COUNTYWIDE : WWII Women Veterans Honored

“If you’re nervous in the service

And don’t know what to do,

Have a baby, have a baby!”

The World War II women veterans gleefully chorused lyrics sung to the tune of “Pretty Baby” and laughed to recall that men who wanted to goldbrick in the war invented mysterious back pains.

Former Women’s Army Corps Sgts. Mary Steffen, Ann Simonitsch and Iris Coleman-Hodges; Army nurse Lillian Rudzonis; and Navy Capt. Edna Peters were letting down their hair recently after being honored by the County Board of Supervisors.

“It’s about time we’re recognized,” Steffens said. “Military women are the forgotten soldiers. You don’t see any monuments to us.”

It’s a situation they’re plotting to change by enlisting in a national move to raise $25 million to build a memorial center to military women on four acres at Arlington National Cemetery. They’re looking at a November, 1992, groundbreaking.

The heart of the memorial, they say, is a computer register that will list the names, records of service, photographs and memorable military experience of the nearly 2 million women who have served or are serving in the military. Donors can call 1-800-222-2294 for details.

But not all memorable military experiences can be recorded. Tears and laughter punctuated reminiscences.

Rudzonis recalls service at Omaha Beach as “awful . . . so many burned from the bombings and plane crashes. More and more wounded coming in as the troops moved forward. Our job was to get them in halfway decent condition to be shipped out. . . . Can’t speak about it without crying.”

When you read about war, it’s all about men, she said. “The government’s built a lot of monuments to them but tells us to get our own money. Maybe the public’s forgotten, but those patients haven’t.”

Coleman-Hodges witnessed Victory in Japan Day and the birth of the United Nations while stationed in San Francisco.

“The San Francisco ladies, in their hats and gloves, looked down their noses at us,” she said.

“Loose women is what some called us,” said Simonitsch, who joined the service to “see the world.” Mainly she saw Des Moines, Iowa, and Long Island, N.Y., where she cut paychecks and processed papers for returning troops.

Steffen defied her “Bible-thumpin’ Baptist” family to enlist in a secret and experimental gun battery. “They wanted to see if women in America could defend the United States like the women in England,” she said. “We took an oath never to tell about it . . . and proved we could do everything the men did.”

Peters signed up in 1959 after the Korean War. “Men and women alike were ‘officers and gentlemen,’ ” she said. “We were ‘sir’ in the Blue Jackets Manual until the ‘60s, when they finally changed us to ‘ma’am.’ ”