ROANOKE TIMES
Copyright (c) 1996, Roanoke Times
DATE: Sunday, September 8, 1996 TAG: 9609090063
SECTION: NATIONAL/INTERNATIONAL PAGE: A10 EDITION: METRO
DATELINE: BOSTON
SOURCE: ASSOCIATED PRESS
Fifty-odd years later, they still call themselves girls. In World War II, they were the Navy's girls - temporary yeomen, hospital assistants, radio operators.
Some served just a few months, some several years. But the time they spent as WAVES - Women Accepted for Volunteer Emergency Service - were some of the proudest moments of their lives.
``If I had to do it over again, I would,'' said 72-year-old May Reese, of Vergennes, Vt., one of about 900 WAVES who gathered for their biennial convention in Boston over the weekend.
The WAVES date back to the summer of 1942, when the Navy first began accepting women. A few months before that, the Army gave women temporary military status. The Coast Guard and the Marines soon followed.
About 350,000 women volunteered during World War II - about 85,000 in the Navy. Each woman who enlisted did support work, freeing up a man to fight.
Although 11,000 American women served during World War I - almost all of them as nurses - it wasn't until World War II that women took a permanent place in the armed forces.
Myrian Czarnecki of Salem, Va., Irene Weeks of East Falmouth, Mass., and Alice Sawicki of Bristol, Conn., lived, worked and played together as WAVES at a Navy health center in Boston during the war.
The three have remained friends ever since.
Weeks, now 74, enlisted after she delivered some X-rays to a Navy recruiting station in her hometown of Minneapolis. The sailors there told her about the new female volunteer group. She'd never heard of the WAVES. But her father was in Navy construction, so it seemed like a good idea.
The next thing she knew, she was off to ``boot camp'' at Hunter College in New York City. Later, she was sent to Northampton for more training, then on to Boston.
Working as a secretary for the Navy gave Sawicki a sense of purpose.
``You really thought you were doing something,'' she said.
Many, including Sawicki and Weeks, ended up marrying sailors. Some had to be discharged from service early because they got pregnant.
Things sure have changed since then, the WAVES noted. Women can now serve on ships and even command men. And they aren't kicked out if they get pregnant.
Over the last few years, the Navy has also endured its share of scandals - including the 1991 Tailhook convention, where dozens of women said they were sexually assaulted.
But, scandals or no, the Navy remains special for the WAVES.
``We still hold the Navy dear,'' Czarnecki said.
When the war ended in 1945, most of the women returned to civilian life. Problem was, they were different from the other ``girls'' who had stayed home, found husbands and had babies.
``It was hard to fit back into life again,'' Weeks said. ``You didn't have anything in common with them, and you didn't know what to talk about.''
LENGTH: Medium: 63 lines ILLUSTRATION: PHOTO: AP Alice Sawicki (from left) of Bristol, Conn.; Ireneby CNBWeeks of East Falmouth, Mass.; and Myrian Czarnecki of Salem, Va.,
gathered Saturday in Boston to recall their WWII service.