Her Menu Offers Generous Helping of Wartime Memories

Britta Pulliam injects a tasty twist into her book club’s monthly gatherings: She serves food mentioned in the prose that club members read, then later discuss at her Balboa peninsula restaurant, Britta’s Cafe.

For Joanne Harris’ “Chocolat,” there was chocolate fondue. For Dean Koontz’s “Sole Survivor,” there was pureed corn and black-bean soup served in what Koontz described in the book as “a yellow and black yin-yang pattern.” And for Sheri Reynolds’ “A Gracious Plenty,” there were plenty of vegetables because the main character grew them.

So what’s on the menu Wednesday when members discuss this month’s offering, “The Gaylord Wacs,” the World War II memoirs of a Women’s Army Corps veteran?

C-rations? said the book’s author and club member Harriet Green Robinson, joking.

The 85-year-old Balboa Island resident served 32 months as a Wac from 1942-45, nearly half of it in Cairo and a year as a recruiter based in San Francisco, where she and four other female recruiters became known as the Gaylord Wacs.

The name refers to the Gaylord Hotel, a second-rate downtown hotel where the five women shared a single, $80-a-month room and bath. As the first Wacs to be stationed in San Francisco, they became local celebrities. But civilians--and even GIs--wondered what kind of woman would volunteer to wear an Army uniform for $21 a month.

“It was something new and people thought, ‘They’re tramps, they’re whatever,’ because they weren’t used to women being in the Army,” Robinson said.

When book club members learned that one of their own had published a book, there was no question it would become one of their monthly selections.

Members will be happy to learn that Pulliam isn’t planning to serve C-rations at the meeting. They can find their lunch menu--chicken, rice, vegetables and chocolate ice cream--on Page 71 of the book.

The occasion was a celebrity-studded dinner at the Masquer’s Club in Hollywood during a Southern California recruiting drive. Robinson and her fellow Wacs were among a group of GIs invited as guests.

At one point, Robinson’s table mate, Hollywood columnist Louella Parsons, turned to her and said, “You girls don’t know how lucky you are.”

An offended Robinson had endured that line before.

“I didn’t hear anyone telling the guys how lucky they were,” she writes. “They were heroes serving their country in its desperate time of need. But we were ‘lucky.’ I just smiled and kept on eating.”

Countless books have been published about men in the military during World War II, but few have been written about women.

Encouraged by her Navy veteran brother, the late Orange County Superior Court Judge Robert H. Green, Robinson began writing her book nearly a decade ago. It was published by Laurel Press of Laguna Beach in November.

Originally known as the Women’s Army Auxiliary Corps when it was established in May 1942, the WAAC enabled women to serve in noncombat positions, thus freeing more men to meet the demand for combat troops. In July 1943, the WAAC was converted into the regular Army. As the Women’s Army Corps, it gave women pay and benefits equal to their male counterparts. More than 150,000 women served as Wacs during World War II.

Robinson was a 23-year-old aspiring actress attending drama school at night and working days as a secretary in a Los Angeles law office when she became fascinated by a recruiting poster she saw through the streetcar window on the way to work each day.

“This is a woman’s war as well as a man’s war,” the poster proclaimed. “Every woman must do her part. One way to do your part is to join the Women’s Army Auxiliary Corps.”

Motivated as much by patriotism as frustration over an acting career that was going nowhere and a no-win relationship with a married lawyer in her office, Robinson signed up in December 1942.

After basic training at Fort Des Moines, Robinson thought she’d be made a secretary or be sent to a cooks or bakers school. Instead, she was assigned to the Army Recruiting and Induction District in San Francisco.

“That was considered the glamour job,” she said.

When she arrived in March 1943, the city was bursting with military personnel and civilians in the defense industry. Rooms were at a premium. Robinson and her four fellow Wacs were jammed into a ground-floor room at the Gaylord, two doors from the hotel bar.

Their room, Robinson writes, “was like Grand Central Station, crowded every night.” There were her roommates’ dates, military friends using the telephone or bathroom, and soldiers simply passing time before shipping out.

Though their social lives were busy, the Gaylord Wacs had a job to do.

They manned WAAC information booths in movie theaters and department stores, and handed out pamphlets on street corners. They appeared at war-bond rallies with Eleanor Powell, Eddie Cantor, the Andrews Sisters and other celebrities. They marched in parades and talked to the press. They even modeled their uniforms in a fashion show.

In time, they broadened their recruiting efforts, traveling between Fresno and Crescent City on the Oregon border.

The press loved them, as attested by the yellowed newspaper clippings Robinson has saved.

Running throughout Robinson’s book are letters from an Army Air Force second lieutenant she met on her way to San Francisco. Over time, their correspondence brought them close, and they hoped for a reunion. But he died on a bombing run over Germany.

The young lawyer Robinson left behind in Los Angeles also pops up to see her in San Francisco. But it’s a master sergeant, Don Robinson, whom she would meet in Cairo, whom she married after the war. They had two daughters, Robin and Janis, and divorced in 1964.

Robinson had her first book signing at Martha’s Bookstore on Balboa Island in December. Co-owner Kathy Wales said 100 people attended, the shop’s largest crowd since Steve Allen’s appearance six years ago.

“It’s not only a memoir,” Wales said, “it really gives you a feeling about why women would want to be in the military.”

Dennis McLellan can be reached at (714) 966-5986 or by e-mail at dennis.mclellan@latimes.com.