Newtown woman was a pioneer during World War II.

By Petra Chesner Schlatter, BucksLocalNews.com


U.S. Air Force Senior Master Sergeant Cora Wehmeyer Henderson of Newtown was one of the first women to enlist in the Armed Forces at the time of World War II.

At age 90, Cora thrives on being independent. As she talks about her time in the service, Cora does so with great detail. She sits at her kitchen table, showing vintage photographs of her as a WAC (Women’s Army Corps.) Before the WACs, she explained, there was the WAAC (The Women’s Auxiliary Army Corps).

“I’m probably one of the only ones who are still alive,” Cora joked.

What strikes you about Cora is her keen memory. People find her to be witty and intelligent. She has been described as “a remarkable woman.”

Cora made a career of the Air Force, serving more than two decades and retiring as a Senior Master Sergeant.

In her collection of memorabilia, Cora has a copy of a 1951 Parade magazine cover. She is one of four in uniform, along with three other women, each from a different branch of the service.
“I was with the first group of enlisted women,” Cora said. She was working at the former Budd Company’s Wheel and Locomotive facility in Philadelphia. Budd later became a defense plant.
“We were painting Bazooka guns. You wore a mask and overalls. I worked the swing shift – 3 to 11,” she said.

Cora had read in the Philadelphia Bulletin that an organization for women in the military was forming. “The first day you could apply, I was down there,” she recalled. “People thought I was crazy. My pay was $21 a month in the service.”

She went in as a private first class. The women officers, who had gone to college, went to training first. “They had to train us,” she explained. “We were sworn in September, 1942.” Basic training, which took four weeks, was in October 1942 in Des Moines, Iowa.

During her first assignment, she lived in a hotel in Miami, Fla. “We were with an aircraft warning service in November 1942.

“In March 1943, we went to Orlando to the Army Air Corps Base where the work had to do with training fighter pilots,” she remembered.

Next, it was overseas to England with the 8th Air Force until V.E. (Victory in Europe) Day in May 1945.

“I was in communications,” she noted. In a picture, she is sitting with three other “operators.” These women were connecting teletype machines with the bomber bases in England.
She worked in an underground facility right outside of London. She described it like a switchboard. There was another one for the Prime Minister. “We were in the one at High Wycombe,” she said. Her shift started at 11 p.m. and ended at 7 a.m. “We kept rotating,” she noted.

Cora would later become the base chief operator at the telephone exchange at Eglin Base in Florida because she had some practice on a switchboard.

One of her favorite pictures is of her receiving a commendation medal. “They gave me a review,” she said. “I was escorted up to the presenting officer.” A general pinned the medal on her.
“After we won the war, I was shipped to Germany. The only way we could stay in was civil service. Six months later, they wanted us back in,” she maintained.

“They needed help with the demobilization [in 1945] – that’s why I went back in,” she said. She worked in administrative training and recruiting.

For four years, Cora worked at the Pentagon as an administrative assistant to the director of the Women in the Air Force (WAF).

She continued climbing the ladder. One of the rungs was working in Baltimore at the Third Army recruiting headquarters. She served there from 1948 until 1950 and later transferred to Philadelphia as a recruiter, where she was stationed until 1952.

Next stop was Weisbaden, Germany and in 1954 she went to San Antonio, Texas. Then, it was time to head back to Pennsylvania where she could live in Hatboro to be with her mother.
The next assignment took her to McGuire Air Force Base. Going there was a major turning point in her life, Cora noted. “I met John,” she said of her late husband. They were married in the chapel on the base. Three hundred people attended.

Cora is a charter member of the Women in Military Service for America Memorial, which is located at the entrance to Arlington National Cemetery.

When the memorial was dedicated in 1998, people came from all over the country. “It was quite an event and I was lucky to be there,” Cora said.

Because of the memorial, people will be able to see her military history on the computer for years to come.

She likes that idea.