With most of the eligible boys in the Army and few to date, Helen (Kogel) Denton joined the Women’s Army Corps (WAC). After a short basic training period, Helen became a recruiter in Kansas and Missouri before going to Fort Crook, Nebraska to continue her service.
As secretary to the post commander, she immediately raised her hand to volunteer when a telegram came in asking for a person to join GEN Dwight Eisenhower’s staff in England. A short training period by the FBI on military security, a ship ride with 30 other WACs and several thousand soldiers aboard the Queen Mary, and Helen found herself in England. Assigned a top secret assignment that she did not talk about for 50 years, Helen spent many days in early 1944 in a closed room, typing the orders for Operation Overlord, the invasion of Normandy, France, known as D-Day.
Helen covers her experiences as a soldier and a member of the “greatest generation.” Read on to learn about Helen’s experiences dodging V-2 bombs in London, meeting her future husband after she waded ashore on Utah Beach in July 1944, and her experiences as one of the first WACs to enter and work in a liberated Paris.
Still going strong at 90, Helen’s experiences since her retirement from Delta Airlines, working as a volunteer with the Red Cross, the Delta Airlines Museum, the Federation of WomenClubs, the Collie Club of America, the Veterans of Foreign Wars, and many other organizations, is a roadmap for those preparing their own journey into their retirement years.
