A REAL GO-GETTER
THE OLIVE BRITT STORY
Story & Photo by Zack Coco
The enthusiastic and ever ambitious Olive Britt sat at a desk in Washington D.C., earphones on and typing fast. She was a small-town girl from Mississippi who had worked hard at secretary school before being employed by the Federal Communications Commission during World War II. Olive was considered a fast typist and was assigned to type Hitler’s speeches late at night after they had been translated and recorded in English on cylinder disks. “I would type the speech, and interpreters from all nationalities would be there waiting.” Men in dark suits gathered around Olive, smoke from their cigars filling the air as they watched her type. They impatiently turned the cylinder of the typewriter to see what the next sentence was.
Olive got off work at seven in the morning and walked three blocks to her room at the YWCA. Along the way, stores showed reels of how the war was progressing. Because she didn’t own a radio, Olive regularly stopped in and paid 20 cents to see war news that she had just typed the night before. “At that time, I took it for granted. You just did. You were doing what you could toward the war effort.”
Olive wanted to enlist in the military when the Women’s Army Corps was formed, but because typists and secretaries were so scarce that the Federal Communication Commissions would not release her right away. After they finally agreed, Olive enlisted and was sworn into service at the Pentagon before being sent to Georgia for basic training in December 1943.
She was then stationed at an anti-aircraft base in Georgia where 95 mm and 105 mm guns practiced every night. The ground would shake from endless explosions. Olive had a desk right outside the general’s office where she typed and took dictation, but some men were not happy to see women taking their safe office jobs. “On my first job, I replaced two men one week apart. Clapper and Kehoe both left very upset that I had replaced them.”
Olive worked on service records, each word painstakingly printed in record books the size of a passport. Each detail of the soldier had to be carefully printed. A camaraderie formed among the men and women in service. Olive received gifts of silk hankies, cushions, and souvenirs from soldiers stationed overseas. She corresponded regularly with them until one day, they would stop writing. Sadness and pain washed over Olive as she had to realize the deaths of her penpals.
In Olive’s experience, many officers and enlisted men resented the WAAC at first, but finally realized that women could fulfill a job and help the war effort. However, women were only given the safe jobs of secretarial work. Women were not allowed to participate in the obstacle course, shoot guns, or operate vehicles. While at Fort Knox, Kentucky, Olive spent weekends at her favorite place—the motor pool. The soldiers at the motor pool would allow her to drive a 4-ton truck forward and backward, but only to the edge of the motor pool. A few of the soldiers Olive knew drove tanks and offered to teach her. She learned to drive on weekends and eventually was given a license undercover. “Until today the Army didn’t know that I learned on their dime how to drive one of those tanks!”
While serving in the WAAC, Olive met her husband George Britt when they were both stationed at Fort Bragg, North Carolina. One Friday night, Olive was walking from the women’s barracks to the airport to see if she could get a quick flight to Fort Knox. It was a long way to walk, so she hitchhiked to save time when a soldier driving a jeep suddenly pulled up beside her. He asked what the trouble was, and Olive replied that she wanted a ride to the airport. “Well, if you’ll come and have breakfast with me in the mess hall, I’ll take you over,” he said. Olive agreed. After sharing breakfast together, the soldier took her to the airport where she got a flight to Fort Knox for the day. Olive got back to Fort Bragg at 9 o’clock that night and saw the same soldier lingering around the airport. “This same soldier, an Air Corps guy, was there. He greeted me, and I was so surprised, but I still thought, ‘Well, it’s coincidence.’ ‘I’ll give you a ride home if you’ll stop at the club,’” the soldier said. Olive agreed once again. The next morning at breakfast, the soldier was in the mess hall. “He started appearing everywhere I went.”
Two weeks later, George Britt asked Olive to marry him. They waited six months and on October 5, Olive and George were married at Chapel 13, kicking off a marriage that lasted 44 years. Olive served two more years before leaving the military behind and raised two children. Years later, ambitious and energetic as ever, Olive bought a 1942 Willy’s Jeep that she is now working on restoring. “I fell in love with my little Willy. It took me 64 years to get that thing.” When thinking back on her service with the WAAC, Olive said, “You do what you gotta do when you gotta do it. When you’re in the middle of it, you don’t think about it as being exciting. You just want to get through and do the best you can.”
Zach Coco & Grandfather
Zach Coco has spent thousands of hours over the course of four years-time to preserve the legacies of the men and women who served during the world’s greatest conflict in human history, so their sacrifices may be learned of by future generations, and to never be forgotten or lost to the sands of time.
To find out more about Zach, visit: picturesforheroes.com