The Gallatin Daughters of the American Revolution presented their Patriot Award to Lois Yost in a ceremony on May 9.
“We thank Lois for her service to our country and her example to our community,” noted Markay August, Chapter Regent, during the ceremony. “It is with great pleasure that we present our first Patriot Award to a woman, Martha Lois Yost.”
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Women graduating from high school today are free to take whatever path they please — go to college, enter the workforce, join the military. Their way was paved more than 70 years ago by women like Gallatin’s Lois Yost.
In the 1940s, War War II raged in Europe and the South Pacific and the traditional roles of wife and mother were forever changed as America called its young women to help with the war effort. They helped at home, on the farm and factory, and in uniform.
In order to free men to fight, for the first time in America’s history, women drove trucks, became radio and telegraph operators, broke codes, repaired airplanes, and did whatever else was required of them.
For Lois, whose memory must go back half a century to recapture that time, it was fun, but also scary, exciting, but also sad.
Lois, now 94, was born in Kansas and when she was four, moved with her family to a farm in Red Cloud, Neb. She graduated and taught school for two years in Nebraska and one year in Iowa.
Around this time, her parents bought a farm in Daviess County.
Another thing happened about this time — On Dec. 7, 1941, Japan bombed Pearl Harbor.
After the horrific surpise military attack, Lois was not necessarily itching to get in the fight, but she was caught up in the wave of impassioned patriotism that swept across the country.
“My oldest brother was in the Army. My youngest brother was in the Navy Seabees. My sister worked as a civilian secretary to a major in Washington, D.C. I wanted to do my part, too,” said Lois. “I think people were a lot more patriotic at that time in history.”
The next spring, Lois joined a unit of the Naval Reserve called WAVES (Women Accepted for Volunteer Emergency Service) during WWII.
Lois was only 20-years-old at the time. She needed to be 21 to join. So, in order to join, she had to have her parent’s consent, a preacher’s recommendation, and the recommendation of at least three neighbors.
She got all that and went to boot camp at Hunter College in the Bronx, New York.
The Navy had high standards and a specific, and complicated, process for women who wished to become a WAVE.
“It wasn’t hard for me as I remember,” says Lois, Petty Officer 3rd Class. “I qualified for everything.”
Boot camp was designed as a way to transition the soldier from civilian to military life. Not everyone made the transition with ease. Some women had difficulty with the new lifestyle, and others failed completely. But not Lois…
“Oh, I was young,” she said. “Everything was new and fun in a way.”
Lois was a gunnery inspector stationed in Pensacola, Fla.
How did a 20-year-old girl from Missouri wind up in Florida teaching bomber crews how to shoot machine guns?
For Lois it was almost a natural progression.
“Being from the midwest, I didn’t have to be told to hold my rifle against my shoulder,” she told the Gallatin DAR at a ceremony to receive their first ever Patriot Award. In fact, she was such a good shot with her pistol that the trainers took bets on her. An article was written about her after her impressive display of marksmanship — only one of her shots missed the bullseye.
Lois said her classroom had room for a screen and a movie projector. The screen depicted each .50 caliber machine gun turret. The training was a mockup of an attack by a Japanese aircraft.
“The bomber planes were the same as the Army’s B24, but the Navy called them PB442,” said Lois. “We used the screens to make sure the gunners had the right number of rads when shooting back at the zeroes.”
The ‘zeroes’ were the Japanese war planes, Lois explained, and the ‘rads’ refers to the radius.
Lois was teaching these young men lessons vital and highly valued…how to shoot a machine gun from inside the turret of a bomber…how to recognize enemy aircraft…how not to mistake the enemy for one of their own. In short, how to come out of the fight alive.
Did it bother any of the young men to be taught by a woman? Hardly, Lois says.
“They liked being taught by pretty young women,” she laughs. “There were six sailors and six WAVES that taught the classes. More often than not, the sailors asked for one of the WAVES to teach them.”
The crews came for training for six weeks, left to take other classes, then came back for their finals before being shipped overseas to combat.
Though Florida was a long way from the battlegrounds, there was no escaping death, tragedy and heartache that came with war.
“Crew took off with green pilots,” recalls Lois. “An engine might catch on fire, or they’d do the wrong thing, bank on the wrong side, and crash right there on the field.”
Lois remembers one plane that took off and was lost to the Bermuda Triangle.
“It disappeared without a sign,” she says. “It was never heard of again. It was a mystery.”
Lois served for 22 months in the Navy Reserves, from 1942-1944. Among other citations, she was awarded the WWII Victory Medal; Asiatic Pacific Campaign; American Campaign; the Phillippine Liberation.
“I enjoyed the service,” she said. “I’ve had a lot of benefits from it. I wouldn’t take anything for the experience.”
Lois married Glen Yost after leaving the Navy. They lived on a farm by Pattonsburg and had three children. The were married for 56 years. Glen passed away in 2003.
Lois is a member of the United Methodist Church of Gallatin and a life member of the VFW Auxiliary. Lois has three children, nine grandchildren; seven great-grandchildren; and one great-great-grandchild.
Lois said she has especially loves two things in life — flowers and babies–. Her family has given her five generations of babies; and on Mother’s Day her children helped her plant a flower garden.
Lois has enjoyed her life as a wife and mother. But when Amercia needed her to switch roles and be something more and different, she answered the call.
Would she do it again?
“Oh yes,” Lois says. “If I was that young again, I would.”