In a speech to the Women's Overseas Service League's Orange County California unit, Mary E. Price talks about her more than thirty-years as a U.S. Navy nurse and her service in three wars. Price says that she started nursing school at the Georgetown University Hospital in 1933, joined the Naval Reserves in 1938 and was first sent to the Panama Canal Zone in early 1940. She talks about her pay and her hospital duties in the Canal Zone and the great anxiety everyone felt after the attack on Pearl Harbor. Price says that she was next assigned to the Bethesda Naval Hospital for thirteen months and later to a hospital ship for the rest of the war. After the war, Price says, she returned to school on the G.I. Bill, but was reactivated for duty in Japan and the Philippines for almost two years during the Korean War. She says that she went back to school after Korea, earned her graduate degree in hospital administration and taught Navy corpsman during the Vietnam War. Price says that her last assignment was at the El Toro Marine Corps Air Station in California. Recorded by Mary Braumer. Vivian Peterson introduces and concludes the recording.
Read
