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- Description:
- In an oral history interview, Mary J. Ford talks about her childhood and education in Indiana and serving in the U.S. Army Nurse Corps during World War II. After basic training, Ford says that she was first sent to Casablanca in Morocco in September 1943 and after a month, to Naples, Italy. She says that in Naples, she served in a hospital located in a monastery which had been bombed by the Germans and that she struggled to adjust to life in Italy and treating wounded soldiers and describes her duties and working with nurses who were mainly from Detroit. Ford talks about the feelings she had after returning to the United States and why she chose to go volunteer for second tour of duty in Italy at the end of the war.
- Date Issued:
- 2004-01-13T00:00:00Z
- Data Provider:
- Michigan State University. Libraries
- Collection:
- Women's Overseas Service League Oral History Project
- Description:
- Genevieve Manning Voelker talks about her service in the U.S. Army Nurse Corps during World War Two, her youth in South Dakota and her nurse's training in Minnesota. Voelker says that she joined the Nurse Corps in 1942, after Pearl Harbor and was shipped out in March 1943 to serve in the South West Pacific, first in Hollandia, New Guinea and later in Manila. She talks about being an officer, working as a staff nurse, living in tents, foxholes, and native huts, the dangers that came with everyday life in the tropics, a typical day of duty, the scarcity of fresh water, needing to wear leggings and men's trousers and shoes to ward off mosquitoes and the native population and village life. Voelker says she did not take advantage of the G.I. Bill after the war because she married, that her biggest adjustment to military life was dealing with the sexist doctors, that the regular soldiers were admirable and endured terrible hardships and that it was difficult for her to adjust to life back home after two years in the living in the jungle. Voelker is interviewed by Virginia Cornett.
- Date Issued:
- 1983-03-13T00:00:00Z
- Data Provider:
- Michigan State University. Libraries
- Collection:
- Women's Overseas Service League Oral History Project