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- Description:
- Retired Colonel Patricia Silvestre talks about her personal history and education and her career in the U.S. Army Nurse Corps which included service in the Vietnam War. Silvestre says she was running short of money for nursing school when she discovered the Army Student Nurse Program and enlisted in 1956. She talks about finishing her classes, doing basic training at Fort Sam Houston in Texas and then driving to her first assignment at Fort Lewis in Washington. She says that her first overseas assignment was in Korea as head nurse on an orthopedic ward and she describes the living conditions, her clothing, the weather and her social life, and says that she believes that hospital staff was really able to help the Koreans. After Officer's Candidate School, Silvestre says that she was sent to Vietnam as a chief nurse and was stationed at a children's hospital near the DMZ where she dealt with a great variety of tropical diseases and war related wounds. Silvestre says that she ended her career at Fitzsimons Army Medical Center in Denver in 1984 after serving at various Army operations around the United States. She says that her experience in Vietnam changed the way she thinks of war because she witnessed its terrible consequences. Silvestre is interviewed by Ruth Stewart.
- Date Issued:
- 2003-10-22T00:00:00Z
- Data Provider:
- Michigan State University. Libraries
- Collection:
- Women's Overseas Service League Oral History Project
- Description:
- In a wide-ranging oral history interview, Margaret Canfield talks about her twenty-four year career in the U.S. Army Nurse Corps and serving in both the Korean and Vietnam Wars. Canfield says that she graduated from nursing school in 1951 and enlisted in the Army that same year. She talks about her basic training in Texas, her first assignment in Colorado, being sent to Japan in 1953 and treating casualties coming in from Korean battlefields. After the Korean War, she says that she was stationed in Utah and Hawaii and again in Asia and was finally sent to Vietnam in February 1967. Canfield discusses her various duty stations in Vietnam, treating Vietnamese civilians and U.S. and Korean troops and says that after becoming Chief Nurse at the 18th Surgical Hospital in Pleiku, she extended her tour of duty for another year. In December 1967, she says that she was transferred to a hospital in the Mekong Delta in support the 9th Infantry Division and that the hospital was shelled and virtually destroyed during the 1968 Tet Offensive. Canfield says that she returned to the U.S. after twenty-one months in Vietnam and finally retired from the Army in August 1975. Canfield is interviewed by Ruth F. Stewart.
- Date Issued:
- 2004-01-15T00:00:00Z
- Data Provider:
- Michigan State University. Libraries
- Collection:
- Women's Overseas Service League Oral History Project
- Description:
- Based upon interviews done some years earlier, Dorothy Harrison delivers a presentation about the life of M.T. "Tuck" Sacher and her service in the U.S. State Department which began in 1954 and led to a stint in Vietnam from 1968 to 1973. Harrison discusses Sacher's duties while based near the Cambodian border and her vivid memories of the 1968 Tet Offensive and watching fighting from her roof top. Harrison says that Tuck told a story about an American nurse stationed near an old French cemetery who reported an increase in funerals to the American Embassy. Embassy officials ignored the information, Harrison says and later found that the Viet Cong had been hiding ammunition in the cemetery in preparation for Tet.
- Date Issued:
- 1983-01-01T00:00:00Z
- Data Provider:
- Michigan State University. Libraries
- Collection:
- Women's Overseas Service League Oral History Project
- Description:
- Retired Air Force Colonel Eleanor M. Carey talks about her youth and education in Pennsylvania, her long U.S. Air Force career and her service in the Vietnam War. After graduating from the Mercy Hospital School of Nursing in Pittsburgh, Cary says that she joined the Air Force on October 19, 1955. She says that after basic and advanced training, she was first stationed in Beirut, Lebanon and later volunteered for duty in Vietnam when that war heated up. Cary talks about treating Vietnamese civilians as part of the military's MEDCAP program, her living conditions at U.S. base at Cam Ranh Bay and working as a flight nurse in air-evac and taking causalities to medical care directly from the battlefield. Carey says that as a capstone to her Vietnam service, she escorted future Senator John McCain when he was released from a North Vietnamese prison in 1973. She says that she retired from the Air Force in October 1979 and that she "loved every minute" of her career. Carey is interviewed by Ruth F. Stewart and Patricia Martin.
- Date Issued:
- 2007-03-26T00:00:00Z
- Data Provider:
- Michigan State University. Libraries
- Collection:
- Women's Overseas Service League Oral History Project
- Description:
- In an oral history interview, Margaret Patricia Phillips talks about her thirty-two years of service in the United States Army Nurse Corps. Phillips says that she joined the Army for patriotic reasons in 1944 while working as a nurse in a Detroit hospital. She says that she served as "chief nurse" in military hospitals around the globe and vividly remembers her plane taking enemy fire as it was trying to take off from the Bien Hoa Air Force Base in South Vietnam. Phillips says the biggest adjustment she had to make to military life was the communal living and that she did not expect to make the Army a career when she enlisted. Phillips is interviews by Marjorie Brown.
- Date Issued:
- 1986-03-01T00:00:00Z
- 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:
- Retired U.S. Army Lieutenant Colonel Anne Noreen Bauer talks about her twenty-eight year career as an United States Army nurse. Bauer talks about enlisting in August 1942 at the age of twenty-seven, her training, early assignments at Fort Benjamin Harrison where she became head nurse and finally shipping out to Bombay, India on her way to Karachi with the 159th Station Hospital. Bauer remembers the voyage to India, having dinner with Britain's Lord Louis Mountbatten, working with British nurses, staff and civilians, taking over a convent to use as a hospital, and the many the diseases and injuries she treated. She also discusses her many post-war assignments which took her around the world and especially her efforts to establish hospitals in Vietnam and provide the local population with medical assistance. Bauer is interviewed by Jane Fore.
- Date Issued:
- 1985-06-20T00:00:00Z
- Data Provider:
- Michigan State University. Libraries
- Collection:
- Women's Overseas Service League Oral History Project
- Description:
- In an oral history interview, Retired U.S. Army Colonel Lola Olsmith talks about choosing to become a nurse, attending nursing school in Little Rock, Arkansas, joining the Army in 1967 and volunteering for duty in Vietnam. She says that after her basic training in San Antonio, she was sent directly to Vietnam and recalls the anxiety she felt as she flew into Saigon at midnight with 13 other nurses. Olsmith talks about her hospital duties in Vietnam, living in Quonset huts, taking care of Viet Cong prisoners, her experiences during the February 1968 Tet Offensive, working in a recovery ward where patients often woke with missing limbs, and making medical visits to Vietnamese villages and orphanages. After her one year tour of duty in Vietnam, Olsmith says that she returned to the U.S., decided to make the Army her career, served in various duty stations around the country, went into the Army Reserves in 1979 as a Major, was reactivated in 1991 during Operation Desert Storm and finally retired from the Army in November of that year. Olsmith says her time in the service gave her a sense of confidence as well as a career. Olsmith is interviewed by Ruth F. Stewart assisted by Carol A. Habgood.
- Date Issued:
- 2004-01-15T00:00:00Z
- Data Provider:
- Michigan State University. Libraries
- Collection:
- Women's Overseas Service League Oral History Project
- Description:
- Retired Air Force Lieutenant Colonel Barbara Pratt-LeMahieu talks about her childhood in Salem, Massachusetts and her career in the U.S. Air Force which included service during the Korean War and the Vietnam War. Pratt-LeMahieu says that she enlisted in 1948, took basic and administrative training in Cheyenne, Wyoming, and later worked as secretary for the Strategic Air Command in Colorado Springs and as a secretary at March AFB in California during the Korean War. After officer candidate school, she says that she was commissioned a second lieutenant and served as a public information administrator in Montana, until she volunteered to go to occupied Japan in 1955. In 1967, Pratt-Lemahieu says that she volunteered for service as a personnel services administrator in Vietnam and talks about hearing shelling on her way to work each day and her experiences during the Tet Offensive in 1968. Pratt-Lemahieu is interviewed by Ruth F. Stewart and Carol Hapgood. She is assisted in recalling the details of her answers by her husband, Jim LaMahieu.
- Date Issued:
- 2004-01-14T00:00:00Z
- Data Provider:
- Michigan State University. Libraries
- Collection:
- Women's Overseas Service League Oral History Project