HomeMy WebLinkAboutWay of the WAVES - Review
The Way of the WAVES
by Marie Bennett Alsmeyer
A condensed review of The Way of the WAVES ,written by Dr. Susan H.
Godson, McLean Va., for Minerva: Quarterly Report on Women and the Military.
Vol. I, No. I, Summer 1983.:
In 1942 the Women's Reserve of the U.S. Naval Reserve began with a few
dozen women and by the end of World War numbered 86,000 officers and enlisted
women. They paved the way for women's permanent place in the U.S. Navy. Yet, little
has been written about these trailblazing women.
Marie Bennett Alsmeyer has recently made two significant contributions to the
sparse literature. In The Way of the WAVES she has described her own experiences
in the wartime Navy and has demonstrated the value of memoirs as primary source
materials.
Typical of many who volunteered for naval service. Alsmeyer was a wide-eyed,
naive, immensely enthusiastic 20-year-old who wanted to help win the war. The Way
of the W AVES chronicled her 30 months in the Navy by following her from a small
town in southern Texas through her duties at Oak Knoll Naval Hospital in California.
Alsmeyer was highly introspective, and the reader watches her quickly
transformed from a jaunty school girl into a sensitive woman. She cites her own duties
and thoughts as well as relationships with others. Making no pretense of producing
well-researched history, Alsmeyer acknowledges basing her book on letters written to
her mother and her own memories. Her writing is clear, often graphic. but sometimes
disorganized.
This book, along with Joy Bright Hancock's Lady in the Naw. are important
steps in recording the story of women in the Navy and forms the primary source
materials for a thorough, scholarly history of women in the U.S.Navy. Such a study is
long overdue and badly needed.