When World War II forced itself upon the United States, the Ward family answered the call.

Until that time, the family had been hard-pressed just surviving. Farming on land originally acquired through a Civil War veteran’s grant was the Ward family. They had six boys. The Patteson family, which worked an adjacent farm, had six girls. Things were pretty far apart in Chautauqua County, Kansas, so it’s not surprising that those six boys married those six girls.

One of the boys was Robert Ward. His bride was Rose Patteson. Robert farmed a small patch of his own land and was a share-cropper on a few other parcels. He eventually saved enough to purchase the tiny general store in Wauneta, Kan. Like their parents, the couple had six children.

They survived droughts. They survived the Great Depression.

Then came World War II.

The Ward boys, Royal, Lyle and William (Billy) all enlisted. All three ended up in Europe.

The two older girls, Cleta and Marjorie, went to Wichita to work in the Boeing plant building B-29 Superfortress bombers. They were the real-life “Rosie the Riveter” you’ve seen in posters. In fact, Cleta looked suspiciously like the Rosie on the poster in those days. The youngest girl was Carolee, my mother, who was too young. Instead, she stayed home and worked at the store, which was a hub for both commerce and social interaction for the area.

Cleta and Marjorie were two of an estimated 29,000 workers at that Boeing plant. The Wichita facility produced 1,644 of the 3,970 B-29s built during the war.

While the girls built the weapons, the Ward boys employed them.

But it was the youngest, Billy, who distinguished himself on the battlefield. His unit, made up mostly of Kansas boys, fought its way through the bocage of Normandy where each hedgerow was a small fortress. Many of those country boys remained in France, killed in action as the rest learned how to overcome the German defenses. Billy Ward earned the Silver Star during this time by eliminating a machine gun nest, which helped at least a few of those boys to return home.

My Uncle Billy did come home but I never met him. A few weeks after returning, he was killed by a drunk driver on a narrow bridge near Cedar Vale, Kan. He survived bombs and bullets only to be taken down by a drunk.

The rest had better outcomes. Royal was a successful businessman in Battle Ground, Wash. Lyle became a school principal in Coffeyville, Kan. Cleta was a school teacher in Wichita. Marjorie was the wife of Cedar Vale’s town mechanic, Floyd Goode. They eventually bought a farm of their own.

None of them boasted about their wartime service. They always said they only did what was necessary.

But they answered the call.