Search Constraints
Search Results
- Description:
- Winifred Anne Jacobs Walker talks about her service in the U.S. Army Nurse Corps from February 1943 to October 1945. She discusses her Army training, shipping overseas to a base in Leominster in England, preparations for D-Day in the spring of 1944, treating invasion casualties, landing in Normandy at Utah Beach in July, and bivouacking near Carentan. Walker says her unit followed the advancing forces into Paris by train and later set up a tent hospital near Liege, Belgium. She remembers being on edge during the Battle of the Bulge and preparing to withdraw if necessary and the gory scene she witnessed when her base was hit by a German bomb which killed 25 soldiers. Walker says that she was sent home on a C-47 transport plane after the war, "hitch-hiked" across the U.S. by plane to see her fiance in Washington state and married him soon after her discharge from the Army.
- Data Provider:
- Michigan State University. Libraries
- Collection:
- Women's Overseas Service League Oral History Project
- Description:
- Matilda Papenhausen talks about her service in the U.S. Army Nurse Corps during World War One. Papenhausen explains why she volunteered for the Army and says that her unit was deployed to an American staffed British hospital in France in July 1917. She talks about the diseases, injuries and wounds she treated, her uniform, quarters, rations, and social activities. Papenhausen says she returned to the States shortly after the Armistice and worked in a Kansas hospital as an assistant superintendent of nurses, and later as a government hospital inspector in Iowa and South Dakota. Ends abruptly. Papenhausen is interviewed by Dorothy W. Early.
- Date Issued:
- 1984-08-23T00:00:00Z
- Data Provider:
- Michigan State University. Libraries
- Collection:
- Women's Overseas Service League Oral History Project
- Date Issued:
- 1984-12-27T00:00:00Z
- Data Provider:
- Michigan State University. Libraries
- Collection:
- Women's Overseas Service League Oral History Project
- Description:
- Ninety-eight year old Elizabeth Phillips talks about her service in the Army Nurse Corps in Europe during World War I. She recalls being assigned to a hospital five miles behind the front near Avignon, France, German planes flying over on their way to bomb Paris, surgeries performed as wounded were brought in from the front, her general duties, the large number of casualties, the catastrophic flu epidemic in 1918 and the many funerals, the regimentation and twelve hour shifts, and that when her unit was first deployed to France in May of 1917, the nurses did not receive rations and were expected to find their own food. Phillips explains that nurses had no rank in World War I and were not treated as equals and says that she lobbied vigorously in World War II to correct that inequality. She also says she tried to volunteer for service during World War II, but was refused and spent the war preparing Red Cross packages for shipment to American POWs in German camps.
- Date Issued:
- 1982-04-28T00:00:00Z
- Data Provider:
- Michigan State University. Libraries
- Collection:
- Women's Overseas Service League Oral History Project
- Description:
- Betty Vogel describes her youth and education and her service in the U.S. Army Nurse Corps during World War II. After graduating from the nursing program at Abbott Hospital in Minneapolis in 1942, Vogel says that she decided to join the Army after seeing Japanese atrocities depicted in a newsreel. She says that she was inducted in September 1943 and after training, was shipped out to Scotland in January 1944 on the USS Brazil. She says that she was later stationed at a hospital in Barford, England and that on D-Day the casualties came in so fast that they had no time to even clean them up. In July of 1944, Vogel says that she was sent to a hospital near Paris and treated American and German casualties from the Battle of the Bulge and actually married her husband Edward during that same battle. When she had earned enough points, Vogel says that she was sent back to the States and was discharged at Fort Sheridan, IL in December 1945. Vogel remembers being scared much of the time that she was in the field during the war and says that she doesn't believe that women belong in combat. Vogel is interviewed by Ruth F. Stewart assisted by Carol A. Habgood.
- Date Issued:
- 2003-10-23T00:00:00Z
- Data Provider:
- Michigan State University. Libraries
- Collection:
- Women's Overseas Service League Oral History Project
- Description:
- Agnes Elaine Osborn Myers talks about joining the U.S. Army Nurse Corps in September 1917 and serving in World War One. Myers says that she completed nurse's training at Philadelphia General Hospital, joined the Army immediately after the U.S. entered the war and was sent directly to a hospital without ever having basic training. Myers talks about her uniform, slogging through the mud in France, being cold all of the time, working in both hospitals and tents, being assigned to areas where major offensives were taking place, her duties treating injured and ill troops, and being busy every minute of every day. Myers says that she met her future husband, a captain in the 78th Division, in France and married him when they returned to the States. Myers is interviewed by Ruth Banonis.
- Date Issued:
- 1983-11-02T00:00:00Z
- Data Provider:
- Michigan State University. Libraries
- Collection:
- Women's Overseas Service League Oral History Project
- Description:
- Dorothy Schroeder talks about her service in the U.S. Army Nurse Corps during World War Two. Schroeder says she graduated from nursing school in 1941 and after working as a civilian in Miami, was inducted into the Army on January 28, 1944. She says that she shipped to Liverpool and Glasgow with the 191st General Hospital in October 1944 and was later stationed in France, just outside of Paris at a former mental hospital. She remembers treating casualties from the Battle of the Bulge, meeting her future husband in an operating room, site-seeing along the Riviera, sailing on the Mediterranean, visiting Lourdes, and attending a memorial service for President Roosevelt in Notre Dame Cathedral in April 1945. Schroeder says that she shipped back to the States in January 1946, was discharged that February, later married, started a family and worked at the Saint Joseph Infirmary in Louisville, KY for many years. Schroeder is interviewed by Jean T. Campbell.
- Date Issued:
- 1986-03-07T00:00:00Z
- Data Provider:
- Michigan State University. Libraries
- Collection:
- Women's Overseas Service League Oral History Project
- Description:
- In an oral history interview, 93 year-old Lena Hitchcock talks about her pioneering service as an occupational therapist in the U.S. Army during World War I. She says that she was one of the first of her profession to join the Army and was in the first group of women sent to France to establish physical therapy practices in American hospitals. Hitchcock recalls being shipped to France aboard a troop transport which was part of a twenty-nine ship British convoy and being assigned to a New York nursing unit which was part of the Army Medical Corps. She says that she was always too busy to keep a diary of her experiences in Europe and that beginning each day at 6:00am she was faced with treating a constant flow of casualties coming in from front line aid stations. Hitchcock also describes the science behind physical therapy, gives a history of the profession and explains why she chose it as a career. The interview is conducted during the 62nd Annual WOSL Convention. Hitchcock is interviewed by Jane Ingersoll Piatt and Geneva K. Wiskemann from the WOSL Lansing Unit.
- Date Issued:
- 1982-07-14T00:00:00Z
- Data Provider:
- Michigan State University. Libraries
- Collection:
- Women's Overseas Service League Oral History Project
- Description:
- Anna Spillman Atteberry talks about her childhood in depression-era Louisiana and her service in the U.S. Army Nurse Corps in Southern France and Italy during World War Two. Atteberry says that after nursing school she heard news of the bombing of Pearl Harbor and immediately enlisted. She says that she was first assigned to the Fort Bliss hospital, volunteered for overseas duty, joined the 56th Evacuation Hospital and was sent to Casablanca in North Africa. She was next moved to Bizerte to treat casualties from the invasion of Sicily, she says and was later sent to Anzio and then north to Naples. She talks about spending the winter in a front line tent hospital, dealing with the dirt floors and trying to keep things sterile, treating battlefield wounds and pneumonia and other cold related cases and working during German shelling and says that she is proud of the care that she and other hospital staff provided. After next being stationed in Rome, Atteberry says that she was transferred to the 10th Field Hospital in France, followed the Army as it moved across France and Germany and says that the lines changed so quickly that they were sometimes forced to leave behind patients who were too critical to be moved. She says that she returned to the States as a patient and received treatment at Fitzsimons Army Medical Center in Denver and when she recovered, was sent to Fort Sam Houston where she nursed severely injured casualties. Atteberry is interviewed by Ruth Stewart and Patricia Martin.
- Date Issued:
- 2007-04-02T00:00:00Z
- Data Provider:
- Michigan State University. Libraries
- Collection:
- Women's Overseas Service League Oral History Project
- Description:
- Betty Thompson talks about her service in the U.S. Army during World War Two. Thompson recalls working in Chicago as a physical therapist before she enlisted in October 1943 and was sent to the 48th General Hospital in Memphis, TN. Thompson says she was first shipped overseas to Glasgow, Scotland and later to Stockbridge in England to help set up a hospital. She describes her quarters in Stockbridge, her rations, the weather, and how the nurses were treated. She also remembers the D-Day preparations that were going on around her, the conditions on the Normandy beaches when her unit finally arrived in August, how busy she was with casualties and the chaos of the Battle of the Bulge. Thompson says she returned to the States in October 1945, took a discharge at the end of 1945, was married, continued to work, and raised a family. Thompson also says that her time in the Army Nurse Corps was the highlight of her professional life. Thompson is interviewed by Lilah Ramsey.
- Date Issued:
- 1984-05-14T00:00:00Z
- Data Provider:
- Michigan State University. Libraries
- Collection:
- Women's Overseas Service League Oral History Project