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- Description:
- Retired U.S. Army Colonel Helen P. Onyett, the first Chinese American woman ever promoted to Colonel in the United States Army, talks about her youth and education in Connecticut and her service in the Army Nurse Corps during World War II. Oynett says she was encouraged by her teachers to become a nurse and talks about her training at the Waterbury Hospital School of Nursing and her later decision to join the Army. Onyett also talks about serving in a tent hospital in North Africa, caring for the wounded, using commandeered German wool blankets to keep warm, living on Army rations, and working long and brutal shifts. After leaving the Army at end of the war, Onyett says that she later joined the reserves and finally retired from the Army in 1978. Onyett is interviewed by Ruth Stewart F.
- Date Issued:
- 2004-04-08T00:00:00Z
- Data Provider:
- Michigan State University. Libraries
- Collection:
- Women's Overseas Service League Oral History Project
- Description:
- Retired Army Colonel Erna H. "Tommy" Thompson (nee Schmidt) talks about her youth in Ada, Minnesota, her education and her long career in the U.S. Army Nurse Corps. After nursing school at St. Johns Hospital in St. Paul, MN and additional course work at the University of Chicago, and after receiving advice directly from Eleanor Roosevelt, Thompson enlisted in the Army Nurse Corps. While her husband, who was also in the Army, was sent to Europe, Thompson says that in 1942 she was sent to Guadalcanal in the South Pacific. Thompson talks about working at front line aid stations on Guam in the Mariana Islands, Enewetak Atoll, and Iwo Jima and says that she did not like being required to give transfusions from scarce blood supplies to Japanese casualties and was upset that her personal mail was censored. Thompson says she was discharged from the Army in December 1945, went back to active duty in 1948 and worked in hospitals at Fort Sam Houston and in Chicago and then in 1955, resigned from active duty and went into teaching. She says that in 1957 she went back into active duty and served in Hawaii, Fort Bragg, Puerto Rico, New Mexico, and Berlin and finally retired from the Army in September 1969. Thompson also talks about the tension between practicing nursing and teaching nursing and describes her retirement activities. Thompson is interviewed by Wilda Smith.
- Date Issued:
- 2004-01-13T00:00:00Z
- Data Provider:
- Michigan State University. Libraries
- Collection:
- Women's Overseas Service League Oral History Project
- Description:
- Ninety year old U.S. Army and Air Force veteran Mary Templeton Gates talks about her childhood, education and service career. Gates says that her decision to go into nursing was the result of her family's long history in medicine and that after graduating from nursing school in 1938, she worked in Georgia and New York City before deciding to enlist in the U.S. Army Air Corps to become a flight nurse. Gates says that she turned down a teaching position to become chief nurse in a squadron sent to the Pacific during the war and describes her career in the Army through service in hospitals in Guam, Hawaii and Bermuda. After the war, Gates says that she left the Army, but later enlisted for duty in the Air Force at the start of the Korean War. She says that she became a Lieutenant Colonel around 1960 and finally retired shortly after. Templeton is interviewed by Ruth F. Stewart.
- Date Issued:
- 2004-04-07T00:00:00Z
- Data Provider:
- Michigan State University. Libraries
- Collection:
- Women's Overseas Service League Oral History Project
- Description:
- In an oral history interview, retired Army Colonel Lois A. Johns talks about her education, her career in the Army Nurse Corp and her service in the Vietnam War. Johns talks about growing up in Cleveland, earning her nursing degree in 1948, a second bachelor's degree in 1950 and later two master's degrees and finally, in 1967, a doctorate. In 1950, she says that she also joined the Army Reserve and that her active duty began in 1960 when she was promoted to Captain. She describes a number of her duty stations, going back into the reserves while working and going to school and then going back on active duty as a Major for duty in Vietnam. She says that she arrived in Saigon late at night, was assigned to the "renal ward" at the 629th Medical Detachment of the 3rd Field Hospital and describes her quarters, her duties, her patients, the local cuisine and culture and says that she was awarded a Bronze Star when she left Vietnam and was assigned to the Institute for Surgical Research at Fort Sam Houston. She goes on to discuss her various duty stations after Vietnam, both stateside and abroad and says that she finally retired from the Army in 1980. Johns praises her many coworkers throughout the years, but says that women often had problems dealing with their male counterparts and that sexual harassment did exist in the service. Johns is interviewed by Ruth Stewart and Patricia Martin.
- Date Issued:
- 2007-02-06T00:00:00Z
- Data Provider:
- Michigan State University. Libraries
- Collection:
- Women's Overseas Service League Oral History Project
- Description:
- In an oral history interview, Doris Cobb talks about her life and family and her long service in the U.S. Army Nurse Corps. Cobb discusses her childhood and education and graduating from nursing school in 1941. She says that she enlisted in the Army in 1944, took basic training in Indiana and was shipped over to Scotland April 1945, just as V-E day was announced. Cobb talks about her travels and assignments at various hospitals in England and on the continent in the post-war years and says that she finally decided to leave the military in May 1946 to go back to college. After earning a B.A. in 1950 and working as a civilian nurse, Cobb says that she decided to go back into the Army in February 1956 with the rank of captain. She talks about her various jobs and duty stations through the years, including stints in various places in the U.S., Okinawa, Japan, Thailand, and Heidelberg, Germany. In 1969, Cobb says that she was promoted to Lieutenant Colonel and finally retired from the service in the fall of 1974.
- Date Issued:
- 2003-01-01T00:00:00Z
- Data Provider:
- Michigan State University. Libraries
- Collection:
- Women's Overseas Service League Oral History Project
- Description:
- Retired United States Air Force Lieutenant Colonel Jeannette Marshall talks about her twenty years of military service. Marshall says she was born in Sheridan, Wyoming, educated in California, and received her nurse's training at St. Vincent's Hospital in Los Angeles. Marshall says that a failed marriage prompted her to enlist in the Air Force in September 1952 and after her training, was sent to Japan as a flight nurse to help in the evacuation of wounded from battlefields in Korea. Marshall says that in 1955 her flight crew was part of the effort to evacuate French casualties from Vietnam to the Philippines and that 104 wounded soldiers, mostly amputees, were transported in one flight. She says that she was later stationed in Germany and England and at various U.S. bases and eventually retired in San Antonio in 1972. Marshall is interviewed by Ruth F. Stewart.
- Date Issued:
- 2004-02-16T00:00:00Z
- Data Provider:
- Michigan State University. Libraries
- Collection:
- Women's Overseas Service League Oral History Project
- Description:
- Ginny Brown talks about her childhood in Tennessee, graduating from nursing school in 1943 and joining the U.S. Army Nurse Corps in July of that same year. After her initial training, Brown says that she volunteered to go overseas and was assigned to the 48th General Hospital in Petworth England in January 1944 and to a combat medical unit in France in August of that same year. She describes living in a tent, showering in front of male soldiers, working in a field hospital in a potato patch and being stationed in Paris after liberation. After V-E Day, Brown says that she was assigned to a hospital on the Riviera, was shipped back to the U.S. from Marseilles, left the Army in 1946, but went back on active duty in 1953 and finally retired in 1980. Brown claims that women were discriminated against in the military and were often denied promotions because of their gender. Brown is interviewed by Ruth F. Stewart and Carol A. Habgood.
- Date Issued:
- 2004-01-14T00:00:00Z
- Data Provider:
- Michigan State University. Libraries
- Collection:
- Women's Overseas Service League Oral History Project
- Description:
- Marjorie Varner talks about her service in the Army Nurse Corps from 1949 to 1971 and serving in both the Korean War and the Vietnam War. Varner recalls her nurse's training, her assignments in surgery units, her uniforms, her quarters and assignments in Korea and Vietnam and a terrible battlefield incident in which she attempted to take a soldier's blood pressure only to find that he was a double amputee. She says that she earned a bachelor's degree during her enlistment, became a nursing supervisor at several hospitals, and retired as Chief Nurse at Fitzsimons Army Medical Center in Denver. She also describes some of her activities in retirement.
- Date Issued:
- 1983-06-17T00:00:00Z
- Data Provider:
- Michigan State University. Libraries
- Collection:
- Women's Overseas Service League Oral History Project
- Description:
- Helene Denny discusses her service in England and France as a part of the Red Cross during World War Two. Denny talks about graduating from nursing school in New York City and being sent first to North Africa and then finally being stationed in England in 1942 as a part of the British Civil Defense. Denny says that she was sent to Edinburgh for training in triage and later served as a triage nurse in a mobile hospital unit caring for victims of German air raids. Denny also talks about her experiences after being transferred to the American Army shortly after D-Day and later dating and finally marrying a Royal Marine. Denny is interviewed by Ruth Banonis.
- Date Issued:
- 1983-09-07T00:00:00Z
- Data Provider:
- Michigan State University. Libraries
- Collection:
- Women's Overseas Service League Oral History Project
- Description:
- In a poignant oral history interview, Marian Weller talks about her long career in the U.S. Army Nurse Corps and her service during the Vietnam War. Weller says that she comes from a family with a long military history and that she even graduated as a second lieutenant from the Army Student Nurse program in 1967. She talks about her basic training at Fort Sam Houston, working at Walter Reed Hospital in 1968 and being shipped to Vietnam in February 1969 to join the 95th Evac Hospital, across the harbor from Da Nang. She talks about her duty in the "yuck unit" working with patients with disfiguring battlefield injuries, the civilian casualties brought in by the choppers, life on the base, being in a helicopter crash, atrocities committed by the Viet Cong, the corruption which was part of daily life, trying to clean blood off concrete floors and the relentless tropical heat and humidity. She says that she rotated back to the States in 1970 and served at hospitals in Maryland, Hawaii, Georgia, Massachusetts, Texas and the Philippines and finally retired as a major in 2002. Weller talks candidly about developing medical and emotional problems in the years after her Vietnam service and says that she was finally diagnosed with Post Traumatic Stress Disorder (PTSD) after a visit to the Vietnam War Memorial sent her into a three day crying jag. Weller 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