Oral history interview with K. Faye Kane Giles, 2001

WOMEN VETERANS HISTORICAL PROJECT

ORAL HISTORY COLLECTION

INTERVIEWEE:Katherine Faye Giles

INTERVIEWER:Eric Elliott

DATE:May 15, 2001

Also Present:Roscoe Giles

[Begin Interview]

EE: It's May the fifteenth in the year 2001. Time marches on when you don't really realize it. I am in Salisbury. Are we in the city limits of Salisbury [North Carolina]?

KG:Just barely.

EE:Salisbury, North Carolina, today at the home of Katherine Giles. Mrs. Giles, thank you. You go by "Faye"?

KG:Yes.

EE:Faye Giles. Thank you for sitting down with us this morning. This is an interview for the Women Veterans Historical Project at the University. I wanted to start out with you today the same way I start out with most folks, and that is if you would just simply share with us where you were born and where you grew up.

KG:I was born and grew up in western Pennsylvania, Washington County, Donora, where my father was superintendent of the blooming mill, American Steel and Wire Company. I have three sisters. All of them are still living.

EE:Were you the oldest? Youngest?

KG:I was the second from the oldest.

EE:What did your mom do?

KG:She was a stay-at-home mom, like all moms were. She was very active in church and in some of her social clubs, yes.

EE:Had your dad been in the service?

KG:No.

EE:I guess about the time you were born, the war was coming to a--

KG:Yes, I was born in January, and World War I ended November 1918.

EE:Right.

KG:I did have an uncle, who drove an ambulance in France, though.

EE:So you spent your whole life growing up there in Donora?

KG:Yes.

EE:Were you somebody who liked school, growing up?

KG:Oh, yes.

EE:What was your favorite subject?

KG:Probably reading and all that goes with it, history, geography, and so forth.

EE:Reading is a great way to see the world, isn't it?

KG:Oh, yes, yes.

EE:I guess you were old enough to remember the stock market crash and the start of the Depression. How did that affect your household?

KG:Well, the Depression did not affect it, except that--it did not affect our family directly, because my father, his work continued, and his salary remained about the same and so forth.

EE:So it didn't affect the mill?

KG:It didn't affect us as much as it did practically everybody else around us.

EE:At that time, North Carolina was slow in getting twelve years of high school. Did you go to a public school?

KG:Yes.

EE:What was the name of the high school you graduated from?

KG:Donora.

EE:Donora High?

KG:Yes.

EE:Was it a twelve-year school at that time?

KG:Yes.

EE:So you graduated in '35?

KG:Thirty-four.

EE:Did you have an inkling what you wanted to do when you grew up?

KG:No. I guess I thought I wanted to be a secretary, and went to a business college, very good business college, for two years.

EE:Were you staying at home during this time?

KG:Yes.

EE:Was it there in Donora, or did you have to go elsewhere?

KG:No, I went to another town.

EE:Then after two years in the business school, did you get a job locally?

KG:Oh, yes. My first job was with township schools where I was secretary to the high school principal, and did bookkeeping for the superintendent of schools. Then there was a job opened up in the American Steel and Wire Company, where my father worked, and I worked there for the chief clerk, which that would not be a name they would give anybody today, because he probably had 200 people in his section.

But from there, they were starting a program of communication, and I had a machine, which I could talk by machine, which, of course, was a predecessor of our computers that we have today. When I look back on it, it was quite 00:05:00marvelous. But this company, U.S. Steel, had steel mills around the United States, which shared information, and they put me in charge of that department. That's where I was working when I joined the Marine Corps.

EE:Do you remember distinctly Pearl Harbor Day?

KG:Oh, yes. Yes.

EE:Where were you, and how did you find out the news about that?

KG:I believe it was a Sunday, and we heard the news on the radio.

EE:Were you at your folks' home?

KG:Yes.

EE:Was there an immediate change in your thinking and your life, after that day?

KG:There was in everybody's life, I think, everybody that I knew. It probably had a great deal to do with why I wanted to be in the military. There were four girls in our family, and at that time, people who had a son--they were mostly sons, of course--in the military would have a little white flag in the window that faced the street.

It just bothered me every time I'd walk up the street and see how many people had a son in the military who was doing something. So I decided I would try to get in. So I went down to Pittsburgh. I don't know why I was so impressed with the Marines. Maybe because it was so new. I didn't think of it as being an advantage to me, because it was so new. But the Marines were romantic with their dress blues and so forth. That might have had something to do with it. I guess you would say it was very patriotic, the reason I joined. I never thought of myself as being overly patriotic.

EE:How did your folks feel about your interest in joining?

KG:They didn't ever say anything that they disapproved. I know that they visited me. My father had more gasoline available to him, because his mill was very necessary to the military. They managed to get enough gasoline to drive to wherever I was, at some point, to visit, so they could see how I was living and how I was doing.

EE:That's nice. I guess if the Marines started in '43, the Women Reserve for the Marines, in February, the WAC had started a little bit earlier, and it was not universally thought of as a great thing.

KG:Oh, no.

EE:In fact, there were some people who actively tried to spread rumors about the character of the women in the WAC.

KG:Yes.

EE:Did you get any sense of that from friends? Were there concerns about what you were doing from other people?

KG:Well, really, once you got into the military, you weren't around other people enough to get that. But my mother and father never said anyone had ever expressed that only losers fought in the military. But thank goodness, they did. I don't know where we'd be today if they weren't.

EE:It sounds like that your motivation was very much more personal from just looking around your town to see what people were giving up.

KG:Yes.

EE:They had the campaign. I think the Marines were one of the ones that started the "Free a man to fight" slogan.

KG:Yes.

EE:But it sounds like your motivations were much more personal.

KG:Well, they were. I guess they were. Of course, I knew people who were getting deferments that I didn't think should have gotten deferments. Of course, that was governed by the local board.

EE:Right. You did not have to have your parents' signature to join?

KG:No.

EE:You went to Pittsburgh to sign up?

KG:Yes.

EE:When you signed on, did they specify length of time?

KG:No.

EE:Or did they give you an option of which kind of work you wanted to do?

KG:No. But they gave you tests. They decided from the test results. That continues for--that's one thing that my husband did, was give tests to people in--the MOTG-81 is the organization that we were connected with, Marine Operational Training Group. He tested people to see what school--you could apply for a school, and it would train you to be certain things.

EE:Right.

KG:But when I went in, they tested you and decided where you would work out the best.

EE:Did you ask to go anywhere in particular, or were you just basically offering yourself to--

KG:That was funny. After I got out of first sergeant school, they had requests 00:10:00for, let's say, four first sergeants in California and so many in Florida. I remember when I was at Fioro [?] Beach, and I kept thinking, "Well, I'll hear something along the line."

Finally, they said, "And the last one is Cherry Point, North Carolina." I said, "Well, that would be a good place." So I went to Cherry Point.

EE:Not so far away from home.

KG:No.

EE:Had you traveled much outside of your home area, before joining the service?

KG:Oh, yes, with my family. We did a lot of traveling, and covered the historic places. My father was born and raised in Chambersburg, Pennsylvania, so that was in close proximity to Gettysburg [Pennsylvania]. So he had relatives, one uncle particularly, I know, who played drums at Gettysburg, fourteen years old.

[Tape recorder turned off.]

EE: You joined in March of '43 at Pittsburgh.

KG:Right.

EE:Tell me about your trip to the big city, because you left and went to Hunter College.

KG:Yes. Well, it was a troop train that picked up people in Pittsburgh that were going east. Some of them were going to Norfolk [Virginia], people on leave and so forth. But they went up to New York by train. Everything was arranged. You didn't have to think about anything.

The thing that I found amusing, my family decided I should have a corsage. I think I sent that copy of the National Geographic.

EE:The line marching?

KG:Yes, and I could pick myself out, because I'm the only one with a corsage. So that soon disappeared. See, our drill instructors at Hunter College were from Parris Island [South Carolina], those renowned drill instructors.

EE:These were men?

KG:Oh, yes. Yes. All our training in boot camp was from men because we were so new. I recall when I was in boot camp, they were, of course, getting all the publicity they could, so they could get recruits. I'm trying to think of that mayor. But he was going to have a parade, and we were invited to come down and parade several companies.

EE:Was [Fiorello] LaGuardia still mayor?

KG:Yes. That's right. So the drill instructors said--it was a hot day in June, and they said, "At the parade, WACs will faint. WAVES will faint. SPARs will faint. Marines will not faint," and not one of us did.

EE:So even though you were all training at Hunter, you each had your own unit? You were very regimented in that respect?

KG:Very regimented.

EE:How many other women were there when you came in?

KG:I have no idea.

EE:Because you had to be one of the first classes of enlisted folks coming through?

KG:Yes.

EE:Your training was for about what? Two months there?

KG:Yes.

EE:What was a typical day like in your memory?

KG:Up at six o'clock. We were housed, of course, in dormitories, which we had eight beds in each dorm room. They were very nice, though. They were large and weren't crowded. We had a bathroom for eight people, which simplified things a lot.

EE:It's a little bit more privacy than some of the others I talked to.

KG:Yes. Then we would go to breakfast. We had all these classes we took, and marching. The reason they march you all the time is so that you react immediately, and the discipline was a prominent thing in the training.

EE:Was that difficult for you?

KG:No, no.

EE:Or did you like it?

KG:See, I was twenty-five, and there were women in there up to, I think, about thirty-five. The older you were, the most used you were to following orders and so forth. I recall, there was one girl in our apartment, in our dorm room. She had posted pictures of her on her motorcycle. Well, she was a free soul. She had a terrible time. I don't know whether she ever made it any further than boot camp.

We had a lot of marching to do, and a lot of studying to do, and testing. Your 00:15:00day ended--there was a rec room that you could go down and sit in in the evening, if you had everything done, including your own laundry, washing your stockings and washing your hair, and all these things, which were not the easiest things to do when you were in your room. But you had to be in your bed at ten o'clock.

There was a girl in our group from Pennsylvania, and she had a sister who was a nurse overseas. Her sister had been wounded, and she got a telephone call, and she stayed till five after ten, and she had to scrub floors for a week after that.

EE:From a wounded sister. They didn't make an exception?

KG:There were no exceptions. They couldn't have exceptions, they said. Because a lot of us asked that she not be punished for that, but they said, "No, we can't make exceptions. We don't know what she was talking about. We don't know who she was talking to." So that's the way it went.

No, I did not have trouble. I know when we had shots, they lined us up, and we walked through this line and got two shots in one arm and one shot in the other arm at the same time. Of course, a lot of people have reactions to this. They have a fever. I was up all night with somebody in our room who was almost delirious with fever.

In fact, one time, I had to call in somebody from--of course, our medical care was from the navy, and I had to call somebody in--it was an emergency--to get something for her so that she could settle down a little bit. But you all had to be up the next morning at six o'clock, whether you had to drag yourself or not.

EE:Were your teachers men, as well?

KG:Yes.

EE:All your instructors were men?

KG:Yes.

EE:Did you ever get a chance to go into the city? Because I know New York was a good place to be for time off. Did you ever have any time to go?

KG:I recall going one of the Sundays. I'm a Methodist, but one of the women I was serving with was familiar with New York, and she said, "Would you go to the Catholic Church with me, because I know where it is?" So we were given two hours to go to church, so I went with Margaret to her church. That was a big treat, to get away to go to church. We did go to Mayor LaGuardia's parade, and we were in the city then, but outside of that, I totally left, we were not, no.

EE:You were in there for two months, and then you told me they put you on a train and headed you south.

KG:Yes, headed me south to Atlanta. There was all women, the whole school. Everybody that was there, the Marines, they were headed south, headed toward Atlanta. The train was derailed in North Carolina with no water, and of course, no air conditioning. We were there for seven hours on our trip.

EE:This was May, I guess. You went in in March?

KG:March, April, May. Yes, it was June.

EE:June by the time you got in. That can be rather uncomfortable that time of year.

KG:Yes.

EE:But then you did get to Atlanta, only to spend a night there, it sounded like.

KG:Yes, part of a night.

EE:They put you back on a train and headed you out to Nashville.

KG:But see, a lot of the women were going to a place where they trained clerks, and that was south of Atlanta, and I can't remember that. I thought of it earlier today. I can't remember that. Many of those stayed at and were processed in Atlanta, but I was put right on the train, and I was the only one that was going to Nashville. Some people went to New Orleans.

EE:You told me before we started this that you were the first Woman Marine in Tennessee.

KG:Right.

EE:But you were assigned to a recruiting station?

KG:Yes.

EE:So really, what you ended up doing was freeing a man to fight.

KG:Yes.

EE:You were not recruiting Women Marines, or were you?

KG:No, no. The only role I had with Women Marines when I was there was when the navy doctor was giving a physical to an applicant. He asked me if I would come and protect him against--be in the room with them.

EE:Right, right. You had this position for about six months?

KG:Yes.

EE:Tell me about what that kind of work was. What did you do there?

KG:Well, we recruited seventeen-year-olds only. We recruited them every day in 00:20:00the week.

EE:Did you go out and make speeches?

KG:They didn't go out. They were fighting to get in. No one went out of the office, but it was just processing them. They were put up overnight in a hotel near our offices in the custom house. They went to a hotel overnight, and then they were shipped either to Lejeune [North Carolina] or to California for their boot camp.

EE:So your work was basically as an administrative assistant to that recruiting effort. Or were you actually involved in talking with men as they came in about why they wanted to join the service?

KG:Oh, yes. That was my role. Then, getting all this information from them, because this was where their whole life was affected by what record we got from them there and what they could recall.

EE:Did you have any special training in this kind of work before showing up in Nashville?

KG:No.

EE:Or did they just sort of teach you on the job--

KG:No, no, no. Nobody taught you. They expected you to know how. I was with a group--there were five of us, four men with the recruiters, and then we had a first sergeant there, who was male, and he ran the office.

EE:You were telling me one of the things that you thought up on the fly down there was how to solve a problem with illiteracy.

KG:Yes. We would hold people over, so that we would get a class of four or five that couldn't read or write, even their own name, and then I would spend a couple of hours with them in trying to make them--well, our commanding officer, Major Drew, was very kind. He, too, was concerned about them leaving and not having any connection with home from then on.

EE:Because their family was illiterate as well?

KG:Oh, yes.

EE:They wouldn't be able to keep in contact with them.

KG:But it was so difficult for me to think people school age couldn't write their own name.

EE:Did you have to fend for your own housing when you were in Nashville?

KG:When I got there, I was met by two Marines, and they had contacted a rooming house that they knew about. So they took me by to see if it was all right. They said they hadn't committed. I thought it was fine. So I stayed in a rooming house.

EE:How was the relationship with you and the other men in the office? You were a curiosity for them, I'm sure, as well.

KG:Yes, discovering we got the second Marine, she bugged them. But I had worked with men.

EE:You had had seven years working in an office environment?

KG:Yes.

EE:You knew what it meant to be a professional?

KG:Yes. I was broken in. I was broken in, yes. But she wasn't. Plus, she was very aggressive. One of our men worked for the National Tennessean. One worked for the--I'm trying to think of the Memphis paper. One was on the staff of Boss Crump. You've heard of Boss Crump in Tennessee. He ran the whole state without ever being elected to anything.

EE:Yes. A lot of communities have those kinds of figures behind the scene, unelected leaders.

KG:They were all college-educated men. When they left there, they went to Lejeune and had to be trained for military duty overseas.

EE:Did you keep up with any of those people?

KG:Later on, I did, yes.

EE:The major, Major Drew, was impressed enough with your work there that he recommended you for--

KG:First sergeant.

EE:--first sergeant school?

KG:Yes.

EE:I'm going to take you there. And I just was thinking, did you have a chance to socialize, to get out and see any of the area there?

KG:Oh, yes, yes. We did a lot of things together. Of course, in Tennessee at that time, in Nashville, you didn't ask anybody what their religion was. You would say, "Methodist or Baptist?" because that was the two religions.

EE:That was it?

KG:Yes. So the men that I worked with were Methodist and Baptist, and there were twenty-three Methodist churches in the city at that time, so we went to a different church every Sunday.

EE:I guess Vanderbilt was Methodist, too, wasn't it?

KG:Yes.

EE:Did your folks get down to Nashville to see you?

KG:My mother did. That was an experience. She got off of a train and was surrounded by these young officers. One was even carrying her purse. She was on the train, and I think they were all so homesick, and they just took such good care of her.

EE:She became everybody's mom for a while?

KG:Yes.

EE:That's great. You got this assignment to go to first sergeant school, and that was conducted back in Philadelphia at the navy yard.

KG:Yes.

EE:Had you been to Philadelphia before?

KG:No.

EE:So it's a new location, as well, even for a Pennsylvanian?

KG:Yes.

EE:Tell me about that experience. You started in January of '44, I guess this was, that you went to the navy yard?

KG:Yes, the first of January. I came by train from Nashville to Cincinnati. And when I got to Cincinnati, I had to change trains going east, and none of my luggage and all my uniforms and everything were missing. I had to get on the train, and I had a berth, and this wonderful, wonderful black man, who was the attendant in that sleep car, sat up with me all night, because I was so concerned about my uniforms and things being lost.

He told me what to do. He said, "When you get to Pittsburgh, you go to the luggage keeper, and you tell him what your bags look like." This was the day before Christmas, incidentally. He said, "He will watch for them, and I'm sure he'll find them." He was right. On Christmas Day, we were eating dinner, and we got the call from the train station.

EE:So you got to stop by home on the way to Philadelphia?

KG:Yes. I think I was there for a week, because it wasn't going to start until January. So my brother-in-law got in the car and drove down to Pittsburgh, picks up my luggage. That made my week's leave very much relaxed from what it was.

Then I reported in there. The women lived at the Benjamin Franklin Hotel. There were twenty-five of us. We lived three to a room. We ate breakfast at Horn and Hardart, and then we were taken by bus out to the--we got out to the navy yard by seven o'clock in the morning.

But there was perhaps the best training I've ever had in my life. The thing that I've used the most is the things I learned there. We had map reading. I remember that I excelled in that, because they asked me if I would stay at school and teach that class, and I said, no, I wanted to get out, that wasn't what I came for.

EE:You were telling me there were twenty-five women, but there were seventy-five men?

KG:Fifty men. The men stayed at the navy yard.

EE:There were no allowances made for being a woman? Everybody had the same training and expectations?

KG:Yes, we did.

EE:How did that work? When you're in an office of four in a professional environment, it's one thing, but here it's competition, men against women. How did that go over?

KG:Well, in the first place, those who finished in the first half of the class got a promotion the day they walked out, so that was a great incentive. Our instructors were very good. There I had a couple of women instructors at the first sergeant school, but that's because they were replacing even those instructors with women.

EE:So those were other Marine officers who would come in?

KG:Yes, yes.

EE:This class was about three months, you said?

KG:Three months long, yes.

EE:Map reading. What other skills did you learn? You were talking about rifles at one point. You had to--

KG:Well, we drilled with M1 rifles, but we had to learn to disassemble and reassemble rifles, Thompson machine guns--

EE:Did you have the temerity to ask, "Why will I need to know this for sitting behind a desk?"

KG:You didn't ask anything. You did not ask anything. How many latrines would I have to dig? But the school was made up for first sergeants. We were going to be lifetime first sergeants and be in all kinds of situations, in combat and in peacetimes.

EE:So those people needed to know how to dig a latrine?

KG:They knew how, but they needed to know that before they went overseas. I don't know whether any of them ever had to use it or not, but that was something that really amused us, that we had to learn that.

But we had to remove our hats when we entered buildings. We had to do everything that the men had to do. They would not change one thing, which I thought was good. Some of the gals griped about it, but I thought it was good. And no man--he was punished if he held the door for you.

EE:I think I was reading somewhere, a comment from the commandant at that time says, "If we're going to have women Marines, they're going to be Marines."

KG:Yes.

EE:It sounds like you got that attitude, front and center. No allowances, in a sense. I know some of the services--I've talked with people who liked a certain service more than the other because of the look of the uniform.

KG:Yes.

EE:Perhaps it allowed them to look more feminine, and yet here was an opportunity where they said, "We wanted people for their skills, and we're going to value you one way or the other."

KG:That's how well we're going to do when they need us.

EE:At the time you were in that school, did you feel like you had made the right choice in joining?

KG:Oh, yes.

EE:It had to feel good to be valued for your skills, right there, front and center.

KG:Right.

EE:You were there through--I guess you left just before D-Day, which would have been in the early part of June. You probably left in April?

KG:I was there in January, February, and March. In April I was assigned to Cherry Point.

EE:That would end up being a short stay at Cherry Point?

KG:Yes, that was just for reassignment. That's the way they did it, because it would be difficult to make transportation arrangements and so forth, if in Philadelphia they started saying, you will--

EE:Stay the evening or something, yes. It's too small.

KG:They sent a lot of people to Cherry Point. They sent a lot of people to Miramar, California. Then they were reassigned to where they needed them, in that area.

EE:As it turned out, you spent a couple of weeks in Cherry Point, and then were assigned to the Marine Corps Air Station in Edenton, North Carolina?

KG:Yes.

EE:Which, we talked about before, is no longer there. It's now an industrial park. Tell me about the kind of work you did when you were at Edenton.

KG:I was first sergeant of this women's squadron, made up of 178 women, who were assigned to work in six different squadrons, who had various duties in the training of pilots, air and ground crewmen. I had a payroll clerk. I had two secretaries who did papers to fill out and so forth. We were quite busy all the time.

EE:So this is the first time that you are actually supervising other personnel in your work?

KG:Yes, yes.

EE:But for 180 women, there's a lot of work to be going on with people coming in and out.

KG:Yes.

EE:These were women who were training pilots who would fly PBJs and SNDs?

KG:Yes.

EE:Whether it's league training or celestial navigation?

KG:Yes, see they--out of boot camp, because of something that showed up on their tests, that they would be able to do this--they had been sent to these various schools and trained to do whatever they did, and then they converged on Edenton, where they actually did the training.

EE:How long would you end up being at Edenton? You were there till they closed the base down. When did they close the base down?

KG:Let me see. Ros, can you help me out there? When did they close the base down in Edenton?

RG:You mean closed it for the Marines?

KG:Yes, when we were--

RG:I think that was February.

EE:So the war hadn't ended in Europe, yet?

RG:No, no. This was in '45. I know we there in January. Just reading some memento thing--Might have been March.

KG:Yes.

EE:So you were there altogether about eight months before they closed it, maybe 00:35:00a little bit longer?

RG:Oh, longer.

KG:Longer than that.

EE:She came in in April. If they closed it in January, it would have been about eight or nine months. If it was March, it would have been closer to a year.

RG:Let me see. She went there in '44.

EE:Right. When they closed the base down, did they just move the entire--

RG:That's right.

EE:It would have been about a year?

RG:Yes. I was thinking it was longer than that. But no, that's right.

EE:When they closed the base down, did they move all that training to Cherry Point, or did they just not have a need for it anymore?

KG:Well, the war was winding down, and they were training less.

EE:Right.

RG:Let me think.

EE:Well, the exact time is not--

RG:They changed the training.

KG:Okay. "Personnel was removed to Cherry Point on 25 February '45."

EE:Okay. That gives us the right dates. So it's about ten months that you were there altogether.

KG:Yes.

EE:Then when you switched back down, your actual kind of work changed as well, when you got back to Cherry Point?

KG:Yes.

EE:You were working in the adjutant department for the PX?

KG:Yes.

EE:So you probably didn't have as many personnel working under you at that position?

KG:There was maybe--well, we more or less worked together.

EE:How did you all meet at Edenton?

KG:Well, our offices are in the same building.

EE:Give me the sanitized version.

KG:Our offices are in the same building, and I had met a girl who worked in his office, in the same office as he did. So I went down to meet Irene, and we were going to go to lunch together at the mess hall. Ros was sitting there, and he said, "No matter what anyone tells you, I like your hat at that angle," which was his way of tell me it wasn't GI.

RG:We had just changed from the winter uniforms to summer uniforms. The cap was a little different in shape or something. She had it at--

KG:An angle.

RG:It wasn't exactly the way it was supposed to be.

EE:What was the work that you were doing at this station?

RG:Well, I was in what we then called personnel classification. It's now called personnel administration.

EE:So when the base closed, you moved back to Pittsburgh, as well?

KG:Yes, in fact, we went on an early cadre, because of our jobs. We had to get down there.

EE:To set up in advance?

KG:Yes.

RG:See, I worked at the group level, headquarters squadron, but the personnel classification records were kept at the group level, so all of the pilots and ground crewmen, air crewmen, and all of these people who were trained there, we updated their files.

EE:When was this conversation with Irene? How long had you been at Edenton before you actually ran into each other? Would it have been that summer?

KG:You came first, didn't you?

RG:No, you came first.

KG:I came first, yes. I had been there maybe two weeks.

EE:Early on. So by the time you left for Cherry Point, did you all realize y'all were a serious, long-term item?

KG:Oh, yes. I was talking to Ros about this, because we've been trying to recall things. At that time, the civilian people and some of the military thought that any military marriages wouldn't last, because they really were not living in a real world. It didn't make any difference if you played poker the day after you 00:40:00got your paycheck, because somebody was going to feed you, house you, dress you until the next paycheck. So it really wasn't a real situation.

Ros and I dated for thirteen months, and dated every day. On the way home back to the barracks after dinner in the evening, which we ate together, I'd say, "Now, I can't see you tonight, because I have to do laundry," or, "I have to wash my hair," or whatever, and then by the time he walked me to our barracks, he'd talked me into hurrying up and doing that. Anyway, I said, we really went together about thirteen years and not thirteen months.

EE:Because you had so much extra time to get to know one another?

KG:Everything we did--one didn't work here, and one worked there, and one worked here, and one worked there. But anyway, that's the way it went.

EE:Edenton is a little bit isolated, too. It's not right next to Cherry Point.

KG:Oh, no.

RG:Ninety miles.

EE:I assume you pretty much stayed on here [at] the base, did you not, at that time?

KG:Yes, we had cattle cars, they called them, which took you in town, but when you got in town with all those Marines--and incidentally, the people of Edenton were so understanding. That little town absorbed all those people.

EE:It's not a big town.

KG:We had these--I don't know how you would describe it, those cattle cars. They were not buses.

RG:There were semis set up. The transportation portion of it probably originally was set up to transport cattle.

KG:They had benches along the side. That's how we got in town.

EE:When did you all actually get married? I saw that great photograph of you.

KG:July 12, 1945.

RG:See, you go into wartime. In a war, everything just moves so much faster. A month can be a long while. I guess the first date we had was at a squadron party on base. But early on, we started having lunch together. Since we worked from the same building, you know, we went for lunch together. After we finished work--because it was nine to five--we had dinner together, and walked her to the barracks and all, and go back and pick her up, and we'd go to the movies--

KG:NCO club.

RG:--the club, NCO club, or whatever.

EE:I know some people, when they got married, they immediately applied for a discharge, or they wanted to get out, or they were going to get pregnant and decided they wanted to have a family. At that time, you could not stay in the service if you were a woman and you were pregnant. But you all stayed in to the time--

KG:Yes. See, you accumulated points and were discharged by the number of points. But Ros, in his position, was assigned to rehabilitation, so he had to stay in longer to rehabilitate these fellows.

RG:Separation center.

KG:Separation center, and where you go for this, and you should keep your insurance, because you'll never get anything like that again, and so forth. So he stayed in. I was discharged in October.

EE:So Cherry Point became a separation center for folks coming back?

KG:Yes. He stayed in for that, but I had no trouble getting a job on the base. In fact, I worked for the commanding general of the base as a civilian in the business office.

EE:So you'd left the service then in January of '46, but you stayed near the base afterwards?

KG:We lived on the base, or on government housing inside the gate at--what's--

RG:Havelock [North Carolina].

KG:Havelock, yes.

RG:Navy housing.

KG:Navy housing. We got that after several trials.

EE:Do you remember where you were when you heard the news about President 00:45:00[Franklin D.] Roosevelt passing?

KG:I don't remember where. I know where we were when the--

RG:VJ Day.

KG:VJ Day, yes, because we were in town, and the first thing they did was close all the bars.

EE:They didn't want that much celebration going on.

KG:They didn't want to assist in the celebration at all, but it was a very--to us, it was a very jubilant time.

EE:I don't believe anybody had any inkling that we had anything like the atomic bomb that would bring it to a close so fast. They just assumed it would be another year or two.

RG:But there was some plans that had been made at a higher level, because at that point we had a room in town, which we rented in a house, and we were in town. It was, I'm going to say, seven o'clock in the evening when the sirens started blowing. If you were on the base, you couldn't go off.

EE:So sort of like a lockdown, then?

RG:If you were off the base, you couldn't get on. This didn't just happen in ten minutes' time. Somebody had planned that. There was some inkling of this. But I don't know. I don't know what happened.

EE:You were in Atlanta and New York and Nashville and Philadelphia and someplace you probably never knew before, Edenton, until you got there.

KG:No.

EE:All these different situations. Were you ever afraid, all these transitions?

KG:I guess I've always had training, that whatever you had to deal with, you dealt with. I gained this from my father and mother completely. Whatever you had to do, don't fuss about it; just do it. You end up a lot--no, I was never afraid.

EE:What was the toughest thing about being in service for you?

KG:I don't think there was anything tough about being in service for me.

EE:It was a good fit for you?

KG:Yes, it was a good fit for me at the time, and I evidently satisfied my need to make up for those boys whose mothers had a star, and then of course, when they had another little flag they put up when they were killed.

EE:A lot of personal satisfaction in doing it.

KG:Yes.

EE:Did you ever think about making a career out of the service?

KG:No, we didn't. Ros signed up in the reserves, and he was called back in the Korean War, and that was probably as tough--they stationed him in Lynn, Massachusetts, on recruiting. So he didn't ever go overseas, either. He stayed there, and then they transferred him to Boston. But that was a difficult time, because he was a staff sergeant. At that time, staff sergeants were making about $96 a month, and we had no military housing. He did get the housing allowance. We had no medical care. I'm talking about the time during the Korean War when you were back.

RG:August or September of '50 to what would be October of '51.

KG:Fifty-one. He was in thirteen months. I wasn't frightened. We had adopted Sally by this time, and we had to live kind of close.

EE:When you think back to those days in service, is there a particular song when 00:50:00you hear it, or movie when you see it, that takes you back to those days?

KG:The song is "It Had to be You." We still love hearing that. He has questions he has to ask.

EE:You've traveled to many places in this time period. Are there particular characters that stand out in your memory? One of the questions they had me ask early on was: What is the most embarrassing moment you recall? I thought, well, most people really don't want to reveal their personal most embarrassing, but is there a particularly funny encounter you remember, whether it's a story about yourself or some other person that you met in the service?

KG:Well, this happened at Edenton. Across the hall from our office was a Major Thompson. One day he came in early in the morning. I don't think the girls in my office were there yet. It was in the morning. He wanted me to come over to his office, and he said, "I was getting out of the Jeep, and I tore my pants." He said, "What can I do about it?"

I said, "Well, one of the girls in my office, Winnie Parker, is a very good seamstress, and she probably has sewing equipment in her desk drawer."

He had a bathroom off of his office, so he went over, and went in the bathroom, and took off his pants, and quickly came out and sat down behind his desk. I took the pants over to Winnie and said that Major Thompson had an accident, would she mend his pants so that he could at least move around to get back to his quarters? So she went into the women's restroom where they had a chair and good light. She sat there and worked on his pants. He kept calling me and saying, "Is she through yet?" "Is she through yet?"

In the meantime, Lesco--what was his--Lieutenant Lesco--

RG:Lieutenant Lesco. He was the adjutant.

KG:Yes, he was the adjutant. A little short fellow that was very GI, and he came in to see Major Thompson for something, and he noticed that he didn't have any pants on. So he asked him, and he told him what the story was. So he went back to the commanding general and told him what was going on. The general called Major Thompson and said, "I need to see you immediately in my office."

EE:Just to get him--

KG:Yes, so anyway, he really panicked then. But thank goodness, Winnie saved the day. She got the pants finished, and he got his pants on and went down there. The adjutant and the general were sitting there in stitches. That was the funniest thing that happened the whole time I was in. I couldn't get anything done, because he was on the phone to me all the time.

He was in Squadron 814, who did certain types of specialized training, and the women in my squadron, who worked under him, complained to him about [how] they [had] to get up--see, we were on the first floor in the women's barracks. On the second floor were the women who were with the station, and that was people who took care of the housekeeping and so forth for everybody on the station. He came to me, and he said, "Faye--." He always called me "Sergeant." He said, "Sergeant, the girls are complaining that they have to get up earlier, an hour earlier than the ones on the second floor." He said, "I'd like you to think about that."

So I thought about it. I listed all of the things that the girls on the station had to do that they didn't have to do. I said, "Now, you have your choice. If they get up an hour later, they have to also do these things."

He said, "I'm not even going to take it back to them."

But we had a very good relationship with him, with all the officers. Edenton was the paradise of the military. Not that we had anything elaborate or anything, but we just had--it was a small group.

EE:Good camaraderie, it sounds like.

KG:The camaraderie was great. But we never did break the barrier between the enlisted and the officers. In fact, we had such a good NCO club, that some of the officers wanted to put on civilian clothes and come in, but we couldn't allow it. I was on the board with that, the board of governors of the club, and 00:55:00we couldn't let that happen.

EE:So that was a social center for everybody?

KG:Yes, that was the social center for those who were noncommissioned officers.

EE:When you think back to those days, who are your heroes?

KG:Lieutenant Hamilton, a woman. She was my CO, when I was a first sergeant there. I'm trying to think what her civilian background was.

RG:She was in education, wasn't she?

KG:Yes, I think so, at the college level. She was from Ohio, but she knew what her duties were and what my duties were. We carried them on very amicably.

EE:She was a role model, then?

KG:Yes, she was a role model.

RG:She was a good officer.

KG:Yes, she was a very good officer.

EE:One of the things that people say about role models is that women like you who joined when you didn't have to--there was no draft for women--that you all were role models later on for people who wanted to do--you were at that first sergeant school, and they treated you just like a man. Well, that was not exactly an everyday commodity back in those times.

KG:No, no.

EE:Do you feel like a pioneer in that regard?

KG:Well, sometimes I get shocked at how well it was set up, when it had only been authorized a month before I went in, how really well it was set up, and where they got the people, too. Because we have a lot of women at boot camp that are drill instructors for men, from Parris Island.

EE:The services have changed so much since those days, although you were in an environment where they treated you like a man, but they treated you professionally. Nowadays, women are allowed to do so much more.

KG:Yes.

EE:You had the first woman combat pilot against Iraq a couple of years ago. How do you feel about the change in the use of women personnel? Is it something that you think is a good thing?

KG:Ros and I went to Parris Island to a reunion of our group--how many years ago? We were so impressed with the training. We watched the training. See, the women are trained there now, at Parris Island. They were so good. They did so many more things, more dangerous things. They were on the--

RG:Obstacle course?

KG:Yes, the obstacle course, we watched that. They're really doing so much more, because they're in there. It's a career thing now. But they're really not softening up. I feel that's one thing that's wrong with our civilian life. We're all softening up. If our kids misbehave in school, it's the teacher's fault and everything. But those people are really disciplined. If you're not disciplined, you don't make it.

EE:So that's something that's different about generations?

KG:Yes. But we had nothing but pride for those--

RG:Just a sidebar, but the training was more intense at Parris Island than it was when I went through for men, because we did not do obstacle course at Parris Island. We did a lot of things, but that was not one of the things. So there has been an overall change.

EE:Perhaps people were concerned about with a volunteer army about softening, but from your perspective, it sounds like perhaps that a volunteer army has led to people who really want to do it, really want to be there, and they push them harder, maybe.

KG:We have two grandsons, one who was in the navy for four years so he could get the GI Bill to go to college. Now he has graduated from UNC Wilmington, and is finishing his first year as an elementary school teacher. He has been so 01:00:00successful. We visited, when we went to his graduation from Great Lakes, and we know that they're getting training. They're really getting training.

EE:If a woman came to you today and said, "I'm thinking about joining the Marines," what would you tell her?

KG:I'd say, "If you can take it, you'll never regret a day. But if you're going to go there and try to live the way you do now and spoil yourself, it's not going to work." I'd try to be truthful with them.

EE:She has to be a woman ready to change?

KG:Right, right. But you will never regret the changes, because it's something that--in fact, I know the things that I've been able to do, both on a volunteer basis, on a social basis. I never would have done them. Wouldn't have had the courage to even try.

EE:So that's been the biggest change, maybe in you, as a result of service, is that it gives you more of a feeling of independence and self-reliance.

KG:Yes, yes.

EE:Tell me about you all after your service days. You gave me a brief review before you started here. How did you get from Cherry Point, through the world, and back to North Carolina?

KG:Well, Ros had been with the immigration border patrol before he went in, so he came back there, and he was assigned to Fort Fairfield, Maine, which is up in Aroostook County, "Potato County," and we were there for nine years. Then he was asked to take over the chamber of commerce in Fort Fairfield, and he did, and he was there for two years with that, and then he got an offer of a job in Pennsylvania. We went to Pennsylvania, were there two years.

EE:This was also the chamber of commerce?

KG:Chamber of commerce. He just really fell into something, or somebody saw--well, a friend saw that that was a good place for him to be, and recommended him there.

From Pennsylvania, we went to New York, and he was there for six years. Chamber of commerce is the only way you can get a promotion is to move to a bigger town, because there's only one--

EE:That's right.

KG:From New York, we went to Michigan, and he was in Holland for twenty years.

EE:I don't see any tulips in the yard.

RG:There were. It's past the season now.

KG:Incidentally, this is Tulip Time Weekend. It's the week that has the fifteenth of May in it. It's Tulip Time Weekend. We have those--

EE:Huge event up there. I took my family up to Michigan for the first time. We're doing a tour of the state capitals, and we went to Michigan. Beautiful capital.

KG:During this time, let's see, when we were in New York, I did not work in Maine, except for a couple of part-time jobs. Then in New York State, I worked in the school district, secretary of two elementary schools. Left there, went to Michigan. I did not work for a while, but then I was asked by a friend, an attorney was opening his own office from a group he'd been with, and he asked me if I'd do his bookkeeping, so I start part time on that. Eventually, I worked up to where I was a legal secretary, because when he would lose a secretary, I'd fill in until he got another one.

Then, the last thing I did was I was the director of community foundation, and that was very rewarding, I found.

EE:You were sharing with me that you are both active in a lot of community boards and community activities.

KG:Yes. Even before we retired, we discovered England, so we've been there four or five times.

EE:Have you placed the family tree back to there somewhat?

KG:See, my grandfather was born in Stratford, England, but we never have been to Stratford. We fell in love with it.

RG:You're saying that wrong. You said "Stratford."

KG:No.

RG:I can't think of it now.

KG:That's the trouble when you interrupt people. You lose your train of thought.

RG:Stratford, where the Bard was.

EE:Upon Avon.

KG:Yes.

RG:Sheffield?

KG:Sheffield. Yes, he was in Sheffield. That's a nice place. But we've been there on elder hostels, and we've been there on tours and covered all of Great Britain, and we've taken an awful lot of vacations.

EE:How long, actually, have you been here in North Carolina?

KG:Eighteen years.

EE:You just moved to this place in the last couple of years?

KG:A little over a year ago.

EE:That's great. We're less than two weeks from Memorial Day.

KG:Yes.

EE:I had a veteran give me this pin. "Eternal vigilance is the price of liberty." So many people I talked to, and you're one of them. You were looking at the street, and saw people who had sent daughters or sent sons to war, and you wanted to participate. You volunteered. Some people talk about the sense of patriotism has changed in this country. How do you compare the way people are now to then, in their terms of patriotism and their pride in country?

KG:Well, by the time we retired and came to Salisbury--and I'm sure it's not any different anyplace else--everybody used to go to the parade on Memorial Day, and not so many people do. I think that perhaps like many areas of our life, when there's a crisis, it brings us closer together. We lived through three wars. Our son-in-law was in Vietnam.

I think, again, if we had a crisis that maybe we would pull together, but not quite so much. I'm thinking of things like Oklahoma City and so forth. I've heard so many people say how that's brought the whole city together. We just are fortunate that we don't have wars that come close to us, to enough of us. I know that there's still military peacekeepers here and there, but if it's not in your family, you don't think too much about it.

EE:It's a nice thing that we have not had those crises, and yet, the consequence is that perhaps we don't think together as a community and pull together as much as we should.

Well, I think you've done a very admirable job of flying through your career with me this morning. I've gotten through the main questions, which I try to make sure that we go through with people. Is there anything about your service time that I had not asked you about, that you'd like to share with us?

KG:Well, the greatest thing that came out of my time in the service is Ros. I found him. In fact, we talk about that. What would be the chance of somebody from Maine and somebody from western Pennsylvania, ever getting together? We have friends who've met in the military, and they're still together. I don't think the fact that we were in the military had too much to do with it, but Ros and I have been fifty-five years.

RG:In July, fifty-six.

KG:It'll be fifty-six.

EE:It does sort of humble you to forces bigger than yourself that brought you together.

KG:Yes, yes.

RG:Well, in the military, as least in time of war, things come together oddly. Let me do this, what's the easiest way for me. Some in the first two weeks of boot camp we went through the classification process. We tested, and then we were interviewed. I was interviewed by a fellow who had worked with the FBI 01:10:00[Federal Bureau of Investigation]. The FBI was under the Department of Justice, and the Immigration Service is under the Department of Justice. So when he looked at my card and saw the Department of Justice, perhaps it was a little bonding there. He said, "How would you like to work in this type of work?"

I said, "Fine."

EE:Somebody was looking out for you.

RG:Yes. That was a happenstance, okay? So then I finished boot camp and went to classic basic school there on Parris Island. Early on, during these training periods, the trainings, they said, "Now, tell us what type of activity you would like to do after school." Now, there's no point in putting in--you can put in for aviation, if you want, but there's no point in it, because they're just not calling for classification people. So you pick like three choices, first, second, and third.

When we were almost finished, actually, they found out that up at Cherry Point, they didn't think they were part of the Marine Corps. So they hadn't bothered in eastern Marine Corps aviation to be concerned with whether they had people who were trained to handle personnel. They had a lot of strikers, navy systems. They put somebody on [unclear]. So headquarters and Marine Corps found out about it. I'm going to say there were twenty of us in our class, and the headquarters and Marine Corps sent twenty-five people to Cherry Point, took three out of the so-called permanent personnel, or five or whatever, in our whole class and sent us to Cherry Point.

So we all got here. We weren't happily to see, because we upset them. I mean, the fact that we were sent here upset things. At one point, my buddy and I went in to talk to the first sergeant. We were supposed to be studying airplane identification. I was having a real problem with this. We were studying on our own, but I was having a real problem with it. So I went in and said to the first sergeant, "If I might be around here another month or so, so I can work a little harder on this, I'd appreciate it," because they were making assignments. My buddy went with me, because I asked him to.

So the next day, he assigned us both to a squadron--what did they call the skeleton?

KG:Cadre.

RG:Cadre. It was to make up a squadron to go to one of the other satellite bases.

EE:This is a way for you to get extra time?

RG:I said, "You got to get me out of there." I mean, they weren't happy to have us there. If there was any way they could just pick on you, they did, or the first sergeant did. Anyway, he sent us to this cadre at this point. They had some kind of a CO, and I don't know if they had anybody else besides him or not, but two or three of us, maybe.

So then in less than a week, the call came to send two people to Edenton, and 01:15:00because that was supposed to be a long-term thing and Marines want to get out and get in the action and everything, as punishment they sent us up there.

EE:So fifty-five years later, you're dealing with the consequences of punishment?

RG:But all of these things had to come together for us to meet.

EE:If you had so much control, if you could have picked it yourself, you would have never run into each other.

RG:No, No.

KG:No.

EE:If you're a good Methodist, you believe in providence and say, "Thank you."

RG:Absolutely.

EE:Well, I appreciate your sharing that. The wonderful things about stories like y'all's is it reminds people when they want to pick up a history book and think the world happens because--well, there's a whole bunch of decisions that go into everybody's lives. So much of it, in retrospect, you just wonder how we all got together with each other.

KG:Yes.

EE:Well, you have got a few things that you've got to show. What I was going to tell the transcriber is I think we'll close our formal interview here, but I'll leave this tape running, because sometimes people say things when they're going over documents that are of interest.

KG:Well, I was going through a folder that we have that's called "Memories," and I came across this book on Cherry Point, and it's pictures--one faint picture in there that I thought might be of interest. It's the Women's Reserve mess hall.

EE:One of the first interviews I did was with a woman who set up the libraries at Cherry Point, when they were carving it out of a swamp. She was a civilian employee, but was sent down from D.C. They had to set up one for women and one for men. I think they had the first white Marines down there. They didn't have black women at that time, but they had white Marines.

RG:The only blacks that I saw were mess hall people.

EE:Here is "to Women Reserves mess hall." Is this something that I could borrow--well, here's "Lady Marines on the march" right next to it.

KG:Yes.

EE:Is this a book that I could borrow and have them shoot and then get back to you, like we did before?

KG:You can have it.

EE:Oh. Well, that would be great. Thank you.

KG:Yes.

EE:Are there pictures in here of those two kinds of planes? I see there is an F-6S.

KG:See, they had different types of planes at Cherry Point.

EE:Here it is, SNB.

KG:Oh, yes. There is an SNB in there.

KG:Now, was that a submarine hunter? What kind of plane was that? What was the purpose of that?

RG:An SNB, it seems to me--

EE:It looks like the kind that Piedmont Airlines used to fly out of Winston-Salem, DC--

RG:They were small. Didn't that have pontoons?

EE:The profile on it. There's the SNB right there.

RG:That was a fighter type, faster plane. The PBJ was the P-25. It was a bomber, and they armed it, rather heavily, with a machine gun, too.

KG:What was the one that you went out?

RG:That was a PBJ.

KG:Ros had a chance to go out on a--what do you call it?

RG:Practice run.

KG:Practice run, you know where they trail the--it's quite a treat, when you're not used to doing that, to be flying upside down some of the time.

EE:Well, now, here's the Women Reserves recreation building. Of course, it wasn't too far from Lejeune where the SPARs were practicing. They were towing planes off of Wilmington, I guess. There were some practice planes where the SPARs were towing target planes, where they'd take target practice. They had one of the few casualties out there, where some woman was trapped when her plane was hit accidentally. This will be great. I know they'll love having this.

KG:I don't know in my file if you--I have more than one of these about our wedding, and it's to put aside a uniform.

EE:Oh, yes. That's great. "Is Made Known," now you weren't trying to keep it a secret; it's just that word finally got back home? Is that what the deal is?

KG:That was interesting. If there was a plane going in the direction you were going on leave and they had space, you could take a ride on the plane. So we were going home to be married. We just asked for a ride. When we got over Norfolk, we spent about two hours looking through radar.

RG:It was a radar training flight.

KG:It was a radar training flight.

EE:You had to basically wait until they did their work before you could move along?

KG:Yes, yes. Then they were going on to Philadelphia. Willow--

RG:Willow Run.

EE:It amazes me, the stories of how people get from one place to another. So everybody's on their own, but everybody in the service will give you a lift to wherever they're going.

RG:It's really great. Now, here's a word that I never knew until I got to be a married man myself. As a guy, you don't run into the word "nosegay" too often.

KG:No.

EE:But I did learn that.

KG:Well, that's about all I found, besides what I've given you.

EE:I was going to give you the booklet that we've made, and we used one of those pictures that you had sent along. This was a talk that I gave on the first number of interviews, but I was going to show you that--there it is right there. Now, are you in that picture?

KG:Yes.

EE:Which one are you?

RG:You don't have a corsage on that one.

KG:No, I don't have a corsage. I was in the last row, because I was one of the shortest.

EE:I'm not sure if I can see you in that picture, but you're in that picture?

KG:Yes. This is Mary Albro. See, this is the first sergeant school.

EE:Okay. That helps me. I'll go back and tell them that. So that was taken at Philadelphia at the navy yard.

KG:Yes, that was taken in Philadelphia. This woman was on the staff there. She was a Marine officer. Oh, I'm so glad you brought that over.

EE:Well, I had fun pulling those together, because there are some good folks in there. So that's yours to hold on to. Let me go over this and make sure I got the spelling right. I'm going to stop our tape right here, then.

[End of Interview]