AT LAST IT CAN BE TOLD

I am going to blog a serial of my experience in the Signal corps in World War 11. There will be 20 episodes. This is the first.

AT LAST IT CAN BE TOLD

Sixty years have come and gone and the secret I have kept all of these long years can now be revealed for all to read. It is neither a sordid tale nor one of which I am ashamed. Rather, I take pride in the telling, and would like my descendants to know at long last the part I took in winning World War 11, the war we hoped would make the world safe for Democracy.
I was sworn to keep for life the secret I now reveal. But recently I found the whole story on Google, with a picture of the headquarters building and a comprehensive write-up. So apparently the rules have changed and I can tell my own tale at last.
It all started when I was living in Milwaukee and working in a defense plant. Although the work was interesting and I felt that I was making a contribution, I had been there for two years and was restless and ready for a change. Then one day a poster caught my eye. It was Uncle Sam, pointing his bony finger at me and saying “Uncle Sam wants YOU!” Did he indeed? The very next day the bus I was riding passed a recruitment office, and I took it as a sign from above and hopped off the bus and went in.
Without hesitation, I offered myself up body and soul. Even though my mother had warned me about the disgrace I would endure if I enlisted, I felt no qualms. My mother, being of a Victorian mindset, thought all women in uniform were only a small step above street walkers and kept women. She held to this notion for the rest of her life. The fact that I wouldn’t tell her what I had done while in the service only reinforced her conviction.