Milly During the War Years

     Milly and her cousin  Muriel had to pass psychiatric examinations in order to enlist in the WAC s. She recounted that the psychiatrist asked her, “Do you like boys?” She answered, “Of course, I have brothers….” Then she understood that he wanted to know if she were a lesbian. The women enlisting in the WACs at the time came under heavy criticism from enlisted men, many of whom would lose their office jobs to women, and who would be sent instead into combat.

      The cousins reported for Basic Training. Barely 21 years old, they were physically fit, and did well, but Milly observed that older WAC s had a much greater struggle. When one WAC fainted, the others were ordered to keep on marching, just step over her, don’t stop to help.

     At inspection time, Milly terrified her fellow WACs with her disobedience, but Milly was a tough gal from the south side of Chicago, she didn’t scare easily, and she knew games being played when she saw games being played. The WACs were taught to make their beds with mitered corners and with sheets and blankets stretched taut.  The beds never passed inspection on first attempt.  But after the officer had ordered them to remake the beds and had left the barracks, Milly would sprawl out on her bed for a while to read a book, then get up and lightly brush her impression off of the top of the bed, but she didn’t remake it. She always passed inspection on the second round.  Later, when she was the mother of four children, she would launder their sheets and make their beds every Monday. After that, the kids were ordered to make their own beds daily.  But Milly made the beds so tightly on Monday that it was difficult to get the sheets and blankets loosened up at all, so it was easy to keep the beds looking tight all week.

     After Milly and her cousin Muriel finished their basic training, each was given a choice of assignments.  Muriel chose to be assigned to the Pentagon, and soon served at a major, top secret, conference of the allies, the Quebec Conference of 1943.  U.S. President F.D. Roosevelt,  British Prime Minister Churchill  and the Canadian prime minister were the key players.  It was there that Roosevelt and Churchill signed a secret agreement to share their nuclear technology; and all three agreed to begin wearing down Japan’s resources, to try to sever Italy from the Axis, to limit involvement in the Balkans to guerrilla warfare, to shore up the British military, and to plan the invasion of occupied France.

     By contrast, Milly chose an overseas assignment.  Before she shipped out, her father told her, “If you get to Australia, tell me that you are drinking a Fosters.” Fosters was the popular Australian beer, and Milly never drank beer (or any other alcohol until she was in her early 40s), so there would be no mistaking the message. Her letters home would be censored, so she could not simply report her destination—“Loose lips sink ships.”      

     She shipped to Australia on the “Lurline,” a luxury liner by the Matson line that normally served Hawaii from the mainland  U.S. It   had been converted to troop carrier for the duration of the war. Milly hated the sea travel. She complained that there was nothing to do except play cards and shuffleboard. That’s when she swore that she would never again write a letter or stand in a line unless she had to.She held true to her resolve about lines. During the 1960s, a Florence school teacher, Mr. Ulrich, got a sore throat that somebody feared might be diphtheria. The whole town lined up to get an inoculation.  When Milly saw the line, she turned around and drove home. Fortunately, his sore throat was a false alarm.

     The Australians were strong allies, but the local women weren’t particularly friendly toward the WACs. For one thing, the Aussies had nowhere near the consumer goods that the Americans were accustomed to, and sometimes flat-out refused to believe the WACs’ description of life in America.  Milly specifically mentioned their lack of Kotex. The Australian women were literally still “on the rag.”

     Milly and a fellow WAC were walking in town one day when they saw General MacArthur and his wife emerge from a house. General MacArthur was a well-known public figure at the time, who had married his (second) wife at age 55. Mrs. MacArthur, who was a wealthy socialite 18 years younger than he was,  and was a brunette. Milly’s friend looked and her and remarked, “He could at least have married a white woman!”

     Milly and her fellow WACs lived in tents and were awakened every morning by the quartermaster’s whistle.  Every morning, the whistle sounded earlier and earlier. Eventually, somebody figured out that a lyre bird had learned to imitate the whistle, and it was the bird who was sounding so early.

     During the day, the WACs pounded out communications on their typewriters. One day Milly was supposed to type an order for “Vomit bags.” Her semi- German upbringing kicked in. “Fo-mit’? Fo-mit’?"she asked. “Vomit,” as in “puke” somebody explained. A landing was being planned, and the allies could not allow the ship decks to become slick with the vomitus of sea-sick soldiers.

     Milly told Sandy or Leslie that each woman had only part of an order to type, so that none could assemble its entirety and leak its contents, but often, she could figure out the order from the part she knew.

     There was time off when the WACs could play. “The nurses got away with murder,” she claimed, but she and the WACs had their own adventures. Once, while she was running around with some soldiers, one turned the steering wheel over her and told her to drive. “I don’t know how!” she told her companions, and when the vehicle went careening one way and another, her companions quickly believed her and took over the driving.      She wasn't injured in that incident, but did spend time in the infirmary.  She looked up to see chameleons crawling all over the ceiling of the facility.     

     According to the styles at the time, women’s pants had zippers on the left side, but the WAC’s uniforms had front zippers, like the men’s. Milly traded services:  a woman altered her pants in exchange for getting her shoes shined every day for a month.

     The WACs spoke in every regional accent of the U.S. and Milly didn’t understand when a WAC offered her a “Clack Bah.” Finally somebody made her understand “Clark Bar,” a popular candy bar at the time.

      Milly’s unit departed Australia by airplane, heading for the island of New Guinea, but their airplane developed an oil leak while they were over the north coast of Australia. They were forced to land and to make camp for the night. They were greeted on the ground by aboriginal tribesmen who were reputed to be cannibals.  Never the less, they were welcomed, and had a restful night. The leak was fixed, and the next morning,  they prepared to depart. They asked their hosts if there were anything they could offer in thanks. “Mirrors,” they said. The men had no mirrors to shave with, so the WACs handed over their compacts.  Milly had her picture taken with a chief, a big-bellied man with a huge, tall “afro” style hairdo. The picture fascinated me when I was a child, and I have asked my sisters to search Mom’s photographs for it, so that I can scan it and post it and share with all of us. Late in her life, Milly became a donor to the Women in Military Service to America, Inc. memorial. Donors were asked to contribute an anecdote from their service for the Memorial’s archives, and the story of the night among the head-hunters is the story she told.

     Their next station was New Guinea (now two nations referred to as Papua New Guinea), then they moved forward to Manila, the Philippines. The women pitched their tents and dug their fox holes.  Every night, a Japanese pilot flew overhead to bomb the allied forces, and the WACs ran from their tents to dive into the foxholes for shelter. “The ground was full of big grubs,” Milly said. Even after the war, when she was married and living at Bridge, OR, an airplane carrying the U.S. mail would fly over at night. At the sound of the airplane, her legs would begin to pump, running for her foxhole. Vake would clomp an arm over her, and wait for her to calm down.

     During the day, there was some personal time.Vake had sent Milly a pretty gold-cased watch, and the Philippine merchants offered to buy it from her, but it was a gift that she would not sell.  Eventually, when I was a teenage, she loaned me the watch to be sure that I would get home from my date on time. Almost as soon as I put on the watch, it quit running. Several years later, the magician Yuri Geller appeared on TV (probably on a delayed broadcast to appear at a reasonable hour on west coast time), and told viewers to hold any broken watches to the front of the TV while he sent out his telekinesis waves, or whatever, to fix them.  She did, and she swore that when she did, the watch began to run again, and not only that, it was set to the correct time of day.

     One evening, the soldiers and WACs partied, and left the encampment littered with cigarette butts and beer cans. The next morning, the officers ordered all enlisted personnel to clean up.  Milly was furious! She neither smoked nor drank, and was not about to clean up after those who did.  Instead, she sat at her typewriter, typing out orders, so mad that smoke was coming out of her ears.  She was never reprimanded at the time, but later, she found out that she had not received one of the medals that everybody else in her unit had received.  She wrote to the military, and she got it!

     Milly reported that the Philippine women were beautiful, but suddenly would collapse into a multitude of wrinkles that told their true ages.

     Milly’s job was to type, and she was confident of her punctuation. Frequently, she thought that her commanding officer, Major Eichler, who was a lawyer in civilian life, used too many commas. She would correct his correspondence. He would disagree, and when he dictated, he would say “Comma. That is an order!”

     Rumors abounded that the U.S. had a tremendous new weapon that would end the war, and in August 1945, that weapon was deployed when the Japanese cities of Nagasaki and Hiroshima were bombed with the Atomic Bomb. The war ended, and one of Milly’s friend from the signal corps gave her a photograph of General MacArthur emerging from the hull of the U.S.S. Missouri when a treaty of peace was signed.

Milly had the choice to be discharged, or to follow General MacArthur on to Japan, but she had received a note from Johnnie Sampson’s wife, Evelyn, telling her to come home. Vake had been discharged, and was starting to date an old girlfriend, Norma. Milly chose discharge.

     Milly’s commanding officer, Major Eichler, conducted an exit interview of each of the WACs who was mustering out and leaving his command.  Each emerged from his tent, looking sober.  Milly was last. “You!” he said. “You have the courage of your convictions, and that is good.”  Major Eichler sent Milly a baby gift, a baby-sized gold bangle bracelet when I was born, but he did not survive to know that I, like he, had entered law.

     Milly returned to Chicago, where Vake joined her for their marriage in 1946.  After the war, he was invited to join the Veterans of Foreign Wars (the territory of Hawaii was as far as he had been from home, but that qualified) and the  American Legion, but Milly was not eligible. She could join their women’s auxiliaries if she wished, but the organizations in chief didn’t admit women. “No thanks,” he said, “She's the war hero in our family.”