Search Constraints
« Previous |
61 - 70 of 75
|
Next »
Search Results
- Description:
- In an oral history interview, Retired U.S. Army Colonel Lola Olsmith talks about choosing to become a nurse, attending nursing school in Little Rock, Arkansas, joining the Army in 1967 and volunteering for duty in Vietnam. She says that after her basic training in San Antonio, she was sent directly to Vietnam and recalls the anxiety she felt as she flew into Saigon at midnight with 13 other nurses. Olsmith talks about her hospital duties in Vietnam, living in Quonset huts, taking care of Viet Cong prisoners, her experiences during the February 1968 Tet Offensive, working in a recovery ward where patients often woke with missing limbs, and making medical visits to Vietnamese villages and orphanages. After her one year tour of duty in Vietnam, Olsmith says that she returned to the U.S., decided to make the Army her career, served in various duty stations around the country, went into the Army Reserves in 1979 as a Major, was reactivated in 1991 during Operation Desert Storm and finally retired from the Army in November of that year. Olsmith says her time in the service gave her a sense of confidence as well as a career. Olsmith is interviewed by Ruth F. Stewart assisted by Carol A. Habgood.
- Date Issued:
- 2004-01-15T00:00:00Z
- Data Provider:
- Michigan State University. Libraries
- Collection:
- Women's Overseas Service League Oral History Project
- Description:
- Anna Spillman Atteberry talks about her childhood in depression-era Louisiana and her service in the U.S. Army Nurse Corps in Southern France and Italy during World War Two. Atteberry says that after nursing school she heard news of the bombing of Pearl Harbor and immediately enlisted. She says that she was first assigned to the Fort Bliss hospital, volunteered for overseas duty, joined the 56th Evacuation Hospital and was sent to Casablanca in North Africa. She was next moved to Bizerte to treat casualties from the invasion of Sicily, she says and was later sent to Anzio and then north to Naples. She talks about spending the winter in a front line tent hospital, dealing with the dirt floors and trying to keep things sterile, treating battlefield wounds and pneumonia and other cold related cases and working during German shelling and says that she is proud of the care that she and other hospital staff provided. After next being stationed in Rome, Atteberry says that she was transferred to the 10th Field Hospital in France, followed the Army as it moved across France and Germany and says that the lines changed so quickly that they were sometimes forced to leave behind patients who were too critical to be moved. She says that she returned to the States as a patient and received treatment at Fitzsimons Army Medical Center in Denver and when she recovered, was sent to Fort Sam Houston where she nursed severely injured casualties. Atteberry is interviewed by Ruth Stewart and Patricia Martin.
- Date Issued:
- 2007-04-02T00:00:00Z
- 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:
- Marjorie Varner talks about her service in the Army Nurse Corps from 1949 to 1971 and serving in both the Korean War and the Vietnam War. Varner recalls her nurse's training, her assignments in surgery units, her uniforms, her quarters and assignments in Korea and Vietnam and a terrible battlefield incident in which she attempted to take a soldier's blood pressure only to find that he was a double amputee. She says that she earned a bachelor's degree during her enlistment, became a nursing supervisor at several hospitals, and retired as Chief Nurse at Fitzsimons Army Medical Center in Denver. She also describes some of her activities in retirement.
- Date Issued:
- 1983-06-17T00:00:00Z
- Data Provider:
- Michigan State University. Libraries
- Collection:
- Women's Overseas Service League Oral History Project
- Description:
- Retired U.S. Army Captain Cecelia G. Mehlick recalls her service in the Army Nurse Corps beginning in World War Two. In this oral history interview, Mehlick describes being inducted into the Army in April 1944, basic training at Camp McCoy in Wisconsin and later being sent to Mayo General Hospital in Galesburg, IL to be trained a a nurse anesthetist. Mehlick talks about her duties at Ft. Bragg in North Carolina and Ft. Belvoir in Virginia before being sent to Texas to help set up a surgical center during Army training maneuvers. Mehlick says that she was finally sent to Europe to treat front-line casualties and at war's end, spent many hours also treating German civilians. After breaking her ankle in Germany, Mehlick says that she was shipped back to the U.S. and lists a number of later assignments she had both in the U.S. and Europe before retiring after 20 years of military service.
- Data Provider:
- Michigan State University. Libraries
- Collection:
- Women's Overseas Service League Oral History Project
- Description:
- Dorothy McDonald says that she joined the U.S. Army Nurse Corps at the age of 36 because of the attack on Pearl Harbor and then goes on to discuss her war experiences in a wide-ranging oral history interview. She talks about her duty stations in France and Germany, sleeping four nurses to a tent, and her uniforms. McDonald says that wading ashore at the Normandy beach made an impression upon that she will never forget. McDonald also says that she did not use the G.I. Bill after war, that her war experiences and training did not help further her career and that she hated Army drilling and calisthenics because she joined "to be a nurse and not a soldier."
- 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
- Description:
- In an oral history interview, Winifred Gansel discusses her service in the U.S. Army Nurse Corps during World War Two. Gansel talks about growing up in California, graduating from nursing school in 1931, her enlistment in the U.S. Army after Pearl Harbor and being sent to New Guinea with the 80th General Hospital. Gansel describes life at the camp, working with the native people, surviving insects and lizards, dealing with hygiene issues, and what the nurses did to relax. She says that the 80th later moved with the troops to the Philippines and she talks about treating severely dehydrated and malnourished soldiers in tent hospitals there, and her duty in a polio ward. Gansel says that she came back to the States in November 1945, was discharged as a captain in March 1946, and returned to her position as a supervisor at the Santa Clara County Hospital in California. Gansel is interviewed by Norma I. Williams.
- Date Issued:
- 1984-05-30T00:00:00Z
- Data Provider:
- Michigan State University. Libraries
- Collection:
- Women's Overseas Service League Oral History Project
- Description:
- Anna Lisa Moline talks about her service in the U.S. Army Nurse Corps during World War Two. Moline talks about her pre-war education and employment and says that she joined the Army in April 1941 after a good friend enlisted. She discusses her first state-side assignments, leaving New York for Scotland on December 7, 1942 and joining the 30th General Hospital to help set up a hospital in a bombed out Catholic school. Moline says she and a friend were recruited for a secret mission and were sent to Russia to treat causalities from Allied bombing missions who landed in Soviet controlled territory. Moline remembers being bombed by the Germans in Russia, taking patients into the trenches for safety, living in a barracks with an earth floor, ant infestations, and terrible latrines. Moline says that after the war she worked at the University of Pennsylvania School of Nursing as an assistant superintendent, but left because of stress related health issues caused by her time in the Army. Moline is interviewed by Marjorie Brown.
- Date Issued:
- 1986-04-07T00:00:00Z
- Data Provider:
- Michigan State University. Libraries
- Collection:
- Women's Overseas Service League Oral History Project
- Description:
- In a poignant oral history interview, Marian Weller talks about her long career in the U.S. Army Nurse Corps and her service during the Vietnam War. Weller says that she comes from a family with a long military history and that she even graduated as a second lieutenant from the Army Student Nurse program in 1967. She talks about her basic training at Fort Sam Houston, working at Walter Reed Hospital in 1968 and being shipped to Vietnam in February 1969 to join the 95th Evac Hospital, across the harbor from Da Nang. She talks about her duty in the "yuck unit" working with patients with disfiguring battlefield injuries, the civilian casualties brought in by the choppers, life on the base, being in a helicopter crash, atrocities committed by the Viet Cong, the corruption which was part of daily life, trying to clean blood off concrete floors and the relentless tropical heat and humidity. She says that she rotated back to the States in 1970 and served at hospitals in Maryland, Hawaii, Georgia, Massachusetts, Texas and the Philippines and finally retired as a major in 2002. Weller talks candidly about developing medical and emotional problems in the years after her Vietnam service and says that she was finally diagnosed with Post Traumatic Stress Disorder (PTSD) after a visit to the Vietnam War Memorial sent her into a three day crying jag. Weller 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