LUCILE CAMPBELL KRAEHLING
Age: 91
Born: July 24, 1919
Hometown: Elvaston, Ill.
Residence: Palm Springs
Military branch: Women's Army Corps
Years served: April 1943-January 1947
Rank: Staff sergeant
Family: Husband Lyman Kraehling (deceased); son Lynn Kraehling of Naples, Fla.
About this series
Staff writer Denise Goolsby will profile desert veterans from World War II through the end of 2010 — the 65th anniversary of the end of the war. Contact her at (760) 778-4587 or via e-mail at denise.goolsby@thedesertsun.com
Coming tomorrow
U.S. Army veteran Abram I. Chasens, DDS, of Palm Desert.
LEARN MORE: Read about other Coachella Valley residents who served in World War II at mydesert.com/wwii.
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Women's Army Corps veteran Lucile Campbell Kraehling broke up with her high school boyfriend when he proposed marriage right after Pearl Harbor was bombed.
“He said, ‘Let's get married so I won't have to go,'” to war, she said.
At the time, Kraehling, who graduated from high school in 1937, was attending business college in Quincy, Ill. On weekends, she returned to her hometown of Elvaston, Ill., to visit her family.
She and her boyfriend would have a date on Sunday, and then he'd drive her back to college — about 35 miles away.
On one of these car trips back to school, they were listening to the radio when news of the attack came over the airwaves.
That's when he popped the question.
She was shocked not only because he tried to shirk his duty to his country, but also because she'd have to quit college to move near where he was working if they got married.
“I took my ring off and said, ‘Sorry, I'm going to finish school,'” she said. “We just broke the whole thing off.”
Kraehling got an early start in the business world. When she was about 5 years old, she used to help out in the family's general store. She sat on a chair in the back of the store and sorted dates.
The dates came in cardboard boxes and were “all stuck together,” she said. “I would tear the dates apart and put them in little paper bags,” to be sold.
After completing college, she went to work as a bookkeeper at the Hancock County courthouse in Carthage, Ill., where she was a clerk in the War Price and Rationing Board office.
“Right next door was a recruiting station for the guys,” she said. “I had such a patriotic heart, I'd look at that flag and cry.”
When she went home and told her mom she intended to join the military, her mother said, “No you're not.” But she went ahead with her plans.
The next day at the recruiting station, she said, “OK gals, give me the papers.
“I sent three applications,” she said. “To the WAACS (Women's Army Auxiliary Corps), WAVES (Women Accepted for Volunteer Emergency Service) and Marines. The Army came through first.”
Kraehling was sent to Peoria, Ill., to be sworn in, then assigned to Fort Oglethorpe, Ga.
“The table of organization built up really fast,” she said. “A lot of ex-business gals” joined the Army.
“We did recruiting the first year,” she said. “I helped a lieutenant recruit girls from high school.”
Her next stop was Sul Ross State Teachers College in Alpine, Texas, where she served as first sergeant with a cadre assigned to assist women training at the Army base.
“The companies are made up of girls from various training centers, such as Oglethorpe, Daytona Beach and Des Moines, who are sent here to attend Army Administration school for a period of eight weeks,” she wrote in a letter to her hometown paper, the Journal, during her time in the service.
“I work for them more than with them,” she continued in her letter. “(I) see that they get the proper size in clothing, make inspections in the barracks, make out the necessary reports — various duty and detail rosters — and then I am a secretary to the company officers.”
“I also drilled with the girls,” she said.
She was later sent to Dallas, Texas, as a member of the 8th Service Command Headquarters.
“I sat there and typed all the time,” she said. “I got so bored.”
She enjoyed her next assignment — at Camp Wolters, outside of Dallas.
“I was ordering the food for the mess halls and kept the books and paid the bills. I loved it.” But after a couple of years, Kraehling said, “I got real sick and tired of it. I got sent to Modesto, California.”
She was stationed at Hammond General Hospital, where wounded men returning from Japan — those confined to wheelchairs — had come back to recuperate. Former prisoners of war, including “a lot of nurses,” were also being treated at the hospital.
“The Japanese were cruel to our nurses,” she said, saying the women had been physically abused.
As part of their therapy, the “guys did leather work — making purses and belts,” she said. “I was in special services. We entertained the boys. I got to call to Hollywood and get actors to come up and entertain.”
Bob Hope and Bing Crosby were among the stars who she said appeared in the huge, onsite auditorium.
While stationed at the hospital, “I bowled with the men's team — I could out-bowl anybody,” she said, laughing.
The 91-year-old continues to stay physically and mentally active.
“I volunteer a lot,” she said. “You've got to keep yourself busy.”
She works at the Presbyterian Church on Riverside Drive in Palm Springs and is an alto in the church choir.
Kraehling also enjoys volunteering at Desert AIDS Project's Revivals Resale Mart in Palm Springs. Her duties include sorting through the donated goods and pricing the merchandise for sale.
“I work in the back room, where the big bags come through,” she said.
Kraehling is lobbying to get a horseshoe pit installed in her Canyon Estates community.
“I just love to pitch horseshoes.”
