Working to Rebuild Post-War Europe

Curiosity and empathy for a soldier led Armeda Jenness to join the Women's Army Corps during World War II.

"My brother was in the Army and had to take care of tuberculosis patients. He was in for nine months and then got a Section VIII discharge. He spent the rest of his life in institutions. I wanted to know what it had been like for him," she says.

Armeda, then known as Armeda Hudson, was the oldest of five children raised by a farm couple in Shelby County, Illinois. She informed her parents she was heading to Chicago to join the war effort. It was December 1944.

"My dad was real proud. My mother didn't say a word." Armeda, who didn't have the opportunity to attend high school, reported to Ft. Des Moines on January 9, 1945. She took a clerical course, completed payroll reports and was soon sent to Ft. Hamilton, New York, where she spent three months sorting mail. She was there when the war in Europe ended.

A former switchboard operator, she was sent to Vienna, Austria, as the Allies rebuilt Europe. She was one of 11 women who trained German women how to operate a switchboard.

"We lived in a building that had been a Jewish orphanage," says Armeda, then 21. "You can about imagine where the children who had lived there ended up going during the war. We were sure they all ended up in concentration camps."

Vienna was divided into five sections; one each for military units from England, Russia, France and the U.S. The fifth was a shared effort among the Allies. U.S. Army officials, she remembers, would not hire German women over the age of 25 who had worked for the Nazis during the war. German women under 25 were given the benefit of the doubt.

"The German women did not like to talk about the war," she says. "They did talk about not having gas or electricity. We learned enough German to pick up that much." While in Austria, Armeda enjoyed a get-away to Switzerland. Her favorite memory involves milk.

"I'd been overseas six months and hadn't had a drop of milk. We got to Switzerland and drank as much milk as we could."

Gen. Mark Clark presented her with a citation for outstanding service at the conclusion of her 12-month tour in August 1946. She and seven other women then boarded a ship with thousands of men and headed home.