The newlyweds of 1943 were an odd lot. Young. In love. But often an ocean apart, their romance sundered by World War II.

Today, the faded months of worry are re-emerging as war brides and old soldiers and sailors observe golden wedding anniversaries and recall their love in war.

Almost every Sunday, the Tri-City Herald runs photographs of couples now in their late 60s or early 70s alongside their wedding pictures from 50 years ago. Often, the groom of 1943 wears Army khaki or Navy blue as he stands next to his bride.

The Herald interviewed three couples who spent much of the war apart, Roy and Elizabeth Moore of Richland, Gordon and Marie Hille of Kennewick and Anthony and Mable Putra of Richland.

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Gordon and Marie Hille lived in Kennewick before the war. They met when he was the doorman at the old Roxy Theater and she was a cashier.

Often after a late show, Gordon would volunteer to walk Marie home and an off-screen romance started to bud.

Gordon, who graduated from Kennewick High School in 1940, was waiting around to be drafted.

He gave Marie an engagement ring in early December 1941 just before her 18th birthday, which was Dec. 7.

She, Gordon and their families where getting set to enjoy her birthday when they learned Japan had bombed Pearl Harbor.

It was an era when engagements were lengthy, so they were in no hurry to get married when Gordon was drafted in November 1942 and sent to Fort Worden at Port Townsend for basic training.

A few months later, Marie went to California to stay with an aunt and uncle and the young couple got their first taste of separation.

They didn't like it. Gordon told Marie they either should get married or call it off.

Gordon and Marie married in a garden wedding Sept. 12, 1943, at her family's home at 215 E. First. Superior Court Judge B.B. Horrigan of Pasco waived the customary three-day waiting period and issued them a license.

"I remember it was pretty hot that day, especially for someone wearing a wool Army uniform," Gordon said.

A lot of Kennewick boys already had gone to war and some had been killed. The war drew the town of about 1,500 people closer together, Marie said.

The newlyweds moved to Port Townsend, then to Texas, where he underwent further training as a clerk for a field artillery company.

On May 12, 1945, four months before the war ended, Gordon boarded a troop transport bound for the Philippines. He could tell Marie only that he was heading into the Pacific.

She came home to Kennewick to wait.

Although they were only separated for eight months, and the war ended about the time his ship got to the Philippines, it wasn't an easy wait.

As the war dragged to an end, things were chaotic. Ships bound for the Philippines had to take painfully slow routes to their destinations to avoid Japanese submarines bent on last-ditch suicide missions.

There was no mail for three months.

"Our letters were few and far between," she said.

When letters did come, they arrived in bunches without any postmarks to tell where they originated and without any dates.

Marie said she had no idea which letter to open first. Sometimes she would be reading a letter that referred to something mentioned in a previous letter she had not read yet.

The letters also were heavily censored.

"I've saved a few of the letters. They are pretty precious," she said.

They contained mostly small talk. She would tell of going to the Roxy and seeing a movie, and he would write of what he and a buddy were doing as long as it wasn't of a military nature.

Gordon had to wait four months for a ship home. "In those days, they didn't fly you home. You had to wait for a ship, and thousands of guys were waiting."

It was a glorious reunion when Gordon stepped off the train at the Kennewick depot Feb. 9, 1946.

Marie had been a bridesmaid in a wedding earlier in the day and came to the train soon afterward.

The Hilles celebrated their own honeymoon that day.

They have lived in Kennewick since. Gordon retired from Westinghouse Hanford Co. and Marie retired from working as a Kennewick school librarian and at the Mid-Columbia Library.

They raised one son and three daughters and today have eight grandchildren.

***

It was almost love at first sight when Ray Moore stepped up to the photo album counter at the Fort Leonard Wood, Mo., post exchange and met his wife-to-be Elizabeth.

It was Independence Day 1941. Elizabeth, who had tired of working as a school teacher, had decided to try something different by working at the PX.

Roy, who had been drafted from his hometown of Manila, Ark., on April 16, 1941, was already a sergeant in ordnance.

Roy represented everything Marie disliked. He drank, swore too much and had a poor command of English. Yet he fascinated her.

"He looked good in his uniform and had Southern charm, with a thick Arkansas accent," Elizabeth said.

Roy said he thought Elizabeth was beautiful and quite different from the women he was used to dating.

They immediately started to date and when Ray was transferred to Camp Blanding in Florida, Elizabeth, who had worked her way from the PX to accounting, got her own transfer to the base near Jacksonville.

Ray was promoted to first sergeant, which paid enough to support a wife, and they married March 20, 1943, at Camp Blanding.

Both knew Ray eventually would be sent to Europe.

"We were young, in love, and really didn't think about separation until it happened," she said.

In September, he sailed on the Queen Mary to England for what turned out to be a 27-month stay overseas.

He ended his tour on the Belgian-German border.

When Roy went overseas, Elizabeth started looking for a better job. She spotted an advertisement about war jobs available in an adjoining state.

That "adjoining state" turned out to be Washington, nearly 3,000 miles from Florida. The job she took was at Hanford.

Elizabeth and a girlfriend arrived in Pasco in late 1943, and the next day were on their way to Hanford and a new tent city springing up in the desert.

"The farther we drove, the worse it looked," she said.

She lived in a barracks for a while and eventually rented a trailer when her sister and two nieces came out to live with her.

Later, they moved to government housing at Parkview Homes in Kennewick near the current Kennewick City Hall.

Elizabeth didn't inform Roy of her move at first or about her spartan quarters.

Both could say little of what they were doing.

They wrote frequently, but mail delivery was spotty, with letters coming in bunches.

In fact, when Roy finally shipped home, he arrived before some of his letters from Europe.

"There are a few letters in the trunk down in the basement that I never opened," Elizabeth said.

Mail from home wasn't always good news to the G.I.'s. Some got "Dear John" letters from wives who had found someone else.

"I never feared I would get one, but I read some from guys who did," he said.

There were also some funny ones, such as the one from a fellow soldier's wife, who tried to convince her husband - away for 18 months - that she was in her 18th month of a pregnancy caused by a delayed reaction.

"He didn't buy the excuse," Roy chuckled.

After the long separations, husband and wives needed to get reacquainted.

"I remember I and a girlfriend, whose husband was coming in on the same train with Roy, we went down to meet them," Elizabeth said.

"She got all gussied up for the reunion. Then her husband gets off the train drunk and walks right past his beautiful wife without recognizing her," Elizabeth said.

The Moores had no trouble recognizing each other.

Both later got jobs at Hanford and settled down to stay in Richland. Roy retired from United Nuclear in 1980, while Elizabeth retired as a third-grade teacher from the Richland School District in 1975.

They have four children and three grandchildren.

"The separation was painful, but I think it would have been even more so if we would have had children at the time," Elizabeth said.

***

Every once in awhile, retired Pasco physician Anthony Putra still gives thanks that he came through World War II intact.

"I saw a lot of men who didn't make it or came back wounded," said the former front-line Army surgeon.

"At least I came back whole to a wife and 2-year-old son who was toddling around and didn't know me from Adam," he said.

On Valentine's Day, 1943, Anthony Putra, a new Army doctor from Michigan, proposed to Mabel Stromme, who had grown up in Pasco and was teaching school in Olympia.

They had met just before Christmas at a dinner dance at nearby Fort Lewis.

The Putras aren't sure they sat together at the dinner, but they did get acquainted and made a date for the next day.

Three months later, on March 20, 1943, they were wed at the officers club at Fort Lewis.

"I guess we got married pretty fast when you think of it, but it sure lasted," he said.

The couple celebrated their 50th wedding anniversary at the Meadow Springs Country Club in Richland in March.

"There were a lot of rumors that we would be shipped out soon, and that kind of rushed things along," he said.

They spent five days in Victoria, British Columbia, on their honeymoon and when they returned to Fort Lewis, he shipped out for desert training near Mojave, Calif.

She followed, staying in a motel nearby. He could visit almost every day because he was the commanding officer of a medical company and had a staff car.

When rumors came that his outfit was going to Southern California, Mabel went to Los Angeles to wait.

"I had to commute on weekends from Mohave to L.A. and it was tough," he recalled.

They both wanted to have a child.

"I felt if I never came back, at least Mabel would have something to remember me by," he said.

It was late 1943 when Anthony and his desert-trained unit marched down the streets of San Pedro in their wool army uniforms to head for Hawaii for jungle training.

Watching from the sidewalk was a pregnant Mabel.

Their son Brian was born the next February when his father was clear across the Pacific.

After a stop in New Guinea and island hopping across the Pacific, he ended up in the Philippines.

He worked in a medical unit right behind the front lines and was often under fire not only from Japanese artillery but also from snipers.

He received the bronze star for valor.

Mabel returned to stay with her mother, Borghile Stromme, in Pasco. Her father had been a Northern Pacific railroad engineer and her brother ended up owning a well-known Pasco car dealership.

It was on the island of Luzon while under fire that Putra got a telegram telling him that he was a father.

He quickly sent a telegram home, which they have kept in their son's baby book:

"Telegram received. Many thanks. Your are more than ever in my thoughts at this time. All my love dearest."

"I passed around a few cigars and then went back to tending the wounded," Putra recalled.

With a child he had never seen and a wife he had only spent a short time with, he kept thinking of home and wondering if and when he would return.

In was June 1946, nearly 2H years later, when he flew into McChord Field at Tacoma. Waiting for him were Mabel and their son.

The new family returned to Pasco and began a lifetime together. The Putras now have two children and two grandchildren.