© 2014 Enfys McMurry All rights reserved.
June 13, 1940: The situation for the British was dire. The Germans had invaded Denmark, Norway, Holland, Belgium, Luxembourg and France. “We have just one more battle to win,” Hitler’s propaganda minister Joseph Goebbels, talking of Britain, told cheering thousands. The new British prime minister Winston Churchill told the British he had nothing to offer “...but blood, toil, tears and sweat.” With the invasion of the island imminent, he said, “We shall fight on the beaches, we shall fight on the landing grounds, we shall fight in the hills, we shall never surrender...” The speech went around the world. It was reported on the front page of the Iowegian. Time magazine, sold in Allen’s bookstore on the Square’s east side, carried it in full. Roosevelt knew exactly what was happening and what was coming. Extra military recruiting officers were arriving in town. So were representatives of the Civil Aeronautics Authority who made arrangements on this day with Centerville Junior College (six months before Pearl Harbor) to open an aviation school at the airport. Student pilots, required to be enrolled in a college or graduated from one, signed up in Junior College rooms on the top floor of the high school. (388-390)