A Woman Marine in the Control Tower During World War II
During World War II, thousands of women stepped forward to serve in the United States Marine Corps, taking on jobs that allowed more Marines to deploy overseas.
Among them was Nell Pittman, a young woman from Georgia who became a Marine and found herself working amid the roar of military aircraft at one of the Corps' most important wartime aviation bases.
Pittman served at Marine Corps Air Station Cherry Point, North Carolina, where she worked as a control-tower operator during the war.
Her story represents a generation of Women Marines who performed essential jobs far from the battlefields of the Pacific but nevertheless played an important part in keeping the Marine Corps fighting.
Women Join the Wartime Marine Corps
The Marine Corps Women's Reserve was established in February 1943 as America's military expanded dramatically during World War II.
The idea was straightforward: women could fill critical positions within the United States, allowing additional male Marines to be assigned to combat units and other overseas duties.
Women Marines soon served in hundreds of specialties.
They worked as clerks, mechanics, radio operators, drivers, parachute riggers, aviation specialists and control-tower operators.
By the end of the war, approximately 20,000 women had served in the Marine Corps.
Nell Pittman was one of them.
Duty at Cherry Point
Pittman was assigned to Marine Corps Air Station Cherry Point, which had been commissioned in May 1942 as the United States rapidly constructed the military infrastructure necessary to fight a global war.
Cherry Point became a major center of Marine aviation.
Its primary wartime mission was preparing Marine aviation units and individual Marines for deployment to the Pacific. Aircraft continually arrived and departed as pilots, aircrews and ground personnel trained for war.
Women Marines began arriving at Cherry Point in 1943.
Eventually, more than 2,300 would serve there.
They could be found throughout the sprawling air station—working as mechanics, drivers, aviation instructors, office personnel and control-tower operators.
Among the Marines working above the runways was Nell Pittman.
In the Control Tower
Working in an airfield control tower carried considerable responsibility.
Aircraft had to be safely directed around the airfield as pilots took off, landed and moved across the runways. Controllers had to remain alert and maintain an accurate picture of activity around a busy military installation.
At wartime Cherry Point, that activity was directly connected to the fighting taking place thousands of miles away.
Marine aviation units trained there before heading toward the Pacific. Pilots and aircrew prepared for assignments overseas. Aircraft were maintained, repaired and moved through an air station that seemed to operate constantly.
Pittman's job placed her in the middle of that enormous operation.
She wasn't carrying a rifle across an island in the Pacific.
But the Marines who eventually did go overseas depended upon an enormous support system back home—and Women Marines such as Pittman became part of that system.
More Than Office Work
The story of the Women Marines of World War II is sometimes reduced to the idea that women simply replaced men in clerical positions.
Their actual responsibilities were far broader.
A wartime history published by Cherry Point itself described Women Marines working throughout the station in dungarees as mechanics, transportation drivers and aircraft repair workers, while others served as aviation instructors and control-tower operators.
It was an enormous change for a Marine Corps that had historically been overwhelmingly male.
And it demonstrated how dramatically the demands of World War II were transforming the Corps.
Women were becoming an integral part of Marine aviation.
War Ends — And a New Life Begins
Nell Pittman's story also had an interesting ending after her wartime Marine service.
She became engaged to Navy sailor Charles Rupert Franklin, who was stationed thousands of miles away in Long Beach, California.
After the war, Pittman traveled west to marry him.
A February 1946 Georgia newspaper announced the marriage of Nell Pittman, U.S. Marine Corps, Cherry Point, North Carolina, and Charles Rupert Franklin of the United States Navy.
They were married at Belmont Heights Methodist Church in Long Beach.
It was a small newspaper announcement, but today it provides valuable documentation of a woman whose Marine Corps service might otherwise have largely disappeared from the historical record.
Remembering Nell Pittman
Nell Pittman was not a famous Marine.
She did not command troops on Iwo Jima, fly a Corsair over the Solomon Islands or receive decorations for actions under enemy fire.
But Marine Corps history isn't composed only of famous names and great battles.
It is also the story of the thousands of individual Marines whose work made those battles possible.
During World War II, Nell Pittman put on a Marine uniform and reported for duty at one of the busiest aviation installations in the Corps.
From the control tower at Cherry Point, she became part of the massive organization training and preparing Marine aviators for war.
Her story is also part of something much larger.
The Women Marines of World War II demonstrated that women could perform important technical, aviation and administrative jobs throughout the Corps. Their service helped establish a foundation upon which later generations of Women Marines would build.
More than eighty years later, Marines still stand watch in the control tower at Cherry Point.
And among those who helped establish that wartime tradition was a young Woman Marine named Nell Pittman.