Page 35 - Senior Link Magazine Fall 2021- Online Magazine

arMY air corps
WWii

Service. He memorized many of the colorful poems
and developed a reputation for entertaining guests
around a campfire with his gift. (He once unknowingly
recited the crusty “Ballad of Salvation Bill” for the Rev.
Franklin Graham.)

Peggy passed away in 2005, but love found Charles
again when he became reacquainted with an old friend.
He and Myrna have been married for ten years. Charles
and his new bride relocated to Lubbock when he was
89, and they are both delightfully agreeable about this
hunt and fish. stage of their lives. Hopefully, it will be a long time
“It was beautiful from now, but before he once again slips “the surly
there, and the bonds of earth”, it seems appropriate to say, “Thank
streams were full you, Charles Baldwin, for your service and for living
of trout. The Germans weren’t allowed to fish during an exemplary life of appreciating the simple things and
the war, so you could cut a pole, tie some string on it, treasuring the important things.”
attach a fishhook from your escape kit, and catch a mess
of German brown trout.” They would bring them back
and fry them up on their Coleman stoves.
Despite those pleasant memories, Charles remembers
the devastation he witnessed after the war ended.
He felt most sorry for the “conscripted” homeless.
“They had nowhere to go.” (At least 11 million people
were displaced from their home countries – about seven
million of those in Germany.) The detailed scrapbook
he has kept of his military service is a rare glimpse
into the experiences of the Greatest Generation during
WWII.

In Nov. 1945, 1st Lt. Baldwin sailed out of Marseilles,
France on the USAT Geo. W. Goethals and landed at
Camp Miles Standish in Boston. Back in Artesia, he
went to work with his father again, foregoing college
because of his father’s fragile health. He separated from
the Army Air Corps but stayed in the AF Reserves,
retiring a Lt. Colonel after 20 years of service. He
married his high school sweetheart, and he and Peggy
raised three wonderful children, Rick, Judy, and
Russ. The family moved to Lamesa in 1964, where
Charles managed the popular family-owned Baldwin’s
Department Store on the square for over 30 years.

After retirement, the couple travelled in their RV to
countless state and national parks. Charles never tired
of the great outdoors, especially the mountains, and the
two often served as camp hosts. Charles fell in love with
Alaska and developed a love for the poetry of Robert

Lubbock Senior Link 35