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The Veterans History Project (VHP) of the American Folklife Center collects, preserves, and makes accessible the personal accounts of American military veterans so that future generations may hear directly from veterans and better understand the realities of military service.
Home State: Arkansas
Dates of Service: 1943-1946
Highest Rank: Technical Sergeant
“It was a wonderful experience, I learned so much about people - you'd be surprised at the people you can meet and every last one of them is an individual in themselves...” (Audio interview, 20:24)
Emma Brown enlisted in the Women's Army Auxiliary Corps (WAAC) immediately after high school graduation, attracted by the prospects of advancing her career opportunities and traveling the world. She initially trained as an administrative clerk, and worked as a records clerk in Army medical facilities in the United States, where she encountered wounded American servicemembers and returning prisoners-of-war, an experience that exposed her to the brutal realities of war. Despite witnessing such suffering and experiencing discrimination within the military—as well as a lack of understanding overseas—her optimism and sense of humor endured. After the war, she completed a degree in history and worked in a college library, then as a teacher, and also served as a government employee.
Jump to: Oral History Interview (Audio) | Explore the Full Collection
After graduating from Hot Springs High School in 1943 at the age of 18, Emma Brown was enticed by the opportunity represented by serving in the WAAC.
“The incentive was that if you volunteered for service in the WAAC… there was always the possibility of further educational training and traveling and so forth. And to an 18-year-old who had no prospects of getting a good job unless they had some more education, that was something to do. And I’ve always been the type of person who really wants to know about something else, and I figured it would give me the chance to—I like history very much—and I figured it would give me [the chance to] visit some of the places that we always studied. So it was just one of those deals, the only thing was I wasn’t old enough.” (Audio interview, 0:25)
The minimum age for enlisting in the WAAC was 21 years old. Brown did not allow this inconvenient fact to stand in her way, however, as she convinced her mother as well as the doctor who presided at her birth to sign an affidavit stating that she was actually 21 years old rather than 18 as indicated by her birth certificate. Her introduction to military life came at Fort Des Moines, Iowa, where she completed basic training. She remembers it as a tough but beneficial experience:
“Every time you turned around we had a man teaching us calisthenics or how to make up the beds and all this other stuff. I used to get so disgusted because they’d come in with these boots so shiny that you could see your face in them. And if you hadn’t pulled that blanket tight enough and that quarter didn’t bounce, oh boy you had to tear the thing up and go all over again. But it was a good experience, so it made some good things.” (Audio interview, 2:39)
After basic training, Brown received training in administration - particularly the maintenance of medical and personnel records. Her first assignment after training was to the Army hospital in Camp Atterbury, Indiana, where she managed medical records but also received some medical training and met many wounded American servicemembers returning from overseas.
“That was always a hard job, because we didn’t like seeing the men wounded the way they were. I think the hardest thing was when they started bringing those prisoners of war back from Corregidor and Bataan. And the thing is you could almost want to cry, but you knew you shouldn’t. Or you almost wanted to get nauseated but you can’t show that either. And that put me to wondering about man’s inhumanity to man - I don’t understand it, it just doesn’t make sense to me why you have to do things like that.” (Audio interview, 4:17)
Contrary to the popular understanding that all members of the 6888th volunteered for service with the Europe-bound battalion, Brown recalls—with her typical good humor—that she never volunteered for it:
“They said it was a volunteer thing, but it wasn’t voluntary.” (Audio interview, 5:07)
The members of what was to become the 6888th then went through training for service in a combat zone, training that Brown remembers as strenuous but effective:
“We had to go through all that training, and I mean training. [laughs] These bullets and everything else flying, and then they taught everything that you need to do—to try to save your life or save somebody else’s.” (Audio interview, 5:25)
Brown does not hold fond memories of the sea voyage to Britain, recalling that she got seasick regularly and subsisted entirely on crackers and canned peaches - the only things she could keep down.
Between February and May 1945, the battalion was based in Birmingham, England, where they encountered a British population that was mostly welcoming to them but also harbored absurd and racist misconceptions about African Americans:
“It was comical - they’d look at you so funny. And they’d look at the hair, and I guess someone must’ve told them that they had tails because I’ll never forget somebody walked in and asked me, “Where did you put your tail?” [laughs] That’s the only thing you could say, you could go and laugh about it. I saw some people who were definitely angry… but the training I had from my mother was that “God made all of us, and you know what you are, so you don’t worry about what other people think about you.” So it always went over my head.” (Audio interview, 11:06)
The battalion also faced a lot of mail in Birmingham that was in need of sorting and delivering:
“The building that we were in had two large rooms…and the mail was stacked up to the ceiling. You had just enough room that you could pass through and get one of the bags down.” (Audio interview, 11:51)
As a postal clerk, Brown was one of the personnel responsible for tracking down updated addresses for servicemembers scattered around the European Theater. In her interview, she provides a valuable first-hand recollection of the nature of the work:
“Each one of us had at least 3,000 names, and they gave you some different alphabetical ranges that you had to use. And then if whatever bag that they pulled had that particular name or if it was that alphabetical range then they would distribute it. And then we would find where this person was and track them down….It was hard to really track anybody but this was your responsibility.” (Audio interview, 12:51)
German bombing attacks still occasionally hit British cities in early 1945, and besides the obvious danger these could be a major inconvenience to the 6888th members who worked long days sorting mail only to be woken by air raid sirens in the middle of the night. Brown’s first experience of this was three weeks after her arrival in Birmingham, and she decided to accept the risk of choosing sleep over the uncomfortable safety of an air raid shelter:
“They can do whatever they want to, I am going to bed…. The air raid shelters were full of water, so I didn’t see any sense going down there…. If the good Lord wants me to die tonight that’s what I’m going to do, if He doesn’t I’ll wake up in the morning….” (Audio interview, 6:50)
Although she remembers that the bombing shook their building, Brown reported “I was well-rested when I got up the next day.”
In May 1945, the battalion relocated to Rouen, France, arriving there shortly after V-E Day. The war had been over for a few days, but the soldiers of the 6888th still came face to face with the carnage and destruction the war had inflicted.
“There were tanks still burning in the streets, you could see where the bombs had hit some of the buildings and they were still trying to get people out.” (Audio interview, 15:44)
Brown remembers this time in France as a time when they were all asked to pitch in and help out in a variety of ways, and how these difficult circumstances brought out the best in the soldiers around her:
“What you had you shared.” (Audio interview, 16:13)
Because Brown had received some basic medical training while at Camp Atterbury, she was asked to assist with the treatment of the wounded and injured, as were all those who had any medical background. The human suffering she witnessed during this time still haunted her at the time of her oral history interview in 2006:
“We saw some… well, it still bothers me. I try really hard not to look at any of these movies that I feel like are going to bring back too many memories.” (Audio interview, 16:17)
The 6888th moved their operations to Paris in October 1945. Brown remembered her time there as the most enjoyable period of her military career, and she took full advantage of the opportunities provided to travel, play sports against teams from other units, and visit Parisian nightclubs. A lifelong lover of history who would go on to get her degree in history, Brown was particularly grateful for the opportunity to visit sites such as Versailles and Notre Dame, as well as other locales around Europe:
“I enjoyed being in Paris because I got the chance to see a whole lot of things that we had studied in history. I got a chance to go to Brussels, and we went to Frankfurt, Germany to play ball, and Marseille to play tennis.” (Audio interview, 17:40)
Brown took advantage of the GI Bill to complete her degree in history at the University of Arkansas at Pine Bluff. One of the most gratifying aspects of her college experience was the large number of returning veterans that went through all four years of school with her:
“That was another experience that was great for me, because my graduating class had 105 veterans.” (Audio interview, 21:40)
After graduation, she worked at the library at the University of Arkansas at Pine Bluff, before going on to work as a teacher and as a government employee. At the time of her interview, she was operating a used books store in Monticello, Arkansas.