NYT OPINION: My Mother Returned From World War II a Changed Woman
By Luis Alberto Urrea
Section: Opinion
Source: New York Times
Published Date: May 12, 2023 at 03:00AM
Her nightmares woke us nearly every night, leaving her hoarse. She had inexplicable outbursts of anger during the day. A battered army footlocker in the living room held her mementos, but my mother carried World War II inside her like a ghost. She had never been a soldier, but she volunteered to serve with the Red Cross Clubmobile Service and followed the troops into combat.
The Clubmobile Service was essentially a mobile social club for the battlefront. The “Donut Dollies” drove two and a half-ton GMC trucks, three women to a crew. In the back of the truck: a galley with huge electric urns for making coffee and a doughnut machine, a record player, sometimes letters from loved ones to be delivered. My mother was trained to always be a friendly face, ready to listen, comfort and encourage. Which meant she and the other women were also direct and secondhand witnesses to everything that happened during that brutal war. I now recognize my mother was tortured by PTSD, her nightmares and outbursts classic symptoms of something she would never understand: After all, “battle fatigue” was for the boys.
By Luis Alberto Urrea
Section: Opinion
Source: New York Times
Published Date: May 12, 2023 at 03:00AM
In her World War II photographs and those of her friends, my mother is laughing and bright-eyed in every single one. I almost don’t recognize her.
At the end of World War II, my mother, Phyllis McLaughlin, was sent home after weeks in a battlefront hospital tent, her legs wired and sutured together. She had tumbled off a mountain in the Bavarian Alps in a Jeep accident that nearly killed her. Her scars were familiar to me, born 10 years later, but I did not understand that the wounds from her service would never heal.Her nightmares woke us nearly every night, leaving her hoarse. She had inexplicable outbursts of anger during the day. A battered army footlocker in the living room held her mementos, but my mother carried World War II inside her like a ghost. She had never been a soldier, but she volunteered to serve with the Red Cross Clubmobile Service and followed the troops into combat.
The Clubmobile Service was essentially a mobile social club for the battlefront. The “Donut Dollies” drove two and a half-ton GMC trucks, three women to a crew. In the back of the truck: a galley with huge electric urns for making coffee and a doughnut machine, a record player, sometimes letters from loved ones to be delivered. My mother was trained to always be a friendly face, ready to listen, comfort and encourage. Which meant she and the other women were also direct and secondhand witnesses to everything that happened during that brutal war. I now recognize my mother was tortured by PTSD, her nightmares and outbursts classic symptoms of something she would never understand: After all, “battle fatigue” was for the boys.
Read more at: https://www.nytimes.com/2023/05/12/opinion/women-ww2-redcross-clubmobile.html
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