Ritchie Girls and Ritchie WACs
Join author Dr. Beverley Driver Eddy for this insider’s look at Camp Ritchie, a World War II military intelligence training center in the mountains of western Maryland. Dr. Eddy is the author of Ritchie Boy Secrets: How a Force of Immigrants and Refugees Helped Win World War II. In that book, she recounts the stories of bilingual immigrants and refugees who were trained in interrogation, photo interpretation, terrain analysis, mapmaking, counterintelligence, and order of battle during WWII. Known popularly as the “Ritchie Boys,” this group included some 15,000 men and women.
In tonight’s program, Dr. Eddy focuses on the 200 “Ritchie Girls” and “Ritchie WACs” who trained and worked in the secret facility. Through intense research and interviews with the veterans’ families, she has gathered colorful stories of the WACs’ work at the camp and in the field. The three women pictured above became close friends during their time at Camp Ritchie, and Dr. Eddy has followed their careers through the war and their civilian lives after service.
Dr. Eddy is professor emerita of German language and literature at Dickinson College. She has published seven books, including Camp Sharpe’s “Psycho Boys,” the story of the Camp Ritchie sub-camp on the Gettysburg Battlefield which trained men in psychological warfare during WWII. Dr. Eddy’s books are available at Amazon.com.
