Narrator: Wilma Herren Interviewer: Andrew Ward  AW: What was your job? WH: I was  a property clerk [at Fort Bliss in El Paso, Texas]. AW: What was a typical day like? WH: Well you kept track of the property that the Quarter Master Corps had assigned to the military units that were stationed there on the base. The property was mainly mattresses, stuff like that, things they use. This was one of the many civilian jobs the military had. AW: Was there a reason you didn't enlist? WH: I never thought about it (laughs). I wasn't interested. Interviewer: KC Haas Narrator: Anne Krizanauskas KH: What was your job or assignment in the military? Describe a typical day. AK: Well when we finished basic training at the fort, we were sent down to hotels in  downtown Des Moines, and I was sent into the administration section that was the Savory Hotel, and women that were going in the motor corps went to the Chamberlin. At the end of our months training we were sent back to be the cadre for the new recruits coming in. So my first job was a training sergeant and supply sergeant combined. Then I went to officer candidate school within a year. KH: What do you remember about living in the base? What were conditions like? AK: You have to know when we went to find a place to train women, they had a lot of difficulty because they had no where to go. And many of the existing bases at that time were training men, so Fort Des Moines was an abandoned calvary post. The first ones that went in--they converted the  stables, so they put our beds in the stables. There were 4 beds and two wall lockers and a foot locker so there were 240 of us in each stable. Nobody complained because we were all excited, and everything they did was an experiment...what I remembered most probably was that they set up two bathrooms at the back. At first, we had what you would call a "gang" shower because they set up shower heads in one big room.  But they found that a lot of the women (since they were not accustomed to that) a  lot of the women would wait for lights out and figure out who was in there and go back and take a shower in private. So we were wondering around all night before revelry and that's why when the first women's officers graduated and were assigned, they asked for separate showers. So walls were put up and shower curtains.