Zelda Anderson

Zelda Anderson (1921-) was one of the first black women to enter the military service in the Women's Army Auxiliary Corps (later renamed the Women's Army Corps, or WAC). Following her experience with the army, she went to graduate school and received her M.Ed. and her Ed.D. and worked in education. Anderson was interviewed by Victoria Ford in 1995.

     I reported for duty in January 1942. Until then everything had been done over the phone and in writing, and it was only when I reported at the recruiting office in Baltimore that they saw that I was black. Because we had a segregated army back then they sent me home until March, when they had enough black recruits to make up an all-black unit.
     They put me in charge of fifteen black WAACs [Women's Auxiliary Army Corps, later the Women's Army Corps] from Baltimore, and sent us to Fort Des Moines, Iowa. This was so exciting to me. We had black officers, and our basic training was the same as for men. They would simply tell us, "You wanted to be in a man's army, so now you've got to do what the men do." We learned military courtesy, history, how to shoot an M-1, go on bivouac, bathe in a teacup of water, eat hardtack rations .
     Every evening troops of male soldiers would march by our barracks enroute to the mess hall. I told the commanding officer that we would like to have some shades at the windows, "Oh, no. You wanted to be in the man's army. Fine you have to do what the men do."
     I told all the girls, "Listen, they won't give us any shades. So I want you to get right in front of the windows buck naked." The next day we had shades at all the windows. [laughter]
     They pulled me out of basic training the third week and sent me to officer training in Des Moines. All of the instructors were white, but white and black officers were being trained in the same facility, in the same classes, and we slept in the same barracks. After OCS [Officer's Candidate School] I was assigned to a laundry unit.
     A black enlisted WAAC could either be in the laundry unit or she could be in the hospital unit. In the laundry unit, if she had a college degree she could work at the front counter, giving the laundry out and taking the laundry in. If she had less than that, then she did the laundry—very demeaning. And in the hospital unit they let her wash walls, empty basins, wash windows—all that menial work.
     In the laundry unit we were constantly asking for promotions for our girls. The white troops were steadily being promoted, but they would tell us that all of the promotions were frozen. We learned that you can skip all that chain of command and go to the inspector general and action will be taken. Three of us officers asked the girls to cooperate with us. We took off our officer uniforms and went to work right beside them for two weeks. We told the girls, "If you have a backache, if you have a headache, if you have any kind of ache, go on sick call, because we want this to be part of our report." We had so many girls going on sick call!
     We sent our report to the inspector general, and, as a result, they rewrote the rules about what women could do in the service: They could no longer lift over a certain number of pounds; they could no longer wash the windows. We couldn't do it by the book, because they weren't going to listen to us. We had to find another route, but we got it done.
     I started applying for every opportunity to take additional training advertised on the bulletin board. Everywhere I went, a president quit. At Purdue University I took a course in personnel administration, and the president quit. At William and Mary College in Virginia, the president quit. I was sent to Washington and Lee University, to become a special service officer—the president quit. Schools had to agree that all trainees would stay in the same facilities, and I was the only black each time. It was unthinkable for a black person to walk up and down those "halls of ivy" without a broom in his hand. "Sleep in our beds? Oh, no!"
     I was assigned to duty at Fort Breckenridge, Kentucky. The post commander's name was Colonel Throckmorton. In a pronounced southern accent he told me, "You're going over to that colored WAC company, and you're going to be the mess officer."
     I said, "Sir, I have not had any mess training."
      "All you nigras know how to cook."
      I said, "You just met one who does not know how to cook; but if you send me to Fort Eustis, Virginia, for training I will come back and be the best mess officer you have on this post."
     "I ain't sending you to no school, and you're going over there to be a mess officer." When I about-faced, I kept on going. I didn't even salute him.
     In the days of slavery there was always a black slave who would shuffle up to the master and tell him anything that was going on among the blacks, an informant. Usually they had a handkerchief tied around their head for perspiration, so that's where the slang expression "handkerchief head" came from. This woman in our barracks was a handkerchief head. She told Colonel Throckmorton things about me... that I went out without my hat on, trivial things.
     He said, "Now, I sent you over to that colored WAC company to be the mess officer, and I understand you don't even eat in there."
     I said, "Well sir, if I didn't eat in there, where would eat? I can't eat in Mess Number One because that's for white officers."
     He pointed at me, and when he did that I grabbed his finger and said, "As long as you live, don't you ever point your finger in my face. I am an officer and a gentleman by the same act of Congress that commissioned you."
     They finally decided to send some black WACs to Europe, and everybody was calling me from all over the country: "I see your name is on the list to go to Europe. I'll see you at Ft. McClellan." But I never got any orders. Finally I went to Colonel Throckmorton. I said, "All of these people are calling me saying my name is on a list to go overseas, but I have not received any orders."
     Now he tells me the real truth: "We had your name taken off of the list to go overseas, because you wanted to show me that you can be the best mess officer on this post."
     "I told you I would be the best mess officer you have on this post if you sent me to Fort Eustis, and I've been waiting on my orders," I said.
     Instead, he made me the assistant to the post publications officer. But there was no post publication officer! I was the assistant to a nonexistent position to organize books of Army regulations. When the books come out, a train delivers them to a warehouse on the post; they simply dump them in the building. I had twelve WACs, two German prisoners of war (to kill the rats), and a white civilian fellow who the colonel had planted there to really be in charge. The first order I gave this young man, he said, "Uh-uh. Negroes don't talk like that to white folks."
     So I said, "Well, darling, if you can't stand the heat, get out of the kitchen," and he left.
     Our job was to make some order out of all of that chaos. I have a whole scrapbook of letters of commendation on the good job that I did there. We not only made order of the chaos, but I got every one of those girls a promotion to PFC [Private First Class] or corporal. Meanwhile, I'm still a second lieutenant. Oh, it took a new act of congress to get a promotion for me! [laughter]
     Not too long after that, as the war was de-escalating, they closed Camp Breckenridge, and they sent me to Fort Knox. Lo and behold, that's where they had sent Colonel Throckmorton as post commander! When I went up to greet him, he said, "Now, Lieutenant, I think we understand each other, and so that there won't be any friction, I will make you the post special service officer. Your office will be right here in headquarters."
     I groaned, "Oh, no!"
     "This will be your secretary and your driver, and you will be assigned a station wagon.
     My job was to act as a liaison between the big entertainers in the civilian world and the military, to bring them to the post to entertain the troops. Duke Ellington, Stan Kenton, Lena Horne, Earl Hines, Jimmy Lunsford, Cab Calloway, Count Basie—the legends. They put on good shows, and they were good for morale, because it was a release from this day-to-day, humdrum life of the military. I met their planes and found rooms for them, because they couldn't stay on the post or in the white hotels. They would stay at colored hotels or rooming houses or in the homes of private citizens. One of the places was a doctor's wife's home—the doctor had died, and she was living by herself in this three-bedroom house.
     As a result of our relationship, the colonel would come to me for advice. One of the things that he wanted advice on was whether all officers, black and white, should use the same mess hall and theater. I told him that segregation has not allowed white people to know black people. "We know you very intimately, but you don't know how we think, how we react, and so you just try to push your stuff on us, not giving a damn about how we feel about this. And then when we rebel, or you meet somebody like me who decides that you can't do this to me, then you think I'm cantankerous; you think I'm an agitator. I'm just trying to give you an education. All we want to know is that we can use these facilities." I said, "It's degrading to us to have gone through officer training school, and then we have to go to the enlisted men's club or the noncoms' [non-commissioned officers'] club if we want to have a drink with our friends."
     I lived out the rest of my days very happy in the army. If I had succumbed to the treatment that they had given other blacks before and not spoken up for myself, my morale would have been down, and I would have been doing work that I did not like. In this life you've got to speak up for yourself.