Army & Navy – Shot in the Dark

Ella Shake pined for her sailor husband. He had married her in 1942 in Honolulu. Then he had been sent across the Pacific and she, like other Navy wives, had been shipped back to the States.

For a while she taught ballet, but she missed her husband more & more. The WAC and the Red Cross refused to let her volunteer for service in the Pacific because she had been born in Germany, had not become naturalized until after war broke out. But, knowing that her husband was somewhere in the Southwest Pacific, determined Mrs. Shake finally persuaded the captain of a Norwegian freighter, bound for Sydney, to sign her on as a pantrymaid in the officers’ mess.

Several days from Sydney, the skipper was ordered to put in at a New Guinea port. Mrs. Shake told a party of officers who went ashore to be sure and ask around for Lieut. Hugh Fox Shake. They did. Bossing the foundry and machine shop at the port was Hugh Fox Shake.

A sympathetic officer gave up his cabin to Hugh and Ella Shake for the two and a half days the ship was in port. Mrs. Shake had been so sure of finding her husband that she had brought along two cases of beer, also paints and canvases for Lieut. Shake, who likes to paint.

Last week Pantrymaid Shake, first civilian wife to visit her husband overseas, was on her way back.