Women War Veterans Interview

Agnes Rycek was a Navy Nurse in World War II who stayed in the states to care for the wounded that were shipped home. A humble woman, with vigorous life in her eyes, she kindly allowed me to bombard her with questions of her past. And though she kept telling me that her life was not as interesting as those who went overseas, I could tell, from hearing her tale, how she was just as important an influence here. During the interview, I gained more insight of the generation who lived during the war -- what they did, what they thought, what they believed -- and I learned much from her as her story unfurled…

[I was born]* right down the street [in Pittsburg]. My parents were first generation Polish people. Both my grandparents on both my dad’s and mother’s side were Polish. I had three sisters and one brother. One sister was a nurse, and one sister got her degree – taught at Saint Mary’s of the Plains College. She was a nun. My brother was an engineer. He has five patents. We were born here. It was…it was my grandparents that were the ones who came here. [My parents were] born here in Pittsburg. My dad was a machinist who worked for McNallys. You know, primarily at one time they were making shovels to mine coal with; and my mother took care of the house. My folks were very good. We had a nice family.

My dad died when I was twelve years old. It was just my mother. So, even when I was in school, I worked. Well, I mean, if I wanted to go to school, if I wanted a new coat, if I wanted anything, I worked. It was understood.

From my first grade on, I went to Saint Mary’s. Then, [at] that time there was a junior high on Broadway. I took my ninth grade there. Then I went to Pittsburg High School. Then I finished my high school; and then, I was too young to go to into nursing, so I went out and got my degree in pre-med at Pittsburg Health Center School.

At that time, I mean, women doctors were very rare. You just, you know, this was very unusual. So I went into nursing. [I chose nursing because], well, first of all, I had an older sister who’s a nurse, and I knew from age two that I wanted to become a nurse. That’s what I wanted to do.

I went to nursing through the cadet corp. I don’t know if you know what that is. It’s just a way that you could go into student nursing. But through the cadet corp, the people who didn’t have enough money could go into nursing; but then they had to join the service. I started training when I was eighteen, and I finished when I was twenty-one.

I [went into service] right after I got out of my training, my nurses training. Which was, uh, forty… something or other. I can’t remember. [I decided to go into service because], well, you were kind of expected to. If you got your training through the cadet corp, it was kind of understood that you were going into the service as a nurse. See, this cadet corp paid for your nursing training; and so, it was understood that you went in after you’re finished. I went in, and I stayed in until after the war was over; and then I stayed in the reserves for several years. I started out as a Lieutenant JG. I went into reserves as a JG. Junior Grade Lieutenant.

See, they were really hard up for medical people, you know -- Pacific and all that stuff --and they [were] needed. They were shipping boys back here and they needed them.

There was a group of us that were together, and was sent to this place in California to this hospital there. It was outside Corona, California. It was very close to Riverside and it’s about fifty some miles from Los Angeles. It was a club that they had converted to a hospital. [The hospital had no name]. It was a U.S. Navy hospital. The women were the nurses and they were the officers. The corp men were enlisted personnel. I think there were some WACS or WAVES there to run the offices, did the typing and that kind of stuff. But mostly it was corp men and nurses that took care of the patients. And they had some others to run the general maintenance of the department.

They put you under an older nurse that had been there, and she showed you the books and showed you where to go and that was it. You were there. After you’ve been there for a while then you went on your own, took care of your ward. You controlled your ward. You usually have corp men that worked under you. So you instructed them, you showed them how to do dressing, you showed them how to do medications, you made out their time schedules. You just generally run your ward, you know, and your job, primarily, was that of setting up the ward and then teaching the procedures. This procedure has to be done, you do it this way and, you know, see that it’s done. See that it gets clean; and that was primarily what you did.

Usually on a day shift, I’d have two or maybe three corp men to work with me. And each shift usually had two; then at night, one that was directly under me. And then, you had the whole hospital that you had to coordinate. The doctor would write his orders on a chart and you had to see that his orders were carried out. Transfer the things so that the medicines would be given at that hour.

[On a typical day], well, you come on the ward. Usually it’s eight o’clock. You got the report from the night nurse. This patient was this way – you went through the whole [story] of each patient. This one slept, this one didn’t sleep, this one was, you know, the whole thing. Then, usually you set up and see that your breakfast and your meal got served. Then after that, you check what procedures were going to have to be done, who had to have their bath, when the doctor was going to show up to do his rounds. He’d come in, did his rounds, left orders that had to be done for this patient. It was noon, served dinner. Get that up; and then, in the afternoon, [too,] whenever it needed to be. By that time, three o’clock, just about time for the PM gals to come on. Give them an order, and, so, you know, you had to see that this patient got down to physiotherapy, this patient see this doctor when he wanted to do this, this patient got his dressing changed. You just ran the ward. (laughs)**.

Usually, you had to handle a twenty bed ward, with the ten on one side and ten on the other. That was ten beds, you know. And there were different wards. Some of them were complete paraplegics, some had EMT wards that you had to take care of nose, throat and that type of thing. It really depended upon how they were, what wards you were sent to and what had to be done, you know. But usually, you handled about twenty patients. You see that they were taken care of. I won’t say that you had to do as much taking care of as you just had to see that they were done. Mostly, I mean, your corp men did a lot of the work, except for grade your procedures. They served their trays and, you know, that was it.

But it was, ah, it was a very interesting experience.

My first ward was all orthopedic. All the ones that had to have surgery. That was my first ward. I worked for a while on woman’s ward. The woman’s ward was just pretty much the same thing as you see on all the other ordinary wards in an ordinary hospital. They did ordinary stuff like biopsies, there were GYN situations, colds, upper respitory, ENT stuff, just ordinary things. Then, they had one big unit on tubercular patients.

[Also] the first ward I had were the marines who had been on Iwo Jima. You know? The flag and all that. They were there. They put the flag up in Iwo Jima. They were the ones whose had some sort of injury or something, and they shipped them back. They were there on Iwo Jima. [Actually,] most of my patients were marines that had been in the Pacific. You know, all of those small places where they fought down there in WWII. The Navy took care of most of the navy personnel and the marines. So I didn’t have soldiers, you know. I was always with the marines or our navy personnel. The immediate [injuries] were taken care of aboard ship. By the time they got to us, they were usually at least treated. Now, we had large wards of tubercular patients, and we had large wards which needed a lot of physiotherapy, paraplegics, they had lost arms or had wounded arms or legs.

The most danger [I was in] was that I worked eight months on a tubercular ward. So we had patients that had bad tuberculosis. We were doing chest and lung transplants. Most of these patients had been prisoners of war.

I think, you did your job. Heck, you couldn’t be emotional. You had this to take care of, and that to take care of, and that to take care of. Maybe, once you stopped and thought about it, you can get…, but you didn’t have time to get emotional. Get this done, get that done, get this done. See that this ward’s cleaned up, you know. It keeps you busy.

[What I gained from this experience is] the evil of war. I remember one night – oh, it wasn’t just one night only – those guys that had been there at war, you listened to them cry at night, and you knew it was not easy. They were out of the war, they were back in the states; but they, but they’d wake and…That was the hardest part, listening to them [tell stories]. Why, they were crying at twelve o’clock at night when they should be sleeping. They had seen this, they had seen that. They wanted to forget, but they couldn’t. They tell you that when they were trying to get up on Iwo Jima, the ashes from the volcano was so hot they burned their tummy. You could hash out a lot of bad stories if you wanted to listen to them. I mean, war is hell; and there’s no arguing that. [But hearing others tell their stories] was the most rewarding [part] -- that you would listen. And that was sometimes as therapeutic as any medicine.

One [significant experience] I remember, one of the marines who had had injuries to his chest used to sit right by the desk. And every time he walked up and down the hallway, he’d say, “Hip, two, three, four. Hip, two three four.” (laughs). That’s very significant… (laughs)

Oh, [men] were very good to us. I mean, they were serious. I think we let them know there’s no nonsense. We could. But, they were good to us. They would do anything for you. But, I’m sure that it was the atmosphere of the hospital and everything, and we were taking care of them, so they knew. They were very, very, very nice to us.

The men treated you just as you expected them to, and you were the one that controlled how they treated you. I mean, you said no nonsense, [then] no nonsense, you know? It’s the woman that controls the situation. She’s the one that has to say yes or no. And they treat you just like they treat anyone. You see, we were treated royally because they needed us. It was hard to get nurses, and they appreciated when somebody would be there and help. So nurses were treated very royally, in most cases.

In the hospital setup, yes, [women were treated well]. Otherwise, I can’t say. I think they were treated as much as they demanded. If they were treated right, that was because they did that right and they demanded it. I blame the women. I don’t blame the men; I blame the women. In other words, it’s what the women ask for, you know. As far as nurses, they liked us, they were good to us.

[Rules] weren’t too different from a regular nurse at home. You had a student nurse. What did she have to do? She had to be in at a regular hour and the door was closed. She couldn’t entertain a man in her room. I think you weren’t supposed to date enlisted personnel. You know the whole deal with that. Just the regular stuff. If you wanted to take a gentlemen, you could go someplace else, ya’ know. I think it might have been different if we hadn’t been officers. You had to come in the next day, and you were in charge of your ward. So you had to be a nice little girl. If the nurses broke a rule, they were usually sent home. Minor, minor [offense], they’d be fined, maybe. But, nurses [who broke the rules], one day they would be there and the next day they wouldn’t. It’s either that or ship them out. If they were getting in too much trouble, it’s possible that they’d ship them to another one.

Women had to get permission from your [commanding] officer [to marry]; and they would change some of your living arrangements, and that type of thing, if they married. But usually they didn’t. And if they did marry, they usually sent them back home. They got out of service or sent them back. At that time, marriage was not a good idea. They didn’t know how long the war would last, you know. Well, if you had children, you would usually stay home, out of service. You had a child to take care of.

Let me see. I want to say [my pay was] roughly two hundred a month. But then, don’t quote me on that. You have to understand that we had complete board and room. So, the money was just for immediate cash. But most of it was paid for as far as your uniform, and everything else.

If you were an ensign, you got one pay; if you were a Junior Grade Lieutenant, you got another one. It didn’t make any difference. It was how much rank you had on your shoulders. So it didn’t matter if you were a male or female officer. You had your rank. The nurses, primarily --to get your rank -- is how long you stay in service. I stayed two years. By two years, I got my JG. If you wanted to go on to a full lieutenant, you just stayed on until you could make a captain, if you stay that long in the service.

[I slept] in the nurses’ rooms. They had a special building, you know. You had your room in the building. I grant you this room of ours wasn’t as interesting as it was for the soldiers and all that stuff. And, you know, they had different materials. By the time I went in, the worst of the war was over. We had our own private rooms. Just one room, that’s it. They were feeding us the same thing they were feeding patients, so we got good food. Better than people out fighting. We had milk, we had vegetables and fruit, and everything.

[On duty, I wore] a white uniform. No scrub suit type things, now. We wore white with a starched hat and a starched uniform, and white shoes and white socks. And outside, you wore your dress blues or your dress whites – not your hospital uniform, but your Navy uniform. [We had to wear them all the time.] I mean, of course, if you went over to the pool and went swimming, but…(chuckles). They had quite a large physiotherapy department where we were, so we could use the pool that they had as part of the physiotherapy department. The nurses could go swim in the pool. Oh, they had a small golf course there; and it was a nice place. See, it had been a private club, and that’s why it had a pool and everything else.

When you were off duty, you could do whatever you wanted; and you had a long weekend or you had your two weeks vacation, you know. We had no problem [visiting places outside the hospital]. We go where we wanted to go. You see, you’re talking to officers. We all got together and arranged to have a car, and on our days off, we take off in the car; Then we would take it all around and go places; like, how about up to San Francisco? That’s first time I’ve been to San Francisco. You had your weekends just like your regular ones. You could take off on Friday night, and not come back until Monday morning.

Well, we had a little theater group going. And they put on little shows, so we could sing and we could dance. We had a lot of fun and foolishness. Once you were there, you know, there was no JG or officer. You were all just men and women. You took off your braid, as they call it.

[Segregation] was not mandatory, but it was often chosen. I mean, the Spanish people were happy to get into one end of the ward by themselves, take beds close to the others where they could speak their Spanish. And the same way it was not a mandatory thing; they didn’t have to, but they usually wanted to. And they felt more at ease. Now, I can’t say about all of them; I can say about my wards. Well, which, after all, remember you’re working with people.

The best part [of being in the military] was people. Oh, maybe because they never cease to amaze me. I think the worst part was too big an ego. Some of them just were…, just one little braid on their shoulder and wanted to be big-time officers. (laughs) Well, they pull a rank on you, just like what happens here now. People haven’t changed. People are people.

I think once you’ve adjusted to that way of life, that was your biggest problem. I mean, [adjusting] to your routine, your officers, Navy personnel, who you’re supposed to salute, and all this stuff. Then, once you’ve adjusted, that’s you’re biggest problem. And then you run your ward, I mean, it was very easy running the wards.

[I missed my family a lot, away from home.] I’ll always miss my family, you know. I was close enough so that I could get on the phone and call them, I suppose. There was no problem to call them. Only financially. You know. But you did call them on special occasions, and that was it. You kept in contact with them. You wrote them and you called them, let them know where you were, what you were doing, and everything.

I wasn’t overseas. I didn’t get overseas. I’m not unhappy that I didn’t. What happened was that I came into the service late enough that the worst of the war was really over with. I was still in the Navy Reserves. I was in a plush little hospital back in the states. And everything and anything that had here, we got it, and we got the best. They went out of their way to find the best doctors that they could find and do surgeries. The equipment was just as good, in fact they were better than what you would have had in most of your hospitals at that time. We got, surgical instruments, everything was the best they could be.

[After the war], I lived two years in Africa. I went to Liberia, because of the Peace Corp, for two years. I was doing anesthesia. You see a lot of things that you wouldn’t see here in Pittsburg. You come back and you appreciate things that you normally wouldn’t notice even, ya’ know?

Then, I came back and started to teach, and I taught nursing because I had a degree. I got my degree in nursing from the Catholic University in Washington D.C. [in three years], and I taught at various places. And a lot of the hospitals, in order to get accreditation for their school of nursing, had to have people with degrees. Then after I taught, I just went back to school. I trained for two more years to give anesthetics. And now, well… I always say that if a nurse walked in to get a job and she was warm, they’d hire her. So, I had no problem getting work. So, oh, thirty years, I did anesthesia. I worked in an operating room.

[After that], I collapsed! I was ready to retire. Believe me! I think that [service] was very interesting, very educational experience. I learned management, how to get along with everybody, you know. Do I get mad at the pharmacist today or wait till tomorrow?

This interview with Agnes Rycek was conducted by Diana Liu on Saturday, December 10, 2005.

* Brackets [ ] were used to indicate words that were not spoken by Ms. Rycek and were used to clarify her meaning.

**Parentheses ( ) were used to indicate actions.