[Interview of Betty Thompson on her service as a physical therapist in the U.S. Army during WWII]. [Part 1].

Betty Thompson talks about her service as a physical therapist in the U.S. Army during World War Two. Thompson says that her unit was originally scheduled to be sent to Belgium, but that they were kept in a Paris triage hospital because the causality load became so heavy. She says that she spent sixteen months there and describes some of the most severely injured patients which she treated. After V-E Day, Thompson says her unit was split up and she was sent to the Riviera for duty in a venereal disease hospital and then was finally ordered back to the States in October 1945. She also talks about meeting President Franklin Roosevelt when she worked at Warm Springs, Arkansas after graduating from nursing school, meeting her future husband overseas during the war and using her G.I. Bill money to earn a pilots license.

Interviewee, Betty Thompson.

Recorded 1983