My middle name is elizabeth. Interviewer elizabeth. And then last name . Reid. I was born in pittsburgh, pennsylvania, 1927. April of 1927. Interviewer what date . Mary ninth. April 9, 1927. Tell me about your family when you were born . Mary we were very poor. My father was from tennessee. My mother was from pittsburgh. And when i was born, we lived in pittsburgh then. I had two older brothers and a sister. The oldest brother was 10 years older than i was. And so, i by the time i a little kid,nd they were already grown. So it seemed to me as if i was almost an only child. And i always missed not having somebody else. But we were poor. Lived in houses on a hill. I was never without friends, because we played on the street s and in the fields, on the hills. Pittsburgh is full of hills, so i was my mother would warn me when i would go out to play, not to go over the hill. And of course, i didnt until i andto the end of the row went around the row, until she couldnt see me. But then i went over the hill, because that is where all the kids were. [laughter] interviewer what was your fathers job . Mary my father was he worked for the university, for pittsburgh in the repair department and he was a maintenance man. And he was very well acquainted with construction, and he could do anything in the house. Interviewer so it was around the great depression, right . Mary i was born in 1927. 1929 is when the depression began. So by the time that while i was a child, it was the depression. Interviewer right. It must have been very difficult. Mary well, it wasnt for me, because i was so much younger. But it was very difficult for my older brothers and my sister, because they were in high school and there was no jobs and so forth. And so, as i say, we were very poor. Interviewer tell me about the school you went through. Mary i went to a small school, local school. That was, as i said, we lived on hills. To get to the school, you had to go down the hill, and you also had to come up the hill, of course, after school. So i will never forget, if you want to hear a sad story, i will never forget i was a little kid and i was coming up the hill from school, and there was snow on the road and it was slippery. And the horse and it was a milk cart, and they used horses days to carry those bottles, and the horse was down, and he was beating the horse. And that picture has always stayed in my mind, all my life, it was just such a horrible thing to see for a little kid. But it was only once, you know, but things like that stand out. Interviewer what high school did you graduate, and when . Mary i graduated from schenley high school. Interviewer could you spell it . Mary schenley. Interviewer what year . Mary that was in 1945. Interviewer what did you do after that . Mary well, when i started high school, i had a desire to learn and i was very fortunate to be in the high school i was in. They had very good teachers and they had a good counselor there. And the counselor asked me what i wanted to do, and i said i wanted to be a teacher or a nurse. Graduate nurses were taken from the hospitals to go into the army, or the military. Interviewer when did you join this nurse cadet corps . Mary well, after i graduated from high school. And that would have been in 1945. That would have been september 1945. Interviewer so even though world war ii ended, there were still big demands for the nurse . Mary well, this was the last class for the cadet corps. I was very fortunate to be in it. Interviewer where was it . Mary it was in the Western Pennsylvania Hospital school of nursing. And i graduated in 1948. Interviewer what did you learn there . What was the tuition, and what did you learn . Mary we had no expenses at all. The government paid everything. Not only the school and the residences, living in the nurses quarters, all our food was provided. Even our uniforms were provided. And on top of that, for the First Six Months in the cadet corps, we were given a stipend of 10 a month. And then after we were capped, that was after the sixth month, we were then student nurses and we were given 20 a month. And then, six months before our graduation, we were given 30 a month. Now, this means 30 a month, in those days was a lot of money. Interviewer what were you able to do with the 30 . Mary i saved most of it. Im a saver anyhow, but i saved most of it because i planned on going up to alaska to see my sister and mother and family up there. So i was saving for that. Interviewer you volunteered. Your name was not in the list, but you volunteered to go to korea. Mary right. I thought from the movies i had seen, the nurses were lovely and in white uniforms. Interviewer you might have lost your life in the work. The war. Mary i have the war to me was the real beginning of life. Because i had lived such a sheltered life, and had done so little, really, that it opened up the doors of how large life can be if you allow it to be. And i wanted to be in the army because i felt, not only because of the silly war movies, but because i was very serious. I would never have been able to go to college or get any education. We were too poor for anything else. And when the government came along and offered all this to me, completely free, i felt i owed the army, i owed the country. So when i went in, i didnt feel that i was doing them a favor, i thought they had on me a favor, and i was paying back. And i feel today that that was the right thing to have done. Interviewer very good. Tell me, when did you depart, from where, to korea . At fort worden, not fort worden, anyhow, we left seattle on a ship that was used for transporting people. And what we found out later, a lot of those people who were on the street waiting to get on the ship, a lot of them were civil servants. Civil servants for the army and, japan, i suppose. Because they all got off in yokohama. Only those who were going to korea went on to korea, so they were all civil servants. And that was one of the things, pat,when the three of us andy, and i were looking for the fourth person we needed for our we realized later that probably the people we were approaching were civil servants. We didnt realize, we thought it was all part of the hospital. But it turned out ok, because we eventually gave up trying to find our fourth, and the three of us just stood there looking kind of lost, because we knew somebody else was going to be putting in with us. And this tall, goodlooking irish girl comes up to us and starts to talk, and there was no discussion at all, the three of us just looked at each other and we knew immediately that this was our fourth. And she was. And we became a real solid relationship of four. When did you leave . Ms. Reid we left, when was it . I dont remember right now. Ms. Reid was it summer . Was it summer . Ms. Reid no, it was october. I know that we got to korea on november 7. Where did you arrive . Ms. Reid pusan. We went to japan first, to yokohama, and to korea. We all got off there. What was your unit . When it was organized it was called the 10th station hospital, and that was the most ridiculous situation you could ever think of, because a station hospital in the army is a stationary, permanent hospital. The station hospital, the General Hospital are the ones that are in the states, those are the big hospitals. The ones overseas were the station hospitals. Then the next one down is the eveac hospital, and then in korea, the mash unit was developed. But there is another unit in the field called a field hospital, and that is a mobile unit. The evac hospital is set mobile and thesemimobile station hospital is a permanent hospital. Now, they said a permanent hospital with 50 nurses and 30 , which,icers to korea really, the whole peninsula was a combat area. And it turned up to be that way. But, of course, when we arrived november 7, the war was over. When . Ms. Reid november 7, 1950. It was the end of the war as we thought of it, because the inchon landing had provided troops, to send our troops up to the board. The border. So we had no idea there was anything going on. We were coming in to set up a permanent we would have been the biggest hospital in korea. Not only that, we were assigned to a place in north korea, where we were to set up our big hospital. When we came in, however, with this huge unit, they had no place to put us. The people in pusan, the 21st evac hospital was in pusan, and we were sent there to stage, but they had no place for us. What they did was, they cleaned out the attic, painted the walls, set cots up, and that is where they put us. 50 people. Major able and a couple of her assistants were there, but the rest of us, 48 of us were there, and you couldnt move without however many eyes wanted to watch you. This was in pusan . Ms. Reid yes. And not only that, we were in the attic, and all we had was our footlockers, that was the only piece of furniture we had besides a cot. And we were told that the latrine we could use was on the second floor, and there was a pair of steps that went down. That was on the third floor, we went down to the second floor for the latrine, and we were restricted to only going to that latrine. We werent allowed to go into the hospital. We werent allowed to walk down on the second floor. We were confined to the attic and to the latrine. Well, when we got a look at the latrine, we were a little upset by that, because we looked in the door and all we saw was a row of small sinks, and on the wall were a few commodes with very limited shelter about them. They were mostly not complete. So that was that. And when we looked in, of course, we were children from the depression, and we looked in , took one look at that row of sinks and said, uhoh, saturday night bath. What about the facility . Ms. Reid terrible. Equipment . Ms. Reid terrible. Medicine . Ms. Reid well, we didnt have anything to do with equipment or medicine, because we were there to work. We were there to stage, because they were waiting to send us up to build our hospital, so we had nothing to do. And there was no place to go because we were confined. To send a unit this large into that area was just not good thinking in the beginning. The building was what was used for quarters, and the male officers were on the first floor. Female officers were on the second floor. What we didnt know was where the enlisted men were, because when you walked around the compound, you never saw anything that had to do with enlisted. Finally, someone said, where are they . We were on night duty, and someone said, where are the enlisted . And some little voice from one of the other tables said, someone said something about over the hill. And we said, over the hill, over what hill . And with that, we said, lets go, went out, started walking on the far side and sure enough, there was a hill. It dropped right down, and down on that second level were the greatest tents you ever wanted to see, all reinforced with wood, and they all had their own stove, potbellied stove, and they looked so clean. And we were jealous. And i will tell you, that winter, those breezes were blowing through our old school building, we thought many times about going down and saying, i want a tent. [laughter] of course, we didnt. We wouldnt. What did you eat . Ms. Reid food became a real problem with the four of us, in particular. I was better off than they were, because i could eat breakfast. I liked oatmeal. I was used eating porridge. They would have these scrambled dry eggs, and they had toast and coffee, so i could get enough for breakfast. The other three would not even go to breakfast. Why not . Ms. Reid because they just wouldnt eat it. And it ended up we were living on tunafish that our families sent us. Each family would send us a box in a week, so we had more boxes. Four boxes. We had a box a week of the food we ask for, tunafish, crackers, cookies, relish. You didnt get k rations . Ms. Reid after a long time, eating the same thing over and over, you get to the point where you cant eat it anymore. Soldiers on the front lines ate c rations. Ms. Reid they thought the hospital food was wonderful because it was hot and it was wet and all that sort of stuff, but we, who didnt have c rations, all we had was the same, you had to eat the same thing day after day after day, week after week. You get to the point where you cant eat it. How much were you paid . Ms. Reid i dont even remember, because i had my money sent to the bank. I had 10 a month coming to korea for me, and i didnt use much of that. [laughter] where can you use it, right . Ms. Reid no place. And that was surprising to me. And usually when you go someplace where there are women who do handwork and so forth, they always bring it around to sell to you, and the korean women never did anything like that. They never had anything to sell. When did you leave korea . December 1951. We left, i think it was three days. We left the day before christmas. Because we were in tokyo christmas eve. So what was the most difficult thing you remember during your service in korea . It was those days when we didnt know whether we were going to be overrun by the chinese when they go through. Those were scary days. There was nowhere to go. And we certainly didnt want to become prisoners of war. And you didnt regret at the time that you were in korea . Ms. Reid no. How could you do that . It was my duty. You were human beings. Ms. Reid of course, we were human beings. And you dont regret . Ms. Reid no, i felt like we should be there. Let me ask about the soft side. Was there any romance between nurses and soldiers and so on . Ms. Reid there was no way you could do it. There was no possible way that you could. I will tell you something. I had an older nurse, a Second World War veteran, we were very friendly, and one evening, and it was in the summer and it was a beautiful evening, a big moon just like this coming up, by the water, it was a gorgeous night, so the two of us are just standing there enjoying this gorgeous view and she said, all of a sudden, the worst thing about being in korea is, there is no place you can go for an immoral weekend. And that says it all. There was no place. There was always eyes around you. Any particular patient or wounded soldier you remember, and the reason why . Ms. Reid yes. We had one come down from the north, and how he ever got to us, we never understood that. And we cleaned him up. They never groaned. They never grunted. They never said a word. And the first day especially, nothing was said. But by the second day, a few of them would try to communicate, and it was just body language and so forth. But it ended up we would have some of them laughing, and we would be laughing, and just getting them ready. Because what were you going to do . They were dirty, they had to have surgery, they had to be cleaned, and the job was very simple. How did you clean them . Ms. Reid no, because of the water situation, the amount of water that we needed in the amount of water that we had. What we were interested in was finding the wounds, because we knew that they fought hand to hand, and they couldnt talk to us, so you had to look at them to see if there were any signs of. So you had to look at their bodies and you had to clean the areas, but they were dirty. If there was nothing wrong with their feet or legs, we werent going to do anything with them. But the water situation was a bad thing. And this was nonpotable water. Im sorry . Ms. Reid the water we would be using would be nonpotable, potable being clean, nonpotable, dirty. But it wasnt dirty dirty. When we cleaned them, we felt they were cleaner than if they had been left alone. And that is all you did . Ms. Reid that is all we did. During your whole service in korea . Ms. Reid no, only for five or six days, i think. The six days we were at inchon. And in the meantime, the level of confusion and so forth was very high, because the information coming back, we didnt know whether we were going to stay or be evacuated or what was going on. We just knew something was terribly wrong. And after a week, we were put back on the train. And then, this kind of made me feel bad because these civilians, the place was loaded with civilians, all coming from seoul and inchon and all these places, trying to get out. And they wanted us back in pusan. They just opened the way and we walked on the train, and i kept thinking, those people have been waiting for so long to try to get a train out, then we come along and take the space. But that is what happened. Where did you go . Ms. Reid we went back to pusan. What did you do . Ms. Reid well, we found when we got back to pusan, we were put on buses and taken to this compound, and then we found out that this was the rest of our unit, the rest of the tent station hospital. Our male officers and the enlisted were there. And they were at this compound that had been cleaned up, and very much so, because they had stayed there that whole time when we were going up to ascot city, traveling. They were here in pusan, building, cleaning up and building what would be the hospital. It turned out it didnt stay a station hospital, but it became an evac hospital. The lines would come down from wherever the fighting was going on, and the ones that got into pusan would come into the 21st evac, the 22nd evac, there was a Swedish Hospital down on the bay, and there were hospital ships in the water. So this is what we did with our patients, the ones who were serious would go stay on a hospital ships. We at the evac hospitals would keep the patients that were able to be treated and sent back on the line. That is what we did. The 22nd evac, you dealt with Many American soldiers, not just turks . Ms. Reid oh, yeah. You were only there for six days, but tell me about those patients and how serious well, kept. Ious, the ones you ms. Reid the ones we kept were the ones who were going to get better. And the feet are very important to soldiers, infantrymen, and anything to do with the common things people lived with, constipation, diarrhea, upset with abdominal pain we were always concerned, was it an ulcer, because with an ulcer you have the possibility of a hemorrhage. If you were suspicious of that, we would send them right over to japan. We wouldnt keep them. But if it was diarrhea or worms, we had a tremendous amount of warms. We had really good worm medicine. And i will tell you, those guys would come in with worms and would be so weak and spent that we would treat them with our medicine, and in a couple of weeks they would be a man again. [laughter] and as soon as they got their strength back, they went back on the line. It was from drinking out in the rice patties. At one time, i had a young man coming end and then i was scolding him about drinking water. I said, you know better than that, and he came back at me, when you are thirsty, you drink. And i realized i was out of line to criticize his decision. But anyhow, that was the kinds of things, and we had surgery too. But it wouldnt be what we would call dirty surgery, but we treated the dirty wounds, cleaned them up, and put them back on the line. What did you feel when you saw so many Wounded Soldiers . What were you thinking . You volunteered to come to korea. Ms. Reid it was my job. It was nothing to think about. And when it really got rough, and we didnt know whether the line was going to hold or not, and that was, where were we going to go . We were at the tip of the peninsula. All that was down there was water. And the only other thing would have been prisoner of war if the chinese had been able to get across that river. And we never knew. We had been ordered to hang our helmet with the liner in, our canteen with daily, freshwater, and our helmet and our bag with our important papers, and a threeday supply for managing. Where did you sleep and what were your Living Conditions there . Ms. Reid the compound had two old school buildings. And one was the one we used for the hospital, as an evac hospital, we were semimobile. So we had big tents. We had tents that held 70 to 90 cots, and we had 10 of those around our compound, and those would be full, as well as the hospital. In the building we used as the hospital, on the second floor of the building, downstairs was the surgery and administration offices, but on the second floor was a medical ward. So between all these areas was what composed our hospital. We found out later, however, the ones who were sent to the 21st evac hospital, when we got up the ship, were we nurses. Because our troops, our enlisted people were not on the james ohara, where they were i have no idea, but we really did begin to treat soldiers on the day we on the day after we arrived in afcom. Lets see, thanksgiving, was that the 27th . It would have been the 28th we stayed, and it would have been the 29th that we arrived in afcom city, so that would have been the 29th. Tell me about the situation, how bad was it . Ms. Reid it was horrible. Ms. Reid the Living Conditions im talking about the Wounded Soldiers. Ms. Reid we reported at 8 00 in the morning for duty and they , said, go to the Main Building. And the Main Building was what had been the auditorium during the Second World War, where thousands of gis went to be entertained, you know how huge it was. We walked in there and there was a row on row on row on row of crosses, a huge room with cots that were two together. And in the army, if you have to double up on space like that, you have head to toe, and that is what it was. All those cots were filled with turks, dirty, filthy turks straight off the battle lines. And they all had to be cleaned up so they could have surgery done. Now, these were nothing seriously wounded. You have to understand, we were an evac hospital. The evac hospitals job in the we take care of the serious that need care, but our main job is to take care of the people fighting the battles to get them back on the line as fast as you can. Because there are lots of things that go wrong that can be treated very easily, and sent back. And that is what our job was to do. So that is what we were doing here. And we said how, how do you want us to do it . And they said two nurses, one nurse on each end of the line, and just cleaned them up and then go back to the other side. When you arrived and when you were around there, how was it . Ms. Reid dirty. Smelly. Ugly. No color. When we left the ship and were driving through the streets of pusan, i saw no color, no life. I looked for stores. There were no stores. There were no gas stations. Not even a saloon. Nothing. And only military vehicles, no civilian anything. And what did you think about that . Ms. Reid i was amazed by it. And there were0, no cars, and there were no cars, no gasoline. Interviewer when you left korea in december 1951, what were you thinking about the future of korea . Have you ever thought about it . What were you thinking . Mary when i left our war in 19501951 was a completely different word than it was in 19521953. So the only way i could look at it was what i had known. I thought it would carry on, and i felt we would eventually win, as we get, being able to hold the chinese, and when ridgeway came in, well, before ridgeway, when we were under general walker, we were in retreat. And in retreat is not a pleasant thing to be in. Interviewer you know what happened to korea now, right . Mary yes. Interviewer what do you know about korea now . Mary i was over in korea in 2009. Was in 2009 . 2006. 2010. Well, close. It wasnt long ago. I was absolutely astounded. I could not believe my eyes. I couldnt believe my eyes, for one thing, for all the color. All the flowers, everything, and the big buildings. I mean, this was just a whole new world. And the Korean People were different. They were busy and they were smiling. And you know, when we came in to korea, the women all wore the same things, the little white jacket, lots of skirts, they were bloomers it looked like at the waistline, the waist and ankles, and it was such a foreign look. It was from 1905, remember. They hadnt come past that. They were very clean. They would take our uniforms, our fatigues, they would take those fatigues down to the river and they would be perfectly ironed and folded, and just perfect. Interviewer so what do you think about the korean war . What is korea to you now . You have such a clear picture of before and after. What is the korean war to you, what is korea to you and what is the importance of the korean war . Mary i think the korean war was absolutely a magnificent example of what can be done if you live in the correct manner with freedom. And i know that the Korean People give us americans a lot of the credit for the freedom that you learned was available to you. And i feel a lot of gratitude to the Korean People, for recognizing the part we played in it. And i think also, it is such a wonderful demonstration to other secondrate countries of what we did. That interview was provided to cspan by the korean war legacy foundation. For more information about their archives, plus hundreds of interviews, video clips and photos, visit their website at koreanwarlegacy. Org. This is American History tv, exploring our paystub is exploring our history every weekend. That is the 70th anniversary of the korean war, on june 25, 1950. The korean war began 70 years ago on june 25, 1950. And ended about three years later in july of 1953. Up next, an interview with veteran carl house, recorded in by the korean15, war legacy foundation. He recounts his part in the inchon, it turning point in the war. And a battle in which he was captured. Am suffering as a prisoner of the chinese. The project was underwritten by south koreans patriots and veteran affairs