Interview with Phyllis Schmidt Berglund, Woman Marine in WWII

I stepped out of my car and into the torrential downpour on Saturday afternoon. My great-aunt’s best friend, Phyllis Berglund, was my veteran to interview, and so we met at my great-aunt’s condominium to conduct the brief discussion. My great-aunt Grace, always the hostess, offered us some tea and chatted about the weather until both Phyllis and I were more comfortable about the whole situation.

For as long as I can remember, Grace had been receiving her “Four o’clock call” from Phyllis every afternoon – just to check up and find out about any of the latest Canton gossip. Thus, it was a little awkward to be formally interviewing someone who’s known me since I ran around in diapers. Nonetheless, it was a great opportunity to get to know both Phyllis and Grace better, since I was never really old enough (or interested enough) to ask them questions about life during World War II… up until now. I didn’t really know what to expect from Phyllis, except I knew that she loved to tell stories about “the old days”, and so I anticipated a long afternoon of nostalgia and reminiscences.

For the sake of clarification, I will designate myself as (C), Phyllis is obviously (P), and Grace (since she tended to interject here and there) will be (G).

(C): “What was the branch of service you were in, and why were you in that particular branch?”

(P): “I went in the Marine Core, and we were considered women reserves, and later they changed it to, um, we’re still part of the real Marine Core… but we were in the Service,… the duration plus so many days… I can’t remember, let’s skip this part” (laughing).

(C): “Alright, when exactly were you in the service? Do you remember the dates?”

(P): “Umm, World War II. From October, no, from Jan… uhh… April 1943 ‘till October 1945. I was about 21, although my mother and father had to sign for me. That may have been something just, you know, because we were women.”

(C): “What was your rank?”

(P): “I was discharged a corporal. When we got out of boot camp we were privates, and then you got a promotion and you became a private first class. I ended up as a corporal.”

(C): “What exactly was your job?”

(P): “I ended up working as a bookkeeper for the officers’ club, which was not what I was trained for. I went through Navy storekeeping school, but they didn’t need Navy storekeepers when I was through, so I was out, just sorta killing time, planting grass seed over ammunition dumps so the enemy couldn’t see it, and a man came up and said, “Do any of your girls know any bookkeeping or accounting?” well I had had some of that in school, so we… this girl was going to OCS (that’s officer’s training school), so we replaced her. And she was killed afterward, in projection fire…”

(C): “So, what places did you go, where were you?”

(P): “I went through boot camp at Hunter College, in New York, and then we went down to Millidgeville, Georgia to learn military storekeeping, and we were there, oh, about three months. Then we went by True Carrier, the railroad, we went down to Eatonton, North Carolina.”

(C): “Could you describe a memorable day from your time in the service?”

(P): “Well, at one point I had an opportunity to fly to, I think it was Baltimore, with a friend, and they, uh, my superiors had to “OK” my leave, but I decided that I had planned on going so I was going anyway. My leader, of my group happened to be on the same plane, and, she never said a thing to me. And I was given, not a court marshal, but I was restricted to base for a while, which was not too much of a hardship! But it was not fun, though.”

(G): “That was when I got all those hand-embroidered things! (laughter) I had to remind her of that time, though…”

(P): “Yes, the time I went over the hill…”

(C): “Went over the hill?”

(P): “That’s what it was called, when you went away without official leave… AWOL, A-W-O-L… Away without leave.”