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- Description:
- In a an oral history interview, Mary Duncan Clark talks about her twenty-eight year career in the U.S. Army Nurse Corps. She says that her friends persuaded her to enlist during World War II and that she began as a staff nurse, moved up through the ranks and ended her career as a chief nurse. She discusses her duty stations in the U.S. and overseas, including in Vietnam and describes base housing, her uniforms and her travels. She tells a humorous story of going through customs in an unfriendly country and putting her feminine hygiene products on top in her suit case so that it would not be searched. Clark also says she enjoyed working with an adoption board in Japan to find homes for the illegitimate children of American soldiers and that she decided right after D-Day to make the Army her career. Clark is interviewed by Marjorie Brown.
- Date Issued:
- 1986-04-26T00:00:00Z
- Data Provider:
- Michigan State University. Libraries
- Collection:
- Women's Overseas Service League Oral History Project
- Description:
- Janet A. Bachmeyer talks about her thirty-year career in the U.S. Army Nurse Corps from July 1944 to June 1974. Bachmeyer says she received her nurse's training at the Evangelical School of Nursing in Chicago and worked her way up the ranks in the military from staff nurse to chief nurse before she retired. She talks about her duty stations in Europe during World War II and others in postwar Germany, Korea and in Vietnam. Bachmeyer describes post housing, her uniforms, and her vivid memories of being in London on V-E Day and celebrating all night. Bachmeyer says that she hadn't intended to make the military a career but decided it was right for her after leaving active service for a couple of years. Bachmeyer also talks about her activities in retirement and her feelings about the WOSL. Bachmeyer is interviewed by Marjorie Brown.
- Date Issued:
- 1986-04-21T00:00:00Z
- Data Provider:
- Michigan State University. Libraries
- Collection:
- Women's Overseas Service League Oral History Project
- Description:
- Retired Army Colonel Mary Ruth Pullig talks about growing up in Arkansas and Louisiana, her education and her long career as a U.S. Army nurse. After nursing school and working at various hospitals in the south, Pullig says that she joined the Army Nurse Corps in 1943, did her basic training at Fort Sam Houston in Texas and was first assigned to Fitzsimons Army Medical Center in Denver. She also talks about other Stateside assignments and says that she was finally sent overseas to New Guinea and and then to the Philippines and describes the living conditions at both posts, the poor diet, working under enemy fire, some of the patients she treated and nursing civilians suffering from collateral damage wounds. After the war, Pullig says that she was stationed in occupied Germany for a time and finally came back to the States and earned bachelors and masters degrees. She says she is thankful for being given the opportunity to travel and see the world and that the young men who fought were good men overall and that she enjoyed her experience with them and helping people as a nurse. Ruth Stewart interviews Pullig.
- Date Issued:
- 2003-01-01T00:00:00Z
- 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:
- Lilah Cameron Ramsey talks about her service in the U.S. Army Nurse Corps from January 1940 to January 1950, including duty in the Pacific theater of Operations from June 1942 October 1945. Ramsey recalls being shipped out with the 166th Station Unit to Melbourne, Australia, then being sent to Ballarat and finally to a hospital in Adelaide, Australia where the temperature was 104 degrees on Christmas day of 1942. She says that the 166th was later split in two and that she took a group to New Guinea as chief nurse and worked at a hospital base 17 miles inland from Port Moresby. After a year of being billeted in tents with wooden floors she was next sent to Biak Island in 1944 and was stationed there when the war finally ended. Her hospital unit was sent to the Philippines after the war, she says and then finally back to San Francisco. She says she was originally motivated to enlist in the Army when she saw an advertisement in a nursing journal promising education and adventure and even though she never found adventure she considers herself fortunate to have been able to see and do the things she did. Ramsey is interviewed by Betty Thompson.
- Date Issued:
- 1984-05-01T00:00:00Z
- Data Provider:
- Michigan State University. Libraries
- Collection:
- Women's Overseas Service League Oral History Project
- Description:
- Margaret J. Hornickel discusses her service in the United States and England as a member of the Army Nurse Corps during World War II. Hornickel says that she reported to Camp Lee in August 1942 and was promoted to Lieutenant and made Chief Nurse, then was later sent to Ft. Jackson where she was also Chief Nurse and was promoted to Captain. Hornickel talks about crossing the Atlantic on the Queen Mary, disembarking in Glasgow and taking the train to Hoylake on the Wirral Peninsula where she was billeted with an English family. She says that she was finally sent to a hospital on an estate in southern England and cared for allied casualties from the D-Day invasion. Hornickel is interviewed by Ruth Banonis.
- Date Issued:
- 1983-09-13T00:00:00Z
- 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