Italy to Africa to Italy to home

By JUSTIN HARMON/Staff

It was 1942. Japan had bombed Pearl Harbor a year ago. World War II was in full swing. And Verna Mahaffey’s blood, like many Americans’, was running red, white and blue.

“It was a patriotic type of time,” she said.

When the country realized that the war was chewing up its manpower, the Women’s Army Auxiliary Corps – later just the Women’s Army Corps – was commissioned. Mahaffey wasted no time in joining the first contingent of the newly commissioned service branch.

She wouldn’t be dodging German gunfire or dropping bombs. She would be a switchboard operator. It was the only way she was allowed to serve her country. And she was proud to do it.

“We were not in the line of fire,” she said. “It was against the rules of the WAC.”

Mahaffey said she never had any problems in the “man’s Army,” even if the bill to get the Corps commission met some resistance in Congress when first introduced.

“We were all treated very nice. Personally, I didn’t have any problems,” she said. “Some probably did, but I can’t recall anyone I knew immediately that did.”

The Corps members and the servicemen in the regular Army were essentially segregated. Mahaffey said each lived in separate camps with guards at the gates of those camps.

“The only man in the entire camp was an old man who kept the furnace going,” she said. “If you joined the service looking for a fella, you came to the wrong place.”

Mahaffey and her group of WACs spent their war in support role for the soldiers on the front lines. It wasn’t exactly cushy duty.

Her first overseas trip was to Italy, where she would operate switchboards for field telephones. The boards weren’t set up when she arrived she said, and she and the others were kept there for weeks with nothing to do. Then came the order to transfer. Mahaffey and her fellow Corps members moved to Africa. The trip, she said, was memorable, mainly because it was so bad.

“It was total misery,” she said. “The food was bad, we slept in hammocks with fleas… they were strung over tabled and chairs.”

Once in Africa, Mahaffey said they played the waiting game again, with no military jobs to do. Not that there wasn’t work. She and the other lived in an abandoned school. One of her first assignments was toilet duty.

“The latrines were a total mess. The local people had been using them for years… they were totally unusable,” she said. “So the captain said to put on our gas masks and clean it up.”

A few weeks in Africa and more orders trickled down. Mahaffey and the others were headed back to Italy, to do the job they were assigned in the first place.

The voyage back was a bit more pleasant.

The ship they sailed back to Italy was outfitted for French officers, Mahaffey said.

“It went from ridiculous to sublime,” she said.

The beds, she said, were beautiful. It was the first time in some time any of the girls had seen a white wool blanket.

Once back in Italy, Mahaffey said she and her Corps stayed put till the end of the war.

To pass the time, she and friends would go out after work. And, yes, she dated.

“We dated quite a lot,” she said.

In fact, it was on one of those dates that Mahaffey met her future husband, John. In 1945, Mahaffey left Italy again. This time to go to Abingdon, where she still lives.

Though she looks back with fondness, Mahaffey said if given the chance, she wouldn’t do it again, at least not in today’s climate.

“This is just a different war,” she said. “I wouldn’t put my life on the line for it.”

Justin Harmon can be reached at 628-7101 or