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- Description:
- Lillian Kivela talks about her service in the United States Army Nurse Corps during World War Two including, why she enlisted in June 1943, nurse's training, basic Army training, housing, uniforms, and her duties at the Schick General Hospital in Clinton, Iowa. She says that she was sent to New Jersey in preparation for being shipped to Europe and describes shipboard conditions and being seasick throughout the entire ten-day voyage. She talks about being housed in an unheated Welsh resort hotel, marching, walking a mile to the mess hall for meals, serving in the orthopedic ward at a hospital in Headington, a suburd of Oxford and experiencing an influx of patients following D-Day and the subsequent fighting, and the early use of penicillin to control infection. In her off-time, Kivela says that she often visited London for the theater, rode her bicycle around Oxford, became acquainted with British families and even met the Queen Mother and boxer Joe Louis when they visited the hospital. Back in the States, after the war, she says that she had a difficult time adjusting to civilian life and finally came to Michigan State College to finish her degree in microbiology. Kivela is interviewed by Elsie Hornbacher.
- Date Issued:
- 1986-01-22T00:00:00Z
- Data Provider:
- Michigan State University. Libraries
- Collection:
- Women's Overseas Service League Oral History Project
- Description:
- Betty Bowman talks about her twenty-two year career in the U.S. Army Nurse Corps. Bowman says she received her training as a nurse and dietitian and joined the Army in 1951 because she felt patriotic and wanted Army travel opportunities, pay, benefits, and security. Bowman says she hated basic training and had a difficult time adjusting to the long, overnight shifts and quick rotations Army nurses faced and says that such policies were dangerous to both the nurses and the patients. She discusses her duties as a medical surgical nurse, her duty stations overseas and in the U.S., housing, and her uniforms. Bowman also recalls Eleanor Roosevelt's trip to Japan and her own visit to an orphanage in Japan and seeing the plight of the Amer-Asian children who were ostracized by the Japanese. Bowman is interviewed by Marjorie Brown.
- Date Issued:
- 1986-03-17T00:00:00Z
- Data Provider:
- Michigan State University. Libraries
- Collection:
- Women's Overseas Service League Oral History Project
- Description:
- In an oral history interview, Alice Nordly talks about her nearly four years of service as an officer in the U.S. Army Nurse Corps during World War Two and being stationed in the Asian Theater of Operations. Nordly explains why she enlisted in Army and discusses her induction and basic training and says that she was recruited from a local California hospital. Nordly talks about her stateside assignments and duties in various surgical wards and says that she finally shipped out to India on an troop ship which had no naval escort and which took forty-five days to cross the Pacific. Nordly describes stops in New Zealand and Australia before landing in India and taking a train to Ledo, India to support the troops trying to recapture the Ledo Road from the Japanese. She describes the scenery, the poverty, her gear and quarters, the torrential rains and intense heat and treating various battlefield wounds and injuries. After her discharge in 1946, Nordly says that she did face a period of adjustment to civilian life and that what she most disliked about the Army was the regimentation and the lack of privacy. Nordly is interviewed by Neola A. Spackman.
- Date Issued:
- 1985-01-29T00:00:00Z
- Data Provider:
- Michigan State University. Libraries
- Collection:
- Women's Overseas Service League Oral History Project
- Description:
- Patricia W. Pasbach discusses her experiences in the U.S. Army Nurse Corps while attached to the 124th General Hospital in Salzburg, the 279th General Hospital in Berlin, and the 120th Station Hospital in Bayreuth in 1946. Pasbach speaks at length about her experiences in a divided Berlin, detailing the economic problems caused by postwar inflation in Germany and discussing the Russian occupation of East Berlin and the territory around Berlin. She also describes spending weekends in Berchtesgaden while stationed in Salzburg, and her anxiety about being stationed in a foreign city where she did not know anyone. Pasbach says she was offered the chance to sign on for another year, but did not want to stay in Europe that long and left the Army in November 1946 after a little over a year of service. Pasbach is interviewed by Elsie Hornbacher.
- Date Issued:
- 1983-04-26T00:00:00Z
- Data Provider:
- Michigan State University. Libraries
- Collection:
- Women's Overseas Service League Oral History Project
- Description:
- Sophie Steffer discusses her twenty year career in the United States Army Nurse Corps, focusing primarily on her service in World War Two. Steffer says that her civilian job was considered "essential" to the war effort and that she was denied enlistment for two years because of it. She says that she was first sent overseas to India near the end of the war and then later to the Philippines, Germany and Japan with the occupation forces. Steffer talks about living in thatched huts in India, Quonset huts in the Philippines, and apartments in Germany and Japan and describes processing soldiers and civilians who had been Japanese prisoners, while she was in Calcutta. She says that her biggest adjustment to military life was learning to salute and accepting the separation of enlisted personnel and officers. Steffer 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:
- Martha Baker talks about her twenty-year career in the U.S. Army Nurse Corps and says that she began as a general duty nurse but spent most of her time as a surgical nurse before moving to central supply and supervision. She recalls her overseas and U.S. assignments, including serving in Okinawa and Vietnam and says that the housing overseas was better than in the States and that she was "disappointed" by the unattractive uniforms she had to wear. Baker also says she had to make few adjustments to military life and found it to be incredibly exciting. She describes her post-retirement jobs, including teaching ROTC for the past eleven years. Baker is interviewed by Marjorie Brown.
- Date Issued:
- 1986-03-22T00:00:00Z
- Data Provider:
- Michigan State University. Libraries
- Collection:
- Women's Overseas Service League Oral History Project
- Description:
- Nelda Weeks, in a written reminiscence read by Marjorie Brown, describes her twenty-five career in the U.S. Army Nurse Corps. Weeks says that she volunteered for service after serving six months as a cadet in a military hospital and talks about her various duties, her U.S. and overseas assignments, her housing, and her uniforms. She says that transition to military life was easy for her, that she had to make very few adjustments and that she had always planned to make the service a career.
- Date Issued:
- 1985-04-15T00:00:00Z
- Data Provider:
- Michigan State University. Libraries
- Collection:
- Women's Overseas Service League Oral History Project
- 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
- Description:
- In an oral history interview, Evelyn Barbier says that she joined the U.S. Army Nurse Corps in 1941 because she knew that war was imminent and then spent the next twenty years in the Army even though she had never planned on a military career. She talks about some of her duty stations, including the Panama Canal Zone in 1942 and later Germany, Japan, Guam, and Saipan and describes her duties, housing and uniforms and riding out a typhoon in Saipan and a measles epidemic on Guam. Barbier says she adjusted easily to military life and returned to civilian nursing after she retired from the Army. Barbier is interviewed by Marjorie Brown.
- Date Issued:
- 1986-03-04T00:00:00Z
- Data Provider:
- Michigan State University. Libraries
- Collection:
- Women's Overseas Service League Oral History Project