These were long and desperate sea journeys. On April 16, 1944, a sub the Japanese code-named the Matsu departed Lorient, France, bound for Japan, carrying four German technicians and thirteen Japanese personnel, as well as German antisubmarine countermeasure equipment; torpedoes; radar apparatus; plans for high-submerged-speed subs; and the influenza virus. The Allies tracked its journey via messages sent and received at stages. One message gave the sub’s route through the Balintang Channel, and on July 26, the USS Sawfish sent its own message back to U.S. naval headquarters, saying, “He did not pass… put three fish into Nip sub which disintegrated in a cloud of smoke and fire.” After this hit, the Allied code breakers read messages from Tokyo to Berlin noting that the sub had been headed to Japan to bring supplies, but “our inability to utilize them owing to the loss of the ill-fated ship is truly unfortunate and will have a great effect throughout the Imperial Army and Navy.”
Similarly, on February 7, 1944, a message from Tokyo confirmed that a sub code-named Momi would soon depart Kure, Japan, for Germany. The sub made a four-month journey, arriving in Europe during the D-Day invasion. Berlin sent a message to the sub noting that “Anglo-American forces have landed on French coast between Le Havre and Cherbourg, but your destination is still Lorient.” The cargo included 80 tons of rubber; 2 tons of gold bullion; and 228 tons of tin, molybdenum, and tungsten; as well as opium and quinine. This sub was lost, causing Berlin to message Tokyo: “The disaster which has befallen these liaison submarines one after another, at a time when they were playing such an important role in transportation between Japan and Germany, is indeed an extremely regrettable loss to both countries.”
As 1943 gave way to 1944, the American bombes ran on a twenty-four-hour basis—and their mandate expanded. With the U-boats under control, Bletchley Park asked the Americans to help break the daily keys of the three-rotor Enigmas used by the German Army and Air Force. Louise Pearsall moved to the Luftwaffe effort. The pace remained relentless as the European war thundered on. The women would spend the morning working naval U-boat ciphers and the rest of the day breaking the others. “The attack against the U-boat cipher has been so successful that only about 40 percent of Op-20-G’s ‘bombe’ capacity is utilized for it each day,” said a U.S. Navy memo. “To further the common good, the remainder of the ‘bombe’ time is used to run successful attacks on German Army and Air Force ciphers under the direction of the British.” The bombe machines would be called into heavy use just prior to—and during—D-Day; as the memo noted, “this resulted in a considerable gain in intelligence during a very critical phase of the invasion of France.”
In Dayton, meanwhile, a cadre of WAVES remained at their worktables, wiring wheels to be used as replacement parts. The women felt almost guilty enjoying the war in such lovely surroundings. They played the piano; sang; went into town. The Beverly Hills Country Club, a distance away but worth the trip, had shrimp cocktail for $1, Russian caviar for $2.75, and two floor shows nightly. When the weather got cold, the women moved into a heated barracks. In the mornings Esther Hottenstein, the lieutenant in charge, would come skipping stark naked out of the shower, singing “Oh, What a Beautiful Mornin’” from Oklahoma! The women were pretty much on their own in Dayton, and they liked it.
These women were a select group, and they got along beautifully. There were, to be sure, occasional dramas, and had been all along. One night a commotion developed when it emerged that Hottenstein had inadvertently come upon two women having sex with each other. The others gathered, somebody used the word “queer,” and Ronnie Mackey, one of the youngest, said, “What do you mean, they’re queer?” Charlotte McLeod took her aside and explained. Another WAVES member began wearing her raincoat everywhere. Nobody paid much attention until she was taken to the hospital and gave birth to a boy. The women put the newborn in the Sugar Camp sick bay, using a supermarket cart for a crib. They called him “Scuttlebutt,” the old Navy term for a water cask around which sailors cluster to gossip, and loved him dearly until both baby and mother were obliged, like the same-sex couple, to depart.
Other women at Sugar Camp were in stages of romantic commitment that might have seemed bizarre in peacetime but felt normal now. A WAVES enlistee in Betty Bemis’s cabin was writing letters to her boyfriend, and that boyfriend had a buddy named Ed “Shorty” Robarts with no immediate family to write him. All the girls in the cabin started writing letters to Shorty. Gradually the other women dropped out, but soon Betty, the champion swimmer, and Shorty, the unseen soldier, were engaging in a serious correspondence.
This was not uncommon. The quasi-divorced Iris Flaspoller also was writing a sailor, stationed on Tinian Island, she had never laid eyes on. She and her correspondent, one Rupert Trumble (his nickname was, of course, Trouble), wrote each other every day and developed private jokes. One of the jokes was that they were married and had children. Trumble would write and ask how the children were doing and Iris would make up something amusing to report. Other times he would write to say that he was dreaming of her. One time he sent her an envelope that contained only ashes, to demonstrate how her letters made him feel.
CHAPTER TWELVE
“All My Love, Jim”
May 1944
The letters accumulated each day in the mailbox that was attached to Apartment 632A at 609 Walter Reed Drive in Arlington. Dot Braden would take them out of the box when she came home after her shift or find them waiting on the table when she got home, if Crow or Louise had beaten her home and picked them up first. There was usually a big sheaf. All the women in the apartment were getting and sending letters. Dot corresponded often with both of her brothers, Teedy and Bubba. Curtis Paris’s letters had dropped off, and she lost track of him. She and George Rush kept writing. Dot wanted to dump George but couldn’t quite bring herself to do it. Morale and all that. Over time, though, the letters from Jim Bruce began to take precedence. Jim Bruce was a diligent and faithful letter writer, his handwriting small and precise, his D’s very loopy when he wrote “Dear Dot.” His letters were written on feather-thin airmail stationery, neatly folded in sixths, and addressed to “Miss Dorothy Braden.” Like the other military men, he sent them through the Army Post Office system, which disguised GIs’ overseas locations by using, as a return address, the APO address of the American processing station. The envelopes from Jim always had the distinctive airmail edging, striped like a barber’s pole. The return address would say Lieutenant James T. Bruce Jr., with a U.S. Army Postal Service postmark, usually in Miami or New York.
While some soldiers were serving in secret locations, Jim wasn’t. He was working as a meteorologist for the Army’s strategic air command in Ghana. It was not life-threatening work, but it was an important assignment. His job was to safeguard the lives of airmen, making forecasts that would protect pilots from dust storms and other mishaps.