WHY A PATRIOT BECAME A WAC
                                            By Bob Jamison

          This patriotic story is familiar with the folks around south Liberty County, Texas. However, it is much more far reaching than this event shared by many brave young women during World War II.

          Lt. Colonel Anne Marie Doering wasn’t born here in Texas. In fact she was born near Haiphong, French Indo China (now North Vietnam). He father was a French electrical engineer who was instrumental in the hydro electric dams of the region. Her mother was German from a prominent family in Dresden, Germany.  A.M. Doering’s father died when she was six years of age. Her mother was a secretary in the main office of The Standard Oil Company there.

          Doering went to school in a Catholic school where she became fluent in the French language. She was equally fluent in German. Subsequently, her mother married an American auditor in the oil company and became an American citizen.

          Through a relative in Dayton, she came here to enroll in Dayton High School and later after graduation, received her degree from Southwestern University in Georgetown, Texas.

          The memory of atrocities on many of her friends and acquaintances in Hong Kong, Shanghai and other parts of China committed by the Japanese angered her. Her uncle was shot by the Gestapo in Dresden because he was outspoken about the Nazi movement. This was too much for the petite young lady who had a promising future as a reporter and served in a position with the New York Medical Society.

          The Women Army Corps was organized in 1943 and she enlisted immediately. After boot camp she graduated as a 2nd Lieutenant of the Officer’s Candidate School and was quickly sent to the Philippines under the MacArthur command.

          During the invasion by the allies on the island of New Guinea she was again assigned near the combat zone in that campaign. There, she was recognized for valor under combat conditions and was awarded the Bronze Star metal with the V devise.

          Her military career didn’t end there. When Japan surrendered she was again assigned to General MacArthur’s office in Japan. Still her military duties required her reenlistment during the Korean War and the Vietnam War. As in a ‘full circle’ she went back to her home land where she once lived for duties as the first female intelligence officer in Saigon.

          In Vietnam, her past was relived with the several Chinese dialects she remembered from her childhood days. He modest comments of her experiences were only to emphasize her love for America and what it meant to her life.

          One interesting phase of her assignment in Japan related to her thoughtfulness of sending by a currier a simple package of hard-to-get ladies makeup to the Emperoress of Japan. Not really expecting to hear anything from this gesture of kindness from one woman to another, some time later the currier placed a package on her desk. It was a pair of carved ivory birds from the recipient of that ‘simple package’. 

          Lt. Colonel Doering passed away peacefully in the company of fellow ‘soldiers’ and care of the facility for retired military officers in San Antonio, Texas. She was given full military honors with a twenty one gun salute and buried amongst many other truly patriots in the military cemetery at Fort Sam Houston, San Antonio, Texas.