Mary Edwards has many memories of her time working for the 1007th [Annotator's Note: 1007th Quartermaster Rescue Boat Overseas Training Unit under the Air Quartermaster]. She had taken the civil servant examination after graduating from school. She did well on the exam and was called in for an interview. She was hired at the beginning of June [Annotator's Note: 1943] for the 1007th Boat Company. The work was on an Army air base at the Lakefront [Annotator's Note: Lake Pontchartrain in New Orleans, Louisiana]. It was quite an experience as her first job. She was not only on an air base with hundreds of soldiers but also met people who had been all over the world. There were stories they recounted from the previous war. Most of the men she came in contact with were mariners who had experience as boat or yacht operators. They had to be knowledgeable of the seas, weather conditions and how to react to problems encountered at sea. Edwards worked with them on developing an air and sea rescue book for England. She typed quite a bit of the document. Additionally, there was extensive training in skills such as Morse code and semaphore. That was new to soldiers who had never been on a boat before. The waterborne training on the Lake was not bad unless the weather turned rough. Some individuals got sea sick when they were out in bad weather. The boats would be loaded with not only the requisite number of troops but each soldier shouldered the equipment he had to carry into combat. Some men even had to go overboard to see how they would handle the heavy equipment. Some troops went out several times a day. The Higgins boat operators taught the Navy and the Coast Guard how to operate the boats. The Navy wanted little to do with the boats. The Coast Guard and the Marines were more interested in the landing boats because they felt the vessels would facilitate amphibious assaults. The female workers at Higgins would go out to the Lakefront during lunch and watch the operations. There was an occasional drowning during the activities. The practice involved men overboard with their heavy equipment. Despite having strong swimmers available, the heavy weight of the gear pulled the men down too quickly for rescue. One of the swimmers was Jim Martineck [Annotator's Note: unsure of spelling] who was a good swimmer who had swum around Pearl Harbor in the deep water channels. Edwards was always concerned that sharks would get him. He assured her that he avoided the predators. He and three other men taught swimming. It was important to know how to swim to be in the unit. It was sad when a drowning occurred. There were many visitors from the Army and Coast Guard who came in from Washington. Many of them had traveled the seas extensively and witnessed many different problems during those times. They were to learn that the English Channel had its own set of issues to confront. With the invasion set to be staged from England, it was important for them to know about the seafaring conditions there. Navigation, tidal, wind and seasonal conditions in the Channel were significant areas to evaluate prior to the invasion. Edwards learned a lot by typing up reports. She found the information very interesting. The men and their wives were dreading the day when they would have to leave for the invasions. Two of the men departed for the invasion of North Africa. Tobruk and El Alamein were two famous battles there. One of the two men was killed during the invasion. The workers had thought a lot of him. They would be in the Army shacks with no fans in the high heat. Workers and soldiers would be sweating profusely. The man who was killed would go out and buy snowballs for the girls to cool them off. When the girls heard he was killed, they felt so bad. Colonel Schroder [Annotator's Note: no given name provided], who was their employer, called the workers together to tell them when someone they knew had died. Anzio and Salerno were Italian invasions where some of the men were killed. The home front workers felt bad when they heard of the deaths of those they knew. Edwards and the others had to type up tests and scores for the Morse code and semaphore tests. The trainees had to know those skills but some did not do too well on the tests. They had to take the tests again if they did not succeed. Edwards typed the information so many times that she learned Morse code. Day after day they would type the information and if something had been omitted, the page would be retyped with the changes. Edwards basically typed the initial text with the revisions delegated to the other girls. The completed document was a couple hundred pages long. It was finished by the end of summer. It was sent to Washington where it was bound as a book and sent on to England. When Churchill [Annotator's Note: British Prime Minister Winston Churchill] saw the book, he was very pleased. He sent a letter of congratulations to Washington. Since the work was done by the 1007th, a letter of commendation came from Washington to those workers on the Lakefront. The original was framed in the office and each worker was given a typed copy of the letter. The workers were so proud of the commendation. That letter and the one from Truman [Annotator's Note: President Harry S. Truman] was lost in the flood waters of Katrina despite Edwards' attempt to preserve and protect the documents. The workers were so proud of those letters. They were all so excited to think that they worked for those famous people. There were four teenagers in the crew with all older people.

Mary Edwards met Harry Truman [Annotator's Note: President Harry S. Truman] when he was a congressman in charge of the Defense Committee. Truman sought to inspect the Higgins boats to determine how good they would be in an invasion. The fact that he wanted to ride on one of the boats made the men very proud. The girls were proud that a person of such prestige was coming to their facilities. Midgey, Pinky and the other girls all came down to meet him [Annotator's Note: no other names provided for these women]. Truman was pleasant and nice to everyone. He requested three secretaries for him to work with on collecting his notes concerning the boats. The girls would take dictation into the night for Truman. Mimi, Marie and another older girl were assigned the task [Annotator's Note: no other names provided for these women]. At the time, any girl in her twenties was considered an older girl by 16 year old Edwards. [Annotator's Note: Edwards chuckles.] A day or two before Truman's arrival, one of the girls got sick. Colonel Schroeder [Annotator's Note: no given name provided] asked Edwards to take the place of the ill secretary. Edwards was very nervous about the assignment because of Truman's fame and the responsibility involved with collecting his thoughts correctly. She had no problems and Truman was complimentary to her after she presented the reports to him. He always congratulated the girls after they completed their work. It made them proud. When he left, he wrote a memo with words of praise for the three secretaries. Edwards was proud of that. He shook the girls hands before he left and told them goodbye. The next year, he would be voted in as vice-president. He would become president when Roosevelt [Annotator's Note: President Franklin D. Roosevelt] died in 1945. The girls were tickled to think that they had worked for the president of the United States. It was Edwards' first important job. She liked Truman because he was nice and very down to earth. She took dictation from other Army generals who would come to the facilities. The officers would inspect the work in order to find things that could be improved. Working at Higgins was always interesting and never dull. The famous actor, Van Heflin, was in the military near New Orleans. He would visit Higgins on occasion. Lieutenant Robert Taylor was across the road at the Naval Base. When he came to visit, special efforts would be made for him. One of the sergeants on the site, Jim Owen, had a restaurant and would prepare coffee and donuts especially for the actor's visit. It was difficult to keep the men from eating all the donuts. Pat Brougham [Annotator's Note: unsure of spelling] was the captain of Robert Taylor's ship. He wanted to make sure that Taylor got some donuts. Edwards served the officers and was going to leave the meeting room so the men could talk. She was asked by Taylor to remain and visit with them. She was so excited to meet Taylor. He was nice, friendly and down to earth. Not at all like a movie star would be expected to be. After the girls heard about Taylor, they would find an excuse to interrupt her when the actor was there. They would be invited to sit down and have coffee and donuts with the officers. Van Heflin was stationed somewhere in the suburbs. He would also visit and have coffee and donuts. The stars would be asked about their movie careers. Those were the two actors that Edwards remembered the most. It was exciting for a 16 year old.

Mary Edwards began working for the Army at Higgins Industries when she was 16 years old. She had finished high school in May [Annotator's Note: May 1943]. She was at the minimum age to work for the Army. Edwards' father had died when she was a baby. Her uncle brought her to the base because she did not know how to get there. The day she was to be interviewed, her uncle rode the three buses with her to get to the facility. Upon arrival, only Edwards had civil service clearance to enter the facility. Her uncle would remain in the guard shack. The shack had a fan so it was better than being outside. After her interview, she knew she would work for 1007 [Annotator's Note: 1007th Quartermaster Rescue Boat Company]. She did not know anyone there. The second day, she met the personnel she was to work with. She went through a lot of bureaucracy to be hired. It included much paperwork and numerous attempts to fingerprint her. She had to be fingerprinted because she was typing up information related to the invasion. Only seven of her ten fingers would print. She had very soft skin and even after attempts by highly trained professionals, three of her fingers just would not print. A man from Leavenworth plus another professional tried unsuccessfully to obtain prints of those three fingers. She was told that she could get away with safe cracking because her prints could not be tracked. She jokingly said that she was not interested in that. She was accepted even though only seven fingerprints were obtained. She had significant problems getting the ink off her fingers using the cleansers available at the time. Later, when she went to work at Camp Plauche, she thought she would have to go through the cycle of fingerprinting again. The FBI told her it was unnecessary. The seven prints they had would suffice. She joked with them about being called whenever there was a bank job that could not be solved. Edwards found it exciting being finger printed like a criminal. Edwards enjoyed working for the Army. She especially liked the Air-Sea Rescue people. It taught her things about geography and, particularly, about other parts of the world that she didn'tr know existed. The tides of the moon were to have an effect on the invasion. The wide range of depths of the English Channel reflected that some parts were very deep while, in some areas, a person could stand up. The tides had that kind of effect. Edwards knew the invasion would be on some part of the English Channel, but she did not know where. Weather would play a role in the planning of the invasion. Some men who left the unit would be transferred to the Mediterranean. They would be involved in the Italian invasions. They had to learn a whole different scenario for those landings. They had to study the sea and the conditions they faced. They were impressed with the extent of knowledge gained. Edwards found the information very interesting. Andrew Higgins frequently visited the Edwards' work area. Sometimes, he would visit twice a day. Higgins would visit the colonel [Annotator's Note: Edwards earlier referred to a Colonel Schroeder without providing his given name] and Major Creighton [Annotator's Note: unsure of spelling, no given name provided] who did the detailed assignment of personnel to the ships. The workers knew that Higgins was a famous boat builder, but they did not know of his important role in the upcoming invasion. The women were anxious to go on a boat, but they never had the authorization to do so. The Army felt it was too risky for them to participate in any of the operations. The girls watched the vessels on their lunch time and break time, but they never were allowed to sail on them. Higgins explained to the women some of the geography of Lake Pontchartrain. Areas are shallow but some are quite deep. Higgins and his assistants would go out on the boats nearly every day. Major Creighton would have his men dictate severe weather reports related to the Lake to Edwards and the other secretaries. The boats had to be prepared for every eventuality when the landings actually came. Higgins was a nice man. Everyone seemed to like him. After he gave bracelets to the men, he told the women that he did not think they wanted something that advertised Higgins Industry. They all confirmed their pride in his work and that they did want a bracelet. He gladly provided the females with their own bracelets. Edwards' office was located where UNO [Annotator's Note: University of New Orleans] is today. It started on Franklin Avenue where there was a glass enclosed bus shelter to protect the workers from the weather while they waited for the bus to transport them home. The guardhouse was right across the road. In bad weather, they would sit in the guardhouse until the bus arrived. The facility was large. A bus would transport personnel around the camp. Edwards walked just two blocks inside the site to get to her office. There were German prisoners in camps along Franklin Avenue. They were surrounded by plenty of barbed wire, electrified fences, guardhouses, and dogs. Edwards knew of no prisoner escapes. The captives were always making up something to get the Red Cross there. The Germans would whistle and call out to the girls. The American men told the females that the prisoners were just young men acting like young men do with women their age. Edwards could not tell what the Germans were saying. She did not care. She just wanted to avoid them. The Germans did not cause much trouble except to call in the Red Cross and the chaplains to complain about the food. It was the same food the American servicemen ate so they had no reason to complain. Chocolate was scarce. Civilians could not get it at the PX [Annotator's Note: Post Exchange or military store], but the military could. Some soldiers purchased the treats and provided it to the office girls to share. Edwards particularly like the Elmer's Gold Brick chocolates. Each base had a certain allotment of cartons of the candy. The men would buy them for their wives and family. It was a big treat to get the candy. Edwards started working in June 1943. The men started going overseas in the fall. By February 1944, the unit was closed. Most of the men went to England or the Mediterranean. The eight girls that had been in the unit were all transferred.

The Civil Service had two opportunities for Mary Edwards. [Annotator's Note: Edwards was a secretary for the 1007th Quartermaster Rescue Boat Company Overseas Training Unit at Higgins Industry on Lake Pontchartrain. When the 1007th closed in February 1944, personnel were transferred.] One possibility for her future employment was at Camp Plauche. She does not remember where the other option was. Three of the secretaries, one being Edwards, were employed by Camp Plauche. It was a five bus trip to get to the camp and her work location. Even though that was a problem, Edwards enjoyed working at the camp. She worked for the Transportation Unit for Colonel Benson [Annotator's Note: no given name provided]. He was a West Point graduate who served in the European Theater under a General MacArthur [Annotator's Note: no given name mentioned]. It was not Douglas MacArthur who served in the Pacific. Many famous West Pointers came to visit Colonel Benson. Benson was strictly a West Point man with a swagger stick and all. Edwards would take dictation from him and order jeeps and other larger vehicles. Some went across the Lake to the gunnery range at [Annotator's Note: inaudible]. The war had ended by that time, but military training was still ongoing. At Camp Plauche, there was a camp bus that seemed to go back half a mile or so to the opposite end of the facility. There was a big supply of Army trucks and jeeps on site. Orders had to be put in a day or so in advance prior to actual use of a vehicle. Italian prisoners of war were housed within the base. They worked in the offices doing cleaning at night. They painted at night also. The workers had to move their personal items out of their office when the prisoners painted at night. Pauline [Annotator's Note: Edwards' coworker, no given name mentioned] did not move her coat and found paint on it the next day. She had a fit. Colonel Benson told her not to blame the men who painted. She had been told ahead of time to move her belongings. Nevertheless, the prisoners were sorry and apologized. When the roses and lilacs cultivated around the office started blooming, the Italians made a point of bringing one or two vases of flowers for the women who worked in the office. The flowers were beautiful. The camp beautification program was very successful. The prisoners did a good job of raising the roses and lilacs. Some of the prisoners worked with Edwards' friends in the warehouse. Some of the Italians spoke English. When the work assignments were determined, the Italian leader would get the assignment in English and then translate the orders into Italian for the others. The prisoners were visible around the facility. The war came to an end. Edwards found the Italians were different from the Nazi prisoners. The Nazis always seemed to be angry. The Italians were from different parts of Italy and could not wait to get home to their families. Employment both at Camp Plauche and her work at the Lakefront for the 1007th were daytime jobs. Edwards would go home each evening after work. With five buses to take, the employees advertised for rides. A carpool would yield gasoline ration cards for the vehicle owner. The officers also needed that to run their cars. There were five people in the car transporting Edwards to and from work. The main headquarters building had a location to post notes seeking carpools and other things. The driver not only got a gasoline ration card, but he was paid a weekly fee by each of his riders. It was more convenient for Edwards to catch a ride from her neighborhood than ride the multiple buses. She carpooled at both of her work locations during the war. Until she managed to find a ride, she had to catch five buses to reach her work at Camp Plauche. That included a camp bus that ran on a 20 minute cycle to transport workers through Plauche. It was a job getting to and from work. Camp Plauche was located in the Elmwood area. [Annotator’s Note: Camp Plauche, also known as Camp Harahan, was in Harahan, Louisiana, a suburb of New Orleans.] Edwards worked there for about a year until the camp closed. All the men had left. There was just finalization of records underway. After the closing, Edwards went to work for the VA [Annotator's Note: Veterans Administration].

Mary Edwards worked for the regional office of the Veterans Administration after the war had been over for a year [Annotator's Note: the Second World War ended with the surrender of Japan in August 1945]. She found that she was paying benefits for Civil War veterans. Even though most all of them had passed on, she was involved in the benefits for surviving dependants. Many of the veterans had married much younger women and those disabled dependants and their handicapped children lived on well past the end of World War 2. Edwards' office received the first electric typewriters ordered by the government. She had always been a good typist and used various manual typewriters, but they were nothing like the new model issued to her. Edwards worked with stencils and had to take information from the old records. The old records were on parchment paper dating back to the 1860s. The paper was falling apart. She had to be careful with the records and with typing with stencils on the new electric machine. She made many mistakes on the new equipment. It was problematic because corrections made the stencils ineffective at times. Stencils had to be thrown away. Even though it was unfortunate to discard the stencils, the typists could not do any better because of the pressure. There was an urgency to get the information off the parchment paper records which were disintegrating. It was hard for people to believe that she was working with Civil War records at that time. The Veterans Administration benefits were not for the soldiers but for their wives and children who were still alive.

Mary Edwards and the home front had to deal with rationing during World War 2. Often, her mother would go to the butcher and find that not only were the chops all gone but there was no ground meat either. The next day, she would go to the butcher's even earlier in the morning. At least she could get something, even if it was not everything she wanted. Sugar and many other things were also rationed. In her junior and senior years of high school, Edwards and other girls would drag scrap iron through the streets to a friend's home. The friend's father had a truck and could haul the large sections of iron for recycling. It was a terrible job, but the girls were proud to be fighting the Japs [Annotator's Note: a derogatory term for the Japanese enemy] with scrap iron. That was their motto. [Annotator's Note: Edwards chuckles.] Many things including shoes were rationed. Edwards always loved shoes but had to get a card for her ration of footwear. She also bought war bond stamps out of her paycheck. When she had collected enough 25 and 50 cent stamps in the book, she could turn them in for a 25 dollar war bond. That also gave her a sense of pride. Edwards' father died during the Great Depression. Her uncle came to live with them to support the family. Several of the companies he worked for went out of business due to hard times. Many companies had difficulties during the Depression. Neighbors shared food with each other. They were all good neighbors sharing what they had with each other. Many people were out of work. The next door neighbor worked for the WPA [Annotator's Note: Works Progress Administration]. Another friend also worked for the WPA. That employment did not result in any additional ration cards for the employees. Things were really bad. Edwards remembers the bad times even though she was just a little girl. Edwards was born in 1927 in New Orleans, Louisiana at Touro Hospital. She belongs to a club for Touro babies. A reunion of those members filled two blocks with other Touro babies. Edwards has a plaque with her name on it in the baby section of Touro. She has her doctors there and has gone there all through the years.

Mary Edwards saw the world change dramatically as a result of World War 2. It was important to all the nations of the world. As an Army wife, Edwards lived at Fort Riley, Kansas for a year or so. She met girls from all over the world while she was there. There were German and Italian girls and one girl from Czechoslovakia. The Czech woman had two children before the war had ended, and then she married an American soldier. She came to America. She was a beautiful woman who could have competed in the Miss Universe contest. She was from Lidice, Czechoslovakia. That town had been terrorized by the Gestapo during the war. The Nazis suspected the town of underground activity. When they could not find any proof, they shot every man in the town. The beautiful woman from Czechoslovakia lost her grandfather. Many of the younger men were off at war. Teenage boys were shot in the village. Though the Czech woman was a young girl, she said that she would never forget that incident. Everyone hated the Nazis so much. After the incident, the townspeople did more to undermine the German occupation. The girls even helped out in the underground. Edwards' Czech friend was a young girl in the war but a teenager by the end of the war. She was young when she married the American soldier. There were several Czech women that Edwards came to know in Fort Riley. The Czechs talked about the severe hunger they suffered during the war. When the Americans liberated them, the soldiers distributed their own food to the starving civilians. Many of the locals had been sent to concentration camps because they were suspected of being in the underground. Some of the women from northern Italy told of the Nazis mistreating them. Some Italians were with the Nazis, but most of the Italian soldiers had deserted their army by then. During the war, Edwards worked around many service men and women. She would inform them of the cultural things around the city of New Orleans and in the French Quarter. The newcomers would explore some of those interesting places on the weekend instead of limiting themselves to Bourbon or Decatur Streets. Most of those who served here hated to leave the city for overseas or even another base. The WACs [Annotator's Note: Women's Army Corps] who worked with Edwards were largely from New York and Pennsylvania. They loved the temperate New Orleans weather compared to the winters up north. It would get cold in New Orleans, but the WACs were not allowed to ride in the buses. Edwards never understood the reason for that. Mardi Gras was cancelled during the war. Many of her colleagues would return to New Orleans and visit with Edwards after the war so they could enjoy Mardi Gras with her. People in the streets were so friendly compared to up north. Edwards has a friend in Florida who was a WAC. She was chosen WAC of the Year at Camp Plauche after she reorganized the camp filing system more efficiently. She was from Brooklyn, New York and very friendly. Everyone really liked her. There were five WACs in the Camp Plauche office. One, her friend from Brooklyn, worked directly with Edwards. The others worked with quartermaster or chemical warfare. The WACs were good workers and likeable. Edwards would give them hints about places to see in New Orleans on the weekends. They were stuck in Camp Plauche with no way out except five bus rides. On a WACs salary, that was tough. They would spend a whole day visiting a museum. They loved the Mississippi River and would sit on the levee. When they had enough money they would ride the Natchez [Annotator's Note: Mississippi riverboat]. World War 2 brought America into contact with the rest of the world. While we were fighting, we did not know what Japan and Germany were doing in the lands they occupied. Places like Czechoslovakia were armed camps. Women were held down and kept from doing things. That has changed since the war. Even in Germany, the leader is a woman. Edwards' visit to The National WWII Museum was enjoyable. She spent so much time walking around it that she had ankle problems afterward. The Theater was wonderful. [Annotator's Note: The National WWII Museum features a 4D experience entitled "Beyond All Boundaries."] There is so much to see and do; a person does not want to leave. It is nice to see the history and especially the Higgins boat. The wartime mementos that Edwards had were lost to the floodwaters. That included bomb tags from Wake Island. Some of the items were humorous. Such as a report by a boat crew who cooked and ate a "delicious" hamburger while aboard their vessel. [Annotator's Note: Edwards laughs.] The men who ran the boats did all kinds of crazy things. The boats had Zenith radios. They were new on the boats because the company had submitted the low bid. They were quality radios and highly recommended by her uncle to Edwards. When she wanted to buy a television, she bought a Zenith. The war was an exciting time, but Edwards remembers those who were lost in the war. She used to find four leaf clovers and give them to the men going overseas. She often wonders if those men came back. She has so many happy and sad memories of those days.