Eighty years after WWII, Red Cross volunteer Ginny Allen recalls her service

Ask 102-year-old Ginny Allen about COVID-19, and she scoffs.

"If you spent World War II in India," she said, "this pandemic is really nothing."

Allen's temperature spiked to 105 degrees with dengue fever in Calcutta during her stint as a Red Cross volunteer. When a soldier in Agra asked her to write a letter home the day before he died from polio, Allen was placed in quarantine and her throat sprayed daily in that pre-vaccine era. And Allen's pregnant mother, Leona, survived the deadly 1918 flu when Ginny was in the womb.

Born Virginia Claudon in 1919, Allen was nicknamed "G.I. Jill" during WWII for her upbeat radio programs broadcast to Allied troops in the China-Burma-India Theater. The military hoped her daily shows, complete with big band tunes, would boost morale and offset the propaganda broadcasts aired by the English-speaking Japanese woman known as Tokyo Rose.

"My show was light and airy," Allen recalled during a telephone interview from her apartment at the Episcopal Homes in St. Paul.

"Whether they were on a ship in the ocean or up on a mountain, our men were isolated and inclined to believe the lies and hogwash Tokyo Rose was telling. I informed them that we were not losing, the Japanese were not sinking all our ships."

The Library of Congress has captured excerpts of Allen's oral history, along with her 22-page memoir (tinyurl.com/GinnyAllenInterview). She reminds us that the Greatest Generation didn't comprise only men in battle or "Rosie the Riveter" women contributing back home.

"My story is rather common and not that unique," she said. "In those days, everyone was dedicated to doing something."

Allen grew up in Illinois and Palm Beach, Fla., and graduated from the College of William and Mary in Virginia, majoring in English and French. Her first foray into wartime service was grim, assisting wounded troops at a hotel-turned-hospital in Palm Beach.

"I soon learned to blind my eyes to the tragedy of lost limbs, blistered and missing faces," she wrote. Realizing a sense of humor helped, "the legless were promised a dance when they had improved."

Just as she was cleared to work in the intelligence office at a nearby air base, Allen's fiancé, Lt. Langdon Long, was killed when his plane was shot down over Africa.

"That was the impetus for volunteering" with the Red Cross, she said. "I just said to myself, I've got to do something."

"Helmets became the receptacles for seasick souls," she wrote.

As she broadcast radio programs from India, Allen said rumors started to circulate that she was having an affair with an officer. She went so far as to undergo a physical exam — "my first step in proving the rumor to be the major lie that it was."

She then concocted her own fib, saying she was engaged to Signal Corps Capt. James Scribner Allen, an acquaintance from Florida who was then serving far away in Okinawa. Sporting an engagement ring lent by a friend, the ruse worked.

"I had no more problems with cavorting G.I.s," Allen said. "A couple little lies were worth taking care of my reputation."

Shortly after the Japanese surrendered, movie star Melvyn Douglas — then an Army officer — tapped Allen to perform in a Noel Coward play for the troops in Calcutta. Soon she was reassigned to Shanghai, where her friend and mock fiancé, "Scrib" Allen, surprised her with a visit.

Allen acknowledged earning accolades and awards over the years, including a 2008 commendation from the state of Minnesota "for serving your country and the principles of freedom ... as well as paving the way for future generations of women military members."

She remains baffled that while WWII Red Cross volunteers are considered veterans, they've never received veterans or educational benefits.

"It's unjust, but we never regretted our volunteerism," she said, still humble after all these years. "I just followed orders."