It was a time of apprehensions and uncertainties. Eighty years ago, millions of American families stared at the empty chairs at their holiday dinner tables. World War II was raging, and men and women were in uniform, some in combat, some in support roles, and almost all were away from home.

As 1943 waned, 1944 lacked clarity. How long until this war is over? The Art and Lillian Jones family of Marshalltown mulled over this question constantly. They had two empty seats at their 1943 Christmas dinner table. Two sons were in the armed forces, both away from home for the first time.

Richard Jones, age 23, was in the grind of Marine Corps boot camp in San Diego. Roger Jones, 19, was in the Army Air Forces’ aircraft mechanics school in Biloxi, Miss. The Joneses counted their blessings. Their older two boys were still in the USA. Many families worried about their loved ones in hostile locales overseas. Some Marshall County families had already made the ultimate sacrifice.

Six months earlier, Richard was a serious college student in Cedar Falls. His fiance, Bernadine Buschbom of Albion, was back in Marshalltown working at Brintnall’s store on Main Street. Roger was walking the halls of Marshalltown High, talking to girls and missing so many classes that he did not graduate on time. Military service was inevitable, and the Jones boys wondered about their futures. Richard talked at length with their uncle, Victor Lien, a World War I combat veteran and Iowa Soldiers Home (now Iowa Veterans Home) employee.

Roger Jones in his Army Air Force uniform.

Lien told his nephew, “If you want the best training, go into the Marines.” The Marine Corps, with its harsh and demanding basic training, was an all-volunteer branch. Richard signed up for the Marine Reserve and waited to be called up for active duty.

Roger was undecided. He could not see himself as a Marine or a sailor and was not keen on all the marching required in the Army.

“I wasn’t crazy about that,” he laughed.

But the local draft board had his name. His good friend Butch Bucksbaum approached him one day. Butch had a brother on the county Selective Service Board.

“My brother asked me to see what service you want,” Butch said.

Richard Jones attending USMC officer training.

“Do you know?”

Draftees normally did not choose their branch of service

“Well, it might as well be the Air Force,” Roger replied.

Soon he received an official letter informing him he was joining the United States Army Air Forces. June 16, 1943, was a monumental date for the Jones family. Their two oldest sons went off to the military just hours apart. About midnight, Roger went to the Milner Hotel at Third Avenue and Main Street to meet the buses taking him and 81 other recruits to Camp Dodge near Des Moines.

Art and his youngest son, 14-year-old Randall, walked uptown in the night’s darkness to send off Roger. They said goodbye to Roger then hurried a block south to Church Street to wave one last time at his bus as it sped away. Back at home, Randall was nearly asleep when his dad came over to his bed and collapsed on the floor. Art started crying and sobbed for a long time. Richard left Marshalltown later that day for Kalamazoo, Mich., and a Marine Corps officer’s training program. He took logistics courses that were supposed to lead to a commission as a second lieutenant in the Marines.

Pvt. Richard W. Jones after boot camp.

But there are no promises in wartime. In mid-October, Richard and hundreds of others saw their unit shut down. He was transferred to Marine Corps boot camp in San Diego. Gone were his thoughts of becoming an officer with shiny bars on his shoulders. He was starting over as a lowly Marine recruit.

“The war in the Pacific wasn’t going well, and the military needed more men in combat,” Richard recalled. Roger was first assigned to an Army Air Forces basic training unit in Lincoln, Neb. A child of the Great Depression, it was his first trip outside of Iowa. He went through training with little difficulty.

“The hardest part is now over,” he wrote on a postcard to “Pa,” his grandfather who was a machinist for the Minneapolis & St. Louis Railroad in Marshalltown. “We’re going out to the gunnery range for eight days.” A week later he proudly told Pa, “I qualified shooting a carbine and submachine gun.”

His next assignment was at the aerial gunnery school in Harlingen, Texas. It appeared he was going to be a gunner on an airplane, perhaps a B-17 or the newer B-24, both four-engine bombers. But halfway through the training, even before Roger got to fly, he was transferred. “The air force must have needed more airplane mechanics than gunners because we packed up and I was sent to Biloxi, Miss.,” he explained.

Roger’s training was slow to start, and he spent a rainy December doing little but catching up on his cards and letters to his family and a group of MHS girls.

“The weather is hot here yet, which seems strange for December,” he wrote home. He enjoyed a special treat on New Year’s Day 1944. Trainees received free tickets to the Sugar Bowl football game between Georgia Tech and the University of Tulsa in nearby New Orleans. Tech took a come-from-behind victory, 20-18. Roger finally began his training, but before long, he was transferred again, this time to Laredo, Texas, and back to gunnery school. Richard spent the latter weeks of 1943 in boot camp.

“It was tough. It…was…tough,” he repeated, slowly emphasizing each word. The three-month assignment was a grueling, demanding test of physical and mental endurance. “They were rushing us through basic because they needed manpower.”

All individualism was washed away so the screaming drill instructors could build unit cohesion. Days began well before sunup with calisthenics and running and ended after dark.

“We would often have bayonet practice an hour a day,” Richard remembered. “Knife practice half an hour a day. Rifle practice all day long for two weeks. Running, jumping, wrestling. Judo practice after the first week almost every day. We marched about two hours a day.”

The Jones brothers began 1943 as students and ended it as warriors in training. Neither knew his wartime future at the beginning of 1944. They were just two of millions of men and women in uniform who were trained to expect the unexpected.

Art and Lillian maintained a normal lifestyle during the war. He continued his job as the custodian at the First Congregational Church on West Main Street. She worked occasionally at Marshall Canning Co. Sometimes Lillian and Randall went to the train depot in town with sandwiches for the boys in uniform passing through to their next assignments. She prayed mothers elsewhere were also feeding her boys in uniform.