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- 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