[Neola Ann Spackman talks about her service in the U.S. Army Nurse Corps during WWII].

Neola Ann Spackman reminisces about her family, her decision to go into nursing, and what motivated her to join the Army Nurse Corps during World War Two, after serving in the Red Cross Disaster Nursing Service. She talks about working in Minnesota, moving to California, and in April 1941, receiving a request to join the Nurse Corps, which she says was almost like being drafted. She describes life at Fort Ord, California, her duties, housing, racial discrimination, and how she spent social time. Spackman recalls almost being transferred to the Philippines just before the Japanese attack on Pearl Harbor, shipping out to England aboard a cramped troop ship in 1943 and eight months later transferring to a field hospital which followed the troops into France after D-Day. Spackman says that she joined a field hospital near the front in August 1944 and describes her twelve-hour surgery shifts, being evacuated from Luxembourg as the Battle of the Bulge raged, moving into Germany at Cologne and later witnessing the Russian-U.S. hook-up at the Elbe River. After the war, she says that she was assigned to the Fort Custer hospital in Michigan, was married, worked as a civilian nurse for 35 years and retired in 1982.

Speaker, Neola Ann Thurneau Spackman.

Recorded 1985 June 2