Elizabeth Williams holds a doughnut out to the hands of flyers returning from bombing runs at an American Red Cross clubmobile in southern Italy in 1943. The photo is a classic depiction of a Red Cross "Doughnut Dolly."
Doughnut Dollies replaced the Doughnut Girls in World War II, as once again doughnuts were trotted out to soldiers as a fresh, hot reminder of the homefront they were fighting for.
Elizabeth A. Richardson, the woman on the left in this photograph, is standing in front of her Clubmobile, a single-decker bus fitted with coffee and doughnut-making equipment that drove around the England, bringing cheer to the soldiers stationed there. “I consider myself fortunate to be in Clubmobile—can’t conceive of anything else,” she wrote to her parents in World War II.
But like many of the young men she served doughnuts to, Elizabeth did not return home. She was killed in plane crash in July 25, 1945, and is buried in the American Cemetery in Normandy.
