LT Dorothy May Caudill Oral History Side A

title:

LT Dorothy May Caudill Oral History Side A

creator:

Caudill, Dorothy May (Swendson) (1920 May 24 - )

subject:

Navy Nurse Corps

description:

Side 1 of 2. Dorothy M. Caudill was born on May 24, 1920 in Astor, Iowa, and she grew up with her parents an older sister, and an older brother mostly in Dallas Center, Iowa. Her father worked various types of jobs, including clerking at stores and working as a handyman, and her mother was a private nurse. Her father died by suicide when she was just 14, but her mother ensured that she, her sister in college, and her brother in the Civil Conservation Corps, were all still well looked after and able to take care of themselves. Caudill knew she was going to be a nurse from a very young age, but after graduating from high school she spent some time at the American Institute of Business in Des Moines, Iowa since she missed most deadlines for nursing programs. She didn’t like this course, however, and entered nurse’s training at Iowa Methodist Nurse Training School in 1939. After graduating in 1942, she was interested in surgery and obstetrics, so she took a post-graduate course in operating room technique in St. Louis, Missouri. After the bombing of Pearl Harbor, she decided to join the Navy Nurse Corps, choosing that over the Army because her brother had already enlisted in the Navy. After finishing her post-graduate course, she enlisted in 1943. She first reported to the Great Lakes Naval Training Base in Illinois. There, she worked in a scarlet fever ward, then she was assigned as a supervisor of corpsmen in the operating room. After serving there for four months, she was sent to the Naval Air Station at Fort Lauderdale, Florida to work at the Naval Dispensary, where she was a general duty nurse for officers and, once again, a supervisor for the operating room. They had a lot of men who’d been hurt in plane crashes in training and after being sent over to the Pacific, often involving treating very serious and extensive burns, which was hard on her both physically and mentally. While at Fort Lauderdale, she was able to take a 15-day leave to see her brother for the first time in three years while he was on leave from submarine duty. From Fort Lauderdale, she was sent to the Naval Hospital in Brooklyn, New York on temporary duty at the cancer ward before getting orders to Argentia, Newfoundland in Canada. She was, once again, an operating room supervisor. Caudill left the service in 1945 with the rank of lieutenant. For her service, she was awarded an American Campaign Medal and World War II Victory Medal. A transcript of this interview is available.

publisher:

Military Women's Memorial Foundation

contributor:

Scott, Kate M.

date:

2005-05-25

type:

Audio

format:

Cassette

identifier:

158; 2005.158

source:

CLIR - Recordings at Risk

language:

English

relation:

138086

coverage:

World War II (1939-1945) | 1943-46

rights:

Unrestricted