In all the many references to the greatest generation, it is almost always only the men who are mentioned. Those men could not have accomplished what they did without an awful lot of support and assistance.

Those providing that support often were the wives, mothers, daughters and sisters, who were just as much a part of that greatest generation. Their story is all too often untold and unrecognized. It is a story that needs to be remembered and celebrated.

Marietta McCarter is an example of those untold stories. During World War II she worked in the Red Cross office at Columbus Army Air Field. One of her duties was to inspect the Prisoner of War camp at Aliceville, Alabama. It was a camp that held many members of Rommel’s “Afrika Korps” who had been transported there after their capture in North Africa. That was something that until not long before she passed away, I had never heard her mention. I had seen an old photo of her at her desk at Columbus Army Air Field and asked her about it. It was then that she first told me about going to the POW camp to make inspections.

My mother, Ida Billups Ward, worked at the Columbus Army Air Field Hospital during WWII. She also seldom mentioned her experiences there. I remember being surprised when I learned that she not only flew in the Civil Air Patrol but was the “first girl to solo” in the Columbus unit.

I never heard Sue Hardy speak of her experiences, either. At the beginning of the war, she went to Los Angeles where she was a riveter in an airplane plant, helping build B-25 bombers. She then went to work with the Red Cross and was assigned to a position in England.

Marcella Billups Osten joined the Navy serving as a WAVE, and I never heard her mention that. As I started looking for other area women involved in the war effort, I hit a brick wall. There has been some material published on the ordinance plant at Prairie and the people who worked there, but little other information on the contributions of area women was to be found. It seems as though I would only hear snippets of their stories after they had passed away.

The role of women during World War II first made a real impression on me 28 years ago when my father, who became a POW after his B-17 was shot down over Germany, came across a Clarion Ledger article about Dorothy Stout of Vicksburg. He told me that when he was liberated in April 1945, he was told to hurry across a river bridge as some fighting was still going on. After crossing to the other side and hurrying up the riverbank he encountered Stout, a Red Cross worker, dispensing coffee and cigarettes to combat soldiers and newly freed POWs on the German road. It turned out Dorothy was from Vicksburg, and Mae Puckett of Columbus was her good friend. Dorothy and her two coworkers would travel right behind the front lines in their Red Cross “club-mobile” to serve coffee, doughnuts and cigarettes to combat troops. I remember my father saying how surprised he was to find a girl from home in Germany so near the front and the fighting.

Yes, these ladies and so many more were truly members of the greatest generation.

The role of women in assisting the war effort could not be clearer than at Columbus Army Air Field. There, WACs (Women’s Army Corps) and WASPs (Women’s Air Force Service Pilot) played important roles.

The WASPs served as airplane ferry pilots, flying planes between bases. They would also fly planes to check them out after repairs had been made to ensure they were air worthy. There were eight WASPs assigned to the base at Columbus. On Nov. 13, 1942, the first women pilots landed at the Columbus base ferrying new airplanes. They were Florence Miller and Mary Helen Clark, two of the original members of the WASPs.

At Columbus the work of the eight WASP pilots stationed there was to test fly planes that had been repaired after mechanical problems or had new engines.

During WWII there were about 1,000 WASP pilots, and 34 died in plane crashes. They were considered civilian employees and not military, even though they flew military aircraft in potentially dangerous situations. I have found no record of a fatal crash by a Columbus WASP.

However, WASP pilot Margie Davis on a flight from Texas to Courtland, Alabama, in October 1944, crashed and died at Walnut. She was flying at night. Her plane developed a problem and she attempted to land at an unlighted airstrip. The townspeople in Walnut heard the low flying aircraft and hurried to the airfield in their cars to light the runway with their headlights. As Margie approached the runway her plane clipped a powerline and flipped over, crashing, and killing her. Because she was considered a civilian employee, the military did not even help with her funeral expenses.

The WACs at Columbus Army Air field were under the command of Lt. Hazel Dale and served in non-combat positions such as airplane mechanic, radio operators and air traffic control.

There is some information in The History of Columbus Air Force Base published in 2008, but there is little other easily accessible information on the important role that women played.

Those stories need to be written down and given to the Billups-Garth Archives at the Columbus Lowndes Public Library so that they are preserved.

Rufus Ward is a Columbus native a local historian. E-mail your questions about local history to Rufus at [email protected].

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