Julia L. Myers was born in 1921 in New York City [Annotator’s Note: New York City, New York]. Her father always had a job. He was an attendant in a hospital. They owned their own house. She did not suffer too much during the Depression [Annotator's Note: Great Depression; a global economic depression that lasted through the 1930s]. She has two brothers and four sisters. She is the second eldest. Myers would play volleyball, table games, and card games for fun. She went to public school. She graduated in 1939. Then she went to nursing school and graduated from there in 1942. She wanted to be a stewardess because her hero was Amelia Earhart [Annotator’s Note: Amelia Mary Earhart was an American aviation pioneer and writer, and the first female aviator to fly solo across the Atlantic Ocean]. At that time, stewardesses were nurses. In December 1941 [Annotator's Note: the Japanese attack on Pearl Harbor, Hawaii on 7 December 1941], the war began. She was at a dance at a hotel when there was a broadcast over the radio. Everyone was shocked and they went home.

Julia L. Myers wanted to join the Army because of the war. She felt, as a nurse, that it was her duty to care for the wounded soldiers. When she joined the Army, she was stationed at a hospital on Staten Island, New York. She went to Fort Dix [Annotator’s Note: Fort Dix, New Jersey] for her training. She was assigned to the 15th General Hospital. They left New York on the Queen Mary in March 1944. They arrived in Scotland on 7 March 1944, and took a train to England to set up the hospital. Soon after, they got their first patients. It was not until after D-Day [Annotator's Note: D-Day; the Allied invasion of Normandy, France on 6 June 1944] that they saw what the war was really like when receiving soldiers from the front. The men were horribly wounded. She always felt that she could never do enough during her time in service. After D-Day, they boarded a boat and went into northern Normandy. They had to climb down the cargo nets and wade through the water. They stayed in a cornfield overnight. Then they moved on to a cow pasture, set up tents, and stayed there for about a week. From there, they moved on toward Paris [Annotator’s Note: Paris, France] where they helped the 203rd General Hospital. Then they took a train to Liege, Belgium in September 1944. Their unit took over an abandoned civilian hospital. The hospital was filthy and they had to clean it up. Every night, a German reconnaissance plane would fly over and they called him Bed Check Charlie [Annotator's Note: nickname given to aircraft that performed solitary, nocturnal operations]. After a while, the V1 bombs [Annotator's Note: V-1 pulse jet flying bomb, German name: Vengeance Weapon 1; Allied names: buzz bomb, doodlebug] came over. On 24 November 1944, a V1 entered the hospital's pharmacy section. Many people were injured or killed. They had to remove the dead and evacuate the patients to other hospitals. The hospital was in shambles. Myers was assigned to a new hospital for the time, and she came across the patient she was with before the blast. After they moved to a new area, they were getting men with more serious injuries and frostbite on their feet. In December 1944, the Germans broke through the Allied lines in Belgium. General Eisenhower [Annotator's Note: General of the Army Dwight David "Ike" Eisenhower, Supreme Commander, Allied Expeditionary Force; 34th President of the United States] issued an order that the nurses and amputee patients were to evacuate. In the middle of January [Annotator’s Note: 1945], the Germans retreated. Myers met her husband in Normandy. He was the commanding officer of a signal corps group. They wrote letters to each other. All their mail was censored. She had two very good girlfriends and they remained friends after the war.

Julia L. Myers had male nurses in her class as well, and they joined the Army too. Myers was an Army nurse. She went in as a second lieutenant, and was a first lieutenant when discharged. They had to learn how to climb down cargo nets and go on 14-mile marches during basic training. She wrote letters to her friend who was also a nurse. It was all Army training because they were registered nurses. Myers was the head nurse of the employee sick bay. His parents were proud of her. She was 22 years old when she joined the Army. She had never been on a ship before. It was zig-zagging [Annotator's Note: a naval anti-submarine maneuver]. Many people were seasick. They had 15 people in a cabin with bunks. They arrived in Scotland where the people were very friendly. They were sent to Ellesmere, England. They stayed in stone huts with coal-burning stoves. The huts were in the stages of being finished when they arrived. In France they would go into Paris, but in England, they mostly worked. They rode bicycles. The men from D-Day [Annotator's Note: D-Day; the Allied invasion of Normandy, France on 6 June 1944] were the first soldiers they got to take care of. This was the first time they had seen wounded soldiers. Myers had never seen wounds as drastic as those. When they went to France, the nurses came off last. They had to climb down the cargo nets and wade through the water to get to shore. Then they marched to a cow pasture. They wore pants. They stayed for a week. They were waiting for orders. Then they went to Garches, France, a suburb of Paris. Myers remembers seeing a mass liberation [Annotator’s Note: Paris was liberated by the Allies in late August 1944]. Everyone in Paris was happy. They were happy with the Americans. There were signs showing occupation. Myers went to the sights and to some restaurants. The food was better than the K rations [Annotator's Note: individual daily combat food ration consisting of three boxed meals].

Julia L. Myers went to Liege, Belgium. They had to clean the windows and scrub the floors of an abandoned hospital they were taking over. It was extremely dirty. A wounded soldier threw a blanket over her head when they were bombed. She was teasing him about brushing his teeth when the blast happened. She would join the service again. She felt it was her duty to take care of the wounded soldiers. They were too busy to know what was happening with the war other than what they were told. She returned home in December 1944, and then had furlough [Annotator's Note: an authorized absence for a short period of time] until March 1945. She went back to work at her hospital after the war. She went to New York University to get her BS [Annotator’s Note: bachelor of science degree]. She used the G.I. Bill [Annotator's Note: the G.I. Bill, or Servicemen's Readjustment Act of 1944, was enacted by the United States Congress to aid United States veterans of World War 2 in transitioning back to civilian life and included financial aid for education, mortgages, business starts and unemployment]. Then she got married. She did not finish her degree until several years later. They moved to Nebraska and had two daughters. She went back to work when they were in high school.

Julia L. Myers remembers the winter of 1944 in Belgium. It was cold and miserable. It was snowy and the bombing of their hospital was tragic [Annotator's Note: Myers is referring to a V-1 pulse jet flying bomb, German name: Vengeance Weapon 1; Allied names: buzz bomb, doodlebug attack]. They were not a combat unit. Before the attack, they laughed off the bombings. It was smoky and there were fires. The walls of the building came crashing down. Myers was in shock after the blast. The attack happened in the morning. They took care of each other. Myers was patriotic and wanted to serve. She thinks the war made her a better and more caring person. She is happy to have served. She does not think they want to get into another war like that. Museums are important. Many people know women served on the Home Front, but not many people know that women served in the armed forces. People need to know what happened in the past. The atomic bomb [Annotator's Note: nuclear weapons dropped on Hiroshima and Nagasaki, Japan, 6 and 9 August 1945] being dropped was horrible.