CPT Avelina Ross Oral History

title:

CPT Avelina Ross Oral History

creator:

Ross, Avelina (Pedreschi) (1938 October 21 - )

subject:

Army Nurse Corps

description:

Avelina Ross (formerly Pedreschi) was born on October 31, 1938 in Chuquicamata, Chile, a town built around a large copper mine. She grew up in town and went to high school nearby, eventually going to Catholic University in Santiago for nursing and graduating in December 1959. Because the mining company was American, she was exposed to Americans as a child and tried to learn English and French, hoping to move to the United States herself. She worked at a hospital in California for about a year before joining the Army in 1961, which she did in part because she remembered when Americans helped a devastated Chile after an earthquake, and she felt she was partially paying them back. She could not get into the Air Force or the Navy since she was not a citizen, but the Army decided to take her regardless. She went to Fort Sam Houston in San Antonio, Texas for orientation as a 2nd lieutenant, then went to the Walter Reed Medical Center in Maryland to work in neurosurgery in 1961. After a year at Walter Reed, she requested to go to France and ended up being sent to Verdun, where she worked at the 319th Station Hospital. She met her husband there and they married in France in 1964. She and her husband returned to the states in 1965, and she was stationed at Fort Meade in Maryland. While there, she got orders to go to Vietnam in March 1966, fast-tracking her citizenship. In Vietnam she went to Vung Tau and helped set up the hospital there. Although at first Avelina was bored as it felt like they were reporting for duty to do nothing, this changed when they received their first patients. The first was a group of casualties they received from the Australians' first engagement. She remembers a few procedures and situations that were difficult. There were a lot of amputees, and many serious cases of malaria. She served as an Army nurse from 1961 to 1967, including 19 months in Vietnam at the 36th Evac Hospital, and the 3rd and 17th Field Hospitals. She left the service as a captain, and for her service she was awarded the Vietnam Service Medal/Ribbon. A transcript of this interview is available.

publisher:

Military Women's Memorial Foundation

contributor:

Reborchick, Marcy

date:

2007-08-28

type:

Audio

format:

CD

identifier:

1085; 2007.1085

source:

CLIR - Recordings at Risk

language:

English

relation:

410706

coverage:

Vietnam War (1964-1975) | 1961-67

rights:

Unrestricted