Manassas WAC recalls service

From her desk in the Undersecretary of the Army’s Office in the Pentagon, Margaret Danner was a witness to the Korean War.
Danner, 76, of Manassas, served in the Women’s Army Corps from 1951 to 1953.
Born Margaret Donovan, the New Hampshire native was the third of 12 children. The first of Danner’s two younger sisters wasn’t born until she was 11.
“I grew up with boys,” she laughed. “I didn’t even know they made girls.”
Danner said she learned the value of hard work from an early age. When she was 4, Danner’s parents made her a stool that she stood on to wash the dishes.
“I was a tomboy who knew how to take care of babies and the house,” she said.
Danner grew up during the late 1930s, when the Great Depression gripped the country. Both of her parents worked outside the home in order to provide their children with food and shelter. Danner’s mother grew and sold the vegetables grown on the family farm and much later worked in a local shoe store. Her father worked for the Works Progress Administration.
Danner said she did not utter a word in school until her senior year of high school when she was required to give an oral report to graduate.
“You wouldn’t believe this, but I was extremely shy and inward,” she said.
Following her high school graduation, Danner went to work at a local convalescent home and quickly became interested in attending nursing school.
“I worked 12 hours a day, 6 1/2 days a week for $60 a month,” she said. “I gave part of it to my family.”
Without the money to attend nursing school, Danner began to look around for a way to better her life. She soon focused on the Army. Her father had served during the First World War and one of her brothers had also joined. In early 1951 she traveled by bus to Manchester to sign up herself.
“Nobody convinced me,” she said of her decision to join the Army. “I just made up my mind. I was determined. I had a strong faith. I remember thinking the Lord has more for me.”
That determination took her to Fort Lee for a 10-week boot camp, where she was introduced to life in the Army. In addition to bivouacs and physical fitness training, Danner and her fellow WACs took tests to determine what their jobs in the Army would be. Danner had to choose between photography and stenography.
“I chose stenography because I had that in high school, along with typing,” she said.
Danner attended stenography school at Fort Benjamin Harrison in Indiana following her graduation from boot camp.
“They were just opening up that fort again after World War II,” she said. “Our barracks had this high fence around it to keep the men out. I believe it was as stockage during the war. They would lock the gate at 10 p.m.”
Danner attended class with six other women and 25 men. As the five-month stenography course came to an end, she watched as her classmates were assigned to Army installations around the country. There were soon only two spots left — one in the Undersecretary of the Army’s office in the Pentagon and one at Fort Lee — and two candidates — Danner and one of her female classmates. A coin toss sent Danner to the Pentagon and her classmate to Fort Lee.
“We did not want to go back to Fort Lee, neither one of us,” she explained.
Arriving in Washington, D.C. Danner found herself working for Maj. Donald L. Geer and Undersecretary of the Army Archibald S. Alexander.
“They treated me like I was a daughter,” she said fondly. “They took me in like family.”
Danner was the only enlisted person in the undersecretary’s office, where she handled typing and filing. She escorted visitors to and from the office, and clipped articles from the newspaper for Alexander’s scrapbook.
“For a long, long time I didn’t realize the importance of what I was doing. I just did my job,” she said.
Danner was also among the first to learn the names of the soldiers killed while serving in Korea.
“I knew who they were even before their families were notified,” she said. “When the names came in to the office I recorded them in the black book that the office was required to update and keep for the undersecretary. By the way, it was top secret information. I also hand carried top secret info to the Justice Department and other agencies escorted by the driver for the undersecretary in the limo that was provided for him.”
Danner remained in the Army until she married her husband, Horace, who was in the Air Force, in 1953. Horace Danner ultimately left the Air Force and pursued a career in the ministry which led the couple to Manassas, where they served at the Manassas Baptist Church and raised their family.
In 1970, she returned to college while working as an aide for Prince William County Schools. Danner graduated from George Mason University in 1981, the same year her son Steve graduated from Osbourn Park High School. She earned her master’s degree from Virginia Tech in 1985 and went on to teach at Loch Lomond Elementary School in Manassas. Danner retired in 2002 and now substitute teaches for the City of Manassas Schools.
“It has been a wonderful, rewarding life,” she said.