WESTWOOD—The Westwood High School yearbook for 1944–1945 featured this page of students who, having reached enlistment age prior to graduation, had already joined the military during World War II. On the cusp of manhood, these teenagers left their families, their friends, to be shipped to overseas battlefields and unknown fates in service to their country. As the saying goes, “Freedom isn’t free.”
With Westwood and Park Ridge being the only high schools in the Pascack Valley at that time, kids attending the Westwood campus—which back then was a large brick building on Fourth Avenue—came from that borough, plus Washington Township, Emerson, Hillsdale, River Vale, and beyond.
Accompanying text on the facing yearbook page reads, “The seniors have spoken many times of the absent members of their class who would have graduated with them in June were it not for the war. These classmates are now at various foreign stations. The winter in western Europe has been severe, requiring as much effort to overcome as the enemy. The South Pacific is the other weather extreme, steaming jungles with their constant threat of fever and disease, ripping coral reefs sharp as razors, poor drinking water, and a more fanatical adversary.
A number of those who will graduate in June will be called upon to face some of these hardships. May 1945 be the year of a final victory and a speedy return home.”
Indeed, 1945 did bring that victory. The six-year conflict officially ended on Sept. 2, 1945, just before the beginning of the next school year. Many childhood friends would return home, but not all.
So many teenagers around the United States enlisted in the military prior to graduating that in 1942 the General Education Development (GED) Test was developed. The test was intended to provide young military men with the educational credentials they would need to procure a job upon their return to civilian life.
Americans will commemorate Veterans Day this Thursday, Nov. 11. The staff of Pascack Press wishes to express our gratitude to all of the men and women, past and present, who have served in our nation’s armed forces.
