For the Boys

"This novelistic narrative captures both the violence and trauma of WWII and its subject’s remarkable heroism."― Publishers Weekly

A month after her 24th birthday, Lt. Mary Elizabeth Balster collapses among the rubble of a shelled supply room. Has the young nurse finally succumbed to the mounting emotional toll caused from months of caring for the sick and wounded just behind the front lines of General Patton’s Third Army? On the night of November 30, 1944, holed up in the Heinrich Himmler Barracks in Morhange, France, Lt. Balster’s evac receives a typical patient load (over 200 soldiers, including wounded enemy), but this time one of the admissions is a 19-year-old tanker she’d nursed back to health five months before in Normandy. The charge nurse on Surgical gently informs the lieutenant that the private is critical, admitted with two gunshot wounds and almost half his body consumed by burns. Rising determined to save him, Balster limps toward the shelled supply room determined to search for any blood plasma bottles still intact after Luftwaffe strafing.

Recaptured from her mother’s reminiscences and letters home, N. C. R. Davis takes the reader through every heat-of-battle harrowing moment as Balster lived it, achieving a rare glimpse of one nurse’s point of view during the latter part of the European conflict.

The book mixes Lt. Balster’s observations, memories, and dreams to re-tell the true story of a richly rebellious and intense woman trying to navigate her life and nurture her sanity while nursing the wounded and dying frontline soldiers of the Third Army. Her strong-willed, beguiling personality fosters the grit necessary for her success as a combat nurse, but these same characteristics cause two men to fall in love with her. And the personal cost of war comes to a heartrending conclusion, as she must choose one man over the other to save herself.

Table of Contents

Acknowledgements

Author’s Note

Preface

PART St. Paul, Fort Leonard Wood, Middle Tennessee, Winter 1933–Winter 1943

1 On a Streetcar, Guilt Takes a Prisoner

2 During Quarantine, a Nurse is Born

3 Under Control

4 Mail Call

5 The Cave

6 Hotel Jefferson, St. Louis

7 Please Forgive This Depressing Missive

8 No Excuses

9 Pickled Caterpillars and Wood Tick Juice

PART HMS Andes and Altrincham, Spring 1944–Summer 1944

10 Shave Tail

11 The Buckleys

12 A Doctor Captain

PART European Theatre of Operations, Summer 1944

13 Christmas in July

14 Bed-Check Charlie

15 Poppies

16 On a Grassy Knoll near Sainte-Mère-Église

17 Lost Cots and Litters in the Sun

18 It’s Just the Little Things, Daddy

19 You Can’t Blame These Boys

20 Got into a Little Dutch

21 Toul

22 These Boys

23 Snow Globe

24 Redmond

25 General Patton’s Vagabonds

26 KAR 98

27 Blue 88

28 For the Boys

29 Lucky Strikes and a Limey

30 Luxembourg

31 Deposed Queens

32 Buchenwald

33 Hopes Unrealized

34 The Green Danube

35 Isolation Has its Perks

36 Winter Storm Brewing

Afterword