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- 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:
- 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:
- 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:
- Hazel Percival talks about her twenty-three year career in the U.S. Army Nurse Corps and says that she enlisted because it was the "thing to do" and that there was talk of nurses being drafted. She says she was first sent to Europe in 1943 and after World War II, to duty stations in several stateside hospitals as well as in Panama and South Korea. Percival shares memories of living in tents and Quonset huts, the ship convoy that took her to Scotland via Iceland and her first assignment in southern England, and says that her greatest adjustment to military life was getting used to having people around all of the time. Percival is interviewed by Marjorie Brown.
- Date Issued:
- 1986-05-26T00:00:00Z
- 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:
- Retired Lieutenant Colonel Margaret E. Oaks talks about her twenty-one year career in the U.S. Army Nurse Corps which began in July 1944 during World War II. Oaks says she was attached to an "air-evac" hospital during the war and discusses her wartime quarters and her various uniforms, and remembers being in Le Harve, France after D-Day and being amazed at the level of destruction. Oaks says she did not consider making the Army a career but when the war ended just decided that she was "cut out to be in the military." She talks about serving in post-war Germany and lists her other postings throughout the U.S. and around the world and says that she worked in almost every nursing specialty during her long career, including supervision and command. Oaks is interviewed by Marjorie Brown.
- 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