A witness to Navy weddings
February 6, 2008 – 7:00 amToday we’ll look at one more of the women who served in the military as reported in We Knew We Were at War: Women Remember World War II.
Doris joined the WAVES (Women Accepted for Volunteer Emergency Services) in 1942 after a short-lived career as an elementary school teacher. Her first assignment was to the Navy Training School – boot camp – at Oklahoma A. & M., where she and her fellow recruits were awakened each morning by the bugler’s reveille and the Duty Officer’s raucous shout of “Hit the deck!” She soon acquired a new vocabulary: walls – bulkheads, stairs – ladders, floors – decks, and, of course, “the head,” although she never saw a ship during her eight years of service for the Navy.
After three months of boot camp, Doris was stationed at the Naval Air Station in Jacksonville, Florida. This was a new ballgame. Gone were the ugly lisle stockings to be replaced with nylons available in the WAVES Ship Store, and barracks inspections were few and far between. Much of her work in the WAVES was of a secretarial nature although, while working in the Chaplain’s office, she was sometimes called upon to stand as a witness to a marriage. Since the grooms were about to be shipped out, there was no time for proper protocol. One such wedding was for two aviation machinist mates standing before the chaplain dressed in their coveralls.
Doris reminds us that the purpose for instituting the women’s Navy was to release men from stateside jobs to overseas duty, thereby increasing our naval forces in wartime, although not all the sailors appreciated this system. WAVES were trained as storekeepers, machinists’ mates, control tower operators, radar technicians, photographers, cryptographers, and many other such tasks.
After the war, Doris worked for the United Nations Relief and Rehabilitation Agency (UNRRA), which was charged with the task of assisting war-torn countries. Along with many other veterans, she made use of the GI Bill at Michigan State University.
Join us tomorrow to learn about gas rationing and cockroaches.
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