A former editor of the Townsman, Jack Moynihan spent most of his Army service in China. His reminiscences, reprinted here from the 1946 Town anniversary publication, are representative of 1,200 others who served with Uncle Sam during World War II.

I wouldn't attempt to speak for all Andover's ex-servicemen. I was strictly a scrub team warrior myself. For one thing I wasn't in the E.T.O. (European Theater of Operations), where the major league slugging was going on. I wasn't a combat man, as the Service Forces in China were chiefly interested in getting Chiang Kai-Shek's boys up near ringside. And I wasn't an officer, so any original ideas I may have must have been black-marketed to me by a traitorous I and E man.

If I have any distinction at all, it lies in my brain-benumbing ennui for Andover during my time overseas. I dare say I was the most homesick soldier in the entire Army. So if I confine my remarks to the way Andover servicemen felt about the old town during our most recent Armageddon, I can qualify as a gilt-edge, preferred stock, five-star-with-oak-leaf-cluster authority on the subject.

We missed Andover's democracy the most. It wasn't only the much-publicized "caste system" of the services, but the way people live in other countries. Despite what the professors tell us, the world is still full of little guys who "know their place." They leave their government to the people of wealth and family, they view a high school education as an ostentatious way of putting on the dog, and they stand on the curb and tip their hat when the mayor's car goes by.

We recognize that Andover isn't like that. When a Cadillac goes by in this neighborhood, you have to look twice to see if it's transporting the bank president or the union president. When Gene Lovely picks his valedictorian at Punchard, he doesn't have to look up the genealogy tables first to make sure the kid's family came over on the right boat. And when we have a town meeting, any ex-Kilroy can rise up in his wrath and tell the town fathers to go blow it out of their town reports.

There were other things we missed. Roads, for instance, good solid macadam roads that led straight to any town you pointed the car for, and didn't degenerate into a morass of mud and broken bricks after the first half-mile. And Andover's innocent little non-malarial mosquitoes, that didn't land you in the hospital with the sweats and frets. Inside plumbing. Electric light and power. Eateries and drinkeries that weren't out to displace Joe's last franc. Populations who didn't mortgage their ideals and hang price tags on their morals.

We missed Andover's public services and servants. We missed a town where you can get twelve full years of education for the price of a dozen pencils and a prom ticket. Where police, public and court combine to make a busted window a bold piece of lawlessness. Where the water's always good, the streets always clean, the public health watch-dogged, the highways repaired, the snow cleared away as soon as it hits the ground. We are pretty well convinced that for $28 a year, we'd buy a thousand bucks worth of Andover any time.

Worst of all, we missed the town's limitless opportunities to have fun. We remembered Pomp's Pond, the Crystal (Ballroom), Saturday night at Roy Hardy's bowling alleys (on Park Street), skiing on Prospect Hill. We missed the Punchard Alumni banquet, the May Day breakfast, the Memorial Day parade, the Ballardvale Horribles....Not to mention the skating on Rabbits Pond, the way the wind howls down from Morton Street at a Johnson game, and the St. Patrick's Day plays in the old town hall. Some of the things we do in Andover are part of our heritage, but all are part of our life.

Now that we're back, what do we want from Andover? Mainly, we want just what we had before; as far as the town's concerned we've been away playing for funsies. We want the town government well-regulated, democratic and efficient. We want a decent job with a decent income, a chance at a car and a home, our own churches, pastimes and clubs. And they're nothing extra-ordinary to ask from a town like Andover, which has been offering them to its citizens for generations.

Without undue vainglory, we think that our town and our folks raised us just right for our tussle with the musclemen on the other side. We hope our grandchildren will be making merry at the 400th birthday of the old town, and telling each other how proud Gramp was to be back home in time for the shindig a century ago.

Jack Moynihan

Charles & Maude Newman House

Charles Newman's Photography Collection

J. Everett Collins: A Man Born to Do

Snow, Ice, Wind, and Water: Andover's Natural Disasters

Josh Miner and His Excitement for Living

The Bay Circuit Alliance: Making Connections

Andover in the Civil War Resources for Researchers

The Story of Epaphrus Kirby Bryant

Bessie Goldsmith