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Oral history interview with Louise Birch

Oral History | Digitized | RG Number: RG-50.344.0005

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    Oral history interview with Louise Birch
    Transcript
    OK.
    This is July 15th, 1995.
    I'm Neenah Ellis speaking with Louise Birch
    in West Park, New York.
    Tell me, please, when and where were you born.
    June 21st, 1921, Cleveland, Ohio.
    And tell me something about your family and your background.
    Mother and father-- father was a newspaper reporter
    in Cleveland, transferred to New York City,
    and became sports editor of the New York World Telegram.
    Have a brother.
    My mother and father divorced.
    And saw very little of him.
    But my mother, I think, was loyal to him all the time.
    The one thing I remember about him when
    I wanted to become a nurse--
    he said to my mother, there's not
    going to be any damn maids in our family.
    That's what he thought of nursing?
    Mm-hmm.
    Well, in those days, you're thinking, talking 1939.
    That's when I graduated from high school.
    So my mother said I could go to college and become a teacher.
    Well, I didn't want to become a teacher,
    I wanted to become a nurse.
    So I stayed home for a whole year and absolutely nothing.
    And she finally said to me, go.
    Go, you know, I'll pay for it.
    Because in those days, you had to pay for a nursing education.
    And it was dad's responsibility.
    So anyhow, make a long story short, I became a nurse.
    And he never congratulated me or anything
    until I got in the service.
    And he wrote me a letter that he wanted
    to come down and do an article on the nurse, the army nurses.
    And by the time I got the letter,
    we were all already overseas living in tents.
    In fact, it was Eckie who helped me compose a letter back
    to my father, saying, you wouldn't want
    to do a story unless-- we don't look like nurses,
    we don't act like nurses.
    You know, we're living in tents, and you
    know, walking in mud, and not the sterile atmosphere
    that you think, white, crisp nurses.
    So he dropped the subject.
    He never said boo to me the rest of my life or his life.
    Where did you get the idea that you wanted to be a nurse?
    And why was it such a strong motivation?
    Actually, it goes back to--
    I was 5 and 1/2 years old, had a real bad operation.
    And I almost died evidently.
    It was rare in that time.
    And I won't go into it because I, well--
    but anyhow, two holes in my belly here.
    And I had specials around the clock.
    And I can always remember begging my nurses
    that I'd give you a drink if you were thirsty, you know.
    Because I couldn't have any water
    or anything to drink and stuff.
    And that must have been what was instilled in me.
    I remember that
    Because I had no idea what nursing
    was like when I went into training.
    In fact, my mother, when she finally said go,
    she said, I'll give you a couple of months and you'll be back.
    And I said, no, I'll stick it out.
    And I did.
    Well, where did you get the idea that you
    wanted to go in the service?
    Well, that's almost another chapter in my life.
    I had my boyfriend through high school had gone in the service
    before he was drafted.
    And he volunteered for the airborne.
    He was in the 82nd Airborne Division.
    And in training, we weren't allowed to be married.
    And we had been really romantic.
    And he knew he was going overseas.
    And so he got leave, and I sneaked out,
    and we got married.
    His family knew about it, my family knew about it.
    It was a real simple ceremony.
    And he just had a weekend pass.
    And that was the last I saw him.
    He went over, he was in the invasion of Sicily.
    And he was-- that's a thorn in my side.
    He was considered an MIA for a year.
    And then you're dead.
    Not like the MIAs today that they're still--
    I know that they have to look for these people.
    But they didn't look for the boys in the World War II.
    And there were many of them that they never found.
    And unless there's blue-eyed blondes running around Sicily,
    then I don't know where he is.
    And so I went trying to find some trace of him.
    I'd written to his chaplain and I'd
    written to a lieutenant that used to censor our letters
    and never got any response.
    Went to the Red Cross, never got any response.
    So I finally found--
    when I was in the service and I was stationed down
    in Atlantic City in what they called England General
    Hospital.
    It was one of the big hotels in Atlantic City at the time,
    they made a hospital.
    And I found a fellow that was in his company.
    And so he invited me over to his apartment with his wife
    and we got talking.
    And he knew that my Hughie had jumped.
    Because I wondered, you know, did he even make it over there?
    And he said, yeah.
    He said, but that was--
    I guess that whole operation was a faux pas.
    You know, they went off of target and whatever.
    So anyhow, at least I knew that he did his duty.
    What was his name?
    Hugh Sheridan.
    And that's why they call me Sherry.
    My maiden name was Williams.
    So at least I found that out.
    When did you find that out?
    Well, actually, it was a year that they--
    well, no, it wasn't a year.
    Because they had listed him as Missing
    In Action and his picture was in the paper.
    And his family had given his little blurb that he just
    got married, et cetera.
    And I know my directress of nurses
    would see this paper because it was a local paper.
    By this time, I'm out of school.
    But I felt so bad because I had lied to her,
    you know, to get this little pass that I had.
    So I went back to her, you know, teary eyed, and I said,
    you know, Miss Coleman, I want to talk to you.
    So I started to say something.
    She said, I know.
    She said, I know you got married.
    And I looked at her.
    But she didn't know, you know, that he had been missing.
    So she was sorry about that.
    But it was OK.
    And I guess she probably felt good that I came back
    to confess my crime or so.
    Now, see, we were Catholic.
    And the bands had to be announced in the church.
    And they were announced in his church, where she went.
    Oh, so she knew.
    And she picked up the names.
    And she must've even known who was writing to me.
    I don't know.
    Because they knew everything.
    So he was lost in--
    Sicily.
    About June, '44.
    Uh, actually, July.
    July '43.
    Oh.
    And I got out of school.
    I finished school probably September '43.
    And by the time we took state boards, you know,
    to get your RN.
    Because you couldn't join the service until you
    got your state boards and had physical papers.
    It was '44, it was early '44 that I went in the service
    and was stationed down in Atlantic City for a while.
    And then got my orders to go to Camp Polk, where
    the 131st was being started.
    The full name of your unit was what?
    131st Evacuation Hospital, Semi-Mobile.
    In other words, you could pick up half of that hospital
    and move it on while the other half was still operating.
    Although we never did that.
    But it was equipped to do that.
    You could even take down half of the operating room, which
    was a huge, big tent.
    Look, it was several tents put together.
    Looked like a big circus tent almost.
    And you could take down half of that
    and move it on and move half of the wards on.
    And we had two teams, you know, nurses and doctors and stuff.
    But we never did that.
    When we set up, set up as a whole
    and moved the whole unit as a whole.
    So it was like what we might know today as a MASH
    unit, mobile hospital.
    Yeah, Mobile Army Surgical Hospital.
    And I imagine today that that's what they call them.
    I don't think they call them evacuation hospitals anymore.
    The patients that we had stayed maybe two nights at the most.
    And then they were either taken by ambulance or air evaced out.
    So this was 1944.
    They were forming this unit at Fort Polk.
    Where was that?
    What state?
    No, I'm wrong.
    Fort Jackson.
    Jackson.
    Fort Jackson, South Carolina.
    1944.
    Yeah, Fort Polk is where we got just broke up.
    Yeah.
    And you stayed in South Carolina until when?
    Do you remember?
    Well, we headed up north in December, early December.
    And by this time, we knew that we were heading someplace.
    We had gotten a leave to go home.
    And it was a short leave, probably 10 days.
    And then we wound up at--
    and I don't remember whether it was Camp Kilmer, someplace
    in New Jersey.
    And we did a lot of training as far as marching
    with packs on our backs.
    What other kind of training?
    Well, I think we did that down at Fort Jackson.
    We dug flip trenches, we put up tents,
    and we hiked, and I was--
    I think I told you about the gas chamber that we went through.
    Tell me about that again.
    Well, it was this, almost about the length
    of a barrack, maybe shorter.
    But there was nothing in it but tear gas.
    Underground?
    No, no, up above.
    It was all sealed.
    Full of tear gas.
    And there was a sergeant or some GI
    sitting at the end with a pad of paper and a pencil on a desk.
    And you went in through the far end
    and walked through this whole chamber of gas with a gas mask
    on.
    You always had to have your gas mask on.
    And you had to put it on properly, too.
    Because if it wasn't properly fit, then you got the gas.
    When you reached this officer, enlistment whatever he was,
    you took off your gas mask and told him your name, rank,
    and your serial number.
    And if you got nervous and flubbed--
    because he must have had right down there what
    your serial number was.
    If you missed a number, he'd say, repeat that.
    You know.
    But it was one way to teach us all our serial number.
    Because that was very important.
    And then you got out into the fresh air.
    Oh, where he was sitting, he had a gas mask.
    Oh, he had them on, too.
    There was gas.
    Oh, yeah.
    He was sitting there with his mask on.
    But you would take yours off.
    And he was just delighting in every--
    especially with a bunch of females, you know,
    and we're all screaming.
    I imagine.
    I know the men had to go through this, too,
    and probably even harder.
    And you had to dig trenches.
    We dug a slip-- well, what they call a slip trench, which
    would just hold up a body.
    In case you got bombed, you could jump into it.
    And we had to put our pup tents up.
    And those were small tents.
    They were like two-men tents.
    And as I remember, each one of us
    carried a half a tent at all times.
    So if you were ever caught someplace with no shelter,
    you could double up and put some kind of a shelter up.
    All those things, I think, are in the bottom of the Atlantic
    Ocean.
    Because when we came back, stuff was going on inside.
    Oh, really?
    Yeah.
    Well, did you want to-- hey, you didn't want to carry this home.
    Hopefully you wouldn't need it again.
    Did they teach you how to use a weapon?
    No, no.
    Never.
    No, never, no, no.
    Never had to use it.
    No.
    We were given all sorts of films on disease, body lice,
    sanitary conditions.
    And I don't even think there was a film for us on weapons.
    And there were no weapons in our hospital.
    Although I do have a picture of our dental assistant,
    and he's got a bandoleer of, you know, shells on him.
    I don't know where he got it.
    And did they-- did you have special training in how
    to treat combat wounds?
    Well, that was-- in the army, you do everything, as they say,
    by the ARs, Army Regulations.
    There was only one way to dress a wound,
    and you did it that way.
    You might not like to do it that way.
    But the army wanted you to do it that way.
    So yes, we had all these army regulations
    on how to treat this and that.
    And going over on the ship, I was
    assigned to be an orthopedic surgical nurse.
    And I met the orthopedic surgeon.
    And he gave me a whole list of what
    we would do for all these orthopedic amputations
    or whatever.
    You know.
    And you read them and OK.
    We'll do what we have to do.
    Were they substantially different from the way you
    had learned in nursing school?
    No, not really.
    You know, you still have surgical technique
    that you had to follow.
    But they had a particular way of doing things.
    And the army is a stickler for that.
    In a hospital, you might have several different sizes
    of bandages, you know.
    In the army, you have one or two sizes.
    It may be different now, but in wartime, it wasn't, anyhow.
    And while we were in England, I saw returning casualties
    from the Battle of the Bulge.
    For bandages, they used the latest issue
    of Stars and Stripes, which was in the magazine.
    They had no bandages.
    We'd get them in the operating room
    and we'd have to wet down this let
    that had all this paper, newspaper stuck to it.
    Because that's the only thing they
    had because that was a different situation.
    So you can't say that they went by army regulations.
    You do what you have to do.
    Let's pick up our chronology.
    You had to leave in December, you went home.
    We went home for short leave.
    And I can remember, my mother gave me a [? hegen?] haig
    bottle of scotch, pinch bottle, and I hate scotch.
    And we got back to base.
    Why did she give you scotch?
    I don't know.
    Evidently, this was a very-- and is.
    I don't know, because I'm not a scotch--
    it's a very good brand of scotch.
    And she said, take this back, you know, you
    might want to have a little party or something.
    And when we got back to camp, the door came down,
    you could not make a phone call, you could not write a letter,
    you could not have any visitors.
    It was-- and I'm trying to think of the name they used.
    I want to say blackout.
    But it was a censorship.
    So my mother never heard from me.
    And she said, oh, Louise got caught with that bottle in her.
    She said, they put her on-- put her in the brig or something
    because I got it.
    And I remember going into the little commissary there.
    And they had a florist in there that they could wire flowers
    out.
    I'll fix.
    I'll get in touch with my mother.
    So I wired her a dozen red roses.
    Of course, she got them a month later.
    But I thought they would go right out, you know.
    But they were smart, you know, and so what I put on
    was I love you, you know.
    And it didn't work.
    And you shipped out.
    Yeah, we shipped out.
    Yeah.
    We were like that for maybe three or four days, I think,
    that you couldn't do anything.
    And the other girls must have told
    you the story about crossing the Hudson at night
    and this fog rising up.
    And that's a vision I'll never forget.
    Tell me about that.
    I can't remember exactly whether--
    I know we'd gone by train to this barge.
    Now, it seemed to me the train was on the barge,
    but I could be wrong.
    But I remember crossing.
    It was dark night.
    And crossing the river, and this fog coming up.
    And there was this big, gray thing in front of us.
    It was huge, huge.
    Several stories high.
    And you're looking up at it and you could just make out
    Queen E-L-I and then you don't know
    what was in round because it was all painted gray,
    the Queen Elizabeth.
    And we went, my god.
    You know.
    I get goose pimples right now.
    This is it.
    And we all had steel helmets on.
    And they chalked mark.
    You're all numbered.
    And lined up.
    And they had the roster and one, two, three, four.
    And then you got to the gangplank
    and they checked the one, two, three, four.
    And you got up on top of the gangplank, one, two, three,
    four.
    And they showed which way to go.
    They had our orders all--
    women were, of course, all segregated.
    And there were thousands, thousands on that ship.
    All the doors on the stateroom were removed.
    There were no doors on the stateroom.
    They had guards at either end of the hall so nobody could go.
    Nobody else could go.
    And we only could eat twice a day
    because there were so many on there
    to feed that I guess the kitchen was going constantly.
    You got your seating thing, which was like 10 o'clock
    in the morning and maybe 9 o'clock at night.
    That's when you ate two meals because they couldn't
    feed everybody three meals.
    Were you able to mingle with the men at all?
    Would you talk to them?
    Yeah, well, just the officers.
    Because it was very segregated.
    The huge, huge, big lounge.
    You couldn't find a place to sit.
    Everyone was sitting on the floor.
    The few that got a chair were lucky,
    you know, and they weren't about to give it up.
    And the officers all mingled.
    There were many Air Corps fellows going back to England.
    There were many other units.
    I found out after the war that one of my friends
    who I knew as a little kid was on that same ship.
    And in fact, he was in the 120th Evac Hospital--
    Watch your microphone there.
    --that liberated Buchenwald.
    And I tried to get him to talk to me.
    No, he's busy right now.
    His wife has got cancer.
    But anyhow.
    Yes.
    And while we were there, some of the nurses from another unit
    put on a little skit.
    That's why it was the same boat this friend of mine went on.
    Because he was talking about I can still
    see the girls up there saying don't fence me in.
    And they had big wings, was supposed
    to be Air Corps wings on it, you know.
    And of course, the Air Corps guys went ape over that.
    And so we had good time.
    So there was another unit of nurses.
    Yours wasn't the only one?
    Oh, and this was in Buchenwald they went to.
    A unit replaced us when we left, the 58th Field Hospital
    replaced us.
    And I have no idea, you know, what happened then.
    That's why I was disappointed.
    Well, maybe Mike would know, when he comes back with Bonnie.
    Because I'm sure his outfit stayed there.
    So you got to England right after Christmas?
    Just before Christmas.
    Just before Christmas.
    And we knew we were going to be away for Christmas.
    So all the nurses went into the PX,
    and we all bought three gifts.
    Handkerchiefs, or aftershave, or a razor or something.
    And wrapped it up for the enlisted men.
    And we had that.
    And I think we bought an ornament, too, it seems to me.
    But we carried those.
    So when we got to England--
    and of course, holly grows wild over there.
    So we had a ball cutting it off and trying
    to make our quarters a little bit more cheerful.
    And Christmas night, we took all these grab gifts,
    you'd call them, but we thought it was something, up
    to the enlisted men's quarters.
    And we all were a great singing group.
    Not that I have a voice.
    I'm losing what I have.
    But we sang all the time.
    And I'm sure the men got so sick of hearing us sing.
    And Eckie was one of the ringleaders
    because she has a voice.
    You know, all kinds of songs.
    And we sang Christmas carols for the enlisted men
    and gave them their little presents,
    so that made it a little nicer.
    You all-- seems like you saw it as your responsibility
    to care for the men as well as the injured.
    Well, it was hard, the segregation thing, you know.
    And the men thought of the nurses
    as for the officers only.
    We weren't supposed to fraternize with them.
    And how can you do that with somebody you're working with?
    I mean, you had a little law and order, let's say,
    on the wards and stuff.
    But you still were friendly.
    Like one night at Christmas time, we had this house
    that we turned into a sickbay.
    So anybody in the outfit, whether they
    were officer or enlisted man was sick and needed care and stuff
    were sent there.
    So of course, the nurses had to man it.
    And one night, we're sitting there
    and one of the GIs, the enlisted men who
    was taking care of the fires.
    In England, each house room has a little fireplace.
    And god, if you don't keep that going, you freeze to death.
    And he'd go around.
    And so we were sitting there and we're talking about Christmas
    back home.
    And we're sad, you know.
    And this guy says to me, boy, he says
    there's no place like Christmas in the Adirondacks.
    Just, you know, right up here.
    And I grew up in the Adirondacks, summertime.
    And I said, whereabouts in the Adirondacks?
    And he says Speculator.
    And no one has ever heard of Speculator.
    Well, that's where I grew up.
    I off the bench--
    and I jumped in his lap, and I'm kissing him, and going on.
    And the poor kid, he's scared to death,
    you know, what did I do wrong?
    You know, I'm going to be court martialed.
    But I was so--
    someone had heard of Spec.
    And then he said to me, you know, I recognized you,
    but I didn't recognize your name.
    And that's because I had my married name.
    But that was, you know--
    You all were homesick, huh?
    Oh, yeah.
    Yeah.
    Especially at Christmas time.
    And this boy happened to be Jewish, too.
    So that really didn't mean as much to him.
    But the fact that he was even near any area.
    You know, when you meet a soldier--
    where are you from?
    Everyone wanted to know where you're from.
    The majority of our enlisted men were from Oklahoma.
    A bunch of Okies.
    A few, like Mark, happened to be from New York.
    And we had a few from Pennsylvania.
    Us girls, most of us girls were from New York, Pennsylvania,
    and New Jersey.
    Our officers, our doctors were mostly from Ohio, Pennsylvania.
    And you know, so there were little areas.
    So you always looking for someone
    who knew your hometown so you'd have something
    to talk about that would remind you of home.
    And you know, especially the fighting soldiers.
    They were so glad to see somebody.
    First, you know, it was an American voice
    that they were so glad to see.
    And then an American woman.
    And then, you know, where are you from?
    Where are you from?
    And if you were even two states away, you know,
    you were their sister.
    What was it like caring for the men who had
    been injured coming back from--
    there they were in the Battle of the Bulge some of them?
    At that point, it was right at Christmas.
    I was in the operating room, so I really didn't care for them.
    I saw them and saw their wounds.
    And that's all.
    Because they were in and out.
    And we had two tables going at the same time in one room.
    These were people who were pretty badly injured.
    Well, they had all sorts of--
    and the room I was in, it was an orthopedic room.
    So it was either real bad fractures, some amputations,
    something like that.
    But there were other rooms that had chest wounds and, you know,
    abdominal.
    So they were, in a way, worse off.
    Because it's a little easier to fix a bone
    than it is to fix a--
    Soft tissue.
    --a shatter, you know, lung and stuff.
    So in fact, I had to relieve one day in the chest surgery room,
    and I went, get me out of here.
    You know, I was scared because I'd never
    saw so much blood in my life.
    You know, and they worked so fast, whereas orthopedics,
    it's--
    It's slower.
    Yeah, it's slower because most of the bleeding
    had already been under control because it didn't just happen.
    But you know, they were repairing what they could.
    And even that, they would probably
    have to have more surgery when they got back to the States
    because there were nerve damages done, which I don't think
    they would attempt to do there.
    It's an awful thing to say, but it
    was good to take care of our soldiers.
    What do you mean by that?
    Well, that's what we were there for.
    And when I was stationed in Atlantic City,
    these soldiers were all injured ones,
    but they were up and about on crutches, and wheelchairs,
    and you know, slings and whatnot.
    So they were sick, yes, but they weren't sick that way.
    Had a couple real bad head injuries that upset me
    because they couldn't talk.
    But they weren't fresh wounds.
    And in England was the first time I saw a fresh wound.
    And then in France, we set up the hospital in France,
    but we didn't have any patients.
    It was like a dry run because that's the first time
    we had set up the tents.
    We had to make sure all of our equipment
    worked, trying our generators, and water distillers,
    and autoclaves.
    And all of our instruments were shipped over,
    covered with some sort of grease,
    or Vaseline, or something.
    We had to clean all that off.
    It was to protect it, you know, from the saltwater, I guess,
    whatever.
    And we cleaned the instruments.
    And even made little--
    some of the girls made, sewed, hand sewed little compartments
    for some of the more delicate instruments, to protect them.
    And then we went on to Germany.
    That was the first time we had fresh patients.
    In April?
    April, yeah.
    April, yeah.
    April, 1945.
    '45, yeah.
    And these were coming off the battlefield?
    Yeah.
    Our very first load of patients was a truck accident.
    The truck had tipped over and a whole bunch
    were injured in that.
    In fact, we even had some German POWs that had gotten injured
    and we treated those.
    But then there were--
    the war was starting to wane down.
    So there weren't that furious amount of accidents.
    There were a lot of mine, you know,
    people walking into personnel mines and stuff like that.
    I remember.
    And I can't remember what happened to him, one night
    in the operating room, was this kid with this head wound.
    And we had just set up the distilled water.
    And it was-- the doctor yelled at me to get a pitcher water
    and pour it over, you know, to debride it,
    to get the dirt out.
    And I said, no, the water's too hot.
    And he says, pour it.
    I said, it's too hot.
    He says, pour it, god damnit, pour it.
    And when I did, I could see the kid's toes jump.
    And, oh, I felt terrible.
    And he came later.
    His toes moved?
    Well, yeah, because of the nerve reflex, you know.
    And I felt terrible.
    I felt so bad.
    And he came to me later and apologized.
    He says, I shouldn't have yelled at you.
    And I said, well, I shouldn't have questioned you.
    And he said, he couldn't have felt that.
    He said, the damage that was in his brain,
    he said, but I had to, you know.
    So that was one incident I remember.
    Was it a generally tense situation?
    I mean, I don't know about what the normal state
    of an operating room is.
    But how is it different behind the lines?
    Well, I think any operating room situation,
    even if you watch MASH, is tense while they're
    doing the operation.
    Once it's over-- and I know in civilian
    because I worked in the civilian hospitals in the operating
    room.
    Once it's over, the laughter starts,
    and they ask how your golf game is, or they'll start, hey,
    did you hear this joke?
    You know, it's very blase.
    And I think there, too.
    Although they did things a lot faster.
    They had to move, keep moving.
    Because there was always another.
    There's another one waiting, yeah.
    We always had what we called a pre-op tent that
    came out this way, then the big operating room tent
    was this way.
    And the pre-ops were in there on the stretchers and--
    Waiting.
    --waiting.
    So it was a constant emergency surgery.
    Yeah, next.
    Constant, yeah.
    Some of it wasn't considered emergency,
    but it had-- it wasn't life or death.
    Some of them weren't life or death
    but they still needed attention.
    And you took the first ones first, that's triage.
    Who would do those assessments, the triage assessments?
    A doctor in that area?
    Well, yeah, and the nurse like Woodie, she was head of the OR
    that I worked in.
    I don't know because I was in the operating room.
    Actually, I don't remember those.
    And I know we had a sergeant who was
    in charge of the ward itself.
    And he was an older man.
    So whether he was, you know-- the corpsman, god bless him,
    was a lot better than some of the nurses.
    They were great, really great.
    On a typical day, how many surgeries would you do?
    That would be hard to tell because we move so much.
    We moved an awful lot.
    You just couldn't keep up with the third army
    was moving through.
    And we weren't that busy.
    Our wards were never full.
    Whether they shipped them back out fast enough.
    Like I said, the war was waning down.
    And they could get them moved out.
    They wanted to get them to general hospitals
    as soon as they could.
    And then back home.
    So we were never out straight.
    I wouldn't say.
    In England, yes.
    England was different.
    England was when they--
    What do you mean by out straight?
    Well--
    Working around the clock?
    Yeah, yeah, yeah.
    One right after the other.
    And at nighttime, you might be called out at night.
    That would happen that you--
    Yeah. oh, yeah.
    --were on call virtually every day, all the time?
    Yeah, yeah, yeah.
    There was always this two team units.
    So somebody was always there to work the hospital if some of us
    got to go to a so-called party.
    You know, as long as there was enough left
    to cover the hospital, that was OK.
    You could get leave to go.
    So half of you were always on and half of you
    were always off?
    Well, actually, yes, I suppose you'd call it that.
    I was going to say we were always
    all on unless there was something doing,
    which wasn't that often.
    It sounds like we were just one big party but it certainly
    wasn't.
    And we made our own parties a lot of times just for something
    to do, something different.
    I think that's probably why we got along so well together.
    Because you could always think of something else to do.
    What do you mean?
    Well, if you had to, you know, you sit in the tent,
    and you might write letters, or read books,
    and somebody would come in, and make a lot of noise,
    and say, oh, well, quiet down.
    And you know, they realize well, maybe I
    should go out for a walk.
    And you'd go out for a walk.
    And you couldn't walk far because you
    weren't allowed to go too far.
    So I don't know, it's funny, thinking back of we
    didn't take it lightly but we didn't let it get underneath,
    you know, let us get down.
    We had a job to do and we were there to do it.
    Let me check this.
    While you were in Germany in April,
    was your general attitude--
    what was your general attitude?
    Were you feeling I'm glad to be here, I feel good doing this?
    Or was it this is terrible, I want to go home?
    Well, I always wanted to go home.
    I know that when I was in Germany,
    I hated the Germans with a passion.
    Just hated them with a passion.
    And I couldn't even be civil to them when I would look at them.
    I've changed since, believe me.
    Because I've been back and found some real nice people.
    But we were almost like cattle being led.
    You're in the service, you're told
    when to get up, and go to bed, and when to eat,
    and you didn't question what you were eating, you ate it.
    You went to work and you did your job.
    And why am I here?
    Because I joined.
    I wasn't drafted, I joined.
    This is what I want to do.
    I never thought of coming home as it
    seemed to me that everybody in that era joined the service.
    So it was the thing to do.
    You had to do it for your country.
    And we weren't doing it, maybe--
    we weren't doing it for the country, per se.
    We were doing it for our men, our fellow men,
    fellow Americans.
    And that's what we wanted to do.
    That's why we were all there to help them over.
    Because they're the ones that did the dirty work.
    Yeah.
    And we try to make it a little nicer, or softer, or healthier.
    Did you think about your husband?
    Yes, yes, I did.
    Wondered, you know.
    He used to have a--
    on his dog tags, he had a little vial with my hair in it.
    And he had said to me, the last I
    saw him, don't ever believe I'm dead unless you get this back.
    Of course, I've never gotten it back.
    But there were--
    I have heard so many stories since how must have
    been an awful job for these--
    I don't know what they call them.
    They had a name that buried the dead.
    And this especially, in the Battle of Normandy,
    I heard this from one of the GIs.
    That the invasion of Normandy was so horrendous
    that they had a truck of left arms, a truck of right arms,
    a truck of left legs.
    And when they went to bury a body,
    if it was missing a left leg, they went to that truck.
    So you wonder.
    And even when I was in high school,
    my chemistry teacher in high school
    was a doctor, a female doctor.
    And she was a doctor in World War I.
    And she had all these slides to show us.
    There were slides of heart tissue, lung tissue,
    and all sorts of tissues that she had taken out
    of World War I dead soldiers.
    And she told us, and here we are,
    that's way back in the early '30s, that they stuffed them
    with straw and sent them home to be buried.
    So you wonder, you know, what came home.
    Maybe he's better over there not knowing, you know.
    Blown to bits or something, I don't know.
    But that stuck.
    And I can remember we had these seats in our chemistry lab
    that were two to a desk.
    And I'm listening like this.
    And all of a sudden, I hear blump, and the girl next to me
    fainted right out of her seat.
    But I don't know if they could do that now.
    Maybe they do, I don't know.
    I don't know.
    So you were caring for wounded soldiers
    and grieving at the same time?
    I couldn't have been grieving.
    Because now, this is a year later, for one thing.
    I was busy doing my work.
    I thought of him.
    I still have the same picture I carried with him,
    with his wings.
    And the last letter I wrote him--
    or he wrote me, excuse me, which was a V-mail letter.
    But they never photographed it.
    And I'm curious to know why it was never photographed.
    Because they came all photographed.
    I don't know if you're familiar with V. Well, V-mail you would
    write on the certain paper.
    You could only have one sheet.
    And they would photograph them and put them into microfilm.
    And then they'd send that microfilm.
    They'd get thousands and thousands of letters
    on this little small microfilm.
    And that saved hundreds of cubic feet in a cargo ship,
    sending all these letters back and forth.
    His letter, dated July it looks like seven,
    but he made it an eight, and he was missing on the 10th.
    And it says, I'm going to be busy for a while.
    This will probably be the last letter
    you get from me because I'm going to be busy.
    But you'll hear about it soon enough.
    And why would they send that handwritten, you know, piece?
    The original piece.
    So I still have that and his picture,
    which I carried all overseas with me.
    And kept even when I remarried.
    And my husband knew it was in my drawer, and it stayed there,
    and it's still there.
    Let me turn the tape over while we have a break.
    This is the end of side one with Louise Birch.
    That's the fan.
    OK.
    This is side two with Louise Birch, July 15,
    1995 in West Park, New York.
    We stopped.
    Before, we were talking about being in Germany in April 1945.
    You must have gotten word there about the death of President
    Roosevelt.
    Mm-hmm.
    Do you remember anything about that?
    Well, being a staunch Republican,
    I said, "That's too bad," which is terrible.
    But everyone was stunned and, you know,
    what's going to happen now?
    That, I think, was the first [? concerned ?]
    about everybody.
    What's going to happen now?
    Because he certainly, you know, did give us good leadership.
    But then we heard about this guy named Truman
    and went on with our work.
    And shortly thereafter?
    Was VE Day.
    And I think I told you about stealing the denatured alcohol
    out of the operating room, and--
    No, you didn't.
    Oh, didn't I?
    No.
    [LAUGHTER]
    I think you need to.
    We had what we called solution basins.
    They were little, oh, porcelain basins
    that we'd soak instruments in, in alcohol and stuff.
    And we swiped-- we had this denatured alcohol.
    It'd kill you.
    You know, kill you.
    We put that in, and we had powdered grape juice
    and it would turn it all purple.
    (WHISPERING) We'd swish it around, swish it around.
    Oh!
    Terrible.
    Horrible.
    Terrible.
    And our whole-- [? Eckie ?] was the only one
    that was sober that night, and she had these--
    what we called number 10 cans.
    You know, peanut butter and jelly came in them.
    She had one by each one of our bunks
    because we'd just roll out of bed and go, [? ah. ?] [LAUGHS]
    We couldn't get up.
    It's a wonder we didn't die.
    So you had a big party?
    Well, not really.
    You know, we just--
    just among ourselves.
    And, ooh, you know, whoopie do.
    Because, at that time, we were right next
    to the 34th Evacuation Hospital.
    They had brought us in, and we were
    supposed to help them out or relieve them
    of some of their duties.
    They didn't like us, and we didn't like them.
    And I think it was just an ego trip, you know,
    that maybe the nurses were afraid
    that we'd infringe on their officers, or whatever.
    But we could care less, you know?
    We were our own-- we were very cliquey, as you could notice--
    and we were our own little establishment.
    And so we did what we had to do, and they
    did what they had to do--
    until our men up and left us, and then we
    had to stay with the 34th because they would--
    Well, what happened there?
    Your--
    Well, that was right after VE Day,
    maybe two days after, three days after.
    I'm not sure on what date.
    We were used to hearing our tents
    being pulled down because the hospital was always moving.
    And, one morning, there's tents coming down,
    and they came and told us we had to move out of our tents,
    but we weren't going with them.
    And they had one big tent, so all of us, 40 nurses,
    were in this one big tent.
    We had to stay behind, and we just
    felt so abandoned because we'd been a family for so long.
    How could you do this, you know?
    "We're going on to Austria, and you're
    staying here with the 34th."
    And, oh, there were tears because we
    had some romances going on.
    And, you know, "We don't know.
    We don't know nothing.
    You stay here.
    They'll feed you.
    You work with them," and that's it.
    And some of these girls were angry and some were sad
    and some were indignant.
    Because how could they do this to us?
    You know, we're part of this unit, and they're leaving us.
    But off they went, and we didn't know why.
    And so we made hay.
    You know, we played around and made--
    ah, (LAUGHS) we did what we had to do.
    You worked with the other unit?
    We worked with the other unit.
    Not too much.
    They were getting rid of-- their patients
    were being pushed out and back to the general hospitals, too.
    And I can't remember except for just horsing around.
    Like, we found that old cart, and we
    used to run around the place pulling this cart.
    Horse cart?
    Well, it was--
    I don't know what.
    It-- maybe it was, but it was like a push cart,
    but a big push cart.
    We'd put two of the girls in it and two would pull it,
    you know.
    And, oh, it was stupid, you know, but it was silly.
    And I can remember sunbathing.
    We-- it was getting, you know, it was May then,
    and it was getting warm.
    And the earth, I can still smell the earth.
    The earth was very sour.
    We were set up in what might have
    been a pasture or something.
    And you don't realize, America, here, is a new country,
    and our earth is still new.
    But that's centuries-old over there, and it stunk.
    The earth was sour, like--
    like it was moldy, but it had [? an odor. ?]
    So when the sun hit it, ooh!
    But anyhow, one morning, down the dirt road
    comes our trucks trundling around and, yeah,
    tooting the horn.
    You know, "Pack your bags, girls.
    We're going."
    And you didn't see a happier bunch, you know,
    and in the trucks we went.
    One [? truck was ?] for our bedrolls and two trucks
    for the nurses.
    And off we went, singing all the way.
    And the tarp was down off of the trucks
    because it was nice weather.
    And we didn't even ask.
    We just went and sang and drove through the roads.
    And the countryside was so beautiful,
    Tyrolean houses with the flower boxes.
    And all the flowers were starting to bloom.
    And then we crossed the--
    into Austria, and you could see these rolling
    Alps in the background.
    Some still had snow on it, and it was just ideal.
    We were in heaven, really in heaven.
    The war was over.
    Yeah, the war was over.
    And this was beautiful and serene and happy.
    And what more could you ask for?
    And there's the Danube, and we crossed the Danube at Linz.
    And I remember going across the bridge at Linz and the Danube,
    and someone mentioned, "This is the city Hitler was born in.
    Linz, Austria, he was born here."
    So?
    [LAUGHS] He ain't around anymore.
    We don't care.
    And we drove out, just through a corner of Linz itself,
    and off we went.
    All alongside the river, we were driving, just beautiful,
    singing away, having a ball.
    How long did you travel?
    Just one day?
    Oh, yeah.
    Not even a whole day.
    It wasn't that long.
    I think we were not too far from the Austrian border.
    And, all of the sudden, the singing stopped.
    One by one, we stopped singing.
    (WHISPERING) Something's wrong.
    Something's wrong.
    What's wrong?
    I don't know.
    What's wrong?
    [SNIFFING]
    Something's the matter with the air.
    We didn't even see the place, and we could smell it.
    And the truck came down around a corner, and there she was--
    this big gray granite wall with guard
    houses every so often, barbed wire on the tent.
    And we just-- first, your mouth would open,
    and then your hand went over your mouth.
    And we drove up in front of these huge gates.
    [CLATTERING]
    Watch your microphone.
    Yeah.
    Drove up in front of these huge gates.
    And, usually, the enlisted men got right out of the trucks
    and opened the tailgate for us so we could get down.
    This time, they didn't.
    The gates were shut.
    And we just sat there, all with our hands over our mouth,
    eyes as big as saucers.
    At that time, we didn't see any bodies.
    There were a few--
    I like to call them stick figures.
    You know how you draw a stick figure?
    Their hips stuck out.
    Their legs came down, and this little ball on top for a head.
    A couple of them were walking around.
    Outside of the gates?
    No, inside, because we were inside the--
    the wall came around, and then big gate
    was in here, on the blockhouse.
    And some had striped uniforms on.
    Some had just a blanket on them, stark naked.
    Some had the blanket wrapped around their heads
    so you wouldn't know who they were.
    They were afraid of being recognized.
    That's how-- and, you know, (WHISPERING) what?
    What is this?
    And the other girls may have told you the same thing.
    Our Colonel came out, and the first words out of his mouth
    were, "There no Americans here," which would-- (SIGHING)
    because you didn't know what you were looking at.
    There was no identification on them.
    You were afraid it could have been an American POW camp?
    Yeah.
    Yeah.
    Yeah.
    You didn't know.
    Yeah.
    We didn't know.
    You couldn't tell.
    [? Was ?] just a-- hmm.
    So then he started his little spiel
    about, "You girls were not sent over here to do this work.
    You girls were not trained to do this work.
    You girls were not-- are not equipped to do this work,
    and I will not order any one of you in this camp."
    He was visibly upset.
    And I personally think that he had grandiose plans of,
    for himself, being in some nice hospital doing
    some great deeds.
    I don't know.
    That's my personal thing.
    This was your Commanding Officer?
    Commanding Officer.
    What was his name.
    Colonel Dale Friend, who was quite a researcher
    at Peter Bent Brigham Hospital in Boston.
    But so, after he gave his spiel, the GIs
    let down those tailgates, and we jumped out
    to a one, every one of them.
    And I think he was shocked that we all responded in that way
    because he just stood there.
    "Now, wait a minute," he says.
    "There's going to be rules and regulations," or words
    to that effect.
    "You can't be here after dark.
    You can't be here by yourself.
    At all times, you're with another person,
    even in the wards.
    You have to be completely covered.
    I don't want them to even know you're a female."
    We had-- we're supposed to wear our the turbans, masks
    over our face, our dungarees that we had,
    little puttees around our ankles and our boots.
    What are those?
    I'm sorry.
    Puttees are actually left over from World War
    I. They're canvas, like a ski sock, and they buckle across,
    so they keep your pants into your boots.
    Because, of course, typhus was such a rage there.
    Anything get up your pants, and you had it.
    So-- although we'd all been innoculated.
    So, with that, you know, they took us to our nurses quarters
    because we didn't go right into the camp itself then,
    and which was nice.
    It was the first time we had nice--
    and we had three nice houses.
    I think that were three.
    Yeah, three nice houses up on top of a hill
    overlooking the Danube.
    Couldn't have been better.
    And these German girls, oh, ooh, you know, "I do.
    I do.
    Can I do?
    Can I do?"
    You know, they [? couldn't ?] do it.
    Like, one of the girls was saying,
    today, "You remember, you put down your panties,
    and they's snatch them up and go wash them?"
    You'd put them-- take them out to put them on,
    and they're gone.
    She's out there washing them.
    They could--
    They were from the local?
    Yeah.
    From Linz?
    Yeah.
    Yeah, they couldn't do enough for you.
    And I-- still having this hatred in me--
    hey.
    You know?
    Who are you trying to kid, you know?
    Which side were you on, you know?
    Now, you turn turncoat?
    I didn't trust anybody that was like that.
    I really couldn't.
    I figured, last week, you were doing that for the Germans.
    But, anyhow.
    They were good to us.
    And what-- had they been working for the German officers?
    I don't know.
    I don't know.
    You don't know?
    I wouldn't be surprised.
    You know?
    And, there again, it's survival, a sense of survival,
    just like the poor inmates in the camp.
    Why did this one live, and thousands other die?
    They had a survival.
    And I'm sure a lot of them must have
    had a guilty complex going home, especially
    if their whole family died.
    Why did he live?
    That's-- you know, I would have no idea what that feeling is
    like, but I imagine there must be a lot but that had that
    feeling.
    So you would have your quarters, and then they
    would come and get you?
    And you would go down to the can?
    Yeah, the trucks would always take-- we couldn't walk.
    We weren't supposed to be walking outside the areas
    because you didn't know what was out there.
    The trucks would bring us down to the camp,
    and we would work and eat.
    And they'd take us back to quarters, and we stayed there.
    And the name of the camp?
    It was Camp Gusen, and which was a satellite of Mauthausen.
    Mauthausen was up on the hill, and they brought down--
    well, Gusen, had enough of its own patients,
    but some of the patients from Mauthausen
    because there was no medical facilities up there.
    And our wards were set up-- they must have told you--
    in the former SS barracks.
    But we used the same, I guess you'd call it--
    the same three-tiered bunks for the inmates,
    except there was only one and each bunk instead
    of three or four.
    And they had beds of straw.
    Because I-- you know, I never questioned, when I was there,
    where did all these blankets come from?
    Where'd these pajamas come from?
    And evidently, they must have flown them in.
    And it wasn't-- this Mike [? Warber, ?] who I'd wanted
    to come, he told me, and I didn't realize it at the time,
    there were two units that were sent in which were called
    delousing units.
    That's all they did.
    And they were behind the walls because these guys all--
    inmates, patients, whatever you want to call them--
    had to be completely deloused before they were brought out
    to us.
    So that had been going on before you arrived?
    Yeah.
    Yeah, before we arrived.
    And then, and while we were there because,
    as we would have, say, eight deaths a night,
    we'd have eight empty beds they'd bring out.
    But they were doing this behind the wall,
    washing them down and delousing them
    and giving them either a blanket or pajamas, whatever
    was flown in.
    And I didn't know about that, and I didn't even question.
    Where's this all coming?
    I should have said, how come?
    You know?
    And what did you do, then?
    You would come every day--
    We'd come--
    --into the same ward?
    Into the same ward, yeah.
    And how many people would be in there?
    Do you know?
    (SIGHING) Whew.
    I would say at least a hundred, but I am not sure.
    120?
    140?
    I'm not sure.
    There were rooms on both sides, and they were big, big rooms,
    and--
    And the hallway in the middle?
    Big hallway, and there were open door
    here and an open door at the other end,
    so you could-- the hallway itself was very dark,
    but you could see light at the end of the tunnel.
    And I like to think of that.
    Yes, there is a light at the end of the tunnel.
    One of-- and I think I told you that we were not
    allowed to have any physical contact with the patients.
    We could not-- inmates, whatever you want to call them--
    we were not allowed to give them nursing care.
    And they brought in either prisoners of war,
    German prisoners of war, or people from the community,
    went out in trucks and rounded them up.
    And they stayed there for the day, fed, washed,
    and cleaned these guys, did what they could.
    So you didn't touch them?
    We didn't touch them.
    We weren't allowed to touch them.
    The only thing we did was give them medication.
    Every day?
    Every day.
    Those that need it.
    We learned the word "diarrhea" in three languages,
    and I'm not sure that I can even say the names today,
    and I'm sure they were true.
    Because one was Russian, one was Polish, and one was, I guess,
    French because we had a very sweet Frenchman who
    spoke beautiful English.
    And whatever we were saying, he says,
    "Sister," because they call the nurses Sister, "don't say."
    And I think we were--
    I forget the word we were saying.
    But, excuse me, but we were saying "shits."
    [LAUGHTER]
    And he wanted-- he said, "It's diarrhea."
    "That's not nice," he said.
    Because we'd stand at the [? hall-- ?] at the door
    and yell out these three words, and those who had diarrhea
    would raise their little old hand up, you know.
    And we'd go over and we'd give them the medicine.
    And that's how you cared for them?
    What was--
    That's the only-- well, I don't think
    we kept any records, maybe number-wise.
    And things like that, I don't remember.
    I know we didn't keep records because we
    didn't know their names.
    Towards the end of our stay there,
    things seemed to ease, maybe because we'd
    been there long enough to not be so tense, that we
    were able to talk to some of the patients
    through an interpreter.
    And I got a couple of names that I wrote to their--
    one was a sister back in the States
    and one was some other kind of a relative--
    to tell them.
    They're begging, "Tell America I'm here," you know.
    And, at that time, you couldn't say
    exactly where they were, just "someplace in Austria"
    was the term you had to use, and you couldn't say exactly
    what their condition was.
    When I got back to the States, and I
    must have given my address back in the States,
    I got a letter from one woman in Evanston, Illinois.
    And she had gotten my letter and sent me a check for $50
    to do something for her brother.
    It was her brother.
    And so, by this time, I'm back in the United States,
    so I wrote back to her exactly where
    he was, exactly his condition, and sent her back the $50.
    Hopefully, he was still alive.
    And I said, "Contact your Red Cross.
    Now you know exactly where he was.
    Whether he's still there now, I don't know."
    I never heard from the other one that I wrote to.
    So I, sometimes, I think, I wonder how he made out.
    Did he make it out of there?
    Did he make it to America?
    So.
    So you did-- you were, after a while,
    able to have some communication with some of the people.
    Some of them.
    Not very many.
    Our corpsman happened to be a great guy.
    He was-- I think he was Mexican, and he spoke Spanish fluently.
    And he could speak a few words of German or Polish,
    whatever it was, and he was able to--
    well, this.
    You know, and then you could do with hand signals, too.
    And there wasn't much you could talk to them about.
    They were too weak, for one thing.
    I don't know if I told you that.
    And [? Eckie ?] knows I will tell you
    the story where we weren't supposed to look like women.
    And, like I told you, we used to give out these medicines
    together.
    And she'd give the pills, and I'd
    be behind her with a bottle of whatever it
    was I had to pour out and give it to them.
    And I'm waiting for her.
    She's bending over, giving this guy his pills.
    And out from the other bunk comes this little bony hand,
    and pats her on the fanny.
    And I'm standing there, not laughing out loud, but saying,
    there's hope for them after all.
    There's still life in them.
    You know, really.
    And, of course, she didn't even feel it.
    It was so weak.
    And when she stood up, and I'm--
    and I says, "Who are we kidding?
    They know who we are."
    And she-- why?
    And I get tears.
    But I can still see him, now, doing that.
    It was cute.
    Yeah.
    It was pathetic, but it was cute.
    Did you know who these people were?
    Were they-- I mean, some, they were from different countries.
    Were there-- there were some Jewish people?
    Oh.
    Mostly Jewish people?
    I think there were--
    Do you know?
    I couldn't swear, but I would say I thought most of them
    were Jewish.
    At the time, you did.
    Yeah.
    Yeah.
    But we had Frenchmen.
    We had one Spanish guy who worked on the ward.
    He was another one I didn't trust because he
    was a trusty for the Germans.
    And he was-- looked well-preserved.
    And he had been in the Spanish Revolution
    and had gotten caught, somehow and, you know,
    when the Germans helped them out.
    Roberto, his name was.
    But he helped us out.
    But these people, no, we didn't know who they were.
    Had no idea, [? any. ?] There was even Russians there too,
    I think.
    At the time, did you feel that what you were
    doing for them was helpful?
    It must have helped a little bit,
    but it was like swimming upstream.
    You made a little progress, but not much.
    You know?
    You nourished them, but you have to start out
    with thin, thin soup because you couldn't give them food,
    per se.
    And just the thought that they were free, you know,
    it must have been something.
    And I'm sure-- you know, I see pictures of these survivors
    now in the Holocaust.
    And, God, they look great.
    So they-- you know, life does--
    the body does improve.
    Oh, you mean survivors today?
    Yeah.
    Yeah, that they interview on TV.
    And you would say, looking at them,
    you couldn't have been in a concentration camp.
    But you know, yourself, if someone's really sick
    and loses a lot of weight and gets better, they do come back.
    But the body is a wonderful machine.
    So.
    It's too bad it gets abused.
    How long were you at Gusen?
    I think, about five weeks, we were there
    because we left to go home, either it was either
    on my birthday or the day after.
    It was either June 21st or 22nd.
    I remember my birthday.
    And were you informed suddenly that you were going to leave?
    And--
    I think probably a week's notice.
    You know?
    And did you, by the end of that period,
    did you feel as if some of the people that you were caring for
    had made progress?
    Or was the situation better when you left than when you came?
    Well, the attitude was better.
    It was a lot more relaxed because we
    went in there with so tight and so tense, and you were all--
    literally afraid of them because they
    were so riddled with disease.
    And, hey, you know, you're protected.
    And--
    Did any of the nurses get sick?
    Well, as far as we--
    now, they're talking about the DDT, which you heard about,
    that several of our nurses have developed breast cancer.
    But with the ratio of breast cancer
    today, I can't see blaming it on the DDT that we had.
    You didn't tell me this.
    You were sprayed with DDT every day?
    Every day, yeah, down our pants, up our arms,
    and in the back of our necks.
    She had an old flint gun.
    I don't know if you know what a flint gun is.
    It's a canister on the end of, sh-sh-sh, pump thing.
    And I think flint, they used to use for flies or mosquitoes
    or something.
    You'd fill this canister with whatever.
    And that was filled with DDT powder,
    and we'd stay in front of our chief nurse
    and pull our pants out.
    How degrading, when you think of it.
    But that's how we had to go on.
    The first couple of days that we worked at the camp,
    we felt so bad, so dirty, so contaminated
    that we would come back to our nurse's quarters
    and literally strip outside the door
    and just drop our drawers right there.
    And these nice German girls would grab them and wash them
    for us.
    Because we didn't want to go in the house with this aroma
    around us, you know.
    And it-- that odor clung to you.
    Your clothes, after a while, too.
    So.
    And, after a while, you didn't notice it.
    So.
    What other kinds of things that you know of
    were going on at the camp?
    In addition to the care that you were giving,
    what else was happening there?
    Do you know?
    [SIGHING]
    Well, I know they got musical instruments
    for some of the inmates that were musically inclined.
    I don't know where they came from.
    I imagine they just walked into somebody's house and took them.
    That's what they usually did.
    This Jeanie [? Striker, ?] that I gave you her papers,
    she worked with the women.
    Now, I never saw the women.
    I know they were there, but I never saw them.
    Some of the men went in town and got bolts of material
    and brought it out to the women.
    And she said they practically clawed at the material.
    They couldn't wait to get a piece of it
    to make themselves a top or muumuu-type dress or shorts
    or something, something to put on their bodies.
    And but that's the only story I ever
    heard from her, from the women.
    Do you know if there were children around?
    I never saw a child, no.
    Thank God.
    So there were survivors there who
    were well enough to play musical instruments?
    Yeah, but, you know, [? there ?] were all grades
    of [? degradation ?] or something.
    I don't know what you want to call it.
    There were some that could not move at all
    and some that walked around.
    And, yes, they could play a violin, maybe not as well
    as they did in days gone by.
    And the spirit was always there, I guess, if you're a musician.
    I'm not.
    But--
    Was Gusen, by that time, being called a DP camp?
    Mm-mm.
    Never was?
    Mm-mm, not as far as I know.
    It wasn't at that time, anyhow.
    We were the 131st Evacuation Hospital at Gusen.
    Mm-hmm.
    Were there people arriving there from other places?
    Mm-mm.
    I know that happened in some other--
    Mm-mm.
    We had more than we could take care of.
    Do you have any sense of how many?
    Oh, someone, at one time, told me we had 4,000--
    we were a 400-bed hospital originally,
    this little tent hospital-- and that we had 4,000 patients.
    But there were, according to that confession,
    there were, what, 60,000 inmates there?
    So that's just a drop in the bucket.
    Did you have a chance to walk around the camp at all?
    Or did you go up to Mauthausen, the main camp ever?
    I never got up there.
    And you had to have-- you had to know somebody
    to get up there because that was off-limits, as far as I know.
    I did get in-- behind the camp, there
    was this nice rolling hill, and I did get back there.
    And inside that hill was a complete factory,
    railroad tracks and everything.
    And I was told that they were making Messerschmitts,
    planes in there.
    In fact, I brought home a piece of--
    I still have it-- a piece of balsa wood that
    was painted like a, oh, dark, dark olive green.
    And you can just about see a swastika on it.
    And someone else told me it was a new ammunition place.
    And this Mike that I talked to on the phone who didn't make it
    here, that was our interpreter, he
    claims that they were making parts for the V-2 bombs there.
    But it was a complete factory, back there, all
    underground in a big cavern.
    And when I went back to Germany and Austria,
    years later, with my daughters, and we were in Strasbourg.
    That was as far as we were going to go.
    And I said, hey, we have enough time to go to Linz.
    And my daughter, at this time, she was doing all the driving.
    "Oh, [? Ma, ?] you're crazy."
    And I said, oh, and like just by my nose,
    crossed the bridge, turned right, followed the river.
    And she said, "Do you where you're going?"
    I said, "No, but it's in this direction."
    Oh, and she was getting so upset with me.
    It's like looking for a needle in a haystack.
    And I said, slow down.
    And over on the horizon, I saw that same hill.
    I says, we're coming there.
    I know we're coming there, and there it was.
    The camp?
    The camp.
    TV antennas out of what was our ward's little lace curtains,
    flower boxes.
    People were living in those buildings?
    Oh, painted white and beautiful.
    Hey.
    I have pictures downstairs I'll have to show you.
    They had, just before you got to the camp,
    there was a Memorial to the camp built and it was like a maze,
    and you went around and there were all pictures and sayings
    all around this cement wall.
    And right in the center were the ovens.
    But it was locked.
    You couldn't get in.
    So I went-- there was a little, like, I call it
    a 7-Eleven store next door.
    By this time, my daughter's really mad at me.
    So I went next door and I wanted the key to get in there.
    Oh.
    [SPEAKING GERMAN]
    He couldn't speak English.
    I couldn't speak German.
    And he was very upset that I wanted to get in there.
    In where?
    Into this little maze, see, that was locked.
    There was a padlock on it.
    And I said, I want to get--
    [? [MUMBLING] ?]
    And he was upset.
    He was visibly upset, [? woo woo, ?]
    and I didn't know what he was saying.
    He didn't know what I was saying.
    So, finally, I'm going because we all wore the Red
    Cross on our sleeve.
    Boom boom, [? Kranksvester. ?] And that's what I thought
    was nurse in German.
    Boom boom.
    All of the sudden, he got the message.
    And his wife comes out with wine and cheese,
    and they're hugging me and kissing me.
    And (WHISPERING) my daughter's standing there like this.
    She was so mad.
    He come over and opened up the gate.
    [? Oh, ?] [? no?. ?] Couldn't do enough for me.
    So, you know, I walked all the way around and inside
    with the ovens, that they had.
    I've got pictures downstairs in my album.
    I'll have to show you.
    So that was the crematorium there?
    Well, it--
    Is that what you mean by albums?
    They had taken the ovens out of where the crematorium was.
    And behind-- that's another story--
    where, I'm telling you, the barracks
    were made up like nice houses with TV antennas.
    And then there's the big block house,
    which had the big gates in it, and those--
    that was all boarded over.
    The gates had been removed to someplace.
    Maybe, they were in the maze.
    I forget.
    But we drove up on top of the quarry, which
    is famous for those last steps, and looked down
    into what was the big compound.
    Of course, all those barracks were blown up and burnt down.
    Guess what they were using it for?
    They made tombstones there.
    From the stone in the quarry?
    All these beautiful carved, yeah.
    Tell me about the quarry.
    What do you know about that whole--
    Oh, my nose is running.
    Do you want a-- let me.
    I just saw--
    I understand there was a quarry at this Mauthausen Gusen
    complex, where people were forced to carry stones.
    Did you hear about that?
    Did you see evidence of that?
    Well, we have the pictures that our chaplain gave us
    of the steps.
    They call them Steps of Death.
    And--
    What were they?
    They were?
    They were just granite.
    Everything that Mauthausen and Gusen was built of
    were huge blocks of granite.
    And it all came from that quarry.
    And they're still using the quarry to make tombstones.
    But I drove down there once.
    I must have had a date with somebody that had a Jeep.
    And it was weird, these--
    you're like in a-- almost in the Grand Canyon, these walls
    and walls of rock.
    And I saw the steps, and that was all
    and I wanted to get out of there because it was eerie.
    And these were steps that went up to the quarry?
    Or?
    No, they came out of the quarry.
    And they must have built these steps
    because they were also of these big black blocks of granite.
    And then there's a big wall to one side,
    in fact, on the side of the steps,
    that they must have built as they went up.
    And when they got to the very top,
    I don't know what was up there more for maybe trucks
    or something to take these blocks of quarries, Granite
    someplace else.
    But it was eerie.
    And then to drive up there 20 years--
    was it 28 years later?
    Hmm, it must have been more than that--
    but to look down and see all of these tombstones
    down there in that compound.
    And I thought, you son of a gun.
    So somebody is making a good business.
    So even the roadblocks, there was
    a roadblock between our quarters and Gusen
    that, of course, had been discombobulated
    for us to go through.
    But that was built of big blocks of this quarry.
    We got to middle late July, when you left Gusen.
    June.
    June?
    June.
    July.
    I thought you said--
    Middle of June, we left Gusen.
    Uh huh.
    Yeah.
    And where did you go?
    We went back to France.
    This time, we went by train.
    The nurses and the officers were in first class cars,
    and the men were in horse cattles.
    Again, segregation.
    And, every so often, the train would stop,
    and they would say, nurses, we were not
    to look out to the side because the men were all
    having their relief break.
    [LAUGHS]
    And the train would stop and start
    because the tracks were in repair,
    or it was a-- it seemed to me a long ride to where we got.
    And then there were trucks that took us, first, to--
    I think they took us, first, to what we call Camp 20 Grand.
    They had all these little like repo depots, which
    were replacement depots for different units,
    and they were named after cigarettes.
    First we went to Camp 20 Grand.
    Then we went to Camp Lucky Strike, which was great.
    It was up on top of a hill overlooking the Seine,
    in France.
    Except this was just a huge rock pile.
    I mean, there again, we had to live in tents again.
    They were pitched on these rocks.
    And we had to wash our hair out of tin cans.
    And we had a good mess hall which
    was run by the German POWs.
    And they would be quite fresh to us,
    but sometimes they would say, "No sugar
    today for your coffee.
    No sugar today.
    No sugar today for your coffee."
    Well, I don't take sugar in my coffee.
    It didn't bother me.
    They [? had to ?] go.
    That night, they'd have sugar cookies they'd make for us.
    You know, they tried to make up-- they
    would do this on purpose to make something nice for us.
    So they were also trying to be nice.
    See, I'm still had this distrust of the people.
    And I didn't like anyone that got too familiar.
    And we finally found out they had a ship.
    We were going home.
    We had our foot lockers all packed, and away they went.
    And they went down to the harbor,
    and somebody's packing the--
    and they, because they're all stenciled with our names.
    Who's this Mary?
    Females, no way!
    Unload.
    Unload.
    And the poor GIs, just because we were females,
    our men couldn't go either.
    Huh.
    So they--
    Why?
    Why?
    Well, there were no facilities on that ship for females.
    And why they kept the men behind,
    because we couldn't get on.
    I don't know.
    What does that mean, no facilities for females?
    Well, they would have to have a place that was closed-off,
    where the men couldn't, we couldn't--
    Mingle.
    No one could communicate.
    So they couldn't segregate you, so you couldn't go.
    Yeah.
    Yeah.
    Yeah.
    No, so we couldn't.
    So because we couldn't go, our men
    couldn't go, which I thought was so wrong.
    And, here, these guys have been sitting
    waiting to go home, too, just as much as we had.
    And then we finally got the General Bliss,
    which had an area that they could, you know, cordon.
    You know?
    Yeah.
    Cordon off.
    Cordon off.
    That was a big ship, the General Bliss.
    It was big, but it that-- it wasn't as big as the Queen
    Elizabeth, that's for sure.
    And where did you leave from, what port?
    We left from Le Havre in France, and we wound up in Boston.
    And it was great.
    You know, the boats were out there and welcoming,
    and bands were in the boats.
    And, from there, we went to--
    in fact, we--
    I remember it was the Fish Pier in Boston,
    which is still there.
    And we got on trains that were right there at the Fish Pier,
    and they took us down to Camp Myles Standish on the Cape,
    not quite too far down on the Cape,
    but some part of the Cape.
    It's now a big campground, I guess.
    And they were great.
    They had Welcome Home, and we slept in
    like it was a huge ward, so we were all together.
    But there were sheets.
    That's the first time we'd had sheets in--
    oh, months and months and months, we haven't had a sheet,
    and it was great.
    I remember calling my mother because you could call
    whoever you wanted to call.
    And they had the--
    papers had a habit of printing what units
    were landing when and where.
    And she had seen in the paper that the 131st
    was coming into New York Harbor at such and such a date.
    Well, that must have been the first boat that they
    were loading our stuff on.
    So she says, "Where are you?"
    I said, "Up in Massachusetts someplace, Camp Myles Standish.
    "You get right home, here!"
    I said, "Ma, I can't.
    I'm still in the Army, you know."
    Well, you were supposed to ra pa pa pa pa.
    I said, "No, Mother."
    So we finally went to Camp Dix and got our leave papers.
    We had 30-day leave, and we were able to go to CBI, China Burma
    India area.
    And we knew it, and we figured but while we were on leave,
    VJ was declared, so.
    Do you remember the dropping of the bomb?
    Yes, I do.
    Yes.
    And I'm sorry to say I was all for it, and still am.
    Not now, I wouldn't want it dropped today,
    and what they're making today is 10 times bigger than that.
    But I just felt that it saved our men a lot.
    And, to me, it was, they're the ones that started it.
    Woody and I are going over to Hawaii for the VJ ceremonies
    in August, yeah.
    Huh.
    The end of August, so.
    So you knew, right away, then, that you
    wouldn't be going over?
    Well, we didn't.
    But, you know, we didn't know whether we'd
    be made to go in the Army of Occupation or what,
    so we had to report back to Camp Polk.
    Now, Woody was in the service longer
    that I. Girls that had longer service, they had points,
    and you got out by a certain point system.
    If you were married, not a widow,
    but if you were married, if you'd
    been in the service so long, et cetera, et cetera, et cetera,
    you could be discharged.
    And we had several discharged from Camp Polk.
    Another gal and I got orders to go
    to San Antonio, Texas, Fort Sam Houston, which
    is a huge hospital.
    When I got down there, hadn't worked on a ward,
    didn't know what to do.
    Didn't know how to do anything, actually.
    Hadn't worked how to make a bed, even.
    And this young whippersnapper had just gotten in the Army,
    and I'm saying, "Well, how do you do this?
    And how do you do that?"
    And she thinks, well, I must have just got into the Army
    before--
    you know, after she did.
    And so she's giving me this [? whole. ?]
    She says, "Well, where were you, last month?"
    I said, I was over in Germany.
    You know?
    Or, "Where were you when VE Day?"
    That was it, I could remember her saying to me I said,
    I was in Germany."
    "Germany?
    What were you doing there?"
    So she thought I had just joined the Army, acting so dumb.
    Well, how do you do this, and how do you do that?
    And so I met my present--
    my ex-husband there.
    He was in the Air Corps, and we got married.
    And life starts new.
    Yeah.
    How long did you stay in the service?
    Well, I got out just before Christmas then.
    So it was about 18 months total I was in.
    What a year!
    Yeah.
    Yeah.
    Yeah.
    In fact, I was embarrassed because, when
    I met my husband-to-be, he was very shy and didn't say boo.
    And I went, oh, what a dud you are.
    You know?
    And so I'm telling him how I-- because you got $300 when
    you were mustered out.
    In other words, when you're discharged,
    they gave you $300 to survive on.
    And I told him how I was putting up a notice on the ward,
    I'd pay anybody on the ward my mustering-out pay
    who would marry me to get me out of the service (LAUGHS).
    You did that?
    I did that.
    And he, in the meanwhile, we had had a date,
    and he had this little brown bag.
    And he--
    This is the third side of the interview with Louise Birch.
    Go ahead.
    Talking about Captain [? Makata ?],,
    our Japanese dentist, whom--
    I was insulted that they had a Japanese man in our outfit
    at first.
    And it was he who told me about our American concentration
    camps.
    His family had all been taken from Hawaii
    and put in those camps, had all their cameras, and binoculars,
    and radios all confiscated and never got back.
    I didn't know about that.
    I never heard about that.
    And originally, as I said, I disliked this man intensely,
    because he was Japanese.
    And he turned out to be the most lovable guy there, a doll.
    And I intend to look him up when I go to Hawaii next month.
    I don't know if he's still living.
    But he was just a great guy, just sweet.
    So those were the kinds of lessons you learned.
    Yes, that there's good and bad in everybody.
    And it was a rude awakening for somebody
    who didn't know nothing.
    And that was me.
    OK.
    Anything else you want to say?
    Uh-uh.
    OK.
    This is the end of the interview with Louise Birch.

    Overview

    Interview Summary
    Louise Birch, born June 21, 1921 in Cleveland, Ohio, describes becoming a nurse; getting secretly married to her boyfriend, who was part of the 82nd Airborne Division, and how he died during the war; going into the service in early 1944; going to Fort Jackson, South Carolina, where the 131st Evacuation Hospital was being started; the training she went through; being assigned to be an orthopedic surgical nurse; army regulations for bandaging and seeing how this broke down when casualties from the Battle of the Bulge came through when she was in England; boarding the RMS Queen Elizabeth; segregation by ranking on the ship and entertainment from the units; spending Christmas in England and buying gifts for the enlisted soldiers; how many of the enlisted men were from Oklahoma; her experiences in the operating room in England when they were seeing the wounded from the Battle of the Bulge; how they did a dry run setting up their tents in France and did not have any patients; going to Germany in April 1945, where they received patients; her experiences in the operating room in Germany; her feelings about the Germans at the time; her reaction to Roosevelt’s death; celebrating V-E Day; their relationship with the 34th Evacuation Hospital; how the men in their unit went on without them then came back later to get them; the journey to Linz, Austria and seeing a concentration camp for the first time; how the commanding officer, Colonel Dale Friend, said that her unit had not been sent to do this work so he would not force them and how all the nurses agreed to treat the concentration camp survivors; how they saw patients from camp Gusen and Mauthausen; how the patients were all deloused before the nurses arrived; how the wards were filled with 100 to 140 people; how they were not allowed to have physical contact with the patients and only gave them medication; not keeping records and not knowing the patients’ names; learning names after a while through interpreters; writing to relatives of the patients in the U.S.; being sprayed every day with DDT; the conditions of the patients; the quarry at Mauthausen; leaving Gusen in June 1945; the train journey to France; sailing to Boston; the dropping of the bomb in Japan; being discharged in December 1945; the Japanese dentist in her unit, who told her about the American internment camps for Japanese-Americans and how his family had been put in one; and the lessons she learned from her experiences during the war.
    Interviewee
    Ms. Louise Birch
    Interviewer
    Neenah Ellis
    Date
    interview:  1995 July 15

    Physical Details

    Language
    English
    Extent
    3 sound cassettes (90 min.).

    Rights & Restrictions

    Conditions on Access
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    Keywords & Subjects

    Administrative Notes

    Legal Status
    Permanent Collection
    Provenance
    Neenah Ellis, on the behalf of the United States Holocaust Memorial Museum, conducted the interview with Louise Birch on July 15, 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 08:27:43
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    The collection consists of 9 oral history interviews conducted in 1995 with American nurses who served with the 131st Evacuation Hospital in Europe. Topics include nurse training, traveling to Europe aboard the RMS Queen Elizabeth, and treating patients at Mauthausen and Gusen after the camps were liberated.

    Date: 1995 July 14-1995 July 15

    Oral history interview with Clarice MacLeod

    Oral History

    Clarice MacLeod, born in Philadelphia, New York (a village in Jefferson County) in 1917, describes her childhood; her decision to become a nurse; going to nurse training at House of the Samaritan in Watertown, NY in 1935; going to basic training in Atlantic City, NJ; being sent to South Carolina then sailing overseas; arriving in Greenock, Scotland on December 22; the journey across and how she stayed with 18 other girls in a stateroom in the RMS Queen Elizabeth; going to Alteringham, England (possibly Altrincham, England) then France, Belgium, and Germany with the 131st Evacuation Hospital; treating the wounded from the battle field in Germany; working in the operating room as an anesthetist; her work in the operating room and other roles she had had in hospitals prior to the war; off duty activities; how the colonel told them they did not have to go to the concentration camp and everyone but one person went; her first impressions of camp Gusen; the burials for the dead prisoners; staying in houses; how some of the prisoners left upon liberation; seeing the Mauthausen quarry; the mental and physical conditions of the prisoners and their tendency to hoard food; being separated from the army in October 1945 and being recalled in 1951; her reflections on the Holocaust; and how she has not encountered any Holocaust deniers.

    Oral history interview with Ellen Marchese

    Oral History

    Ellen Bonnie Marchese, born in Brooklyn, NY in November 29, 1917, describes her Italian immigrant family; graduating high school in 1933; being trained as a nurse at King’s County Hospital; working at several hospitals and medical offices before joining the army in 1944; her experiences in basic training in Atlantic City, NJ; the journey to England on the RMS Queen Elizabeth; conditions in England; going to a hospital in the south of England and treating wounded American soldiers; meeting Garson Kanin while crossing the channel; setting up the tents in Sedan, France; being a psychiatric nurse and treating post traumatic stress; how nobody in her unit was forced to work in the concentration camp and they all did it anyway; how she hates to remember what she saw in Gusen concentration camp; how the camp was filled with Poles, Roma, political prisoners, and Jews; meeting her future husband, Mike, who was an infantry man who helped liberate the camp; treating the survivors by giving out medication and applying new dressings; their Austrian maid; feeling contempt towards the locals; the former inmates she conversed with, including an artist who drew portraits; celebrating V-E day with onion sandwiches; going to France and being infected with scabies; being dusted with DDT; liaisons between the men and women in her unit; getting out of the service around the end of 1945; doing industrial nursing; and her reflections on the Holocaust and present day conflicts.

    Oral history interview with Phyllis Law

    Oral History

    Phyllis A. Law, born in Lakewin, Pennsylvania on July 5, 1922, describes graduating from nurse’s training at Saint Luke’s Hospital Nursing School in 1943; why she decided to become a nurse; her experiences at basic training in Atlantic City, NJ and how everyone got sick after being inoculated; being assigned to different places until she joined the 131st Evacuation Hospital; receiving training in South Carolina; her experiences sailing on RMS Queen Elizabeth; landing in Greenock, Scotland; going to Altrincham, England; how her unit was in quarantine while in England; being sent to a hospital near Chester, England, where she treated American soldiers with penicillin; crossing the channel in March on the Sobiesky; going to Paris, France then Sedan, France, where they performed some drills; going through Germany, where they set up the hospital to take care of wounded American soldiers; being in the post-op ward; giving the soldiers baths using their helmets; taking care of a young wounded German; going to Bamberg, Germany, where they joined General Patton’s army and helped with another, already establish hospital; waiting for their unit’s infantry men to return from liberating a camp; how the colonel told them they did not have to go to Gusen concentration camp; sustaining a march fracture; being assigned to the C ward; being treated with DDT; treating patients with sulfadiazine; seeing the camp survivors; being in a car accident; traveling by train back through France; sailing on a U.S. Navy ship, the Bliss, to Boston, MA; how the Austrian civilians claimed not to know anything about the camps; how her experience changed her; her grandmother’s refusal to believe the Holocaust happened; and how the car accident she was in was never documented by the army.

    Oral history interview with Dorothy Maroon

    Oral History

    Dorothy Maroon, born in Kingston, New York in 1921, describes how her parents did not want her to be a nurse; how she did her training at Metropolitan Hospital in New York City; how she had to convince her parents to let her join the service; joining the army in August 1944; going to Europe with the 131st Evacuation Hospital, which consisted of 40 nurses, 40 doctors, and numerous enlisted men; being attached to the 8th Army, 15th Army, and the 3rd Army; the role of the enlisted men to the unit; working in some of the general hospitals in England, where they cared for U.S. service men; crossing the channel and dealing with the depth charges; being in Germany on V-E Day; being given the choice to go to the concentration camp and how all of her unit agreed to go; conditions at Gusen concentration camp; providing the survivors with pills, food, and plasma; how after the patients were all gone, the barracks were burned; how she worked mainly with the male patients and was unable to communicate with most of them; not having much physical contact with the patients because of the diseases; how the unit’s soldiers made Austrian civilians come to the camp and help; being sent back to the U.S. and being home in Kingston on V-J Day; being reassigned to Texas and getting out shortly after; getting her bachelor’s degree and working with her brothers, who were doctors; teaching practical nursing; the impact of her experience on her life; hearing stories about how the camp inmates killed a commander after liberation; staying in the SS troop barracks; going to the church one night in Linz, Austria; and how the nurses in her unit have kept in touch over the years and how they can account for 17 still living.

    Oral history interview with Mary Bergquist

    Oral History

    Mary Rita Bergquist (née Hannan), born in Bridgeport, Connecticut in 1923, describes her family and early life; graduating from high school in 1940; beginning her nurse’s training in September 1940 at Saint Vincent’s in New York City; becoming a nurse because her aunt was one during WWI; enlisting in the army in 1943; getting basic training in Atlantic City, NJ; joining the 131st Evacuation Hospital; sailing on the RMS Queen Elizabeth; arriving in Greenock, Scotland and going to Alteringham, England (possibly Altrincham, England), where they lived in private homes; being assigned to a general hospital; taking care of wounded American soldiers; going to Sedan, France; the names of their tents; her experiences treating the wounded from the war front; talking to the patients; living in homes in Austria; smelling the camp before they arrived; seeing mass graves; treating the camp survivors: changing dressings and helping them walk; treating only male patients; seeing the crematorium burned down; her experience with Holocaust denial; not having much contact with Austrian civilians; being told they would be deployed in the Pacific; returning to the U.S. on the General Bliss; being home on leave when the bomb was dropped on Hiroshima; not being sent to the Pacific; being discharged; her reflections on her experience during the war; and keeping in touch with the nurses from her unit.

    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 Mary M. Wood

    Oral History

    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.

    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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