World War It: Stories from our Veterans Nelda Gibbs Nelda Gibbs joined the Women’s Marine Corps in 1943 and served on a base in Virginia. Where and when did you enter the service? 1 was 20 years old and I went to Milwaukee in 1943. I wasn't called to active duty until the first of February. Where you drafted or did you enlist? Tenlisted. What branch of service did you go into? I went into the Women’s Marine Reserves. They are not reserves today, they are a regular regiment, ‘They were reserves back in World War II. They were called the Marinettes. ‘This was a whole new outfit. I think they went to boot camp in the beginning of 1943. After basic training where did you go? After basic training, which we called boot camp because we use naval terms, we went to North Carolina, Following that I was assigned to a base in Virginia. The reason women were signing up was the slogan “Free Marine to fight”. The idea was to have women on the bases doing non- combat things so mote men could be sent to wat. Could you tell me where the unit was stationed? We were stationed in Virginia, about an hour south of Washington, D.C. [ was in the post paint shop and we painted everything from signs to houses to the Colonel’s boat. It was run by civil servants and they were Virginians. Did you see any combat? No, not unless you call riding the railroad, combat, We would have to ride the railroad into D.C. ‘They would have two passenger cars attached to the train and the rest were freight cars hauling stuff needed for the war. Do you have any other stories you could tell us about your experiences? The biggest thing of the day was mail call. My father was over with the Red Cross in Korea and the Philippines and I had my kid brother in the Army. I didn’t know until the end of the war that even though he was in the Army, he was on a ship for most of the war. I didn’t know where my sailor brother was. I had been to the university for two years and that had become a new place with marching soldiers and Quonset huts. It was a place where they trained naval pilots and it {©2001 D.C Everest Area Schools Publications 26 iWorld War I: Stories from our Veterans was so different. It just wasn’t a college anymore. ‘That's why I signed up. Mail call was so jmportant because my future husband was off in the Pacific on a baby aircraft carrier. His {etters, even though he wrote me a lot, would not get off the ship for a couple of months. Then you would get a whole bunch of letters all at once. It was really lonesome, a very lonely time. ‘The only thing you could do was wait until the war was over What was the hardest part of being in the war? Probably being away from home and everybody and not knowing when the war would be over. ‘We have television now and you see it everyday. We didn’t, We had newscasts on the radio, ‘but when you enlisted, you enlisted for the duration of the war, plus six months. We didn’t know if we would be there for one, two, three or more years. ‘There was no way of knowing, especially when Roosevelt died. He had been the leader of the country for three terms. We had been at big meetings and we knew the Russian leader and the British leader and when Roosevelt died, it was sort of a lost day. You didn’t know what was going to happen next because of the change in command. He had been our commander in chief. Is there a particular experience that stands out in your mind? No, but I would like to tell you about what happened at home because I came from a little village ‘of about 500 people in the middle of Wisconsin. My mother was required to use ration coupons and she had to run the house. We took a picture of her with a rake and a hoe in her hands because she was always doing everything. My kid sister was a night telephone operator and the rest were in the service except for the teenager. Everybody had to put up with rationing and with old shoes. All the wax, all the things you didn’t have because it was going into defense, You are talking about experiences and I didn’t have any. It was just a long miserable time. Except when you got leave. I sawed off the end of my finger. I got it cut off in the mess hall in the meat room. Everyone had thirty days of mess duty each year. If you got to be corporal, you didn’t have to do the duty but as a private I was in the meat room and I was lucky, because once you got the meat prepared for a day or two ahead, you were ok, Thad this pork loin and I was funning it through a band saw when my hand flipped with it and my finger was cut off. I was in naval hospital for six weeks. I was going nuts in there and they only had one ward for women and they had psychiatrists come in there. ‘These women could not take it and it was scary. The Joke was, go see the chaplain. Do you have any friends you still keep in contact with? ‘Yes, I sure do. One lives about two blocks away from me and works in a welding shop and I still Write to her, She turned out to be a Methodist preacher. There were others and I wrote to Butch, Whose real name is Winonna and she lives out in Missouri. You see how people have to make theit buddies their family. You make it a family because you don’t have your own family and You get to be real close. Can you describe what an average day was like? Tyould el up, go to the mess hall, and stand in line for breakfast. ‘Then we would go to the Daint shop. I was glad that I got out of there. I think we must have got out by four o’clock but 1 ant really remember the hours. We looked forward to the evenings because we could go to the Movies or the: library or you could go to the NCL club, Marines like me could go and sit there (©2001 D.C. Bverest Arca Schools Publications 2World War I: from our Veterans for an entire evening talking (o others. A lot of girls just sat there and wrote letters home or read a book. There were fifly girls in the barracks in one room and the bathroom had showers with wooden boards. If you had the duty, you had to clean the shower and if you got demerits you had to clean the shower Was there a lot of emotional stress that you had to endure? Tthink I told you about emotional stress. I never knew when the war was going to end. I mean part of it was because we didn’t have good news coverage like now. The guys were really great and all the girls were waiting for them at home. The girls were very sentimental and they would go out singing, One of the most popular songs was “Sentimental Journey.” It’s about going home, I remember going down to the barracks singing that song. My friend was going home on leave and then something came up and she never got to go. All the love songs were very hard to take if you were lonesome. All the people were around a lot of other people. They were around people of the opposite sex. Tam not saying that I didn’t have a good time but it wasn’t as much fun. But I did have fun too, What was the training like in boot camp? Because it was early and we were just a new outfit, they didn’t know what to do with us. They had men as drill instructors for marching, phy. ed. And a bunch of other stuff. Most of us didn’t use it because we were just going to be on the base. The worst thing they could say was that we ‘were a bunch of sheep. I was always doing what they wanted me to do. even marched in a platoon, We had so many minutes in the mess hall and we could only go to the bathroom twice or three times a day. So then they had to decide what they needed, That’s where I learned to smoke because they gave us cigarettes. I was so hungry that the cigarettes seemed like heaven. ‘The other gals were smoking and there was nothing wrong with it, The cigarettes took away the hunger and a lot of people learned to smoke when they went off to war. Twas glad when boot camp was done. How long was boot camp? think it was six weeks. What was the total time you were gone in the service? It was a bit over two years. Then I was in the reserves after that for another three years but the reserves were never called back in. It was good to be able to go back to school and then I got | married. Is there a message for young people today about the war? War is terrible. War is awful, I guess the only thing you can do about war is maybe getting a | peace academy. We have academies for the services and we need an academy for training peace and mediation, Let's have a peace academy. {©2001 DIC Everest Area Schools Pobliatons 28