CityView Magazine

The USO brought together a variety of organizations such as the Salvation Army, the YMCA and the YWCA – to provide recreation, entertainment and creature comforts for the troops. a uniformed chap could find a sweetheart to go happily-ever- aſtering with … well then, strike up the band and take a bow. The 16-year-old piano player – "I had only taken a few les- sons," she said – had her mother as chaperone that night at the Soldiers Town Home. "She took me and two or three of my friends because they didn't have enough girls," she said, sitting in her home that is less than three miles from setting for that fateful night. "There were all these older college men coming for a party, and they didn't have enough girls, so we went to just fill up the crowd." The crowd included an ROTC unit from the Alabama Polytechnic Institute, the school now known as Auburn University. A cadet named Reggie Barton, who was about 20 years old, had been called to active duty and ordered to report to Fort Bragg. He joined his classmates at this affair, "and that's where I met her." There she was, at the upright pi- school. It had just been a fun, innocent night of "Stardust" and hot dogs in Fayetteville, North Carolina. WAGING WAR AND WINNING WARRIORS OVER Zula attended other USO Club events, especially the danc- es. How she loved those Saturday night dances. "And there were lots of cute guys, too, who liked to dance," she recalled. With all the comings and goings of soldiers marching to battle cries, "I met a lot of very nice people from all over – eve- rywhere – and carried on a long distance relationship with some of them." Young people in those days The USO of North Carolina Fort Bragg Center will host the 4th annual Run for the Troops ano, playing with all her beginner might to the sheet music of "Star- dust" and Glenn Miller's "In The Mood." College boy and high school girl were not starry-eyed by each other – at least not at first. There was no you-had-me-from- hello, no walking hand-in-hand in the moonlight aſter the last dance, no made-for-Hollywood romantic scene. Instead, "they came to my house to have hot dogs," she said. And that was that. Zula went on about her life as a teen- 5K on March 31. The race will be held on the campus of Fayetteville Technical Community College. Registration is $25 and can be done online at www.active.com. For more information visit www.uso-nc.org. were singing and swinging to a cavalcade of musical luminaries. Glenn Miller. Tommy Dorsey. Artie Shaw. Benny Goodman. This was, aſter all, the height of the Big Band era. But the coun- try had just trudged through the depths of the Great Depres- sion, and the winds of war were flapping swastika flags on the other side of the Atlantic. That firebrand tyrant of Germany, Adolf Hitler, was on the warpath, determined to clear everything in his path to crush France and Great Britain, the champions of World War One he so despised. For now, at least, Hitler's madness was mostly Europe's ager in a military town, wedged in an anxious time between World Wars. Reggie went on with his training at Fort Bragg and then was off to Fort Sill, Oklahoma, for officer candidate 54 | March/April • 2012 mess. But the specter of another World War gave Ameri- cans a real sense of foreboding. Our military had been fast expanding in response to the growing international threat. Bases were bulking up, young men were signing up, and amid

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