Post #65 – Women’s Memoirs, Book Raves – Kendra Bonnett and Matilda Butler
Today’s book review is a look at both a memoir and a Rosie the Riveter, military style. Victoria Selfridge contacted me about a family memoir, When Women First Wore Army Shoes. Her aunt, Ethel A. Starbird served as a member of the Women’s Army Corps during World War II, doing for the army what Rosie the Riveter did for industry. She wrote a marvelously funny memoir about her experiences as a member of the Women’s Army Corps during World War II.
I’ve spent several thoroughly enjoyable evenings reading Starbird’s book. Unfortunately, she passed away in 2005 and didn’t get to see the publication of her memoir. She is buried with other members of her military family in Arlington National Cemetery.
Starbird had a considerable amount of writing experience before deciding to bring together her World War II stories that range from her enlistment in Vermont to her overseas assignment in Hollandia, New Guinea. After leaving the Corps as a commissioned Second Lieutenant, she spent most of her career as a writer and editor of National Geographic Magazine (from 1961 to 1983), “traveling the globe as one of its few female staff writers.”
Let me share some of Starbird’s lighthearted descriptions:
“The last horses in military service were mustered out of the Army in 1940; the first WACs mustered in two years later. Until the Corps could prepare its own members for command functions, a few veteran Cavalry officers and cadre, some still resplendent in boots, campaign hats, and swagger sticks, had been dragooned into training the new fillies.
“First stop on the Basic odyssey: temporary lodging called ‘stable row,’ little changed since its original occupants except the removal of water buckets and feed bins. Here, in our first few days, we would learn the true meaning of togetherness. (Even our blankets read US.)” p. 10
“For the short, stubby WACs, staying in step was no stroll in the park. Straining to keep pace with their long-limbed sisters activated the more generous parts of their anatomy, setting them swinging like metronomes in overdrive. At a distance, it was difficult to tell whether they had broken into double-time or were merely marching to a different drummer.” p. 18
“For, as soon as Griffith left, so too did our office furnishings – through a form of Army procurement best remembered as moonlight requisitioning. The tables vanished first, then the chairs, and finally our only light bulb. Just as I learned to squat on a sunbeam to do my typing, the typewriter disappeared.
This photo shows Starbird with a set of drums given her for her 60th birthday. They were described in the Washington Post obituary in 2005 in this way, “her friends pitched in to buy her a full set of drums–just the thing for someone who marched to no one’s drumbeat but her own.” p. 144
Thanks to Ethel Starbird and other courageous women during World War II, women of later generations had role models of strong women.
