Retired Air Force Lieutenant Colonel Barbara Pratt-LeMahieu talks about her childhood in Salem, Massachusetts and her career in the U.S. Air Force which included service during the Korean War and the Vietnam War. Pratt-LeMahieu says that she enlisted in 1948, took basic and administrative training in Cheyenne, Wyoming, and later worked as secretary for the Strategic Air Command in Colorado Springs and as a secretary at March AFB in California during the Korean War. After officer candidate school, she says that she was commissioned a second lieutenant and served as a public information administrator in Montana, until she volunteered to go to occupied Japan in 1955. In 1967, Pratt-Lemahieu says that she volunteered for service as a personnel services administrator in Vietnam and talks about hearing shelling on her way to work each day and her experiences during the Tet Offensive in 1968. Pratt-Lemahieu is interviewed by Ruth F. Stewart and Carol Hapgood. She is assisted in recalling the details of her answers by her husband, Jim LaMahieu.
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