The long-term impact of military experience on World War II Women's Army Corps veterans

This thesis represents a study of 20 white, middle-class women who were in the Women's Army Corps from 1942 to 1946 and in two cases continuing after the war. Through the use of oral history, I examine their lives during their service and after the war to draw conclusions about the possible long-term impact of their military experience. I define long-term impact in terms of every-day experience. I am concerned with the years from the end of the war to roughly 1960 and primarily with the areas of marriage, work, homemaking and childrearing. This study focuses on change at the individual level.