On a pitch black evening the night before Thanksgiving in the middle of World War II, A dozen Radcliffe students traveled to a military base in a remote area on the coast of Massachusetts to entertain troops watching for enemy submarines.

"We were in the mess hall. There was a big pot-bellied stove at one end," recalls Marilyn Whisman Tyler '45, who organized the two dozen women who made up Radcliffe's entertainment Unit.

"[Beverly Maynard Jeffers '45] had this song and dance member. She fell over backwards off the stage into the coal bin, with her legs sticking up," Tyler said. "The men thought it was wonderful. They thought it was on purpose."

"She just got up and smiled and waved," remembers Tyler.

The members of Radcliffe's class of 1945 who spent four full years in residence at the College are the only alumnae to have attended school for the entire war.

"Then came Pearl Harbor, December 7, 1941," reads the Fiftieth Reunion Book. "The next day a mass meeting was held in Agassiz House. [Radcliffe's President Ada Louise Comstock advised, it is our] `immediate duty to continue our college work in order to prepare ourselves for the organization of a peaceful world."

Four years later, as the class prepared to graduate, the somber mood had changed.

"1945 was a spring of celebrations: V-E Day Celebration. W.K. Jordan Address' (5/11/45)," the reunion book reads.

Throughout their years at Radcliffe, the women were urged to participate in the war effort. The reunion book records knitting sweaters for the Red Cross, performing in benefit shows, apple picking, watching for enemy planes, ecouraging the study of math and science and complaining in the spring of 1945 that too few undergraduates were doing was work.

But in the fall of 1943, according to the reunion book, half of all students were doing some sort of war work.

"Everybody's boyfriend was off someplace," Tyler recalls.

"We all had boyfriends; we all had brothers, fathers who were in the war," says John Keenan '45-'44. "There were people...in my dorm who had loved ones who were killed."

"Everybody wanted to do something then," remembers Patricia M. Sheehan '45. "There was a clear cause and everybody was in agreement. You felt guilty if you didn't do something."

Volunteer Work

The Entertainment Unit first performed at the Radcliffe College United Nations War Relief Benefit, a show and carnival Radcliffe students sponsored to raise money for war relief, and continued to perform for troops on weekends through 1944.

"It was really a kick. We had dancers and singers and piano players and stand-up comics," recalls Tyler. "They were really marvelous girls. They had made up these songs and dances."

Each weekend, the Red Cross took the women to hospitals and bases too small to be visited by professional performers.

"People needed entertainment," says Tyler. "There wasn't much going around."

"We did the Danny Kaye stuff, whatever we could do to entertain them," she says, adding that the isolated troops were easy to please. "They were great audiences. All you needed was two legs and a skirt."

Tyler had studied ballet before coming to Radcliffe in 1941. She performed a dance for the Entertainment Unit, but hit a pair of rainbow striped men's boxers underneath her ballet costume.

"I'd start doing this very formal...dance. You could just hear the moans of these boys," she recalls. "Then I would do something like a handspring and they could see the striped pants."

"It was a lot of fun because they were sure [the dance] was going to be something awful," Tyler says.

One night Tyler performed her handsprings and backflips inside a airplane carrier with pipes hanging from the ceiling.

"I didn't realize how low the top of the room was," she says. "When I came off the stage, the girls said, 'We thought you were going to get hung up. You just missed those pipes."

Tyler's hidden boxers were not the only undergarments which attracted the troops' attention, she remembers.

"One day, Dean Mildred P. Sherman called me up," she

One night in the midst of gas Radcliffefirst-year was forced to drive out to pick her upafter the young woman's secret finance showed upon the family's doorstep.

Following a that incident, Sherman requiredthat a chaperone accompany the Entertainment Uniton all their trips. But Tyler says the chaperonedidn't help matters any.

"The chaperone was the wildest one of thegroup," Tyler recallls. "We were up on stageperforming. But she was out [in the audience]making out with all these boys."

War work continued through vacations school,according to "Adapting to Change," an unpublishedpaper on the Radcliffe Class of 1943 by MeredithWolf '95.

"During the summers, Radcliffe women worked infactories and laboratories to help with the wareffor," Wolf writes.

Tyler also did some volunteer work at thehospital, stretching old used bandages to make newones. But she says she did not find the work veryfulfilling.

"I felt they weren't using my abilities totheir fullest potential," Tyler says.

Sheehan volunteered with French naval officersin the burn ward at Massachusetts GeneralHospital.

"We were making up for the lack of help at thehospital," she says. "One of my duties was to gotalk to them because my French was fairly goodthen."

"They didn't talk much about the war," Sheehanrecalls. "They talked about their families andbooks. They just wanted to talk in French."

The Radcliffe women had to balance theirvolunteer efforts with their academicrequirements.

"There was some feeling of should [we] be goingto college or not," Sheehan remambers. "Theadministration kept assuring us that it would bemore valuable if we finished our work."

Sheehan says the administration encouraged thewomen to study science in order to help nationaldefense.

"They pushed people toward science programs,"she says. "There was a sense that if you werecapable, you really should major in science."

To assist in the war effort, "many Radcliffestudents took practical classes such as motormechanics, first aid or cryptography," accordingto Wolf.

Women in Uniform

Phyllis Freeman Calese '45-'49 used herchemistry studies in her two years with theWomen's Army Crops (WAC).

"One of the factors was that the GI Bill hadbeen enacted, and I had to leave school because Ididn't have any money," Calese says. "I thoughtthis would be a way of finishing up."

Claese says she had intended to go into theArmy Medical upon joining the WAC.

"It was a recruiting gimic," she remembers."You were supposed to be able to choose what youwanted to do."

She spent 16 weeks in x-ray technical training.But by the time her course work was finished,there was no need for x-ray technicians.

"They saw that I had been a chemistry major, sothey sent me to the Chemical Warfare ProvingGround at Dugway in Utah where they devisedincendiary bombs and napalm," she says.

Calese worked as a photo lab technician and anassistant in the meteorology section.

"I don't regret it. It was an interestingexperience," she says. "It was the first time I'dbeen away from home. I saw a lot of the country. Isuppose in that sense it was good."

Keenan remembered another classmate who leftschool to join the armed services.

"[She] had two brothers in the Pacific," Keenansays. "She felt she had to do something. I've hadtremendous respect for her ever since.'

According to Wolf's paper, almost 10 percent ofRadcliffe's class of 1943 joined the armedservices after graduation.

Many women took advantage of an acceleratedtrack of year-round courses that allowed them tograduate in three or fewer years.

According to the Fiftieth Reunion book, about30 of the 240 members of the entering class of1945 chose to accelerate their first year.

Keenan joined the Women Approved for VolunteerEmergency Service (WAVES), the female branch ofthe Navy, during her senior year at Radcliffe.

"I was one of probably 25 Radcliffe people whotook a special course that prepared us for work inthe WAVES," she says. "It was a secret course. Weweren't supposed to talk about it. That peakedcuriosity."

For security reasons, Keenan says she willcan't discuss what she learned in the course, butshe and her classmates were all sent to theNational Security Agency in Washington, D.C..

"I know I would be going to Washington as aresult," she remembers. "That was a prettyexciting place to be in the middle of the war andthat I would be working with a lot of people Iknew from Radcliffe."

Keenan graduated in October 1944 in order tocomplete her training and join the WAVES.

"Because the last midshipman's class atNorthampton began on October 20 and the HarvardCorporation didn't meet until October 25, they hadto have a special meeting [to award degrees]because we couldn't get into midshipman's schoolwithout our A.B.s," Keenan says.

The WAVES occupied the top floor of Radcliffe'sBridge Hall from January 1943 until July 1945.They studied across the river at Soldiers Fieldwith the Naval Supply School.

Keenan so enjoyed her time in the service thatshe continued in the Naval Reserves for 20 years,working as a personnel and training officersetting up national security training units.

"It gave me the GI Bill..which enabled me to goback graduate school," she says. "that was a realincentive. It made graduate school or collegepossible for many, many people."

Keenan took a 10 month program in businessadministration from Harvard Business Schoolprofessors.

"I made baby rattles for a month on an assemblyline," Keenan says. "It was the most valuableeducational experience I've had in my life. And Iowe it all to the secret course I took atRadcliffe."