n World War II, Reed Taught Aerial Gunnery To Hardened Marines

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Luray Woman A Trailblazer Posted 2009-07-03

In World War II, Reed Taught Aerial Gunnery To Hardened Marines

By Jeff Mellott

LURAY - As America prepares to celebrate Independence Day, one Valley woman recalls how, with the nation at war more than 65 years ago, she wanted to do her part.

But Jean Elizabeth Frye Reed, now 86 and living in Luray, didn't become another World War II "Rosie the Riveter," going to work in a factory turning out weapons and the machinery of war.

Instead, the determined woman quit her job as a telephone operator in St. Paul, Minn., and joined the Marine Corps Women's Reserves, where she served as a gunnery instructor for aviators.

Reed's desire to serve her country also led to meeting her husband, the late Milford N. Reed, and to becoming a worldwide traveler as the spouse of a member of the U.S. Foreign Service.

Family Tradition

Reed's enlistment, for a time, broke with the family teaching tradition.

"They were all teachers," she said.

Reed, 21 years old at the time, was moved by the recruiting call for women to "Free a Marine to Fight," and enlisted on Feb. 1, 1943.

Wartime was changing the traditional roles for women, who were taking jobs ordinarily filled by men. Women who joined the military served in support of men thus freed for combat duty.

But women in the military still had to endure training, which for Reed meant a trip to Camp Lejeune, N.C.

According to retired Col. Mary V. Stremlow, USMC Reserve, who has written of the women who served in the Marines during World War II, the women recruits were greeted by shouting noncommissioned officers.

They also encountered harassment, Stremlow writes in the online version of her history, called, "Free a Marine to Fight: Women Marines in World War II."

"Their patriotism and idealism was sorely tested, and some readily admit they cried when they realized what they had done. Others wondered why they had done it all," Stremlow writes.

Combat Veteran

After her aptitude testing, the Marines assigned Reed as a gunnery instructor on a flight simulator at Cherry Point, N.C.

"I never fired a gun in my life," she said.

By April 1944, she had been promoted to corporal. That's when she began instructing Milford Reed, a sergeant and a combat dive-bomber pilot.

The flier had joined the Marines on Dec. 8, 1941, the day after the Japanese attacked Pearl Harbor and the day the United States declared war on Japan.

In the first major U.S. land offensive in the Pacific, Milford Reed was seriously wounded and temporarily blinded during the Guadalcanal Campaign fought from August 1942 to February 1943.

After recovering his sight, he arrived at Cherry Point for flight instruction.

The story of what happened next is a favorite one in the family, said Jean Reed's daughter, Nancy Bauserman, 58, of Luray.

"Here is a man who was a combat veteran. He had flown off an aircraft carrier, and then he had to take a course run by a woman," Bauserman said.

But the pilots did not intimidate Jean.

"They thought they were pretty good," she said. "I got along fine with them."

The first lesson Jean gave Milford in the simulator did not go to the combat veteran's satisfaction, Bauserman said.

Undaunted, the flier prepared himself for the next round. He asked other instructors how the simulator worked.

Milford then showed off what he knew, Bauserman said.

"He flew her all over the map because he knew how she was controlling [the simulator]," she said.

Even after that, the Marine remained persistent.

"He kept coming back until he got it right," Jean Reed said.

But Bauserman said he might have had other reasons for returning so often. "I think he wanted to see you, too," she told her mother.

Life After The Marines

Romance blossomed and the instructor and student married in August 1944, four months after they had met. Later, Jean resigned from the Marines when she was expecting their first child.

After the war, they both attended the University of Minnesota. She received a teaching degree and he received a degree in agricultural economics. They both went into teaching.

In 1955, he joined the State Department as a foreign service officer.

They began traveling around the world and Jean taught children in American embassies.

"We lived in so many different places," she said.

Arriving Home

They came home to Luray in the mid-1970s.

Even before he met his future wife, Milford had taken a bus trip while visiting Washington, D.C., during the war.

He bought a ticket to the end of the line, which was Luray. He never forgot the place and later bought a farm there for his wife and their three children.

Looking back, Bauserman said she sees more clearly how her mother had been a role model for her and other women.

"Now that I am married and have children of my own, I realize how terrific my mother is and all the things she did," Bauserman said.

She recalled how her mother had the stamina to travel on horseback in the Afghan mountains with a baby on a foreign service trip.

"That is why she had no trouble speaking to Marine pilots," Bauserman said.

Contact Jeff Mellott at 574-6290 or jmellott@dnronline.com

Ellie