Shiflett, Marian.

[Scrapbook of a World War II Navy Nurse].

Mostly San Diego, CA: 1942-1943. 11¼” x 9¼”. Commercial scrapbook. Pp. 88 with 46 newspaper and magazine clippings, 183 photographs, 14 real photo postcards and 67 pieces of ephemera adhesive mounted and laid in. Photos range from 1” x 1” to 8” x 10”, most around 3” x 4” and all but 2 are captioned. Good: boards lightly worn and scuffed; a few pages detached; pages chipped and susceptible to more.

This is a fantastic scrapbook compiled by a young woman from Ohio, Marian Shiflett, who served as a nurse in the United States Navy during World War II. Bright, colorful and heavily captioned, the album contains incredible photographs, news clippings and wartime souvenirs that identify dozens of young men and women in the military and provide an inside glimpse into the lived experience of a naval nurse.

Marian Shiflett was born in 1913 in Sidney, Ohio and graduated from the nursing school at Grand Hospital in Columbus in 1935. She served as part of a ranking-officer nurse and doctor unit in Dayton, specially organized, per a newspaper account we found online, “to act and practice as a group so that should the navy demand their services at bases or floating hospitals, the units could be sent to undertake the war tasks and act with greatest coordination together.” In early 1942 she was ordered to the San Diego Naval Hospital, and this album thoroughly documents her life and work there through September 1943. Shiflett then went overseas until 1947, earning the rank of Lieutenant Commander and serving at medical stations in Australia, New Guinea and the Dutch East Indies. She returned to Ohio, married and remained a nurse. She died in 2002.

This album is filled to the brim with media coverage, including fabulous photo-illustrated clippings, of medical and military service men and women. There are headlines like “Navy Nurses Win Acclaim for Skill in Emergencies” and an article by Gladyce Badger, Director of the American Red Cross Pacific Unit, on the formation of the Nursing Service Student Reserve. Clippings show nurses at various tasks, as they “instruct hospital corpsmen” and “relax on Fiji Island.” Some seem to have been sent to Shiflett from home, showing “Sidney-Made Products in [the] War Effort,” and several identified friends and fellow service men and women getting promoted, transferred or married.

Over 180 terrific photographs, all but two of them captioned, track Marian and another female officer's train trek out west, identifying soldiers, sailors and uniformed women they met along the way, and cover her San Diego sojourn for about the next year and a half. They show “our gang” of women in white uniforms, in swimsuits on the beach and riding horses at La Jolla. There are two shots of Eleanor Roosevelt (“The 1st Lady of the Land”) visiting the nurses and dozens of identified service friends enjoying their off time “out at Rancho Santa Fe,” “Felicita Park near Escondido,” Balboa Park and Zoo. Shiflett collected dozens of souvenirs like matchbooks, napkins and club cards from southern California haunts like the Victor Hugo Inn, El Cortez and Coronado hotels, as well as the U.S. Destroyer Base Receiving Station Fleet Schools and “Torpedo Squadron Three.” There are plentiful small greetings, telegrams and notes from friends and suitors, along with “My identification bracelet Dec. '42,” a ticket to the Destroyer Base-Navy Nurse Dance at the San Diego Club and a large illustrated menu for the Naval Hospital's 4th of July dinner in 1942. The album is enhanced by Shiflett's sweet and detailed captions, the inclusion of original poems and even a friend's two-page diary-style entry, handwritten directly onto pages. There is also a charming color cartoon, signed by one Patricia Latt, of a woman and sailors on the beach, one nearly nude with drawn-on tattoos.

A vivid and personalized record of the life of a naval nurse in World War II. Good. Item #8640

Price: $1,200.00