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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:
- 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:
- 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:
- 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
- Description:
- Retired U.S. Army Colonel Helen P. Onyett, the first Chinese American woman ever promoted to Colonel in the United States Army, talks about her youth and education in Connecticut and her service in the Army Nurse Corps during World War II. Oynett says she was encouraged by her teachers to become a nurse and talks about her training at the Waterbury Hospital School of Nursing and her later decision to join the Army. Onyett also talks about serving in a tent hospital in North Africa, caring for the wounded, using commandeered German wool blankets to keep warm, living on Army rations, and working long and brutal shifts. After leaving the Army at end of the war, Onyett says that she later joined the reserves and finally retired from the Army in 1978. Onyett is interviewed by Ruth Stewart F.
- Date Issued:
- 2004-04-08T00:00:00Z
- 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:
- 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:
- 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