A Lady Steps Up

A Lady Steps Up

World War II veteran recounts her years committed to the U.S. Marines

By Allison Candreva - May 2009
It was the middle of March 1943, and June Whitehurst sat one morning, sick with the German measles, listening to Arthur Godfrey on the radio. He was announcing the Marine Corps opening its doors to women in a campaign called, "Free a marine to fight."

"I thought, 'gee, that's for me,'" Whitehurst said in an interview in her home in High Springs.
She had considered joining one of the branches of the service. She thought the SPARS (the U.S. Coast Guard Women's Reserve) sounded interesting, but she needed to wait until her 20th birthday -- unlike men who, with their parent's permission, enlisted at 17 years old. The women's Marines had started in February 1943, but Whitehurst had not heard anything about it until listening to the radio that morning while she was sick.

A week later, on her birthday with her parents' consent, she went to the recruiting office and signed up. She then spent a little over two years in the Marines, training, going to boot camp and teaching pilots using flight simulators.

The night of her enlistment, Whitehurst was a hostess at the Stage Door Canteen in Washington, D.C. While talking with five Marines, she told them she had joined the Marine Corps that morning. One turned to her and asked if she wanted to go on duty immediately.

"I told him 'sure,'" Whitehurst said. "He said 'OK. You go tomorrow to see captain so-and-so and dress exactly as you are now.'"

She had expected to go home to St. Joseph, Mo. to visit her family, and wait a couple of weeks for the call to go to boot camp at Hunter College in New York. Instead, she took the Marine's advice.

Wearing a black dress with a flared skirt and short sleeves, a pink camellia placed in her hair, Whitehurst went to see the captain on Thursday. On Friday morning, she got a phone call telling her to report Monday in Maj. Streeter's office -- the first director of women reservists.

When she arrived, she was handed a piece of paper saying she was immediately promoted to private first class. She was given a dark-blue armband that said U.S. Marines.

"That was my uniform until I went to boot camp," she said.

Whitehurst spent about seven weeks working in Streeter's office in Washington. She said she had a say in some fairly important things, including whether the women Marines had an acronym, how some of the uniforms should look and selecting the new recruits who went to boot camp.

Then she was demoted to a private to attend boot camp for about a month. Whitehurst said she wore civilian clothes, and mainly attended lectures, exercised and marched.

"We were there over Memorial Day," she said. "We did have our winter [wool] uniforms by that time, so we marched in the parade down Broadway during the end of May."

When boot camp was over, the women were asked what they wanted to do in the Marines. Whitehurst was told she had a very high score on her proficiency test. She could do anything except work in the control tower because of her poor depth perception. She said officials wanted her to go to Officer Candidate School, but she decided to go to Link Trainer School and become an instructor, teaching pilots and aerial gunners on simulated trainers.

The school was outside of Atlanta at Harris Field Navy Base, and Whitehurst was one of 11, out of about 300 women, chosen to go.

"The one thing I remember was the food," she said. "The food was so good there."

Every Saturday morning, they had baked beans for breakfast, which was a Navy tradition. She said they also had Danish pastries and fresh fruits.

She was there all of July and most of August, and when she graduated, she was sent to a Marine Air Base in Cherry Point, N.C. About six weeks later, the women were asked to volunteer to go to Atlantic Field in North Carolina, a base on the coast near a tiny town called Atlantic and the offshore Coast Guard island -- Ocracoke Island. Whitehurst said Atlantic Field was "complete boondocks," where nothing much grew because they were undeveloped.

"Certainly, the worst place in the world," she said, "but we loved it."

Whitehurst went along with her best friend, Mary Henry, and three other women. When they arrived, there were two squadrons of dive bombers training, and one of the men happened to be the Marine she 'freed to fight' when she enlisted.

Whitehurst said so many women enlisted that enough men were freed to form a new division. The women were able to help with many jobs, such as working in offices and control towers, as truck and airplane mechanics, as cooks and many other things.

While waiting in the "chow line" to the mess hall in 1944, she met Dale Whitehurst -- an aerial gunner in the Marines. After knowing each other for two weeks, he started asking her to marry him.

"I kept saying no because I didn't want to get married," she said. "I just loved being in the Marine Corps."

After eight weeks from the time she met him, they were married.

Immediately after, they started their family and she became pregnant. At that time, pregnant women were not allowed to be in the Marine Corps, so she was discharged on April 5, 1945.

Until her husband's death, the couple were together for 56 years, and had seven children -- four boys and three girls.

Whitehurst said she would absolutely do it all over again. She said she does not think enlisting really changed her life but feels it was an important thing to do and is so proud of having been a Marine. §

Allison Candreva is a student in UF's College of Journalism. She may be contacted at: allison.cand@yahoo.com.

Ellie

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