"Milkweed Pods for War", 1944

Despite its poor reputation as a weed, the common milkweed played a vital role locally and throughout the nation during World War II when it became a strategic resource gathered by schoolchildren.

Milkweed is a distinctive plant. Growing some 3 to 6 feet tall with a single stout stalk in abandoned fields and along the margins of roads, milkweed takes its name from its latex or milk-like sap. In autumn, it is easily recognized by the large greenish-gray pods which eventually dry and split open to reveal seeds secured to fine white silky filaments or floss. Tethered to this floss, the seeds drift with the wind, and so are dispersed. It was this distinctive floss which in 1944 became vital to the Allied war effort as stuffing for life vests and insulation for flight suits.

Previously, life jackets and flight suits had been filled and insulated with seed floss from kapok, a tropical tree grown on the island of Java in what was then the Dutch East Indies. Following occupation of these islands by Japan, the Allied source of kapok fiber (also known as Java cotton) was cut off and an alternative fiber was needed. Milkweed floss was found to be the perfect substitute. The silky white hairs or filaments are hollow and coated with wax, giving them properties of lightness, buoyancy and water resilience very similar to kapok. It was found that a pound and three-quarters of milkweed floss could keep a man afloat for hours.

Since commercial production of milkweed would not have met the immediate needs of the American armed forces, schoolchildren were enlisted to gather pods of wild milkweed to satisfy military demand. Pods were collected during the fall of 1944 before they could split open and disseminate their seeds.

A national campaign to collect wild milkweed pods was inaugurated under the direction of the Milkweed Floss Division of the War Hemp Industries, agent for the Commodity Credit Corporation of the U. S. D. A. In Massachusetts, the effort was promoted and coordinated by the state department of education. Children throughout the nation were encouraged to gather milkweed pods with such slogans as “Two Bags Save One Life”, (since two bags of pods were required to fill one life vest).

At the start of the school year in September, 1944, Middleborough’s secondary-level school children joined the search for milkweed pods, with the collection drive spearheaded by Norman W. Lindsay, principal of the Bates Junior High School. Superintendent of Schools J. Stearns Cushing emphasized the importance of the collection in presentations to Middleborough eight graders on September 13, and the town’s seventh graders the following day. Within two weeks, students at the School Street School had collected 40 bags towards the town’s goal of 250, enough to produce 20 life vests. Ernest Salley was the first student to return a full sack, and others contributing were Richard Flood (3 sacks), Donald Wheeler (3 sacks), Louise Stets (2 sacks) and Loris Jackson, Jacqueline Jones, Clarence Tarr, William Warner, Robert Richardson, Charles McCrillis, James Provenche, Evelyn Roberts and Mae Guilford (1 sack each). Elementary level students at the Union Street School, though not officially part of the program, also contributed to the School Street School collection.

The pods were packed in open mesh onion bags which were provided by the government and which were favored as their loose weave allowed the pods to dry after packing. To further facilitate the drying of collected pods, filled bags (each holding a bushel) were suspended from the fire escapes of the Bates Junior High School and on the fence at the rear of the Union Street School. Filled sacks of fresh pods weighed about fifteen pounds, while those containing dried pods weighed just five pounds.

Ultimately, Middleborough schoolchildren gathered 109 sacks or an estimated 87,200 pods, enough for 54 life vests. 

The collected pods were shipped to the milkweed processing and seed extraction plant of the Milkweed Floss Corporation of America, built in 1943 at Petoskey, Michigan. The Middleboro Gazette on November 17, 1944, described the process which the pods would undergo at Petoskey for its readers. “…They will be run over a hot air dryer for a few minutes, then removed from the bags and put through a machine that first takes off the pods, then picks the seeds from the floss. The floss is pressed into bales and shipped to the manufacturers of life saving garments into which it is quilted.”

It is estimated that 11 million pounds of milkweed floss were gathered during the war.

Illustrations:
Milkweed Pods, Union Street School, Middleborough, MA, photograph by Horace K. Atkins, November, 1944.
Flanking the 109 sacks of milkweed pods gathered by Middleborough schoolchildren in the autumn of 1944 are Superintendent of Schools J. Stearns Cushing and Bates Junior High School principal Norman W. Lindsay who let the collection efforts.

Common milkweed (Asclepias syriaca) pod, Pratt Farm, Middleborough, MA, photograph by Mike Maddigan, August 24, 2004.

Common milkweed (Asclepias syriaca) floss, Pratt Farm, Middleborough, MA, photograph by Mike Maddigan, October 28, 2004.

Troops Homebound by Ship, photograph courtesy of the Western History/Genealogy Department, Denver Public Library.
Tenth Mountain Division Troops return by ship to the U. S.  Several wear life vests

Sources:
Middleboro Gazette, September 15, 1944:1, “Pupils on Hunt for Milkweed Pods for War”; September 29, 1944:5, “Collect 40 Sacks of Milkweed Pods”; November 17, 1944:1, “Milkweed Pods are Shipped to Michigan”

"Germans" Bomb South Middleborough, 1942

Or so the headlines would have read had the civil defense air raid drills of 1942 which targeted South Middleborough had been an actual event. Fortunately they weren’t, but they did help prepare local residents for a feared enemy attack on American shores during World War II.

Even prior to America's declaration of war in December, 1941, South Middleborough had been exposed to wartime preparedness procedures. In June, soldiers from Camp Edwards on Cape Cod had engaged in maneuvers in the vicinity. The following month, Lucy Braley was appointed captain to solicit funds for the U. S. O. at South Middleborough. A number of South Middleborough residents enlisted in the armed forces prior to the declaration of war including Russell Tripp and Everett W. Collins.

The community, itself, began preparations by naming Everett Buckman as air raid warden for South Middleborough with Harold Williams as his assistant in late summer, 1941. The Junior Red Cross at the South Middleborough School engaged in war relief efforts, establishing a contribution box to raise money for the purchase of books for U. S. O. camps in January, 1941.

Route 28, as one of the principal highways to Cape Cod where Camp Edwards was located, saw convoys pass through, as well as consequent accidents. On February 1, 1942, a cab operated by the Checker Taxicab Company of Boston carrying seven or eight soldiers back to Camp Edwards skidded, struck a tree and flipped over before burning a mile north of the Middleborough-Rochester town line. Both Engine 1 from Middleborough and the Wareham engine responded to the call shortly before midnight.

The community was included in the distribution of so-called “bomb sand” on March 14, 1942. Middleborough Highway Department trucks distributed sand to congested areas where homes were clustered closely together. Sand was to be kept easily available in metal buckets “for use in extinguishing and disposing of incendiary bombs.” It is not clear how readily South Middleborough residents participated. The Gazette reported that only thirty percent of householders outside the center had put out pails to be filled while the percentage for the center (fifty percent) was not much better. Some residents may have recognized the futility of effectively dousing an incendiary with a single bucket of sand and so felt disinclined to participate.

The relative lack of willingness to participate in the sand distribution fueled concerns about Middleborough’s overall preparedness in the event of an air raid, particularly since the town had held only one blackout drill in May, 1941 prior to the start of the war. Accordingly, both air raid defense tests and test blackouts began being scheduled with regularity throughout Middleborough. Initially, the bell of the South Middleborough church was to be used to supplement the town’s two existing fire alarm sirens located at Middleborough center to signal an air raid. Additionally, air raid wardens were provided with police whistles to be used to signal for a final blackout. In June, 1942, an electric air raid whistle manufactured by the Westinghouse Air Brake Company was installed in Sisson’s Garage at the intersection of Wareham and Locust Streets, operated by the same compressed air system which Sisson used to inflate tires.

The first civilian air raid defense test on Sunday, March 29, 1942, played havoc with Cape traffic on Route 28. Over 225 northbound cars were halted at the Middleborough line in Rochester while “some 56 additional that had passed the town line before the start of the blackout were stopped in lower South Middleboro.” Despite the inconvenience, “the drivers cooperated without protest.” Additional town blackouts were conducted April 7, 1942; August, 1942; and June 23-24, 1943; along with two state-wide blackouts held on December 15, 1942, and February 28, 1943.

On Monday, May 11, 1942, the evening before registration for gasoline rationing was to commence, Middleborough’s defense organizations participated in a rehearsal mobilization, though without a blackout, in which South Middleborough was actively engaged. The first warning was given at 7 p. m., the second at 7: 15, and the final warning at 7:29 at which point a blackout would have been complete. “The first call for help came a minute before the final warning, at 7:29 p.m. from the Esso station in South Middleboro reporting an accident on the old road [Spruce Street] at the first house on the left. Serious injuries required the services of doctors and an ambulance.” Richmond Matthews’ auxiliary ambulance was dispatched to the scene along with the Egger ambulance accompanied by a first aid assistant. The “injured” were transported to St. Luke’s Hospital at Middleborough where Doctor James M. Bonnar, Jr., judged the bandaging done by first aid corps members.

A second surprise test was conducted late Sunday afternoon, June 21, during which an enemy bomber was shot down by an interceptor plane at 5:10 p.m., crashing some 500 yards north of the South Middleborough railroad station east of the tracks to Cape Cod. Three men were “seen” parachuting from the plane and “have landed near Wareham street nearly opposite the burning plane.” The State Guard was dispatched to capture the men. During this raid the recently-installed electric air raid siren installed at Sisson’s gas station was employed for the first time.

South Middleborough’s situation was regarded as particularly perilous at the time, isolated as it was by thick woods and swamps which provided extensive concealment for any possible invaders as manhunts for lost and fugitive individuals during the 1950s would so well demonstrate. Because of this, the area became the scene of an extensive search following the actual loss of an Army fighter plane which disappeared following take off from its base at Hillsgrove, Rhode Island on December 22, 1942, the wreckage of which was thought to be hidden beneath the tree cover near South Middleborough. Members of Middleborough’s Company 4 of the Massachusetts State Guard as well as troops from several Massachusetts and Connecticut camps searched the thickly-forested area southwest of South Middleborough during the last week of December, while a blimp searched from the air. The area immediately west of South Middleborough bounded by Spruce, Benson and Highland Streets and the railroad tracks were searched as well. “The local men came out of the woods well scratched up.” It was not until late March, 1943, that the plane and the body of its pilot were located in a heavily wooded portion of Cape Cod ironically near Camp Edwards.

A second plane from the Hillsboro base, a P-47, caught fire and crashed just over the South Middleborough line in Rochester in early March, 1943, with the pilot parachuting to safety.

Civilian air raid preparedness drills became increasingly infrequent as the likelihood of invasion diminished throughout late 1943 and 1944. In fact, South Middleborough experienced its only true bomb scare in November, 1944, when blasting associated with the construction of a cranberry bog west of the railroad tracks by Harrison Peppin shook windows at Sisson’s Garage, Sisson’s Diner, Lucy Braley’s Candy Kitchen and homes in the neighborhood, prompting residents to fear a “robot bomb”. Following an investigation by Chief of Police Alden C. Sisson, local fears were allayed.