Caught the War of the Worlds T-V special last night and it reminded me of a story that my former father-in-law Bill Raftery once told me.
In 1938 Bill was 17 years old and living in a barracks in New Jersey serving in Roosevelt’s Civilian Conservation Corps. When the War of the Worlds radio show aired that night, he and the rest of the corps members in the barracks were ordered outside and armed with shovels to fight off the Martians. According to the radio story, the Martians had supposedly landed in the Jersey countryside. Someone positioned the radio in the barracks’ window so that Bill and his buddies could hear the announcer discussing the Martians’ progress thru the countryside.
Bill said he was scared to death and gripped the shovel as tightly as he could while he awaited for the Martians to come his way. The radio announcer continued to describe the Martians’ marching thru Jersey and destroying everything in their path. Bill said “It never dawned on us that those shovels weren’t going to be much defense if the Martians did attack us, but we were ready anyway.”
However, as Bill and his buddies stood waiting to fight off the attackers, the radio announcer proclaimed that the Martians had overrun the very location where they were positioned and were now proceeding across the river to New York City. Bill and his buddies looked around at each other trying to figure out where the Martians had gone. It was then that they finally realized that it was all a big hoax. However, he did note “I’d never been so scared in my life. If something had moved in front of me, I probably would have beat the hell out of it with that shovel.”