Alice Goddard
Jordan Shipley
Mr. Thomas
US History, period 2
11 May 2006
Personal Interview with Alice Goddard
Jordan: What is your first memory about how the war deeply impacted you?
Alice: “I was a young mother down in Greensburg. And my husband, he volunteered, he was 35 years old; he would never have had to go, because he was a lawyer…but one day he sat in his law office, and he heard the planes fly over-war planes- and he told his law partner… ‘I feel that I need to do something. I’m going to volunteer,’ and his law partner said, ‘I’ll go with you,’ and they got in a car and went to Indianapolis. They went to the Army first, and his partner went into the interview first. They tested the eyes, and he couldn’t see [from where he was standing], so they told him to take two steps forward. And he still couldn’t see. So they said, ‘Take two more steps forward,’ and he still couldn’t read the eye chart. So they said, ‘Take two more steps forward,” and he ran into the wall. They said, ‘Well, you’re blind. We don’t want you.’ My husband, he had taken it, and he passed. So, his law partner said, ‘Well, why don’t we go join the Navy?’ and he said, ‘Fine, let’s go’ so they went and when they got there…[the same thing occurred]…well, he bumped the board again, and my husband passed with flying colors. Well, his elderly friend had been in the Navy before, and he said, ‘Why do you want to go to the Navy when you’re 35 years old, you have a law practice, you have a little boy? You don’t have to go, you’ll never have to go.’ And he said, ‘I just can’t sit home. When all those planes flew over, I couldn’t do nothing. I know I’m old, but I am a lawyer and maybe I can be of some help.’ So they sent him to Dartmouth College for officer training, and from Dartmouth they sent him to Princeton, and from Princeton they sent him to Ohio State. From Ohio State he didn’t know where he was being sent…but before this, he came home and told me, ‘Alice, I joined the Navy.’ And I said, ‘What?!? Do you see this little boy we have here?...” Well, after he studied at Ohio State, they sent him to Notre Dame. Not too shabby. And he was put at the head of the Department…and that recognized enemy planes and ships… they’d go into a dark room, and use a red light to detect the ships…he was a midshipman, and the boys that were there were all college graduates and had been called into the service.”
Jordan: What was life like during the war?
Alice: “…Everyone had to be careful especially when you ordered the groceries because you might not have enough. I was 200 miles from my home, and I couldn’t go home as often as I wanted, because gas was rationed and there was no gas to get there. But someone in Greensburg that we knew, he sent me ration cards so that I could go down there. But everything was so hard to get…I even had a hard time finding a coat for my little boy. It was hard to buy stuff, even if you had the money…and the people at home…well, I don’t know. I had some friends who had more food in their pantries than the servicemen had. And how they got that, I don’t know. So, someone had to give them that. And their husbands did not have to go into the service. They made lots of money in their professions and got to stay at home, which didn’t sit very well with me. And I know that people had a hard time getting the luxuries they were accustomed to… My husband was sent out one summer to sea. He left out of Dallas, Texas, and he went to Bermuda. He saw action, but he was so sick, this Navy man, this Navy officer, that he just couldn’t keep anything down!...Well, my husband had dark hair and dark eyes, and while he was gone he grew a mustache. He looked so different! I knew that while he was gone he couldn’t wait to get back to South Bend, and when he came back he looked terrible, all watered down! He didn’t look like my husband…As far as the servicemen, we lost so many of them, so many of our good friends who were pilots and got shot down. One family lost two boys and that was just terrible. As far as our housing goes, in South Bend it was very hard for me to find a place to live because I had a little boy. We had to apologize because we had a child. No one wanted that, you see…no one wanted anyone rowdy. But this one place that we went, this lady she had lost a son and she was very upset and so discouraged. My husband talked with her and told her that we had a 22 month old little boy and that I was pregnant, and she was fine with it. She was a lovely lady. So, my husband sent me over to talk with her. She had a daughter she wanted to live with in South Bend. So, we lived there for almost 2 years. It was so nice: a two story house, around nice people. She’d call every once in a while to see how we were getting along. She wanted to know when the new baby would be there…I can’t tell you much about the actual war because my husband did not actively fight in it. But he could have been called at any time even as a reserve. But he had an important job in intelligence. I did actually get to go visit him one time while he was at Princeton. I took the train to visit him. With a little baby boy, it was quite an interesting trip!
My husband was released in November of 1945, and of course we had no home because we had left it. And we lived with my mother for a month; it was very hard to find a home because everyone was looking for one. He bought a house that I had not seen. He went by himself to look for houses because I had a new baby, and he said that people were lined up outside the house behind him. And he said he’d take it. He called me to tell me he’d gotten it, and he said ‘I’m sorry you didn’t get to see it. But if I hadn’t bought it, the man in back of me would have.’ So we lived there 9 years, and raised 3 sons. Well, my husband went back into the law business with the same lawyer from before, and the next year it was election time, and so he did run for office and was elected—and that was a lovely windfall, I might add—and he was a judge on the bench for 30 years, the longest anyone has ever been in our county. And then he retired and we traveled. We traveled a lot. Oftentimes we’d just pack up and go wherever there were empty seats. Oh, it was fun. We would drive to a station and sign up and we’d take clothes for cold weather and clothes for hot weather because we didn’t know where we were going. One night we were sitting with another couple and they called our name…so my husband went up to the counter and they said that our plane was going to Spain. And your name is on the list and you’re next in line. Is that what you want to do? And he said, ‘That’s fine.’ And we were off in 30 minutes!...We often went from one Army base to another, and we lived on bases. Because he was an officer, we always had good accommodations…but anyways, back to the war. We were often short on things, but that was not hard compared to what some went through. I talked to men in the service who saw rough, rough duty. Going through WWII was very difficult for people who had children that age…They did not take care of the servicemen in the time my husband was involved, even though they said they would; until about 4 years ago, when Congress passed a bill that said the servicemen, when they got out of the service were not taken care of, and took care of the insurance for their health.”
Jordan: “What do you remember about the end of the war?”
Alice: “We really believed it was over in November, when we found out our boys were coming home. There was celebrating in the streets. We realized that our boys were coming home. Being at Notre Dame was wonderful. There was wonderful entertainment on the base. There were opera singers and numerous other entertainers. It was really a lot of fun. But those guys had to work very hard, probably harder than they had to work in college. But living through the war was quite the experience”