![]() The English were bearing up in their particular way, sacrificing, fighting hard, and carrying on, but England was a dark and tired place by 1944. A calm voyage placed her in England, a country that had been ravaged by nearly five years of Nazi bombers, food shortages, and the horrors of total war. After six weeks of training in Washington, D.C., she boarded the Queen Elizabeth, one of 15,000 Americans "the Queen" carried across the Atlantic to war in mid-July 1944. Twenty-five-year-old Liz passed her medical examination and whizzed through the all-important personal interview. Reference letters and physical examinations were essential, but the personal interview was the clincher and, as one official wrote, "often centered around the intangibles of personality." The rigorous selection process accepted only one in six applicants. Recruiting teams traveled the country interviewing candidates. Female applicants for Red Cross postings overseas had to be college graduates, single, and at least 25 years of age. New recruits in Red Cross training at Hurst Hall, American University, Washington, DC., ca. "We just had to go," one of the friends recalled. In early 1944, with two women she had known in college, she joined the American Red Cross. Although excited about her new advertising job in Milwaukee, Liz began to follow war news more closely and to worry about friends in uniform. The war didn't end quickly but became instead the most brutal war in human history. "Like a toothache, I hope it ends quickly," she wrote her aunt soon after American entry. This was now a necessary war, yet she regretted the necessity. will be suckers if they enter it." Pearl Harbor quickly changed her mind. The beginning of another European war in 1939 convinced Liz that "the U.S. ![]() The Great War of 1914–1918 had taught that lesson. Although she joked lightheartedly about professors and classes, she developed a curiosity that kept her engaged with art, music, literature, and international affairs after graduation.Īlong with many of the 1930s generation, Liz believed that America should remain isolated from Europe's tangled quarrels. There she embraced the academic and social life of this small liberal arts school. After graduation from Mishawaka High School in 1936, she went off to Milwaukee-Downer College. Liz Richardson grew up in Mishawaka, Indiana, an industrial town, 100 miles east of Chicago. Her life began in Indiana, moved on to college and career years in Wisconsin, and finished with service with the American Red Cross in England and France in 19. Elizabeth Richardson's story opens a window into World War II that enhances and shifts the usual tales of men, foxholes, and bombers.
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