BRICK – It was 1942 when Alice "Nora" Howes answered the nation's call to military service, but the 99-year-old Brick woman remembers it as if it happened yesterday.

Howes was among the first women to enlist in the Women's Army Auxiliary Corps, which later became the Women's Army Corps.

It was a career that opened the world to then-25-year-old Howes.

"I just loved all of it," said the blue-eyed retired lieutenant colonel as she sat in the living room of her Brick home.

With her 100th birthday on Thursday, Howes vividly remembers the details of her 28-year military service. She remembers where and when each photo in a stack of black and white pictures was taken. She recalls the details behind each newspaper clipping from a pile on her lap.

After graduating Neptune High School in 1935, this intelligent, strong-willed woman yearned for a life beyond her hometown of Neptune City, and the Army delivered that dream.

A call to service

"When the (second World) War came, I wanted to join," she said. "Dad was mid-Victorian (in mindset). And you know, (as a) single woman, you stayed home. If you got married, fine. Otherwise, you stayed home."

"Well this wasn't a stay-home kid," she said and laughed.

Howes' Army career took her to Germany, Japan, the Phillippines and Korea. She would meet and escort celebrities to visit wounded soldiers. She would watch General Douglas MacArthur, after World War II, stroll to lunch from his Tokyo headquarters in the Dai-Ichi Seimei Building. She was partly responsible for Army supply chains across nations.

It was a career far beyond the humble beginnings of her youth, when she worked in Asbury Park's Woolworth store for $8 a week.

But before she would get there, Howes pressed her father for six months to get his consent.

"I loved my parents enough that I couldn't do it if they didn't want me to," she said. "Finally, I said, 'Well, dad, if I don't do this, when the war's over, I'll always feel like I shirked my duty.' "

Her father, an English immigrant turned American patriot, relented at her words.

Howes did her duty, and at the end of World War II, she left and eagerly accepted a civilian job in public information with Veterans Affairs. But it was not long before she returned to active duty service.

"I missed it terribly," Howes said. "I didn't want to go back to Neptune City and work like I did."

The early roles of military women

Howes was among the tens of thousands of women who served in World War II and the Korean conflict. The new roles of these women put them close to male soldiers and officers, which occasionally led to tension.

Howes recalls many of the moments with fondness. There was a military policeman who caught Howes and friends fraternizing after hours with a group of officers. He told Howes he would forget what he saw if she accepted a date with him.

Another time, Howes ended an effort by male officers to limit women from using a golf course. They encountered in her a formidable enemy.

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"I find that we (Army leadership) are not allowing (military) women to play golf on Saturday morning," she recalled of a time in her career when she was stationed in Germany.

"So I pull out the Army regulations, the one specifically on special services and athletics, and I get the paragraphs," she said. "I go and see my friend in the Inspector General's Office."

After making her case, Howes and three friends defiantly played nine holes of golf in front of the offending officers.

"Saturday morning we go, and the colonel who had put out the word that women weren't to play, oh he hated my guts," Howes said and laughed. After retiring in 1970, she continued to play golf three times a week, until her late 80s.

Other times, the sexism in the military was no laughing matter to her.

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While participating as a board member in a court-martial cast, she cast a dissenting vote and another board member stood up and appeared ready to strike her, Howes said. It was a violent reaction she suspected would not have happened if she were a man.

There were more institutionalized forms of sexism at the time, as well.

"A PFC (Private First Class) in the Army could have a wife and two or three kids, and he could have a nice house. And a major in Woman's (Corps), a two-room BOQ (Bachelor Officer Quarters). You couldn't have a house," she said.

In addition, married women were not chosen for service.

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"They wanted us. They needed us, but they didn't treat us that way," she recalled. "It took a long time, but it changed."

Howes is pleased to see how much women's roles have advanced in the military since her retirement. Being able to serve in combat roles has been a major milestone, she said.

"The gals are doing everything and getting everything," she said, "and that's the way it should be."

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Amanda Oglesby: 732-557-5701; aoglesby@GannettNJ.com