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- Description:
- Jane Piatt, chair of the Women's Overseas Service League's National Oral History Project, moderates a conversation between several WOSL members gathered for the 60th Anniversary celebration of the organization's Milwaukee Unit. Unidentified speakers reminisce about their often colorful service experiences in such places as Australia, Japan, Korea, Okinawa, Brussels, and other far-flung places around the globe. The women say that it often took boldness, creativity and audacity to survive and thrive in a "man's world." The women later hold a short business meeting, convene the session with the Pledge of Allegiance and recite the WOSL's mission and purpose statement. An unidentified participant also provides a brief history of the Milwaukee Unit. Jane Piatt describes the Oral History Project, its goals, how it has been coordinated, and the success rate of conducting interviews and obtaining recordings.
- Date Issued:
- 1985-05-01T00:00:00Z
- Data Provider:
- Michigan State University. Libraries
- Collection:
- Women's Overseas Service League Oral History Project
- Description:
- Edna Penny Rice talks about her twenty-four year military career, first in the Women's Army Auxiliary Corps and then its successors, the Women's Army Corps, and the Women in the Air Force. Rice says that she enlisted because she thought she "was as good" as her brother and her fiance and felt very patriotic. Rice says that she was inducted in July 1942 and worked in personnel and administration in every military theater of operation. She describes working and living conditions at her various posting, her uniforms and her leadership and administrative responsibilities. Rice says she was was pushed into becoming an officer and never planned on making the service a career. Rice is interviewed by Marjorie Brown.
- Date Issued:
- 1986-03-07T00:00:00Z
- Data Provider:
- Michigan State University. Libraries
- Collection:
- Women's Overseas Service League Oral History Project
- Description:
- Transcript of interview of Marian Sievert Mosher conducted by Vivian Peterson. In the interview, Mosher describes her time as a nurse during World War II at the 165th Station Hospital in Hawaii and the Philippines. In addition to the general details about living conditions and daily life as a nurse, she particularly details the training she conducted for servicemen who would be out on the front and the American prisoners of war she worked with in the Philippines. Mosher also discusses her time after the war when she traveled to Vietnam, India, Egypt, and Jordan to advise on teaching and teach nursing to locals in those areas.
- Date Issued:
- 1990-01-01T00:00:00Z
- Data Provider:
- Michigan State University. Libraries
- Collection:
- Women's Overseas Service League Oral History Project
- Description:
- First Lieutenant Merriann E. McBride McKillip, in a presentation at the Glendale Federal Savings and Loan in Laguna Hills, CA, discusses her service in the U.S. Army Reserve Ordnance Corp and her deployment for Operations Desert Shield and Desert Storm. McKillip talks about graduating from ROTC in 1986, the job of the Ordinance Corps to deploy transportation and field service units and being sent to Korea, Honduras, and Japan on training exercises. She also talks about the role of women in the service, women in command positions, gender discrimination in the military, and adapting to everyday life in Saudi Arabia. McKillip answers questions from the audience about sexual assault in the military, female soldiers who are pregnant at the time of deployment, how military families deal with childcare during mobilization, and the growing number of women in the military. Ends abruptly. The recording is introduced by Vivian Peterson.
- Date Issued:
- 1991-11-05T00:00:00Z
- Data Provider:
- Michigan State University. Libraries
- Collection:
- Women's Overseas Service League Oral History Project
- Description:
- Betty Leiby discusses her experiences during and after World War II while serving in the Red Cross and working as a civilian recruiter for the U.S. Army. Leiby talks about working as a secretary in Detroit before joining the American Red Cross when she was 23 and being sent to Hanley, England to serve in a Red Cross Club. She says that she was transferred to Furth, Germany at the end of the War and eventually left the Red Cross to recruit civilians to work for the U.S. Army's 53rd Quartermaster Company which was stationed there. She talks about her travels around Europe, including many trips to Ireland and Wales and discusses at length the general conduct of American soldiers while serving abroad. Leiby is interviewed by Elsie Hornbacher.
- Date Issued:
- 1985-11-21T00:00:00Z
- Data Provider:
- Michigan State University. Libraries
- Collection:
- Women's Overseas Service League Oral History Project
- Description:
- Barbara Fravenholtz talks about her service in the U.S. Army Nurse Corps during World War Two. Fravenholtz describes her decision to enlist on Armistice Day in 1942 and discusses why she enlisted alone rather than with other graduates from the St. Francis General Hospital nursing program. Fravenholtz recounts her experiences as a nurse in the 95th Evacuation Hospital which was attached to the 5th Army and later to the 7th Army, as it followed the front lines in Tunisia, Sicily, Cassino, Salerno, Strasbourg, and Heidelberg. She talks fondly about her dog Eric, a gift from an enlisted man in Africa, and says that the dog traveled with her throughout the war and came back to the states with her when she was discharged. She also vividly recounts seeing Mount Vesuvius threatening to erupt while she was on leave. Fravenholtz is interviewed by Amelia Bunder.
- Date Issued:
- 1984-02-25T00:00:00Z
- Data Provider:
- Michigan State University. Libraries
- Collection:
- Women's Overseas Service League Oral History Project
- Description:
- Peggy Lechtweis talks about her five years of service in the Army Nurse Corp during World War Two. Lechtweis discusses her induction, basic training, and shipping out to Fiji in the Pacific. She also describes life on base and her responsibilities as chief nurse at the hospital and putting in long shifts in operating rooms. She explains how her unit moved as it followed the advancing U.S. troops across the Pacific to Okinawa and describes the events on VJ-Day, and later treating Allied POWs after their release from Japanese camps. Lechtweis is interviewed by Lois Collet.
- Date Issued:
- 1983-05-05T00:00:00Z
- Data Provider:
- Michigan State University. Libraries
- Collection:
- Women's Overseas Service League Oral History Project
- Description:
- Eileen Jackson Crane talks about her service as a civilian U.S. State Department employee working at military bases in the U.S. and overseas from June 1943 to October 1946. She says that she served first as a Cafeteria Hostess and later as Command Hostess at the U.S. Air Force base in Wiesbaden, Germany. She describes her duties as a hostess, her pay, base housing, medical care, being prohibited from eating in the cafeterias she ran, trying to manage appropriate levels of food inventory, life as a civilian working with the military, and being prohibited from fraternizing with the local German population. She also remembers being assigned to set up a segregated service club for African-American soldiers. Crane is interviewed by Neola Ann Spackman.
- Date Issued:
- 1985-01-28T00:00:00Z
- Data Provider:
- Michigan State University. Libraries
- Collection:
- Women's Overseas Service League Oral History Project
- Description:
- Margaret M. Lyon talks about her service as a civilian teacher for the U.S. Army in France and Italy from September 1956 to July 1958 and in Japan from August 1960 to June 1961. Lyon says she taught at an elementary school in Louisville, KY before going overseas with the Army and talks about her pay, her responsibilities teaching the children of military personnel, the diverse backgrounds of her students and adjusting to working in very close quarters. Lyon says that she returned to the states after serving in Europe, but took a similar job with the Navy two years later in Japan teaching American dependents and teaching English to Japanese students on a volunteer basis. She also talks about traveling extensively in Japan and throughout Asia. Lyon is interviewed by Dorothy M. Harrison.
- Date Issued:
- 1984-02-01T00:00:00Z
- Data Provider:
- Michigan State University. Libraries
- Collection:
- Women's Overseas Service League Oral History Project
- Description:
- Jean Timms Campbell talks about her service in the U.S Army Nurse Corps during World War Two. Campbell describes her youth and education in Ohio, working in the college infirmary before joining the Army, arriving in Scotland on VE Day, being very afraid that she would be sent to the Pacific, but ending up being assigned to the 114th General Hospital in Nuremberg, Germany. Campbell talks about her duties in the hospital, the 12 hour shifts, the patients, her living conditions, attending the Nuremberg War Crimes trials, traveling around Bavaria, being threatened with courts martial for not wearing her uniform cap in public, and finally being shipped back to States in early 1946. After the war, Campbell says that she married and started a family, returned to the nursing profession and retired in 1981. Campbell is interviewed by Dorothy M. Harrison.
- Date Issued:
- 1983-03-01T00:00:00Z
- Data Provider:
- Michigan State University. Libraries
- Collection:
- Women's Overseas Service League Oral History Project