April 9, 1943 had its own flavor; the day I said goodbye to my Chow dog with the shoe button eyes (named Buttons because of it) standing behind the driveway fence at 4111 Three Mile Drive while my mother and my friend's mother and my sister waited in the car. Just a tender moment, somehow, explaining to my dog the story of the day. The next stop was Union Depot in downtown Detroit, a large and handsome building with the terminal that carried trains going East and West in and out of Detroit. The train to Chicago was loading and I was directed to the Pullman Car along with six or seven girls, all WAVES, and so I began the journey from private life to military life.
Just 237 miles, time enough to exchange information about our lives up until now and our excitement about the life we were about to enter into and the promises of writing letters to our lonely families! All so 'Cool.' Chicago to Cedar Falls, Iowa , would be an overnight trip on an authentic Troop Train with a two hour layover in Chicago before boarding so the plan was to have lunch at an Italian restaurant that one of my fellow travelers knew only good things about. The others agreed, but I, with some regret, said goodbye and promised to meet them in time for the train ride to Iowa. I went to The Palmer House, often advertised and written about in many of the New Yorker Magazine issues. And there I spent the afternoon, with one drink in hand, wondering why I had decided to join the WAVES and realizing, finally, that I had signed up and had been sworn in for the Duration of the War. At last, then, I was finally settled and ready to begin my life as a WAVE. Looking at my Elgin watch with the pigskin band that my father had given me for my 20th birthday, I realized that I needed to hurry to get to the Chicago Station for boarding ...it all happened just like that, the troop train was waiting for me and I was given a bunk with another WAVE The bunks were in sets of three, and my bunkmate introduced herself as Barbara Blankenship. Then the train started to move as we began our trip through Illinois and Iowa. arriving in the morning in Cedar Falls. There, for the last leg of the trip, we were helped into two or three open bed trucks where we stood holding on to one another and to the sides of the truck. The Iowa farms were beautiful, with rich, black soil still soft from the spring rain and the smell of the pig farms all around us. I truly loved it all. The Iowa State Teacher's College Campus had been taken over by the Navy - dormitories and classrooms were all Navy. We soon learned that the Schools' kitchen was, while under the supervision of the Navy, run by the personnel of the College, and the menu each day was filled with roast pork and other Iowan delicacies. Room assignment followed; I was assigned a corner room with three other WAVES and that it how it all began during the first week of April, 1943.
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