Making her way as a WAVE

VETERANS SCRAPBOOK

By: Al Wicklund
   MONROE — When Ann Reiss of Greenbriar at Whittingham served as a Navy WAVE, a member of the Women’s Appointed Volunteer Emergency Service, in World War II, she found excitement, a career and unexpected hostility.
   "I remember those posters encouraging women to enlist in the WAVES and free a man for sea duty. I was a green kid and was happy to do the patriotic thing.
   "My first assignment was at the Patuxent River (Md.) Naval Base where I worked for the commissary officer. He was supposed to pick the man I was to replace from his staff for sea duty. He chickened out and had the men draw straws. The loser was a 30-year-old only child of a widow. He went to serve on a destroyer on the Murmansk run (the North Atlantic convoy route to Russia).
   "I was not popular when he left. The rest of the commissary crew had me write letters and send care packages to the guy. I was only about a year out of Woodmere (N.Y.) High School. I didn’t have to, of course, but, at the time what did I know?
   "So, I wrote and sent packages. I remember he had a problem with seasickness that bouncing around on a destroyer in the North Atlantic didn’t help.
   Ms. Reiss said the hostility was even worse when she went to Hilo in Hawaii.
   "I was part of group of about 40 women. At that time, the war was raging in the Western Pacific at places like Iwo Jima and Okinawa far from the safety and beauty of Hawaii. The men we replaced were not pleased with the prospect of sea duty.
   But, despite these unpleasant episodes, Ms. Reiss enjoyed her time in the Navy.
   "Every day had an element of excitement to it," she said.
   Ms. Reiss enlisted in the Navy in the spring of 1943 and served for more than two years. She trained at Hunter College in the Bronx, N.Y., one of the Navy’s basic training centers, and at the Navy supply school in Milledgeville, Ga., before serving in Maryland and Hawaii,
   "I came home in the late fall of 1945. The war in the Pacific ended in August. We were being released from the service on a point system based on factors such as length of service and time in combat. As noncombatants, we women trailed in the point system.
   "After the war ended, my father wrote me letters — my brother and my male cousins were home already — asking me what was so important about what I was doing that the Navy couldn’t send me home," she said.
   She remembers with a smile an occasion early in her days in Maryland when she and several other WAVES went to Atlantic City to give a fellow WAVE from Kansas a chance to see the ocean.
   "When we went into the hotel dining room for dinner in our uniforms we created quite a stir, People came to our table to talk to us," Ms. Reiss said.
   She said the WAVE from Kansas was thrilled just to sit on a boardwalk bench and stare at the Atlantic Ocean.
   In Maryland, Ms. Reiss’ job entailed ordering supplies for five mess halls. Each mess hall had a galley (kitchen) and bakery.
   In Hawaii, she was responsible for ordering and supplying hand tools.
   "I had another brush with unpopularity in Hawaii. When you ordered wrenches, they came in sets of various sizes. If we needed a single wrench, you got a requisition, went downtown and bought from a civilian hardware store.
   "I started breaking up the sets we got through Navy supply, sent out the wrenches requested and stored the rest for future requests. Naturally, this cut down on the purchases from downtown stores causing irate local merchants to complain to the base commander. He stood firm, however, and I continued to work my system," she said.
   About a year after getting out the service, Ms. Reiss heard of a need for workers at the Navy supply headquarters on Long Island.
   "I went to apply. I figured I was familiar with Navy terminology and how the Navy worked. The personnel officer asked if I could start that day. That’s how desperate they were for help," she said.
   She did start that day and worked as a civilian for the Navy exchange (the Navy version of the Army PX) for 35 years. She did more traveling for the Navy as a civilian than she did in her days in uniform.
   "I traveled a lot to see needs at the Navy exchanges. I did some trouble-shooting, often calming Navy wives who couldn’t get things they needed in places like North Africa or Northern Scotland and on Pacific islands.
   "And, through it all, everything the Navy used was made in the U.S.A.," she said with a touch of pride.
   She worked in her final years with the Navy exchange as the senior buyer for men’s clothing and uniforms.
   Ms. Reiss and her husband, Leo — they will celebrate their 50th anniversary in January — have had their place in Greenbriar for the last 11 years.