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- Description:
- Retired Army Colonel Mary Patricia Laughlin talks about her childhood and education and her service as an U.S. Air Force nurse from 1951 to 1954 and as an Army nurse from 1963 to 1980. Laughlin says she was raised in Omaha and went into nursing because she didn't want to be a "teacher or secretary." After graduating from nursing school in 1946, she says that she worked in Seattle and Denver and other locations around the Midwest, before finally joining the Air Force in 1951, during the Korean War. She left the Air Force in 1954 and after working in various hospitals, joined the U.S Army in 1963 and was sent to Korea. Laughlin describes life and work in Korea and says that she was next sent to Japan and later worked in Seattle, Washington, D.C., Fairbanks, Alaska and Monterey, CA, where she retired in February 1980. Laughlin is interviewed by Ruth F. Stewart and Carol A. Habgood.
- Date Issued:
- 2003-01-01T00:00:00Z
- Data Provider:
- Michigan State University. Libraries
- Collection:
- Women's Overseas Service League Oral History Project
- Description:
- Elizabeth "Betty" Hulings Booker discusses her service in the U.S. Army Nurse Corps during World War Two. Booker, who served with the 19th Field Hospital in the Persian Gulf, recalls her childhood and education at Johns Hopkins School of Nursing prior to enlistment and then shipping out by way of the Mediterranean Sea to a field hospital in Iran. Iran, she says was part of the route used to ship much needed supplies to Russia for use on the Eastern Front. She also talks about the excitement of mail call, the twelve hour shifts she worked caring for injured American and foreign troops, her feelings about army pay and food and feeling threatened by the excessive amount of attention she received as a woman during a rest and recreation trip to the Holy Land and the Caspian Sea. After the war, Booker says that she married and raised a family, used the G.I. Bill to earn a Master Degree and later taught Nursing at the University of Pittsburgh. Booker is interviewed by Mary Meyers.
- Date Issued:
- 1986-09-21T00:00:00Z
- Data Provider:
- Michigan State University. Libraries
- Collection:
- Women's Overseas Service League Oral History Project
- Description:
- Retired U.S. Army Colonel Helen P. Onyett, the first Chinese American woman ever promoted to Colonel in the United States Army, talks about her youth and education in Connecticut and her service in the Army Nurse Corps during World War II. Oynett says she was encouraged by her teachers to become a nurse and talks about her training at the Waterbury Hospital School of Nursing and her later decision to join the Army. Onyett also talks about serving in a tent hospital in North Africa, caring for the wounded, using commandeered German wool blankets to keep warm, living on Army rations, and working long and brutal shifts. After leaving the Army at end of the war, Onyett says that she later joined the reserves and finally retired from the Army in 1978. Onyett is interviewed by Ruth Stewart F.
- Date Issued:
- 2004-04-08T00:00:00Z
- 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:
- 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, 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
- Description:
- Ginny Brown talks about her childhood in Tennessee, graduating from nursing school in 1943 and joining the U.S. Army Nurse Corps in July of that same year. After her initial training, Brown says that she volunteered to go overseas and was assigned to the 48th General Hospital in Petworth England in January 1944 and to a combat medical unit in France in August of that same year. She describes living in a tent, showering in front of male soldiers, working in a field hospital in a potato patch and being stationed in Paris after liberation. After V-E Day, Brown says that she was assigned to a hospital on the Riviera, was shipped back to the U.S. from Marseilles, left the Army in 1946, but went back on active duty in 1953 and finally retired in 1980. Brown claims that women were discriminated against in the military and were often denied promotions because of their gender. Brown is interviewed by Ruth F. Stewart and Carol A. Habgood.
- Date Issued:
- 2004-01-14T00:00:00Z
- Data Provider:
- Michigan State University. Libraries
- Collection:
- Women's Overseas Service League Oral History Project
- Description:
- Marguerite Noutary, the daughter of immigrant parents, talks about her childhood and her career in the U.S. Army Nurse Corps, including her service in World War II. Noutary talks about joining the Army in 1940 and being sent to the China-Burma-India Theater of Operations after the start of the war. She describes her duty stations in Calcutta and Myitkyina, Burma, the dust of the Burma Road, the food, the climate, rampant malaria, flying over "The Hump" into China in a transport plane with Japanese prisoners, the start of the Chinese civil war after the Japanese surrender and treating American POWs who were survivors of the Doolittle Raid. Noutary says that she decided to join the Army Reserve after leaving the regular Army and was called-up for active duty in October 1961 during the Cuban Missile Crisis. Vivian Peterson introduces and concludes the recording.
- Date Issued:
- 1990-03-03T00:00:00Z
- Data Provider:
- Michigan State University. Libraries
- Collection:
- Women's Overseas Service League Oral History Project