[Helen Holcomb Thompson photograph album]

Collection — Box: 1

Identifier: 8606

Scope and content

Album consisting mainly of photographs taken by then Lieutenant Helen M. Holcomb; contents include 494 of her photographs, 25 commercially printed photographs, 96 postcards, and an additional 18 photos and some ephemera laid in. Photographs document the entire period of Holcomb's Army training and service, including shots of Omaha Beach, the hospital at Bolleville, candid shots of nurses washing their hair and clothes using helmets as basins, daily life for residents and soldiers in France and Belgium, Charles de Gaulle in Paris, V-1 bomb (aka "buzz bomb"), the hospital and surrounding scenery at Aachen, POW camps, Nordhausen concentration camp, foxholes, minefields, train depots, many destroyed buildings, and formal and informal photos of her fellow nurses. Ephemera include a safe conduct pass for a German soldier and a German leaflet on the Allied invasion at Cherbourg.

Dates

1943 - 1945
Undated

Creator

Thompson, Helen Holcomb (Creator, Person)

Language of Material

Captions in English.

Terms Governing Use and Reproduction

Use a book support and be careful when turning pages - paper is brittle and photographs are prone to fall off..

Biographical / Historical

Helen Thompson (née Helen Mercedes Holcomb), born September 15, 1910, grew up in Wadsworth, Ohio. She graduated from the St. Luke School of Nursing in Cleveland in 1932 and worked as a public health nurse. In May of 1943 she became the first nurse from Wadsworth to volunteer for the Army's nurse corps. Initially, she underwent training in the United States, then arrived in England, and went on to arrive in Normandy in July 1944, a month after D-Day. She worked at the hospital in Bolleville, France, and visited Paris after its liberation by the Allies. She was in Liège, Belgium in time for V-E Day, and was also stationed for a time at the 32nd General Hospital in Aachen, Germany. Altogether, she served in the Army's nurse corps from June 1943-October 17, 1945. She married in 1947.