Mrs. Annabelle Easton
[b. 07/15/21]
Recorded on 01/16/05
Transcribed on 01/17/05 to 01/30/05
Edited on 01/30/05
[Interview starts at 001 on counter]
ANDREW PAUSZEK: [Today is Sunday, January 16, 2005, and this is the beginning] of an interview with Annabelle McLeod Easton at her apartment in Westminister Village North at 11050 Presbyterian Drive in Indianapolis, Indiana. Mrs. Easton is eighty-three years old, having been born on July 15, 1921. My name is Andrew Pauszek and I will be the interviewer. I am a ninth grade student at Park Tudor High School. Mrs. Easton is a friend of my mother’s.]
[004]
ANDREW PAUSZEK: Mrs. Easton could you state for the recording what war and branch of service you served in?
ANNABELLE EASTON: World War II, in the Women’s Army Air Corps.
AP: What was your rank?
AE: I started as private and I was discharged as a sergeant.
AP: Where did you serve?
AE: I served at Santa Monica, California.
AP: Were you drafted or did you enlist?
AE: I enlisted.
AP: Where, Where were you living at the time?
AE: Minneapolis
[010]
AP: Why did you decide to join?
AE: Well, there were a number of reasons. At that time, the people were very patriotic about that war. You know, we had Pearl Harbor and then we had a lot of dreadful things happening, both in the Pacific and in North Africa and the European Theatre, and so there was that overall feeling of patriotism. I had three brothers in the service and I lived with nurses in an apartment in Minneapolis and they decided to join the service as nurses. So, I, and also, this may be extraneous, but I was ready for some kind of a change. I was working as a secretary and I was taking courses at the University of Minnesota and I wanted to get into full time school, and so it was time for a break, so all those things went together, but it if wasn’t for that atmosphere of patriotism, I probably never would have thought of doing this.
AP: What did your family think about your decision?
AE: Oh they were quite willing. I was living in an apartment from my, I mean, I lived on my own by then because I was, how old was I? Twenty-three, I think. So I was living in the city by myself.
AP: How did people view the Women’s Army Air Corps in those days?
AE: I think it was something new and people were interested in it, and I think it was looked upon favorably.
[025]
AP: Can you tell me about your first days in the service and your boot camp experience?
AE: Well, the first day of boot camp, the first night, I arrived from Minneapolis on a train, and the Army always manages to get you in some place in the middle of the night. So in the middle of the night, we came in to the, into Des Moines, and that was where the boot camp was. I don’t know any other name for that boot camp except that it was Des Moines. I believe there was another one in Georgia, and while we were there, we were ordered to do this, to do that, to get your bedding, to do this, to do that, and the person that ordered me around was a corporal, maybe five feet tall, and I jumped every time she spoke or looked at me. [laughs]. You’d think she was the general, but it was all very strange and in the middle of the night, and you just followed orders. There was no coddling you. Just do what you’re asked to do. That’s the way the army is, and so I did it. And what else were we talking about? The first day, the first night? And the first days were all training, military training. Learning to march and drill and do push ups in the morning and before breakfast, and something special on Saturdays. They had inspections and you had to have your area, everybody was in a big barracks, but you had your own area, and there was your own bed and your footlocker. In the footlocker, all the clothes had to be folded in such a way or rolled up and the bed had to be made just so, and then we had this very impressive major who came by with a whip, and he didn’t whip us but he whipped the bed to see if he could make a dent in the sheet. It was supposed to kind of just bounce off. So that was kind of hair raising on Saturday inspection. And the night before inspection, everybody would be in the, I think we called it latrine. It’s like the bathroom, but I think we called the whole thing a latrine, and polishing up their shoes and getting themselves ready for inspection.
AP: Did you miss your family at boot camp?
AE: Oh, not especially because I was used to being away. I had been away for several years.
AP: Can you tell me about this picture? Do you recognize any of these buildings?
AE: Can I see what it is? What is it?
AP: These are temporary buildings at the first WAC training center in Fort Des Moines.
AE: Well, I guess I was at Fort Des Moines. Yeah, that’s the type of buildings we had, temporary. Um-hum. It was very muddy there, in February, March, I was there. Very muddy. And here we are marching along in the mud.
AP: Were most of the other women in your training class about the same age?
AE: Approximately.
AP: Did they come from similar backgrounds?
AE: They came from a lot of different backgrounds. There were teachers. There were office workers, like I was. That’s as far as I can remember. Some probably worked with machinery, but probably for the most part they were teachers and office workers, as far as I can remember.
[062]
AP: Can you tell me exactly were you went after training camp?
AE: Yes, after training camp, I was shipped by train directly to Santa Monica.
AP: Do you remember arriving at your first assignment?
AE: I don’t remember the arrival. No, I just know the train ride but not the arrival.
AP: Can you tell me more about your specific job?
AE: Oh yes. Well, it’s listed in my discharge papers, but they get more specific every year, but I think I was doing, or every rank, but I think I was doing pretty much the same thing. I was an interviewer. My discharge was as a personal affairs counselor which had to do with the bonds, family allotments and insurance. The GI's all had these, should I say, privileges or perks. They had insurance, if they wanted it and it was paid for, and the families got allotments, so they had something to live on and they could buy bonds. You know, buy ten dollar bonds, not very big bonds. I didn’t get very much money I don’t think, and so I interviewed people, men, in regard to this. I didn’t in my job ever interview any women that I remember. The other women in the base were at work but I don’t remember ever any interviewees. Are you interested in who these people were that I was interviewing?
AP: Yeah, do you remember any specific soldier stories?
AE: Well, I don’t remember if I remember this certain person or that certain person, so much, but I have an overall feeling that these were men who were escapees. They had escaped from the Japanese. They came from the Pacific, evadees. They had evaded the Japanese, or ex-prisoners of war, who at this point, somehow, I don’t know how they got released, but they were released. So they had had a really horrible experience and they were pretty much worn down and they were tense and, and they had very bad experiences and consequently all their records were in disorder because there hadn’t been any, you know, what do they call the person who was there to take care of your records, wasn’t there in the jungle.
AP: Do you remember feeling sad after hearing of their stories?
AE: Oh sure. I felt, I felt sorry to speak to them and they were, I think you had to be careful, in talking to them, that you didn’t disturb them too much. Before I was assigned to this I was interviewed by a psychologist. I don’t know if that had anything to do with the job, or just to be a WAC in general, but I was interviewed by a psychologist.
AP: What did the psychologist ask you?
AE: Well, one thing I remember mainly is, what are your plans for life, what do you want to do? I don’t remember too many other things he asked me, but that I remember directly.
[099]
AP: Do you remember any friends or special people that you met while working your job?
AE: I remember friends. One of my best friends was a very attractive young woman from Minnesota who was the Minnesota women’s skiing champion. She was Scandinavian and very attractive and very active. She did some office work. I can’t remember what all the different WAC’s jobs were so much. I don’t remember exactly what she did, but then, I remember another good friend of mine was a person who drove a truck in the WAC. And, I don’t know what her background was, but that’s what she did for them, and other people worked in the, I had many other friends. I can’t remember what all their assignments were though.
AP: How did you stay in touch with your family while you were in the service?
AE: Oh, writing is easy. You know we didn’t call in those days the way we do now. It’s incredible the way we call now. But in those days, well, we had franking privileges. Do you know what franking privileges are? You just, you would address a letter, where the return is, you gave your army name and address and it goes through without postage. And so, we could do that easily, and I guess the mail arrived, as far as I can remember. I think my grandmother sent me cookies. [laughs].
[115]
AP: Did you get to visit them on leave or did you travel to other places?
AE: Well, I visited, let’s see in October, ‘44 was my first leave. I had a furlough to visit my family, did that. But, oh, other places. I visited different places in California, quite a few, and I got a ride on a mail plane, Navy mail plane, to San Francisco, just sitting in the bags of mail you could hitch rides that way and also my first airplane ride was a ride I hitched on an old Army plane that was about to be discarded. I think it was a training plane. We went to Nashville. See, I was going up into Wisconsin and Nashville was east, but it wasn’t very far north. And I, that was pretty, what should I say, kind of nerve racking. I was sort of lying in the back of the plane and they brought me a box lunch and I wasn’t feeling so great, but they were just wonderful. The crew was wonderful to me and they found me a place to stay at the, at the women’s barracks there in the Nashville station, and I stayed there over night and one of the crew took me to a bus station and I took the bus to Chicago. That was my first experience. You could go to the where these planes departed and you could wait in line for a ride, if someone was going in your direction. So that’s what I did. I also, one time, had a ride with a captain I was working for who was very, very nice and took me in one of these planes where there’s two people and just a glass over the top and he flew me around that whole Los Angeles area to see, you know, the environment there, just for kicks.
[135]
AP: Is this how you met your husband?
AE: Well, I met my husband, yes, when I was in the service and he was in the service. I met him after that furlough when I was returning to my base and I had been in Minneapolis. From Wisconsin I went to Minneapolis, where I had been before, and then I took a train to Omaha, and those service trains in those days. I guess it was a regular train but they were mostly service people were just jammed with people and there weren’t any seats when I got on from Minneapolis. So, he got up and gave me his seat. I think he sat on my suitcase, and then we rode along the Union Pacific and rode through Cheyenne and he got off at Salt Lake City and I gave him some cards to mail, but they had my address on it. So, he wrote to me after that. He was also in the Army Air Corps.
AP: Do you know what was going on in the war during that time?
AE: Oh yes I did. I can’t remember all of the things now, but we were aware of all the things going on.
AP: Did you keep a personal diary in the service?
AE: Not really.
[151]
AP: Do you recall the day that your service ended?
AE: Maybe not the exact day. I was at Fort Bragg, North Carolina, which is much different than Santa Monica. You want me to tell you about Santa Monica? That was a redistribution station, which means we were with the men who had been escapees, evadees, and so on, came there and then they were taken care of and then they went on to whatever, and there was another one of those stations in Atlantic City and in Miami. They were all resort places because when these men came back they treated them regally in very nice hotels and everything, and many of them went home and got married and then came back, but sometimes I think it was a little bit much to come home and then get married and then back, but anyway that’s what they’d do, and they had a lot of entertainment for them. Well, I went deep-sea fishing with them. They went into Hollywood and so on and so on. We went ice skating every Tuesday night in an indoor rink, and that’s where I do remember one person. Somehow, he came from a German prisoner of war camp and he learned to skate outdoors in Germany where it was very cold. So, he used to come with us skating every Tuesday night. I don’t know if this person from Germany was in our station, but he was, and what else did I do, let’s see. What was the question?
[169]
AP: What about the redistribution center in Santa Monica?
AE: Yeah, that was my station. I didn’t have a regiment or anything, I had the redistribution center. That was kind of a special assignment because you see we had all these, it was on the beach, and you had all these facilities for the enlisted men, so when the first permanent personnel was off duty we could do whatever we could get in on.
AP: How long did the men usually stay at the redistribution center?
AE: I think there was a total of three weeks but I think that included a week or so at home and then coming back.
AP: What did you do in the days and weeks after your service?
AE: I went home to my parents and they lived in Wisconsin and I began making plans to go the University of Minnesota.
[182]
AP: Was your education supported by the G.I. Bill?
AE: It certainly was. I can’t speak enough for the G.I. Bill. It’s just a wonderful program and so many people like me and similar to me got very good educations from the G.I. Bill. I was on the floor; I was visiting Congress the day that Helen Gahagan Douglas, a congresswoman, was speaking on the G.I. Bill and I was still in the service. I didn’t know that it was going to apply to me. I didn’t know what it was, but I happened to have heard it, and it was really wonderful. You had to work. I mean you had to get to your classes.
AP: So, what did you go on to do as a career after the war?
AE: Well, in twenty two months in G.I. benefits I got a master’s degree and as a, I trained as a teacher and a guidance counselor. And that’s what I did.
AP: Did your military career affect your choice of profession?
AE: Well, it didn’t change it. I think I was already talking about, thinking about, personnel work. I’m the kind of person that people used to come and tell me their problems, even though I was young and they were old. [laughs] I thought, well, I’d probably be good at that, so it sort of enhanced it I guess.
[204]
AP: So after the war, did you continue any friendships that you had?
AE: Well, I continued correspondence with this dashing young woman who was a skier [laughs] but it happened that she went to, let’s see this was ‘45 when we were discharged, she went to China that was when the Communists, before the Communists took over and there was, we were in China. I don’t know exactly what the whole thing was, but I could have gone, but I decided no I didn’t want to do that. I probably missed a big adventure, and she went. [laughs] She went to China and she married somebody there, some captain, and then eventually I lost track of her, although I’m tenacious. I hang onto people, [laughs] but I did lose track of her.
AP: Did you continue corresponding with your husband?
AE: Oh yes, I did. Yeah. Yes, I did. He was stationed in Hawaii. He must have gotten done, but he came back.
AP: When did you get married?
AE: March 1946.
AP: Did you ever belong to a veteran’s organization?
AE: Yes, the American Veteran’s Committee, the AVC. It was a more progressive than the American Legion or those, a lot of younger people. I still know people that I met in the AVC. I met them at college and I am still quite much in touch with them.
[225]
AP: How do you think your military service and experiences affected your life?
AE: Well, of course [laughs] the most outstanding thing was that I met my husband, but it did give me a good feeling that I had gone and done something. All my friends from school, my brothers, and my friends who were nurses, all did their share and I did something. I felt it was valuable, even though I was safe and in an attractive place I was doing something. Sometimes I would get little presents from these soldiers. I was tenacious, too. I didn’t give up in writing letters and trying to follow through, untangling things that were incredibly tangled.
AP: Is there anything that you would like to add that we have not covered?
AE: Oh, let’s see. I was thinking of something just a few minutes ago. Is it getting too long on the interview? Because I was thinking of something. I don’t know. Well, when women were in the boot camp they did KP and everything as the men. You took your chances. You took your turn, but when I got assigned at Santa Monica I really didn’t do that kind of thing anymore, and we lived there both in some very special beach hotels that had been beach clubs, as well as they had built for a certain period of time some regular barrack places that we lived in just not far from where we worked, and so that was the living. It was all, it was all good, and at Fort Bragg where I was maybe three weeks, I don’t know something like that, it was the real army different than [laughs] than the army I was in. [laughs] I mean you know I was in the real army and we were doing army things, but that was different, and I’ll tell you one thing about the army. The army makes, makes their choices for you, makes their decisions for you. You do what they decide. So that’s, that’s the way life changes when you go into the service and I’m sure it’s the same now. You’re used to doing something this way or at this time and they want you to do it that way and at that time, and that’s what you do, at least that’s what I remember, but it was not unbearable. It was a good experience and I feel pleased that I did it.
[257]
AP: What jobs did women mostly do in the war?
AE: Well, I think it mostly had to do with paperwork. Some drove trucks, maybe Jeeps. Some women did go overseas. Now, at one point I might have been able to go overseas, but I was so, what would you say, I just didn’t think it was practical to send women overseas. They would have to set up special barracks and places for them to live, although some lived in chateaus, [laughs] and then another thing, I wasn’t really keen on going to the Pacific where you had malaria and all kinds of, I didn’t really want to subject myself to that for what I could do over there. One thing, the men had to go there and fight, but what was that question I’m answering?
AP: The jobs that women …
AE: Oh, the jobs that women did, well yes. They drove trucks, but I think there were variations on office jobs. Some did public relations. Some worked for the adjutant general. They did different things. Some must have worked on transportation because people were moving by train all over the place. I had a wonderful train ride to New York when I went to study insurance there and I lived in a hotel at 80th and Broadway, and then, riding those wonderful trains they used to have [laughs] sleepers and dining cars and all that stuff. That was nice, but then when you were in a regular troop train, believe me it wasn’t luxury. I can’t remember how we ate. It must have been bags of food or something. Also, lots of this kind of escapes me now.
AP: When did you study insurance?
AE: I think it was, yes, it was probably 1945, before I was, I was thinking, they had just trained me in insurance and then not too long after that I was discharged and the war was over, Japan was over, and so on, and then people started leaving, moving out very soon, but they well, I don’t remember the exact dates or anything.
AP: What type of insurance was that?
AE: What kind of insurance?
AP: Yeah.
AE: Life insurance. They called it GI insurance. I still have some. You could get up to ten thousand dollars. It was really a good deal. Now, since then, that insurance has become a little bit of a problem because if you didn’t, that was temporary insurance, when you were in the service, but if you didn’t transfer it to permanent then they kept raising the premiums and raising the premiums and worked something out. I still have some of it, but very little, but it was a good deal. At least they gave us, it was something.
[Interview paused so interviewer could add another question]
[305]
AP: [Can you tell me more about the men you worked with?]
AE: In my job overall, there was always a lieutenant or captain, but working with me side by side was a staff sergeant. I don’t know what part he did and I did, but I know I did all the typing and so on. So we worked together and I guess people waited when we took care of them as fast as we could, as thoroughly as we could. I guess that’s all.
[Interview paused so interviewer could add another question]
AP: Going back to your job, did you give them personal advice?
AE: Not, not in terms of personal relationships, or certainly not romance or anything like that, or problems with friends. I was working with their problems that they had with getting the benefits that they had coming to them that were pretty much mixed up after the periods of time. They probably had been overseas maybe three or four years and their records hadn’t caught up with them, so I tried to straighten that out and how I did it I’m not quite sure. I had I’m sure the list of people to write to, or to call, or mostly write to, on these things so that hopefully it got straightened out, but I imagine some of them had a quite a lot to do to get straightened out.
[Interview paused so interviewer could add another question]
AP: Looking over this information, I realized that you had the opportunity to become an officer candidate and did you ever think about doing this?
AE: Well, I did think about it, because I’ll tell you in the service there’s a big difference between enlisted and officers [laughs] there is [laughs] there’s two layers of, you know, it’s a caste system, and I did think of it, and probably you have more interesting things to do as an officer. I don’t know, but you had to qualify. They gave you IQ tests, and I think I qualified, but I just kind of backed off somehow. I don’t know why. I think I liked what I was doing and, you had to go to training, for officer training, probably about three months officer’s training. We did have WACS who did that, though, and I think I could have if I would have pursued it, but I don’t know I just didn’t pursue it. No particular reason that I can remember now except I probably felt satisfied with what I was doing.
AP: Why did you decide to end your service?
AE: Well, the war was over. They decided. [laughs] The war was over. They were discharging people.
AP: Would you have continued if they didn’t?
AE: Oh, I think I would have continued. I don’t know when I would have had the right to, to leave, you know. I probably had signed up for two years or something and it wasn’t quite two years, it was twenty-two months, but at that time people were being discharged all over the place.
[351]
AP: Were you well paid?
AE: Oh, I don’t know. I mean it met my needs because the army feeds you, clothes you, and houses you, but no, I didn’t, I didn’t really have money when I came out of the army. I had a few ten dollar bonds which I found in more recent years [laughs] made out to my mother or something, but I didn’t accumulate any money. No, and it was no need to be extravagant. I didn’t smoke, and you know. So, but I think maybe, maybe, you start out like about sixty-five dollars a month for a private or PFC and then you got a little bit more as sergeant. I can’t remember now. It was adequate, considering it was wartime. That wasn’t, that wasn’t, anybody’s motivation for being in, even little as they paid in the civilian world then. I could make more than that. So.
[Interview paused so interviewer could add another question]
AP: [Do you have anything else to add about your boot camp experience?]
AE: As in the boot camp, they were pretty strict. If you had a pass to leave the camp, there were restrictions and what do they call? What kind of police are those?
AP: M.P.’s?
AE: M.P.’s, military police. They were there at the barracks, at the gates to let you in and everything and so it was all pretty much contained and restricted. Your time. You didn’t have a lot of free time. We had some but a lot of it was polishing our shoes or straightening up your center in the barracks. It was kind of a busy life. I think for the most part. It was all strange, of course. I thought we were there as much as six weeks, but maybe we were only there four weeks, but while there, before breakfast you had to do these exercises. I don’t remember what else besides push-ups. They had, you had, exercise uniforms you wore, and they were seersucker, and I remember one person, a WAC. Well, I don’t know if this is very interesting to say. You want to turn it off?
[Interview paused at Mrs. Easton’s request]
AE: Well, they had pretty strict rules. There was plenty to eat for everybody, but this one WAC had a voracious appetite, and no matter how many eggs they served her, five, six eggs, she never was filled up. She was always hungry, and I don’t know what the medical diagnosis was, but they had to let her go. [laughs] Most of us just ate normal. The food was okay. So. Can you put that?
[Interview paused at Mrs. Easton’s request]
[402]
AP: Thank you Mrs. Easton for your time and the sharing of your experiences for this oral history project.
AE: Well. It was my pleasure. It really was. I hope that it doesn’t get to be too boring when you transcribe it. I hope that there will be a few tidbits that are kind of interesting, but for the most part it’s kind of general and boring. I didn’t have the excitement that a lot of the soldiers had, but I had a different experience because it was a new thing. Oh, and the other thing that I might have done at that time was to join the Nurse’s Corps because they trained nurses. You didn’t have to have any training. You could get your nurse’s training. Well, I decided that wasn’t for me. I don’t know. They went to good colleges in nurse’s training, so they were using them, and the women who were really doing a job that was exciting were those women that got very little recognition later, who were ferrying planes for the Air Corps. They would, they needed a certain plane in a certain place and they would ferry these planes back and forth. They were women more or less my age. Very few of them left, and I’ve seen a story about them. That was really special I think because they learned to fly and to ferry, some of those planes were kind of getting decrepit after awhile, you know. So what I did was more routine, but it was still new and different. So I thank you.
AP: Thank you.
[Interview ends at 427]
