FReeper Canteen ~ Hall of Heroes: Julia Child ~ 19 October 2020

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Julia Child

Info from this website.

Julia Child: 1912-2004

Julia McWilliams Child was born Aug. 19, 1912, and was, she has said, "an adolescent until I was 30." One of her grandfathers left Illinois in 1849 when he was 16 to pan for gold in California. Her mother, tall and lively like Julia, had roots in New England. Julia grew up in Pasadena in a large house with drivers, gardeners, cooks and a kitchen that both she and her mother rarely saw or cared about. She played center for her private-school basketball team and enrolled in Smith College where she lived what she describes as a "butterfly life," driving her friends around in a Ford and graduating in 1934.

To many, Julia Child is the darling grandmother who taught Americans how to appreciate great cooking. Few know, however, that this part of her life came after a high-level stint in the OSS (a CIA precursor) during WWII. Julia Child became interested in military service when she joined the Red Cross after the bombing of Pearl Harbor in 1941. Before then, Julia was becoming the Paris Hilton of her day -- she would stay out late drinking and socializing and, being from a privileged background, could afford to do so. Joining the Red Cross helped her focus her life on constructive goals. The new lifestyle appealed to her and the Red Cross became her first step toward serving her country.

Julia was eager to do more, but at 6' 2" she was too tall for other military service organizations. Refusing to give up, she a traveled to Washington in 1942 to explore her options. Soon she began working for the Office of Strategic Services. Although she has modestly claimed her duties were only clerical, her performance record suggests otherwise. By 1943 she had been promoted and was working with very sensitive intelligence material. That same year, she was recruited to travel overseas and help manage intelligence activity in WWII’s Pacific theater. Stationed in Kandy, Sri Lanka, she helped the OSS track data on a range of topics including troop movement and espionage. Julia helped coordinate the information necessary to plan the attacks on the Japanese-held islands in the area.

To some degree, Julia was to the service what “Q” was to James Bond -- although her duties didn’t involve undercover work, she helped develop supplies and techniques for spies and clandestine operatives. One of Julia’s first OSS teams was assigned the task of finding ways a spy stranded on a life raft could get water. One particularly unappealing strategy they experimented with was drinking water squeezed from a fish’s body. Unfortunately, the technique turned out to be useless.

Julia’s other surprising contribution to the OSS was a shark repellant. The United States had underwater mines that were being inadvertently detonated by sharks. The shark-induced explosions had two main downsides: There was one less mine and German U-Boats could chart the minefield’s location and know where to avoid. The OSS needed a way to keep sharks away from the explosives, so they turned to Julia. She and some coworkers cooked up a shark repellant that was used to coat the explosives. Unlike her fish squeezing technique, Julia's shark repellant seemed to be successful.

After her service in the OSS, Julia married Paul Child, an OSS operative she had worked with while in Sri Lanka. The two moved to Paris in 1948 where Paul Child worked for the U.S. Intelligence Service. Soon, she began attending the Cordon Bleu cooking school in Paris and developed skill in preparing French cuisine. Julia's cooking interests and abilities grew steadily, and in 1961 she published her first cookbook: 'Mastering the Art of French Cooking.' It was this book and her subsequent television appearances that made Julia Child a household name, but the events were set in motion by her employment in a clandestine intelligence agency.

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TO THE

FR CANTEEN

Good morning, Everyone.

Good morning to our

AWESOME

Military, our Allies, and their families.

Thank you, Ma, for preparing the Canteen
for today's activities.

Heavens, I never realized Julia was that tall.
There are a few celebrities that did military service.
Or spy stuff.

We had a weekend away in the mountains of Virginia.
The colors are bursting.

Back home and now we need to get back on track with our walking.
Missed all but one day last week.

Hope everyone had a wonderful, relaxing weekend.

So, come on in and sit for a while.
There's always plenty of coffee, tea;
pancakes, conversation, silliness,
and plain old BS

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