Bernice Trotter had graduated high school and she was working for an insurance company. It was a one-woman office. Several friends of hers had joined the service. She thought she could do that. She wanted to join the Marines. The Marines were the last branch to allow women. When she was old enough, she joined. Her parents knew she wanted to. She had to go to Oklahoma City [Annotator's Note: Oklahoma City, Oklahoma] to enlist. At that time, the Marines only had a quota of five women. She went and passed her physical and her test. She was sworn in and then they sent her back home. That was in June [Annotator's Note: June 1944]. By August she had not heard so she wrote the office. They told her they had met their quota of 16,000 women and she was not needed right now. Their job was to replace a Marine so he could go fight. They lost so many in the Pacific by that time. They told her they would be in touch. She got her birth certificate, but they kept other things. By the time they got another quota, she had to go back and redo everything. She was accepted with four other women. After that, she left on a train and stopped in Saint Louis [Annotator's Note: Saint Louis, Missouri]. Then they went to Camp Lejeune, North Carolina [Annotator's Note: Marine Corps Base Camp Lejeune in Jacksonville, North Carolina] for boot camp. They were not allowed to carry a gun. A lot of it was observation and classroom work. They had to know the history of the Marine Corps. She passed shorthand and typing because she took them in high school. She was working for an insurance company and she did all the payroll and the writing. She was the secretary to the manager. She was the only woman there. They had six weeks of boot camp. They marched everywhere they went. They were not allowed to look at a man. They were segregated. By this time they had Camp Lejeune ready with one barrack. They did not have enough women to fill all the barracks. They had to clean and they used the "white glove" cleaning test [Annotator's Note: a very thorough cleaning]. They had so much fun doing it they got to do the other wing. She was happy because she got to do something for her country. It was educational. It was a good discipline. Once a Marine always a Marine. She did not regret it. She is proud she served.

Bernice Trotter was born in Kansas City, Missouri in 1924. She was in the fourth grade when they moved to Tulsa [Annotator's Note: Tulsa, Oklahoma]. His dad thought he was going to have a job through her uncle. It was during the depression [Annotator's Note: the Great Depression was a global economic depression that lasted from 1929 through 1939 in the United States]. The job did not work out. They lived with her uncle until her father found work. She has lived there all of her life. She has seen Tulsa change a lot over the years. They were the oil capital of the world. She has lived in her house for almost 20 years. Before the war, her father delivered Oleo [Annotator's Note: Oleo is better known as margarine and is used as a butter substitute]. It came in a package and they had to mash it around until it looked like butter. That is what he sold. He also sold magazines. He was a salesman. When the war came, he worked in the shipyard for an electronics company. She has an older brother. He was two and a half years older. After church, they had family luncheon. They were at her cousin's and they had the radio on. An announcement came on that Pearl Harbor [Annotator's Note: the Japanese attack on Pearl Harbor, Hawaii on 7 December 1941] had been bombed. They did not know where Pearl Harbor was. They got out a map and they found it. She was a sophomore in high school. Tulsa had just built a new high school. The Will Rogers High School. It was east of town. There were signs on the campus that said watch out for the cows. A friend of hers joined the Air Force and she had never heard of a woman joining the military before. This piqued her interest. She wanted her to enlist with her. Trotter wanted to join the Marines. You cannot beat the Marine Corps. She could join with her parent's approval at 20 years old, but her parents did not want her to join. It was a stigma if a woman joined. She has met many women veterans through an organization she was in. She served in the States [Annotator's Note: United States]. Her brother did not join until 1944 because he was a machinist with a government job. Everybody was busy. The kids were carrying their wagons around picking up metal. Her mother was saving grease to make bullets. Everyone was saving things because they did not know when they might use them. Her father was saving things he might use in the future. They were doing this because of the war and the depression. When her father passed away he still had some of the things he had saved. When they were growing up, they had rubber soles on their shoes with cement shoe stands. He asked if he could have a pair of soles for his shoes for Christmas because the cardboard did not protect his feet. His parents saved until they could buy him a pair of soles for Christmas. Usually, they got a stocking with fruit and nuts, and maybe one gift.

Bernice Trotter was assigned to Camp Pendleton [Annotator's Note: Marine Corps Base Camp Pendleton in San Diego County, California], the largest Marine Corps base in the country. She was the only one in her group sent there. When she got there, the first thing she had to do was KP [Annotator's Note: kitchen patrol or kitchen police] duty. Then they sent her to be a general court-martial reporter. That was an education that she wished she did not have. It was the top of your military record. There were two other women in her cell. They would not be allowed into court for certain procedures happening in the courtroom. They had a backlog of court cases that were all done by shorthand. Her job was taking shorthand and court reporting. When they say general court-martial, they are at the highest court in Pendleton. The tire rations board was next door. There was a Major who needed someone to be his jeep driver and to help check tire rations to see if the military could have them. He had her transferred to him. He saw her around. He told her she would be his jeep driver. This was 1945, and she did not know how to drive. Her dad had a car because he was a salesman. She had a bicycle. She told him she did not know how to drive and he told her she would learn. Once she got the hang of it, she did well. She had some difficulty being an inspector. She had one man, a movie star, who wanted tires because his wife was in Los Angeles [Annotator's Note: Los Angeles, California] and she was having a baby. She was rationing only to people on the base. At this time she was a PFC [Annotator's Note: Private First Class]. She turned him down for tires. He wanted to speak to her superior officer. The Major came out and spoke to the man. The man said she would not give him tires and the Major asked him if that is what she said and then he told the man enough said. He stuck with her and approved what she had done. This was a boost of confidence. He was always loyal to her. They had their own section. They had wooden barracks there. It was just like going to work. They had leave [Annotator's Note: an authorized absence for a short period of time] on the weekends. One experience during boot camp stayed with her. She had to have dental work done. They laughed at women. They did the work without novocaine [Annotator's Note: a local anesthetic drug of the amino ester group]. She had to walk back across the parade grounds and she almost passed out. They did not finish the work on her. After that, she did not want to go back to the dentist. They told her no leave until she got it taken care of. The Navy doctor there was wonderful. It got taken care of in a completely different atmosphere. That was the only bad thing that happened to her that scared her to death. She was back on track. She was aware of the war and what was going on. When President Roosevelt [Annotator's Note: Franklin Delano Roosevelt, 32nd President of the United States] passed away and Harry Truman [Annotator's Note: Harry S. Truman, 33rd President of the United States] became president, it was a sad day. She got to see President Roosevelt at camp. He was the only President a lot of them ever knew. They did keep up with the war. At Pendleton, the 3rd Division [Annotator's Note: 3rd Marine Division] went from Pendleton to Iwo Jima [Annotator's Note: Iwo Jima, Japan]. Some of the girls had fiances that left to go to Iwo Jima and they did not come back. They tried to be supportive. They were aware of the war. She was aware of the war when she lost her brother. He was in the Battle of the Bulge [Annotator's Note: Battle of the Bulge or German Ardennes Counter-Offensive, 16 December 1944 to 25 January 1945]. They would get a newspaper and see a map with the divisions on it. They knew he was in the Flaming Sword Division [Annotator's Note: US Army 63rd Infantry Division] under General Patton [Annotator's Note: US Army Lieutenant General George S. Patton, Jr.]. She got a call to go in and see her Major. That was unusual. When she went in, the Red Cross was there and they told her that her brother had been killed. The Major gave her leave [Annotator's Note: an authorized absence for a short period of time] to go home and be with her family. The Red Cross suggested she go to the airfield at the North Island base and she might get a plane to go to Tulsa [Annotator's Note: Tulsa, Oklahoma]. She stayed out there for a day but ended up having to take a commercial flight home. She made it home and spent time with her family and then returned to her post. Her brother was buried in France in a cemetery there. In 1948, her parents wanted him home in Tulsa to put him in their family plot. They went down to the train station and saw his casket with the flag on it. Her mother wanted to see him again. She had hoped to see him again. They had his dog tags. Her family was never the same after that.

Bernice Trotter's brother died in April 1945. She was in Camp Pendleton [Annotator's Note: Marine Corps Base Camp Pendleton in San Diego County, California] when the war in Europe ended. Some Army groups were going from Europe to the Pacific. President Truman [Annotator's Note: Harry S. Truman, 33rd President of the United States] took care of that when he dropped the bombs [Annotator's Note: nuclear weapons dropped on Hiroshima and Nagasaki, Japan, 6 and 9 August 1945]. They dispersed about half of the 18,000 [Annotator's Note: female Marines] in about a year. She had to stay because she joined a year late. She was discharged in May 1946. Her bunky wanted her to stay out there, but she wanted to go home. She enrolled in Tulsa University [Annotator's Note: Tulsa University in Tulsa, Oklahoma]. She used the G.I. Bill [Annotator's Note: the G.I. Bill, or Servicemen's Readjustment Act of 1944, was enacted by the United States Congress to aid United States veterans of World War 2 in transitioning back to civilian life and included financial aid for education, mortgages, business starts and unemployment]. She got some credits for her Marine service. She could have finished but she had a job. She had no regrets about her decisions. The Honor Flight [Annotator's Note: a national network of independent Hubs working together to honor our nation's veterans with an all-expenses-paid trip to the National Mall in Washington, D.C. to visit the war memorials] is wonderful. They have one in Tulsa and one in Oklahoma City [Annotator's Note: Oklahoma City, Oklahoma]. The one she and her son went on came in Tulsa. They met the mayor and many men who served. She met a Black [Annotator's Note: African-American] man who was a POW [Annotator's Note: prisoner of war] and his son was his guardian. They had a full plane. It was very well organized. No one was complaining. She is glad she went. She does not think the generations today understand what they went through. She understands that it is a different world. Socialism is a thing of the past [Annotator’s Note: Trotter acts like she has a cell phone in her hands to represent how people socialize now]. It is lost. She can accept change to a point. She told a reporter that her generation is an invisible generation. Yes, they served in the war, but now they cannot do a whole lot. They are invisible to young people. She volunteered for five years at the library in Tulsa. Her daughter-in-law was the librarian and needed help. She wanted to feel useful. She is retired from school. She is volunteering with Blue Star Mothers. They support the families of those who lose their loved ones. They send freedom boxes to those deployed. They went from the Great Generation to the Invisible Generation.