Hattie “Kitty” Bass (Ulmer) – WAC

Born in 1918, Hattie Bass grew into an adventure seeking gal. In 1942 she was living in Wilmington, North Carolina where she was volunteering a few hours each week with the Aircraft Warning Service (AWS) which had a local station at the town Post Office.

          Hattie picked up the nickname ‘Kitty’ and despite a war going on, she kept a bright outlook on life. Her duty with the AWS was to keep up with spotted planes along the coastline in her area. Air Observers would volunteer along both American coasts to report all aircraft they spotted and pass that information along via a phone call to people like Hattie. The Air Observers were trained to identify enemy and friendly aircraft by counting the number of engines, reading any markings, and recognizing the aircrafts’ shape.

          Congress approved the creation of the Women’s Army Auxiliary Corps (WAAC) on 14 May 1942 after a bill for such was introduced a year earlier. Five training centers were opened: 1 – Fort Des Moines, Iowa 2 – Daytona Beach, Florida 3 – Fort Oglethorpe, Georgia 4 – Fort Devens, Massachusetts 5 – Camp Ruston, Louisiana. The WAAC had no military status and in 1943 Edith Nourse Rogers, the Massachusetts Congresswoman who had introduced the first bill, introduced another to enlist and appoint women into the U.S. Army on 01 July of the same year. President Roosevelt signed off on it and 90 days later the WAAC was transformed into the WAC (Women’s Army Corps). More men were needed on the fighting fronts which surely played a role in allowing women to serve their country.

          Hattie, having heard of the WAC, thought it sounded like a great adventure and a good job. It would be full-time and she was told that she would even be able to live at home, which appealed to her very much. She soon decided to join up and her parents didn’t object to her decision. At the age of approximately 25, Hattie attended basic training at Fort Des Moines beginning on 18 October 1942. The women went through much the same as the men did from being fitted for uniforms to being interviewed to receiving inoculations against disease. In December of ’42 Hattie was stationed in Wilmington, N.C. where she continued her work with the AWS. She ended up having to live in barracks, not at home as she had been told. She ended up asking for a transfer overseas.

          On 17 April 1943, Hattie was transferred to Camp Polk, Louisiana and in June she moved on to Fort Devens where she received the overseas orders she desperately wanted. It was on to Camp Shanks in New York in September and from there she boarded the British Troop Ship, Strathnaver. Hattie was headed to England to work in the ETO (European Theater of Operations) and the trip across the Pond proved to be a nerve-racking one. When the Strathnaver left the New York harbor, Hattie remembers being surrounded by other vessels as far as the eye could see. Upon awaking several days later and looking out across the sea she was shocked to see no other vessels surrounding hers. The Strathnaver was essentially a sitting duck for German u-boats prowling the ocean’s waters. Hattie found out that they were having engine trouble and the crew was attempting to make the necessary repairs. The convoy couldn’t wait on a single ship so they had to leave them behind.

          A destroyer was dispatched to escort the mechanically impaired ship to St. John’s, Newfoundland. Hattie and the others spent two weeks there while repairs were made. Once again the troops boarded their vessel but as they were leaving the harbor it struck a rock which ripped a hole in it. They were forced to dock again at St. John’s. After the hole was repaired they boarded the Strathnaver for the third time. About 30 minutes out to sea her ship began dropping depth charges which meant that a German u-boat was likely in the area. It seemed that the Strathnaver was not meant to make this voyage to England because the percussion of the depth charges messed up the new repairs. The ship once again returned to St. Johns and another ship was sent to pick up the troops. Before they could start their journey to England they had to wait until the next convoy left America. Hattie and the others finally set foot on foreign soil when they arrived in Liverpool, England in October of ’43. The trip had taken an overwhelming 45 days to complete!

          From Liverpool, Hattie made her way to London by train. She recalls the English trains being very different from the ones in America. In London Hattie worked as a typist for A.G. Cables where she and other ladies worked one of three shifts each day. The cables would come in like telegraph cables with the strips of paper with words on them pasted to a sheet of paper. When they came to Hattie they still needed to be decoded and she would then type or cut a stencil of the message so copies could be made for distribution to other places. The cables could be anything from requests for supplies or troops to Top Secret information. One such top Secret cable that Hattie decoded was the one that told of General Eisenhower’s impending arrival to London where he would be taking over SHAEF (Supreme Headquarters Allied Expeditionary Forces), formerly known as ETO.

After Eisenhower took over SHAEF Hattie was transferred to the Psychological Warfare Division (PWD) where she was a typist and secretary of sorts for a Colonel. Hattie said that the PWD were responsible for providing leaflets to the Air Force which they would drop over various areas. Some leaflets would urge enemy troops to surrender and some would pass along information to citizens of occupied areas.

The war experience was very different for American service members stationed in England. Hattie recalls the blackouts each night and heavy bombing in London. She said it was scary at first because of the air raids. During nights when it wasn’t foggy the Jerries would fly over and the air raid sirens would sound. When this would happen Hattie, who was living near Hyde Park, would go down into the basement with the others. She recalls feeling the ground shake when the ack-ack guns in the park would go off as well as when the bombs exploded.

She clearly remembers the V-1 and V-2 buzz bombs. The V-1 could be heard buzzing through the air and suddenly it would stop and glide to the ground. The V-2 was more advanced and would simply drop from the sky and head straight down. Eventually she got used to it and had the attitude of ‘if it’s going to hit me, then it’s going to hit me’. “I felt for the British people and have a great admiration for them. They put up with a lot,” she said of what they endured and came back from.

In November of 1944, Hattie was transferred to G2 Intelligence Department in Paris, France where she was in a typing pool. She then moved to Reims, France where she worked in the little red school house. Hattie was working in Reims when the Germans came there to sign their surrender. From there Hattie was transferred to Frankfurt, Germany and then on to Berlin. She was in a typing pool while in Berlin where she typed up dossiers on German’s who the Allie’s wanted to bring to trial. The files would contain information such as where they were from, what they were to be charged with, and what they had done. Of her time in Germany Hattie shared that she had never seen people as hungry as so many of the German’s. They would pick out of the trash any food bits thrown out by the American’s.                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                               

          From Berlin Hattie headed back to France and then took a ship across the English Channel to England again. From Southampton, England she boarded the Queen Mary and headed back to America. She chose to leave the military in October of 1945 because she didn’t much care for army life. However, she did enjoy the work she had done and despite the obvious negative aspects of life with a war going on, she managed to make the best out of the circumstances. Hattie had begun as a Private but she left as a T5 Corporal.

          Once back in her home country, Hattie married her hometown sweetheart John Ulmer, who had served in the Navy during the war. It took her about a year to be able to hear or see a plane without it reminding her of her war experience in Europe. “It was great to get home,” she said of her return. Hattie was interviewed about her time in the WAC for the article ‘2 ships and 45 days’ which was published in the magazine America in WWII. Today she is 94 years old and enjoying the world and country she served to preserve.