Mollie and Jack Schaffer
My mother, Mollie Weinstein Schaffer (from Detroit) enlisted in the WAC (Women’s Army Corps) in September 1943. After completing basic training, she was stationed Wilmington, CA and then Fort Oglethorpe, Georgia. Then she was sent to the European Theater of Operations-- London, Paris, Versailles and Frankfurt. She worked in Medical Intelligence, ascertaining what was happening in the countries they were going into, and keeping count of the number of patients that needed care in the hospital. She took dictation on medical intelligence activities on belligerent nations, handled all secret and confidential material. Maintained all files. For my mother, the war was real and fearful. She didn’t know from day to day when the air aids would strike. (This is when she was stationed in London.) She was honorably discharged in October 1945.
My dad, Jack Schaffer (from Chicago) enlisted in the Army in April 1942. After basic training, he qualified for officers training. He became a Second Lieutenant, and for the next two years was sent to different camps in the Southern United States where he taught enlisted black men how to handle and drive trucks. He later was promoted to Captain, given a company, and then was shipped to India where he served in the CBI Theater (China, Burma and India). It took him forty days to travel from Los Angeles to Calcutta by boat. There, he took convoys of trucks filled with supplies, from India to China through the Himalayan Mountains. This helped to rebuild the Chinese economy by replacing the food and clothing that the Japanese had stolen. The areas where my dad traveled with his conveys were never under attack because the United States had control of the air. In December 1945, my dad was relieved of his duties there and sent back to the States where he was responsible for handling war materials. Eventually he joined the Army Reserves where he retired as a Major in 1967.
