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- Description:
- Dorothy Doyle recalls her service in the United States Army Nurse Corps. Doyle says that she enlisted in the Army in 1942 after spending ten years in civilian nursing and talks about basic training and her duty stations in the U.S. and later in New Hebrides, New Caledonia, New Zealand and a stint in Saipan after the battle of Iwo Jima. She also talks about the complicated social dynamics in the army, racism, and the trials of nursing in field hospitals. Doyle is interviewed by Kathryn Cavanaugh.
- Date Issued:
- 2002-07-08T00:00:00Z
- Data Provider:
- Michigan State University. Libraries
- Collection:
- G. Robert Vincent Voice Library Collection
- Description:
- Former U.S. Coast Guard Women's Reserve (SPARS) radio technician Eleanor Jean Bechtel discusses her enlistment, the social environment in wartime America, her basic training in West Palm Beach, FL, and receiving electronics and radio instruction at the Ben Franklin Hotel in Philadelphia. She also talks about the base in Florida where she trained, seeing John Wayne and Robert Montgomery there filming a movie, and moving to post-war Japan to work as a civilian secretary.
- Date Issued:
- 2003-07-29T00:00:00Z
- Data Provider:
- Michigan State University. Libraries
- Collection:
- G. Robert Vincent Voice Library Collection
- Description:
- Marian Cyberski talks about her service in the U.S. Army Nurse Corp during World War Two and says that she was inspired to enlist after seeing the movie "The shores of Tripoli." Cyberski talks about being stationed at field hospitals in Rockhampton, Indooroopilly, and Brisbane, Australia, treating mostly malaria and battle fatigue patients, and originally shipping out to Australia on the luxury liner SS Lurline. She also talks about her daily life in Australia, vacationing in Sydney, leaving Australia on a ship which contained many Australian war brides and crying babies, arriving home in September 1945, and getting married in November to a man whom she had met as a patient.
- Date Issued:
- 2003-07-18T00:00:00Z
- Data Provider:
- Michigan State University. Libraries
- Collection:
- G. Robert Vincent Voice Library Collection
- Description:
- Rachel Babcock recalls her service as a radio operator with the U.S. Navy WAVES (Women Accepted for Volunteer Emergency Service) during World War Two. Babcock talks about the transition to basic training from teaching in a country school in Ingham County, Michigan, serving on a blimp base in Georgia, the culture shock of color-segregated facilities in the south, hitchhiking to the beach on weekends, and how civilians would frequently pay for meals for service members. She also talks about her post-military life, enrolling at Michigan State University, teaching in Lansing, MI, and the role of women in the American military.
- Date Issued:
- 2003-10-23T00:00:00Z
- Data Provider:
- Michigan State University. Libraries
- Collection:
- G. Robert Vincent Voice Library Collection
- 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:
- Alta May Andrews Sharp talks about her service in the American Red Cross and the U.S. Army Nurse Corps during World War One. Sharp says that she served in the Red Cross for two years at "Military Hospital No. 1" as chief nurse in ward 83, before finally volunteering for the Army. She talks about her basic training, learning to salute, the voyage to England in a convoy escorted by sub-chasers and battle ships, sleeping in her life jacket, and having lifeboat drills daily. She says that she was stationed in France and discusses her duties, her pay, her quarters, her gray chambray uniform with the "butchers apron," and being shelled by the huge German artillery gun known as "Big Bertha." Sharp says that the nurses were treated well but were prohibited from dating enlisted men and that the officers were only interested in French girls. When they learned of the Armistice she says that she and her friends traveled to Paris to celebrate "all day and night." Ends abruptly. Sharp is interviewed by Margaret E. Duncan.
- Date Issued:
- 1985-04-16T00:00:00Z
- Data Provider:
- Michigan State University. Libraries
- Collection:
- Women's Overseas Service League Oral History Project
- Description:
- Mary C. Burnham talks about serving as a dietitian in the U.S. Army Medical Specialist Corps during World War Two and later in occupied Japan and stateside military hospitals, over a twenty-year Army career. Burnham discusses her youth in Milwaukee, her college years, her early work life in Chicago, enlisting in the Army in 1942 soon after Pearl Harbor, training at a base in Texas, shipping out to the Pacific Theater, her initial posting to Espiritu Santo in the New Hebrides Islands, and her life on the base and her duties as a dietitian. She says that she was later transferred to India and after serving in hospitals there, was sent back to the states via the Middle East and North Africa. During the Korean war, Burnham was again sent overseas and served as part of the U.S. Army of Occupation in Japan. She describes her three years of service in Japan, and says that she was very happy to finally be sent back to the states to serve in a series of military hospitals for the rest of her career. Burnham is interviewed by Jane Piatt.
- Date Issued:
- 1983-05-13T00:00:00Z
- Data Provider:
- Michigan State University. Libraries
- Collection:
- Women's Overseas Service League Oral History Project
- Description:
- Retired Army Lieutenant Colonel Patricia Accountius, talks about her nearly thirty years in the U.S. Army Meidcal Specialist Corps, including her service during the Vietnam War. Accountius says that she joined the Army in 1948 and became a dietician after completing an internship program. She discusses her stateside assignments, serving on Okinawa from 1956-1958, being stationed at Walter Reed Army hospital in 1958, earning a graduate degree and finally being sent to Vietnam in 1966 as a captain. She says she spent a great deal of time in Vietnam just trying to get food deliveries made on a regular basis, developing menus for hospitals and dealing with the lack of basic food items. After Vietnam, Accountius became Chief Dietician at Walter Reed Hospital for several years, was later assigned to the Pentagon and was finally sent back to Texas in the 1980s as part of the Panama Command. Accountius is interviewed by Ruth F. Stewart and Carol A. Habgood.
- Date Issued:
- 2003-10-21T00:00:00Z
- Data Provider:
- Michigan State University. Libraries
- Collection:
- Women's Overseas Service League Oral History Project
- Description:
- In an in-depth oral history interview, retired Lieutenant Colonel Therese M. Slone-Baker talks about growing up in New York City, attending business school, taking a civil service job in Washington D.C., joining the U.S. Army Air Corps in 1944 and working as a secretary, special events coordinator and a recruiter until she leaving active military service in 1946 to join the reserves. Slone-Baker says she was recalled to active service in 1952 and became an officer and discusses the various assignments she had throughout her career, including being the commander of a WASP squadron. She says that she finally retired in 1972 with 25 years of military service and feels that even though she did not have a "dramatic" career she did contribute and did her best to uphold the high standards of the service. Slone-Baker is interviewed by Ruth F. Stewart assisted by 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:
- Former U.S Air Force Major Ruth Rowntree talks about her eleven years of active duty, first in the Women's Army Air Corps and later the U.S. Air Force. Rowntree says that she left her job as a secretary to volunteer when World War II started, was inducted in October 1942, went to Officer Candidate School, and was later assigned to the all male Statistical Control Section. She says that she was in the first group to become regular Air Force officers and later became a Management Analysis officer, Wing Comptroller, and finally Assistant Division Comptroller until her discharge in 1953. She also talks about the Berlin airlift, about the complex record keeping duties she had while serving in Wiesbaden, Germany and finally leaving the service to be with her husband.
- Data Provider:
- Michigan State University. Libraries
- Collection:
- Women's Overseas Service League Oral History Project
- Description:
- Lucile Pauline Matignon Crane talks about her service as a surgical nurse in the U.S. Navy during World War One, between April 1917 and February 1919. Crane says that she graduated from nursing school in 1914 and first worked at Stanford Hospital in San Francisco and that she enlisted in the Navy for good pay, and a chance for more education and equal opportunity. She talks about shipping out to Scotland, working in a surgical unit in a hospital which was a former resort hotel, the types of injuries she treated and socializing with enlisted men because the doctors were off limits. She also says that she was one of the first nurses to be sent home as the war wound down, spent her leave in Paris and was shipped home from Brest with ten women and thousands of men. Crane talks about her career after leaving the Navy, marrying and settling in Modesto, CA and notes that she received no special recognition for her service until the state of California paid a veterans bonus. The interviewer is unidentified.
- Date Issued:
- 1984-12-27T00:00:00Z
- 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
- Description:
- Edna Penny Rice talks about her twenty-four year military career, first in the Women's Army Auxiliary Corps and then its successors, the Women's Army Corps, and the Women in the Air Force. Rice says that she enlisted because she thought she "was as good" as her brother and her fiance and felt very patriotic. Rice says that she was inducted in July 1942 and worked in personnel and administration in every military theater of operation. She describes working and living conditions at her various posting, her uniforms and her leadership and administrative responsibilities. Rice says she was was pushed into becoming an officer and never planned on making the service a career. Rice 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:
- Retired Colonel Patricia Silvestre talks about her personal history and education and her career in the U.S. Army Nurse Corps which included service in the Vietnam War. Silvestre says she was running short of money for nursing school when she discovered the Army Student Nurse Program and enlisted in 1956. She talks about finishing her classes, doing basic training at Fort Sam Houston in Texas and then driving to her first assignment at Fort Lewis in Washington. She says that her first overseas assignment was in Korea as head nurse on an orthopedic ward and she describes the living conditions, her clothing, the weather and her social life, and says that she believes that hospital staff was really able to help the Koreans. After Officer's Candidate School, Silvestre says that she was sent to Vietnam as a chief nurse and was stationed at a children's hospital near the DMZ where she dealt with a great variety of tropical diseases and war related wounds. Silvestre says that she ended her career at Fitzsimons Army Medical Center in Denver in 1984 after serving at various Army operations around the United States. She says that her experience in Vietnam changed the way she thinks of war because she witnessed its terrible consequences. Silvestre is interviewed by Ruth Stewart.
- Date Issued:
- 2003-10-22T00:00:00Z
- 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:
- 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:
- 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:
- In a wide-ranging oral history interview, Margaret Canfield talks about her twenty-four year career in the U.S. Army Nurse Corps and serving in both the Korean and Vietnam Wars. Canfield says that she graduated from nursing school in 1951 and enlisted in the Army that same year. She talks about her basic training in Texas, her first assignment in Colorado, being sent to Japan in 1953 and treating casualties coming in from Korean battlefields. After the Korean War, she says that she was stationed in Utah and Hawaii and again in Asia and was finally sent to Vietnam in February 1967. Canfield discusses her various duty stations in Vietnam, treating Vietnamese civilians and U.S. and Korean troops and says that after becoming Chief Nurse at the 18th Surgical Hospital in Pleiku, she extended her tour of duty for another year. In December 1967, she says that she was transferred to a hospital in the Mekong Delta in support the 9th Infantry Division and that the hospital was shelled and virtually destroyed during the 1968 Tet Offensive. Canfield says that she returned to the U.S. after twenty-one months in Vietnam and finally retired from the Army in August 1975. Canfield is interviewed by Ruth F. Stewart.
- Date Issued:
- 2004-01-15T00:00:00Z
- 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:
- 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:
- 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:
- Laura Jacquelin "Jackie" Coggin talks about her youth in Georgia and Florida, her education and her 20 years in the Army Nurse Corps. Coggin says that she first graduated from the Macon Hospital School of Nursing in 1953, later earned a a bachelor's degree in nursing education administration and then a master's degree from the University of Alabama in 1963. She says that in 1965, while teaching at University of Southwestern Louisiana, an Army recruiter talked her into joining the Army Nurse Corps as a way of financing a trip to Europe. She talks about her first duty stations and says that she decided to extend her enlistment because she liked the way the Army moved her around. She also talks about living and working in Hawaii and Germany and traveling throughout Europe and says that the military changed the way she thought about peoples' motives and points of view and that she learned to look at problems much differently. Coggin is interviewed by Ruth Stewart and Patricia Martin.
- Date Issued:
- 2007-03-26T00:00:00Z
- Data Provider:
- Michigan State University. Libraries
- Collection:
- Women's Overseas Service League Oral History Project
- Description:
- Erma Flitsch talks about her service as a nurse in the U.S. Air Force during the Korean War and the Cold War. Flitsch says that she grew up in Milwaukee, joined the Air Force after graduating from nursing school and first served at Bergstrom AFB at Austin, Texas and later at Clark AFB in the Philippines and in Tachikawa in Japan. In Korea, Flitsch says that she worked at MASH units to prepare wounded soldiers for air evacuation and talks about the food, her duties, patient care, flying with casualties, the weather in-country and what she did in her off-duty time. Flitsch also says that she later served in Pakistan, Germany and at other U.S. bases before retiring from the military in 1977. Flitsch is interviewed by Ruth Stewart.
- Date Issued:
- 2004-02-16T00:00:00Z
- Data Provider:
- Michigan State University. Libraries
- Collection:
- Women's Overseas Service League Oral History Project
- Description:
- Helen V. Kennard talks about her three years of service in the Women's Army Auxiliary Corps and its successor, the Women's Army Corps and says that she enlisted because she felt that it was her patriotic duty and that she wanted to travel and meet people. Kennard says that she was managing the parts department at Chevrolet dealership before she enlisted in September 1942, that her first duties were in the motor pool and that she became a typist so that she would be sent overseas. Kennard describes serving in New Guinea and the Philippines, sharing housing, and her uniforms and says that her biggest adjustment to military life was learning how to take orders. After the war, Kennard says that she used the G.I. Bill to get a business degree from the University of Denver and worked in accounting until her retirement. Kennard is interviewed by Marjorie Brown.
- Date Issued:
- 1986-02-13T00:00:00Z
- 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:
- Retired Air Force Lieutenant Colonel Alice Pfeiffer talks about her youth in Illinois, her education and her career as an Air Force nurse and administrator. Pfeiffer says that she enlisted in the Army Air Corps in 1941, talks about her first duty stations and says that after additional training at Fort Bragg, was sent to England aboard the Queen Mary. Pfeiffer says that she was assigned to the 68th General Hospital which was set up in a cow pasture, worked 12 hour shifts, and lived in very, very basic conditions. After D-Day, Pfeiffer says that she worked in a hospital in France, was finally sent back to the U.S. after the war and was discharged in 1946. She says that she enlisted in the Air Force in 1949, served at various bases and hospitals around the world and retired in 1964 while stationed at Wright-Patterson AFB. Ends abruptly. Pfeiffer is interviewed by Ruth F. Stewart.
- Date Issued:
- 2004-02-17T00:00:00Z
- Data Provider:
- Michigan State University. Libraries
- Collection:
- Women's Overseas Service League Oral History Project
- Description:
- Helen McPherson Reynolds talks about her service in the U.S. Army Nurse Corps during World War Two. She says that after her induction in October 1942 and receiving training as an anesthesiologist, she joined the 232nd General Hospital unit and shipped overseas in February 1945. Reynolds says that she first landed in Saipan and was later sent to Iwo Jima to help prepare for the expected invasion of Japan. She says that she was one of the first ten nurses on Iwo Jima and describes the tent hospital in which she worked, the heat and the casualties she was treating from the battle on Okinawa. She says actor Tyrone Power piloted the plane which transported the nurses to Iwo Jima. Reynolds says that she was discharged from the Army in January 1946.
- Date Issued:
- 1983-05-01T00:00:00Z
- 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:
- Retired Air Force Colonel Eleanor M. Carey talks about her youth and education in Pennsylvania, her long U.S. Air Force career and her service in the Vietnam War. After graduating from the Mercy Hospital School of Nursing in Pittsburgh, Cary says that she joined the Air Force on October 19, 1955. She says that after basic and advanced training, she was first stationed in Beirut, Lebanon and later volunteered for duty in Vietnam when that war heated up. Cary talks about treating Vietnamese civilians as part of the military's MEDCAP program, her living conditions at U.S. base at Cam Ranh Bay and working as a flight nurse in air-evac and taking causalities to medical care directly from the battlefield. Carey says that as a capstone to her Vietnam service, she escorted future Senator John McCain when he was released from a North Vietnamese prison in 1973. She says that she retired from the Air Force in October 1979 and that she "loved every minute" of her career. Carey is interviewed by Ruth F. Stewart and Patricia Martin.
- Date Issued:
- 2007-03-26T00:00:00Z
- Data Provider:
- Michigan State University. Libraries
- Collection:
- Women's Overseas Service League Oral History Project
- Description:
- Virginia P. O'Rourke Immerman talks about her service in the Women's Army Air Corps in 1944, during World War Two. Immerman talks about growing up in Boston and enlisting in the WAACs when wartime life became boring, training at Fort Oglethorpe, being assigned to the Air Transport Command (ATC) at Love Field in Dallas, and finally being sent to Ascension Island in the South Atlantic which served as a stopover for aircraft flying between the U.S. and the Pacific Theater of Operations. She describes life on the island, the climate, the natives and their culture, and her duties in the Quartermaster Office. Immerman says that she was later sent to England and France with the ATC after VE-Day and describes being in Paris on VJ-Day, traveling the continent, skiing in Switzerland and finally shipping back to the States, being discharged in June 1946, using the G.I. Bill to get an undergraduate degree in 1950 and later working as a civilian in Europe. Immerman is interviewed by Virginia Emrich.
- Date Issued:
- 1984-03-23T00:00:00Z
- Data Provider:
- Michigan State University. Libraries
- Collection:
- Women's Overseas Service League Oral History Project
- Description:
- Rachel Babcock recalls her service as a radio operator with the U.S. Navy WAVES (Women Accepted for Volunteer Emergency Service) during World War Two. Babcock talks about the transition to basic training from teaching in a country school in Ingham County, Michigan, serving on a blimp base in Georgia, the culture shock of color-segregated facilities in the south, hitchhiking to the beach on weekends, and how civilians would frequently pay for meals for service members. She also talks about her post-military life, enrolling at Michigan State University, teaching in Lansing, MI, and the role of women in the American military.
- Date Issued:
- 2003-10-23T00:00:00Z
- Data Provider:
- Michigan State University. Libraries
- Collection:
- G. Robert Vincent Voice Library Collection
- Description:
- Marion Kern Kennedy talks about her service in the U.S. Army Nurse Corps during World War Two. Kennedy says that she did basic training and advanced military training between May 1942 and January 1943, was first sent to Bombay, India and later north to the Himalayas where her unit took over a muddy hospital cut from the jungle in Assam, India. She describes life in the camp, which was set up to support troops who were trying to open the Burma Road, the food, her quarters, the bugs, tropical diseases, her social life, and using slit trenches. Kennedy says that she was sent home in 1945 and was discharged from the military on new years day, 1946. In 1953, she says that she returned to the service and remained on active duty for the next 18 years. Kennedy is interviewed by Ruth F. Stewart assisted by Carol A. Habgood.
- Date Issued:
- 2003-10-21T00:00:00Z
- Data Provider:
- Michigan State University. Libraries
- Collection:
- Women's Overseas Service League Oral History Project
- Description:
- Elaine Carlton (born Olive Milborne) talks about entering service in the U.S. Army in July 1944 while living with her family in Belfast, Northern Ireland, taking rifle training in Litchfield, England, and disembarking from a ship in rough seas at Omaha Beach in France. She says that she was later stationed in Cherbourg, France and describes enemy sniper fire there, the condition of the housing, her duties, and a shipboard explosion that rocked the Cherbourg harbor. Carlton says that she was assigned to General Eisenhower's headquarters in Frankfurt, Germany after the war, returned to the States in 1947, was married in May 1948 and discharged from the Army later that same year.
- Data Provider:
- Michigan State University. Libraries
- Collection:
- Women's Overseas Service League Oral History Project
- Description:
- Harriet Wise talks about her service in the Women's Army Corps during World War Two and in Asia following the war. Wise discusses her postings at various military bases around the United States during the war and being one of the few women sent to the Army Exchange Service School at Princeton University. Following the war, Wise says that she accepted an assignment in Japan and talks about her time in Yokohama and Tokyo and later being sent to Seoul, South Korea to serve as an assistant PX officer. Wise is interviewed by Geneva Kebler Wiskemann and Elsie Hornbacher.
- Date Issued:
- 1983-04-20T00:00:00Z
- Data Provider:
- Michigan State University. Libraries
- Collection:
- Women's Overseas Service League Oral History Project
- Description:
- Gladys Welch says she joined the U.S. Army Nurse Corps because two of her brothers were in the military and she felt she also needed to serve and that she actually served two "hitches" in the Army. She was first stationed in Iran from 1943 to 1946, during World War II and later reenlisted for service in Europe from 1946 to 1958. Welch recalls the heat in Iran and visiting the Holy Land while on leave and traveling extensively throughout Europe. She says that she did not initially plan on an Army career, but found adjusting to military life to be easy decided to reenlist and serve to retirement. Welch also says that after her discharge, she returned to private nursing and taught psychiatric nursing at Mercy Hospital. Welch is interviewed by Marjorie Brown.
- Date Issued:
- 1986-03-06T00:00:00Z
- Data Provider:
- Michigan State University. Libraries
- Collection:
- Women's Overseas Service League Oral History Project
- Description:
- Retired Army Lieutenant Colonel Kathleen Rheinlander O'Neal says that she decided to become an Army nurse while in high school, graduated from the Walter Reed Army Institute of Nursing in 1970 and went straight into basic training as a staff nurse at Fort Sam Houston in Texas. She talks about her various duty stations and assignments and says that she resigned from active duty in 1975, joined the Army Reserves and worked at the 94th General Hospital unit in San Antonio, Texas. O'Neal describes her activities as a reserve officer and says that in January 1991 she was recalled to active duty for service in Operation Desert Storm, sent to a hospital in Germany and finally returned to the U.S. in April of that year and retired from the service shortly after. She says the military gave her a solid career, an extensive network of friends, and a good education. O'Neal is interviewed by Ruth F. Stewart.
- Date Issued:
- 2004-02-18T00:00:00Z
- Data Provider:
- Michigan State University. Libraries
- Collection:
- Women's Overseas Service League Oral History Project
- Description:
- In an oral history interview, Margaret Patricia Phillips talks about her thirty-two years of service in the United States Army Nurse Corps. Phillips says that she joined the Army for patriotic reasons in 1944 while working as a nurse in a Detroit hospital. She says that she served as "chief nurse" in military hospitals around the globe and vividly remembers her plane taking enemy fire as it was trying to take off from the Bien Hoa Air Force Base in South Vietnam. Phillips says the biggest adjustment she had to make to military life was the communal living and that she did not expect to make the Army a career when she enlisted. Phillips is interviews by Marjorie Brown.
- Date Issued:
- 1986-03-01T00:00:00Z
- 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:
- Mary Myers talks about her service in the U.S. Army Nurse Corps from 1944 to 1950. Myers talks about her nurse's training, why she decided to enlist in the military, basic training and being sent overseas to Marseilles, France in November 1944 to help form the 236th General Hospital. Myers recalls being strafed by German planes in Paris, enjoying a Coca-Cola on Christmas day, her primitive quarters, bathing out of her helmet in cold weather, caring for Allied soldiers and German POWs, and the variety of wounds and diseases she treated. Myers says that officers and enlisted men and women shared the same mess hall and that she was always treated respectfully by U.S. troops and German POWs. Myers also talks about the end of the war in Europe and being shipped to the Pacific just in time for VJ-Day. After the war, she says that she stayed in the Army Reserves and used the G.I. Bill to earn an undergraduate degree and part of a graduate degree at the University of Pittsburgh. Myers is interviewed by Elizabeth Booker.
- Date Issued:
- 1986-04-21T00:00:00Z
- Data Provider:
- Michigan State University. Libraries
- Collection:
- Women's Overseas Service League Oral History Project
- Description:
- Sarah Penrose "Penny" Schemmel Edlin discusses her service with the 82nd General Hospital during World War Two. Edlin talks about her childhood, her education as a physical therapist, joining the Army as a commissioned officer in August 1943, her very rigorous basic training, and being shipped to England in February 1944. She also talks about the harsh living conditions in the hospital camps where she served including, the bad food, unsanitary conditions and rodent infestations, and shares a story about a planned German POW prison break near one of the camps and treating the German prisoners who claimed they couldn't speak English. After VE-Day, Edlin says that her unit moved to France to close down hospitals and later to a hospital in England to treat emaciated American POWs who were returning from the German prison camps. She says that romances between U.S. Army officers and nurses was quite common during the war and that she, in fact, married a man from her unit after she returned to the States. Edlin is interviewed by Dorothy M. Harrison.
- 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:
- Florence Bernstein McChesney, from the Women's Overseas Service League Pittsburgh Unit, talks about her service as a flight nurse in the U.S. Army Air Corps from 1943 to 1949. McChesney explains why she volunteered for the Army while working in a TB ward in a Detroit hospital and discusses her training and finally being assigned to the Pacific Theater of Operations. She describes her duties, flying frequently to the States with patients, her quarters in Hawaii and on Guadalcanal, her uniforms, the types of illness and injuries she treated and says that she was the first nurse on Okinawa. McChesney says that she used the G.I. Bill to earn undergraduate and graduate degrees after the war and worked as a nurse until her retirement in 1974. McChesney is interviewed by Amelia Bunder.
- Date Issued:
- 1984-01-12T00:00:00Z
- Data Provider:
- Michigan State University. Libraries
- Collection:
- Women's Overseas Service League Oral History Project
- Description:
- Mary Hall talks about her service as an Air Force officer from 1951 to 1956. Hall says that she enlisted in the Air Force as a Second Lieutenant in November 1951 and discusses her duties in the U.S., being sent to Japan in May 1953 as supply officer, and later to Eglin AFB in Florida with the same assignment. She says that while attending Squadron Officers School in Montgomery, AL, as one of five women in a class of 500 men, she met her husband, married him right after the course finished and left the Air Force in 1956 to start a family. After the Air Force, in addition to raising her family, Hall says that she attend graduate school, did volunteer work, sold real estate and after her husband died in 1991, moved to the Air Force Village in San Antonio and married again. Hall is interviewed by Ruth F. Stewart.
- Date Issued:
- 2004-02-18T00:00:00Z
- 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:
- 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:
- Dorothy Haughton talks about joining the American Red Cross as a secretary in 1943 and in 1948 beginning a twenty year career as a physical therapist in the U.S. Army. She says she became intrigued with physical therapy while working for the Red Cross in a hospital unit and decided to get training and pursue an Army career. She discusses her duty stations, her travels, housing conditions, the Korean conflict, and her uniforms and says that adjusting to military life was easy for her. Haughton is interviewed by Marjorie Brown.
- Date Issued:
- 1986-03-13T00:00:00Z
- Data Provider:
- Michigan State University. Libraries
- Collection:
- Women's Overseas Service League Oral History Project
- Description:
- Hildegarde Abbott talks about her service as a "Hello Girl" telephone operator in the U.S. Signal Corps during World War One. Abbott reminisces about her training, other women in the Corps, her duties, life in France, socializing with soldiers, making candy, writing letters for the wounded in the military hospital, dating officers, having the flu during the epidemic and doing things the nurses didn't have time to do, all in addition to her telephone duties. She says that she got her sixty-dollar-a-month job because the Army needed French speaking women to use the duel French/American telephone systems and to serve as interpreters. She recalls knowing in advance when the Armistice would be signed but not being able to talk about it and then celebrating when the war was finally over. After the war, Abbott says that she served with the Peace Commission overseas and finally returned to the U.S. in 1920. At home she married, finished college, started a family and she says visited France later in life when her son was teaching there. Abbott is interviewed by Jane Piatt and Mary C. Burnham.
- Date Issued:
- 1983-05-13T00:00:00Z
- Data Provider:
- Michigan State University. Libraries
- Collection:
- Women's Overseas Service League Oral History Project
- Description:
- Margaret Kaminski Bliss talks about her service in the U.S. Army Nurse Corp from August 1941 through July 1946. Bliss says she trained as a civilian at St. Lukes School of Nursing in Idaho, that her first military assignment was at Fort Lewis in Washington and that she was later sent overseas to war-time New Guinea and Manila. She talks about the insects, snakes and other poisonous creatures in New Guinea, her quarters, her uniforms, the torrential rain storms, tropical diseases, the forbidding jungle, seeing Japanese submarines, being escorted to the latrine by an armed guard, seeing USO shows, the rations and having the chocolates sent from home melt immediately in the equatorial heat. Bliss also confides that she was secretly married in 1943 but that her husband was soon killed overseas and that she was married again after the war. Bliss is interviewed by Neola Ann Spackman.
- Date Issued:
- 1985-01-01T00:00:00Z
- Data Provider:
- Michigan State University. Libraries
- Collection:
- Women's Overseas Service League Oral History Project