When I read about female officers graduating from the U. S. Naval Academy and a navy in which women really do go down to the sea in ships. I think back to the time when 86,000 coeds, secretaries, and housewives left the dreary civilian world for what we thought would be the glamorous life of a Navy Wave. By the end of World War II. about 8,000 of us, under the leadership of Captain Mildred McAfee, had become the first women officers to enter this man's world.
We were different then. During World War II, there was no attempt at achieving equality of the sexes within the Navy. Our pay was lower than that of male officers; our duty was restricted to shore bases in the continental United States, Alaska, and Hawaii; our uniforms were fashion-designed to flatter the female figure; even the braid on our sleeves was different—a light blue instead of gold. Yet eleven though we were clearly set apart with a (W) after our name and rank, we served beside the male officers in supply and disbursing offices, communication centers, training schools, navy yards and operating bases, naval air stations, and district headquarters throughout the country.
For those of us in college when the Japanese bombed Pearl Harbor, the advent of war brought dramatic changes. The campuses were left to the women and a few men who had been deferred for physical or hardship reasons. A song of the day told the story: “They're either too young or too old. There isn't any gravy—the gravy's in the Navy!”
By 1942, the WAVES had been organized, and recruiting officers began making regular visits to my school, the University of Pittsburgh. They brought with them a pamphlet titled "The Story of You in Navy Blue,” a real hype job that showed pretty Wave officers working in control towers, walking up a ship's gangway, and dancing with tall lieutenants on palm-decked floors. This Navy world looked good to those of us on the deserted campuses. We were sold.
Six of us entered the recruiting office in Pittsburgh one gray February day. A smiling Wave j. g.—a short-haired version of Lauren Bacall—greeted us. Behind her on the wall, a poster proclaimed “Join the WAVES and Send a Man to Sea.” We recognized this patriotic duty, and we knew where the gravy was. When we stood and raised our right hands to be sworn in, we all felt that surge of pride.
The next morning we realized how far in we were when we arrived at our first duty station, indoctrination school at Northampton, Massachusetts. We got off the train and walked toward a figure in blue, a starched Wave lieutenant who wore the face of February. She barked out our names from her clipboard.
“Adams, Barroni. Bielau. . .Fall in!” If any of us had expected a smile or a "glad you are here” greeting, we were soon to learn that the Navy had no time for these platitudes of the civilian world. We scrambled into a ragged line, dragging our suitcases with us. “Right face!” We turned, but not all the same way. Another minute of shuffling, and we were all facing one direction. Through the little town we hupped until we reached the red brick building that would be our home for the two months of indoctrination, the Hotel Northampton. There, with about 200 other new seamen, we would be known as the “hotel battalion.”
We were assigned four to a room and given a diagram that showed the proper way to stow our gear in the small space allowed, our first experience with naval organization. I guess none of us realized that the Navy would concern itself with the folding of underwear and the positioning of toothpaste and shampoo in our drawers. We were also given a 15-minute demonstration on how to make a navy bunk, pulling the stripes on the bedspread spring taut, and folding the blanket into exact thirds so that the letters “U. S. Navy” faced up squarely in the center.
Almost immediately we were issued our first uniform item—the dome-shaped sailor hats that symbolized our lowly status during that first month of training. We were to wear them wherever we went, for a naval officer never goes outdoors uncovered.
Then we were summoned to a lecture hall for our official welcome by the commanding officer. We filed in with our new roommates and sat down, looking around, whispering, trembling a little, and waiting.
‘‘Attention!” the order boomed out from a Wave j. g. in front of the room. We jumped to our feet.
Onto the stage strode a tall gray-haired lieutenant commander, a former dean of women who had managed to acquire the salty look of an admiral during her brief naval career. “At ease,” she half-smiled. As we listened to her, our eyes were boggled by the dazzling silver eagle on her cap, those precious blue stripes on her sleeves. Soon- God and the U. S. Navy willing—we, too, would wear those symbols of rank.
“It is not just your classroom and drillfield performance we will be watching,” she warned, “but your attitudes as well. Remember that the walls have ears.” Then she went on to explain the “tree,” a weekly blacklist of seamen who collect demerits for breach of discipline, poor grades, failure to pass inspection, or just a general negative attitude. Those listed had no privileges to go “ashore” every afternoon to the local malt shop. Three appearances on the tree would bilge a seaman right out of the Navy as an undesirable officer candidate. This was our welcome to ’Hamp.
By the third day most of us were in our navy blue serge suits and black oxfords, ready to begin the routine of indoctrination. I remember how we sighed as we looked at our feet in those sexless brogans and packed our saddle shoes and penny loafers to ship home. We were in uniform for the duration, they told us, and we would need sturdy shoes to march eight miles each day.
How right they were! Our days began at 0545 with a call to “Hit the deck.” Promptly at 0615 the inspecting officer began to move between the ranks mustered in the hotel corridor, her eagle eyes checking the length of our hair, the knots in our ties, the press of our skirts, and the shine on our shoes. Behind her walked the officer of the day, carrying a clipboard on which she collected leaves for the weekend tree. We stood there, holding our breath until they passed, knowing that at the same time another team was descending on our rooms, bouncing quarters off the bunks, running white gloves over dresser tops, and inspecting closets for jackets left unbuttoned.
At 0800 we marched up the hill to Smith College, where we had classes to indoctrinate us in the ways of the Navy in 60 short days. We learned to do everything “by the numbers” and we began to speak a strange language of “bulkheads” and “scuttlebutts.” A poster in one of our classrooms admonished us daily, “Don’t call it a boat unless you can haul it aboard a ship.”
Then there were the drill sessions. For an hour each day we were herded into formations by the only male officer on the staff. He was a full lieutenant who had been assigned from the fleet to this naval equivalent of Siberia, and he sought revenge on any female who stepped out with the wrong foot or turned the wrong way. The target for much of his abuse was a poor girl named Virginia- whose size necessitated a specially made uniform. For a week after the rest of us were in navy blue, she wore the only purple skirt in the platoon. This made her mistakes the more noticeable and gave some inspiration for a marching song, “Ginny, the Ninny of the Third Platoon.'
The worst moment of her naval career had to be the day she was leading a platoon around the drill field after a heavy rain had left lake-size puddles on the ground. As the drillmaster leered, waiting for her inevitable mistake, Virginia called a “Column left” instead of a “Column right,” and led her platoon right into one of these bodies of water. Across the muddy field, we heard her voice ring out, “Platoon, wade!”
Everywhere we marched during our training, we sang. The songs were supposed to help us keep cadence and to give us a feeling of team spirit, like a college fight song. There was one about Yankee Doodle’s daughter, another about being kissed by the numbers, and a half dozen about how we loved the Navy.
Most of us survived the first month of indoctrination to experience the thrill of turning in our sailor hats for those long admired “bonnets with the tails in back.”
We were into the Navy routine now. Uniforms had become a way of life, and when we marched, our lines were straight and our cadence sharp. It had become second nature to keep our right hands free for saluting wherever we went. During that second month, we were permitted two weekend “shore leaves” to Boston where we did all the tourist things, and saluted everyone who wore any kind of gold braid, from Western Union employees to hotel doormen.
On 28 April 1944, our class graduated—gold bars on our collars, blue stripes on our sleeves, ensign commissions in our hands. We stood and sang in unison the chorus to the song written to harmonize with “Anchors Aweigh”:
“Waves of the Navy, there’s a ship sailing down the bay,
And she won’t slip into port again until that victory day. Carry on for that gallant ship and for every hero brave Who will find ashore his man-sized chore was done by a Navy Wave.”
Most of us just out of college were sent to further training school; 65 of us reported to Cambridge for Naval Supply School where we lived in Whitman Hall on the Rad- cliffe campus and marched to buildings in Harvard Yard each morning for classes. We had afternoons free for recreation—swimming, tennis, or sculling on the Charles.
New England that summer was an exciting place to be. We lived in a whirl of activity, meeting new people in the transience of wartime and feeling very patriotic about having answered our country’s call. We knew why we were there, the week of D-Day, when we went to the Red Cross headquarters to give blood that was flown directly to the invasion forces across the Atlantic. Our patriotic blood almost boiled over on the Fourth of July that year when we marched in the admiral’s review at Harvard Stadium, along with 5,000 male officers stationed at training schools in the First Naval District. We stepped out to “The Stars and Stripes Forever” in full uniform—white caps and gloves. The temperature was 104!
We had fun, too. Weekends we were free to tour the shore resorts of the New England coast. One weekend at Marblehead, four of us were treated to a day of sailing and dinner at the Corinthian Yacht Club by the parents of a naval officer serving in the Pacific. They had seen us walking from the train station and invited us to be their guests.
We studied our BuSandA (Bureau of Supplies and Accounts) manuals and crossed our fingers that when we finished supply school, we would be assigned to a duty station as exciting as the First Naval District headquarters in Boston. At the same time, we lived in dread of being sent to one of the landlocked naval supply depots like Mechanicsburg, Pennsylvania, or Olathe, Kansas. Fear of getting that kind of duty prompted me to choose to be a disbursing officer rather than a supply officer, and I was relieved when I received orders to the Norfolk Navy Yard in Portsmouth, Virginia.
My first view of the Fifth Naval District came from the window of a DC-3 as we circled to land at the Norfolk Airport. Below us lay the shimmering mouth of the Chesapeake, with ships of every size and class at the piers of the naval operating base, on the building ways at Newport News, at anchor in Hampton Roads, and beneath the cranes of the navy yard in Portsmouth where I would be stationed. Ships I had seen only on identification flash- cards were suddenly all there before me. I felt the thrill of having arrived. I also felt the August heat.
It was 1645, a few minutes after the end of the working day, when the cab made its way down Granby Street and left me at the Elizabeth River Ferry for the seven-minute trip across to Portsmouth. I grabbed my suitcase with my left hand and moved against the tide of sailor suits toward the ticket window, feeling very conscious of my rank. There was no way I could return all those salutes. I soon discovered that this would not be a problem in Norfolk. To the sailors, a female officer was still a female. Some of them ignored me; a few whistled; no one saluted.
The building where the WAVES and nurse officers were quartered adjoined the warrant officers’ club in a park-like area of the navy yard. On the other side of the park was the big red brick house where the commandant. Rear Admiral Carl Jones, lived. I would meet him a number of times during that year when he would come to officers’ pay day and wait his turn in line. Near our quarters stood the hammerhead crane that was used to install radar and other gear atop the largest ships. It towered over everything in the yard, and we soon learned to look for it when we lost our sense of direction in that strange place.
At 0800 the next morning I reported to the senior disbursing officer for duty as his assistant. This captain, I was to learn later, was the most feared four-striper on the base. In a district where uniform regulations were relaxed during the hot months, he was always in full uniform, blouse and black tie. He had been recalled from retirement when the war broke out, and he fussed about that “damned ‘Ret.’” the Navy had put on his desk nameplate. He let me know that he was a veteran of many years’ sea duty, and that he had no use for the “lounge lizards and cookie pushers” who were attached to mahogany desks and hung around officers’ clubs.
One of the first responsibilities my boss delegated to me was to be the keeper of the disbursing office vault. He showed me how to set the combination lock on the heavy metal door, and he admonished me never to write down the combination or to reveal it to anyone. I was to keep the numbers engraved on my brain.
I had been in Portsmouth about two weeks when I was assigned to hold my first pay day for the officers of the Shangri-La (CV-38), scheduled to be commissioned on 15 September. The 14th was my 21st birthday, and the day a hurricane slammed into the Norfolk area, tossing ships around, uprooting trees, and creating general havoc. From the window of the disbursing office I watched officers of the Shangri-La form human chains and lean against the storm as they attempted to cross the street to get their pay- It was an exciting beginning for my career as a disbursing officer.
Twice each week I would go to the bank in Portsmouth to get substantial quantities of money for our office transactions. This excursion was a production in itself. I had a navy station wagon and driver, and like all good disbursing officers who carried money, I wore a Colt .45 in a hip holster. Two Marine guards were assigned to go with me. each armed with a submachine gun. One of them would station himself outside the bank, his weapon ready. The other Marine accompanied me inside while the bank vice president filled a leather money bag with the requested funds. When I saw the rows of battle ribbons these Marines wore, I had to wonder how the veterans of Guadalcanal liked the duty of guarding a Wave ensign. But they never complained, and they always saluted.
Being stationed in the Norfolk Navy Yard was the nearest thing to sea duty a Wave officer could have experienced during World War II. We got to meet and work with the men we were sending to sea. (Though I don’t recall any of them ever thanking us.) When their ships came in for repair, we heard stories of sea battles and kamikaze attacks. We saw the cruiser Honolulu (CL-48) undergoing battle damage repair, and the jeep carrier Sangamon (CVE-26), a mass of twisted metal where her flight deck had been. We watched the carrier Lake Champlain (CV- 39) being built and saw her commissioned in 1945. Occasionally we were invited to go aboard ships for river trials, and had a chance to test our sea legs. A few times I boarded a destroyer to transfer funds to her disbursing officer. As I walked up the gangway, I remembered a piece of advice I’d received about attaching a buoy to my money bag.
We worked from 0800 to 1630 six days a week, and we slept with the sounds of the welder’s torch and the chipping hammer in our ears because the construction and repair shops of the yard never stopped. Evenings, after dinner at the officers’ club, we went to the “Passion Pit,” the nickname for a cocktail lounge at the club, and danced to the juke box music of Glenn Miller, Tommy Dorsey, and Vaughan Monroe. Adjoining the officers’ club were an olympic-size pool and tennis courts for recreation. One afternoon each week, the Navy ran a special bus to the Cavalier Beach Club at Virginia Beach so that we could enjoy the sun and surf. When a British ship was in the yard, we were invited aboard for the Sunday noon cocktail parties where the standard drink was pink gin. The pictures in the recruiting pamphlet had become realities for us. We loved the Navy, and we loved Norfolk.
Yet there was a sense of urgency, a feeling of carpe diem among us that summer. The ships in the navy yard were being repaired and refitted to go to the Pacific for the planned invasion of Japan. Friendships were temporary, limited by a ship’s time in the yard—one week, ten days. Then President Truman made the decision to bomb Hiroshima, and a few days later, Nagasaki. The next week came that wonderful day when the Japanese surrendered. Nowhere in America could there have been greater cause for celebration. Now those ships would not sail for the Pacific, and the men we knew would not face the enemy again.
We were all at dinner in the officers’ club that evening of 14 August when the announcement came over the public address system that Japan had surrendered. There was instant chaos—cheering, back-slapping, kissing. No one finished dinner. Ships at the piers cut loose with their sirens and searchlights. The hammerhead crane swung around on its tower. Every horn and whistle in the yard sounded loud and clear. We climbed into what cars and trucks we could find and headed for Virginia Beach. The Cavalier Beach Club never closed that night.
After the surrender, I was assigned to the Naval Training Center in Bainbridge, Maryland, one of the main separation centers in the East. At Bainbridge, pay lines were held in huge mess halls where 2,000-3,000 enlisted men lined up at a time to get their pay. Discipline was somewhat relaxed with these men just back from sea duty and ready to be discharged. Sometimes when I entered a mess hall, flanked by two storekeepers and wearing my Colt .45, I heard choruses of “Pistol Packin’ Mamma.” One day we set up a special pay line for survivors of the carrier Franklin (CV-13) that had limped back to the Brooklyn Navy Yard.
As the men came home, many wartime romances culminated in marriages that had been deferred. Regulations decreed that Wave officers were still in uniform until we were separated from the service, so those of us who married needed written permission from our commanding officers to be married in wedding gowns.
That was no deterrent. We remembered a song we had sung at ’Hamp, written to the tune of “Bell Bottom Trousers”:
“Pin your affections on a Navy man.
And only be a sister to the Army, if you can.
For there’s no ban by Captain McAfee
On saying, ‘Yes, I do,’ to a man who goes to sea.” Most of us took this advice to heart.
And when it was over, and we had earned enough points to get out, we left the separation centers with an enthusiasm to get on with our lives as civilians, but also with a sense of gratitude and fraternity to the service we were leaving. Now we look back on our years of active duty in World War II and remember proudly that we had served in the greatest navy in the world.