Girl in a Pink Skirt
by
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It was that bit of female chauvinism I possessed that had me striding confidently down the broad expanse of Pennsylvania Avenue on that hot morning early in June of 1942, my new white sandals beating a perky little tappity-tappity tap as I strode. It was a beast of a day even for Washington whose legendary summer heat and humidity have bestowed on her all manner of unsavory titles from Swamp City to Sweat Capitol of the World. No imagination whatsoever is required to envision the site as it once was...a vast and miasmatic swamp reaching in every direction. For the air that hangs heavily above the city in summer is still that of a swamp. This day was no different. Out in the traffic lanes a modicum of cars and buses were snail-pacing it. Moist pedestrians oozed along the avenue despite a generous green canopy of well-established shade trees. Here and there energetic little groups of servicemen darted in and out among the pedestrians. With the exception of them and the incessant clanging and gonging of a nearby street car, it was as quiet and slow as Dullsville itself. There was little hint of the hustle-bustle that was rapidly transforming this once sleepy southern town into a significant world capital. I was annoyed as anyone by he heat in this muggy metropolis. Perhaps more so, having just come down the day before from the blissful cool of the Virginia mountains. But I had come with a purpose. I wasn’t about to be undone by something as ordinary as the weather and go plodding rumpled and sweat-sodden along an avenue fine enough to house the President of the United States. My stylishly thin and flimsy sandals, however, were no match for the insidious sidewalk heat and dust osmosing straight up through the soles to my defenseless bare feet. So it was that I found myself both actually and figuratively hot-footing it the remaining distance of my avowed errand. There was still a wee chance that the heat combined with my rashness of purpose, so labeled by disapproving friends and relatives, might even yet cause me to change my mind. To chicken-out and the whole thing become but an ignis-fatuus, an attractive deception, so to speak, to a gullible young women. You see, I was on my way to join the Army. My intention was to enlist in the newly formed Women’s Army Auxiliary Corps. More than a year was to pass before the fledgling organization would become the Women’s Army Corps, no longer just an auxiliary. With the new status, the women would become subject to the same stringent military regulations and disciplinary procedures as the men in the Army of the United States. I think I should tell you right off that this decision of mine to become a Wac did not meet with the approval of family and well-meaning friends. Like many others they had little use for this untried but already much-maligned corps of women. Who ever heard of American women becoming a part of the Army? Fashioning weapons in a defense factory was acceptable. Even serving as nurses with the Army or Navy. But soldiers? Never! To them we were nothing more that a bunch of wacky malcontents, female chauvinists, if the term had been in use at the time, and chauvinists we rightly were. In the original and purest meaning of the word...excessively and vaingloriously patriotic...just as was Napoleon’s devoted soldier from whose name the word derived. So you see, the women of the military services were the first true women’s libbers. Not you, Gloria, Bella and Betty! In no time at all I was standing in front of the recruiting station. By the doorway of a glass-fronted but otherwise unpretentious business-type building sagged a very large, very wilted American flag. Damp and listless as a well-used dishrag it hung, victim of the same enervating heat and humidity that befell the rest of the city. The flag was the only clue that somewhere beyond the modest portal might be found either a government agency or military facility. That and a very small sign in black and white lettering that read simply "WAAC Recruits, 1st Floor."
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About the Book
Girl in a Pink Skirt
Little known details of life on the home front, as well as in the military service, are exquisitely told, including the hilarious adventures of a young woman in the fledgling Women’s Army Corps.
The thread of a love story runs throughout the book giving it the feel of a novel rather than that of a true-life experience. The pages ring with charm and simplicity and with the author’s own special brand of self-effacing humor.
Girl in a Pink Skirt is bound to be among the last of the firsthand accounts of one of the most momentous eras in all of human history.
About the Author
Gerry Loving lives in Fairfax, Virginia in the attractive home she and her late husband built almost entirely with their own hands. She is very active in church and community affairs and has a host of hobbies and interests, among them gardening, painting, writing, traveling, and golf. She has two children, nine grandchildren and two great grandsons recently adopted from Kazakhstan. Gerry is a graduate of Madison University, a former teacher, and was a member of the Women’s Army Corps during World War II.