 |
Interviewed by: Charles McAnany |
| My name is Beatrice Low
Notley. I served in the armed forces in World War Two from June, 1943 to November, 1945. I
first joined the WAAC (Women's Auxiliary Army Corps) then re-enlisted in the WAC (Women's
Army Corps) serving in the PTO (Pacific Theater of Operations). In the spring of 1942, I had just graduated with a Bachelor’s degree from the Western College for Women in Oxford, Ohio. I was unmarried, and had returned to Detroit, Michigan to live with my parents. My first job was as a teacher at a suburban school. Because of my inexperience I was not very good at teaching, and found the work difficult and unrewarding. Also, it was stressful living at home again with my parents, because I had already lived away from home for four years at college and was used to having my independence. It’s important that you understand the feeling in the United
States at the time. Everyone was gung-ho to join in the war effort. Unlike the Korean or
Vietnam wars, it seemed that no one objected to the fighting. Hitler had taken over most
of Europe, and needed to be thrown out. Japan had attacked our navy at Pearl Harbor and we
wanted revenge. We never thought the war could have been avoided. It was simply a
continuation of the animosities begun in World War I. The Americans just wanted to get in
there and get it over with. There was never any doubt that the Allies would win. Early in 1943, it wasn’t a difficult decision for me to enlist. It was just the right thing to do. I wanted to be part of the biggest event that would occur in my lifetime. Because I was accustomed to making my own decisions, I enlisted without my parents’ knowledge. My father was so furious he wouldn’t speak to me for three weeks. Imagine, a woman in the military! At that time, there weren’t a lot of choices for women to serve in the armed services, so I chose the Army. This was a completely separate branch of the army just for women. We weren’t expected to fight, but to provide administrative and technical support to the war effort. I took my Basic Training in Fort Des Moines, Iowa. The fort had formerly been a cavalry training post, and the old cavalry officers did not like the idea of having females around. The officers were stiff and arrogant, and assumed that women were incompetent. One of their favorite ways to discipline us was to have frequent inspections. I think it was something of a disappointment to them to find that we women, who were trained from childhood how to keep things clean and neat, were in fact clean and neat. Furthermore, we proved ourselves to be intelligent, resourceful, disciplined and strong. It must have taken some of the fun out of bossing us around. During the weeks of Basic Training, we took classes in military courtesy, military history and customs, close order drill (marching) and Physical Education. Each day we would wake before dawn and line up in front of the barracks for "Roll Call," One of my most vivid memories of Basic Training was being made to stand in formation on the drill field in the pre-dawn blackness. In spite of the hardships, perhaps the most valuable lesson we learned during Basic Training was that of true comradeship. For better or for worse, we were all in it together.
Fort Oglethorpe was a damp place. Damp and hot. When I would rinse my clothes out at night and hang them to dry, they would still be soaking wet in the morning. It was very tiresome wearing such sticky clothing day after day. Around Fort Oglethorpe was a high fence, and behind part of it was a POW camp for Germans who had fought under Rommel in Africa. In the evening as we walked back from the mess hall, if we looked through the fence we could see the German boys sitting in front of their barracks. One of them had a little concertina, and they would pass the evening singing German songs. At the time, I thought of them as "The Enemy" and paid no attention to them. Looking back, I see them for what they were –just homesick boys. Finally, in June, 1944, I was shipped out to Brisbane, Australia, where I worked in an office for the next few months. The barracks were fairly primitive, the food was bad (no more Vienna sausages, please!), the work was tedious, and I was paid a princely sum of $54 per month. However, we knew we were not in any real danger, and I was happy to be serving my country. I have some lovely memories of Australia. When I was there, I became friends with an Australian family who owned an RV and some horses near the beach. On my days off, we would ride the horses along the beach, enjoying a truly pristine Australian wilderness. Since then, that very beach has become Australia’s "Gold Coast," and is ringed with pricey hotels and condominiums. I’m glad I had a chance to know it before it was "discovered." In late 1944, my unit was transferred to an office in Hollandia, New
Guinea. The barracks were more primitive, and the food was even worse. What I would have
given for some fresh fruits and vegetables! And how it rained. After each rain, the jungle
would begin to steam in the tropical heat, and the steam would rise into a great damp
cloud. Within a few hours, the cloud would condense and it would rain again. Our barracks
had a tin roof, and I still remember the sound of that rain hammering on that roof. When Christmas neared, we crawled under the compound fence one night to cut down a Christmas tree. Of course there were no proper "trees" to be had, so we contented ourselves with a little bush and decorated it with whatever we could find. On Christmas morning we exchanged gifts of shoe laces, toothpaste, and playing cards from the PX. It was a very merry Christmas after all! Several weeks later, on another typical sweltering day in New Guinea, I was delighted to receive a special "mail call." When I entered the mail tent, the clerk was at one end of a long counter, and a small package was at the far end. "I believe that’s for you," he grimaced. As I came closer, I noticed that the package seemed to be quivering. The return address was from a little Mom-and-Pop drugstore in my home town of Detroit. Apparently, they had magnanimously decided to send a little "Christmas Care Package" to everyone in the neighborhood who had enlisted. It had probably been mailed in November, and now it was February – so their little "surprise" had been festering in the tropical heat for about three months. And what a splendid surprise it was--Chocolate-covered cherries! Unfortunately, they had long ago melted, and spread their ooze over the additional contents. I could just make out a box of stationery, a pair of hose (in the tropics?) and a soggy package of bath powder. To make matters worse, the whole slithering mass was alive with maggots. After depositing the "Care Package" directly in the trash, I was swift to write back thanking them for such a thoughtful gift. However, I have not touched a chocolate-covered cherry since 1944. My final assignment was in the Philippines, first in Tacloban on the island of Leyte, and then in Manila. General MacArthur’s strategy of taking the Pacific islands one by one was grinding on, and all around I could see how the Philippines had been devastated by years of war. A particularly painful memory is that of the hungry children, who would gather outside our mess hall after every meal, desperate to get any scrap of food they might find in our garbage. When the news came about the bombing of Hiroshima, it didn’t really mean much to us. We had no idea what an atom bomb was, and didn’t know that it signaled the end of the war. We simply continued with business as usual until we were told it was time to go home. Was I homesick? NO. I knew I had had one of the greatest adventures of my life. Was I ready to go home? YES. We had all had quite enough of the war.
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Last update 04/19/01 12:51 PM
Copyright © 2001 Nieman Enhanced Learning Center
Beatrice "Bea" Low Notley
Following Basic Training and NCO school, I was transferred to Fort
Oglethorpe, Georgia for additional training in a specialty field before being
"shipped out." People always wonder how a person deals with their fears in the
military. To tell the truth, my greatest fear was that I would be assigned to the
"Cook and Baker" school. Ugh! Luckily, I was assigned to an overseas secretarial
unit. I was trained to work in an Ordnance office, where I would handle the paperwork
required to keep vehicles and ammo moving.
When I look back on the outcome of World War Two, I can
see that no country really "lost" the war. In the end, everything turned out
okay for the United States, Japan, and even Germany. Japan and Germany abandoned their
cruel, militaristic policies, and the USA grew in prosperity and confidence.