Oral history interview of Inez Riley Moss

Collection:: Veterans History Project: Oral History Interviews
Title:: Oral history interview of Inez Riley Moss
Creator:: Palmer, Janet
Moss, Inez Riley, 1922-2014
Date of Original:: 2004-02-04
Subject:: World War, 1939-1945--Personal narratives, American
Moss, Paul G., 1918-2010
Stevens, Risë, 1913-2013
Murdock, Jayne May
United States. Marine Corps Women's Reserve
Mary Washington College
Baylor University
United Service Organizations (U.S.)
Waldorf-Astoria Hotel (New York, N.Y.)
V-mail
Location:: United States, California, Orange County, Laguna Beach, 33.54225, -117.78311
United States, California, Orange County, Marine Corps Air Station El Toro, 33.67388, -117.72981
United States, Georgia, 32.75042, -83.50018
United States, Georgia, Atlanta Metropolitan Area, 33.8498, 84.4383
United States, New Jersey, Ocean County, Lakehurst, 40.01456, -74.31126
United States, North Carolina, Craven County, Township 6, Marine Corps Air Station Cherry Point, 34.91501, -76.87915
United States, North Carolina, Onslow County, Jacksonville, Camp LeJeune, 34.6835109, -77.3414639212903
Medium:: video recordings (physical artifacts)
mini-dv
Type:: Moving Image
Format:: video/quicktime
Description:: In this interview, Inez Moss recalls her time in the United States Marine Corps Womens Reserves during World War II. She recalls her early education and her motivation for joining the Marines. She describes learning of the attack on Pearl Harbor. She recalls her trip from Birmingham (Ala.), to Camp LeJeune (N.C.) via Atlanta (Ga.) and her Marine Corps training. She was in the weather service and explained her duties. She describes life in Southern California and the journeys she made while on liberty, including becoming a bit player in the opera "Carmen." She recalls the circumstances of her courtship and marriage. She describes how she got transferred to the East Coast by her Captain/fiance and how they celebrated V-J Day. She relates her post-war education and career and their family's plans to attend the dedication of the World War Two Memorial in Washington, D.C.
Inez Moss was in the United States Marine Corps Womens Reserve Corps during World War II.
INEZ MOSS (see husband's interview, Paul Moss) VETERANS HISTORY INTERVIEW Atlanta History Center February 4, 2004 Interviewer: Janet Palmer Transcriber: Stephanie McKinnell Janet Palmer: My name is Janet Palmer. Today is February 4, 2004, and I am interviewing Mrs. Inez Moss for the veteran's history project at the Atlanta History Center. Mrs. Moss, would you please state your name and spell it. Inez Moss: My name is Inez Moss, Inez is spelled I-n-e-z. You really have to be over 70 to have that name, and the last name is Moss, M-o-s-s. My middle name was Riley when I was in the marine corps. JP: What is your date of birth. IM: July 10, 1922. JP: What branch of the service were you in? IM: I was in the Women's Reserve of the Marine Corps. We did not have a nickname. JP: What was the highest rank that you had in the marine corps? IM: I was a corporal. That was the highest rank. JP: Can you tell me about before you joined the service, something about your life, what you were doing, your daily life? IM: Yes, I had two sisters, and my parents who lived in a small town in south Alabama, Andalusia. And I had great aspirations growing up, and I, college, I went to Mary Washington in Fredricksburg, to see the world. Then I got serious and went to Baylor University at Waco, Texas. I was in pre-med at Baylor. In November 1941 and December 1941, I was in the midst of exams when we had December 7, and I just vividly remember that afternoon in the dorm. It was very dramatic, and we had a dorm mother who was beautiful, gray haired lady, whose son was in mission work for Southern Baptist Convention, and I'm sure she had more concerns that we did, but she comforted everybody. And so that was my first real serious thought about the war, I was too much trying to get through my chemistry course. JP: Were you married at the time? IM: Oh, no, and not thinking about it. JP: When did you join the service? IM: I joined the service in September 1943. JP: And what made you decide to join? IM: Well, in that era of time, I had met a Marine, and I was very impressed with him, and we became engaged. And so I decided that I knew what I was going to do for life, and I had passed out when I was watching an operation, and I decided that that was not for me, really. So that I would plan on being a wife and mother. So that, you have to understand the tenor of the times to, for me to explain why I joined. Everybody was so patriotic and so into the whole spirit of the war and my family had no boys, I was the oldest girl. And my mother said to me one day, if I were your age, I would want to join the service. I don't think she meant that as for me to take her up on it, but it started me thinking, and I thought that I would do that and be our family's representative. And of course, the culture was so totally different. I wouldn't have given a thought about being afraid or they wouldn't, they didn't. So they agreed for me to do that, and I wrote to Paul and told him I was thinking of that, but I don't think he took me seriously until after the fact. And I think was a little shocked, but it was a wonderful experience. JP: And was the _ in the service at that time? IM: He was already overseas. JP: He was overseas at that time. Once you joined, and you went off to basic training, can you tell me a little bit about where you went and what you did and what that experience was like. IM: The _ girl in my hometown joined the same time that I did, and that was great, it was great for both families that we would be together. So we, I really went to Birmingham to apply for Navy but Paul had said so much about being a Marine, so I decided I wouldn't apply for OCS, I would just go into enlisted woman as a marine. So the two of us had papers together to report to Camp Lejune, North Carolina. And it was the first time I had seen Atlanta. We boarded a train in Montgomery and came through Atlanta, we had to change trains. And it was a whole troop train of women going to Camp Lejune, and we had to carry our bags, and I thought Atlanta was the longest, longest train station I had ever seen. And the bags were so heavy, and that was my first impression of Atlanta and Union Station. And we got settled on the train and from there to Camp LeJune it was like a big dorm party, it was just a lot of fun and we sat up all night giggling and talking, and fortunately we had no idea what was ahead of us. Because it was very serious business when we got to Camp LeJune. JP: What was the training like? IM: The training was pretty tough. I grew up sort of on a soft side and never exercised, an outdoors person, and we were given very strenuous boot camp. Up early, exercising, and drilling and all of the things that the men went through. And then we were given all the history of the marine corps and a lot of academic subjects too. And I embarrassed myself terribly when we were out on drill one day and I saw a blue bird, it was the first time I had ever seen a blue bird. And so I just kept marching towards the blue bird and looked around and the whole platoon was going the other way. That, I never got over that. JP: How did the men react to having all these women there? IM: Well, they didn't, we really didn't mix a whole lot with the men at that time. Our training was separate as I remember it. We did have some parties, I remember the first marine corps birthday which is November 9th, and there was a big dinner and dance, and that's about the only time I much remember the men being around, and the mess hall. JP: Other than the physical training, did you get any other specialized training? IM: Not at that point. The, that was pretty full course, and I think that when I came home after boot camp on leave, I slept sixteen hours. That was very strenuous. After boot camp, I was sent to Lakehurst, New Jersey to take special training in aerologist as it was called then, which was meteorology. And there were about eight of us that went from boot camp to Lakehurst, NJ and stayed together. We went from there to El Toro, California. JP: So what did you do there in California? IM: We were in the weather office. JP: You were in the weather office. IM: All of us, all eight of us were. I was very fortunate. I think I was the only one who had not received my degree, and they were just a lovely group of women from California, Ohio, one from Georgia. She claimed to be the daughter of a general, I never did check that out, she said at Fort Benning. And I did run into her near Davison's one day a couple of years after we were out. The training at Lakehurst, NJ was very intensive and very, very interesting. And particularly since it was close to New York City. JP: Are there any particular stories that you remember from your training there or any people, specifically that you remember anything about? IM: I wish I were better at remembering names. I know that I was learning how to fill in a map for the weather office, the weather map, and a general woman, marine woman general, came and looked over my shoulders and I just froze. I couldn't move. I was so intimidated, I remember that. And I remember a Christmas incident when we were entertained at the Waldorf Astoria, and that may have been just my small group who was sort of adventuresome. The USO was wonderful during those days. And marine women were in the minority, so when the USO had a limited number of tickets, the WAVES couldn't qualify because of all the army women, there were so many of them, so we would end up with the choice tickets. And we went to this one dinner that a men's club was having. And that was wonderful, I couldn't believe that I was at the Waldorf Astoria at Christmas time. JP: Once you got to California, then what was your job? IM: Well, we were sent to California the last of February, and we all worked in the weather office. The job specifically was to code the maps every four hours. We would get information on the teletype from stations all over the country of what the wind velocity was, and so we would have one person read that and the other person would make a notation of it. Then when it was all over we would draw the lines to connect the _, and I have one of those maps in my possession, which is, I think I'll frame it one day. We also sent the weather balloons up, now all of this is probably antiquated now. I'd love to visit a meteorology office somewhere. But anyway, that was what we did. We were on duty twelve hours at a stretch and four of us would be on duty at a time, the other twelve. So it worked out that we had 24 hours off one week and 36 hours off the next week. So that liberty was a lot of fun on the coast of California. JP: Where did you go? IM: We went everywhere within the twelve or 36 hours. We went to San Francisco, went to Carmel, went to Laguna beach was very close. And LA and Hollywood. There were, my children can't believe it, I hitchhiked. But in those days, there were platoons and places where, platforms, where you could hitchhike from the base and people would give you a ride to where you were going. And when you were in LA, close areas to you, there were also special places where you would go to get a ride back to the base. And there were busses also that came to pick you up. So hitchhiking was not like you would do today. But my buddies and I went to San Francisco a couple of times and went to Laguna a lot because it was only about twenty miles from El Toro. And we went so much that we rented an apartment for a while, and that was a lot of fun. We really had some interesting adventures. JP: So how long were you there for? IM: I was there about twenty months. JP: What was the time frame? IM: February, what was that, '44, until about May of… it would have to be longer than that, May of '45. I left El Toro because I was transferred by my captain fiancé to Cherry Point, NC. And it was, he had a friend that helped him out with that, maybe that shouldn't be on record. But anyway, I went to Cherry Point, NC, and there I was severely reprimanded because I arrived with long hair which was against regulations, and my punishment was to scrub down shower stalls for three days. And my father was just incensed that his daughter had to do that. So I was at Cherry Point for three months. JP: Why did your fiancé have you transferred over there? IM: He had come home from Iwo Jima, he had leave, and was in California for a while. And he was there about a week and then he had to report to Quantico, and he was going to be an instructor in Quantico, but that's part of his story. But, so, it was much easier to see each other on the east coast and that's where we were when V-J day came. And while I was in California, some of the adventures we had, we went into LA one day and went to the USO and they were looking for, they had two tickets to the opera, Carmen, and Risa Stevens was the star. And there were only two Marines, so she and I were chosen to get those tickets. And so we were made up by Hollywood makeup stars and used as extras and they put us in the window of the scenery and told us to mouth the songs and not to dare sing. So I like to say that I appeared on the stage with Risa Stevens in Carmen, which was a lot of fun. We would go out to the Sunset Strip, and there was one particular restaurant, and you would not… We went to the, is it the Brand_ restaurant, and that was the first time that I'd ever seen B&B on the bill, and we were all so puzzled, what in the world have we ordered that was B&B, it was bread and butter, we were so green. _ The other restaurant, I can picture it but I can't remember the name. But we would go there and order artichokes because you could spend an hour eating an artichoke and watch for celebrities to come in, and when you were making $66 a month, you didn't have a whole lot to spend on dining out. So there, I know one time we met Jackie Oakley and there were others we met. We were there when we met photographers who wanted to take our pictures. So that's why I have these glamorous pictures. You can also see the long hair that was out of regulation. So he fixed us up with makeup, and so I really didn't look like this. But he decided he would take one with a white blouse that he used for photographing the stars, and that's how I got this one. So anyway, that was one of our adventures. And I think it was in that time that I developed my lifelong love of adventures. So then I came to Cherry Point, and I must tell you it was a very dull, boring place after southern California, but the saving grace of that was that on weekends I could catch flights sometimes to DC, Paul could drive down, he actually had a car, and we spent time in Washington. And our great memory together is being together in Washington for V-J day and being on Connecticut Avenue. And I know I was so proud because one of the flyover Navy boys was a cousin from my hometown, and it was, that was just an overwhelmingly emotional time to be there together. COUNTER 202 JP: How did you find out about it? IM: My parents, about him flying? JP: No, you found out about V-J day? IM: I was actually taking a nap in the women's marine corps barracks when they came running through and yelling, everybody was yelling about it and so excited. So it from, I was visiting Paul at that time because they would not let a corporal be on the same base with a captain fiancé, so I had to be at Cherry Point. And I guess they changed that regulation there, but at that time. But then after V-J day, I could wear civilian clothes on leave, and so then I would, I bought some clothes and when I visited him in DC, I would wear civilian clothes. So that he could pull rank on me. That was started the process of our getting out. And he had the hours because of his extensive duty, and he could get out before I could. And then they soon passed a law that if you were married you could get out. So I decided I'd go through with the marriage and we would get out. Then we came to Atlanta and… JP: So back before you were in North Carolina, did you pretty much have the same job? IM: No, I did not. I was a clerk typist. And it was fun to type and read everybody's histories that they were processing out. It was interesting just to do that. So that passed the time, and I looked forward to weekends. But I was only working from 9-5 five days a week. JP: Then you lived in barracks the whole time you were in the service? IM: Oh yes, lived in the dormitories, right. And the women I was with in El Toro and was really with from LeJune on, was a journalist for the paper, I think it was the San Francisco Times, one of the papers in San Francisco, and she had written a poem that she had published, and it was circulated all over the California barracks and all. She was a _ so this poem was written about this, the name of it is I Painted on a Bright Red Mouth. And she later wrote this in a book, and my daughter lives in Washington, our daughters, and we visited the Women's Memorial, and I was able to buy a book written by Jane, and it's a pretty popular book. So the Women's Memorial is a very touching place to go if you're ever in Washington, it's right at the entrance to Arlington. And I also have, very proud to be a charter member of the Women's Memorial group, and that was given to me by my DAR membership. They _ as a member, charter member before I'd ever seen _ I bought this. This is a relief of the different branch of service of the women. And what else can I tell you? JP: So you decided to get married, you were still in the service, and your fiancé, was he already out at, you said he was already out at that point? IM: He was out and flew to Cherry Point to pick me up. We were going to meet my parents in Atlanta to buy a wedding dress, which incidentally has been worn by six in the family, and my trousseau, then we'd go home and I had leave. We had about a week before we married. And then our honeymoon was spent going back to Cherry Point to get me out of service. And so after that week there, he had been at a job in Atlanta, so we came to Atlanta to start our career. Then we got so busy in life that we didn't have much contact with any of our friends from the Marine Corps for a long time, as most people did. You were just anxious to get on with your life. And he has an interesting story telling you how we got back in touch with his group of Marines, and that's been a real joy to us for the last fifteen years, is our reunions with them. And we are looking forward to going to the dedication of the World War II Memorial, and we want to take our whole family, so that's going to be an exciting time for us. JP: What did you once you came back? IM: Well, once we came back, I really was not particularly prepared to do anything, and we thought maybe we would go back to school together and I'd get my degree and he'd get his masters, but the job looked so appealing and we came here. So I just tried to be a wife and then start raising a family. And that's what I did for quite some time. Our youngest, when our youngest daughter went to college, then I entered the real estate world and was there for 21 years. We had three children and so that's been the essence of my life. JP: Have you kept in touch with any of those people that you knew? IM: No, I haven't. I wish that I had. We just drifted apart and I, when we visited California, I was just sick that I had not kept up. I had one friend there who had a home overlooking the San Francisco Bay, which she was very interesting, and I enjoyed the women very much. We were all so separated all over the United States that it was my loss. JP: Could we just back up for a minute, when you were both in the service at the same time and he was overseas, how did you, were you able to keep in touch very well, or how did you keep in touch? IM: Well, the last two days, we have spent reading his letters to me and lots of them. And sometimes he would say that he had received several of mine at the same time because they would be slow getting there. And, of course, when he was on operations, you didn't get any mail. And we were talking about it, he was wonderful to write, how much we did communicate. We really didn't have much time dating before we became engaged so we got to know each other more through correspondence. And now it's so wonderful that email and cell phones that families can stay connected so. And where you would go maybe weeks without hearing anything, so, but we did write a lot. And of course you had the V-mails, the little free mail, and we did write a lot. JP: When he was in Iwo Jima and those places, did you know where he was? IM: Not always, not always. And I certainly didn't know when he appeared in San Francisco. When I had already been on four days leave and he surprised me by appearing and calling and saying I'm back, I'm… so I had to do a lot of rearranging to get some free time to be with him. But it was, it was hard knowing, I see people today you know, they're gone _ months and they think that is a long, long time, and it is. But two years is a lot longer. And so it was great to see him back and not injured. JP: Is there anything that we didn't talk about that you like to, any stories or anything that you'd like, that you can remember that you'd like to include? IM: Well, I know that they'll come to me later, but I think I've talked a lot about me and _ Paul's, and it was a wonderful experience which I appreciate more every day, really, and in the last ten or fifteen years in particular since we've been having reunions with the other Marines who are just like brothers, they are more family that anything. I have grown to appreciate that, and they have been so swell to me, and when they stand up and are honored, they insist that I stand up, too, and I always say you're the ones that did the dirty work, I was just roaming all over southern California having a time. And that was, I do want to, I can say that a year ago, a little over a year ago, I went with my daughter to her professional convention near Laguna Beach and El Toro. The El Toro Marine base had been closed several months earlier, it is no longer there, I was disappointed at that. But we went back to Laguna Beach where I had been, enjoyed so many afternoons there. And went back to the restaurant that was our favorite restaurant, and they pulled out a menu from the time I was there, and you could have _ and two sides and a dessert for $2.75, and it was amazing to find that. It overlooks the Pacific, beautiful, beautiful spot. And it was wonderful to be able to take her and share that experience with her. And while we were talking in the restaurant, the server, she was telling him that that was my favorite haunt, and so after when we were getting ready to leave, a man at the table next to us came over and said I couldn't help but overhear your conversation. And I just have one question for you, I was one of the flyboys, and I want to know if you're responsible for all that bad weather we had. And that was a lot of fun, so that was a great experience to be able to go back, I never dreamed I would. JP: Well, thank you very much. IM: Thank you, it's been my pleasure. COUNTER 359
Metadata URL:: http://album.atlantahistorycenter.com/cdm/ref/collection/VHPohr/id/268
Additional Rights Information:: This material is protected by copyright law. (Title 17, U.S. Code) Permission for use must be cleared through the Kenan Research Center at the Atlanta History Center. Licensing agreement may be required.
Extent:: 29:51
Original Collection:: Veterans History Project oral history recordings
Veterans History Project collection, MSS 1010, Kenan Research Center, Atlanta History Center
Holding Institution:: Atlanta History Center
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