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- 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:
- 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:
- Ninety year old U.S. Army and Air Force veteran Mary Templeton Gates talks about her childhood, education and service career. Gates says that her decision to go into nursing was the result of her family's long history in medicine and that after graduating from nursing school in 1938, she worked in Georgia and New York City before deciding to enlist in the U.S. Army Air Corps to become a flight nurse. Gates says that she turned down a teaching position to become chief nurse in a squadron sent to the Pacific during the war and describes her career in the Army through service in hospitals in Guam, Hawaii and Bermuda. After the war, Gates says that she left the Army, but later enlisted for duty in the Air Force at the start of the Korean War. She says that she became a Lieutenant Colonel around 1960 and finally retired shortly after. Templeton is interviewed by Ruth F. Stewart.
- Date Issued:
- 2004-04-07T00:00:00Z
- Data Provider:
- Michigan State University. Libraries
- Collection:
- Women's Overseas Service League Oral History Project
- Description:
- In an oral history interview, retired Army Colonel Lois A. Johns talks about her education, her career in the Army Nurse Corp and her service in the Vietnam War. Johns talks about growing up in Cleveland, earning her nursing degree in 1948, a second bachelor's degree in 1950 and later two master's degrees and finally, in 1967, a doctorate. In 1950, she says that she also joined the Army Reserve and that her active duty began in 1960 when she was promoted to Captain. She describes a number of her duty stations, going back into the reserves while working and going to school and then going back on active duty as a Major for duty in Vietnam. She says that she arrived in Saigon late at night, was assigned to the "renal ward" at the 629th Medical Detachment of the 3rd Field Hospital and describes her quarters, her duties, her patients, the local cuisine and culture and says that she was awarded a Bronze Star when she left Vietnam and was assigned to the Institute for Surgical Research at Fort Sam Houston. She goes on to discuss her various duty stations after Vietnam, both stateside and abroad and says that she finally retired from the Army in 1980. Johns praises her many coworkers throughout the years, but says that women often had problems dealing with their male counterparts and that sexual harassment did exist in the service. Johns is interviewed by Ruth Stewart and Patricia Martin.
- Date Issued:
- 2007-02-06T00:00:00Z
- Data Provider:
- Michigan State University. Libraries
- Collection:
- Women's Overseas Service League Oral History Project
- Description:
- In an oral history interview, Doris Cobb talks about her life and family and her long service in the U.S. Army Nurse Corps. Cobb discusses her childhood and education and graduating from nursing school in 1941. She says that she enlisted in the Army in 1944, took basic training in Indiana and was shipped over to Scotland April 1945, just as V-E day was announced. Cobb talks about her travels and assignments at various hospitals in England and on the continent in the post-war years and says that she finally decided to leave the military in May 1946 to go back to college. After earning a B.A. in 1950 and working as a civilian nurse, Cobb says that she decided to go back into the Army in February 1956 with the rank of captain. She talks about her various jobs and duty stations through the years, including stints in various places in the U.S., Okinawa, Japan, Thailand, and Heidelberg, Germany. In 1969, Cobb says that she was promoted to Lieutenant Colonel and finally retired from the service in the fall of 1974.
- Date Issued:
- 2003-01-01T00:00:00Z
- Data Provider:
- Michigan State University. Libraries
- Collection:
- Women's Overseas Service League Oral History Project
- Description:
- Retired United States Air Force Lieutenant Colonel Jeannette Marshall talks about her twenty years of military service. Marshall says she was born in Sheridan, Wyoming, educated in California, and received her nurse's training at St. Vincent's Hospital in Los Angeles. Marshall says that a failed marriage prompted her to enlist in the Air Force in September 1952 and after her training, was sent to Japan as a flight nurse to help in the evacuation of wounded from battlefields in Korea. Marshall says that in 1955 her flight crew was part of the effort to evacuate French casualties from Vietnam to the Philippines and that 104 wounded soldiers, mostly amputees, were transported in one flight. She says that she was later stationed in Germany and England and at various U.S. bases and eventually retired in San Antonio in 1972. Marshall is interviewed by Ruth F. Stewart.
- Date Issued:
- 2004-02-16T00:00:00Z
- 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