Nurses do not receive the publicity of four Jills in a Jeep. Their pictures
do not fill the papers, for there is nothing pictorially pretty about a
grim-faced young girl sponging dirt and blood from a wounded soldier. They
are not glamorous, our nurses, for their profession is not glamorous. There
is nothing glamorous in caked blood and torn arms and legs and faces blown
away. There is nothing glamorous in a hospital just behind the lines when
the wounded come pouring in; nothing glamorous in the long night's watch
at the bedside of boys in pain, delirious, afraid, crazed some of them.
Their days and nights are full of work and sights that strong men could
not stand.
--Editorial in "America," 1/15/44
Perhaps the passage above suggests the reason why in 1994, when the 50th
anniversary of World War II was justifiably commemorated and the news media
filled the airwaves with accounts of the heroic achievements of the men
who fought in this war, their triumphs, frustrations, fears, and tragedies,
that the American women -- the nurses who shared their experiences -- would
not be mentioned. How tragic that we can tell our young about their brave
grandfathers but neglect the stories of their grandmothers. Are the sacrifices
made by these women any the less heroic or their stories any the less poignant
because they were fewer in number? I don't believe this to be true. Perhaps
it's because no one knows.
Perhaps it's because I am a baby boomer who was raised in the shadow of
the war. Perhaps it's because I'm a nurse. Perhaps it's because I'm a woman
-- but I wanted to know.
So, several years ago I began a journey into the past. I interviewed surviving
veterans of combat nursing and their families, reviewed personal diaries,
read published and unpublished manuscripts, newspaper and magazine accounts.
And I asked what did these women, these nurses, do and what impact did it
have on them and the soldiers for whom they cared. Perhaps it is because
I now know that I want others to know.
World War II was a major global conflict that in terms of lives lost and
material destruction was the most devastating war in human history. Sixty-one
countries involving three-quarters of the world's population participated
in the conflict. Between the War's inception in 1939 and its conclusion
in 1945, sixty million people died, thirty million of them civilians, and
the material cost was estimated to be over one trillion dollars. The United
States sustained 400,000 casualties.
More than 75,000 nurses, fully 29% of all the registered nurses in the United
States, served in the armed forces during World War II. Over 350 were killed,
and early in the war as the Japanese stormed across the Philippines 87 nurses
were captured and held as prisoners of war for over three years -- the first
American women ever to be taken prisoner. Countless more, wounded both physically
and mentally, live today as the forgotten disabled veterans.
Nurses have, in fact, tended the wounded in every war in our history, yet
they did not suffer the casualties they did in World War II. What made this
war unique lies in the matter of mobility. In World War I, the nearly stationary
nature of the fighting allowed for the establishment of semi-permanent hospitals
close to battle sites yet safely in the rear. During the Korean and Vietnamese
Wars, helicopters were used as air ambulances, enabling the wounded to be
evacuated rapidly to a place of relative safety five or six miles behind
the battle lines for treatment. In World War II, however, neither of these
conditions existed, and to provide life-saving surgical care to the most
seriously wounded, nurses travelled with front-line troops and were exposed
to all the same dangers and hardships as the men.
As in all wars, the chief factor in determining whether a wounded soldier
lived or died was the speed with which he received good quality medical
care. In 1939 as it became more and more apparent that the U.S. would eventually
be forced into the war raging in Europe, the Medical Department of the Army
commissioned a study designed to establish an effective system of treatment
for the wounded. Most soldiers wounded in battle, it was determined, died
of exsanguination; that is, they simply bled to death before they could
be treated. The Medical Department of the Army sought, consequently, to
establish a system to give rapid care to soldiers whose wounds were not
immediately fatal. There were four basic objectives: stop the bleeding,
prevent the onset of infection, minimize the effects of shock, and, above
all, move the man as rapidly as possible to safety where needed surgery
could be performed.
Although these goals seem simple and straight-forward, at the outset of
the war penicillin had not yet been discovered, the technique for freezing
and storing blood had not been invented, and the use of helicopters as air
ambulances was unheard of. The Medical Department placed its faith in saline
or plasma for blood replacement, in sulpha for the prevention of infection,
and in litter bearers and jeeps for conveying the wounded. Such methods
of transportation were totally inadequate for casualties needing immediate,
definitive, life-sustaining surgery. So, to provide for prompt surgical
intervention, mobile army field hospitals, manned by auxiliary surgical
teams, were established close to the battlefield, with a series of larger,
less mobile hospitals being spaced at specified distances to the rear. This
arrangement allowed for the immediate treatment of those who needed it as
well as nearby treatment for those whose wounds were not life-threatening.
The usual procedure was to have two evacuation hospitals set up between
the field hospital and the general hospital. This allowed for one to be
functioning and the other packed and ready to "leapfrog" forward
as the line of battle advanced.
Theoretically, a seriously injured soldier would first be tended to on the
battlefield by a medic who would attempt to stop the flow of bleeding, give
morphine for pain, and mark the soldier's location for the litter-bearers
who could then carry him to the battalion aid clearing station located some
500 to 800 yards to the rear. The soldier would then be examined by medical
personnel and, if his condition was not life-threatening, be conveyed by
jeep to an evacuation hospital several miles to the rear for surgery. If,
however, he needed immediate surgery, he would be brought to the field hospital,
usually adjacent to the clearing station. Here, in tents under primitive
conditions, doctors and nurses from the auxiliary hospital surgical teams
would treat shock, begin transfusions, and perform emergency surgery. Once
his condition was stabilized, the wounded soldier would be transported to
the evacuation hospital, still a series of tents but considerably larger
and only a little less mobile. If further, more extensive care was required,
he would be transferred to a larger general hospital, still within the battle
zone but distant enough from the fighting to allow it to set up as a fully
functional hospital for treatment and rehabilitation.
Nurses, with their unique training and expertise, were essential to the
successful operation of these medical facilities. In 1940, however, ninety-seven
percent of all the registered nurses in the United States were women. Never
before had American women been placed in a position of such jeopardy so
close to the front lines. To put this into perspective one must recognize
that this was nearly fifty years ago when the position of women in our society
was far different from what it is today. The general attitude of the public
was that the war was being fought to protect the sanctity of the American
way of life and those left behind, namely women and children.
One nurse's story poignantly illustrates this point. Mary Kennedy, from
Swampscott, was a 32-year-old surgical nurse when she enlisted in 1942.
"They kept saying they needed nurses," she told me, "and
I wanted to serve my country." Both of her brothers, employed in essential
service, had been exempted from the draft. The day she was leaving, she
remembered, her older brother drove up in a convertible with his golf clubs
in the back and said to her mother, "It's a terrible thing to send
the woman of the family off to war first." Both brothers soon enlisted,
however, and she recalled that her mother proudly displayed from the living
room window a flag with three stars on it, indicating that three members
of the family were serving in the war.
Recruitment posed another major problem. At the outbreak of hostilities,
the Army Nursing Corps had only 942 nurses on active duty. The United States
had never drafted women into military service, yet the government determined
that 50,000 nurses would be needed. To resolve the problem, the government
commissioned the Red Cross to recruit 2,000 nurses each month. The goal
was to reach 50,000 gradually and then keep that number. The Red Cross's
massive media blitz was aimed at young nursing school graduates. Advertisements,
many times sponsored by private industry and filled with patriotic fervor,
appeared in the popular magazines and papers. Recruiters visited local hospitals
and schools of nursing, encouraging enlistments and distributing government
literature. One such brochure, picturing nurses tending wounded soldiers
in hospital tents, asked,
Did you ever take a bath in a hat . . . ever build a hospital and tear
it down within a few hours . . . ever hand a scalpel to a surgeon as nearby
cannon shook the ground? As a member of the Army Nurses Corps, these may
be everyday experiences for you . . . you'll have to live roughly and work
gently in the field, where the hours are long and the demands are never-ending
. . . but to an Army nurse with a courageous heart the supreme reward is
life for an American soldier.
In 1941 as a twenty-two-year-old recent nursing school graduate, Phyllis
Santangello Galeaz read this brochure and decided to join the Army. "They
said it would be for one year and thought maybe I would see a little of
the world and do something that was needed. Then Pearl Harbor was attacked,
so I volunteered for overseas duty. I never imagined I would spend three
years in the jungles of New Guinea!" Nearly fifty years later when
I interviewed her, the brochure was still in Galeaz's possession.
The effectiveness of this campaign became even more apparent when another
nurse I spoke with related that twenty-three of the twenty-six graduates
of the Salem Hospital School of Nursing's class of 1942 joined the military.
In conjunction with the voluntary recruitment effort, the War Manpower Commission
set up Procurement and Assignment Committees in each state to register and
classify every nurse in the country. These committees screened nurses selectively
so that the military need for nurses could be met without stripping civilian
hospitals of necessary personnel. A Class I rating meant that the nurse's
civilian occupation was not considered essential and that she was available
for military service. Class II indicated that the nurse, although not available
for military service, was available for relocation within the civilian health
care structure; and Class III indicated that the nurse was essential in
her present position. Although these committees lacked the legal enforcement
authority of draft boards, they had a great deal of power. As their less-than-subtle
literature stated, "Persuasion and public opinion are the only methods
that can be used to get a nurse to accept her responsibility"
[italics mine].
One nurse related how well the system worked. In 1944, the small surgical
hospital in Boston in which she had been working closed, and she was trying
to decide whether to seek another position or return to school for post-graduate
work. "I arrived home one day and opened my mail, and I didn't have
to worry about my decision," she recalled. "There was a letter
from Uncle Sam telling me I was no longer considered essential and requesting
me to report to 900 Commonwealth Avenue," the Boston Armory. "My
mother was upset. 'Don't worry,' I said, 'they'll never take me; I have
a heart murmur, flat feet, and I'm overweight.' Well," she told me
with a laugh,"I passed with flying colors and was soon in the army."
The training and preparation these nurses received was haphazard and inconsistent,
apparently depending upon when they joined. Those enlisting before Pearl
Harbor were simply commissioned second lieutenants and sent to Army hospitals
for general staff duty. Once war was declared, however, with the reserves
being activated and voluntary enlistment increasing, it became glaringly
apparent that some form of systemized training was necessary to introduce
nurses to military service and to prepare them for overseas combat duty.
A field training course opened at Fort Sam Houston in Texas where nurses
were taught how to purify water, cope with gas injuries, pitch tents, climb
rope ladders, dig foxholes, and march. "Marching was fun because we
weren't the most coordinated group," recalled Mary Kennedy. "I
think we drove the regular Army people crazy." Those nurses who entered
before war was declared, however, were sent overseas without benefit of
any training.
Another problem involved determining appropriate uniforms for nurses. Wearing
starched white or dress blue uniforms made no sense for women tending the
wounded in the jungles of the Philippines or in the deserts of North Africa,
but at the outbreak of the war that was all the Army had. They quickly instituted
the use of a blue seersucker dress with blue pumps for general duty. Phyllis
Galeaz, stationed in New Guinea, remembered how impractical this outfit
was. "There was mud everywhere, not to mention rats, snakes, and tarantulas."
She and her fellow nurses started wearing army boots. "We were a pretty
sight with those blue dresses and ugly boots," she told me, "but
it was safer."
But not too easy on the feet. The boots were made for men, and many times
even the smallest pairs were two sizes too large for the women, whose feet,
especially in tropical heat, blistered from wearing them.
The dresses proved troublesome for women climbing over the side of a ship
or bending over the low army cots to care for the wounded. Eventually an
Army nurse field uniform was designed -- with slacks. Amazingly, this innovation
met with resistance from the Army hierarchy which, reflecting the attitudes
of society at the time, did not think women should be "wearing pants."
But with pressure from the Army Nurse Corps and from necessity, the field
uniform was adopted.
The nurses went overseas with the troops on cruise ships pressed into service
for the duration. "It was fun meeting girls from all over the country,"
remembered Mary Kennedy, "but we were all a little nervous, although
trying not to show it, because of the danger of submarine attack."
Their fears were well founded, for the S.S. Santa Rosa, carrying
the 48th Surgical Hospital unit to which she was assigned, was torpedoed
on its way to North Africa, and the command was given to abandon ship. "I
remember climbing down those rope ladders at the side of the ship,"
Kennedy reported, "and then swinging into a lifeboat. It was very frightening;
that water was a long way down."
The nurses even at boarding had not been appraised of their destinations.
"We tried to guess where we were going by what we were issued,"
recalled Genevieve Flood Wing in an interview at the Brockton Veterans Administration
Center, where she is a patient. "Light clothes and nets meant China-Burma-India
and heavy clothes meant Europe." Issued light clothes, she presumed
she'd be sent to China, "but when we got to New York," she told
me, "I was given heavy clothes and sent to Europe! They never took
the light clothes away either, and I still had them when I came home."
Upon arrival at their duty stations, the nurses would be assigned to a surgical
group. Genevieve Wing, assigned to one of the sixty-four teams that made
up the 5th Auxiliary Surgical Group, explained how the system worked. A
team typically had two surgeons, one anesthetist (either a doctor or a nurse),
one surgical nurse, and two corpsmen. Each team travelled by its own truck,
which also carried basic surgical supplies as well as personal gear. Once
orders were received, each team would proceed to its specified location,
meeting up with several other teams to establish a field hospital near the
front lines. The mobility that was so big an asset would also prove to be
a problem: "The Chief Surgeon would ride up front with the driver,"
recalled Wing, "and we'd be on a bench in the back of the truck. We
were always getting lost, and that can be pretty dangerous so close to the
front."
Frederick Clayton, a correspondent for the Red Cross, described one of the
field hospitals in 1943:
The field hospital unit was bivouacked on a depressingly damp hillside,
close behind a division clearing station. Earth-jarring explosions could
be heard constantly and periodically there was heavy shelling from the German
side. Above were the terrific outbursts of anti-aircraft fire which gave
evidence that Jerry planes were overhead. The nurses were making the best
of their bad living conditions, in fact, cracking jokes about damp tents,
not too warm; bathing or washing in a helmet full of water; eating canned
rations for days on end; working to the sound of incessant rain; slogging
through knee-deep mud. There was always the chance that they might be wounded,
but they all seemed willing to take that chance.
-- UPI Release, European Theatre, 1943, printed in American Journal of
Nursing
After visiting another such hospital that same year, Margaret Bourke-White,
on assignment for Life, wrote, "These girls were working closer
to the battle line than American women have ever worked before in this or
any other war. These ten nurses were stationed actually ahead of our own
heavy guns. A short walk in the wrong direction would bring one right into
German territory. Ours and our enemy's artillery crashed back and forth
at each other, the two way traffic of shells passing directly overhead."
Bourke-White's article went on to describe the heroic efforts of these women
who, mindless of their own safety, cared for the wounded under a constant
barrage of artillery.
Any concern that the military hierarchy had concerning the nurses' ability
to withstand the traumas of combat were dispelled early in the fighting.
The North African invasion on November 8, 1942 was the first major amphibious
landing of American troops in the war, and nurses landed with them. In her
memoirs, Theresa Archard, Chief Nurse of the 48th Surgical Hospital, described
the landing: "Just before dawn the guns started booming. With the coming
of daylight we could see ships all around us. Sergeants barked orders and
enlisted men followed each other over the sides of the ship onto Commando
boats. The gunfire from shore became more and more deafening, and we were
two miles from land." The nurses were assigned five to a boat with
two medical officers and twenty enlisted men. Describing the loading of
the landing craft, Archard continued, "It was horrible gazing down
at that swaying ladder, our helmets like iron on our heads, full packs on
our backs, our shoes untied, and the roar of guns all around us. We had
to wade in; wet to our waists we floundered up the beach."
The medical units and equipment were scattered during the landing. The invading
forces were under constant sniper fire and air attack, but the nurses impressed
everyone with their ability to handle the situation. We have the report
of the commander of the medical unit, Colonel Raymond Scott: "There
were twenty-four hours with plenty of things dropping all around -- planes
being shot down. Let me tell you they quickly learned to dig foxholes....
They were pretty hard put for food. They had no water except in their canteens.
They had no tents. Each nurse was given one blanket, and they used the ground
for a bed. They were wearing fatigues and steel helmets -- but they were
there ready to go and waiting for us."
Another nearly disastrous amphibious landing demonstrated anew the courage
of these women. On January 22, 1944, the Allies, attempting to outflank
German lines and speed up the liberation of Rome, staged a surprise landing
at Anzio. Once again, nurses landed with the troops. The Germans held the
high ground, however, and the Allied advance stalled on the beach. Field
and evacuation hospitals alike were nestled in with the combat troops and
were subjected to a constant barrage of artillery fire and air attack. Six
nurses were killed and more wounded. The Army Medical Department's History
of the Service in the Mediterranean put it this way:
The Anzio beachhead nursing service contributed one of the great heroic
achievements of the war. If there was any distinction between combat troops
and medical personnel, it was that the latter worked harder and took greater
risks. They had not even the scant protection of a foxhole, and the red
cross was a target rather than a shield. There were, moreover, no lulls
or quiet periods in their activities. Through it all, the approximately
200 nurses on the beachhead carried on their normal duties, without rest
and without complaint. When the German drive was in full swing and conditions
were at their worst, the evacuation of the nurses was considered, but only
briefly. As a morale factor, their presence was of incalculable value. To
remove them would have been very close to an admission of defeat in the
eyes of the combat troops. So they remained, six of them never to depart.
Among those who survived, four wore the Silver Star, the first women ever
to
receive that decoration.
-- In Medical Service in the Mediterranean and Minor Theaters, Office
of Military History, 1965
The Silver Star is the Army's recognition for gallantry in action. The nurses
were awarded the medal for rescuing forty-two patients from a burning hospital
tent. The citation read in part, "Through the shelling which included
many air bursts, they exhibited coolness and courage and carried on with
complete disregard for their own safety. Their quick thinking, competence
under unnerving conditions, and loyal consideration for the welfare of their
patients prevented confusion which might have been critical, and they were
an inspiration to the enlisted men working under their supervision."
Their courage becomes even more remarkable when one recognizes that this
incident occurred on the day their chief nurse, Nurse Second Lieutenant
Ellen Ainsworth, was killed.
The death of the nurses at Anzio, perhaps understandably, led to criticism.
Army policy was defended by the Medical Commander of the Fifth Army, Brigadier
General Joseph I. Martin, in a report to the Surgeon General: "Nurses
certainly are not expendable, but in a situation as critical as that which
developed on the beachhead -- when subjective factors determine whether
a line will hold or crack -- these nurses assumed a major symbolic importance.
. . . The presence of the nurses on the beachhead constituted a ringing
affirmation of our determination to hold what we had."
The positive morale factor of the nurses' presence was commonly acknowledged.
"Somehow seeing us up there made them feel safe, secure," recalled
Mary Kennedy. "I think they thought if women are here, things can't
be that bad. They knew they'd get good care." Phyllis Galeaz related
how she tried always to wear perfume as she cared for the men in the jungle
hospital tents of New Guinea. "I'd get my mother to send it to me,"
she said to me during our interview in her home in Lynn. "It always
seemed to relax the men and remind them of home." Genevieve Wing remembered
that the soldiers loved joking with the nurses. "They'd say, 'Wow --
an American woman,' and then they'd make fun of my Boston accent."
But what of the morale of the nurses? The chief nurse in charge of the 18th
Station Hospital in New Guinea, Eileen Flaherty, observed during our interview
at the Brockton V.A. Medical Center that the nurses in her group were fine
as long as they were busy. If there was a lull in their work, however, she'd
find them upset and thinking of home. "They were young, many only twenty-two
years old, and away from home for the first time. But the minute they'd
get a flow of badly wounded patients, the nurses would be back on their
feet, smiling and telling little jokes to make the men feel better."
Privacy and creature comforts soon became things of the past. All the nurses
remembered the lack of water. "You were either a prince or a pauper,"
said Genevieve Wing. "Sometimes if you stayed in one place long and
there was water nearby they'd set up showers, and time would be set aside
for the nurses to use them. Most of the time, though, you'd be lucky to
get a helmet full of water to wash with." Eileen Flaherty and Phyllis
Galeaz both remembered the many times water was rationed on New Guinea.
"You'd only be allowed one canteen full a day. We'd save that to drink
because during the day the temperature would go up to one- hundred-and-thirty,
and you needed the fluids." Bathing was out of the question. "If
we had any, we'd just use cream or something to wash our face."
For most of the nurses another problem was the lack of sleep. During the
heat of a major battle, operating room sessions were long and intense, commonly
lasting 18 hours. "Basically you worked till you couldn't stand any
longer," recalled Mary Kennedy, working as a surgical nurse. Phyllis
Galeaz described her day on a medical unit this way: "If you got three
or four hours sleep you were lucky . . . but who could sleep after that?
Really, you just couldn't. But we were young . . . war is for the young
. . . you can rejuvenate. But it took its toll in other ways."
When asked what was most frightening, the nurses I interviewed invariably
mentioned artillery fire. "At times it seemed it would never stop,"
noted Genevieve Wing, "but we just kept operating. We had to, there
were so many wounded." When the shelling was close, she reported, they
were taught to throw themselves over their patients. "It was just second
nature after a while. He was helpless on the operating table, and we had
to do what we could to protect him." A correspondent visiting a field
hospital in Italy during an artillery attack described this scene:
We had just regained our feet when a particularly loud scream came piercing
towards us and we all fell flat. I noticed the nurse, before she dropped
down, took time to check the position of the blood and plasma needles in
the boy's wrists. I heard her say, "Hold your arm still, Clarence,"
and she lay down on the ground beside his cot. The instant we heard the
bang of the exploding shell, she was the first person back on her feet making
sure those transfusion needles had not been jarred out of place. I remember
thinking it was a privilege to be with people like that.
Bourke-White, They Called it Purple Heart Valley, 1944
In New Guinea, the problem was not artillery fire but Japanese bombers.
In 1942 the Japanese desperately wanted to capture New Guinea because of
the airfields and use it as a foothold to invade Australia. The hospital
was located right between two airfields. Phyllis Galeaz recalled that "For
a while it seemed like they bombed us every night. The soldiers dug slit
trenches for us, but they didn't get much use. Who could go and leave the
men?" When the anti-aircraft guns started firing, she reported, the
ground shook and the sky lit up. "Now when I see it in the movies,"
Galeaz told me, "it all comes back. The noise is something you can
never forget."
Leaves for rest and relaxation were granted only infrequently, and this
took its toll on the nurses. As D-Day approached, every nurse who could
be spared was sent to the European theater. The nurses in the Mediterranean
and in the Philippines worked increasingly longer hours without respite.
No replacements were sent, even for normal attrition. In a 1944 memo, Major
Margaret Craighell, an Army consultant for women's health and welfare activities,
wrote, "The hours are long and working conditions, especially in the
field and evacuation hospitals on the Fifth Army front, are difficult. The
nurses are showing definite signs of fatigue. . . . Little things bother
them which previously they could laugh off. Young faces have old masks"
(In Medical Service in the Mediterranean and Minor Theaters, Office
of Military History, 1965).
Another near-universal problem involved communicating with one's family
back in the States. World War II nurses could never say where they were
headed or where they had been, and when they did write, they attempted to
minimize the dangers they faced so as not to worry those at home. Letters
were censored as well, contributing to feelings of isolation and loneliness.
Each of the nurses I interviewed had her own special memory. Mary Kennedy
painfully remembered the many surgical amputations. "One of the hardest
things I had to do was to take the arms and legs and throw them away,"
she told me. "It used to make me physically sick. They were so young,
these boys. I remember thinking, one day they're in high school and the
next in the army and at the front."
Genevieve Wing spoke of the many times she and the members of her team operated
on the same soldier more than once. "Our job was to operate and stabilize
their condition so they could be sent to the rear for recovery. Sometimes
you'd say to yourself that there was something familiar about this guy,
and you'd realize that you'd operated on him several months ago." It
took her awhile to adjust to the fact that the rear area hospitals did not
evacuate those who could be rehabilitated but rather sent them back to the
front. "It was sad," she continued. "Many times he didn't
make it the second time."
The nurses who entered France after D-Day remembered the terrible destruction.
"All I could think was Thank God this didn't come to America,"
said Ruth McBrien, who was assigned to the 2nd General Hospital, the first
general hospital to arrive in France after D-Day.
Phyllis Galeaz and Eileen Flaherty, both stationed in New Guinea, remembered
the terrible heat, the deadly snakes, the insects, and the rats as
big as small cats. "I have a phobia about rats and mice," said
Flaherty, "and I'll never forget waking up one morning seeing this
huge rat staring at me from the netting pole." Galeaz remembered the
terrible food. "I think they forgot us," she said. "We lived
on Spam and C-Rations, anything powdered, unless a ship came in and that
was rare. After a while I just wouldn't eat." During her three years
stationed there she lost forty-seven pounds.
Galeaz also recalled how the decision was made to issue side arms to the
nurses. "This Japanese soldier just came wandering into the camp. He
was sick and looking for help, but they were so surprised he was so close.
After that, they gave us lessons on what to do if we were taken prisoner
and how to shoot a gun. We didn't want the guns -- we weren't there for
that, I could never kill someone." Eventually, weapons were given to
the corpsmen, the male enlisted men who served as medical assistants.
Galeaz remembered that Japanese soldier for another reason. He needed a
blood transfusion, and another nurse, her friend Isabel, gave him her blood.
"I always admired her for that," she told me. "I wasn't very
sympathetic after seeing what they'd done to some of our boys, and I just
couldn't do it."
Shortly after Pearl Harbor the Japanese stormed across the Pacific, overrunning
Thailand, Burma, Hong Kong, and British Malays, and seizing the Dutch East
Indies and dozens of islands including the American-held Wake and Guam;
the Army and Navy garrisons they encountered fell.
The Japanese lost no time in attacking the Philippines. By May of 1942,
in retreat in the Bataan Peninsula, U.S. forces under MacArthur surrendered.
The nurses stationed at installations in the Pacific during this period
were captured along with the soldiers, thus becoming the first uniformed
American women prisoners of war.
In a series of oral-history interviews conducted by the Department of Defense
many years later and produced as a video entitled We All Came Home,
the P.O.W. nurses recounted their experiences. Madeline Nash, a Navy nurse
stationed in the Philippine capital, which was bombed continuously from
December 8 until Christmas, 1941, recalled "looking out after the bombing
and seeing Manila in flames. All the patients were crying for help and you
wanted to help them all, but there were only two nurses. They were operating
on the steps -- everywhere!"
Manila soon fell and she and the other Navy nurses were captured. Nash described
looking over the hospital balcony and seeing the American flag pulled down
and the "Rising Sun" flag hoisted up. "I'll never forget
that," she said tearfully. She and others were sent to the Santo Thomas
internment camp just outside the city.
Meanwhile on Bataan the Army nurses set up two field hospitals and began
caring for the many wounded. These hospitals were actually just clearings
in the jungle, and the wounded personnel were out in the open with only
jungle growth for protection. Operations were performed in an abandoned
motor pool building. Food was scarce, and enemy bombing and strafing were
constant. The hospitals were attacked several times and casualties mounted.
A sense of the horrors on Bataan is given in an official history of the
Army Nurse Corps:
The Japanese bombed [one of the hospitals mentioned] on 29 March, scoring
a direct hit on the wards and killing or seriously wounding more than one
hundred patients. A nurse remembered the force of the bomb. "The sergeant
pulled me under the desk, but the desk was blown into the air, and he and
I with it. I heard myself gasping. My eyes were being gouged out of their
sockets, my whole body felt swollen and torn apart by the violent pressure.
Then I fell back to the floor, and the desk landed on top of me and bounced
around. The sergeant knocked it away from me, and gasping for breath, bruised
and aching, sick from swallowing the smoke from the explosive, I dragged
myself to my feet." The sight that met her eyes was appalling. Patients
had been blown out of their beds. Bodies and severed limbs hung from the
tree branches. Although the nurses knew that nothing could be done to prevent
further air attacks, they carried on.
The Army Nurse Corps, CMH Pub. 72-14,p.5
When it became apparent that Bataan could no longer hold out against the
invasion of the Japanese, General MacArthur ordered Army headquarters, the
hospitals, and the nurses moved to Corregidor where he hoped to make a stand
until American reinforcements arrived. Colonel Carlos Romulo, a native Filipino
and a member of MacArthur's staff, dramatically recounted the escape from
Bataan:
There were cars filled with nurses, and I could not bear to look into their
faces as we passed on that crowded road. I knew what was written on them.
I had seen it in the open and unprotected tent hospitals on Bataan. It was
not fear. I never saw a nurse afraid. It was something more dreadful than
fear, because that is active. It was inevitability.
They knew what to expect. They had seen what hate can do, when their hospitals
were deliberately bombed and wounded men screamed in their last agony under
Japanese planes. They had heard stories of other women. They were fleeing
toward the water line where there might or might not be boats to carry them
to Corregidor . . . I will never forget the faces of those girls. I will
never forgive the fact that American women, under the American flag, had
to know that night -- the last night on Bataan.
--I Saw The Fall of the Philippines, 1942.
The nurses arrived on Corregidor and immediately set up a hospital in Malinta
Tunnel, an underground fortress. In his memoirs (1946), General Jonathan
Wainwright, MacArthur's successor as commander of the American forces in
the Philippines, wrote, "Never forget the American girls who fought
on Bataan and later Corregidor. Their names must always be hallowed when
we speak of American heroes. The memory of them coming ashore on Corregidor
that early morning on April 9, dirty, disheveled, some of them wounded from
the hospital bombings, and everyone of them with her chin in the air, is
a memory that can never be erased."
The conditions in the tunnel were unspeakable, and the food and medical
supplies were running low. Japanese planes bombed the island continuously,
casualties mounted, and it soon became obvious that Corregidor would also
fall.
"When General MacArthur and his family left," recalled Helen Nestor,
one of the captured Army nurses, "I think that was the first time I
saw the writing on the wall -- that we'd have to surrender." Gladys
Mealer Giles, Captain, U.S. Army, retired, remembered, "When I knew
surrender was coming I felt very anxious and was glad I had work to do,
not that I wanted anyone to be wounded, but it kept my thoughts on something
other than what was happening outside."
On May 6, 1942, Corregidor surrendered and the Army nurses were taken prisoner.
Madeline Ullom recalled their commander telling them, "I want each
and every one of you to remember that you are an American and an officer
in the United States Army. You know what your duties and responsibilities
are, and always remember your oath." As Helen Nestor said, "How
could they prepare us, there was no precedent for this -- American women,
nurses, being taken prisoner."
The nurses were marched to the dock and taken by boat and truck to Santo
Thomas in Manila to join the Navy nurses already captured. Alice Clark described
the journey in an article published in the American Journal of Nursing
in 1945: "The trip was made by truck and in the hold of an indescribably
verminous freighter. Many of the nurses were ill from recurrent malaria
and fatigue." Once they arrived, the Army nurses were placed in confinement,
separated from the rest of the camp. As Mary Nelson, now a retired lieutenant
commander, explained, "I always felt the Japanese didn't know what
to do with military women."
Eventually when the need for medical care became acute in Santo Thomas,
the nurses received permission from the Japanese to establish a hospital
in the camp.
Food in the camp was scarce, medical supplies non-existent. The nurses did
the best they could, working twelve-hour shifts and living day to day. "During
the entire time we were there, the Japanese only let one Red Cross package
through," Margaret Greenwalt Walcher, a young first lieutenant, reported.
"Most of it was perishable and we used it right away. It was so hard
to see them die. I was on a men's ward, and a week before we were liberated
twelve men died of starvation."
After thirty-seven months of deprivation and hardship, the nurses were freed
by the U.S. forces. "When the men of the First Cavalry discovered the
American nurses," according to the account of Alice Clark, "they
went wild, shouting and cheering and hugging and kissing the stunned girls."
Most of the nurses were the merest skeletons of their former selves, suffering
from malaria, dengue fever, malnutrition, and exhaustion. "As a young
soldier with that column," Chief Warrant Officer M. Hull would go on
to write," I remember the other prisoners telling us how those nurses
had kept hope alive for so many captives who might otherwise have perished.
. . . I think often of those special Americans and give thanks for having
known such gallant women."
It was not the ill fate of every American nurse stationed in the Philippines
to fall into Japanese hands, but the campaign even for the lucky few left
its scars. Phyllis Galeaz, while at her staging area in Australia, met one
of the few nurses to escape from Corregidor by submarine just before it
fell.
"I came up behind her to say hello, and she jumped when I touched her.
She had that same vacant stare the boys used to have coming out of the jungle."
Flaherty, who served briefly at the evacuation hospital in Australia where
the escaped nurses were taken for care, gave this account: "Women who
normally weighed one hundred-and-twenty pounds were down to eighty-four.
Most were sick with malaria and exhaustion. I never pressed them to talk
about it, and they didn't volunteer too much."
Galeaz and Flaherty told me that although they'd known about the nurses
captured by the Japanese in the Philippines, it wasn't until the war's end
that they would learn of their fate.
The nurses liberated in 1945 were sent to Leyte, an island in the east central
Philippines itself only freshly retaken from the Japanese, where they were
treated and eventually released to come home to a hero's welcome.
The war ended for Genevieve Flood Wing on December 31, 1944, when she was
wounded at the Battle of the Bulge and received head and spinal cord injuries
serious enough to warrant 100% disability from the Army. Wing was one of
sixty-eight Army nurses to receive the Purple Heart. She was also awarded
the American Campaign Medal with four bronze stars, the Meritorious Unit
emblem, the European-African-Middle Eastern Campaign medal with four bronze
battle stars and the World War II Victory Medal.
Phyllis Santangello Galeaz was sent home from New Guinea after three years
of duty in the jungle, weighing ninety-nine pounds and suffering herself
from malaria, dengue fever, and exhaustion. She remembers arriving in America
on a hospital ship and seeing the Golden Gate Bridge. "Those of us
who could went up on deck, and we just stood there. No one said a word,
but man or woman, we were all crying." Galeaz received the American
Campaign Medal, the American Defense Service medal, the Distinguished Unit
Citation, the World War II Victory medal, and the Asiatic/Pacific Campaign
Medal.
Eileen Flaherty and Ruth McBrien, two nurses who told me during our interviews
that they had decided they'd better join up when the commitment was only
one year, returned home after four years overseas, highly decorated. They
both went on to make careers of the Army, serving in Korea and Vietnam,
and retiring as Lieutenant Colonel and Major, respectively.
Mary Kennedy spent the entire war in North Africa. Her group, the 48th Surgical
Hospital, followed Patton's army as it engaged Rommel's tank divisions and
fought in the bloody battle for Tunisia. After nearly two years in a mobile
surgical unit, Kennedy was promoted to chief nurse and assigned to the 128th
Evacuation Hospital in Casablanca, not returning home until after V-E Day.
As our interview ended, Kennedy, now 81 years old and a resident of a retirement
home, said, "I used to worry about all the blood -- there were no blood
banks and all we could give them was saline, and they bled so much. We just
had to stop the bleeding."
"I understand," I said, as her eyes brimmed with tears.
"They buried them, you know."
"What?" I asked.
"They buried them, the arms and legs..."
A report released by the Army Medical Department in 1949 perhaps puts
the work of the World War II combat nurses in a final perspective:
Of those wounded men who survived to reach a battalion aid station or other
medical facility, only 3.5 percent subsequently died of their wounds. Nearly
three soldiers in four returned to duty. The rate of DOWS [Died of Wounds]
was half that of the previous war.
SOURCES AND READINGS
The Army Nurse Corps. Washington, D.C.: U.S. Army Center for
Military History. Pub. 72-14
"An Army Nurse Works Hard to Keep Soldiers Healthy." Life,
26 May 1941, pp. 59-60.
"Annual Message of the President of the United States. 6 January
1945. Congressional Record of the United States Senate, pp. 65-71.
Archard, T. (1945). G.I. Nightingale: The Story of an American
Army Nurse. New York: W.W. Norton.
"Army Nurses Released from Manila Prison Camp." American Journal
of Nursing, 45, 1945, p. 238.
Bourke-White, M. (1944) They Called It Purple Heart Valley. New
York: Simon & Shuster.
Buchanan, M.S. (1988). Reminiscing: An Account of the 300th Army
General Hospital in WWII. Nashville: Williams.
Campbell, D. (1984). Women at War with America. Cambridge:
Harvard University Press.
Clark, A. (1945). "Thirty-seven Months as Prisoners of War."
American Journal of Nursing, 45, pp. 342-345.
Committee on Military Affairs (1944). "Hearings on the Army Nurse Corps
H.R. 3718," Congressional Record. 78th Congress, pp. 28-30.
Cooper, P. (1946). Navy Nurse. New York: McGraw-Hill.
Davis, M.P. (1944). "I Nursed at Santo Tomas, Manila." American
Journal of Nursing, 44, pp. 29-30.
Donahue, M.P. (1985). Nursing: The Finest Art. St. Louis:
C.V.Mosby.
"Draft Women?" Time, 15 January 1945, p.19.
"Do You Know . . . the Army Nurse Corps?" (1945). American
Journal of Nursing, 45, p. 624.
Flanagan, E.M. (1986). The Los Banos Raid. Novato, California.:
Presidio Press.
Flower, D. (1960). The Taste of Courage: The War 1939-1945. New
York: Harper and Row.
Gunn, C. (1944). "The Army Nurse in New Guinea." Army Life
and
U.S. Army Recruiting News, 26(9), pp. 10-11, 17.
Haskell, R. (1944). Helmets and Lipstick. New York: Putnam.
"Heroic Nurses of Bataan and Corregidor" (1942). American Journal
of Nursing, 42, pp. 896-898.
Hull, M. (1991). "Remembering Our Women POWs." The Register.
Washington, D.C.: Women in Military Service for American Foundation.
Jopling, L.W. (1990). Warrior in White. Texas: Watercress.
Kalisch, P.A. (1976). "How Army Nurses Became Officers." Nursing
Research, 25, pp. 164-177.
Kalisch, P.A. and B.J. Kalisch (1976). "Nurses Under Fire."
Nursing Research, 25, pp.409-429.
Kalisch, P.A. and B.J. Kalisch (1987). The Advance of American
Nursing. Boston: Little, Brown.
Korsan, G. (1945). At His Side: The Story of the American Red
Cross in World War II. New York: McCann.
Lane, L. (1992). "Nurses in Combat Boots." Soldiers, 47
(5), pp.
33-36.
Legette, B. (1966). The 38th Evac. New York: Heritage.
Lutz, A. (ed.) (1945). With Love, Jane: Letters from American
Women on the War Front. New York: John Day.
"News About Nursing" (1945). American Journal of Nursing,
45, pp. 315-318.
Paxton, V. (1945). "ANC Reinforcements Land in France." American
Journal of Nursing, 45, pp.13-16.
Piemonte, R. and C. Gurney (eds.) (1987). Highlights in the
History of the Army Nurse Corps. Washington, D.C.: U.S. Army
Center for Military History.
"Proposed Draft of Nurses" (1945). American Journal of Nursing,
45, pp. 87-89.
Ratlidge, A.C. (1975). Angels in Khaki. San Antonio: Naylor.
Romulo, C. (1942). I Saw the Fall of the Philippines. New York:
Doubleday.
"Six Navy Nurses Returned from the War Area" (1942). American
Journal of Nursing, 42, p.1202.
United States Center for Military History (producer) (1985). We
All Came Home [Film]. Washington, D.C.: U.S. Army.
"Tell Me About Procurement and Assignment" (1944). American
Journal of Nursing, 44, pp.251-254.
Wandry, J. (1991). Bedpan Commando: The Story of a Combat Nurse
in WWII. Ohio: Elmore.
"What's Wrong With the Nurses?" Time, 9 April 1945, pp.
21-22.
Williams, D. (1985). To The Angels. San Francisco: Denson.
Wiltse, C. (ed.) (1965). Medical Service in the Mediterranean and Minor
Theaters. Washington, D.C.: Office of Military History, Department of
the Army.
SIDE-BAR pull-outs (E.g., not taken from article):
"The thing that impressed me the most, all the men before they'd
die, a lot of them called for their mother. These things bother you. All
I could think of was his poor mother when she hears about her son being
killed -- I wish I'd had a way of letting her know that we'd cared for him."
Phyllis Santangello Galeaz
"The fire is burning low and just a few live coals are on the bottom.
With slow feeding of wood and, finally, of coal, a roaring fire is started.
I couldn't help thinking how similar to a human being a fire is. If it's
not allowed to run down too low and if there is a spark of life left in
it, it can be nursed back -- so can a human being. It's slow, it's gradual,
it's done all the time in these field hospitals. . ."
--Lt. Francis Slanger, killed in action 10/21/44
". . . thousands of troops sitting on the ground [at a USO show] began
to cheer loudly, and when the nurses saw that Bing Crosby had not yet arrived,
they realized the cheering was for them."
--Vincent M. Paxton, 1944.
Red Cross Correspondent, France
Linda Morrison is the Coordinator of the Salem State College School of Nursing
Resource Center. Her research project on the role of the nurse in World
War II was presented this past year at the National League for Nursing Convention
and at the annual meeting of the Nursing Archives Assocation, Mugar Library,
Boston University.