An Army Nurse’s Interview
April 14, 2008 – 6:00 amLast week, I mentioned the fact that occasionally a family could have as many as five blue or gold stars on a banner hanging in their window during World War II. The family described here had six family members serving in that war. I received this information from Mary Helen Webber’s son, who was fortunate to have discovered a tape of Mary’s 1993 interview with a class of 8th graders at Cumberland Valley Middle School West (now Eagle View) in Mechanicsburg, Pennsylvania. She would have been almost 70 at the time.
Mary served as an Army Second Lieutenant and nurse the last two years of World War II. She had been assigned to a large number of different military bases including Camp Lee, Virginia; Fort Meade, Maryland; Fort Jackson, South Carolina; Camp LaShay, Louisiana, plus a hospital ship in the Pacific that had so many troubles it was sent to Panama. Mary was finally stationed at Letterman General Hospital in San Francisco.
At Letterman, she worked in the operating room and treated mostly GIs returning from the Pacific. In response to a student’s question “Did you know any Germans or Japanese?” she said, “No, I didn’t know any but there were some on our ward who had been prisoners and I am sure that got good care.”
In her interview, she took great care in explaining the impact of the war on her family of five brothers, who had all enlisted by the time she graduated from nursing school in 1944. Her comment was, “The main reason I went to the Army is because I was worried they wouldn’t have good care.” The photograph of Mary, and her five brothers, all in their military uniforms with their father was one of the prized family photos.
Of her five brothers, the eldest three were stationed in Europe, one with a glider unit in England, one with the infantry who saw action in Holland and France; and one who was with an amphibious unit that was in Northern Africa, Italy, and later the Pacific. The two other brothers had administrative assignments, one with a high security clearance who worked on the development of electronic equipment.
To be continued.
To learn more about World War II, go to http://www.peggeorge.com/.
You must be logged in to post a comment.