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- 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:
- Peggy Lechtweis talks about her five years of service in the Army Nurse Corp during World War Two. Lechtweis discusses her induction, basic training, and shipping out to Fiji in the Pacific. She also describes life on base and her responsibilities as chief nurse at the hospital and putting in long shifts in operating rooms. She explains how her unit moved as it followed the advancing U.S. troops across the Pacific to Okinawa and describes the events on VJ-Day, and later treating Allied POWs after their release from Japanese camps. Lechtweis is interviewed by Lois Collet.
- Date Issued:
- 1983-05-05T00:00:00Z
- Data Provider:
- Michigan State University. Libraries
- Collection:
- Women's Overseas Service League Oral History Project