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- 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:
- Irene Petrie talks about her World War Two service (July 1942 to September 1945) as a mess sergeant in the U.S. Women's Army Corps. Petrie says that she was motivated by patriotism to enlist and talks about being trained to set up field kitchens, her various duty stations, military regulations, running a mess hall, experiencing discrimination based upon her gender, what it was like to date G.I.s, her U.S. and overseas housing, and the poor military diet. Petrie also talks about preparing food in Southampton, England for troops heading for Normandy on D-Day, talking to the young, nervous troops headed to France during the invasion, her mess team landing on Omaha Beach in early August 1944, later being quartered in the Grand Hotel in Paris, and setting up a field kitchen during the Battle of the Bulge. Petrie 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:
- 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