CPT Edith M. Key Oral History Tape 1, Side B

title:

CPT Edith M. Key Oral History Tape 1, Side B

creator:

Key, Edith May (Rubright) (Knudson) (1919 January 25 - )

subject:

Army Nurse Corps

description:

Tape 1 of 2, side 2 of 2. Edith M. Key (maiden name Rubright, formerly Knudson) was born on January 25, 1919 in Temple, Pennsylvania. She graduated from Muhlenberg Township High School in 1936, worked in an office for a couple years, then went to nursing training at St. Joseph’s Hospital in Reading, Pennsylvania in 1938, graduating in 1941. She wanted to move away from home, so she took the civil service exam and chose to work in the Indian Service, so she moved to Fort Defiance, Arizona to work on the Navajo Reservation, working there for only a few months before joining the Army. She joined through Fort Huachuca, Arizona in September 1942. The Army was still segregated at that point, so although there were many black nurses and doctors stationed there, she had very little contact with them, working in a completely different station hospital. The base also had many black enlisted soldiers, so the white nurses were heavily monitored and restricted under the false notion that they needed extra protection and to limit any interaction with black servicemembers. From there, in December 1943 she was assigned to the 102nd Evacuation Hospital in San Luis Obispo, California for maneuvers, treating men who were training for overseas duty and practicing set-up and take-down of hospitals themselves. They were shipped off to Camp Kilmer next to complete overseas training and crossed over to Europe from there, arriving in April 1943. She was billeted in England until July when they were shipped to Utah Beach and set up a 400-bed hospital in a meadow outside of Sainte Mere Eglise, France. They treated battle casualties at this hospital, both American and German. She had become assistant chief nurse before the unit had left the United States, and this position entailed keeping records and supervising corpsmen. They moved from this station to Ettelbruck, Luxembourg and continued to move from town to town as the Army moved and evacuated. They eventually ended up in Hui, Belgium where the nurses set up in a school before the Battle of the Bulge. She met her future husband, an enlisted man in the same unit, while stationed there. She thinks that a lot of people, military and civilian, did not take her service and the trauma that stemmed from it seriously when she returned home, assuming she couldn’t have been through too much because she was “just” a nurse. She was still in the service and in the States hoping to go to the Pacific when her first husband first suggested marriage, and although she didn’t really want to get married, the end of the war and her subsequent discharge pushed her in that direction for stability. After moving to California with her first husband, she was repeatedly turned away from welfare and healthcare programs for veterans because they didn’t think that nurses counted, even when she presented her military documents. Key had reached the rank of captain by the time of her discharge in 1946, and for her service she was awarded a Bronze Star Medal, Women's Army Corps Service Medal, American Campaign Medal, European-African-Middle Eastern Campaign Medal with a silver star, and World War II Victory Medal. A transcript of this interview is available.

publisher:

Military Women's Memorial Foundation

contributor:

Scott, Kate M.

date:

2006-05-23

type:

Audio

format:

Cassette

identifier:

521.01; 2006.521

source:

CLIR - Recordings at Risk

language:

English

relation:

094559

coverage:

World War II (1939-1945) | 1942-46

rights:

Unrestricted