Elizabeth Gibbens was born in January 1920 in Corning, New York. Her father, a schoolteacher at the time, moved the family to Rochester, New York when Gibbens was a toddler, and she loved growing up there. She went to good schools and had good friends who had a wonderful time together. From the time she was a little girl, Gibbens intended on becoming a nurse, and went into studies for the profession at Rochester General Hospital right after high school. She passed her qualification tests on the first try, and went to work at the hospital in pediatrics. Gibbens was at home when she learned of the Japanese attack on Pearl Harbor, Hawaii. She said her father, who had been brought up Army and was in the National Guard, was "beside himself," and she was in shock on hearing the news. When the war started, she signed up right away to serve in the 19th General Hospital out of Rochester, along with many other people that she knew. Gibbens went to Camp Livingston in Louisiana for basic training. There, she worked on the wards in the morning and learned to march and went on hikes in the hot summer afternoons. The colonel was a very nice man, but didn't pay much attention to the nurses, however, Gibbens did have a wonderful head nurse. She was commissioned as a second lieutenant immediately upon completion of basic training.

When Elizabeth Gibbens completed basic training, she was sent to Camp Shanks, New York. She found it exciting to get her uniform and equipment. She set sail on a small English luxury ship in a convoy, zig-zagging [Annotator's Note: a naval anti-submarine maneuver] across the Atlantic. Gibbens suffered from motion sickness on the 21 day voyage, and ate very little for the duration. She landed in Liverpool, England and took a train to Malvern, England. Gibbens said the people were very kind and hospitable, the shopping was good, and the terrain beautiful, but there was no doubt that there was a war going on. While in England she took "boring" classes, hiked, and played baseball. Her husband, a soldier in the 28th Infantry Division whom she married before leaving the United States, was also in England at the time, and they communicated by telephone, and met occasionally in London. Gibbens found London fascinating, but scary at times. She remembers watching the 8th Air Force planes leave from the nearby air base in the morning, then wait to see if they came back in the afternoon. Her unit [Annotator's Note: 19th General Hospital] was moved to Wales, but Gibbens doesn't remember much about that experience, except that she lived in a Quonset hut, and acquired a little spaniel. When the dog had to be spayed, Gibbens and a friend served as the operating nurses. Prior to the 6 June 1944 invasion of Normandy, she observed the buildup of forces, and knew when the troops mobilized, because she no longer received telephone calls from her husband. When D-Day [Annotator's Note: Allied invasion of Normandy, France on 6 June 1944] came, Gibbens said everyone was excited and ready. Eventually her unit followed Patton's [Annotator's Note: US Army Lieutenant General George S. Patton, Jr.] Army through France.

When orders came about a month after D-Day [Annotator's Note: Allied invasion of Normandy, France on 6 June 1944], Elizabeth Gibbens crossed the English Channel at night and she was once again seasick. When morning came she got in a landing boat and threw herself on the ground when she arrived on Utah Beach. Her unit [Annotator's Note: 19th General Hospital] was transported in trucks and Gibbens remembers traveling through St. Lo. The nurses had been kept informed of the advance, and knew it was one of the hardest hit targets. They all cried, and it was then that she recognized the reality of war. The 19th General Hospital's mission was to set up hospitals. The modern, beautiful, brick hospital they went into in Le Mans had been occupied by the Germans, and she remember that all the instruments they were to use had been packaged up after World War 1 in Vaseline, and it took hours to clean them. The nurses were housed in a dormitory-style room that had been used for sick soldiers, and Gibbens said when they got there they threw the mattresses out of the window and slept on the bedsprings. The smell of death was prevalent and Gibbens said the Germans had taken their own dead, but left the other bodies in the building's basement. There were French nuns in another building and they were delighted at the arrival of the Americans. Forty-eight hours after the arrival of the 19th General Hospital, the hospital was up and running, giving care to and performing amputations on young German soldiers that had been left in the field. Assisting the surgeons as a scrub nurse, Gibbens said she attended the Germans in the way she would have wanted the American soldiers treated, even though some of them were arrogant. Most of them were grateful.

When the 19th General Hospital was replaced at Le Mans Elizabeth Gibbens' unit moved on to Paris and then to Nancy, following the trail of Patton's [Annotator's Note: US Army Lieutenant General George S. Patton, Jr.] Army through France. Gibbens said she was never afraid, even when she was sleeping in tents and using an outdoor latrine. She remarked that her unit was never under German attack, but on one occasion German soldiers broke into the hospital and stole American uniforms. It was the practice of the unit to administer aid to anyone who needed medical care whether they were American, German, French, British or otherwise. After the Battle of the Bulge [Annotator's Note: Battle of the Bulge or German Ardennes Counter Offensive, 16 December 1944 to 25 January 1945], it became apparent to Gibbens that the war was changing in favor of the Allies. Her husband was embroiled in that battle in Luxemburg, and found it so enchanting that he always wanted to revisit the area, but never did. When the war in Europe ended, Gibbens returned home after her husband had left, but while she was preparing to depart, she remembers that there were three weddings of nurses and GIs who had made it through the war. Gibbens had to travel by sea to get back to the United States, and as luck would have it there were storms. She was sick again, and took pills to stay asleep most of the way. When she arrived at Fort Dix [Annotator's Note: Fort Dix, New Jersey], her husband was there to meet her. She returned to Rochester, New York to visit her family, and because her husband would not stay in the east, they went to live in Arizona.

In Tucson, Arizona, Elizabeth Gibbens worked in a veterans' hospital for a few months, but quit when she became pregnant. Her husband had immediately joined the National Guard, and used to G.I. Bill to attend the University of Arizona. Because it was his dream to go back in the service, they went to Fort Lewis, Washington. The couple had one daughter, lost their second child, then had a son. Their children were still very young when Gibbens' husband was called to combat in Korea. He attained the rank of captain, but was a casualty of that war. Once her children were grown, Gibbens went back to work as a nurse at Rochester General Hospital, and stayed there for 24 years. Gibbens does not believe that people in today's society understand what World War 2 was about and what she and her fellow servicemen went through. But, she said, when people learn that she was a nurse during the war, they are anxious to hear stories, and express their admiration.