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Our First Dyke March June 21, 2026

Generations Unite at Sonoma County’s Dyke March

There might be a higher percentage of lesbians in Sonoma County, California, than anywhere else in the world. So, even though we’ve had gay pride parades and celebrations since the 1980s, it’s surprising that only this year did we have our very first dyke march.

Organizers say it was about time.

An estimated 600 people participated in the march and “Lez-a-Palooza Street Fair on the Square” in Santa Rosa, the county seat. Cries of “We’re here, we’re queer. Get used to it!” resounded in the city streets on June 21.

Movement Origins

Dyke marches began in 1993 in Washington, D.C., organized to confront lesbian invisibility and erasure within both the broader LGBTQ+ movement and society at large. Rejecting corporate sponsorship and respectability politics, dyke marches centered grassroots power, direct action, and community care. Built on a demand for visibility, justice, and collective strength, the movement quickly spread to cities including San Francisco and Chicago, becoming a powerful tradition of lesbian-led activism and celebration.

Organizers say the Sonoma County Dyke March proudly carries forward this legacy, uniting generations and creating powerful common ground across the queer community. A dyke march is not a parade. It’s a community-centered march focused on visibility, history, and connection. The Lez-a-Palooza street fair creates intentional space to uplift dykes, lesbians, queer, non-binary, and the sapphic and trans community, while standing in solidarity with the broader LGBTQIA2S+ community.

Organizer Pam Adinoff, 72, said, “As a lesbian who has been out in Sonoma County for 53 years, my identity has been really important to me, but I have felt more and more invisible over the years as an aging lesbian. We have a very, very large senior lesbian community and a lot of them showed up for (last year’s) Pride and they were all marching under different organizations. But nothing said the word ‘lesbian.'” So Adinoff, along with a number of like-minded women, decided to address that sense of invisibility.

Pat Andreine, one of the organizers, said the best thing about the march was that it was intergenerational. Along with her partner, the historian Tina Dungan, she staffed the Sonoma County LGBT history timeline booth. Pat said they had lots of interest from young people.

Radical Inclusion

It’s an event meant to both elevate and celebrate lesbian culture and history, organizers said. Crucial to its success and its mission are the people who span ages and identities who have been recruited to help get the first-ever event off the ground.

“In writing our mission statement, we met with different groups of people, trans, non-binary, ‘How does this mission statement sound? Is there anything we need to change and do you feel included and do you feel seen?'” Adinoff, of Petaluma, said. “Visibility is one of the only things that we all want, we are all so different. But we wanted to create a warm embrace in a time when our community is facing immense (threat).”

“Part of the intention of this march is to make a strong statement of protest because the queer community is very much under attack. Trans lives are being targeted, non-binary people, marriage equality, and we want to make a statement that what is happening in the country right now, aimed at the queer community, is not OK,” said organizer Nancy Kelly, 68.

Santa Rosa natives Bonnie Hogue and my wife, Holly Holbrook, agreed that it was revolutionary to be part of the first dyke march in their hometown. Holly said that, if when she was younger there had been this kind of lesbian visibility, she would have figured out her sexuality a lot sooner.

Holly (L) and Bonnie, Santa Rosa natives

Reclaiming the Word

And that word “dyke” was intentional, too. “The word ‘dyke’ definitely used to be a slur,” said Kelly. “One of the things that the gay and queer community does is … take a slur and put it on themselves and reclaim it. So dyke used to be a derogatory word, as did queer.”

Much work was done in the organizing coalition to open the event to all identities, organizers said. “…There was a term – TERF, trans exclusionary radical feminist – meaning only people that were born women can identify as women,” said Alicia LeCompte, 38, of Santa Rosa. LeCompte, who hosts regular queer kickball and climbing events, wasn’t interested in supporting an event that wasn’t welcoming to all women. “A lot of my friends who are non-binary were asking, ‘Are they going to be inclusive to all genders and all queer expressions?'” she said. “Are they the type of people that we want to collaborate with, are we on the same wavelength?”

The answer was Yes. The event’s motto: All identities, all orientations, one march.

Bridging Generations

“It’s so energizing to be in an intergenerational community,” said organizer Frances Fuchs, 72, of Santa Rosa.

For Diana “D” Getko, 28, of Sebastopol, much can be learned from older women who have lived through, and learned from, fights for civil rights and acceptance. “I don’t think many people of our generation realize just how much the dykes have carried us through the formative years back in the ’70s,” she said. “Community is what got us through back in the ’70s and ’80s and we are going through another hard time. Community is what is going to get us through again.”

“It’s about building community,” Kelly said. “There is a part that is very serious and it’s a protest but part of it is just fun and joy. Both sustain us.”

The community has many challenges. In the opening days of his second term, President Donald Trump moved swiftly to target transgender and nonbinary people, limiting medical care, stating the federal government recognizes only two unchangeable sexes: female and male, denying requests for passports that use gender markers that don’t conform to the administration’s new definition. It all makes gathering in solidarity all the more important.

And love is at the heart of the event, organizers said. Allies and supporters are welcome. “People say ‘How can you call it a dyke march if it’s open to everybody?'” Fuchs said. “And basically we’d have to say the times are changed. We don’t need to put a fence around it to protect ourselves. We need to open it to protect ourselves. This is about bigger community and bigger connections and having a broader base to stand on.”

A participant in the drumming corps, Sistah Boom, which reunited for this event

From the mission statement:

Sonoma County Dyke March is an inclusive, grassroots, intergenerational movement bringing together Lesbian, Queer, Transgender, Non-Binary, Sapphic people, the full LGBTQIA2S+ spectrum, and our allies to resist attacks on our rights, bodies, and lives.

We honor the legacy of the Lesbians and Queer women who have been the backbone of social justice movements. We uplift Elder Lesbians, reclaim the word Dyke as a symbol of pride and defiance, and bestow this legacy on the next generation.

We organize in a moment of immense and escalating backlash—against trans lives, queer rights, reproductive freedom, marriage equality, racial justice, our immigrant communities, and democracy itself. Our goal is to complement and strengthen Pride by offering an intergenerational inclusive space for visibility, celebration, and belonging.

Silence is not an option.

Too many have sacrificed too much for us to stand by while our rights erode.

Holly and I with old friends. My T-shirt reads This is What an Old Lesbian Looks Like

Thanks to reporter Kerry Benefield for quotes from coverage in our local newspaper, the Press Democrat.

Midsomer Hails to Vikings’ Time

My Regular Pagan Holiday Post

Summer Solstice (Litha) takes place this year on June 21

The pagan Scandinavian summer solstice festival, like winter solstice, was appropriated by christians. But, unlike christmas, the takeover never really stuck. They tried to turn midsummer into a birthday party for John the Baptist. Bonfires that once warded off evil spirits and celebrated the sun’s strength became “St. John’s fires,” but the essential ritual survived unchanged. As they did in pre-christian Viking times, Swedes, Norwegians and Danes continue to make flower wreaths, dance around the maypole, sing, eat, drink and light giant bonfires.

I identify as Swedish because of my grandmother Gerda, who instilled our family’s culture. My grandfather Bernt was Norwegian, so we absorbed some of that tradition too.

In her 90s Grandma Wick dressed in her Swedish costume

Growing up in Yakima, Washington, we simply picnicked and ate outdoors all summer, perhaps an American substitute for the ritual. But my brother remembers our mother, who was born at Midsommer, hosting parties in June with a maypole for us kids to wind ribbons around. She had never been to a Midsomer festival, but her Scandinavian parents had impressed upon her the importance of this holiday.

Flo took this picture and the one at top raising the maypole at a Swedih Midsomer festival when we visited in 1979

Swedes gather at big communal and family events. Norwegians build fires. Oslo’s most dramatic public showcase occurs at Sukkerbiten, the sauna wharves on the fjord, where massive burning displays light the water. The Slinningsbålet in Ålesund ranks among the world’s tallest bonfires—a striking coastal tradition. In some places a figure is built and then burned. Think Burning Man.

This year, we’ll mark the solstice on June 21 at Sonoma County’s first dyke march—marching, singing, eating, and drinking. Living in a fire-prone region, we’ll celebrate without bonfires, but the spirit of communal gathering remains.

Skål!

Love, Molly and Holly

My Silver Linings Playbook

Always Look on the Bright Side of Life

I should have canceled the hiking trip to Morocco and Portugal after falling on my deck. The X‑ray showed my ankle wasn’t broken — just a small fragment of displaced bone — and I convinced myself the pain would subside. They fitted me with a walking boot, and I left the hospital with cautious hope.

The trip was filled with mishaps, and so I have begun to frame it as a succession of silver linings. First thing: I forgot my passport and missed my flight. Unable to get on another, I took BART back to San Francisco, had a lovely dinner with old Bernal Heights buddies Judy and Diane, and slept on Judy’s blow‑up bed.

Judy K and I, Diane in her garden with Bernal Hill in the background, dog walking the next day at Holly Park with Judy K and Judy S

The next day, back at the airport with time to kill, I explored SFO’s International Terminal and found its quirkiest attractions: a low-rider bicycle exhibit, a roast‑your‑own coffee machine and a tiny theater showing shorts that felt like art‑school therapy. At a bar near the Lufthansa gates, the bartender poured a consolatory 20‑ounce IPA and chatted with me — mostly because I was the only customer. Lufthansa pilots were on strike and so their flights were canceled and the bar empty.

At SFO: part of a low rider bike exhibit, roast your own coffee

Standby meant more waiting, more near‑misses. I missed another flight because it was full, then met Lynn, a retired flight attendant of 35 years, who’d also left her passport at home. We were directed to the swanky Air France lounge, an oasis of free food and booze. Sometimes fortune favors the passport‑less.

At the Air France lounge in my boot, new best friend Lynn, 3 kinds of water

My injured leg earned me VIP wheelchair treatment at airports. But the boot was not a fun accessory on the 12‑hour flight.

Stopover in Paris: arriving, rated highly, Charles de Gaulle had the coolest toilets

Midnight in Marrakesh: I swapped currency at the airport, shared a taxi to the old town medina with an amiable French couple and met Ali, the hotel night man, who navigated the medina’s narrow alleys like a supernatural GPS. I could never have found my riad (hotel) without him. Ali seemed never to sleep. He served us breakfast in the morning.

In the old walled city medina: cats and motorbikes, donkeys. No cars will fit

This all-women trip, sponsored by Lewis and Clark College, introduced us to Moroccan culture in ways that didn’t require hiking. I was delighted to chat with English language students whose cosmopolitan takes deepened my cultural understanding.

In the medina: door and interior, the only graffiti I saw

We met Nora Fitzgerald Belahcen, founder of the Amal Women’s Training Center, whose mission is to train indigent women to earn a living. Highlights included a tagine cooking class and a delicate tea ritual using herbs plucked from the garden. Dinner was cooked and served by a crew of deaf women in the Sign Language Café, one of many projects inspired by the Amal culinary school for women*.

On a seven‑hour drive to the Atlas Mountains, motion sickness upgraded me to front‑seat conversationalist; the female Moroccan guide and I talked about Islamophobia, women’s roles in Morocco and architecture. I was amazed at the earthen buildings and walls. “We call this adobe,” I said. “What do you call the building material?” She replied, “Mud.”

On the way to the Atlas Mountains

Limited mobility changed the trip but didn’t ruin it. I discovered lounging is an underrated travel activity. As my cohort hiked, a van whisked me to scenic spots so I could sit and be part of the (stunning) landscape.

Exploring the old kasbah. These mud buildings last hundreds of years.

Indigenous guides introduced us to Amazigh (Berber) culture, inviting us for meals and entertainment in women’s homes. The women dressed us up for a mock wedding, drew us in to the song and dance, and in those moments we ten Americans weren’t tourists, we were favored guests.

Our guide Fatimazahra dressed up for the mock wedding

Three of us traveled on to Portugal, visiting Lisbon, Sintra and mountain schist villages. A highlight for me in Lisbon was the Resistance Museum where I could sit and take in the history of the Portuguese 1974 revolution and the concurrent freeing of their African colonies.

Driving out of the city, we were surprised to see the mountains planted in eucalyptus (for paper production), which burned in a terrible fire in 2025. Then, early this year, a huge storm knocked down trees and power lines and flooded villages, damaging the hiking trails. We Californians recognized this familiar pattern of climate’s cruelty and poor land use decisions.

Burned signs in the Portuguese mountains

We persisted; my ankle felt a bit better and I was able to hike among the old schist villages with the help of an ankle wrap and hiking poles.

On the way home and back in the boot, at the Madrid airport (I can now say I’ve been to Spain), planes were delayed and gates shuffled, yet an army of orange‑vested attendants formed a conveyor belt of compassion for the disabled. We were a support group on wheels. On packed planes I miraculously avoided catching anything despite the coughing babies.

Lisbon’s bridge looks like the Golden Gate

The grand finale: midnight in Santa Rosa, about to be dropped off at the airporter bus stop, I strategized how to get home. Plan A: Lyft—no reply. Plan B: taxi—too late. Plan C: a heroic 2.5‑mile pilgrimage, halted when the bus driver passed me a phone number and I met Eric, the night driver‑cum‑savior who rescued me from walking‑home doom.

Silver linings: reunions that felt like coming home, friends new and ancient, strangers who became angels, tiny airport luxuries, lessons in culture, and real, workable tweaks for travel with an injury. But perhaps the best was bonding with my sister travelers and our knowledgeable guides.

No regrets. If anything, I’m grateful I muddled through—because the mess made room for unexpected warmth. I’m glad I didn’t cancel.

*If you’d like to support the Amal Women’s Training Center, consider donating: https://www.amalnonprofit.org

Taking a Little Break from Posting

Where We Are Now: A Recap

My Mother and Audie Murphy Ch. 113

Dear Readers,

For the past year and a half, I’ve been tracing the life of my mother, Florence Wick, her service as a Red Cross clubmobiler, and her improbable intersection with the war hero Audie Murphy. Flo made a huge scrapbook after the war and I’ve been using that and her war diary to tell the story. I’m also telling Audie Murphy’s story using his autobiography To Hell and Back.

I’m pausing now to catch my breath, but the story is far from over.

Patches and insignia of some of the combat groups Flo served with, along with her dogtag, tacked onto the inside covers of her scrapbook

To recap:

In May 1944, Flo joined the American Red Cross Clubmobile program and sailed for Naples on a hospital ship. A month later, she stood in the streets of Rome as it was liberated, alongside General Mark Clark. By high summer, she was at an army camp near Pozzuoli, leading a four-woman crew, serving doughnuts and coffee to soldiers on the brink of the invasion of southern France.

By late August, they were in France, chasing a front that refused to hold still. Somewhere in that rush, Flo fell in love—with a lieutenant named Gene. They planned to marry in October. A mortar shell ended that future before it began.

Winter came hard—1944 into ’45—frigid, dangerous, unrelenting. Flo and her crew followed the Third Infantry Division through France, often within earshot of the guns. It was here she handed coffee and doughnuts to a young soldier named Audie Murphy—not yet a legend, but already carrying the weight of one.

He would become the most decorated American soldier of World War II. Flo, meanwhile, captured something just as lasting: she took the only photograph of Murphy at a field awards ceremony. The photo became a famous icon.

In January, the division crossed the Rhine and drove into Germany. Flo kept working—serving men rotating through rest camps, offering small comforts in a landscape torn apart. At the war’s end, she witnessed the liberation of Dachau concentration camp and Berchtesgaden, Hitler’s alpine retreat.

She stayed on through the occupation, stationed in Austria and Germany. When she could, she traveled—Switzerland, England, German cities and towns, Brussels, Copenhagen, Paris—brief glimpses of a world trying to knit itself back together. She ended her stay with a visit to relatives in Sweden.

And that’s where we are now.

There is still much to tell. Flo’s scrapbook is bursting with post-war miscellany. How did Flo and Audie adjust to peacetime back in the USA? How did the war affect them and those who fought in combat? How did Audie Murphy become a movie star?

I’ll come back to the rest—after a little rest of my own.

To start the story from chapter 1: https://mollymartin.blog/2024/11/04/my-mother-and-audie-murphy/

Sweden: She Had to Visit Them All

Lugnås, Stora Myran, Jönköping, Lidköping, Skövde

My Mother and Audie Murphy Ch. 112

A Trip to Lugnås, Grandma’s Home Village

Flo got leave to visit Swedish relatives in Feb 1946. She and I returned in 1979.

Church and cemetery at Lugnås. The church was built in the 12th century.

It was still there when we visited in 1979.

Lidköping

Flo visited cousin Karin in Lidköping and we saw her again in 1979. She was a lesbian who adopted her younger caregiver. They traveled the world together.

Town square Lidköping. “500 years old in 1946”

Flo and I with her first cousins Greta and Elizabeth, Ingebritt and son

Ch. 113: https://mollymartin.blog/2026/04/11/taking-a-little-break-from-posting/

Stockholm: First Stop in Sweden

Flo Requests Compassionate Leave to Visit Relatives

My Mother and Audie Murphy Ch. 110

Sweden maintained official neutrality in the war but made pragmatic concessions to Nazi Germany—exporting crucial materials and allowing troop transits to occupied Norway and Finland—while also expanding its military, sheltering thousands of Jewish and political refugees, training Norwegian resistance fighters, and sharing intelligence with the Allies. As the war turned, Sweden steadily curtailed cooperation and nearly ended trade with Germany by late 1944. Historians debate this legacy: some see pragmatic neutrality that preserved independence and enabled humanitarian acts; others criticize compromises that prioritized economic interests over moral responsibility.

Flo and I traveled to Sweden and Norway in 1979, and we visited all the Swedish relatives still living that Flo saw in 1946. We saw Flo’s mother Gerda’s birthplace, and the towns Flo had visited. From talking to Norwegians I got the feeling then that they had not yet forgiven the Swedes for cooperating with the Nazis during their five-year occupation of Norway. In 1979 there were still those, like my mother, who remembered the war. Perhaps the younger generations no longer hold a grudge.

“This is the best place I’ve been in all Europe,” wrote Flo

Flo’s Photos of Stockholm February 1946

Postcards of Stockholm

Ch. 111: https://mollymartin.blog/2026/04/06/visiting-relatives-in-sweden/

How Can Women Make a Living Wage Without a College Degree?

Opening Up the Building and Construction Trades to Women

Indigenous women in Ironworkers Local 725, Canada. Photo: Lightframe

The Club for the Deaf’s attic on Valencia Street reeked of scorched timber. Char and blackened beams swallowed the light; soot clung to everything. We crawled, backs bent low, balancing on sheets of plywood stretched across the ceiling joists. As electricians rewiring the place after a fire, we worked while thunderous punk music rattled below — the deaf crowd savoring the music through their feet.

It was just one of many electrical jobs Cheryl Parker and I did together.

Cheryl belonged to Sonoma County and the San Francisco Bay Area in a way that was both rooted and radical. She came from land and labor, and she spent her life insisting that women — especially lesbians — had a right to both. I knew her as a close friend, a sister tradeswoman, and a fellow building inspector. Our lives overlapped on jobsites, in lesbian bars, and in the long conversations that happen when you are trying to make a life where none has been laid out for you.

I first met Cheryl when she was working at Mare Island Naval Shipyard. She was already doing skilled electrical work there, and she was also helping to raise two daughters with her lover. That combination — determination on the job and deep commitment to chosen family — was classic Cheryl. She was grounded, political without posturing, and absolutely unwilling to shrink herself.

We later worked together through Wonder Woman Electric on several jobs. At lesbian bars in San Francisco, while everyone else was dancing, Cheryl and I would be off to the side talking about electrical work — arguing over grounding, circuitry, and the strange logic of systems hidden behind walls. No one wanted to sit with us. We didn’t care.

Cheryl came out of an Italian American family deeply tied to Northern California agriculture. Her grandparents emigrated from northern Italy, homesteading land outside Cloverdale. Her father was a fruit tramp who met her mother, Irene Gianoli, while picking fruit. Cheryl grew up in Cloverdale, one of three children. She had been a high school cheerleader and a member of the riding club, but she was never ornamental. Strength came naturally to her.

In the early 1970s, Cheryl entered the political and cultural ferment of the Bay Area. At City College of San Francisco, she met Joan MacQuarrie in a women’s history class. They became lovers and political partners, asking a question that would shape the rest of their lives:

How could women make a living wage without a college degree?

That question led them straight into the building trades — places where women were barely tolerated. Cheryl went on to be a leader in the Tradeswomen Movement, organizing to bring more women into the construction trades and jobs that women had not been allowed to do.

In 1972, Cheryl became the first woman cabinetmaker in Local 550, hauling ninety-pound doors. She later became the first woman to enter the electrical apprenticeship at Mare Island, working in confined, dangerous spaces including nuclear submarines.

Cheryl went on to own her own business, teach at the Center for Employment Training in Santa Rosa, and receive Sonoma County’s Tradeswoman of the Year award. But her real legacy was collective. She was a founding member of Women United for Apprenticeship, and she fought — loudly and publicly — for enforceable standards to get women into union trades. When apprenticeship officials claimed women couldn’t do the work, Cheryl, a tall woman, stood over them with the authority of someone who already was.

Her path also led to many firsts in public service. Cheryl became the first female building inspector in Richmond, then the first senior female building inspector in Oakland, and later the first supervising female building inspector in San Leandro. In Richmond she led the city’s comparable worth campaign, bringing feminist labor politics directly into municipal government. In the late-1980s, we founded a network of women inspectors, the FBI — Female Building Inspectors — mentoring others who were just beginning to cross barriers we had already broken.

Female Building Inspectors after Cheryl’s time

Cheryl lived openly as a lesbian, embedded in women’s and lesbian communities, from tradeswomen groups to the Oakland-Berkeley Women’s Union. She argued about everything. Friends said she should have been a lawyer. In 1986, at 38, she gave birth to her son Tyson, and he became another fierce center of her life. I got to be her birth coach, an amazing experience.

We started Tradeswomen Inc. in 1979. The nonprofit is still going strong.

Cheryl Parker died of ovarian cancer on July 9, 1992, at the age of 44.

Visiting my friend as she was dying and sick from chemo, I repeated an old chestnut, that I’d prefer to die quickly of a heart attack rather than suffer. She said something profound: “Don’t be so sure. Just think of all the love I’ve received and all the love I’ve been able to give as I’m dying.” Cheryl lived just nine months from her diagnosis to her death. Much love flowed in all directions and my view of death was transfigured.

Cheryl understood something early that many still resist: solidarity has to be built and no one breaks barriers alone. I carry her with me — in the work, in the arguments, in the memory of two women at a bar talking about grounding while the music played on.

Cheryl helped make a path where there wasn’t one before. I was lucky to walk part of it with her.

Trip to Denmark and Sweden

First Stop Copenhagen

My Mother and Audie Murphy Ch. 108

Flo stopped in Copenhagen on her way to visit relatives in Sweden. In a postcard home Flo wrote, “Copenhagen is a lovely city and the food is wonderful–milk, steaks, ice cream.” The city had escaped the ravages of war as few other European cities had.

Permission from the consulate. Flo was born in 1913, not 1915.

Denmark was invaded by Germany on April 9, 1940. The Danish government opted for a swift surrender to avoid destruction, leading to a period of occupation where they maintained some autonomy and collaborated with German authorities. Denmark supplied food and resources to Germany, but resentment grew among the population against this cooperation.

As occupation continued, resistance movements emerged, notably organizing the rescue of around 7,200 Jews, who were smuggled to Sweden in 1943. Denmark was liberated by British forces on May 5, 1945, after five years of occupation. The aftermath prompted national discussions on collaboration and resistance, significantly influencing Danish society and identity in the post-war era.

“I wish you were here with me,” Flo wrote to her mother.

Ch. 109: https://mollymartin.blog/2026/04/01/mary-mcauliff-revealed/

3rd Signal Co. Hosts a BBQ Supper

They join in singing popular songs from the war

My Mother and Audie Murphy Ch. 107

Flo and her comrades got together for an indoor BBQ supper in February probably in an effort to recreate an American picnic. It was sponsored by the Third Signal Company, the photographers attached to the Third Infantry Division who joined the division at Anzio. Their photographs are posted at dogfacesoldier.org.

Cotton Balers. The 7th US Infantry Regiment is one of the five oldest continuously serving regiments in the U.S. Army, initially organized in July 1798. The regiment earned its nickname, “The Cottonbalers”, from its use of cotton bales as defensive works during the 1815 Battle of New Orleans. The regiment deployed early on in 1942’s assault on Morocco. They went on to serve across North Africa into Sicily and Italy, up through France, and then participating in the capture of Berchtesgaden.

Stella the Belle of Fidella is a song sung by soldiers who joined the war in Casablanca. Stella, it turns out, was just starving.

“This Arabic honey has no use for money:
She spurns even five hundred Franc notes
In order to win her just give her a dinner
It’s much more effective than bank notes”

Dog-faced soldier is the official song of the Third Infantry Division. In this version the word “Jap” replaces the word “Kraut.”

Ch. 108: https://mollymartin.blog/2026/03/31/trip-to-denmark-and-sweden/

Clubmobiling in Occupied Germany 1946

Then there were three: Flo, Janet and Mary

My Mother and Audie Murphy Ch. 106

The clubmobile crew of Mary McAuliffe, Janet Potts and Florence Wick in occupied Borgen, Germany. The women are now allowed to wear pants and have been issued handsome uniforms.

After having to scrounge vehicles to deliver donuts throughout 1944 and 45, the crew finally got its own clubmobile, the SageBrush. It had been attached to the 70th Infantry Division.

Janet poses with donuts in the new/used clubmobile

Serving coffee and donuts in what looks like a break in an archery or shooting competition

Working during halftime at an army football game

Mary McAuliff joined the crew in late 1945. She had probably served with another crew, but I can’t find more information about her. She doesn’t appear in “The Arc in the Storm,” the one book that lists the clubmobile women, but neither do most of the others who joined the North Africa/Italy campaign.

With “C” Company 3oth Infantry at Borken Germany

I’ve no idea why the soldiers are wearing helmets in these pictures. The war was long over.

Ch. 107: https://mollymartin.blog/2026/03/27/3rd-signal-co-hosts-a-bbq-supper/

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