1500 Donuts Burn, but Clubmobilers Not Hurt
My Mother and Audie Murphy Ch. 46
Newspaper clipping posted in Flo’s album
WITH THE 7TH ARMY, FRANCE—
“Total damage: one volkswagon and 1500 donuts,” so read unit B’s report of accident. Back of the simple statement, however, was more than meets the eye.
Sent to serve an artillery unit of the infantry division to which they are attached, Florence Wick and Janet Potts took off for the assignment in their captured German jeep or volkswagon.
Down the road they went, bounding happily along in the mud. The car ran smoothly while the girls served their coffee and then things began to happen.
“After covering part of the battalion,” Miss Wick reports, “our car caught on fire from a short in the wiring system, and a few minutes after we had gone out the only door in front that worked, the gas tank exploded and threw gasoline across the highway and held up traffic for several minutes.”
Nothing daunted, the girls thumbed a ride back to their donut shop, a little shaky, then started out again with more donuts and covered the balance of their day’s assignment.
After the war, Flo still drove Volkswagens
Flo developed a hatred for Germans; they killed her fiancé and many of her friends. But she wasn’t one of those war survivors who refused to drive German-made cars after the war. She hated krauts, but she loved their cars.
At the start of their service the clubmobilers were told they would be issued a 2 ½ ton truck retrofitted with a kitchen and equipment for making coffee and donuts. But they travelled through Italy and France before they finally got their truck in Germany. Until then the women had to scrounge vehicles in which to carry their donuts to the troops. They used any vehicle they could get their hands on; for a while it was a recommissioned ambulance. Later they used a captured German Volkswagen. It seems this was not the vehicle that blew up. Flo notes that they left the Volks behind when they crossed the Rhine into Germany.
Flo sent the photo to Wagen Wheels, the Volkswagen magazine, in 1973. She wrote to them:
“Leaning on their ‘donut delivery wagon’ are Liz Elliott of Manhattan, New York, and Flo Wick of Yakima, Washington, donut gals with the American Red Cross in World War II. They were attached to the famed Third Infantry Division which left from home base at Fort Lewis, Washington in 1942 for North Africa, thence to Sicily, Anzio, Rome, France and Germany, ending the war in Salzburg, Austria in 1945 and with more Congressional Medals of Honor than any other unit in World War II (a majority posthumous). Most famous Congressional Medal holder, Audie Murphy, later made his movie, “To Hell and Back” in the Yakima area.
“Their vehicle is an original People’s car (Volkswagen) which the German people bought, contributed to the Fatherland for the war with the promise that after the war (and victory, of course), their car would be returned to them.
“Fortunately, the American and British armies were able to spoil their plans and when this particular VW “German jeep” was captured in France in 1944 it was presented to the 3rd Division’s four Red Cross girls who converted it into a donut wagon in which they delivered Red Cross donuts to units of the combat division in all the best mountains and fields of France. Later, after crossing the Rhine into Germany and leaving the Volks behind, they had a more military vehicle in which to deliver donuts—a 2 ½ ton clubmobile truck.
“Flo Wick, Red Cross Clubmobile Captain, from Yakima, Washington is now Mrs. Carroll Martin of that city—mother of a daughter and three sons—daughter and eldest son college students. She is the happy owner of a VW Squareback in which she commutes from her home in Yakima’s West Valley to her office in Selah, some 15 miles, every day. There are two other VWs in the Martin family—one, another Squareback, used by the 19-year-old son, and the other, a red Beetle, operated by the youngest son, a junior in high school. None of these, however, can match the ugly little original for stamina and glamor. After all, not many VWs have “fought” on both sides of World War II!”
In 1944, while in France, the Third Division “liberated” one of the Wermacht’s famous Kubelwagens. A second incarnation was called The Thing.
Flo’s story was published in the 1973 Wagen Wheels magazine.
Ch 47: https://mollymartin.blog/2025/08/24/sainte-marie-aux-mines/
tradeswomn musings 