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- Description:
- Lillian Kivela talks about her service in the United States Army Nurse Corps during World War Two including, why she enlisted in June 1943, nurse's training, basic Army training, housing, uniforms, and her duties at the Schick General Hospital in Clinton, Iowa. She says that she was sent to New Jersey in preparation for being shipped to Europe and describes shipboard conditions and being seasick throughout the entire ten-day voyage. She talks about being housed in an unheated Welsh resort hotel, marching, walking a mile to the mess hall for meals, serving in the orthopedic ward at a hospital in Headington, a suburd of Oxford and experiencing an influx of patients following D-Day and the subsequent fighting, and the early use of penicillin to control infection. In her off-time, Kivela says that she often visited London for the theater, rode her bicycle around Oxford, became acquainted with British families and even met the Queen Mother and boxer Joe Louis when they visited the hospital. Back in the States, after the war, she says that she had a difficult time adjusting to civilian life and finally came to Michigan State College to finish her degree in microbiology. Kivela is interviewed by Elsie Hornbacher.
- Date Issued:
- 1986-01-22T00:00:00Z
- Data Provider:
- Michigan State University. Libraries
- Collection:
- Women's Overseas Service League Oral History Project
- Description:
- Lillian Malloy says that she joined the U.S. Army as soon as the enlistment office in Battle Creek, MI opened after the attack on Pearl Harbor. She says that she was first sent to Des Moines, Iowa for basic training and also received administrative and clerical training before being sent to Eglin Field in Florida as part of the first group of women earmarked for service in the U.S. Army Air Corps. She describes finally shipping to England aboard the Queen Elizabeth, her duties there and traveling around England and Ireland after V-E Day. Malloy also talks about her postwar European duty stations, describes the living conditions and remembers watching General Eisenhower run a staff meeting. She says she might have stayed in the service if she had not had to care for her sick mother.
- Date Issued:
- 1984-10-10T00:00:00Z
- Data Provider:
- Michigan State University. Libraries
- Collection:
- Women's Overseas Service League Oral History Project
- Description:
- Betty Vogel describes her youth and education and her service in the U.S. Army Nurse Corps during World War II. After graduating from the nursing program at Abbott Hospital in Minneapolis in 1942, Vogel says that she decided to join the Army after seeing Japanese atrocities depicted in a newsreel. She says that she was inducted in September 1943 and after training, was shipped out to Scotland in January 1944 on the USS Brazil. She says that she was later stationed at a hospital in Barford, England and that on D-Day the casualties came in so fast that they had no time to even clean them up. In July of 1944, Vogel says that she was sent to a hospital near Paris and treated American and German casualties from the Battle of the Bulge and actually married her husband Edward during that same battle. When she had earned enough points, Vogel says that she was sent back to the States and was discharged at Fort Sheridan, IL in December 1945. Vogel remembers being scared much of the time that she was in the field during the war and says that she doesn't believe that women belong in combat. Vogel is interviewed by Ruth F. Stewart assisted by Carol A. Habgood.
- Date Issued:
- 2003-10-23T00:00:00Z
- Data Provider:
- Michigan State University. Libraries
- Collection:
- Women's Overseas Service League Oral History Project
- Description:
- Retired Air Force Lieutenant Colonel Alice Pfeiffer talks about her youth in Illinois, her education and her career as an Air Force nurse and administrator. Pfeiffer says that she enlisted in the Army Air Corps in 1941, talks about her first duty stations and says that after additional training at Fort Bragg, was sent to England aboard the Queen Mary. Pfeiffer says that she was assigned to the 68th General Hospital which was set up in a cow pasture, worked 12 hour shifts, and lived in very, very basic conditions. After D-Day, Pfeiffer says that she worked in a hospital in France, was finally sent back to the U.S. after the war and was discharged in 1946. She says that she enlisted in the Air Force in 1949, served at various bases and hospitals around the world and retired in 1964 while stationed at Wright-Patterson AFB. Ends abruptly. Pfeiffer is interviewed by Ruth F. Stewart.
- Date Issued:
- 2004-02-17T00:00:00Z
- Data Provider:
- Michigan State University. Libraries
- Collection:
- Women's Overseas Service League Oral History Project
- Description:
- Lee Gordhammer talks about her service in the Women's Army Auxiliary Corps (WAAC) and the Women's Army Corps (WAC) from 1942 to 1945. Gordhammer says she chose to work in motor transportation and became both an instructor and a skilled mechanic. She describes dodging "buzz-bombs" while in England, landing at Omaha Beach in July 1944, and ending the war in Paris. Gordhammer also discusses why she enlisted, her pre-war employment, military living conditions, uniforms, using the G.I. Bill to finish her education after the war, and finally working at the U.S. State Department.
- Data Provider:
- Michigan State University. Libraries
- Collection:
- Women's Overseas Service League Oral History Project
- Description:
- Elaine Carlton (born Olive Milborne) talks about entering service in the U.S. Army in July 1944 while living with her family in Belfast, Northern Ireland, taking rifle training in Litchfield, England, and disembarking from a ship in rough seas at Omaha Beach in France. She says that she was later stationed in Cherbourg, France and describes enemy sniper fire there, the condition of the housing, her duties, and a shipboard explosion that rocked the Cherbourg harbor. Carlton says that she was assigned to General Eisenhower's headquarters in Frankfurt, Germany after the war, returned to the States in 1947, was married in May 1948 and discharged from the Army later that same year.
- Data Provider:
- Michigan State University. Libraries
- Collection:
- Women's Overseas Service League Oral History Project
- Description:
- Sarah Penrose "Penny" Schemmel Edlin discusses her service with the 82nd General Hospital during World War Two. Edlin talks about her childhood, her education as a physical therapist, joining the Army as a commissioned officer in August 1943, her very rigorous basic training, and being shipped to England in February 1944. She also talks about the harsh living conditions in the hospital camps where she served including, the bad food, unsanitary conditions and rodent infestations, and shares a story about a planned German POW prison break near one of the camps and treating the German prisoners who claimed they couldn't speak English. After VE-Day, Edlin says that her unit moved to France to close down hospitals and later to a hospital in England to treat emaciated American POWs who were returning from the German prison camps. She says that romances between U.S. Army officers and nurses was quite common during the war and that she, in fact, married a man from her unit after she returned to the States. Edlin is interviewed by Dorothy M. Harrison.
- Data Provider:
- Michigan State University. Libraries
- Collection:
- Women's Overseas Service League Oral History Project
- Description:
- Jane Piatt, chair of the Women's Overseas Service League's National Oral History Project, talks about her service in the Women's Army Corps during World War Two and in the Korean War. Piatt speaks at length about her time as a mess hall chief at Fort Des Moines and her time working with both Colonel Oveta Culp Hobby, the first director of the Women's Army Corps and Lieutenant Colonel Charity Adams, the first African-American woman to become a commissioned officer in the WACs. Piatt also talks about her jobs as an air inspector and the head of an officer's club in the United States near the end of the war and leaving active duty in 1947, only to be recalled during the Korean conflict. During the Korean War, she says that she served in England at both Burtonwood Air Force Base as an air inspector and at Brize Norton Air Force Base as an administrative assistant. Piatt is interviewed by Elsie Hornbacher.
- Date Issued:
- 1983-04-21T00:00:00Z
- Data Provider:
- Michigan State University. Libraries
- Collection:
- Women's Overseas Service League Oral History Project
- Description:
- Hazel Percival talks about her twenty-three year career in the U.S. Army Nurse Corps and says that she enlisted because it was the "thing to do" and that there was talk of nurses being drafted. She says she was first sent to Europe in 1943 and after World War II, to duty stations in several stateside hospitals as well as in Panama and South Korea. Percival shares memories of living in tents and Quonset huts, the ship convoy that took her to Scotland via Iceland and her first assignment in southern England, and says that her greatest adjustment to military life was getting used to having people around all of the time. Percival is interviewed by Marjorie Brown.
- Date Issued:
- 1986-05-26T00:00:00Z
- Data Provider:
- Michigan State University. Libraries
- Collection:
- Women's Overseas Service League Oral History Project
- Description:
- Theodora C. Smolinski talks about her service in the Women's Army Auxiliary Corps and later the Women's Army Corp during World War II. She says that she was working as a stenographer and switchboard operator for a company in Pittsburgh when, motivated by patriotism, she enlisted in October 1942 and later found herself being shipped overseas aboard the Queen Mary. She discusses the bases she served at in both England and France, describes her Army duties as a switchboard operator, her pay, her rank, her uniforms, and being segregated from the men. Smolinski says she returned to her employer in Pittsburgh after her discharge in 1945, used the GI Bill to earn a certificate in occupational therapy and later an undergraduate degree and that her time in the military gave her a sense of confidence which was important to her throughout her life. Smolinski is interviewed by Amelia Bunder.
- Date Issued:
- 1984-02-22T00:00:00Z
- Data Provider:
- Michigan State University. Libraries
- Collection:
- Women's Overseas Service League Oral History Project