Enlisting in the Army

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“Well — I heard a lot of talk about it and I saw a lot of it in the movies, and I was too dissatisfied with my job in the defense plants — it was a dirty job and we had several bosses that I didn’t care for at all — to me they didn’t know any more than I did.”

“This was the oldest daughter of the people I boarded with. Laverna Cline. We went to the same recruiting station but I boarded with her family in Baltimore.”

“You just filled out papers. You put down when you were born, where you live, and your family, and what you had done. You know, working and just about your whole life history.”

“[Laverna’s parents] didn’t want us to go into the army. And her daddy had been in the army and but her mother tried to tell him that the women’s army wasn’t like the men’s but he didn’t want to believe it. But their oldest daughter and I enlisted at the same time. And we weren’t kept together though — she stayed in the States and I went overseas.”

“The things they did were more or less on their own. It showed the things that they had done and the way they’d dress and everything, so it appealed to me and I thought if they can do it I can too.”

Editor's Note: Inspired by movies about the Women's Army Auxiliary Corps, Faye Edwards enlisted for the WAACs with Laverna Cline in 1944 at a Baltimore recruiting station.