[Interview of Lilah Cameron Ramsey on her 10-year service in the U.S. Army Nurse Corps].

Lilah Cameron Ramsey talks about her service in the U.S. Army Nurse Corps from January 1940 to January 1950, including duty in the Pacific theater of Operations from June 1942 October 1945. Ramsey recalls being shipped out with the 166th Station Unit to Melbourne, Australia, then being sent to Ballarat and finally to a hospital in Adelaide, Australia where the temperature was 104 degrees on Christmas day of 1942. She says that the 166th was later split in two and that she took a group to New Guinea as chief nurse and worked at a hospital base 17 miles inland from Port Moresby. After a year of being billeted in tents with wooden floors she was next sent to Biak Island in 1944 and was stationed there when the war finally ended. Her hospital unit was sent to the Philippines after the war, she says and then finally back to San Francisco. She says she was originally motivated to enlist in the Army when she saw an advertisement in a nursing journal promising education and adventure and even though she never found adventure she considers herself fortunate to have been able to see and do the things she did. Ramsey is interviewed by Betty Thompson.

Interviewee, Lilah Cameron Ramsey ; interviews, Betty Thompson.

Recorded 1984 May