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Oral history interview with Mary M. Wood

Oral History | Digitized | RG Number: RG-50.344.0002

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    Oral history interview with Mary M. Wood
    Transcript
    OK.
    Just so I can hear your voice on the microphone,
    tell me where you live.
    Oh, where do I live?
    Webster, New York, six miles east of Rochester.
    Uh-huh.
    You came a long way.
    Yeah.
    How many hours it takes to drive?
    I left there a quarter after 7:00.
    AM?
    Got here, yeah.
    Yeah.
    Got here about 2:30, I think.
    If I hadn't gone and turned the wrong way
    when I got off the freeway, I'd have been here earlier.
    OK.
    Here we are.
    This is Neenah Ellis interviewing Mary M. Wood.
    It's July 14, 1995.
    We're in West Park, New York.
    Please tell me, where were you born?
    When were you born?
    And where did you grow up?
    September 5, 1917, Alexandria Bay, New York.
    And I grew up in Alexandria Bay till I went away
    to nurse's training.
    Where did you go to nurse's training?
    Syracuse, New York, Crouse Irving.
    Hospital?
    Crouse Irving Memorial Hospital.
    Uh-huh.
    Did you always want to be a nurse?
    I really don't know.
    That's just how it was.
    My sister was one, so then I sort of followed
    in her footsteps.
    And when and why did you decide to go in the service?
    Well, when the war started, I thought
    that's where I should be.
    Did you have other members of your family in the service?
    Oh, my father had been in the service.
    His brother had been in the service.
    But that's all.
    But it was just the thing that--
    Thing I thought should be done.
    And where did you--
    when did you go in?
    July 8, 1942.
    I was going to NYU, so I waited till the semester was over
    before I went in.
    You finished your nurse's training?
    And then I was--
    I did postgraduate work.
    And then I was working and going to NYU at night.
    Working as a nurse?
    In the city?
    In Queens, out in Jamaica.
    And then you did basic training starting in July?
    No, you don't do basic anything.
    I didn't.
    I got away with it.
    How come?
    I don't know.
    Don't most people have to?
    Usually they do.
    But they just sent me down to Fort DuPont in Delaware
    and that was it.
    And how long were you there?
    Let me see, was there in July, I was there till November.
    1940?
    Two.
    Two.
    And then tell me--
    In '42, we went to Dix and Kilmer.
    And then I went to Africa.
    And I was in Africa from January till November of '43.
    November, I came home.
    And where'd I go next?
    Camp Dix, I think it was.
    You were in North Africa with the Third Army?
    30-Second Station Hospital in Clemson, about 100 miles
    outside of Oran.
    Outside of what?
    Oran.
    Oran, a-ha.
    That was the first time you were overseas?
    What was that like?
    We had a station hospital, so we got the boys directly back
    from the aid stations and what have you.
    So that's what we took care of there.
    And then they were going home from there?
    Most of them home.
    Badly wounded.
    Some were flown back, some went by ship on the hospital ships.
    Well, when did you meet up with this group here now?
    That was in-- must have been November of '44.
    November '44.
    In England?
    No, no.
    Met them in Charleston.
    I think it was Charleston, North Carolina, if I remember right.
    Oh, you came back after Africa.
    Yeah.
    And then you went over with them to England?
    Yeah, England, France, Austria, Germany, what have you.
    Well, tell me about the experience at Mauthausen.
    What do you remember when you arrived?
    Well, the smell.
    The bodies, the smell.
    And I was in the operating room.
    And we had to repair the damage that they
    had done experimenting on different people.
    Really?
    They used to-- well, they said they delivered babies, and held
    them up, and killed them in front of the mothers.
    They would maybe cut off a leg for practice.
    And we got some of those to take care of.
    But mostly, they were nothing but skin and bones.
    It wasn't too much to do surgically for them.
    We didn't have too much to do there.
    Were you able to talk with those people who'd been?
    No.
    See, the girls were out in the wards.
    I wasn't in the wards, I was in the operating room.
    So I really didn't get to talk to the people.
    How did you know what had happened to them?
    Well, from things we heard.
    Mostly from the men that worked in the offices and some
    that worked up in at Mauthausen, where the POWs were--
    not our POWs, the Germans, the SS troopers, and that type
    of thing from them.
    The stories we got from.
    What was a typical day like for you there?
    That was in June of '45.
    Or May of '45?
    May of '45, yeah May and June.
    You arrived shortly in early May.
    Am I right about that?
    You know, I can't remember the dates.
    We went to Germany first.
    Then the men-- after the war ended,
    the men, the officers, and enlisted personnel
    went over to Camp Gusen and liberated it.
    And we were a couple of weeks later before we went over.
    They didn't want us at first.
    So it was a voluntary thing whether you wanted to go
    or didn't want to go.
    Was it much of a choice for you?
    Did you have any?
    No, we all said yes, we'd go.
    There wasn't any.
    I don't think-- nobody backed out, everybody went.
    And what would a typical day like be for you?
    Do you remember?
    Getting on the trucks, going to work, being sprayed with DDT
    for bugs.
    Every day?
    Yeah.
    Every day we got sprayed.
    Down your pants, up your shirts, down your shirts,
    every place they sprayed so you wouldn't get any fleas or bugs
    or what have you.
    In the operating room, repairing things
    that they had done to the people, that type of thing.
    Long days, were they long days?
    I don't think so, 12-hour day.
    And then you would go back?
    Oh, we had a house.
    We lived in a house.
    There's three or four houses.
    And everybody was split up into a different house.
    And we lived there.
    We ate in the mess hall.
    And we met a lot of nice people, made a lot of nice friends.
    What was it like for you women in the evenings?
    What would you talk about?
    What would you-- you'd already been to Africa.
    But a lot of the women had never.
    No, that was their first trip.
    What kinds of things did you talk about in the evenings?
    Gee, I don't remember.
    I really don't remember.
    When were you discharged?
    Oh, December 12, '45.
    That was the official date, but we left in September
    because we were in Camp Polk, Louisiana.
    We were discharged there.
    Did you spend the whole summer in Europe?
    Yeah, we got back in August.
    Were you at Mauthausen the whole time?
    No, when we first went in, we went over to England.
    We went to France, we went to Germany,
    and we went to Austria.
    Then we went to the camp.
    We had a tent hospital in Austria
    before we moved to the camp.
    Mauthausen, you mean by the camp.
    No, Gusen.
    Oh, Gusen.
    There's two.
    Gusen and Mauthausen.
    They're very close together.
    And you worked at both?
    No, Gusen.
    Only Gusen?
    Oh, I'm confused then.
    I thought you were at Mauthausen.
    No.
    Well, as I remember, Mauthausen was only
    where the-- there was an infantry
    group that was in there, men, and they
    had the prisoners there.
    I don't think there was a hospital up there.
    I don't remember it if there was.
    And were they bringing, then, the survivors, the patients
    who'd been in Mauthausen?
    Were they bringing them down to where you were in Gusen?
    I don't remember camp--
    as DPs, what have you.
    No, that's displaced person.
    But I don't remember them bringing anybody down.
    If they did, I don't remember it.
    So the people that you were caring for
    had all been at Gusen?
    Mm-hmm.
    And what became of those people over time?
    I don't know because they were still there when we left.
    Because when we went in--
    when the men went in, the Germans had released them.
    And they were out in the fields and they
    had to go get them and bring them back.
    Because I remember, they were digging in the fields
    and ate raw potatoes.
    And it made them deathly ill because they
    weren't used to eating.
    And when they did feed them, they'd always save part of it
    under their pillow for fear they wouldn't get anything anymore.
    And there were some musicians there.
    And they used to play at mealtime
    up on the stage, the ones that were able to play while we ate.
    But I don't remember eating in that dining room.
    We're talking about a lot of things,
    I remember that I don't remember.
    Were you ever able to have conversations with those--
    No.
    --people at all?
    I never did, no.
    Because, see, the operating room was here,
    and we looked out the window and the mess hall was there.
    I did go around in some of the wards to see the people.
    I never talked with any of them.
    And there were only men there?
    You didn't see women and children?
    Yeah, there was women there.
    I didn't see any children, yeah.
    Because I operated on women.
    Because you what?
    We operated on some of the women.
    Oh, you did.
    Yeah.
    And they had suffered the same kinds of things?
    Did I tell you?
    Nearby, there was a munitions factory in the mountain,
    inside the mountain, where the people used
    to go in there to work.
    So long as they were able to walk,
    they had to go there to work.
    They went there from the camp to work.
    And there was also places where they actually made lampshades
    there out of human skin.
    And the big furnaces were there, where they--
    whew, it's hot.
    Want to take a break?
    Where they burned the bodies.
    The layout.
    Oh, I can't even remember.
    All I can remember seeing that big oven with the doors open.
    There was, if I remember rightly,
    there was three of them.
    Did they tell you about the SS trooper that they killed?
    We had natives, or what do you want to call them, natives.
    People who lived in the town came into work afterwards.
    They worked in the kitchens, and in the dining room,
    and what have you.
    And there was one German SS man.
    And those prisoners who were nothing but skin and bone
    killed him and hung him up on a fence.
    I have a picture of that at home.
    Did you see it happen?
    No.
    And then there was the chaplain, his assistant doing
    all the burials, you know.
    And they had big, long trenches with bodies
    in long, long lines.
    And they were doing that the whole time you were there?
    Every day?
    See, a lot of them died at first.
    And matter of fact, you couldn't tell the live ones
    from the dead ones.
    That's how bad they looked.
    Before you went in there, had you heard about that at all?
    No.
    I hadn't.
    They just said we were going to a concentration camp.
    The colonel said, you can go or you don't have to go.
    It's up to you, whatever you want to do.
    Did he tell you what it was going to be like?
    If he did, I don't remember.
    Were you shocked when you got there?
    Oh, sure.
    When you don't know the difference
    between a live person and a dead one, it's pretty awful, grisly.
    When you got out of the service, and in your later life,
    what do you think has been the impact of that experience
    on your life?
    I remember, I was in Atlanta going down to see a friend.
    And we went to the movies.
    And there happened to be, remember-- well,
    you don't remember.
    There was newsreels then.
    And one of the newsreels showed the concentration camp.
    And a guy behind us said, it's all propaganda,
    that never happened at all.
    An American guy?
    And that, you know, that disturbed me a little.
    They had to hold me in my seat because I
    was ready to get up and punch a person.
    And then even now, you hear people say it didn't happen,
    but it did.
    Very much so.
    Do you have family members?
    Do they ask?
    I have one son in the Air Force, and one son the Army,
    and one son is working for Uncle Sam as a park ranger.
    He was in the Air Force in Vietnam.
    Do they ask you about your experience a lot?
    Well, they've seen my pictures and what have you.
    You took a lot of pictures while you were there?
    I had a lot, real lot.
    And somebody said, well, I'll print them for you.
    I'll have them printed for you.
    I never saw them.
    I lost about six rolls of 36--
    35 millimeter film.
    Before you got back?
    Yeah.
    I had to go on an inspection trip in France.
    While they were setting up the hospital getting things going,
    I went on an inspection trip with two or three
    other officers.
    And I took a lot of pictures then,
    all through Germany, all the devastation that was on.
    That was before the war was over.
    As a matter of fact, I was in the hospital in Brussels.
    What was the name of the place?
    Can't remember now.
    But I'm sitting down to eat in this dining room.
    Woman next to me said, that you are Margaret Wood?
    Yes.
    She was one of my teachers in school.
    She was a Red Cross worker.
    Another time in France, walking down
    the street, a boy I went to school with was there.
    Twice I ran into people.
    I mean three times.
    Once in England.
    When you look back on that experience,
    was it a good experience or a hard experience?
    Or how do you characterize it?
    It was good and it was hard.
    What was good about it?
    The things you saw, the people you met, the things you did,
    your experiences.
    Your friends.
    We've all been back and forth for years.
    You've kept in touch with a lot of the women
    that you served with?
    When you say the things you saw--
    one of the good things about your experience
    was the things you saw.
    What do you mean by that?
    Maybe other cultures and the way other people
    live, and the things that we have that they don't have,
    that type of thing.
    The beautiful buildings that were left,
    the beautiful cathedrals that you saw.
    I remember going to mass-- and this was back in Africa.
    We went into mass and we sat down.
    But you don't do that because everybody just
    has their own pew.
    Their own chair, they bring their own chair,
    and their own kneeling bench, and so I
    was in somebody else's seat.
    They just sort of--
    it wasn't the same in England.
    I don't remember going to church in any place else except there.
    We went in churches and saw the cathedrals, some
    of the cathedrals and things.
    Those were beautiful things.
    Did they hold services every week?
    No.
    We didn't have a chaplain.
    Oh, you didn't.
    Not a Catholic chaplain.
    We had the Protestant minister.
    And if I remember correctly, they had a mass in Gusen
    that they hadn't had one in years.
    And everybody went that could.
    All the inmates went.
    Never can think of what to call them.
    Patients or survivors.
    Is there anything you want to say?
    I can't think of anything.
    What do your kids ask you about from that period?
    Well, they look back at my scrapbook,
    and the pictures I have in the scrapbook, and things
    like that.
    Ma, did you look like this 50 years ago?
    Hard to think you changed that much.
    I think the only person hasn't changed is Sherry.
    I would know her any place.
    But the rest-- oh, maybe Doddie, too.
    And Feldhusen.
    The three of them.
    The rest, you don't recognize.
    Time does strange things.
    Doesn't it?
    Good.
    OK.
    Great.
    Good.
    Oh, this is the end of the tape one, side B. Has been Mary M.
    Wood.
    You want the serial number there?
    Do you take the serial number or no?
    10, seven, two, three, four, six, three.
    Don't ask me my social security number, but that I know.
    Oh, you remember that one.
    Well, you had to write it every time
    you wrote a letter or anything.
    This is July 14, 1995, West Park, New York.

    Overview

    Interview Summary
    Mary M. Wood, born September 5, 1917 in Alexandria Bay, New York, describes going to nurse’s training in Syracuse, New York at Krause Irvy Memorial Hospital; joining the army on July 8, 1942; not going to basic training; being in Algeria with the Third Army as a part of the 32nd Station Hospital from January to November 1943; joining the 131st Evacuation Hospital in November 1944; going to England, France, Austria, and Germany; her memories of Mauthausen; working in the operating room and helping to repair the damage that the Nazi doctors had done experimenting on different people; a typical day for her; being sprayed with DDT; being discharged December 12, 1945; how she had cared for people from Gusen concentration camp; how the camp survivors killed a German SS guard; the conditions of the survivors; her experience with Holocaust denial later in life; the effects her experience has had on her; and speaking with her sons about her experience.
    Interviewee
    Mary M. Wood
    Interviewer
    Neenah Ellis
    Date
    interview:  1995 July 14

    Physical Details

    Language
    English
    Extent
    1 sound cassette (90 min.).

    Rights & Restrictions

    Conditions on Access
    There are no known restrictions on access to this material.
    Conditions on Use
    No restrictions on use

    Keywords & Subjects

    Personal Name
    Wood, Mary M., 1917-

    Administrative Notes

    Legal Status
    Permanent Collection
    Provenance
    Neenah Ellis, on the behalf of the United States Holocaust Memorial Museum, conducted the interview with Mary M. Wood on July 14, 1995 in West Park, New York.
    Funding Note
    The cataloging of this oral history interview has been supported by a grant from the Conference on Jewish Material Claims Against Germany.
    Record last modified:
    2023-11-16 08:27:42
    This page:
    https:​/​/collections.ushmm.org​/search​/catalog​/irn513370

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    Time Coded Notes (English)

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    Oral history interview with Ruth Kirby

    Oral History

    Ruth Eberly Kirby, born Glen Ridge, NJ, describes growing up in West Hallwell, NJ and her reasons for becoming a nurse; graduating from nurse train in 1943; being motivated by the Pearl Harbor attack to join the Army and being inducted in 1944; sailing on the RMS Queen Elizabeth; arriving in Southampton, England; nursing the American soldiers who fought in the Battle of the Bulge; being a part of the 131st Evacuation Hospital, a semi-mobile unit, and eventually joining General Patton’s army (Third Army); crossing the English channel to France in March of 1945; going to Germany; how the unit was comprised of 40 nurses and 40 officers, who were mainly were from the eastern seaboard, and about 206 enlisted men, who were primarily from Oklahoma; going from Germany to Austria after the war had ended and seeing all the white flags in the villages; going to a concentration camp outside of Linz, Austria (Mauthausen concentration camp); smelling the camp before arriving; covering their hair and being sprayed with DDT before entering the camp; the conditions of the male camp survivors; treating the survivors with sulfa drugs, which many of the patients could not swallow; how many of the patients died; seeing mass graves; writing to her mother about her experiences and how she still has the letters; how her experience effected her; and telling her children about her experience.

    Oral history interview with Elizabeth Feldhusen

    Oral History

    Elizabeth A. Feldhusen, born in Brooklyn, New York on April 21, 1918, describes why she became a nurse; joining the army July 1, 1943; being at Fort DuPont, Delaware for over a year; joining the 131st Evacuation Hospital in South Carolina; sailing on the RMS Queen Elizabeth and how the ship had to turn every seven minutes in order to avoid the submarines; landing in Greenock, Scotland; crossing the English Channel to Le Havre, France; how they were not allowed to keep diaries; how they had celebrated Christmas of 1944 in England; going through Germany to Austria; how their accompanying military unit left them at one point; being given the choice to go to the Gusen concentration camp and how all of her unit agreed to go; how she had not heard about concentration camps before; taking care of a ward, which was a barracks full of the sickest people; giving out sulfanilamide; how eventually they had young German prisoners of war help as ward men; the physical conditions of the camp survivors; being sprayed with DDT powder before going into the ward and how she wonders if it caused her to have cancer later on; activities when she was off duty and a story about bird watching in Germany; speaking with a female German civilian; hearing about Hitler’s suicide; how a woman drowned while trying to cross the Danube river one evening; how the French came to take all the French survivors and other national representatives came too; how they gave the best care they could under the circumstances; how the nurses bonded and still keep in touch; how her experiences during the war affected her life; one of her close friends, who is Jewish and was stationed in Burma; and her interactions with German prisoners of war in Austria and Fort DuPont.

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