Our Oldest Warrior Writer, Age 98, Served ARC Clubs

Virginia Griffith Hannum Worked for Red Cross During Two Wars

Ninety-eight-year-old Virginia Griffith Hannum, of Fort Wayne, served for what she calls a “quasi-military” organization during World War II and the Korean War. She worked for the ARC Club of the American Red Cross, serving in England from 1942 to 1947, assigned with the Third Division of the Eighth Air Force and from 1947 to 1948 for three ARC Clubs in Germany. Her final ARC Club assignment -- from 1950 to 1952, when she served as a supervisor for the Clubmobile Operation of the Korean ARC Club -- provided the foundation for the poem at right. ARC clubmobiles, like that pictured, carried workers to isolated units, where things like coffee and doughnuts were dispensed. Women ARC Club workers typically assisted during war time by comforting and entertaining sick and injured soldiers and providing recreational opportunities to the men of the U.S. Armed Forces who were serving in those wars, according to Eleanor “Bumpy” Stevenson and Pete Martin in their book, I Knew Your Soldier. An excerpt from the book, which contains the photographs and letters of ARC Club worker Helen Stevenson Meyer when she served in Korea and Japan from 1950 to 1952, provides information about ARC Club activities:

“ ‘Comfort and happiness’ was provided in the form of platonic companionship, coffee, and doughnuts. ‘As many as 8,000 in one day,’ either heading to or returning from the front, ‘invaded the (ARC) Club’ . . . and were greeted by only a handful of Red Cross women. The women answered questions, listened, shared a smoke, and played games with the men, who if only briefly, were permitted simultaneously to forget where they were and remember what they were fighting for.”

Mrs. Hannum, a former teacher, was married to U.S. Army Col. Calvin S. Hannum (now deceased), and they have three grown children, Marisa Hannum, Andrea Warren, and Chris Hannum.


The following poem, although based on the author’s impression of the Korean War experience, has a universal message in the latter stanzas that could be applied to any war or military conflict.

Freedom is Not Free
By Virginia Griffith Hannum

Slowly and reverently we climb
A green, gently-rising slope.
To our right, march nineteen veterans,
South Korea’s realized hope.

Yes, we are walking with American
veterans,
Weighted down with heavy winter gear.
Soldiers, sailors, marines, and airmen.
Though July, it seems cold and drear.

Whatever their height in Texas or
Maine,
Here, they’re all about seven-foot-three
As they silently scale the slippery sand
O! those hills, those hills of Korea!

Their ponchos pleat in the winter wind,
Helmets bent to avoid the snow,
They almost seem to move, their faces
shine
They’re so young, so intent, so gung-ho.

They could be nearing the Frozen Chosin
Or the forest of Uijongbu,
Or the rocky sill of Pork Chop Hill,
Or the shore of the river Yalu.

Or, with the change of gear, it is summer,
On the dust-laden streets of Taegu,
As their clothing wet with body sweat,
An incoming charge they drew.

Yes, they stayed the course, as they
pledged to do,
From ninteen-fifty to fifty-three.
Then infantry, armor, air crews -- all
troops
Left South Korea -- a nation free.

We finished our climb, and at the crest
In bold letters, for all to see
Inscribed, high-lighted, four memorable
words,
“Freedom is Not Free.”

Yes, it has a price, but it can’t be bought,
For the tender’s not the paper or metal,
But a Mother’s tears, and a wife’s dark
fears
As she reads to her son, Dad’s letter.

And Dad, as he straddles his gunner’s
post
Thinks of Tess and the twins, just two,
And longs for the day he’ll be home again
With his job, and the guys he knew.

Freedom has a price, but it can’t be
bought.
It is of the spirit, a thing apart,
Like a symphony, or a jewel unique,
It’s enshrined in a nation’s heart.

Yes, Freedom is not free, my friends;
Never doubt those words are true,
For heroes fought, and bled, and died
To buy it for me and you.

May God continue to bless America!