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Submitted by: Joan Weil Mills

A door slammed open and someone yelled, 'Pearl Harbor was bombed!' We were freshmen at the Woman's College of The University of North Carolina in Greensboro. It was a lazy Sunday. Some were listening to a music program on the radio and others were trying to learn to jitterbug to Chattanooga Choo Choo in another room. Where was Pearl Harbor?? No one knew! I had been enjoying campus life which included classes and fraternity party invites through a distant cousin who was also a student at Chapel Hill.

College life changed. Greensboro became the home of a basic training camp and the town was flooded with servicemen. An active USO developed. We went and made milkshakes for the servicemen. The dorms ran dances on Saturdays and everyone was supposed to participate in order to make the invited servicemen comfortable. A friend and I went to her hometown of Aberdeen, North Carolina to watch the paratroopers practice jumping out of planes.

Our lives would be forever changed. There were to be no lights used at night as well as no unnecessary driving. My mother joined the Motor Corps. She wore a uniform and drove ambulances. One of the responsibilities of the Motor Corps was to meet the service planes and carry wounded servicemen to the hospitals. Because we were under blackout rules she drove the ambulance with the lights off. She also replaced local ambulance drivers since they were overseas fighting in the war. She would pray that if she had to carry a pregnant woman, the woman wouldn't give birth before they got to the hospital. Coupons had to be used to buy certain foods and clothes. Gas for cars was very difficult to get. My dad got me a summer job in the art department of Grumman Aircraft. They were famous for their Navy Hellcat, Wildcat and TBF of which I worked on. I was given a lift from my home in Hewlett, New York to and from Farmingdale, New York each day by several women who worked in the factory ---'Rosie the Riveters'. I and another girl put decals on small parts of planes. We loved planes, test pilots and had ideas of joining the WAAF. Instead, I went back to school in the Fall to continue my studies there, majoring in art.

Sadly, one of mother's friend's son-in-law was missing in action and two boys from my very small high school graduating class of June 1941 were killed. I soon learned that the reason I had not heard from my distant cousin, who had attended UNC and had included me in all of those wonderful fraternity parties had been killed in Europe by a sniper.

In the summer of 1943, my sophomore year at college, five of my friends from school got together in New York City. One girl's father got us the impossible - matinee tickets to Oklahoma. It was the fantastic new musical which everyone wanted to see. We will never forget that day! For a short moment our spirits were lifted from the depressing war atmosphere.

I graduated from college in June of 1945. Our class became known as the WW11 class. The war ended in August of 1945 and I spent that day with my navy brother and his army friend at the beach celebrating.

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