KATIE WHITE: This is Bringing War Home, the show that connects listeners with the history of war through sharing wartime objects and the personal stories that surround them.
This collaborative project is led by Utah State University professors Susan Grayzel and Molly Cannon from the College of Humanities and Social Sciences. I’m Katie White, the producer of the series.
Rain, snow, sleet or hail, when it comes to aircrafts, Mary Walker-Irvin says, everything depends on weather. For twenty-two years, she served as a U.S. Airforce weather officer. Walker-Irvin didn’t plan on joining the military, but getting a job with her degree in watershed science was hard after she married an Airman. As a military-spouse expected to move around every two or three years, Walker-Irvin says employers viewed her as a temporary employee. So, she got a second degree in meteorology and joined her husband in the Air Force — a career that took her to countries around the world.
MARY WALKER-IRVIN: I think that it made me stronger. I was a little bit of a shy shrinking violet type and the only reason I joined in the first place was because I married a guy that was military. And when I first came in I was still kind of reserved, but boy, you get used to, after a while, being the only female in the room.
When you go in to do the the weather for the commander's briefing, there'd be all these guys in there. And even when the commander would first walk in, and the first sergeant would call the room to attention, he'd always say, 'Gentlemen, attention.' It definitely forces you to get out of your shell and advocate for yourself.
Most of my stuff is still in storage. But if I could have found it, I got a chunk of the Berlin wall that I got from somebody who actually got to travel to Berlin. I never got that opportunity. The chunk of concrete that I got it seemed like predominant color on it was purple. But there were some other colors because on the not-Soviet side, the Germans would go and paint all kinds of murals and, 'Let our people go,' and things like that all over their side — symbolize their frustration of being separated from their countrymen.
But we went to Germany to Ramstein Air Base. As we were getting there was when the Berlin Wall came down. And so we got to be there with all the excitement and the fireworks. I was still a bit skeptical was like, 'Ooh, is this really going to last? Is this just another trick on the part of the Soviets?'
For the first about six months I was there, even though they weren't flying it anymore, we still had to do a forecast everyday for the Berlin Airlift corridors in case the Soviets decided to blockade Berlin again, that we would be able to fly supplies and things into them, just like they did right after World War II when the Soviets blockaded it initially.
But it was really fun to be there and see the joy in the Germans as they were celebrating, getting reunified. And lo and behold, it seemed to last so I was really glad that I was wrong.
A couple of years after the wall came down, NATO decided to bring some of the younger officers — lieutenants and captains — from some of the former Iron Curtain countries. So we got a Polish officer or a Romanian officer and Bulgarian officer that my husband and I were assigned to. And we just spent a week being together, going around to different things.
We showed them stuff and we got to tour through their old Russian plane that they flew in on — which, wow, I'm surprised that thing could fly. It was in such terrible shape.
But it was nice getting to know them because that was my first real experience with a former enemy and finding out that the politics and the really bad stuff is the government officials, just like it is here. The regular guy is not really any different from we are. They have the same hopes and fears and just want to you know, live and have a family and be happy and secure and stuff. And so it was — it was really good to experience to get to know them.
And I think for them to get to know us as well and find out that we weren't these evil people trying to undermine their entire existence like they had been taught since they were little. It was good.
And that kind of thing continued for the rest of my Air Force career. I got to meet all kinds of people from everywhere that helped me realize that humanity is just humanity and we're all pretty much the same when you get past all the government stuff that people squabble about.
WHITE: Support for Bringing War Home comes from Utah State University, the National Endowment for the Humanities Dialogues on the Experience of War, and Utah Humanities. More resources available at upr.org.
