CPT Helen T. Boothroyd Oral History Part 1

title:

CPT Helen T. Boothroyd Oral History Part 1

creator:

Boothroyd, Helen "Mother Irene" Theresa (1920 May 14 - )

subject:

Army Nurse Corps

description:

Part 1 of 7. Helen Theresa Boothroyd A.K.A. Mother Irene was born on May 14, 1920 in Maynard, Massachusetts. She grew up there with her parents and four siblings, and graduated from the local high school before going to the Carney Hospital School of Nursing. She was meant to graduate in 1941, but because she was very ill for six months, she ended up graduating in April of 1942. She then worked at Carney Hospital for almost a year before joining the Army Nurse Corps in 1943. She was then sent to Fort Devens, Massachusetts for a sort of orientation, and was only there for about three weeks before being set overseas. She made the trip across the Atlantic in January 1944 on the Queen Mary, which was loaded with about 25,000 soldiers and 40 nurses. After landing near Glasgow, Scotland, Boothroyd was sent to a medical lab in Salsbury for a week or so before being stationed at the 67th Evacuation Hospital in Taunton, England. While there, the nurses taught enlisted men basic first aid like how to take temperatures and practiced how to set up a field hospital before being sent to France. After arriving at Utah Beach, she volunteered to work at the 91st Hospital and traveled between French cities with the 1st Army. She was with the Army when Paris was liberated, and was able to go into the city two days later. They continued moving through northern France before entering Luxembourg and Belgium, where she continued moving from city to city every few weeks. Day one of the interviews ends here, right before the Battle of the Bulge. Day two of interviews, conducted twelve days later, picks up again where Boothroyd left off in Belgium. While in Malmedy, Belgium, they stayed in a former German troop Kaserne (like barracks) that had a torture chamber and gas chamber on the first floor they could see whenever they went to the mess hall. As the Battle of the Bulge was coming to a close, they moved into Germany. As they continued traveling, Boothroyd remembers passing the Buchenwald and Dachau concentration camps, which they were not allowed to enter. Boothroyd vividly remembers one day when a woman who was nine-months pregnant came to the field hospital with serious chest and abdominal wounds. They couldn’t find anyone who spoke the same language as her in the camp, but eventually Boothroyd was able to get her to relax and attempt a normal birth. Her heart rate, however, dropped too low so they had to attempt a C-section instead. Despite everyone’s best efforts to save the mother and the child, her wounds were too serious and they both passed away on the operating table. They continued traveling through Germany before entering Czechoslovakia (now the Czech Republic and Slovakia). They stayed there for a few weeks before returning to France. In September 1945, Boothroyd was eligible to return home, so she went from the 67th Evac Hospital to the 102nd Evac Hospital since it was scheduled to return to the states in October. She was sent to Camp Kilmer, New Jersey to be discharged, a process that formally finished in 1946. Boothroyd worked at the West Roxbury Veterans Hospital for a few years before she joined the Army Reserve in 1950 and was recalled to the Korean War. She worked stateside at a hospital near the Hanscom Air Field, Massachusetts where many wounded men were flown into from Korea. She left the service again in 1952 because she wanted to go to school, enrolling at Boston College and getting a bachelor’s degree in nursing. She worked in nursing for ten years before joining the Abbey because she wanted to live a contemplative life. As of the interview Boothroyd was still a reserve, now with the Navy. A transcript of this interview is available.

publisher:

Military Women's Memorial Foundation

contributor:

Reborchick, Marcy

date:

2008-03-26

type:

Moving Image

format:

DVD-R

identifier:

1109.01; 2007.1109

source:

CLIR - Recordings at Risk

language:

English

relation:

010217

coverage:

World War II (1939-1945) | 1943-45, 1950-52

rights:

Unrestricted