WWII, U.S. Cadet Nurse
Corps Program
Ethelyn Smedshammer Paulson
By Allison Veselka, Assistant at the Barnes County Museum in Valley City, North Dakota
Ethelyn Smedshammer (Paulson) graduated from Litchville High School in 1945.
She went straight from High School into Nursing School. Since America's entry into World War II in 1941, Hospitals on the homefront, overseas, and on the battlefield were in need of nurses. In 1942 a program was instituted, the Cadet Nurse Corps Program. Several nursing schools over the continental United States took part in this program. It was an accelerated course, giving student nurses 3 years of study, observation, and duty in a hospital of their choosing. The Program ran from 1942 to the end of the war in July of 1945.
As Ethelyn had entered in May of 1945, her class, the future class of 1948, was considered the last class of Cadet Nurses at Valley City Mercy Hospital School of Nursing. As in case of all Cadet Nurse Corps classes, the government paid for their tuition. The girls were furnished with a uniform, an allowance and were given accommodations in a dormitory on the hospital grounds. They didn't have to drill, but had to do a certain amount of physical exercise. Ethelyn said that they were not given a lot of time off and as a result a lot of girls had a difficult time adjusting. They were homesick.
Some of the learning took place in the hospital but several classes were held at the local college all the way across town. Ethelyn recalls having to walk all the way to the college and back as they had no vehicles. The last years were spent in another hospital - in most cases in Minneapolis or in Bismarck. Before graduating in 1948, a local Doctor, Dr. Merret, was in need a nurse. Ethelyn asked the sisters (Mercy Hospital was a Catholic school of nursing) if it was okay to take the job and they allowed her to. She worked for Dr. Merret for a year before meeting her husband, Conrad Paulson, and abandoning her nursing to become a wife and mother. Although Ethelyn mentioned that even though she was no longer a nurse, relatives would often come to her if they were sick or hurt. Ethelyn lives in Marion, North Dakota and is almost 90 years old.