Gang then helped open the service club at Wharton Barracks in Heilbronn.Ĭollection includes Stuttgart Post News, Jan. When the Korean War broke out, she volunteered for the Army Special Services and was sent to Germany for two years, where her first assignment was at the 7th Army Headquarters’ Pyramid Service Club. Jeanne (Hamby) Gang, a Piedmont, CA, native wanted to join the Navy Women’s Reserve ( WAVES) during World War II, but was told that she was “too near-sighted.” Instead, she joined the American Red Cross but was considered “too young” for overseas assignment, so she served as a recreational and social staff aide in Army and Navy hospitals in her home state. We lost eight men and a number of supply vehicles.” After the ambush, the nurses began calling themselves “The Lucky Thirteen.”Ĭollection includes scrapbook with newspaper and magazine clippings (including several articles about 1st MASH nurses in Korea), and photographs compiled by Fleming during her Army Nurse Corps service in World War II and the Korean War and typed report on nursing aspects in Korea by Fleming. All that day we worked on the roadside operating and treating for shock. “About sun up we got out of the ditch and started treating the wounded. “The whole sky was lit up by gunfire and burning vehicles,” reported Chief Nurse MAJ Eunice Coleman. During the battle, the nurses retreated to a roadside ditch. As the 1st MASH moved from Inchon to Pusan with the 7th Infantry Division, they came under attack in the early morning of Oct. Because mobile and evacuation hospitals followed the troops and extremely fluid battle lines, Army nurses often found themselves closer to the front than anticipated.
Margaret (Zane) Fleming and 12 other Army nurses with the 1st MASH (Mobile Army Surgical Hospital) landed on the beach at Inchon, Korea, on Sept. They complement the June 2005 publication of A Defense Weapon Known to Be of Value: Servicewomen of the Korean War Era, co-authored by staff of the Women’s Memorial Foundation and published by the University Press of New England. The following highlights from the Women’s Memorial Foundation Collection focus on women’s service during the Korean War Era (1950-1953).
And just as in previous wars, the services turned again to American women to meet personnel needs, asking them to leave their homes, jobs and families to serve their country. As before, a downsized military establishment rushed to call up, draft and recruit manpower, but recruitment numbers fell short of military requirements. In 1950, fewer than five years after World War II had ended, the United States found itself once again confronted by a war for which it was unprepared. To write ‘finis’ to women contributions … would be turning back time.” … It would be foolhardy to wait for another war to find out how and where women could best be used for national defense. “It would be tragic if, in another emergency, a new generation had to start from scratch had to duplicate effort make the same mistakes.