Dorothy tells her story
Dorothy Wilson Schieve joined the Army at age 18, in April, 1942. She served in England and was working in Paris during its liberation. She was discharged in May, 1945.
âI was born in Van, Texas, but my family moved east for an oil drilling boom when I was five. My dad was in charge of building the railroad. When I was 18, we were living in Texarkana, and I joined the Army. You were supposed to be 21.
“My brother was in the Air Force. He wasnât going to get anything on me. I joined and said I was 21. And I got away with it. It was sort of iffy there for a while with my mother, but finally my brother, who was a flier, talked to Mother. He said, âShe can convince them that sheâs 28 instead of 18.â And that was it. She refused keep me home any more.
âJack and I grew up together and we were a twosome. I had another brother, James, 18 years older and a sister, Mary, 12 years older, but Jack was only four years older. We stuck together. I wouldnât do something if Jack didnât approve of it. If I had a date with a boy he didnât approve, heâd say, âNo, youâre not going to go with him,â and I wouldnât. I listened to Jack.”
In the Army
âI went to basic training in Louisiana. The place had been built for a Japanese camp, but it had never been used for that. I had been there four weeks, when on the P.A. system, they said, âPrivate Dorothy Wilson, report to the Commandant immediately.â I thought, âThey found out.â I was scared to death. I went in and this lady said, âWhat Iâm going to tell you, you canât tell anybody. You canât repeat it. Weâre offering you Officers Candidate School. You have 24 hours to think about it. Youâre excused.â I had been in only four weeks.
âI left and went back to my class. The other girls asked me, âWhat did you do?â I said, âI forgot to sign a paper.â Later on that day, another announcement: âDorothy Wilson, please report to the Commandantâs office.â I thought, âTheyâve caught me. They know how old I am.â Another lady in uniform was there said, âWhat Iâm going to tell you, you cannot repeat it. You have been chosen to go overseas. You have 24 hours to think about it.â So thatâs what I did. Thatâs what I chose.â
Overseas Duty in Europe
âAnd away I went the next day. They came in a truck. I was the only one going. I went to an Army base in southern Louisiana. There were men there, too. The women were enclosed in barbed wire and we could not go out singly. We had to have somebody walk with us. From there we got on a train that took us to St. Louis. We thought, âThis is it.â They got us off the train, marched us around, and then put us back on the train. So we knew âOK, this wasnât it.â And away we went to Massachusetts. We were there quite a while preparing to go overseas.
âWe were in a convoy. It was foggy and you couldnât see anything for days. There was a destroyer going around and around us trying to get us to go faster. We were the slowest. It took us forever and a day. When we finally arrived in England, they had built these high steps to get us off this boat, because it had no opening at the bottom. When we came into port, we rammed the heck out of that platform and it fell apart. So we didnât have any way to get off the boat. If youâve ever seen 20 girls cryâwe were dirty, hungry. The ship turned around and went to another docking place and they finally got us off the ship. We were thrilled. Some commandant wanted us to go to breakfast and tell us how great it was for us to be there. All we wanted to do was sleep. It was 4:30 in the morning!
âI was assigned to the European Theatre Operation-U.S. Army. They decided to make the Supreme Headquarters there and had called back some retired generals. I became secretary to Colonel Smith. Eisenhower came from Africa and formed the Supreme Headquarters Allied Expeditionary Force, which was called SHAEF.â
Typing Code
âI was assigned there to Staff Message Control at Bushy Park. They had put tin Quonset huts there. There were four typists sitting at a table. It was all coded. My shift was 11 pm to 7 am. It was cold and damp. We lived there in Bushy Park in separate quarters. We had to type constantly because we had to fill in the whole time. If we didnât have anything to type, we typed nursery rhymes, anything we could think of. We had to do that because the Germans could decode it. So we had to keep somebody typing for literally 24 hours. Each day there were three shifts. We had a hard time sleeping during the day because the other girls were coming back to the bunks when they got off.
âWhen I had a few days off, I took a trip to Scotland just for fun. When I got back I was re-assigned to London. In London I lived in an apartment and ate in restaurants. I was warm. I was in a typing pool. I was sent to Major Mayborn, who was head of public relations. He was known to have a little temper. He had had four secretaries come and go. When I was assigned there, they said, âOh, another one!â So I was assigned to him IF he wanted to keep me. I went down to his office. He asked me where I was from. I said, âTexas.â He said, âIâm from Texas!â And we hit it off great. He even gave me away when I got married.
âWe five WACS stayed in an apartment building in London. We were getting the buzz bombs. Weâd hear them go put-put-put. When you heard them click, you had 15 seconds to take cover. One morning about seven oâclock, I was at the lavatory in front of a window. I heard the put-put-put. My roommate, Jean, said, âIs that a motorcycle or a bomb?â I had just seen a motorcycle go down the street and thought thatâs what it was. But then we heard the click.
âThe building had three floors. We were on the second. We tried to get under the beds. Jeannie was a bit plump. We got her head under the bed. There was an explosion. We were in the center, which was the safest place. All around us, fifty American soldiers were killed and 100 were injured badly. We could hear them screaming, âHelp me, help me. Iâve lost my arm. Come get me!â Jeannie and I helped them. When the bomb blew up there was dirt all over the place. They moved us out to Bushy Park until they found another place for us.”
âI would join up again. I would do it for my country.â
Dorothy continues her story after surviving the bombing of her London apartment:
âAt Bushy Park, I met my future husband. A friend of mine was dating his roommate. One night, my friend said, âCome on, letâs go. Theyâre playing baseball.â She said her friend would bring his roommate, George. I said no. She said, âOh, come on. You donât have anything else to do.â
“So I went. Thatâs how I met him. We dated a couple of times and then my group was transferred back to London. George had to take his company down to the south of England where the ships were going out to France. So I kind of forgot about him and we didnât see each other for a long time.â
Dorothy Schieve
Dorothy’s husband, 1st Lt. George Schieve
Dorothy Schieve
Dorothy Schieve and friends
Paris During Its Liberation
âThe other WACS and I got the word âPack your bags. Do not tell your lieutenant. Just pack and be ready to go. We had these musette bags and the big bags going bump-bump-bump down the stairs. The lieutenant heard all this and came out and asked, âWhere are you going?â We said, âWe donât know.â She said, âYou canât go!â We said, âYes, maâam, we can.â And we got in the back of this truck and took off for the airport and flew to Paris. We flew very low, so if they shot us, we didnât have very far to fall,â Dorothy joked.
âWhen we got to Paris, it was the day before Paris was liberated. We worked on the fourth floor of the American Express building, which was right across the street from the opera house. We heard a gunshot, so we went out to look. There was a ledge on the outside of the windows. We saw a French man with a gun chasing a German down the middle of the street. He had found him in the basement of the opera house. The Resistance were looking for Germans and shooting them. On the ledge, we were saying, âCome on!â and cheering the Frenchman on. Major Mayborn came out and said, âWhat are you doing out here? You could be shot!â
George Schieve Reappears
âOne night we were eating dinner at our hotel, the Scribe Hotel. There were five of us girls around the table. My friend, Jean, saw a man standing in the doorway. She said, âDorothy, that man in the doorway is staring at you.â I turned around and saw six foot-one inch George. He was stationed at Versailles at the time and had come to Paris.
âVersailles was where the main Supreme Headquarters was. George came over and talked to me. We made a date for the next night and we started going out again. He had a Jeep and a driver. So we went around, all over. He was a company commander, an officer; I was enlisted. We werenât supposed to fraternize. But we enjoyed fraternizing very much. George was a commanding officer. He was head of the grocery store for generals.”
Working in Public Relations
âIn the public relations office, we would get letters from Washington when the reporters wanted to come over from the U.S. to write stories about the war. It was Major Maybornâs job to decide who could come and where they would be assigned and for how long. It was my job to type the orders, so every one of them had to come to my desk. I met Dorothy Kilgallen, Edward R. Murrow, and so many others. It was really interestingâthis girl from Texas. By this time, I think I was nineteen! But they all had to come to me.
âOne time I walked by General Allenâs office where he and Edward R. Murrow were talking.”
Dealing with Reporters Covering the War
âSome of the reporters were so nasty. There was one I would have loved to have thrown out. His wife was there. She was working for some magazine. She said something to me that was very complimentary, and her husband said sarcastically, âOh, thatâs her job.â I thought, âThis guyâIâll get back at him if itâs the last thing I do.â
“After they left, I went to Major Mayborn and asked, âWhat are you going to do with him?â He said, âOh, Iâll send him out for six weeks or so.â I told him what had happened, so Major Mayborn cut it short, so instead of six weeks, they could only stay maybe two weeks. Fortunately, I donât know his name. But I got my revenge. His wife was so nice, though. She was interested in women, particularly in Germany. Whether she got to go to Germany, I donât know.â
My Brother Jack, the Pilot
âMy brother Jack was a B-17 pilot. I saw him a few times over there. His plane was shot down on the border of Germany and Holland. The crew members were taken prisoner by the Germans, but all the officers, including Jack, who was the pilot, were hanged. He, the navigator, and the bombardier. They had wanted my brother to teach because heâd been flying since he was 15 years old. But he wanted to fly.
âJack had graduated from high school when he was 15 and went to University of Texas for one year. He came home at the end of the year and said, âOK, thatâs it. Iâm not going to go back.â Dad said, âWhat do you want to do?â Jack said, âI want to learn to fly.â Every Saturday, Jack had taken our truck from this little town that we lived in, to Tyler, Texas, to get fresh veggies and bring them back for the grocery store that Dad owned. While he was in Tyler, he would go out to the airfield. The owners would take him up. They taught him to fly, but he couldnât fly solo because he was too young. That was how he started flying.â
A Wedding in Paris
âJust before Christmas in Paris, we tried to buy gifts to send back to the States, but none of us spoke French, and the clerks in the stores didnât speak English, so that was challenging.
âGeorge and I got married in the American Cathedral in Paris, one week before the war ended. General Mayborn walked me down the aisle. We stayed in Paris until the war ended. We knew we would be separated when the war ended. George said, âIâm not going to let you go!ââ
Dorothy and George and their family lived in Ann Arbor, Michigan. Dorothy worked as an administrative assistant at the University of Michigan Medical School. Sadly, George passed away in 1999. Dorothy later moved to Brevard, NC, to be near her son Ron and his wife.
When Dorothy received the book which includes her story, she said, “I would join up again. I would do it for my country.”
Dorothy Schieve passed away in January, 2020.
This book containing Dorothy Schieve’s story is available. Click the button below and you will be redirected to Amazon to purchase the book.