Pvt. Ida Marie (Tina) O'Brien
(1895 - 1968)
Profile
Ida Marie (or Tina) O’Brien drove ambulance in France during the First World War and a Yellow Cab in Los Angeles in the 1940s until she enlisted in the Women’s Army Corps (WAC) in 1944. Born in Copenhagen in 1895, she lived an eventful life both before and after emigrating to the USA. She was one of twenty-nine Danish born women to volunteer for the Women’s Army Corps (WAC).
Ida Marie (Tina) M. O’Brien was born as Ida Marie Petersen on 13 June 1895 in Copenhagen, the daughter of ship’s master Hans Carl Petersen and Ellen Harriet Petersen (née Rose).[1] Her parents separated in 1904[2] and the mother and children were authorised to change the family name from Petersen to Abildrose in March 1911.[3]
The Petersen/Abildrose family lived in the area of Østerbro in Copenhagen, primarily, during her childhood years, but the record show that lived in many different apartments;The family lived in six different places within her first five years alone.
O’Brien was educated at the school in Nyelandsvej and later, from 5th grade, the local school—Randersgade skole—from 27 October 1908 to 1 October 1910. She seems to have left school at that point for an apprenticeship.[4] Her mother worked as a nightshift nurse after the fathers death in 1912,[5] but nevertheless it is a modest living.[6]
Drove Ambulance in the First World War
During the First World War she was a canteen worker and ambulance driver in Iceland, England and France according to a written portrait in the Arizona Daily Star in May 1944. Even if some of the facts given in this article are not correct, there is no reason to doubt the general story her work from 1915 to 1919.
For three years she drove an ambulance within range of big German guns. Several times she had to leap from her truck and dive under it when caught in German barrages.[7]
She volunteered for ambulance driving when work in the canteen became too monotonous. She picked up wounded Allied and German troops as a member of the neutral ambulance corps. This was not without danger, and one night while helping a French soldier, she was wounded.
We heard the whistle of the German shell but didn’t think it would land so close.[8]
The side of her right index finger was cut open by a steel sliver, and even if she made to back without further trouble, she never regained the muscular control of the finger.
At this stage her story becomes a bit confusing. According to the Los Angeles Times article, she met her husband at a receiving station near the front in France and married him in Paris three weeks later. This man was William Aloysius O’Brien, a private of the ‘C’ Company of the 31st Infantry Regiment. He was, still according to the article, shipped to Vladivostok a month later with the Allied occupational forces.[9] The latter information correspond well with the fact, that 31st Infantry contributed to the American Expeditionary Force, Siberia, from August 1918 to April 2020.[10] W. A. O’Brien left San Francisco for Vladivostok in September 1918 and returned in November 1919.[11]
However, at the same time Danish records suggest, that she was back in Denmark, at least during parts of this period as she gives birth to her first daughter—Inge Helen Abildrose—in Copenhagen on 14 April 1917. No father is recorded in the parish register.[12] Two years later, on 21 September 1919, she married Peter Christian Hansen in Frederikssund.[13]
Emigrating to the United States
The family, including a son from Peter Christian Hansen’s first marriage, Børge Rudolf Hansen, emigrated to the United States in 1920, arriving in New York on 4 March 1920. Their destination was Sioux City, Iowa, where Ida Marie O’Brien’s younger sister, Ingeborg, had been raised by family as their daughter since arriving in the United States in 1907 at the age of 9.[14]
They do not appear to have remained in Iowa for long. On 4 January 1921, she gave birth to her second daughter, Eve May Hansen in Rapid City, Pennington, South Dakota, about 400 miles to the west.[15] Their marriage did not last, however, and on 28 April 1923 she seems to have married August L. Larson in Des Moines, Iowa.[16]
At some point she moved to Flagstaff, Arizona, where she married William A. O’Brien in 1930.[17] He was at that time working in the US Indian Agency and School. They moved to Los Angeles, where her husband died in 1935.[18]
Yellow Cab Driver
In 1942, she became one of the first women Yellow Cab drivers in Los Angeles. She considered it a lot harder to drive a taxicab in Los Angeles, that driving an ambulance in France. She remained employed by the Yellow Cab Company until the day she enlisted.[19]
Army Air Force WAC
O’Brian enlisted as a Private (A-917473) in the Women’s Army Corps on 24 January 1944 in Los Angeles.[20] She wanted
to do something more toward winning the war than drive a Los Angeles taxicab.[21]
There is little information on her service. She served at the Marine Army Air Field, near Tucson, Arizona, which was homed of the 3024th (Pilot School, Basic) and used as a pilot training base. Later in her service, she served as a teletype operator in the Mediterranean theater of operations.[22]
A family at war
O’Brien was not the only one in the family in uniform. Her nephew, the son of her sister Ingeborg, served in the USAAF as well. Samuel Curtis Hernepoint was born on 26 August 1921 in Sioux City, the son of Ingeborg and her first husband, Joseph L. Smith (1892-1923). He graduated from East High School in Sioux City in 1939. In 1942, he was employed at at the Vega Aircraft Corporation in Burbank, California, before enlistment.[23] He enlisted on 3 November 1942 and inducted on 1 February 1943.[24] He was transferred to the 98th college training detachment at the Michigan College of Mining and Technology in January 1943.[25] Accepted as an aviation cadet on 5 July 1943, he enrolled at Maxwell Field, Montgomery, Alabama.[26] He served until August 1946.[27]
In Denmark, her brother had been a police officer for many years, serving at Frederiksberg. During the war, Frederik Johan Henry Abildrose (born 8 May 1894) was one of the 2,000 police officers, who were arrested and send to concentration camps on 19 September 1944.[28] Abildrose was sent to the Neuengamme camp and later the Buchenwald camp, but returned to Denmark among approximately 200 colleagues in December 1944. He was imprisoned in the Frøslev camp near the Danish-German border.[29]
O’Brien died on 22 March 1968 in Los Angeles.[30]
Endnotes
[1] DNA: Parish register, Den Kgl Fødsels-og Plejestiftelse. I use the family name O’Brien for her throughout this article instead of switching between Petersen, Abildrose, Hansen, Larsen and O’Brien.
[2] DNA: Københavns Overpræsidium, Familieretlige sager, SJ-journal, 1904/317.
[3] DNA: Parish register, Den Kgl Fødsels-og Plejestiftelse.
[4] Copenhagen Municipal Archive: Politiets registerblade. Station 7. Filmrulle 0037. Registerblad 4120 (unikt id. 3419713). Retrieved from https://kbharkiv.dk/permalink/post/17-277635 (25 July 2022).
[5] DNA: Parish register, Rørup Sogn.
[6] Copenhagen Municipal Archive: Politiets registerblade. Station 10. Filmrulle 001a. Registerblad 3061 (unikt id. 1487757). Retrieved from https://kbharkiv.dk/permalink/post/17-277635 (25 July 2022).
[7] War Veteran Now win Wacs, Arizona Daily Star, 7 May 1944, p 19.
[8] Ibid.
[9] Ibid.
[10] American Expeditionary Force, Siberia, Wikipedia. Retrieved from https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/American_Expeditionary_Force,_Siberia (26 July 2022).
[11] Ancestry: U.S., Army Transport Service Arriving and Departing Passenger Lists, 1910-1939.
[12] DNA: Parish register, Rigshospitalets Sogn.
[13] DNA: Parish register, Frederikssund sogn.
[14] Ingeborg Louise Petersen was born on 8 October 1898 in Copenhagen, to Hans Carl Petersen and Ellen Harriet Petersen (née Rose). She arrived, alone and unescorted, onboard SS United States from Copenhagen in the USA on 26 December 1907. She was picked up by her aunt Christine Johanne Rose, who had emigrated to the USA in 1888 and married Henrik (Henry) M. Holleufer. He died in 1908, and Ingeborg seems to have been raised by Samuel Gibson and Mary Hansen from then on. They were Danish immigrants as well. Christine Holloufer was shot and killed in Philadelphia in 1917.
[15] Ancestry: U.S., Find a Grave Index, 1600s-Current.
[16] Ancestry: Iowa, U.S., Marriage Records, 1880-1945.
[17] Ancestry: Arizona, County Marriage Records, 1865-1972.
[18] Ancestry: California, Death Index, 1905-1939.
[19] War Veteran Now win Wacs, Arizona Daily Star, 7 May 1944, p 19.
[20] Ancestry: U.S., World War II Army Enlistment Records, 1938-1946.
[21] War Veteran Now win Wacs, Arizona Daily Star, 7 May 1944, p 19.
[22] Southlanders at War, Los Angeles Times, 22 Jul 1945, p. 4.
[23] Ancestry: U.S. WWII Draft Cards Young Men, 1940-1947.
[24] Samuel Curtis Hernepont, Sioux City Journal, 25 Jul 1943, p. 32.
[25] Private C. Curtis Hernepont, Sioux City Journal, 11 Mar 1943, p. 7.
[26] Samuel Curtis Hernepont, Sioux City Journal, 25 Jul 1943, p. 32.
[27] Ancestry: Iowa, World War II Bonus Case Files, 1947-1954.
[28] Fred Abildrose, Frihedsmuseets modstandsdatabase. Retrieved from http://modstand.natmus.dk/Person.aspx?89774 (27 July 2022).
[29] De frie Danske, nr. 2, 4. årg., s. 15. Retrieved from http://www.illegalpresse.dk/papers/show/id/78#/paper?paper=78&page=618 (25 July 2022).
[30] Ancestry: California, Death Index, 1940-1997.