>> Diane Kresh: From the Library of Congress, in Washington, DC. >> Brien Williams: I'm Brien Williams. I'm the historian with the Red Cross. My name is Brien Williams. I'm the historian with the Red Cross. And I've been with the organization since 1998. And one of my pleasures in my job is collecting stories from people who have served in the Red Cross through various parts of their career. One thing that I was totally unaware of when I came to the Red Cross was the enormity of the contribution that the organization made during World War II. And I just want to share with you a couple of facts. At the peak of activity in World War II, 7.5 million volunteers, along with 40,000 paid staff, provided Red Cross services at home and abroad to over 16 million military personnel. By the time World War II ended, nearly every family in America contained a member who had either served as a Red Cross volunteer, made contributions of money or blood, or was a recipient of Red Cross services. So, this tells me that we made a tremendous contribution, both at home and overseas. Today, we have three speakers, all of whom served with the Red Cross overseas. And they were members of what was known as the Club Service. And just a little bit of history here. During the war, almost every military unit, wherever they were overseas, had assigned to them an American Red Cross field director or assistant field directors. And the main project of these people was to continue to maintain communication between members of the military and their folks at home, and to provide counsel and other forms of support to the GIs, with them very close to the front or in the camps. Now, starting a little bit after in '43, the American Red Cross was also sending over women who were running clubs, club mobiles, and various other sorts of facilities to provide recreational activities, recreational support, refreshments and things of that sort for our troops. And so, today, we have three people who did that kind of work. We had, at the peak of the war, we had 787 clubs overseas, 289 club mobiles. These were the converted buses and trucks that traveled around distributing refreshments. Now, to my immediate right is Mary O'Driscoll, and she served with the club mobile units in England and then, after D-Day, moved -- >> Check one. Check two. All right. All right. Yay. Here you go. Let's try it again. Take two. And remember to keep the mics close when you're talking. Okay. Thanks. >> Brien Williams: All right. Following that commercial break, we're back, at least for the time being. And I appreciate your patience. I was introducing -- Quickly. Mary O'Driscoll is sitting to my right. And she performed duty as a ranger, and we'll ask her to explain what that was, on the dock of Scotland and with the club mobile units in England, as I said, and on the continent. She also had other interesting experiences that we will get to. Riki Belew, to her right, from Southern California, was working in Red Cross clubs in Northern Africa and moved up Italy as our forces advanced in the later stages of the war. And she opened or participated in many clubs, both in North Africa and on the continent. And to my far right is Helen Thompson Colony. And she served with the club service in what was known as CBI, which was the area of China, Burma, and India. And so, she has quite different experiences from the other two women, who were in the more European end of the theater of war. And also, Helen participated in the war brides, the bringing of war brides to this country, at the end of the war. And we'll want to touch on that, too. But I'm going to ask Mary to tell us a little bit about how she started with the Red Cross and what her work was for the Red Cross. >> Mary O'Driscoll: Thank you, Brien, and hello, everybody. Actually, I've put five different possibilities into a hat and then pulled out one. It was not the Red Cross. But it started to pour, just as it is now, when I was going to apply to be a censor in the Bahamas. And then I saw the Red Cross flag. And I got off the streetcar, went upstairs of the Red Cross. And there, the person told me that instead of being a secretary overseas, she thought I would be perfect for a staff assistant. I didn't know what a staff assistant was, but no one had ever told me I'd be perfect at anything, and so I was just thrilled. Well, when we arrived in London, they gave us a choice of club mobile, recreation, hospital, different programs that the Red Cross had. And my buddy overseas, and her daughter is sitting in the front row, raised her hand at club mobiles, so I did, too. And the very first assignment that I had was up in Scotland, what is now the port of Glasgow. It was called ranger duty. That meant that we ranged around, and wherever we were needed, they would ask us to go there. The first morning that I woke up in Scotland, I looked at the window and saw a beautiful RAY ship. Oh, my golly. I said that must be the Queen Mary. Nobody had told me what ranger duty was or what we were supposed to be doing up there. But they were bringing in the troops, hundreds and hundreds of GIs were being brought into United Kingdom to be shipped over to France. And they came in on tenders, and we gave them coffee and donuts and welcomed them to England. And we gave them our smiles and our hellos and fast talk. And the whole idea of the club mobile -- Thank you. The whole idea of the club mobile was to create the atmosphere of a hometown drugstore over here. And our hometown accents and our smiles were the tools that we used along with the coffee and donuts that we gave out. Well, let's go from the first day where we put the boys on the train. I call them boys because they were younger than we were at the time. I was 24, and my buddy was 23. But the boys were even younger. We put them on the train, and then we waited for another day when the ship was being cleared and ready for new trains coming up from the hospitals in England with the wounded from the front. This was a very traumatic experience. As the boys were brought in on the tenders, they were on stretchers. And we went among them and put donuts on their chests because their hands were all swathed in bandages. Their heads on so on were all in bandages. We lit cigarettes for them and put them in their mouth and stood there and just let them smoke. Nowadays, this would be considered horrible, but at that time, it gave great comfort. And I had an experience then. Would you rather have me wait to tell about that? >> Brien Williams: You can go ahead with that, and then we're going to move on. >> Mary O'Driscoll: What? >> Brien Williams: Just go ahead and tell your story. >> Mary O'Driscoll: All right. This experience rather seared the whole, what should we say, emotional juices that I had because I went over to the railing where a tall soldier was standing, and it was very misty and foggy. So I didn't see what he looked like on, you know, his head. And I said, oh, this is just terrible. And he said, well, he said, we're all going home. And then the sun came out at that moment. And I saw that his face was halfway gone. Well, I burst into tears. And now, I knew what the wounded healer means when they talk about them because he put his arms around me and he said, we are going home. He says, all of us. And they tell us that plastic surgeons are great, and they will fix us all up. And the fact that we are going home makes us very happy because there are so very many who are not. Well, right after that, I was sent to the airfields in East Anglia. Four of us were in a house. And every morning, we would make donuts, hundreds and hundreds of donuts, and coffee and then drive to the nearest aerodrome. Flixton was the nearest. That would be on Monday. And then on Tuesday, we would go to another aerodrome and Wednesday to another and Thursday to another. On the fifth day, we would go to the forest, where they stacked bombs, and talk to the men there. Now, the other girls will tell you about the clubs. But club mobile, the man that was in charge realized that it was too difficult for people to get out to the clubs all the time. Yeah. So we were to go to them. The first club mobile was a 10-ton truck and great big, huge thing. But by the time I got there, which was just after D-Day, it was a converted bus. And the front of the bus opened up, and we served coffee and donuts from the front. The men would stand in line, and we would just hand them the donuts and the coffee. In the back of the bus was a lounge, where they would come in and play the record player and look at the guestbook, to find out if there was anybody in their family a relation or a friend who had signed up. And then they would put their name down and their location so someone could meet them. Now we always, as we came into the field, we would start the record playing going with Glenn Miller's American Patrol. Do you know the American Patrol? It goes dah, dah, dah, dah, dah, dah, dah, dah, dah, dah, dah, dah, dah. And that's what we came into. So the boys would leave their jobs, fixing the airplanes that had been damaged the day before, and come over, and they would still have the dirt from their faces, and their eyes would be the only thing that I could see, you know, through the opening as we gave them the coffee and the donuts. >> Brien Williams: Mary, let's stop there. >> Mary O'Driscoll: Okay, fine. >> Brien Williams: That gives you a good sense of what the club mobile service was like. And I don't mean to interrupt, but we need to get everyone's story. So I'm going to ask Riki now to describe what the club service was like in your part of the world. >> Riki Belew: Well, I was with club service, and that meant sometimes a big club with 12 of us working, sometimes a small club where I might be the only one. When I went over, I decided I wanted to go to South Pacific because I had a marine friend I wanted to see. And Red Cross asked where I wanted to go, and I told them. Of course, they didn't send me that way. They sent me over to North Africa and the Mediterranean. We landed in Naples. And there, they asked what I wanted to do. I said, anything you want to send me to. So I had three clubs in North Africa, first in Algiers. And it was a place called Palm Beach. It was out of Algiers about 15 miles, and it was where soldiers came for a week of R and R. And these were people who had been behind the lines. What we did, we have a wonderful beach. We had writing rooms, and we had donuts and coffee again, and we had cigarettes. We couldn't give out the packs of cigarettes that said American Red Cross because they'd start appearing on the black market. So I'd break them and have [inaudible] bowls and say take all you want. And then we had dances. We brought the French girls in. Of course, we had to bring the mother and the father and the little brother and even the grandparents because they wanted some coffee and donuts too. Later, I was at a place called Oran, and that was a big club. And then finally, I went to Casablanca, and I thought I'm on my way home by now. And that was the Officer's Club, which was entirely different from the other two and [inaudible] club. There, we had a cafeteria or a restaurant. And we were thankful the Navy would allow us to have some of their good food. I had an Arab cook who wondered what to do with some of it, but he did a marvelous job. Twice, though, during one day, I had to have the fire department. So I was glad I'd studied French in high school. From there, I went back up to Italy. I had landed in Naples before Rome was taken. And then I went on up the boot either opening or closing clubs all the way up to the Brenner Pass, a little place called Bressanone in the Dolomites. And I was the only American woman around for miles. Later, they sent me Pallanza, which was on Lago Maggiore. And I get in there after midnight, driving my little jeep that I had commanded. Red Cross didn't have any vehicles. And so, whatever I could borrow from the Army, I did. And this time, it was a jeep with a little quarter-ton trailer. And I had my stove and my typewriter and all those old things and lots of games. Finding a place at midnight, I was surprised. Again, I was the only American woman for miles around. And they said, you came through all that gorilla country. But no one shot at me. I thank the good Lord that I was well protected. Later, I had clubs in -- Well, the one club that was most interesting probably was called the Tent Club. It had been in a tent. But when we moved into Montecatini, we had buildings. Montecatini, Italy was the spa center. And I was able to tell people where I was by saying look into the Razor's Edge by Somerset Maugham. And they did and found out where I was. We had many, many toilets there. And the fellows coming back off the lines were delighted. But the one building, the Kershaw [phonetic], was open every morning with as many 25,000 going through. They would be in lines. They didn't care whether it was a latrine or package wrapping, a movie, a maybe it was going to be a nice spot at the fireplace because we did have a fireplace. And it was cold. Italy's cold. When we went into Rome and it was snowing so that we couldn't see, the windshield wipers wouldn't wipe the snow fast enough. And I thought, when I studied in home, I was told Rome was warm. There are times when it isn't. our clubs had a variety of activities. Sometimes later on, we had trips, especially when the war was over, and there were thousands of GIs, most of them expecting to go to Japan because that war was still going on. And some of them were ramming jeeps against stone walls, rather than go to Japan, ending up in hospitals. But at that time, Red Cross had some trips. We took trips around to different cities in Rome and Florence, seeing the beauty and the architecture. One of the clubs there was called the College Inn. And it was for people who wanted to take courses. I took a course in Florentine art and architecture at 8:00 o'clock before I opened the club at 9:00, ran into an old professor from Wayne State University who was over there teaching. So we had a variety. I don't know if there's anything special that you want to know about the clubs, but I'd be glad -- >> Brien Williams: I think it's time to move on and here Helen a little bit with the story from India. >> Helen Colony: Okay. >> Brien Williams: Yeah, you're on. >> Helen Colony: All right. >> Brien Williams: And hold the microphone right up here. >> Helen Colony: Okay. >> Brien Williams: There you go. >> Helen Colony: I don't want to [inaudible] because I understand these things get really wild out there. Now my job was not donuts and coffee. We did serve donuts [inaudible] the clubs I was in. But actually, I went with the men who really -- And if there's anybody here that knows anything about the [inaudible], and all of us ended up in Bombay. We were assigned in the China Burma India Theater. It was a very large theater, and there were many, many thousands of men there. So there asked us where we wanted to go, did we want to go to clubs in the cities like Bombay, Delhi [inaudible]. I said, no, I want to go where the action is. And believe me, that's where they sent me, right into the jungle area. And there, they were setting up clubs larger than this area because there was nothing else there, and the men couldn't watch movies or anything there while outdoors because the Japs would come over and bomb the heck out of us. And eventually, we not only hid one of those clubs, but in another part of the jungle, they built a second one. And they were strictly GI clubs. And the only officers that came into those clubs were the GIs or our CO, the chief medical officer, and the security officer. And the men run the clubs themselves. We set up a board. We got a couple men from each company. And if somebody was out on duty and could not be on the meeting boards when we were there, then they [inaudible]. But it was bad [inaudible] because we were the only thing they had. And we had guys that [inaudible]. We also helped. There were no army nurses. So when Dr. Bodie [assumed spelling] needed help, he'd send a jeep down to the Red Cross club, and there was only one other girl, Mary Jane Young from Michigan, with me. And we'd go up there. And believe me, most of the young men that were with us had barely gotten out of high school. So we had young and tender. And it was an air force service command base. In other words, what would be called a used garage where repairing all the new planes that came in or repairing anything that needed [inaudible] at that time. Next to us about 20 miles from us was a big bomber base. So we had frequent visitors from the Japs. And someone said to me one time, oh, they wouldn't bomb Red Cross. I said, believe me, they did not look down from that sky and say we can't bomb there because of Red Cross. They bombed whatever they had. And we learned to duck. And we had all the same type [inaudible] they had all over the entire CBI Theater. And it was a very unusual setup. Then one day, Dr. Bodie, who was our chief medical officer, called me and said, I have requests from the Indian Red Cross, and they have men that have been brought in, Gurkha guards and Gurkha fighters that were up in Burma with the British. And he said, we've got [inaudible] die with 40 or more a day. Could you help set up the blood bank? I had worked in a blood bank in Cincinnati, Ohio prior to going overseas. And with the approval of our CO and chief medical officer, they sent cots down to our Red Cross club. And we set up the blood bank in a couple weeks, and we had notified all the men on the base. The men were not allowed give a pint of blood because of the heat and the fact that we were in a war zone but could give a half pint of blood. >> Brien Williams: Helen, you've got to put the microphone closer. >> Helen Colony: Okay. So what we do is we had 200 men come and volunteer, and we get 200 half pints of blood, and the Indian Red Cross went away very happy because that [inaudible]. And then when we, Mary Jane and I, said we'll give our blood, the poor man that was in charge for the [inaudible], he said, no, no, no, not ladies' blood, not ladies' blood. So the doctor had to explain to him that when the blood went in, it didn't matter if it was lady's' blood or men's blood. It did the job of healing. And so, we finally -- And he's standing there with big tears rolling down his face. I'll never forget that poor soul. And when the doctors took Mary Jane's blood and mine, he was weeping all over the place. But we did it. And our jobs were many, many. We went -- >> Brien Williams: Helen, I want you to pause for a moment. No, I don't want to do that now. I want to ask Mary a question here. Mary, you wanted to talk about the POWs. And would you please tell that story? >> Mary O'Driscoll: Well, VE Day, there were many hundreds and hundreds of boy, our boys, our American boys, who had been in German prison camps. And so, they were brought to, first of all, to London to be rehabilitated to get used to a city kind of life. And then they sent us over to Le Havre in France. And there were cigarette camps. What they were called were cigarette camps because one of them was called Old Gold; one was Philip Morris. The largest was Lucky Strike, and I was in Lucky Strike and Old Gold. Well, these boys would tell about how wonderful the Red Cross was. If it hadn't been for the packages of the Red Cross, some of them would have starved to death. They said if the war hadn't ended in a couple of months, they really would have. So instead of giving coffee and donuts, we gave them milkshakes. And they would stand with their canteen cups in line getting the milkshakes, go to the end of the line, start all over again, come back. And there were six of these club mobiles that were dispensing the milkshakes. So you can imagine how many men there were. They did it all day long, as a matter of fact, just drinking their milkshakes. Another thing that Red Cross did was that they included logbooks. And the logbooks is what also saved their lives because it was journaling, which we know now is very therapeutic. >> Brien Williams: Riki, I want you to tell how you crossed the Mediterranean. >> Riki Belew: I was slated to go to Italy out of Casablanca. And Red Cross was having trouble getting transportation. But one of my friends said, there's a B-17 going. We'll put you on that. I had the orders to go, so it was all right. And I was in the nose of the B-17 on my way to Italy with a great storm and the rain coming in every direction as I stretched out in the nose. It was fun. >> Brien Williams: You could imagine the experience that these folks had. I mean, just unbelievable and the danger and so on and so forth. I think it is time for you, Helen, to speak about the war brides. Tell us that story. >> Helen Colony: Well, I think by now, you're all pretty well aware that we had a number of young men overseas. And the last count I heard is that we had better than a million war brides come to this country. Now originally, I was told I would be sent to Korea with the first 27,000 troops. But one of the girls that was on the staff before the Queen Mary became ill. And actually, on my way home, I had worked with 200 war brides from New Zealand. And I really felt for them because there were no facilities for them. But when I got on board, I went on board the Queen Mary to replace another girl. And we carried an average of 1800 war brides per trip. And I started in February, and we ended the end of May in 1946. We were told we carried approximately 20,000 war brides and all their wee little ones. And they were like flies all over the ship. And the one thing they found the path to was downstairs where all the cooks were. If the cooks found them, they'd give them cookies. So you bet they came. We also had five very large nurseries on board the Queen Mary, and we had one especially, so for the children that were extremely ill. And on one of our trips in, we had something that Captain Sorrell said that never happened to the Queen Mary. We had two little babies that had pneumonia, and they were very ill. And we were running out of the necessary things that they needed, especially oxygen. So our CO reminded the captain that that ship was under US Army command. And they ordered two planes out of Boston, and they [inaudible] Queen Mary in mid-Atlantic Ocean to bring oxygen to these babies. We were able to save one child, but unfortunately, we lost one. But the Queen Mary was a remarkable ship in handling so many things. On one of our trips, on the way back, what really [inaudible] leave pier 90 in New York, and we'd end up in five days right over in England. And on one of our trips, we had Churchill and his lady, and they had their daughter, and they were amazed to see the wonderful nursery things we had for these children. And it was from the chapters all over the entire United States. We had wonderful layettes and beautiful [inaudible] because many of them did not have very much stuff. And what was great about the whole thing is they were not only cared for very well on board the Queen Mary, but when they arrived in New York, it was the Red Cross people in New York that took over. And the girls that were not met by their families or their husbands, they were put on trains, also with Red Cross personnel watching out for them because they went all the way to every state in the union. And they were notified. The Red Cross would notify the people in the cities where these young ladies were arriving with their children to make darn sure their families all knew that they were coming in, and they were met by Red Cross. I got to say that we had a reunion in 1980 something on board the Queen Mary. And many of those people came and said, do you know, we never said thank you when you brought us over here. But believe me, we were bringing our grandchildren in to let them know that we were with them every inch of the way. >> Brien Williams: That's a wonderful story. Thank you. Yeah, it's terrific. Any questions? Would you like to ask these ladies anything about the work that they did World War II? Yes. [ Inaudible Audience Comment ] Yes. The question was, this gentleman arrived in June, '43, '44, in Greenock, Scotland, Greenock, Scotland on the -- Do you recognize each other? >> Mary O'Driscoll: Thank you. >> Brien Williams: Anything else? Yeah, okay. Yeah? [ Inaudible Audience Comment ] Were there many casualties among the Red Cross workers? Yes, indeed; 34 men lost their lives and 52 women lost their lives in war-related activities. Yeah. So it was a dangerous situation at times. >> Mary O'Driscoll: Actually, there is a Red Cross girl buried in Normandy. I think it's the only Red Cross girl, maybe the only woman. And it was Liz Richardson, and she was a friend of your mother's, very good friend. Pat Nixon, when she went over there, laid some roses on her grave. >> Brien Williams: You wanted to talk about Liz? >> Mary O'Driscoll: Hello. Can anybody hear? I have here some handouts. And it's a poem that tells about the Red Cross more succinctly than we do. You know how poets are. They can get an awful lot in one little sentence. And so, I would like to give them to you. I will walk among you later and give them to you. >> Diane Kresh: This has been a presentation of the Library of Congress. Visit us at loc.gov.