Persis Ladd Herold '44 left Radcliffe aftergraduation to work for the Office of StrategicServices (OSS), the predecessor of the CentralIntelligence Agency (CIA).

Herold worked in the counterintelligencesection doing "low-level office work" inWashington, D.C. In November, she was transferredto London, where she remained until July 1945.

"In London, one of my assignments was to gothrough photographs of people in the Germanintelligence service," Herold says. Her job was tofind the best photographs of each suspected agent,she says.

Although women could not fight in combat,Herold says she was still able to experience thethrill of victory.

"I was in London on V-E Day," Herold says. "Thechurch bells rang for the first time since thebeginning of the war." During the war, the ringingof church bells would have been a signal that aninvasion was occurring, Herold says.

"It was extraordinarily moving," she says.

A Role in Support

Support services, such as that which Heroldprovided in intelligence played a crucial role andattracted many Harvard soldiers, partly throughspecial programs.

Bernard Rubin '44-'43, who transported tanksduring the war, joined the Navy through its V-7program, a war-time equivalent of the ReserveOfficer Training Corps (ROTC), which givesfinancial assistance to students. During the war,the naval recruits lived and trained in Eliot andKirkland Houses.

Commissioned as an ensign in May 1943, Rubinwas assigned to a Landing Craft Tank (LCT), whichcarried six Sherman medium tanks in a convoy boundfor Guadalcanal in the Solomon Islands.

A few months after arriving in Guadalcanal,Rubin was assigned to the atoll of Ulithi, a tinygroup of islands southwest of Guam, "which wasseized from the Japanese with tremendous loss oflife," he says.

Ulithi became a major supply point for Alliedforces in the Pacific, and was designated a fleetanchorage, Rubin says. Every kind of ship, fromaircraft carriers to transports, came there toreceive new supplies, he says.

The atoll was surrounded by underwater nets tokeep out Japanese submarines.

"My job was to go back and forth and takethings to shore," Rubin says, calling it "a sortof supply service."

Rubin says his most dangerous task wasextracting unexploded shells from Yap Island anddumping them at sea.