1st LT. Myrl Jean Hughes
U.S. Army – Physical Therapist
334th Station Hospital
New Guinea ’43-‘46
U.S. Army – Physical Therapist
334th Station Hospital
New Guinea ’43-‘46
Myrl Jean Hughes was born on January 1, 1923 in Hibbing, Minnesota. It was undoubtedly a cold day since Hibbing is located 100 miles from the Canadian border. Myrl Jean grew up in Hibbing with her older brother and older sister. Her father owned a printing business and enjoyed an occasional cigar.
I asked Myrl Jean about growing up during the depression and she said, “as a kid, I don’t think I was ever conscious of it.” Myrl Jean graduated from Hibbing High School in 1940 and went on to the University of Minnesota’s junior college in Hibbing. “In that small town you could go from Kindergarten through junior college all in the same building.”
Myrl Jean was in her friends kitchen baking a birthday cake for her friends twin brother and sister when she heard over the radio that Pearl Harbor had been attacked. She also remembers listening to President Roosevelt’s “Day of Infamy’ speech.
Myrl Jean finished two years of junior college in Hibbing but would not have been able to continue her education because there wasn’t enough money. However, she learned that the Mayo Clinic and the U.S. Army had developed one of the first physical therapy programs and the program was free. Physical Therapy was at such an early stage in its development they hadn’t settled on a name for the program, Physical Therapy or Physiotherapy. Myrl Jean was getting in on the ground floor of a new occupation. There were three ways a candidate could qualify for acceptance into the program. You had to be a phys ed teacher, a registered nurse, or a premed major. Myrl Jean had been planning to become a medical technician and in junior college she had a heavy concentration of biology courses. That qualified her for the program.
She spent six months at Mayo Clinic and then six months at an Army hospital in Louisville, Kentucky. Upon completion of the program the Army gave the students the option of leaving the Army or being commissioned as a 2nd Lieutenant. 20 year old Myrl Jean chose to take a commission in 1943. Her mother had made her promise that she would not volunteer to go overseas. When Myrl Jean received her orders, she learned she was headed to New Guinea by way of Australia. She wrote her mother a letter explaining she had been ordered to the South Pacific. At the same time, her mother had written her a letter to let her know that she was relieving Myrl Jean from her promise, She knew if she was in Myrl’s shoes she would volunteer. The letters crossed in the mail.
Myrl Jean left Nichols General Hospital for Camp Ellis in Illinois to join the 334th Station Hospital. From there they headed to California and on February 12, 1944, they boarded the Matsonia headed for Brisbane Australia. The Matsonia was a luxury liner before the war broke out. Now it was a troop transport. It took two weeks to get to Brisbane due to the zig zagging to avoid enemy submarines. “We didn’t know that until we got there.”
“We were in Brisbane for four months. Our unit was being built in New Guinea.” There was a large American recreational center where her unit frequented to kill time until they could leave for New Guinea. “At some point the women all got moved to what had been a monastery in the mountains.”
The hospital was being built in the town of Hollandia, New Guinea. Hollandia was the site of a major battle between the Allies and the Japanese in the spring of ‘44. The men in the 334th went to New Guinea to build the hospital while the females nurses, a dietician and Myrl Jean stayed in Brisbane. By June of ’44 the hospital was complete, and they moved in. The living conditions were comparable to those on the TV series MASH and the 130 degree daytime temperatures were a little warmer than at home in Hibbing.
While they were blazing a new trail in medicine, Myrl Jean recalled the training was minimal. “I really didn’t know how untrained I was. The three magic words were heat, massage and exercise. We had practically no equipment. We had a two whirlpool baths. One for legs and one for arms. We had a table for massage and infrared lamps for heat”.
Myrl Jean recalled the hospital received a significant number of casualties from the Battle of Leyte in the Philippines in late October of ‘44. Many of the men were amputees but the 334th could not provide them with a prosthesis. The medical staff would stabilize the men and care for their stumps. Myrl Jean said the morale of the men was generally good and upbeat. There were even some humorous moments. “One soldier had his leg packed solidly in ice. You could go to visit him anytime you wanted and find everyone’s beer cans lined up along his leg. I think he enjoyed the company.”
“Nothing unusual really happened. The only things we had any danger from were snakes, which I’m not really very fond of. I remember sleeping under the sleeping net when I found a rat going up the inside. Only one! I shook him out and somebody else got him. Everyone was yellow from Atabrine we were taking for Malaria.” As far as the food was concerned, the Army had an endless supply of canned apricots. “It’s a wonder I could ever eat another apricot.”
Myrl Jean recalled seeing some wonderful USO shows that included Bob Hope, Jack Benny and the musical Oklahoma. One of the things that stuck in her mind about the Bob Hope show was the show began with the raising of the American flag. “I didn’t realize until that time that we hardly ever saw a flag. Army hospitals were not very GI and we didn’t have taps or reveille. That impressed me so much that we could actually ever see the American flag again.”
Myrl Jean remembered when she heard of the Japanese surrender. “We were having a baseball game at the time. The officers vs. The non-commissioned officers.” With the surrender of the Japanese, her unit was reassigned to Japan in late ’45 and was sent to the Philippine’s to stage for Japan. While in the Philippines Myrl Jean received orders to return to the states. She was discharged in early ’46 and returned to Hibbing. “I returned to Hibbing and the first things I bought were a fur coat for my mother and a fur coat for me.”
Back at home Myrl Jean’s church had a new pastor. The pastor, who was a former Army Chaplain, was looking for someone to start a youth group and a children’s choir. He went around the congregation asking who would want to take this on and everyone said, “Myrl Jean is home, and she doesn’t have anything to do.” She accepted the challenge, and she got the choir and the youth group started.
This spurred her to attend the Presbyterian college, Macalester College in St. Paul’s. Myrl Jean went on to get her master’s degree in Christian Education from Union Seminary in New York. “My diploma reads from Columbia University. I took one course at Columbia’s Teacher’s College. It sounds much more prestigious than it really is.” She spent the next 32+ years as a Director of Christian Education for Presbyterian Churches in St. Paul, MN, Cincinnati Ohio and Summit, NJ.
Myrl Jean never married and says that explains her longevity. She believes there are two reasons for her longevity, “Good genes and the grace of God, and vegetables are highly overrated.”
She had a good circle of friends and as she neared retirement she knew she needed to leave New Jersey, which is known to be cost prohibitive for retirees. Her good friend was familiar with the Ashville, North Carolina area and they decided to relocate together to the area. After looking at Brevard and Black Mountain they decided to settle in Hendersonville, NC in 1994. She lives there to this day.
Looking back on her time in the military Myrl Jean said, “I would not trade those three years I had in the service for anything. It’s a very important part of my life. At the time I didn’t always relish it, especially the heat.”
Myrl Jean we all owe you a debt of gratitude for doing your part to save the world from true evil. Some did it with guns, you did it by caring for our soldiers that had been through hell and back…..and letting them chill their beer on a buddies ice pack!
I asked Myrl Jean about growing up during the depression and she said, “as a kid, I don’t think I was ever conscious of it.” Myrl Jean graduated from Hibbing High School in 1940 and went on to the University of Minnesota’s junior college in Hibbing. “In that small town you could go from Kindergarten through junior college all in the same building.”
Myrl Jean was in her friends kitchen baking a birthday cake for her friends twin brother and sister when she heard over the radio that Pearl Harbor had been attacked. She also remembers listening to President Roosevelt’s “Day of Infamy’ speech.
Myrl Jean finished two years of junior college in Hibbing but would not have been able to continue her education because there wasn’t enough money. However, she learned that the Mayo Clinic and the U.S. Army had developed one of the first physical therapy programs and the program was free. Physical Therapy was at such an early stage in its development they hadn’t settled on a name for the program, Physical Therapy or Physiotherapy. Myrl Jean was getting in on the ground floor of a new occupation. There were three ways a candidate could qualify for acceptance into the program. You had to be a phys ed teacher, a registered nurse, or a premed major. Myrl Jean had been planning to become a medical technician and in junior college she had a heavy concentration of biology courses. That qualified her for the program.
She spent six months at Mayo Clinic and then six months at an Army hospital in Louisville, Kentucky. Upon completion of the program the Army gave the students the option of leaving the Army or being commissioned as a 2nd Lieutenant. 20 year old Myrl Jean chose to take a commission in 1943. Her mother had made her promise that she would not volunteer to go overseas. When Myrl Jean received her orders, she learned she was headed to New Guinea by way of Australia. She wrote her mother a letter explaining she had been ordered to the South Pacific. At the same time, her mother had written her a letter to let her know that she was relieving Myrl Jean from her promise, She knew if she was in Myrl’s shoes she would volunteer. The letters crossed in the mail.
Myrl Jean left Nichols General Hospital for Camp Ellis in Illinois to join the 334th Station Hospital. From there they headed to California and on February 12, 1944, they boarded the Matsonia headed for Brisbane Australia. The Matsonia was a luxury liner before the war broke out. Now it was a troop transport. It took two weeks to get to Brisbane due to the zig zagging to avoid enemy submarines. “We didn’t know that until we got there.”
“We were in Brisbane for four months. Our unit was being built in New Guinea.” There was a large American recreational center where her unit frequented to kill time until they could leave for New Guinea. “At some point the women all got moved to what had been a monastery in the mountains.”
The hospital was being built in the town of Hollandia, New Guinea. Hollandia was the site of a major battle between the Allies and the Japanese in the spring of ‘44. The men in the 334th went to New Guinea to build the hospital while the females nurses, a dietician and Myrl Jean stayed in Brisbane. By June of ’44 the hospital was complete, and they moved in. The living conditions were comparable to those on the TV series MASH and the 130 degree daytime temperatures were a little warmer than at home in Hibbing.
While they were blazing a new trail in medicine, Myrl Jean recalled the training was minimal. “I really didn’t know how untrained I was. The three magic words were heat, massage and exercise. We had practically no equipment. We had a two whirlpool baths. One for legs and one for arms. We had a table for massage and infrared lamps for heat”.
Myrl Jean recalled the hospital received a significant number of casualties from the Battle of Leyte in the Philippines in late October of ‘44. Many of the men were amputees but the 334th could not provide them with a prosthesis. The medical staff would stabilize the men and care for their stumps. Myrl Jean said the morale of the men was generally good and upbeat. There were even some humorous moments. “One soldier had his leg packed solidly in ice. You could go to visit him anytime you wanted and find everyone’s beer cans lined up along his leg. I think he enjoyed the company.”
“Nothing unusual really happened. The only things we had any danger from were snakes, which I’m not really very fond of. I remember sleeping under the sleeping net when I found a rat going up the inside. Only one! I shook him out and somebody else got him. Everyone was yellow from Atabrine we were taking for Malaria.” As far as the food was concerned, the Army had an endless supply of canned apricots. “It’s a wonder I could ever eat another apricot.”
Myrl Jean recalled seeing some wonderful USO shows that included Bob Hope, Jack Benny and the musical Oklahoma. One of the things that stuck in her mind about the Bob Hope show was the show began with the raising of the American flag. “I didn’t realize until that time that we hardly ever saw a flag. Army hospitals were not very GI and we didn’t have taps or reveille. That impressed me so much that we could actually ever see the American flag again.”
Myrl Jean remembered when she heard of the Japanese surrender. “We were having a baseball game at the time. The officers vs. The non-commissioned officers.” With the surrender of the Japanese, her unit was reassigned to Japan in late ’45 and was sent to the Philippine’s to stage for Japan. While in the Philippines Myrl Jean received orders to return to the states. She was discharged in early ’46 and returned to Hibbing. “I returned to Hibbing and the first things I bought were a fur coat for my mother and a fur coat for me.”
Back at home Myrl Jean’s church had a new pastor. The pastor, who was a former Army Chaplain, was looking for someone to start a youth group and a children’s choir. He went around the congregation asking who would want to take this on and everyone said, “Myrl Jean is home, and she doesn’t have anything to do.” She accepted the challenge, and she got the choir and the youth group started.
This spurred her to attend the Presbyterian college, Macalester College in St. Paul’s. Myrl Jean went on to get her master’s degree in Christian Education from Union Seminary in New York. “My diploma reads from Columbia University. I took one course at Columbia’s Teacher’s College. It sounds much more prestigious than it really is.” She spent the next 32+ years as a Director of Christian Education for Presbyterian Churches in St. Paul, MN, Cincinnati Ohio and Summit, NJ.
Myrl Jean never married and says that explains her longevity. She believes there are two reasons for her longevity, “Good genes and the grace of God, and vegetables are highly overrated.”
She had a good circle of friends and as she neared retirement she knew she needed to leave New Jersey, which is known to be cost prohibitive for retirees. Her good friend was familiar with the Ashville, North Carolina area and they decided to relocate together to the area. After looking at Brevard and Black Mountain they decided to settle in Hendersonville, NC in 1994. She lives there to this day.
Looking back on her time in the military Myrl Jean said, “I would not trade those three years I had in the service for anything. It’s a very important part of my life. At the time I didn’t always relish it, especially the heat.”
Myrl Jean we all owe you a debt of gratitude for doing your part to save the world from true evil. Some did it with guns, you did it by caring for our soldiers that had been through hell and back…..and letting them chill their beer on a buddies ice pack!