LIFE  AFTER  EAST  HIGH, PART 1 

After graduating from East Nashville High School, I had a job with Sears while I did my first two years of college.  At the city’s largest department store I sold boy’s clothing and caught shoplifters.  I didn’t arrest shoplifters, but alerted the floorwalkers and assisted them in several respects leading to arrests. In fact, I was a better detective than salesperson.

But World War II was still going on after several years of it and my older brother was in the Signal Corps of the Army somewhere in Europe.  Several cousins were also there and in Southeast Asia.  I wanted to see the long war over and America and our Allies the victor, with our family’s menfolk once again home. I thought about all this and made a decision.

Sears gave me an extra day off but I left home that May morning as if I were going to work as usual. I spent the day at the Naval Recruiting Office. No member of my family or any of my friends knew what I was doing. I enlisted in the WAVES for the duration and six months afterward.

I chose the Navy for several reasons. The requirements for getting into it were higher than those for getting into the WACS. To get into the latter a girl did not have to be a high school graduate and could be only eighteen, whereas the WAVES demanded a high school diploma and age twenty-one. I had had two years of college while also working more than two years at Sears and the combination of these two filled a requisite for Officers’ Candidate School.  I would aim for that. 

Another reason for choosing the WAVES was the uniform. The navy blues and the dress whites were beautiful, designed by a prominent New York couturier, Mainbocher. Khaki would have been terrible for me. I would have wanted to add a bit of red to that uniform.

During the next thirty days, while waiting for orders to head for boot training, I got somewhat frightened about what I had done. Not being much into politics at that time, I considered the war’s continuing for many more years and the military changing.  I might actually have to fight. I did not tell anyone of these fears, however, and was excited again when the official papers arrived.

 

Of course, I already knew boot training would be in New York City and I had never been there. (This was before the days when the average American thought nothing of getting on a plane and going anywhere.)  I rode the train -- Pullman car -- from Nashville to The Bronx. I was stationed at Hunter College, which consisted mainly of four large, rather grand, stone buildings, laid out in a square and connected by exceptionally wide, light and comfortable underground tunnels with concrete floors, which we would use when it rained.  

Today, after we’ve all seen wars on our television screens and in movies -- and some of us in reality -- it is almost unbelievable when I relate my experience in the military. First, that my training was in New York City. Then, that we lived in civilian apartment houses which families had to give up for the Navy’s purposes. My building was huge, with three wings and several stories. Each apartment had an entry hall large enough to serve as a dining area, two bedrooms, a kitchen and a bathroom  We were not allowed to use the kitchen, but we had to have it spotless for Captain’s Inspection (white gloves). Each bedroom held two sets of bunks; therefore, eight Waves lived in one apartment. Eight females to one bathroom and one closet located between the bedrooms. No problem. We were kept to such a rigid schedule no one had time to spend in front of a mirror. For the closet each one had two sets of dress blues, two gray-striped seersucker dresses, two white shirts, one blue shirt, appropriate ties and a second pair of “old-woman laced and tied” shoes.

We each had one hat and it always had to be with us. One day in Regimental Review, my hat blew off my head and away. Since we were instructed never to break step while marching, even if the one in front of us fainted in the heat, I marched on. My hat got back to barracks before I did and was waiting for me.

 

We had the first shoulder bags to be used by American women, black leather, its strap on our right shoulder but the bag on our left hip, smart and practical.  Perhaps that is why I can hardly endure the current trend in huge handbags worn on only one side.

We had exactly seventeen minutes for eating each meal, then dipped our metal trays in dirty water and used a big brush to clear them before they went into a huge dishwasher. We learned early on to turn up the cuffs of our raincoats before we began eating or someone would say, “What’s up, Doc?”  “Updoc” was what you got on your sleeve if you didn’t.

Boot training lasted eight weeks and I had a ball. Each floor of a wing of the apartment building had one apartment set aside as a smoker. The girls who smoked and some who didn’t, rushed to the smoker whenever there was a free five minutes. I did not, but instead, wrote letters home. Later, they would be envious when at mail call I would receive up to thirty letters a day.

 

An interesting situation in Boot Training occurred when it was time for my platoon to have work detail for one week. As we were billeted alphabetically and the work-detail jobs were also listed alphabetically, the other seven girls in my apartment whose last initials were “J,” “K” and one “L,” all got kitchen and laundry detail while I got the library! They had to get up at five o’clock and don galoshes for their watery work, while I didn’t get called till six o’clock. If they imagined I slept in for another hour after their wake-up call, they were mistaken, for even then the writer’s closest companion -- insomnia -- had already moved in to stay. I got up right after they left, showered, scrubbed the tub and got dressed in the uniform of the day and after breakfast, spent the rest of the day in the library, talking mainly with the Padre and the Red Cross Representative. Certainly no Boots came in for reading material.

Another reason for choosing the Navy is that after Boot Training one automatically is promoted to the next step. I became a Seaman, Second Class. And I was asked what kind of work I would like to do. When I said Officers’ Candidate School, I learned it had closed down before I arrived in New York. “They” had been working on part of The Bomb just down the highway at Oak Ridge, of course, but they hadn’t told me. So, instead of attending OCS, I stayed on in New York for further training in personnel supervision. After those four weeks I got another stripe and was Seaman, First Class. 

But while I was in Specialist School, we celebrated V-E Day on Times Square and had extended liberty. Four of us WAVES went together by subway. When we passed sailors on the street, they would shake salt on the shoulders of our dress blues from a shaker they’d picked up in some restaurant and called us “old Salt.” The happiness among all the people there in the Square was really something to behold. 

Before the evening was over, we ran into an Italian block party, the area roped off and with dancing in the street. We sampled many Italian foods and turned down all the drinks. They toasted us because we were in military uniform, treating us as if we had won the war, when we had not even finished our training. We had a wonderful night and got back to barracks on time.