U.S. NAVY

Mary McGuire

Mary McGuire didn’t run the Navy during World War II, but those who did counted on her. McGuire had been teaching English at Northampton High School in Massachusetts when she enlisted in the Navy in 1943. She was accepted into the officer training program for WAVES, Women Accepted for Voluntary Emergency Service.

Though she had wanted to enter the service earlier, she honored her teaching contract before enlisting.

She attended officer training school at Smith College in Northampton. “It was only a few moments’ walk from my former job,” McGuire said. She graduated as a lieutenant junior grade, a higher Navy ranking than the rank of ensign assigned to most officer training graduates. She went to Washington, D.C., to work in “naval intelligence.”

“In wartime, we couldn’t use that phrase at all,” she said. “It was ‘naval operations.’” McGuire was assigned to a duty office that processed daily events — good and bad — involving all Navy operations. The reports were prepared for the Navy’s “top brass,” which gathered daily to review them and plan strategy.

McGuire said her office was on the floor below the “map room,” where the Secretary of the Navy, its highest-ranking officers and top governmental officials met to plan war operations. McGuire and her co-workers were in charge of updating information on the large map the Navy brass used to track operations. Every night they would take news bulletins from a stream of wire service teletypes and update the map.

“The job was simply to make sure these people clearly understood the amphibious activities we were engaged in,” McGuire said. The Navy operations she reported on occurred chiefly in the Pacific but included some action in the Atlantic.

“The work was routine,” she said. “There were anxious times, and sad times when bad news came in. And, actually, that about tells the story.” McGuire recalls the tensest moments on the job occurring one night when the “top people in intelligence” instructed her office to be “especially alert.”

She said Navy officials were expecting a dual attack by German submarines on Washington and New York. “As it happened, that didn’t occur, but it was very, very scary,” she said. Recalling her service in World War II is bittersweet for McGuire, as was the actual experience.

In Washington, she was among the first people in the nation to learn of Navy losses and casualties. Often she was saddened by personal loss. “I had a lot of students that I heard about,” she said.

At other times the enormity of the loss saddened her. “The heavy cruiser Indianapolis went down with 2,000 crew,” she said. “Nobody in the Navy really knew where she was.” She said the Indianapolis was on a secret mission in the Pacific near the end of the war when a Japanese submarine torpedoed it.

McGuire remained in Washington through 1945, though the demand for her duty ended on Aug. 15 when victory over Japan was declared: VJ Day. (The formal Japanese signing of the surrender terms took place on board the battleship USS Missouri in Tokyo Bay on Sept. 2, 1945.)

 “After VJ Day, the reason for the existence of our office didn’t exist,” she said.

While on duty, McGuire was promoted to full lieutenant. She continued reserve duty after the war and received two more promotions, rising to the rank of full commander. She considers World War II a “tremendous event,” including the contribution of the WAVES, which started with 10,000 enlisted and commissioned women in 1943 and grew to 83,000 in 1944.

“Secretary of the Navy, James Forrestal, said it was the greatest naval achievement in history, and I think it was,” said McGuire. “And it was all necessary. “I’m glad I went in. It was necessary. We were besieged on two fronts, and it was touch-and-go on both.

“I’m glad I went, but now I feel that war is outmoded. We need to substitute better communication, better diplomacy, strengthening the United Nations and that sort of thing.” After the war, McGuire enrolled in Columbia University and eventually earned a doctorate English. While studying at Columbia, she taught there and at the University of Bridgeport.

Most of her college teaching career was spent at Chatham College in Pittsburgh, Pa., where she taught until retiring in the early 1970s. A native of Stonington, McGuire never lost touch with her roots, returning to the family homestead every summer. She moved into the house after retiring from Chatham College.

“In my ’90s, and that’s all I’ll tell you,” she said when asked her age.

—James Straub