Members of the Women's Army Corps stationed at Camp Atterbury, Ind., are filling scores of jobs here, supplementing the troops needed to operate this huge Hoosier post.  Wacs here illustrate General Marshall's statement on the importance of more Wacs in the Army.  The Chief of Staff declared:  "Each woman enrolled in the WAC has postponed the induction of a man since they are counted as a man in computing the ultimate manpower requirements on the Army,"  The need for more Wacs has grown with the coming '44 world-wide offensive, with every additional Wac hastening the day of victory.  Atterbury's Wacs hail from points coast-to-coast, with many claiming the 5th Service Command - Indiana, Kentucky, Ohio, and West Virginia - as their home.  In the above series of pictures, Wacs are shown at work performing duties they are best adapted to perform:

1 - Pvt Gertrude Mayhew, Akron, Ohio, is employed as a record clerk in the sales commissary. 

2. Responsible for the supplies of WAC Section 1, 1560th Service Unit, is Supply Sgt Darthola M. Chambers of Bicknell, Ind. 

3.  Working as assistant to the supply sergeant of the motor pool is Pvt Norma Watkin of Cincinnati, Ohio, pictured driving a jeep. 

4.  This Was, Technician Fifth Grade Coletta J. Becker of SDayton, Ohio, is statistical clerk at Post Headquarters. 

5.  Central terminal of all post transportation is the dispatcher's office, and working on charts at the table are Pvt Nellie Veremko, Montery, Mass., and Cpl Lorna Cunningham, Cincinnati, Ohio. Pvt Carol Silverman, of Berlin, N. J., a driver is shown handing her trip ticket Pvt Reba Roberts, of Slatington, Pa., while Pvt Arland Washer, Patterson, N. J., stands by the record board. 

6.  Delivering mail to the Quartermaster Division is the job assigned to Technician Fifth Grade, Martha Gaines of Covington, Ky.

7.  For relaxation, soldiers visit the Service Club libraries and for any help consult an assistant librarian, Pvt Evelyn G. Wenzel, of Franklin, Ohio, 

8.  Wacs have healthy appetites and fellow Wacs, Mess Sgt. Laura Lord of New Orleans, La, (left), Sgt Annie Jones of Omega, Ga, (center), and Pfc Francis Shealy of Atlanta, Ga., (right) prepare meals "fit for a Queen". 

9.  Pfc Virginia M. Compton of Louisa, Ky., is shown operating the machine which stamps out identification or "dog tags" for every soldier in Atterbury. 

10.  Operating the mimeograph machine turning out memoranda and special orders is the duty of Technician Fifth Grade Louise Symons of Elgin, Ill..

11.  The heart of any camp is the message center and here T5 Ester Powell of Cleveland, Ohio distributes communications to the various unit boxes. 

12. Cashier of the sales commissary is Pfc Betty Sheppard of Charlestown, W. Va.

Pvt Nellie Veremko, Montery, Mass

Mom wanted to leave the cloistered hills of Western Massachusetts, and when World War II started, she joined the WACs.  She initially was stationed in Indiana, which resulted in the pictures you have.

After this, she was transferred to Paris, where she met Major Alfred J. Bellman.  She fell in love in Paris, and later became "Nellie Veremko Bellman."  She moved to Cincinnati, Ohio after the war, where mom and dad had three children:  Diane, Marie, and Dan (the last born, me).

Today, Mom is 85 years old.  Her days from the WACs influenced her for her entire life.  Each morning when I was a child, I would see her doing morning exercises.  I did not learn until I was an adult that that influence came from the WACs.  Today, at 85, mom is still going strong.  She volunteers at St. Francis/St. George Hospital in Cincinnati, where she wheels patients into their physical therapy.  She hands out baby supplies for Santa Maria to young mothers who do not have much money.  She volunteers at the grade school library that she started about 40 years ago.  In her free time, she bikes.   She took biking up as a hobby in her 60's; today, she bikes about 40 miles at a time at a local park.  If you ask her, she would say that she is slowing down because a couple years ago, she easily could go 50 miles on the bike.

A few years ago, she was asked to speak at a Veterans Day program at her local grade school.  She does not like public speaking, and for weeks, she was worried about what she would say.  The day of the program, there was a younger man who spoke first of his days in the military.  Then, mom spoke.  She talked about growing up and going to a one-room school house in the remote hills of the Berkshires in Massachusetts, then joining the military as a young woman, and going to Paris during World War II.  As it turned out, the elementary kids loved it.  A year or two later, the kids would see her and flock to her like she was a famous person.

Her son, Dan
May, 2006
 

The following is from "The Ohio State University College of Nursing Magazine, Vol. 9, Number 1, 1999 and is through the courtesy of Mrs. Ellie Thoemke

1943
click to enlarge

Ruby Mae Martin's life was touched by the tragedy of war even before sloe left the United States to serve in Europe. After graduating from Ohio State's musing program in 1941, she became a surgical nurse at University Hospital until July of 1942. She enlisted in Red Cross duty and was ordered in January of' 1943 to report to Camp Atterbury in Indiana, the same camp where her twin brother, Lt. Richard Martin (`42), had been stationed. Two weeks after Martin arrived in Indiana, Richard was killed in a freak accident while on night maneuvers. Martin was devastated, but she was also committed to fulfilling her nursing service. Through the support of a cousin, who was also stationed at Atterbury, her pain slowly cased, she recalls.

From Indiana, Martin was sent to the AP Hill military reservation near Fredericksburg, Virginia, then on to Camp Kilmer, New Jersey, and finally. overseas.

She remembers the Atlantic crossing vividly: "We went to England on the Queen Elizabeth. There were 14,000 people on that ship and only 40 of them were women. It took us 3 1 /2 days to reach England. We ended up at Dursley, about 100 kilometers from London, where we stayed until June of 1944. Ten days after D-Day on June 16, we landed on Utah Beach (in German-occupied France). We were with the 67th Evacuation Hospital unit. It was a World War 11 MASH hospital, operating in tents most of the time, moving every two weeks to keep up with the fighting. We were doing nearly 100 operations every 12 hours."

Toward Christmas, as Martin and the 67'th moved through France and Belgium, fog and snow grounded the Allied offense. The Germans responded with surprise attacks that shattered two American divisions. The U.S. Department of Defense's Government and Military Archives makes reference to Ruby's valiant unit during the infamous Battle of the Bulge: "

In December 1944 the German Army under Field Marshal General Gerd von Rundstedt launched an all-out offensive against the western front, popularly known as the Battle of the Bulge. 7 he German attack bowed the American front line westward almost to the Meuse River. Many medical units, among them the 44th and 67th Evacuation Hospitals, were forced to evacuate the area on .short notice. Five nurses with the 67th volunteered to stay overnight with 200 patients too weak to withstand the move. All night they listened to the approaching roar of the German guns as they cared for their patients. The next day the Army evacuated nurses and patients within hours of the Germans' arrival. "

"You couldn't let yourself be afraid," Martin says of the war. "Saving lives was our only mission. We had to stay focused on that because if we didn't we couldn't have lasted."

She regularly wrote letters home to a family anxious for news, and felt the pangs of separation especially around the holidays. From Belgium on December 22 she wrote:

Just three more days until Christmas. 1 guess the best thing for its is just not to think about it ...lf we could only get settled for a few dlays. . .I am fine as can be. . . Maybe a little dirty. "
Then again on January 18:

The same ten of us girls are still together. We always seem to be able to wrangle a large enough room so that we can stay together rind that helps clot... Operations have slowed down a little now after several horribly busy days and nights... "

When the war was over, Martin was sent to Czech-Slovakia to help in refugee settlement efforts for the misplaced people of Europe. "It was one of the saddest things I ever saw," she says. "There were thousands of people. Most of them were civilians who'd been forced out of their homes. Many were sick and injured. All they had literally were the knapsacks they carried. They had been forced to leave everything else behind. I'll never forget the emptiness..."

Her experiences in World War II ended on a happier note than they had begun, however. She returned to Columbus in 1945 and finished her bachelor's degree in Education. She then moved to New York, where she Obtained her master's degree in nursing services from Columbia University, and returned to Columbus to begin her nursing career at University Hospitals, where she was director of nursing services for 22 years. She stayed in the Army Reserves and retired as a full colonel.

She still vividly remembers a conversation she had with a commanding officer early on in the war. "Someone asked him whether the nurses in his unit showed fear," Ruby says. "I remember he said, `Nah, they were too dumb to know any better.' Well, we took real exception to that comment and called him on it. He said, `I didn't mean that you were too dumb, I meant that you were too dumb about war.' I guess that was true," she says softly. It was fortunate that we didn't know about war. We were all young. We weren't afraid. We were there to do a job and that was all that was on our minds."

During Patricia Godfrey's World War II tenure she saw the world, lived through earthquakes and hurricanes, waded through land mines, patched soldiers' wounds, fractures, and amputations, delivered GI war bride babies, and married and buried a husband.

It all started in 1941 with her graduation from Ohio State. She returned home to Massillon, Ohio, where she worked for nine months in the obstetrics ward at the city hospital. "The whole country was getting ready for something, we just didn't know what," Godfrey remembers. "Then December came (Pearl Harbor) and we knew."

While at a nursing convention in Chicago, when "nurses were at a premium and the call was out," she signed up for duty with the American Red Cross. "That was the expectation of our generation," she says. "If you had the knowledge and skills you didn't hesitate." In September of 1942 she was training at Camp Atterbury Indiana, and by August of 1943 she was on her way to Algiers.

She remembers the searing heat that greeted her. "When we arrived all we had was our winter uniform," she says. `We had to do a parade in downtown Oran and it was 105 degrees. It looked like everyone had taken a shower with their clothes on."

Six weeks later she and her cadre from the 118"' Station Hospital sailed on British ships to a beach just outside of Naples, Italy, where the German resistance was steadfast. She remembers it like it was yesterday. "I was frightened for the first time. We went ashore the hard way-at night wading through a mined beach. We were wide open walking targets."

Her 700-bed station hospital set up in a medieval school and convent complex half way up the mountain overlooking the Bay of Naples. "It was gorgeous," she says, "and it was swimming in bed bugs. The walls, the mattresses, the linens-everything had to be de-loused. So everybody would line up and we'd put DDT powder down their fronts and backs." She also remembers the hepatitis that was so debilitating to the soldiers, she remembers the dangers of black market penicillin, she remembers cutting free and moving the soldiers in traction as air raid warnings blasted almost nightly.

Following the Battle of Anzio and the fall of Rome, the Germans retreated up the `boot.' There was a call for troops to no to the Pacific, but Godfrey was suddenly hospitalized for abdominal surgery. She missed the boat going to the Pacific and instead stayed with the 300`"' general hospital where she opened a newborn nursery for the Italian war brides of American soldiers. Here she remained until she had enough credits to go home.

On Christmas day 1945, she sailed into New York harbor on the USS Randolph. "There was a covering of snow," she remembers. "It looked like a Christmas card. There she was-the lady with the lamp. It was overwhelming. Everyone stood and yelled-it just rolled out of us. Some people got down on their knees and kissed the ground."

After returning to the U.S., Godfrey was promoted to Captain in the Army Nurse Corps and she went home to Massillon to prepare for her marriage to a Scotsman shed met in Naples. The couple moved to Hong Kong and later to Kobe, Japan. When the Korean conflict developed she returned to nursing as a civilian in the local Army hospital. Her husband, whose war work had started in Burma, where he contracted jaundice, died in 1948 of liver ailments. Godfrey eventually moved back to Cleveland, earned a B.S.N. and a master's degree in educational administration from Western Reserve University, and spent 18 years on tile faculty of the University of Akron before taking a leave to complete a master's of science in nursing from Duquesne University in Pittsburgh.

When the war began she was in her early twenties. Now nearly 80, she is very active in the retirement community near Cleveland where she lives. Of her wartime experiences she summarizes, "We were all about the same age. We were well prepared. We knew pretty well what may lie in store ...although you have to be next to the big bombs and see the resulting devastation to humanity before you really know that."

The dark cloud of war held two silver linings for Margaret Odor: great friends and great surgical success. She talks of England almost as a second home, and of the friends she met there almost like a family. She also talks of the rewards of wartime surgery. "You were doing something worthwhile to help," she says. "People say, `oh, how could you stand that terrible carnage?' Well, for me it was better because it was really the first time I was having success in the surgical field."

Odor graduated from Ohio State in 1943 and worked until September in neurosurgery in the Ohio State University Hospital's operating room.

She joined the Army Nurse Corps and headed to Ft. Benjamin Harrison in Indianapolis, then on to Tennessee where she trained to move with battle lines. On May 19, 1944, in preparation for D-Day, she arrived in Manchester, England, and because there were too many troops and not enough housing, nurses stayed in private homes in Northerridon. It was in these homes that Margaret would forge lifetime friendships.

Fifty-five days after D-Day, Odor and her unit landed on Utah Beach, in an area that was still heavily mined. "A number of enlisted men were blown up going through that mine field," she says. "We tried to operate on them but they were too far gone."

Her unit followed in Patton's wake as Allied armies moved quickly past Paris and through France, staying only four miles behind battle lines. `We were right close to the front," she remembers. "These young healthy soldiers would come in wounded and in rapid succession we would patch them up and move them to another hospital. We had great results with our surgery," she continues.
"We were successful also because we were all very positive about our work. We had a lot of freedom that we didn't have in a closely regulated hospital. I could-and frequently had to-design my own equipment. We could really improve the way we worked. Our colonel was an ear, nose & throat doe. He had no idea what we were doing," she laughs. "He couldn't have monitored us if he'd wanted to."

A year later while in Belgium, Odor was diagnosed with tuberculosis and sent home. She still can't imagine where she might have contracted the disease, but because it is arrested in scar tissue, the threat to her health is gone. Soon she met and married her husband, had two children, and now spends her time enjoying her 2 grandchildren and her friends in Europe.

Some glitch in military records shows that Odor is still on inactive duty, and at 78, she says wryly, "I don't think they'll call me back anytime soon."

Visiting England, she says, is a little bit like going home. "I miss it a little. I made some wonderful friends." Of the war she says simply, "I came out of it with bad lungs, but very enriched."