Chicago Girls

My maternal grandmother was a teenager during World War II, living in an Irish neighborhood in Chicago. Her brother was in the Army, stationed in England and made the D-day landing at Normandy. My grandma later married a former sailor who coincidentally drove one of the landing boats on D-day.

When my grandfather and uncle realized they were at the same place on the same day during the war, my uncle remarked, "You were one of the bastards who kept taking us to that damn beach!" I don't know if he knew then that my grandfather carried shrapnel in his leg from that day till the day he died.

My uncle was stationed with a geologically diverse group of men (this was, of course, before the racial integration of the armed forces.) Many of the guys around him thought that everyone in Chicago was a gangster, since Al Capone and the St. Valentine's Day Massacre was still fresh in everyone's memory. My uncle was at first baffled by such stereotype. He then decided to have a little fun.

Below is a photo that he wrote home and asked to have staged. My grandma is on the left with dark hair. I forgot where she said she got the revolvers from, but I assure you that it was rare for for my grandma to have a gun in the same house. The whiskey was her father's; she never was a drinker and didn't like to be around "hard liquor". It appears that they may be playing Stud Poker, but I know she was more of a Pinnocle player.

Once this photo arrived, my uncle was able to convince every gullible hick in his unit that girls in Chicago were not to be messed with. I wonder how many men were influenced by this photo and believed their whole life that Chicago women were heat-packing, whiskey-drinking, poker-playing thugs. Perhaps one of these guys met a woman later who admitted that she was from Chicago, and a hysterical (or sad) reaction occured.