Interview with Alta Milling [Undated]

Miranda:

Miranda.

Alta Milling:

Miranda?

John:

John.

Alta Milling:

John? My name is Alta Milling.

Miranda:

What rank were you?

Alta Milling:

I was what's called a SP5, Specialist Fifth Class, and it's abbreviated S-P-5.

Miranda:

(Inaudible.)

Alta Milling:

S-P-5? That's like a sergeant. Just plain sergeant, E5, Sergeant E5. They have three stripes. Specialist has a different type of rank insignia.

Miranda:

What branch of service were you in?

Alta Milling:

Army.

Miranda:

(Inaudible.)

Alta Milling:

Your dad is too?

Miranda:

Yeah.

Alta Milling:

Is he on active duty still?

Miranda:

(Inaudible)

Alta Milling:

Yeah? Good for him.

Miranda:

How long were ______?

Alta Milling:

I was on active duty for six years and then I moved to the Reserves and stayed for four. So it's a total of ten years.

John:

So how many years were you in?

Alta Milling:

On active duty six but in the Reserves four.

John:

Four?

Alta Milling:

Uh huh. So all together that's ten.

Miranda:

Did you enlist or were you drafted?

Alta Milling:

Because I'm a female, all females are voluntary so I was not drafted and no other women has been yet in the United States

Miranda:

What was your job or responsibilities?

Alta Milling:

I was an admin clerk like a typist or secretary.

John:

Admin clerk?

Alta Milling:

Uh huh.

Miranda:

Were you in combat?

Alta Milling:

No, I was not.

Miranda:

(Inaudible.)

Alta Milling:

Well, in the support structures, which would be the admin or supply, you are supporting the other soldiers. So, for instance, when I was stationed in Germany and the -- of course it wasn't a war going on when I was in Germany; but the soldiers were out in the field training with their tanks and their artillery pieces and, if they had forgotten anything, they would call back to me and I would ensure that they got whatever it was. One time they forgot their trash cans and I had to -- had to send them out trash cans.

Miranda:

What technology did you use?

Alta Milling:

Well, as some of these gentlemen who are here with with me will attest, there wasn't a whole lot of technology. I did have an electric typewriter but no computers when I was in service.

Miranda:

So no electricity?

Alta Milling:

Oh, no, we had electricity but I just -- we didn't have computers. I had a typewriter but it was an electric typewriter.

Miranda:

They had that kind that had that screen, the little typewriter thing?

Alta Milling:

No, we didn't even have that.

Miranda:

But they did, I mean, in the old times they were in the wars, those times, but I do remember seeing that stuff in wars.

Alta Milling:

Well, in some maybe.

Miranda:

But not -- but not all --

Alta Milling:

And maybe it was just the installations where I was didn't have the -- didn't have the computers; but at post -- I was at Post Headquarters at Fort Jackson two times in the protocol office and I didn't have a computer. They just didn't have them.

Miranda:

So no computer?

Alta Milling:

Huh uh, not at that time.

Miranda:

(Inaudible.)

Alta Milling:

Well, I think that it's not too fair for me to answer that exactly because, in basic training, we had good facilities and I was already married so I lived off post and in the government housing. So we had good quarters; but some of the men here, once you get all the stories together, if you can read the stories from the other groups those who were in wartime situations, I'm sure you'll learn a lot about conditions.

Miranda:

What friendships did you form?

Alta Milling:

Oh, lots of friendships. That's one reason why I got back into like a military organization. I belong to about four different military organizations and I missed the -- what we refer to as camaraderie in the military; and even if we're not doing the same job, like mission as you put it earlier, we have something in common that most people don't have and I regret that I did not keep in touch with many, many of the people with whom I made friends but I do still keep in touch with a good many of them and meeting more all the time.

Miranda:

How did you ________?

Alta Milling:

How did I do what, honey?

Miranda:

Relax.

Alta Milling:

Relax? I like to read.

Miranda:

(Inaudible.)

Alta Milling:

I did some sewing.

Miranda:

(Inaudible.)

Alta Milling:

I used to sew, yeah, and I did some crocheting.

Miranda:

Crocheting?

Alta Milling:

Not I'm sure the -- not the typical thing that many soldiers do.

Miranda:

Crochet?

Alta Milling:

Crochet.

Miranda:

Is it where the thing you hit --

Alta Milling:

You have one hook --

Miranda:

-- the disk?

Alta Milling:

No, that's croquet where you have a ball and you hit it with a mallet, that's croquet.

Miranda:

No, no, I mean that thing -- sometimes they use a little thing that's a disk and they shoot it like that. No, wait a minute. That might have been now.

Alta Milling:

Yeah, that's kind of current.

Miranda:

In the cruise ships, that might have been there.

Alta Milling:

I have -- I used to do some hook rugs and I don't know if your parents or your mother or your grandmother or aunts do any hooked rugs.

Miranda:

Hooked?

Alta Milling:

Hooked rugs.

Miranda:

'Cause I don't know --

Alta Milling:

I used to take those kits with me when I had duty at night, what they call C-Q, which is charge of quarters. C-Q, and we have to stay up all night and I would -- I have -- I did about three different rugs during the time frames that you'd sit there and have to pull that duty and I still have one of them. The others eventually fell apart.

Miranda:

What were your thoughts on the war?

Alta Milling:

On the war? Well, I was -- I came in the service at the end of -- toward the end of the Vietnam era so the war was --

Miranda:

You weren't in the 1942, the Japanese --

Alta Milling:

Well, I think that since I was born in 1943 it was a little late. Do I look that old?

Miranda:

No.

Alta Milling:

Thank you. No, and I was too young for Korea; but I -- I was really kind of old even when I went in the service. I was thirty when I went in the service.

Miranda:

That ain't old to be in the service.

Alta Milling:

Huh? That's not old? Well, it's usually too old to start up. I mean it's not too old but it's -- most people join the service when they're rather young, right out of high school --

Miranda:

My cousin, he wants to join the service after he gets out of high school.

Alta Milling:

Uh huh.

Miranda:

So he's working hard. He got expelled for being bad last year --

Alta Milling:

Well, he just needs to strive a little harder. But my thoughts on the war, I don't know how much study you've done with Vietnam.

Miranda:

Well, I do 'cause I do like the stuff -- study about it.

Alta Milling:

You study a lot about it?

Miranda:

Yeah.

Alta Milling:

Unfortunately the general public did not approve of the decision of our government to send troops to Vietnam and they really took it out on the soldiers.

Miranda:

Vietnam?

Alta Milling:

Uh huh, when they should not have. So when they came back from overseas, the soldiers were usually greeted with people throwing things at them or spitting at them. Just not -- one man, I remember him telling me that he went into a bar to get a drink and he still had his uniform on and the bartender refused to serve him. When you're in the service -- when you're in the service and you're given orders to go somewhere, you go. So at least these men and nurses -- the nurses volunteered to go. The nurses volunteered. So that -- but the men, if they were sent to Vietnam, they had to go. They had no choice. So it wasn't fair for the citizens in the United States to take out their anger on the idea that we shouldn't have been there because we knew there were many soldiers who felt that same way but they did their jobs. So when you -- it's -- the expression about don't kill the messenger, you may have heard; but we should never have allowed the general public to treat our soldiers that way. Some of them were even told that, when they stopped in Alaska on their way home, if they had civilian clothes in their bags, they should change into their civilian clothes and put their uniforms away because they don't want to go into the Los Angeles airport with their uniform on. It must have been pretty bad.

Miranda:

Well, they had some killed.

Alta Milling:

Well, I don't know that anybody would go that far but they would sure --

Miranda:

Well, they might if they were like crazy.

Alta Milling:

War is the failure of our diplomats to iron out political problems so it shouldn't be taken -- whatever the anger is shouldn't be taken out on the soldiers.

Miranda:

Did you have a family when you _____?

Alta Milling:

Yes, I did.

Miranda:

(Inaudible.)

Alta Milling:

At that time the Army did not -- most of the services -- oh, dear --

Miranda:

Spilled my tea.

Alta Milling:

Well, that hit the spot, didn't it?

Miranda:

It's on paper. It got wet.

Alta Milling:

Miranda, get her a chair. Is it dry enough for her to sit in? Is there another chair?

Miranda:

(Inaudible.)

Alta Milling:

Anyway while she's cleaning up, maybe we could finish so we don't get behind. I was married and had two children and at the time, when I joined the service, it was frowned upon to have children. They didn't want you to have children.

Miranda:

Yeah, because you would have to stay home.

Alta Milling:

Well, they just -- you'd have to make arrangements for your children.

Miranda:

Stay home?

Alta Milling:

If you -- well, yes, it's just like any -- like teachers may have the same thing but in the military it's a little bit different --

Miranda:

It's harder.

Alta Milling:

-- so that when you're -- because if you did get called up, sent overseas sometimes in an emergency situation --

Miranda:

But what if you're, like, pregnant --

Alta Milling:

Well, at that time -- at that time when I came in, if you got pregnant, you had a choice of staying in if you wanted to; but that hadn't been in existence very long. Most of the time as soon as you got pregnant, you were thrown out.

Miranda:

That happened to my mom because she was pregnant whenever she was in the military --

Alta Milling:

Really?

Miranda:

Yeah, but she didn't get thrown out.

Alta Milling:

It could be the time frame she was in because early on they didn't like that; and if you -- it's very interesting the double standards that the services had at that time and earlier in that, if a woman married a man -- if a service woman married a man and he had children from a previous marriage, she had to get out of the service --

Miranda:

Then she got --

Alta Milling:

-- but he didn't. You know, if he married a woman, not a military woman but a woman who already had children, they didn't throw him out.

Miranda:

Because he was a man because they didn't --

Alta Milling:

But that's what I mean about double standards.

Miranda:

-- 'cause they thought that women couldn't do anything at first.

Alta Milling:

And when I came in -- before I came in the service, service people are authorized to have what we called a housing allowance. So you get paid a little bit extra -- you get a little extra in your pay to help you with funds for living expenses; but the women weren't authorized to have that. And if -- even if they were married and, you know, not to a service man. If -- if -- and the only way that a woman at that time could get that money that the man would get automatically was to have her husband committed to a mental institution. Now, I don't know about you -- you, young ladies, or even you, John, if it came to a choice of whether you wanted to say, "Well, we'll live in less expensive things or, okay, I'll let you commit me so we can get the money," do you think that would really work? I mean how many husbands would allow them to do that? So this is another double standard that the services had.

John:

I wouldn't do that, no.

Miranda:

(Inaudible.)

Alta Milling:

Yes, I think so. I joined the service for several reasons and one main reason is because I wanted to be able to go to college and get an education and I couldn't afford to do that on my own.

Miranda:

Do you want to do but you couldn't get money to go to college so like they'll come out and then go to college --

Alta Milling:

Well, the -- right now they're under a different schedule for college than they were when I was in. It's called the Montgomery College Bill. I came in under what they had, the G.I. Bill was different. So I felt that I had a lot more confidence in myself than I had before I joined the service. I had a little more poise, if you want to say, because I worked in high echelon jobs, like at Fort Jackson Post Headquarters. I worked in the Post Headquarters building so I saw general officers and high-ranking officers all the time; and when I was stationed in Germany, my boss was a full Colonel so -- and I was his secretary. So I worked with higher level people and I really felt that I was a much stronger person when I came out of service.

Miranda:

What was your most memorable moment?

Alta Milling:

My most memorable moment? There are lots of moments that I enjoyed when I was in the service. Probably can't tell you some of the funny things.

Miranda:

Why?

Alta Milling:

'Cause you're probably too young to understand what some of them are. One of my memorable moments was that my -- my husband -- at that time my husband and I were going to reenlist and we were going to go to Germany together and we were given the oath by the Deputy Commanding General at Fort Jackson and our children were there and I have a picture of my son saluting right along with us. So it was really cute to have my children right there.

Miranda:

How do you feel having, like, September the 11th?

Alta Milling:

Unfortunately I believe it was inevitable that something like this would happen. I admit that I don't understand why there are people in the world who would dislike us so -- so fanatically. It's very hard 'cause we're good people and, again, it could be that the government is doing things that --

Miranda:

______ history 'cause they tell them the government ________.

Alta Milling:

That's not rare either. They've done that for many, many years and over the last number of years things have come to light about medical experiments, if you want to say that, that are not exactly like the Dr. Mengele, I believe, and the S.S. units and the Nazis did; but if you want to think about what they did in testing the atomic bombs, they actually deliberately exposed service men to -- to whatever was going to happen and they had no idea. They're hiding behind their little perfectly safe walls but yet they expose a group of people and now they are having to admit that they did this and pay for their expenses, medical expenses, and they call them atomic veterans. And unfortunately, many of them have probably died from the results of this and their survivors can get the benefits; but often the survivors don't know how to apply for these type benefits. And the Agent Orange in Vietnam is a real -- (Bell sounds.)

Miranda:

He has a class to go to.

Alta Milling:

Okay. Goodbye, John, it was nice to meet you. Agent Orange is an issue in -- with Vietnam veterans because they used Agent Orange to defoliate, to kill the foliage on the trees so that they could see the enemy. So they would drop this stuff over the forests in Vietnam and the veterans were exposed to that. It ended up being in the drinking water because it would run down the mountains into the water and not only are our service members suffering from diseases, mostly cancer, and having difficulty getting their benefits because they wanted to deny it as not being a condition of war; but the Vietnam people themselves are still having trouble with this and lots of children are born with birth defects that's caused from that. How are we doing? Any more questions?

Miranda:

We don't have any more questions but if _____.

Alta Milling:

Well, I would like to try to make you ladies understand -- and especially since you're ladies -- that there is a myth around -- that appears that men are the only ones who can feel that they -- strongly enough that they want to defend their country and that is false. We started -- we have history way back in the Revolutionary War about women who did things -- if you study these, you'll know -- have you ever heard of Molly Pitcher?

Miranda:

Is that the person that joined the Army?

Alta Milling:

Well, she didn't really join the Army but she -- she was married to a soldier and she went with the soldier everywhere he went and she would take a pitcher of water around to all the stations where the men were manning their guns to make sure that they had something to drink; and her husband was either wounded or killed -- I can't remember right now -- at one point and she picked up his gear and she fired his weapon to keep the battle going to make sure that they didn't get overrun. And there are other women who have dressed up as men and joined the -- joined the -- and some of them even had command where they didn't even know that they were women but yet they were officer and they commanded units and some were found out only because they got wounded or they got sick and, of course, when you start stripping them down to -- to tend to their wounds, there's an obvious difference between men and women, you know, so that's how they were -- a lot of them were found out. And in the Civil War, some of the women acted as spies. They would go to these parties, like in Washington, and the parties were always attended by high-ranking people and they would learn things there and then they would carry it back like from the South or to the North, whichever side they were with, and things like -- in the Civil War also, the very first woman who was awarded a Medal of Honor and she has -- we don't have any women today who have a Medal of Honor except for her and she was a doctor. Her name was Mary Walker and she wanted to join the war effort as a doctor and they refused to take her because they only accepted women as nurses. So she gave up her practice and went into the service as a nurse and, through her efforts and other efforts, they did eventually recognize her skills as a doctor and gave her the title of doctor back again and then they awarded her and about three or four other medical people Medal of Honor and they tightened up the -- later on, they tightened up the qualifications for this award and they said that you don't qualify and they tried to take it away from her and she refused to give it back to them. And she wore it every day until she died. And in 1977, I believe, an act of Congress yet -- an act of Congress gave it back to her. So she is the only one who has the Medal of Honor. And if you're ever in Charleston, you ought to go -- have your family go to the carrier Yorktown at Patriot's Point because that houses the Medal of Honor museum and there are a lot of things there. It's a very nice museum, very well-kept, and we've had a number of South Carolinians to have been awarded the Medal of Honor so it's a nice touch to that. Let's see, in the history of women in the military, like the nurses, it was always felt that once the war is over we don't need you any more so you can go back home; but then when war would start up again, they'd immediately call these women back, we need you, we need you; but again, as soon as the war is over, we don't need you any more. Now, the Navy was among the first of the services to recognize that women can be of help, especially in the clerical environment. Now, the Army wasn't really pleased with this but they did contract with AT and T to get some women to be what they called the "Hello Girls" and these girls were telephone operators who could speak French and they sent them to France and so they served in World War I as "Hello Girls" and they were not considered in the service so they didn't get any benefits. Now, another group of women closer to the World War II time frame were WASPs. What they called WASPs. These were women air ferry pilots so what they did was they flew the airplanes from the United States to England for the pilots over there to use. So these were replacement planes. So obviously they could fly but, no, they can't be pilots. We can't let you come into service and be a pilot. And the military still didn't recognize these women as really being in the service for many, many years; and during that time period when they were actually working, if they were shot down in their plane, their plane was shot down and they were killed, the government would not pay to have their bodies shipped home. They -- the ladies had to collect amongst themselves and the family members to get enough money to send the bodies home. Now again, that's double standard that we have. And the women would teach the men in their training how to fly. So there are lots of examples of women and their activities that have shown that they're better than they've been given credit for. Do any of you have an inclination to go into the service? No?

Miranda:

(Inaudible.)

Alta Milling:

There's nothing wrong with that. Now, if John were still here, I don't know whether he would be interested in that; but my advice to any of you, if you do, is to pick something that can convert to civilian life. When my son joined the Army, I'd asked him, "What are you going to select as your field," and he said, "I'm going to go into armor." Armor is tanks. And I thought -- so I said, "Well, how many tanks do you see on the interstate; how many tanks do you see parked out here in a parking lot somewhere." "Oh, I'm going to be in armor. I can learn how to be a mechanic, fix tracks on these things when the tracks break," and they break; but you can't fix tracks in civilian life. We don't have a whole lot of that kind of stuff to do. I think there are so many more opportunities out there for people. Now, even today, the Coast Guard is the only service that recognizes women and has opened up -- not recognize -- has opened up all their fields to women. There are many fields still closed to women in all the other services. I am one, I think, that I don't want to push my way into all of the fields. You know, the women's lib stuff is good to a point but I don't -- don't have the desire to get in every single field; but there are definitely opportunities for women in the military. Did you see there were at least two women on that airplane that the Chinese hit? Do you remember that P-E-3 that happened earlier this year? It was -- it crash -- it had to land in China and there were at least two women on that plane. Is there anything else?

Miranda:

(Inaudible)

Alta Milling:

Shall we turn this off then? (Tape turned off.)

Alta Milling:

An issue that's prevalent in the military which is probably mostly denied today is sexual harassment and I experienced some of that in the military but because I was married and didn't live in the barracks, I probably was saved from a lot of it; but there was still -- there's still problems.

When I interviewed for my very first job at Post Headquarters at Fort Jackson, the Sergeant in charge of the office told me that that Major had had a lot of difficulty with previous women service members in that job. They would would call him up in the middle of the night and they were drunk and it was always something that they had to complain about and so, you know, I -- not quite sure what to expect when I went in to talk with the Major and so, when I got in there, he told me that he'd had a lot of trouble with women and got into it and he seemed to be complaining and complaining about -- about all kinds of activity that the other women had given him problems too.

I was -- I was thirty years old and I just stood right up and I was a Pfc., you know, lowly, lowly, and here he's a Major and he was kind of surprised 'cause he sat back in his chair and I told him that if he expected that I may never ever have a flat tire, or that I may never ever oversleep accidentally, or that my children might not ever get sick and I'd have to leave to go pick them up from school, then I'm wasting his time and he's wasting mine; and he said, "Sit down, you've got the job." And I still keep in touch with him and his family. They live over behind the Veterans' Hospital. So that worked out pretty -- pretty well.

Then when I was in Germany, we got a new Executive Officer and he told me that women had no place in the military and that he had never felt comfortable working with any women. Just was no need and he said, "And I just wanted you to know up front how I felt about you." So I was still standing at the position of attention and I said, "Thank you, sir," and I did a smart about-face and left the office and went in to see the command Sergeant Major and told him what this Lieutenant Colonel had just told me because he was the one who did my performance review -- or was supposed to do my performance review and I wasn't excited about the idea that he would do my performance review; but it wasn't long before he realized that I wasn't quite the woman that he'd been used to getting in other places. I was pleased that worked out for both of us.

[Conclusion of Interview]