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CATHY WURZER: The year 2020 has marked the 75th anniversary of the end of World War II. It's the last major anniversary of the war where many who served are still with us. In their honor, our photographer Evan Frost has been publishing a series of interviews and beautiful portraits with Minnesotans who served in the armed forces at the time.

Throughout the year, he's been joining me here on Morning Edition to share their stories. And he's with us right now as the year draws to a close. Good morning, Evan.

EVAN FROST: Good morning, Cathy.

CATHY WURZER: So today, you're publishing portraits of a couple, Doris and Richard Edge. Tell us about them.

EVAN FROST: Yeah. So Doris and Richard have actually been married for 64 years. They both joined the war effort in 1943. Doris enlisted in the Navy, and Richard was drafted into the army straight out of high school.

CATHY WURZER: We should say Doris's story is pretty interesting because it was pretty unusual for women to be in the service at that time.

EVAN FROST: Yeah, it's fascinating. So in 1942, a year before Doris joined, President Franklin Roosevelt signed into law the Navy Women's Reserve Act. The goal was to free up more men for active duty.

So in the Navy at that point, they created a program called The WAVES, which stands for Women Accepted for Volunteer Emergency Service. And there was a similar program in the army called WAAC, which stood for the Women's Army Corps. When I spoke with Doris, this made me laugh. She said that she was mostly drawn to the Navy and the WAVES program because she thought she'd look good in the uniform.

DORIS EDGE: Well, I tried to decide which hat I would look the best in, and I decided it was the Navy. So that's the why I joined the WAVES.

CATHY WURZER: [CHUCKLES] What exactly did she do during the war?

EVAN FROST: Well, her position was technically called a Youmans.

DORIS EDGE: Which is the same thing as a word as secretary.

EVAN FROST: She was keeping records, writing letters, organizing paperwork.

DORIS EDGE: But they had women who were mechanics and nurses. They had a variety of jobs.

EVAN FROST: She was sent to Florida to work on a base there working for a WAVE officer who was from Milwaukee.

DORIS EDGE: And I was from Saint Paul, and I think that's why she chose me to be her Youmans because I was from her neck of the woods.

CATHY WURZER: So, what did she think of the work?

EVAN FROST: It sounded like she really liked it. And she drew a lot of meaning from it. It was really a way that she could get in and help the war effort and support her country. And she stayed in the reserves for a long time after the war.

DORIS EDGE: Some of the WAVES got out as soon as you could get out. They decided they were all done. But I liked it too much, I didn't want to get out right away.

EVAN FROST: She says they were pushing her to leave as many women did after the war ended, but she really didn't want to.

DORIS EDGE: And I said, "No, I am not ready." And they said, "Well, then you have to go to school." And I said, "OK, what schools are open?"

EVAN FROST: So she ended up going to Texas to get schooling on how to do some training for pilots.

DORIS EDGE: And so it was very rewarding.

EVAN FROST: And by the time she left the Navy, she was a Lieutenant and actually outranked Richard. She says the only reason she left is because she came pregnant with their first child, and at that point, she wasn't allowed to be in the program anymore.

DORIS EDGE: You couldn't have a child under the age of 18 because they thought you're needed at home. So that was the end for me.

CATHY WURZER: Well, let's talk about her husband Richard. What was his assignment in the war?

EVAN FROST: Well, he was drafted straight out of high school. He went to Fort Snelling, like we've heard a lot of these other men to get the training and then to Texas for more training and then was sent off to Europe with the army.

RICHARD EDGE: Well, I was lucky I got a heavy weapons company.

EVAN FROST: And we're playing some tape here from our conversation, but he can be a little hard to understand. So I'll explain.

RICHARD EDGE: And since I was trained in Arizona, they put me in the [INAUDIBLE] section.

EVAN FROST: He was put in a heavy weapons company and was tasked with firing mortars. His squad was made up of 12 men with 2 mortars. And their job was to protect infantry in front of them.

CATHY WURZER: Mm-hmm, that's tough. He must have seen some pretty intense fighting. Did he tell you any stories?

EVAN FROST: Yeah, he told me a few stories. But one thing that's less of a story that he told me was that by the end of the war, he said, all the good German soldiers were dead, and they were left to fight kids, not much younger than himself.

RICHARD EDGE: The Germans were good soldiers. They [INAUDIBLE]. And the trouble is you were fighting a bunch of kids, 16 or 17 years old.

EVAN FROST: And you could tell that this was really hard for him to recall. But a story that stands out, he says that they were advancing on the Germans, but they hit a point where it was raining just so hard. It was downpouring. And so they took shelter in some kind of barn that they found.

RICHARD EDGE: And the time, I got the guns set up. I told the guys, [INAUDIBLE] out and got the two guns set up. And the rest of them went inside the barn.

EVAN FROST: And they had to carry all of their mortars and ammunition. These are two 40-pound mortars and all of the shells that they had to fire. And they were exhausted.

RICHARD EDGE: But barroom floor was all wet and muddy. So they climbed up into the loft.

EVAN FROST: Some of the men climbed up in the rafters and up onto the walls to get some rest.

RICHARD EDGE: And I said, we can't be up here. It's not safe. Before I got [INAUDIBLE] of the shell come to the roof of the building.

EVAN FROST: And two of the men were killed, and many more were wounded.

CATHY WURZER: Was he injured himself?

EVAN FROST: Yeah, he was hurt pretty severely. He was thrown to the ground, and his back was all torn up from the brick floor of the barn. And when the infantry got him back to a hospital, the surgeon told him that he was a very lucky man.

RICHARD EDGE: The surgeon said, "You're a lucky soldier." I said, "Why?"

EVAN FROST: His buckle actually stopped a piece of shrapnel from taking off his leg.

RICHARD EDGE: They passed me up and sent me back to France.

EVAN FROST: He ended up earning a Purple Heart for that and was eventually sent back to his unit to serve on light duty. And he laughed when he told me this because the truth was there was no such thing as light duty.

RICHARD EDGE: So they transferred me over there to a post office in Reims, France, which was the headquarters for Eisenhower. And I worked there till the war ended.

CATHY WURZER: So, how did Richard and Doris's lives come together?

EVAN FROST: So they met just after the war. Richard was living with his folks in Saint Paul and went to a bar downtown. And it just so happened that Doris was there playing organ.

DORIS EDGE: And he got acquainted with me. And we dated for a whole year, and then we got married.

EVAN FROST: And Richard says his mother was very picky about who he was going to marry.

RICHARD EDGE: My mother was very fussy who I wanted to date.

EVAN FROST: And it was important to them that she was Swedish and Doris was Swedish.

RICHARD EDGE: So I took care of us. [LAUGHS]

DORIS EDGE: If you're Swedish, you're all right.

[MUSIC PLAYING]

EVAN FROST: So they married in 1956, and they've been together ever since.

CATHY WURZER: Mm-hmm, what a story? I've said this before Evan, I'm going to say it again here at the end of your series, I really appreciate and I think listeners do, too, really appreciated your work on this and how important it is to tell these stories that these are very brave men and women who served on our behalf so many years ago. So, thank you.

EVAN FROST: Yeah, I'm grateful to them as well. And thank you, Cathy.

CATHY WURZER: Photographer Evan Frost, you can find his portraits on our website mprnews.org.

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