Irma Darphin was born in Orange, Texas in August 1922. Her family moved to Crowley, Louisiana when she was one year old and she grew up there. She loved being on the farm. She was in the sixth grade when they moved into town. She graduated high school in 1939. They did well while on the farm and she was not aware of the Depression. Darphin went to Port Arthur, Texas for nurse's training on 1 September 1939, the date Hitler [Annotator's Note: German dictator Adolf Hitler] took over Czechoslovakia. She did not pay too much attention to the news coming out of Europe. She was playing cards when she heard of the Japanese attack on Pearl Harbor, Hawaii. A friend who was also playing was a student at Texas A&M and when the news came in, he got up, put on his uniform, and left. Darphin was not frightened by the news but it did change her thinking. She went back to St. Mary’s school [Annotator's Note: St. Mary's University in San Antonio, Texas] to get her RN [Annotator's Note: Registered Nurse] and then volunteered for the US Army in July 1943. She worked for a hospital for one year before getting in. On 7 July 1943 she packed her bags and went to Claiborne, Louisiana [Annotator's Note: most likely Camp Claiborne] for basic training. On 12 August 1943 they took a train to Camp Shanks, New York but had missed their ship. From there they went to Fort Devens, Massachusetts. They finally went to Boston, Massachusetts and boarded a ship for the United Kingdom on 13 October 1943. She traveled on the RMS Mauretania which was nearly as large as the RMS Queen Elizabeth and was fast enough to not need a convoy. They did spot a German submarine and fired at it. Darphin was sleeping at the time. The British then sent a Sunderland [Annotator's Note: British Short S.25 Sunderland flying boat] out to circle them for protection until they arrived in Liverpool, England. There were 10,000 people aboard the ship, and they tripled up in bunks and got two meals a day.

Second Lieutenant Irma Darphin, a nurse in the US Army, docked in Liverpool, England and went to Bishop's Lydia, England. It was a small village and they went into an estate named Sandhill. This was in October 1943. The gardens were torn out and about 45 Nissen huts [Annotator's Note: prefabricated steel structure designed in World War 1 by Major Peter Norman Nissen] were put in. The male officers and the cafeteria were in the house. The nurses slept in buildings nearby. The patients were mostly soldiers who had accidents. or hepatitis. There were a few air raids and one empty hut was bombed. Darphin was assigned to the 127th General Hospital. In May 1944 the hospital was closed, and everyone moved out to Salisbury Plains, England. The air was full of airplanes and activity. They knew D-Day [Annotator's Note: the Normandy landings on 6 June 1944] was just around the corner. They board the Devonshire [Annotator's Note: an East India Company ship] and crossed the English Channel on 31 July 1944. The food and ship were great. They landed on Utah Beach, Normandy, France and dropped into Higgins boats [Annotator's Note: landing craft vehicle, personnel or LCVP] and landed on the beach itself. They met soldiers who were happy to see them.

Irma Darphin and the 127th General Hospital spent their first night there [Annotator's Note: in Normandy] in a bombed-out church. They then went to a tent city where they were confined for about two weeks. They boarded trucks to Rennes, France after that. This was the saddest part for her as the local villagers were trying to find their homes and see what they could salvage. In August 1944, they took over a former German hospital and they threw out all of the German equipment left behind. On 1 January 1945, they left by train for Nancy, France. They stopped in Paris, France for a few days first and were able to take baths, sightsee, and attend a performance at the Folies Bergére [Annotator's Note: cabaret music hall]. In Nancy, they had a beautiful hospital and they lived in a small chateau nearby. They had to walk through the snow through a village to get to the hospital. They always tried to have something with them for the village children. Darphin served on the orthopedic ward. Back in Rennes, France they were receiving 500 injured soldiers a day at times. The treatments they used was advanced for the times, including penicillin. [Annotator's Note: The interviewer says she must have seen many terrible things and describes procedures he has heard about.] Darphin was not in surgery as she was just a medical nurse and dealt with other issues.

The soldiers were appreciative of the nurses. In England, Irma Darphin worked as a mail censor at night. There were 100 nurses, 80 to 90 doctors and 250 enlisted men assigned to her unit [Annotator's Note: the 127th General Hospital]. Three of the enlisted men were called out to take part in the Battle of the Bulge [Annotator's Note: Battle of the Bulge or Ardennes Counteroffensive, 16 December 1944 to 25 January 1945, Ardennes, Belgium] and two of them were killed. Darphin was in Nancy, France when the war ended. The patients were very excited and had a parade for the staff. The freed prisoners of war were in terrible condition when they arrived. Her work was very rewarding to her. She was young and fearless. They had a baseball team and played against other unit's teams. Of the POW [Annotator's Note: prisoner of war] groups that came into Nancy to recover, one group made a garden and another had a good piano player and a tailor who made them Ike jackets [Annotator's Note: waist length jacket developed during later stages of World War 2 and named after General Dwight D. Eisenhower]. Everybody wanted to go home. When the war ended though, they thought they were heading to the CBI [Annotator's Note: China-Burma-India Theater], but that changed when the atomic bombs were dropped. She knew she was headed home after that.

Irma Darphin was in Rennes, France when her brother looked her up. He was a captain in the 156th Infantry National Guard [Annotator's Note: the 156th Infantry Regiment (Separate) is part of the Louisiana Army National Guard]. He took her out to Le Mont-Saint-Michel [Annotator's Note: tidal island and commune in Normandy, France]. He had been wounded at the beginning of the Battle of the Bulge [Annotator's Note: Battle of the Bulge or Ardennes Counteroffensive, 16 December 1944 to 25 January 1945, Ardennes, Belgium] and was sent to Marseille, France. When Darphin made it to Marseille, he took her and some nurse friends down to the French Riviera. Darphin missed fresh milk while stationed in Europe. The Red Cross was very good to them there and back in the United States. She came back into Newport News, Virginia and was discharged in San Antonio, Texas. She returned to nursing and went into public health. She got married and stopped working when she had her first child. Twenty years later she returned to it and then spent 20 more years as a nurse. Darphin feels that everyone and the world was changed by the war. Everyone played a lot on their return. She feels everybody loved each other then and it is so different now. We had to fight that war or Germany would have ended up here in the United States. She is a member of the Women's Veterans of Louisiana and has had a good life.