There is a story that at the signing of the peace treaty at Versailles on 23 June 1919, a German delegate, upset with the harsh terms imposed on Germany by the Allies, remarked to a reporter, “We’ll see you again in 20 years. ”1 If true, it was prophetic. Twenty years, two months, and seven days later, on 1 September 1939, Germany invaded Poland, initiating World War II.
The period between the first and second world wars has frequently been called “The Long Armistice,” and in many ways the second war was just a continuation of the first, in the sense that events resulting from the end of World War I directly influenced events that led to World War II.
The end of World War I was accompanied by the fall of three great empires: the Romanov Empire in Czarist Russia, the Austro-Hungarian Empire in Eastern Europe, and the Ottoman Empire in Turkey. Into the power vacuum thus created, nationalistic movements emerged in Japan, Italy, Spain, France, and Germany, enhanced both by a worldwide economic depression and lethargy on the part of democracies exhausted from war, resulting in policies of appeasement and isolationism.
World War I caused 400 billion dollars in property damage and destroyed much of Europe’s infrastructure. More than 65 million men and women took part in World War I; 13 million of them were killed or later died from their injuries. This number exceeded the number killed in all the wars between 1790–1913, including the Napoleonic Wars, the Crimean War, the Danish Prussian War, the Austro-Prussian War, the American Civil War, the Franco-Prussian War, the Boer War, the Russo-Japanese War, and the Balkan Wars.2
English women served extensively in the military during wartime for the first time, beginning in 1914 with FANY. Created in 1907 as a link between frontline fighting units and the field hospitals, FANYs ran field hospitals, drove ambulances, and set up soup kitchens and troop canteens, often close to the front under extremely dangerous conditions. FANYs were awarded many decorations for bravery, including seventeen Military Medals, one Legion d’Honneur, and twenty-seven Croix de Guerre.
In 1915, female volunteers were allowed to serve overseas in hospitals at the Western Front, Mesopotamia, and Gallipoli as part of VADs. During the war, approximately thirty-eight thousand VADs worked as assistant nurses, ambulance drivers, and cooks, and VAD hospitals were opened in most large towns in Britain.
The British WAAC was established in January 1917, and women served as drivers, clerks, telephone operators (“telephonists”), cooks, and instructors. When the Royal Flying Corps and Royal Naval Air Service merged in March 1918 to form the Royal Air Force, a female branch, the WRAF, was immediately created. More than one hundred thousand British women served in the uniformed services during 1914–18, nearly half as nurses.3
World War I was the first war in which American women were able to participate in the military. Two hundred twenty civilian women of the Army Signal Corps served overseas in England and France as operators called “Hello Girls.” (They were finally recognized as veterans in 1979.) Only American Army nurses saw service in France, and by the end of the war, some ten thousand American military nurses had served overseas in field hospitals, troop transports, and in operating rooms at the front. One hundred two Army nurses died overseas, most from influenza and pneumonia. Twenty-three were awarded the DSM and three received the DSC.4
Despite passage of the 19th Amendment in 1919, which gave American women the right to vote—partly to acknowledge their service during the war—the prevailing attitude was against women serving in the military in general, and specifically in combat.
During the ’30s, particularly the latter part of the decade, as war clouds gathered over Europe, the U.S. government discussed the possibility of creating a women’s corps. However, it was only after Pearl Harbor that Congress authorized the creation of the WAAC, on 14 May 1942, over the objections of many members of Congress. Col. Oveta Culp Hobby was sworn in as the first director of the WAAC that same day. The WAAC was changed on 1 July 1943 to the Women’s Army Corps, and was given full military status. By August 1942, women were authorized to enlist in the WAVES as part of the Navy, and an estimated one hundred thousand did, but women in the WAVES were prohibited from serving overseas. Women Marines were authorized on 7 November 1942 and women served in the Coast Guard SPARs. More than one thousand women also ferried aircraft as part of the WASP. Thousands of other women served with the ANC and the NNC. There are no exact figures on how many women served in the Army and Army Air Corps during the war, but there were close to one hundred thousand women serving in April 1945, with a little more than sixteen thousand overseas.5 In all, it is estimated that as many as four hundred thousand women served in uniform during World War II.6 This was the greatest utilization of women, from the greatest number of countries, in the history of the world.
Even though American women were not allowed to serve in combat units, the idea was considered. Even before America entered the war, Gen. George C. Marshall studied the performance of European women soldiers, especially the British women in Anti-Aircraft Artillery (AAA) units, and after America’s entry into the war, he asked Eisenhower to investigate the effectiveness of British mixed-gender units. After Eisenhower’s favorable report, Marshall determined to conduct his own experiment.7
Operating under severe security, twenty-one WAAC officers and 374 enlisted servicewomen were assigned to two AAA batteries and searchlight units of the 36th Coast Artillery, assigned to the Military District of Washington. Between 12 December 1942 and 15 April 1943, men and women trained together in antiaircraft units, and the commanding officer of the experimental unit, Col. Timberlake, found that the women “met the physical, intellectual and psychological standards” and were “superior in efficiency,” an opinion shared by the district commander, Maj. Gen. John T. Lewis. They recommended to Marshall that the experiment be expanded and continued.8
General Marshall weighed the various considerations. How would the public respond? What about the conservative members of Congress who had opposed the women’s corps itself? How would this impact Marshall’s plan to expand the WAC? How would the change impact existing legislation? Would women continue to volunteer? Would they be drafted?
Even though Marshall’s experiment was considered a success, two factors played significantly into his decision not to continue the experiment: (1) There was no real threat from the air to the continental United States and AAA positions could be filled by men on limited duty; (2) There was a much greater need for WAACs in clerical and administrative positions. The experiment was ended, the women were reassigned, and Marshall ordered that the results should be kept confidential. “It is not believed that national policy or public opinion is yet ready to accept the use of women in field force units.” At least for World War II, American servicewomen would not be sent into combat.
1. Snyder, Louis. The Long Armistice 1919–1939: Europe between Wars. New York: Franklin Watts, Inc., 1964, p. 1.
2. Ibid.
3. Caddick-Adams, Peter. Oxford Companion to Military History. UK: Royal Military College of Science, Cranfield University, 2001.
4. “Military Nurses in World War I.” The Women’s Memorial, Arlington, Va. http://www.womensmemorial.org/historyandcollections/history/lrnmrewwinurses.html
5. U.S. Army Women’s Museum, Ft. Lee, Va, Strength of the Army Reports, STM 30, 1942–1945; Treadwell, Mattie E. The US Army in World War II, Special Studies, The Women’s Army Corps. Washington, D.C.: Government Printing Office, 1954.
6. Campbell, D’Ann. “Women in Combat: The World War Two Experiences in the United States, Great Britain, Germany, and the Soviet Union,” Journal of Military History, April 1993.
7. Ibid.
8. Ibid.
Eighteen army nurses of the 45th Field Hospital, along with those of the 128th Evacuation Hospital, landed at Utah Beach in Normandy, France, on 10 June 1944, four days after the invasion of Europe by Allied forces during World War II. Among the group of registered nurses was 2nd Lt. Frances Y. Slanger of Roxbury, Massachusetts, who would later become the first American nurse to be killed in the European theater. On D-Day, approximately ten thousand Allied soldiers were killed and wounded by German defenders as they came ashore at five beaches along a sixty-mile front. Surgeons and medics were staggered by the number of casualties and asked the Allied command in London to send nurses as soon as possible.1
Slanger was of Jewish descent and, during the war there was strong anti-Semitism in America, in addition to racial discrimination in America. These biases existed in the armed services and it was not unusual for American Soldiers to call a colored person a nigger or a Jew a kike. However, regarding the latter, once the wounded were tended to by nurses of all ethnic backgrounds, the Soldiers realized that they owed their lives to the professionalism and tender care given by these women who never seemed to tire while being exposed to the carnage inflicted by war.
War was no stranger to Slanger, who was born Freidel Yachet Schlanger in Lodz, Poland. She and her mother and sister endured Russian occupation during World War I when she was fifteen months old. The brutal Cossacks barricaded Lodz, often known as the stepchild of Russia, in anticipation of a German invasion. Slanger’s father, Dawid, had immigrated to America two years before, seeking a safe refuge for his family. However, once the war began, steamship companies decided that it was too dangerous to send their ships across the Atlantic because of the German U-boat threat. With immigration discontinued, Dawid’s wife and two daughters stayed in Lodz, living in the slums of the city where the Russians killed and maimed Jews at will. On 18 November 1914 a fierce battle for the city began. Though victorious, the Germans suffered thirty-five thousand casualties.
When the war ended, Slanger was five years old and had witnessed the horrors of war. Two years later (in 1920), she and her mother and sister immigrated to the United States, where her family began their new life in a row house in south Boston. While in America her father changed his name to David Slanger. He supported the family as a fruit peddler and each morning he would awaken his daughter before dawn to help him make his rounds. To her neighbors and people along his route she became know as the fruit peddler’s daughter.
Throughout her early years, Slanger dreamed of becoming an internationally known writer. She attended Abraham Lincoln intermediate school and in her free hours wrote poems and essays. At the age of seventeen she entered the High School of Practical Arts. In addition to her writing ambition, Slanger had a natural tendency to care for the less fortunate, especially children. This led to her decision to become a nurse. When she announced this desire to her family, they were dumbfounded. They termed such work as a Christian calling and as a Jewish woman she was expected to marry a man of promise—a lawyer, doctor, or businessman. However, Slanger persisted in attempting to make this dream come true and visited the Boston City Hospital School of Nursing to apply for training. She was quickly told by the supervising nurse to come back when she had finished high school.
At about this time, the 1929 financial crash occurred and Slanger was forced to split her time between helping her father and attending school. Following her graduation she worked in the stockroom of the Massachusetts Knitting Mills. At twenty years of age and with the depression still taking its toll, the family’s financial plight became worse since her father was ill and the family depended on the money she made at the mills. However, Slanger dared to pursue her undiminished dream and she filled out an application for the Boston City Hospital School of Nursing. She waited anxiously for the nursing school’s reply. There were rumors that Boston nursing schools had limitations on the number of Jewish and colored students they would accept each year. In fact, only two colored applicants were allowed each term at the Boston City Hospital School of Nursing. Slanger was accepted and ordered to report for the winter session in February 1934.
Throughout her young life, Slanger kept what she called her “chapbook” (a personal diary/scrapbook). It included her writings, clippings of important world events, and—not surprisingly—her letter of acceptance to nurse’s training.
When she began attending nursing school, Slanger soon found that nursing supervisors were the gods of the floor during her probationary term of training. Two supervisors gave her particular problems. She didn’t know whether it was her attitude, work ethic, or the fact that she was Jewish that bothered the supervisors. One reported her as blundering, slow, irresponsible, and unable to accept criticism. She was often taken to task for spending too much time with children. All Slanger sought was fairness and justice.
Although the supervisors submitted mixed reviews of Slanger’s training progress, the pros far outweighed the cons and on 23 February 1937, Slanger graduated from Boston City Hospital’s School of Nursing. After passing state examinations, she became a certified registered nurse.
In 1939, Poland was invaded by Germany and fifty thousand civilians were killed. The following year, the Germans officially sealed the Lodz ghetto encampment, confining one hundred seventy thousand Jews indefinitely, a number of them relatives of the Slanger family. More Jews were herded into the ghetto, and brought in by train from other cities. Many were worked to death in factories that produced munitions for the German army.
When the Germans invaded the Soviet Union in 1941, it appeared that a world war was in the offing. Following the attack on Pearl Harbor and America’s entry into the war, Slanger joined the U.S. Army Nurse Corps and was ordered to report to Lovell General Hospital at Fort Devens, Massachusetts, on or about 12 November 1941. However, in October her father suffered his second stroke; she rescinded her enlistment and the ANC placed her application in a deferred file.
News of the mass murders of Jews in Poland was first published by the Boston Globe in June of 1942 and this moved Slanger to officially join the ANC and in this capacity help Allied soldiers stop the Nazis. She joined the ANC in the spring of 1943 but was denied overseas duty due to defective vision in both eyes. Thus, she was limited to duty within the continental boundaries of the United States.
Slanger completed training at Fort Devens, Fort Rucker in Alabama, and Camp Gordon in Georgia. However, once her training was complete, she was determined to serve overseas and challenged the ANC policy successfully. This was a major step for the five foot one inch, introverted nurse who had to face down a medical officer. But her argument was clear and persuasive. Nurses were needed urgently on the front lines and she was ready to meet that need. She was successful in her argument and cleared to serve overseas. She was assigned to the 2nd Platoon of the 45th Field Hospital Unit and on 10 June 1944 was on board the freighter William N. Pendleton as it crossed the English Channel headed for the Normandy coast.
Transferred to a landing craft, the nurses struggled ashore at Utah Beach amidst the fierce sounds of warfare, something they had not experienced before. It was frightening as cannons roared and the skies were filled with Allied and German aircraft engaged in air-to-air combat. The nurses finally made it to a field hospital in a pasture near Le Grand Chemin. It was the only medical facility operating in the area. When they entered the tents the scene was almost overwhelming. The smell of the dead permeated the air, causing the nurses to hesitate before plunging into the chaotic fight to save lives in the desperation of the moment.
The nurses worked until they dropped from sheer exhaustion. When they awoke, their gruesome tasks continued and, periodically, German planes would drop bombs or strafe so close to the hospital tents that were marked by large red crosses that the medical teams had to leave their patients and race for foxholes.
Though compassionate and skillful in her care for the wounded and dying, Slanger remained a loner, often sitting by herself and writing in her chapbook. Her three tent mates liked and admired her although she appeared to them to be somewhat mysterious because she never joined them in their off-duty frolicking, preferring to remain a bit on the outside as if she thought she didn’t fit in. She did make friends with other Jewish personnel, in particular Capt. Joseph P. Shoham, a dentist of the 2nd Platoon who later became the platoon’s mess boss. Second platoon doctors were all Jewish except one, but a Jewish nurse, like Slanger, was a rarity. One of the doctors whom she befriended managed to figure out why Slanger was so different. It was, he believed, because everything seemed to mean much more to her than to the others.
The 45th moved five times after landing at Utah Beach, finally arriving in Elsenborn, Belgium, on 7 October 1944. The town was relatively peaceful and the unit set up an encampment near the city. The doctors, medics, and nurses finally had time to rest, write home, read their mail, and in general recuperate after five months of arduous duty. Elsenborn was considered safe from German attack because their now-weakened army was fighting to hold the city of Aachen to the north. With no apparent nearby threat, the unit relaxed; the need to dig foxholes seemed unnecessary.
The U.S. military newspaper, Stars and Stripes, (the paper had first been printed in France in July 1944) and the biweekly magazine, Yank, often printed front-page articles about the arrival and activities of WACS in Europe but gave little attention to nurses. Slanger and her tentmates were aware of the many letters printed in other periodicals about the work of the nurses but Slanger was concerned that the GIs in the foxholes who put their lives on the line every day deserved to be honored in print, not the WACs or nurses.
One night as Slanger was writing in her chapbook, she decided to send a letter to the editor at Stars and Stripes describing nurses’ feelings for Soldiers. The letter went as follows:
It is 0200, and I have been lying awake for one hour, listening to the steady, even breathing of the other three nurses in the tent and thinking about some of the things we had discussed during the day. The rain is beating down on the tent with torrential force. The wind is on a mad rampage and its main objective seems to be to lift the tent off its pole and fling it about our heads.
The fire is burning low and just a few live coals are on the bottom. With the slow feeding of wood, and finally coal, a roaring fire is started. I can’t help thinking how similar to a human being a fire is. If it is 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 is slow; it is gradual; it is done all the time in these field hospitals and other hospitals in the European Theater of Operations.
We have read several articles in different magazines and papers sent in by a grateful GI praising the work of the nurses around the combat zones. Praising us. . . for what? I climbed back into my cot. Lieutenant (Margaret M.) Bowler was the only one I had awakened. I whispered to her, Lieutenant (Christine) Cox and Lieutenant (Elizabeth) Powers slept on. Fine nurses and great girls to live with . . . of course, like in all families, an occasional quarrel, but these were quickly forgotten.
I’m writing this by flashlight, in this light it looks something like a dive. In the center of the tent are two poles, one part chimney, the other a plain tent pole. Kindling wood lies in disorderly confusion on the damp ground. We don’t have a tarp on the ground. A French wine pitcher, filled with water stands by. The GIs say we rough it. We in our little tent can’t see it. True, we are set up in tents, sleep on cots, and are subject to the temperature of the weather.
We wade ankle-deep in mud, but you have to lie in it. We are restricted to our immediate area, a cow pasture or a hayfield, but then, who is not restricted? We have a stove and coal. We even have a laundry line in the tent. Our GI drawers are at this moment doing the dance of the pants what with the wind blowing, the tent waving precariously, the rain beating down, the guns firing and me with a flashlight, writing. It all adds up to a feeling of unreality.
Sure, we rough it, but in comparison to the way you men are taking it, we can’t complain, nor do we feel that bouquets are due us. But you, the men behind the guns, the men driving our tanks, flying our planes, sailing our ships, building bridges and the men who pave the way and the men who are left behind—it is to you we doff our helmets. To every GI wearing the American uniform—for you we have the greatest admiration and respect.
Yes, this time we are handing out the bouquets—but only after taking care of some of your buddies, comforting them when they are brought in bloody, dirty with the earth, mud and grime, and most of them so tired. Somebody’s brothers, somebody’s fathers, and somebody’s sons, seeing them gradually brought back to life, to consciousness, and to see their lips separate into a grin when they first welcome you. Usually they kid, hurt as they are. It doesn’t amaze us to hear one of them say, “hi’ ya babe,” or “holy mackerel, an American woman,” or more indiscreetly “How about a kiss?”
These Soldiers stay with us but a short time, from ten days to possibly two weeks. We have learned a great deal about our American Soldier, and the stuff he is made of. The wounded do not cry. Their buddies come first.
The patience and determination they show, the courage and fortitude they have, is sometimes awesome to behold. It is we who are proud to be here. Rough it? No, it is a privilege to be able to receive you, and a great distinction to see you open your eyes and with that swell American grin say, “Hi’ ya babe.”
On the same day that Slanger delivered her letter to the unit’s mail clerk, the 45th received word that it could expect no casualties the following day. Although guns could be heard off in the distance, this particular Saturday the personnel could relax. The 45th believed that this quiet day would be one of many to follow as the Allied forces moved toward Germany.
All was quiet that evening; after dinner many returned to their tents to write letters and play poker. And, when lulls like this happened most thought of those they’d left behind at home. Suddenly, at 2100 hours an artillery shell crashed into the ground near the tent encampment. The second shell tore into tents and personnel as they ran from their shelters in a state of confusion into a downpour. They had no idea where the shells were coming from and which way to run. Since it was a pitch-black night, they turned off the generators thinking that their lights might be giving away their position. More shells rained down on them and the screams and yelling of injured personnel began to swell. The wounded and critical casualties were rushed to the surgery tents amidst the chaos. A woman’s cry, “Over here!” was heard over the din and doctors and medics rushed to one of the nurse’s tents, which was badly damaged. Three nurses huddled around a small figure in the debris.
Slanger had been critically wounded, shrapnel had cut her deeply across her abdomen and she was hemorrhaging badly. From their experience, those that surrounded her knew that she wouldn’t make it. She was carried to a medical tent, where she died within the hour. Many of her comrades, both men and women, sobbed at her passing. Frances Slanger was thirty-one years old.
American guns positioned to the west behind the 45th finally countered the German artillery. After firing twenty shells, the German batteries ceased their barrage. The night was silent once again.
Around midnight, members of the 2nd Platoon held a brief service for those lost during the attack: Slanger; Maj. Herman Lord, doctor in charge of the 2nd Platoon; and Pvt. Vincente Rivas. Three days after the incident Frances Y. Slanger, Slanger, #752108, was buried at the U.S. Cemetery at Henri-Chapelle, which is approximately twenty miles northwest of Elsenborn. Two thousand graves of American Soldiers dot the Belgian hillside in the cemetery.
Seventeen days after Slanger mailed her letter, Stars and Stripes printed it, not as a letter to the editor, but as an editorial titled, “A Nurse Writes the Editorial.” Her poignant words lauding American GIs struck a chord with Soldiers and civilians alike. The article, published posthumously, drew hundreds of letters from American Soldiers and civilians from around the world. In author Bob Welch’s book, American Nightingale: The Story of Frances Slanger, Forgotten Heroine of Normandy, he quotes a typical letter written by an Army Air Force air gunner, which was also signed by eight other airmen.
Inspiration is difficult to discover. We discovered it. Amid the roar and thunder of war emerges at one time or another the genuine, worth-living-for thoughts of a human being. Only few people can put it on paper—but all of us have that singular, infinite thought deep in our minds and hearts. Frances Slanger put it on paper—so overwhelmingly beautiful yet so much from the heart. She captured the distinguishable characteristic of human love and understanding which has become so latent in our speedy world. She portrayed modesty in the nth degree—looking for no praise, but gathering the hearts of millions of GIs into her possession and then losing them. Losing them in this life to her memory, but retaining them in that unknown world to come.
Frances Slanger is a great woman. We say it because her memory in our minds will linger steadfastly long after the final gun is fired in this war. Why? Because Frances Slanger pointed out the only genuine rule for peace on earth: human love and understanding.2
Army nurses of the 45th Field Hospital pay homage at the grave of 2nd Lt. Frances Y. Slanger USA at Henri-Chapelle Cemetery in Belgium. Courtesy of NARA
In addition to being awarded the Purple Heart Medal posthumously, a newly built hospital ship was named Frances Y. Slanger, American airmen displayed painted images of her on the sides of their aircraft, often with the words, In Memory of Lt. F. Slanger, USANC.
In October 1947, Slanger’s body was brought back to America aboard the Liberty ship, Joseph V. Connolly. That year the U.S. Army offered the parents of those lost in the war and buried in overseas cemeteries the option of having their loved ones returned to America. Slanger’s relatives wanted her remains to be returned home. On 21 November 1947 Slanger was finally laid to rest at Independent Pride of Boston, a Jewish cemetery, in West Roxbury, Massachusetts. She was buried with full military honors. On the upper part of her gravestone (which was etched with flowers and the symbol of the Army Nurse Corps) are words taken from her letter:
U.S. ARMY NURSE CORPS
The wounded do not Cry,
Their Buddies Come First.
The lower half of the stone reads:
Lt. Frances Y. Slanger
Beloved Daughter and sister
Killed in Belgium Oct. 21, 1944
1. The main reference for writing this chapter was Bob Welch’s book, American Nightingale: The Story of Frances Slanger, Forgotten Heroine of Normandy. New York: Atria Books, 2004. Welch’s work is probably the most comprehensive story written to date regarding the life, wartime experiences, and death of Frances Slanger. It is extremely well researched and written with accuracy and completeness seldom found in such war stories. In reviewing his Bibliography it appears that it is the only book solely written about this heroic nurse. It is a book that vividly grasps the carnage of war and the sacrifices made by our young men and women who have fought for our nation in past wars and those of today.
2. Excerpted from Welch, Bob. American Nightingale, p. 224. The letter was written by Sgt. George W. Fritton, an air gunner with the Army Air Force’s 647th Bomb Squadron, 410 Bomb Group.
_________
Photo courtesy of NARA
It was only through an accident of fate that Ens. Jane Louise “Candy” Kendiegh Cheverton achieved the distinction of being the first flight nurse to land on a battlefield during World War II.1
Described as 108 pounds of green-eyed charm and efficiency, Jane Louise Kendiegh was born in Henrietta, Ohio, in 1922 (although numerous articles give Oberlin, Ohio, as her birthplace). She grew up on an apple orchard farm and was an honor student and valedictorian of Henrietta High School in 1940. She graduated from the St. Luke School of Nursing in Cleveland in 1943, achieving a childhood dream of becoming a nurse. Shortly after her graduation, she joined the U.S. Naval Nurse Corps.2
Commissioned an ensign, Cheverton was trained at the Great Lakes Naval Training Station, Illinois, and then was sent to the Naval Hospital at Treasure Island before being assigned to the NATS. She was one of twenty-four nurses who made up the first group to volunteer and be selected for training as air evacuation flight nurses.3
Cheverton was sent to the Naval Air Station at Alameda, California, in December 1944 for the basic air evacuation course. There she attended lectures on how high altitudes affected skull fractures or severe concussions, the expansion of gases in abdominal tracts, and other peculiarities of flight medicine.4 Other classes were more practical in nature, such as flight operations, maintenance of medical equipment, water survival training, use of oxygen masks in flight, and how to safely evacuate patients from the aircraft under emergency conditions.
Upon completion of a six-week phase of classroom training, the nurses gained practical experience on transcontinental flights transferring wounded and ambulatory patients between stateside hospitals.5
After she graduated on 22 January 1945, and following her practice flights, Cheverton was assigned to the newly formed VRE-1 (Evacuation Transport Squadron) comprised of twenty-four flight nurses, twenty-four corpsmen (all pharmacist mates), a flight surgeon, and twenty-two twin-engine R4D Douglas Skytrains, the Navy version of the venerable Army C-47 or civilian DC-3.6
VRE-1 arrived in Guam in early February 1945, putting in place an evacuation system that would transport combat casualties directly from the battlefield to forward hospitals in Guam, then on to Pearl Harbor in Hawaii, ultimately arriving in the continental United States, where every effort was made to place the wounded in hospitals as close to home as possible.7
Initially, there was speculation as to whether or not nurses would be allowed to fly onto the actual battlefields, a concern that increased with the invasion of Iwo Jima on 19 February 1945. However, the military did decide to allow flight nurses into combat areas, and preparations were made to document and record the event.8 Navy Lt. Gill Dewitt was assigned to accompany the mission and “photograph the first navy nurse in action.”9
Dewitt reported to Agana Airfield on Guam at 0200 hours on 3 March 1945 with orders to accompany Lt. (jg) Ann Purvis, only to discover upon arrival that Purvis’ plane had already departed. Disappointed, he boarded the second plane for the fifteen-hundred-mile trip. Dewitt went aft, where he joined Ensign Cheverton; her corpsman; and a cargo of cots, blankets, and medical supplies.10
When they arrived at Iwo Jima, an offshore bombardment was in progress and the plane was ordered to circle the field, which continued for ninety minutes. Dewitt recalled, “We circled and circled the small island and watched the bursting shells beneath us like firecrackers on the Fourth of July.”11
It was only after landing and reporting in that they learned that the first plane, with Lieutenant Purvis on board, had become lost, and thus Cheverton was afforded the distinction of being the first Navy nurse on a Pacific battlefield.12
Cheverton immediately reported to the hospital—a sandbagged tent beside the airfield—and set to work. There were sixteen critically wounded waiting on stretchers, ready to be loaded aboard; the flight surgeon gave her the rundown on each patient and indicated what treatment they would need. She recalled, “We took the worst. Others would be evacuated on hospital ships.”13
First Navy nurse who saw action on a battlefield, Ens. Jane Kendiegh Cheverton attends a wounded man on Iwo Jima before taking off with casualties on a Navy evacuation plane. Courtesy of NHC
Their takeoff path was downwind to avoid flying over Japanese lines, and Cheverton worked without rest until her patients were safely delivered to ambulances in Guam. It was the first of what would become routine missions for the nurses of VRE-1, and Cheverton returned to Iwo Jima several more times, with three days off between missions. “The thing we always worried about . . . were the Japanese snipers. We were afraid of the gas tank getting hit,” Cheverton recalled.14
Cheverton earned the additional distinction of being the first nurse to land at Okinawa, on 7 April 1945. She observed kamikaze planes at their deadly work. “They just disintegrated. They flew right into ships.” When a photo of her tending the wounded made the front page of newspapers nationwide—from the New York Times to the Seattle Times—Cheverton became a media sensation, and the press followed her across the Pacific issuing dispatches regarding the “Angel of Mercy” and the “Most-whistled-at nurse in the Pacific.”15
After three trips to Okinawa, Cheverton was ordered stateside where, accompanied by an injured Marine, she went on a month-long War Bond tour, speaking at shipyards and businesses. Soon, however, she returned to the Pacific where she was assigned the Guam-to-Honolulu leg of the evacuation route. Just about this time, she began dating one of the squadron’s pilots, Lt. Robert E. Cheverton, whom she married on Valentine’s Day (14 February) 1946.
Following the war and her discharge (married women were not allowed to serve), she followed her husband through his twenty-four-year Navy career, retiring to Point Loma, near San Diego, California, in 1963. She worked as an R.N. until her retirement in 1985. She died at home from cancer on 19 July 1987.16
Cheverton, as well as each of the first twelve nurse pioneers of VRE-1, received commendations from the Commander, Forward Area-Central Pacific, which read:
“For excellent service as a flight nurse in the Forward Area–Central Pacific, during the first quarter of 1945, for participation in numerous areas of the Pacific Ocean and contributing materially in the successful evacuation of wounded from the battle area of Iwo Jima. The skill care of patients, and devotion to duty throughout were worthy of the highest praise.”17
1. Dewitt, Lt. Gill. The First Navy Flight Nurse on a Pacific Battlefield: A Picture Story of a Flight to Iwo. Fredericksburg, Tx.: The Admiral Nimitz Foundation, 1983.
2. Ibid.
3. Sutter, Janet. “‘Angel of Mercy’ Kept Wings: WWII Nurse Still Dotes on Patients,” The San Diego Union, 24 March 1985.
4. Cooper, Page. Navy Nurse. New York: McGraw-Hill Book Company, 1946, pp. 171–72.
5. American Journal of Nursing, Volume 45, Number 6, June 1945.
6. Cooper, Page. Navy Nurse, pp. 174–75.
7. Frachette, Joseph. “Flight Nurse,” Navy Medicine, March–April 1945.
8. U.S. Navy Department BUMED (Bureau of Medicine) Newsletter Aviation Supplement, 5(1), 20 July 1945.
9. Dewitt, Lt. Gill. The First Navy Flight Nurse on a Pacific Battlefield.
10. Ibid.
11. Ibid.
12. Ibid.
13. Sutter, Janet. “Angel of Mercy Kept Wings”.
14. Ibid.
15. Ibid.
16. Ibid.
17. U.S. Navy Department BUMED (Bureau of Medicine) Newsletter Aviation Supplement.
_________
Photo courtesy of NHC
Cpl. Barbara Lauwers Podoski arrived for her interview with Kate Scott at The Women’s Memorial dressed in a skirt and tunic, to which was attached with great pride her World War II miniature medals. Among those medals were three Slovakian ribbons, a U.S. Bronze Star, and a small circular ribbon which surrounded a button with the letters OSS on it. The diminutive corporal (she appeared to be just under five feet tall) had been born in Brno, Czechoslovakia, in 1914. At ninety-one, she was articulate in her recall of the war and her participation in it. She is an amazing woman.
Barbara met an American export official, Charles Lauwers, in Czechoslovakia the day after the German invasion of her country, 16 March 1939. She and her husband obtained travel documents at the American Consulate and escaped to America via the Belgian Congo aboard the SS President Taylor. The Lauwers settled in New York City and socialized only with their Slovak countrymen and often frequented the Czechoslovak consulate. On one occasion they attended a soccer game between the Sokol New York and the Chicago Club. Jan Masaryk, foreign minister of the Czechoslovakian government in exile, was in the bleachers at the game and when Podoski saw him she bowed to him and he beckoned her to join him. They had met once before in London and after learning of her present limited personal activity he said to her, “Off with you to the legation in Washington. We need people like you—and now!”
Shortly thereafter the Japanese attacked Pearl Harbor and soon America was at war. Podoski’s husband was drafted into the Army and a few days before Christmas in 1941 Podoski relocated to D.C. to work for the Czechoslovakian Legation.
Midmorning of 1 June 1943, Podoski became a U.S. citizen; a few hours later she joined the U.S. Army. She felt a strong patriotic duty to serve her new country; she hoped to be able to free up a Soldier for combat. She also hoped the service would be a great adventure. After completing three months of basic training, and a brief stint in the Army press service, she was ordered to Fort Oglethorpe, one of the two officers’ schools for women in the Army.
Before Podoski started officers’ school, a WAC captain arrived unexpectedly from D.C. and selected three of the officer candidates who were multilingual for very special training and Lauwers was one of the three (she was fluent in English, German, Czech, Slovak, and French). After she reported for duty in D.C. she learned that she was to be assigned to the OSS and sworn to secrecy about the agency. The OSS compound operated in several temporary buildings near the Lincoln Memorial, away from the rest of D.C.
Female GIs were dispersed throughout the agency; Podoski worked in a back room sorting out material of European origin. One coworker was a taciturn sergeant; one day she heard him hum a Czech melody and learned that it was his fraternity hymn at Harvard. Podoski treated him to the original version, the whole six stanzas in Czech, and the sergeant was ecstatic; she never learned how the melody got to the oldest American university.
In January 1944, Podoski was shipped out to the Algerian port of Oran in North Africa. She was sent to the Allied Control Commission in Algiers, where she worked with Americans, French, British, and a small detachment of Russians. Most of the men assigned to her regiment were paratroopers and were training for action behind enemy lines. Podoski was intrigued by the thought that someday she might be a part of something very significant. Since the U.S. Army did not admit women into combat she decided to prepare on her own. She convinced some French paratroopers that she would like to make a parachute jump. She landed among tree stumps, broke her collarbone, and knocked out several teeth. Her statement to hospital attendants was that she had had too much to drink and fallen into some tree stumps.
Shortly after the Allied armies entered Rome she was transferred to Italy and was used to interrogate prisoners of war. The prisoners were surprised that their interrogator was a woman and some balked at this interaction. In fact, one SS soldier—who was a perfect specimen of the Nordic race—was so furious with Podoski and humiliated that he started to vilify America and President Roosevelt. He stated, “We’ll be bombarding New York soon. That Jew in the White House, we’ll show him!” Podoski listened to him rant and then asked him to repeat what he had said. She became so angry with his words that she gave him “a knuckle sandwich right across the kisser!” The stunned man froze in place and was quickly removed from her tent by a sentry.
When an attempt was made on Hitler’s life on 20 July 1944, the OSS was handed an opportunity to conduct a subversive propaganda operation, which proved to be highly successful. It was called Operation Sauerkraut. Because Podoski was the only one in her unit who spoke German, she was at the center of the operation. When she learned that several hundred Czech and Slovak soldiers had been attached to the German army in Italy she developed a plan targeted at these soldiers. She prepared propaganda leaflets in both Czech and Slovak to be taken across the lines by dissident German prisoners. This message was also broadcast over the BBC and directed at the Czechoslovak soldiers in Northern Italy. The leaflets read:
“Czechoslovak soldiers with the German army! In September 1938, at the Berlin Sports Palace, Hitler swore before the world that not a single Czechoslovak would serve in the German army. Yet today, our soldiers are being used by the Nazis to service their troops! On the side of the Allies in Italy, behind German lines, fighting underground with Italian partisans are men and women who left their homeland so they could one day return to Czechoslovakia and free people. You were sent to fight against this underground. You came to this battleground to protect Germans. The fate of Germany is already sealed. Hitler’s armies are falling apart, beaten in Russia, Italy, France, they are now retreating to their own borders.
“There is only one command for you, soldiers. Shed this German yoke of shame, cross over to the partisans. Come at once. Only one road leads to the homeland: the road some of your countrymen chose four years ago. Remember President Masaryk’s words: ‘We are fighting for the freedom of Europe and mankind!’ Czech and Slovak soldiers: Fulfill your obligations to a land that for 1,000 years has retained its spiritual independence. Come across to us!”
Podoski also came up with the idea for the creation of The League of Lonely German Women. Leaflets were printed and distributed behind the German lines informing German soldiers that their wives and girlfriends were sleeping with Nazi officers, soldiers on furlough, and foreign workers in the Reich. Each dissident POW was sent through front lines with a brick of three thousand sheets of propaganda material. Though there were only four such missions, some six hundred enemy soldiers surrendered to Allied forces, each carrying a propaganda leaflet.
On 6 April 1945 Corporal Podoski was presented with the U.S. Bronze Star by a Polish officer for her meritorious achievement in connection with military operations against the enemy in Italy. Behind her, standing at attention, was her MO team that supported the Sauerkraut operation.
After being discharged from the Army at the end of the war, Podoski, still linked to the OSS, was transferred from the Office of War Information (OWI) where her multilinqual skills could be utilized. The OWI was soon to move from Italy to Austria and her hope was to somehow make her way home to Brno, Czechoslovakia. Now a 1st lieutenant in the OWI, she began the search to find her family. She eventually found them; they were all well and thrilled to see Podoski resplendent in her uniform. After a week of festivities with her family, she rejoined her unit in Austria. She was then repatriated to the United States, disembarking in New York City. There was no one to meet her; her husband had divorced her during the war.
Back in the United States, Podoski worked for a time with a Voice of America broadcasting station, returned for a brief visit with her family in Brno, then traveling back to America. She subsequently held a series of jobs to make ends meet. Finally, she was hired by the Library of Congress and worked there for twenty years. During that time, luck was with her once again in the guise of Joseph Junosza Podoski, whom she met and married.
Corporal Podoski receiving the Bronze Star in Rome. Courtesy of NARA
Her husband died in 1984 and she returned his ashes to Poland. “Mine will—hopefully—go across the Potomac to the National Cemetery in Arlington. Resting there are Soldiers of the American Army, which was my first true home in this country. From the cemetery there is a beautiful view of the river and of Washington. And it is close to the airport that links America with old Europe.”
_________
Barbara Lauwers Podoski was interviewed by Kate Scott in Arlington, Virginia, on 5 August 2005. The tape and transcript are deposited at The Women’s Memorial in Arlington. Photo courtesy of USA
Prior to World War II, American military history offers only one example of a female prisoner of war, that of Mary Edwards Walker during the Civil War, who as an assistant surgeon of the 52nd Ohio was captured on the field of battle and held in Richmond for four months before being exchanged in August 1864. For her valuable service and patriotic zeal, Walker was awarded the Medal of Honor, the only woman to be so honored.
Prior to the Japanese attack on Pearl Harbor, there were approximately 7,719 nurses serving on active duty worldwide in the ANC and NNC. Of these, 105 nurses were assigned to the South Pacific (88 ANC and 12 NNC in the Philippines; 5 NNC in Guam). During the war, seventy-eight women were confined as POWs; seventy-seven of them in the Pacific and one in the European Theater of Operations.1
The first women to be taken prisoner were five Navy nurses stationed on Guam; they were captured on 10 December 1941. Under the command of Chief Nurse Marion Olds, lieutenants (junior grade) Leona Jackson, Lorraine Christianson, Virginia Fogerty, and Doris Yetter continued working at the naval hospital on Guam as prisoners of the Japanese until 10 January 1942, when they were transported to Japan and interned at the Zentsuji Prison on Shikoku Island.
On 12 March, the nurses were transferred to Kobe. In the summer, they sailed aboard the SS Gripsholm, a Swedish liner chartered by the U.S. State Department as an exchange and repatriation ship under the auspices of the American Red Cross. They were taken to Mozambique, Portuguese South Africa, where they were exchanged and repatriated on 25 August 1942.2
The Japanese attacked the Philippines on 8 December and aggressively bombed military targets: the fighters and bombers at Clark Field and Fort Stotsenberg, and Camp John Hay to the north. Of the eighty-eight Army nurses on duty, seventy-three were assigned to Sternberg Hospital and its satellites in Manila, thirteen were at Middleside Hospital at Fort Mills on Corregidor Island, and two were at Camp John Hay, in the mountains near Baguio. There were also twelve Navy nurses assigned to Canacao Naval Hospital at Cavite, but after the base and hospital were bombed and destroyed in a raid on 10/11 December, the nurses were ordered to evacuate to Manila to assist the army nurses at Sternberg Hospital.3
The Japanese began an almost continuous bombing of Manila on 10 December, and the available medical facilities were overwhelmed by the enormous numbers of wounded and injured Soldiers, Sailors, and civilians. The nurses exchanged white dresses for coveralls, size 44. The quartermaster issued steel helmets and gas masks, and the women soldiered on.
On 13 December, Fort McKinley was evacuated, and its twenty nurses returned to Sternberg for other assignments. On 22 December, the same day that the majority of General Homma’s troops landed at Lingayen Gulf, north of Manila, Camp John Hay at Baguio was ordered evacuated. Its two nurses, lieutenants Ruby Bradley and Beatrice Chambers, accompanied other personnel attempting to join Allied forces in Bataan, but then elected to return to care for seriously wounded Soldiers and civilians unable to make the arduous journey. They became the first Army nurses taken prisoner by the Japanese when they were captured on 28 December. They were interned at Camp John Hay, which was now being used as a Japanese POW camp.4
On 24 December, the military decided to evacuate the seventy-three Army nurses remaining in Manila. That day, twenty-four Army nurses, one Navy nurse, and twenty-five Filipino nurses set out by truck to Camp Limay on the southeast coast of Bataan to set up Hospital #1. The following day, twenty additional nurses departed Manila aboard the ferry Mc E. Hyde with orders to establish Hospital #2 at Coclaban. The nurses safely crossed the bay before Japanese planes sank the ferry, with the loss of all their medical supplies and equipment. One of the Coclaban nurses traveled to Limay, joined by seven additional Army nurses from Manila. Ten nurses were sent to Corregidor, and twelve nurses volunteered to remain behind at Sternberg to care for patients too injured or ill to be moved.5
As the Japanese closed in on Manila, preparations were made to evacuate the remaining Army nurses. On 29 December, eleven of the nurses were evacuated from Cavite to Corregidor. On the 31st, the last Army nurse in Manila, Lt. Floramund Felmuth, boarded the inner-island steamer Mactan, pressed into service as a hospital ship, in charge of three hundred seriously wounded Soldiers. The ship miraculously evaded the Japanese blockade and made it safely to Australia.
Either abandoned or forgotten, eleven Navy nurses remained in Manila at the temporary naval hospital at the Santa Scholastica Musical College (one Navy nurse, Ann Bernatitus, had evacuated to Corregidor with the Army). They witnessed General Homma’s victorious entry into Manila on 2 January 1942, and were shortly afterward taken prisoner, along with twenty-seven doctors, dentists, and several dozen enlisted Sailors. They remained in place until 8 March, when the men, doctors, corpsmen, and patients were transferred to Bilibid Penitentiary, a civilian prison used for military prisoners, which would later be remembered for its brutality. The nurses were moved to Santo Tomas University, which was used as an internment camp for foreign nationals. The Navy nurses were the only medical unit for the camp until they were joined by the captured Army nurses on 25 August 1942. Together, they set up a hospital next door at the Santa Catalina Girls’ School.6
1. American Women and the Military Gender Gap Web site. http://www.gendergap.com/military/usmil6.htm.
2. Ibid.
3. Norman, Elizabeth. We Band of Angels–The Untold Story of American Nurses Trapped on Bataan by the Japanese. New York: Simon and Schuster, 1999, p. 273.
4. Ibid, p. 274.
5. Ibid, pp. 23–4.
6. Cooper, Page. Navy Nurse. New York: McGrawHill Book Co., 1946, pp. 29–30.
Among the Navy nurses left behind in Manila, and perhaps typical of them, was Lt. (jg) Dorothy Still Danner. Along with chief nurse Laura Cobb and lieutenants (jg) Mary Chapman, Bertha Evans, Helen Gorzelonski, Mary “Red” Harrington, Margaret Nash, Goldie O’Haver, Eldene Paige, Susie Pitcher, and Edwina Todd, the group became known as the Sacred Eleven.1
Danner had joined the Navy in 1937 after having worked as a private nurse for several years. Then twenty-three, she was looking for adventure and a steady paycheck. After two years at Balboa Naval Hospital in San Diego, she received orders assigning her to the Canacao Naval Hospital in the Philippines. She remembered the languid trip across the Pacific aboard the USS Henderson (AP-1) as festive, and recalled being met at the dock in Honolulu by leis and hula dancers.2
Her first year in the Philippines was paradise, and although aware of rumors of war with Japan, “nobody thought the Japs would be silly enough to try and do anything to Uncle Sam.” Even when the dependents were evacuated in early 1941, and tales emerged about the Rape of Nanking, Danner, and others, she was still confident there would be no war:
Pearl Harbor shocked me as it did everyone else. I and the other nurses were awakened in the middle of the night and told that Pearl Harbor had been hit. We were sent to the hospital as soon as we were dressed. Since the hospital was right in the target zone, we sent all the ambulatory patients back to duty, and the rest to Manila. . . . On Wednesday the tenth, the Navy Yard [at Cavite] was bombed. It was wiped out.3
Danner and the other Navy nurses were ordered into joint (Army–Navy) surgical teams operating all over the city, and she ran a receiving station out of the Jai Alai Club. After about two weeks, the Navy nurses were reunited at Santa Scholastica as the Army evacuated Manila and declared it an open city. In reply to the questions of when the Army was going to get them out, chief nurse Cobb replied, “We have no orders to leave so we stay put.”4
Danner recalled her first contact with the Japanese:
At first the Japanese were not hostile and mostly left us alone. But then they started taking quinine from us. They took our beds and mattresses. They also began to slap around and beat up the men. But they ignored us—the nurses.5
On 8 March the nurses were separated, and sent to Santo Tomas, where they would be joined six months later by the Army nurses.
The Army nurses that had evacuated to Bataan were overwhelmed by the large number of casualties, which grew daily, and the scarcity of medical equipment, supplies, and even tents to shelter their patients. Most wards were nothing more than cots under the trees, and the nurses carried out their duties under the constant harassment of the Japanese. The nurses worked long hours doing the best they could with what they had. Capt. Rosemary Hogan was one of them.6
1. Sforza, Kevin. “Bethesda Nurses Honor Former POW,” Journal of the National Naval Medical Center, 13 September 2001.
2. Danner, Dorothy Still. “Remembrances of a Nurse POW.” Navy Medicine 83(3), May–June 1992, pp. 36–40.
3. Ibid.
4. Norman, Elizabeth. We Band of Angels: The Untold Story of American Nurses Trapped on Bataan by the Japanese. New York: Simon and Schuster, 1999, p. 25.
5. Danner, Dorothy Still. “Remembrances of a Nurse POW.”
6. Norman, Elizabeth. We Band of Angels, pp. 80–81.
_________
Photo courtesy of NBMSA
One of the first women to be awarded the Purple Heart, Rosemary Hogan was born in Walters, Oklahoma, on 12 May 1912. She spent her childhood in Oklahoma, never leaving the state, but dreamed of seeing the world. To that end, she entered nursing school, after which she enlisted in the Army at Fort Sill, Oklahoma, on 1 August 1936, and was commissioned a second lieutenant in the ANC (although at that time it was relative rank).
Transferred to the Philippine Islands, she arrived in Manila just prior to the Japanese attack on Pearl Harbor in early December 1941, but as heavy fighting broke out in the Philippines, the nurses were evacuated on 24 December. Hogan was among the twenty-four Army nurses, one Navy nurse and twenty-five Filipino nurses sent to Camp Limay on the southeast coast of the Bataan Peninsula to set up a one-thousand-bed hospital. On 26 December, they were joined by seven other nurses.1
The nurses arrived in Camp Limay to find their equipment packed in a warehouse, ready to be shipped overseas. They uncrated and inventoried the equipment and set up Hospital #1, but were soon ordered to move to Little Baguio to be closer to the fighting. Since the evacuation of Manila was hurried, there was inadequate time to gather necessary supplies, and the nurses found themselves caring for approximately two thousand wounded and ill men in tents, and often open jungle, with severe shortages of food, water, and medicine. Soon, malaria, dysentery, and malnutrition afflicted the troops, patients, and the medical staff itself, including the nurses.
Twice, on 31 March and 7 April, bombs fell on Hospital #1 itself, killing a total of 100 patients, and wounding 195 more, including three nurses. During the second attack, on 7 April 1942, Hogan was seriously wounded by shrapnel while she and another nurse were assisting a surgeon during an operation. Forced to huddle in foxholes, they watched as the hospital was destroyed.2
On 8/9 April, the nurses were ordered to evacuate Hospitals #1 and #2. At Camp Limay 2,300 evacuees fled to the southernmost base on Bataan through Japanese fire. Their arrival on Bataan put an enormous strain on a garrison already on three-eighths rations. Bataan surrendered on 9 April, and those taken prisoner endured what came to be known as the Bataan Death March, which resulted in 16,000–25,000 deaths.
Only the Rock (Corregidor) was left. As events progressed, those in the garrison on Corregidor gradually came to the realization that politically as well as strategically, it was unlikely that the island would be relieved. Cognizant of this fact, Gen. Jonathan Wainwright, in command since the departure of MacArthur to Australia on 11 March, made efforts to salvage what he could before the inevitable came to pass.
On the evening of 29 April, twenty Army nurses boarded two PBY Catalina flying boats for evacuation to Australia. Among the twenty were the three wounded nurses, including Hogan. While landing at Lake Lanao on the southern Philippine Island of Mindanao for refueling, one PBY was damaged trying to take off under cover of darkness, and the colonel in charge of the passengers, believing the plane to be beyond repair, ordered the passengers into the jungle.
The Navy crew was able to make the repairs but, unable to locate the passengers and pressured by the advancing Japanese, took off, stranding their passengers. The fifteen passengers—the colonel, a naval officer, three female civilian dependents, and ten Army nurses—evaded the Japanese for almost two weeks before surrendering on 11 May. The men were shipped off to a POW camp on Luzon, and the women remained confined in a convent at Davao until they were transferred to Santo Tomas on 9 September 1942. (The second PBY arrived safely at Port Darwin, Australia, with its ten army nurses on the evening of 1 May 1942.)3
On 3 May, the last eleven Army nurses to evade capture on Corregidor, as well as Navy nurse Ann Bernatitus, sailed out to sea aboard a converted yacht to rendezvous with the submarine USS Spearfish (SS190) which carried the nurses, along with seven senior Army and Navy officers, safely to Freemantle, Australia.4
With General Wainwright’s surrender on 7 May 1942, the last fifty-four Army nurses in the Philippines were taken prisoner. The nurses continued providing medical care in the Malinta tunnel, and later the ruins of Middleside Hospital, until being transferred to Manila on 2 July. They were held at Santa Catalina convent, until joining the other nurses at Santo Tomas on 25 August. The ten stranded Mindanao nurses arrived on 9 September 1942. The following September, one of the two Camp Hay nurses, Lieutenant Ruby Bradley, arrived at Santo Tomas. The other nurse, Lieutenant Beatrice Chambers, would remain at Camp Hay until being liberated on 4 February 1945.5
1. Norman, Elizabeth, p. 33.
2. Ibid., pp. 80–81.
3. Ibid., pp. 112–14.
4. Ibid., pp. 110–11, 118–21.
5. Ibid., pp. 181–82.
_________
Lieutenant Hogan, former prisoner of war, gets new lieutenant bars from Maj. Juanita Redmond (Hipps). Photo courtesy of ANCC
One of the greatest worries for the captured nurses was whether their families back home knew if they were alive. The Japanese, nonsignatories to the Geneva Convention, were inconsistent in notifying the Red Cross with names of prisoners. One Navy nurse’s family, that of Lt. (jg) Margaret “Peggy” Nash, learned of her capture through an unlikely source.
Having joined the U.S. NNC on 28 April 1936, Nash had been serving in Guam in October of 1941 when she was ordered to report to the Canacao Naval Hospital in the Philippines. With the others, she’d endured the bombings, the capture, and the deprivations inherent in imprisonment. And like the others, she had no way of contacting her family to let them know that she was alive but a prisoner.
Interned at Santo Tomas, she became concerned that a Japanese guard, who followed her for five days, was stalking her. “The moment I came out of the building, he was right there, and when I’d get to the hospital, I’d turn around and he’d be following me. I was scared to death.” Then one morning, while she was working on the ward, he took her photograph. It appeared the next day in Japanese propaganda newspapers. After the American invasion, the photo was found on a captured Japanese soldier, and Cdr. R. F. Armknect, an acquaintance of Nash’s on Guam, saw the photograph. Armknect notified the Navy, who notified her family.1
On 14 May 1943, due to overcrowding and disease at Santo Tomas, the Japanese opened a second internment camp at Los Banos, approximately forty-two miles southeast of Manila. The eleven Navy nurses, along with 787 of the healthiest male internees, were sent to establish the camp and hospital.2
The nurses endured almost three years of captivity, some longer, under conditions that could be charitably referred to as primitive. Conditions in the camp worsened as the war dragged on. The nurses worked long hours, improvising by necessity as shortages of medicine and supplies increased. The nurses risked beatings to smuggle extra food to the children, and lost weight by giving the children their rations. So great was their self-sacrifice and dedication to their patients that they became known as the “Angels of Bataan.”
Things went from bad to worse in January 1944 when the administration of the camps changed from civilian to military control. Restrictions were increased and violation of minor infractions resulted in severe consequences, and on occasion, execution. Malnutrition and diseases like malaria and dysentery ravaged the prisoners, and the brutality of the guards increased as the Allies came closer.3
On 9 January, troops of the American Sixth Army landed at Luzon, opposed by 275,000 Japanese troops in well-prepared defensive positions. On 28 January, a raid behind Japanese lines at the POW camp at Cabanatuan, by the 6th Rangers of the 1st Cavalry (Alamo Scouts) and Philippine guerillas, freed 511 American and Allied POWs, some who were survivors of the Bataan Death March. Five hundred twenty Japanese soldiers were killed or wounded, with a loss of only two American and twenty-one Filipino lives. (The 2005 film, The Great Raid, was based on the event.)4
Intrigued by the raid, General MacArthur ordered Maj. Gen. Vernon D. Mudge, “Go to Manila! Go around the Nips, bounce off the Nips, but go to Manila. Free the internees and Santo Tomas.”5
On 3 February 1945, elements of the 1st Cavalry liberated Santo Tomas, and its sixty-five army nurses. Nurse Bertha Dworsky recalled, “Tanks were crashing through the gates. . . . Tanks rolled up to the front door. . . . The men in the tanks looked like giants, we were so emaciated and thin.6 Lt. Chambers rejoined her comrades at Santo Tomas the following day.
On 23 February, the 11th Airborne Division raided the Los Banos Internment Camp, liberating the internees and eleven Navy nurses. Lt. Danner recalled the liberation:
On January 9, American troops landed at Lingayed Gulf. The Japanese awakened us in the middle of the night and told us they were leaving. They turned the camp over to the Administrative Committee and advised us not to go outside. . . . An American flag was run up the flagpole, and we sang the national anthem. . . . Unfortunately our freedom only lasted a week. Then the Japanese came back.7
MacArthur was afraid, not without cause, that the Japanese might massacre the internees at Los Banos. Other massacres of prisoners had already occurred, specifically 150 POWs at Palawan Island on 14 December 1944.8
Paratroopers were dropped over Los Banos, and they attacked in conjunction with infantry that came ashore in amphibious armored tracked vehicles, Amtracs. One pulled up in front of the hospital and Danner recalled, “Oh we never saw anything so handsome in our lives. These fellows were in camouflage uniforms wearing a new kind of helmet, not those little tin pan things we were used to seeing. And they looked so healthy and lively.”9
Approximately 1,500 internees were evacuated by Amtracs, the remainder overland by truck. Only two Soldiers were killed and one internee injured. In retaliation, the Japanese murdered 1,500 residents of the nearby town of Los Banos. The Japanese commander, Lieutenant Konishi, was later tried and executed as a war criminal.10
Remarkably, despite bombing, artillery, shrapnel, dysentery, malaria, dengue fever, malnutrition, starvation, and mistreatment, all seventy-seven nurse POWs survived three years of harsh captivity, and were promoted, given back pay, and returned to the United States for hospitalization and evaluation at Letterman and Oak Knoll Hospitals in San Francisco.11
Upon their return, five of the nurses had sufficient time in service to retire, nineteen were medically retired, and twenty-three remained in the service, many seeing additional service in Korea. The remainder were honorably discharged.12
In the European Theater of Operations, only one woman, 2nd Lt. Reba Whittle Tobiason, a flight nurse with the 813th MAES, was taken prisoner of war.
1. Margaret Nash, interviewed by Andree Marechal-Workman, September 1992, transcript, Naval Hospital Oakland, Public Affairs.
2. Norman, Elizabeth. We Band of Angels–The Untold Story of American Nurses Trapped on Bataan by the Japanese. New York: Simon and Schuster, 1999, p. 276.
3. Danner, Dorothy Still. “Remembrances of a Nurse POW.” Navy Medicine 83(3), May–June 1992, pp. 36–10.
4. King, Michael J. “Rangers: Selected Combat Operations in World War II,” Chapter 6 of the U.S. Army Command and General Staff College’s Leavenworth Papers, No. 11.
5. Sternberg, R. Return to the Philippines. New York: Time-Life Books, 1979, p. 114.
6. Norman, Elizabeth. We Band of Angels, pp. 203–4.
7. Danner, Dorothy Still. “Remembrances of a Nurse POW.”
8. King, Michael J. “Rangers: Selected Combat Operations in World War II.”
9. Danner, Dorothy Still. “Remembrances of a Nurse POW.”
10. Ibid.
11. Norman, Elizabeth. We Band of Angels, pp. 213–32.
12. American Women and the Military Gender Gap Web site: http://www.gendergap.com/military/usmil6.htm.
_________
Photo courtesy of The Women’s Memorial
The story of Reba Whittle Tobiason is markedly different from those of the nurses captured in the Pacific. As the only female POW in the European Theater of Operations, she was isolated and unable to share the sense of community and comradeship that developed among the women interned at Santo Tomas and Los Banos. She was the only flight nurse captured by the enemy, and the first Army nurse to be repatriated and returned home.
The Pacific nurses endured almost continuous combat conditions on Bataan and Corregidor, while Tobiason flew into combat, often landing under fire, but lived in the relative comfort and safety of England. The Pacific nurses surrendered; Whittle was captured. Most of the nurses in the Pacific endured nearly three years of captivity, some longer. Whittle was repatriated after almost four months.
Perhaps most significantly, the Pacific nurses returned to parades; celebrity and public acclaim; three books and a movie covered their experiences. Tobiason was ordered to remain quiet, and had to fight for two decades to qualify for a disability retirement due to her wartime injuries, and was only officially recognized as a POW years after her death in 1992.1
Reba Zitela Whittle was born in the ranchlands of Rock Springs, Texas, on 19 August 1919 to Edward and Lottie Whittle. She graduated from the Medical and Surgical School of Nursing at San Antonio, Texas, in June of 1941, and almost immediately applied for an appointment in the ANC. After taking her induction physical at Fort Sam Houston, Texas, on 10 June, she was initially disqualified. At five feet, seven inches, she weighed only 117 pounds, which was below the minimum. This requirement was waived, and she was sworn in and commissioned a second lieutenant (#N734426) in the ANC on 17 June 1941.2
After serving at Kirkland Field, New Mexico, and Mather Field, California, Tobiason volunteered for training as a flight nurse in January 1943. Evacuation of the wounded by aircraft was a new concept at the beginning of the war. The C-47 multiengine aircraft used in the missions flew troops and supplies in to, and wounded Soldiers out of, battlefield areas. Because of this two-fold mission, these planes were not considered noncombatant. As a result, service in air evacuation was at great risk, since the unarmed planes were legitimate military targets and often came under direct fire.
Tobiason was accepted into the program in August 1943 and reported to USAAF School of Air Evacuation at Bowman Field, Kentucky, in September. Besides classes, candidates drilled and engaged in calisthenics and ten-mile hikes carrying full backpacks. They stood guard, ran the obstacle course, and crawled under barbed wire while under live machine gun fire. Tobiason completed the intense six-week training course and graduated in January 1944.3
Assigned to the 813th MAES, Tobiason was one of twenty-five flight nurses who boarded the Queen Mary on 21 January 1944, along with four flight surgeons and twenty-five enlisted men, while the band played “A Pretty Girl is Like a Melody.” Upon arrival in England, the unit was based at Balderton, Nottinghamshire, and later Grove, Berkshire, attached to the 9th Air Force.4
For the next eight months, Tobiason flew more than five hundred hours, including eighty combat hours, on forty missions to Belgium and France, carrying supplies in and the wounded out, often under fire, without event. That changed in September 1944.
On 27 September 1944, the war was going well for the Allies. The Germans were evacuating Greece, and the Allies were liberating the Netherlands. But the war was far from over, as the 445th Bomber Group’s disastrous raid over Kassel and the failure of Operation Market Garden proved. That morning, Tobiason boarded a C-47 for an evacuation flight from Paris. With her was the pilot, 1st Lt. Ralph Parker Jr.; the copilot, 2nd Lt. David Forbes; the crew chief/aerial engineer, Sgt. Harold Bonser; the radioman, Cpl. Chester Bright; and her surgical tech, T-3 Jonathan Hill.
The evacuation flight arrived in Paris to find no wounded, but they were informed that there were wounded at Liege, Belgium, but were told, “It’s a combat zone, and it’s hard to get in and out. We aren’t going to send you. Everybody on the crew has to agree to go. It’s up to you.” As Sergeant Bonser later recalled, “We took a vote on it and everybody said, “Well, they need us so we’ll go.”5
Through a miscalculation, they flew three miles over German territory, and machine guns firing incendiary bullets hit the plane and started a fire aboard. The plane barely missed a smokestack in the village of Aachen, before crash landing in a turnip field. In Bonser’s words, “It just didn’t want to stay in the air any longer.6
Tobiason recalled, “[I] was sleeping quite soundly in the back of our hospital plane until suddenly awakened by the terrific sounds of guns and crackling of the plane as if it had gone into bits. And suddenly, we hit the ground—myself landing in the navigator’s compartment head first. . . . Immediately we saw soldiers not many yards away. Second glance, we recognized they were German GIs. . . . The surprised look on their faces when they saw a woman was amazing.”7
Despite their injuries, the crew was able to exit the burning plane through the escape hatch over the pilot’s compartment and get away from the aircraft. Almost immediately, they were captured by German troops. Bonser recalled of Tobiason, “It seemed she was more worried about those that were hurt and bleeding than what she was about herself.”
Tobiason had suffered a head wound, and several shrapnel wounds, as well as damage to her back. The pilot had a bullet in his ankle, and the copilot’s face was burned. The most seriously hurt was the medic. They were marched to the village of Aachen, while American artillery shells exploded around them. After a preliminary interrogation by English speaking German officers, during which the copilot was physically abused for being Jewish, and an examination by a doctor, the enlisted were separated from the officers, and were sent to Cologne, and in Tobiason’s case, Luft Stalag IX (Camp 9C).8
Tobiason was given a solitary cell because there were no provisions for female prisoners. While a prisoner, she performed nursing duties for the male POWs in the camp. The morale of the camp was greatly improved by her presence, and the men made her small gifts, including stage makeup they had received from the Red Cross for theatrical productions.9
In the interim, Tobiason’s family had been notified that she was “missing in action”, and they received letters of condolences from the nurses and unit chaplain. It was only the day after the family held a memorial service in November that they learned Tobiason was a prisoner of war.10
Her future husband in England, Lt. Col. Stanley Tobiason, kept up to date with her affairs through an English lady, a Miss Duxbury, who corresponded with a boyfriend also interned at the same camp, Capt. William S. Holden. (As a military prisoner, Tobiason was prohibited from writing to anyone in the military.)11
On 25 January 1945, Whittle was part of a prisoner exchange, and was repatriated to Switzerland along with 109 other POWs. She later joked that it was because the Germans had absolutely no idea of what to do with her. She traveled home aboard the SS Gripsholm, the same ship which had earlier repatriated the five Navy nurses captured at Guam. She returned to D.C., and received a congratulatory telegram from President Roosevelt. She was awarded the Air Medal, a Purple Heart, and was promoted to first lieutenant. Reassigned to an air base in Miami, she was disqualified for flight status as a result of her wounds.12
After marrying Tobiason, she was released from active duty on 31 January 1946. They had two sons, Capt. Joel Tobiason, an Annapolis graduate and Naval aviator during Vietnam, and Stanley Tobiason, Jr. As a condition of her repatriation, Whittle was required to sign a sworn statement not to talk about her experiences, a common practice during the war (to avoid putting other prisoners at risk). As a result, she became the forgotten POW.13
Tobiason tried unsuccessfully for the next twenty years to qualify for a disability retirement due to her wartime injuries and the loss of her health while a prisoner of war, but she wasn’t officially recognized as a POW until March 1992, years after her death from cancer on 26 January 1981. Remembering that she never seemed bitter over her lack of recognition, Colonel Tobiason, in accepting his wife’s award in D.C., said simply, “She would have been very delighted.”14
Following victory in World War II, after the bands and parades, the country put a lot of effort into returning to normal, and the commanders began to plan immediately for the demobilization of the returning vets, and the dissolution of the women’s services. The priceless service rendered by women in the war, and indeed the men, was soon forgotten. It would take several decades before they would be recognized as “The Greatest Generation.”
1. “Tobiason, WW II POW Finally Receives Recognition.” The Rocksprings Record and Texas Mohair Weekly, 14 May 1992, Vol. 99, No.13.
2. File # N734426. National Personnel Records Center (NPRC), St Louis, MO.
3. Buck, Anna. “POW in Germany.” Army Magazine, March 2000.
4. Ibid.
5. Harold Bosner, interviewed by Mary Jo Binker, 27 April 2000, Falls Church, VA. Tape and transcript are deposited at The Women’s Memorial Foundation, Arlington, VA.
6. Ibid.
7. Tobiason, Reba Whittle. Diary of 2nd Lt. Reba Whittle Tobiason. Air Evacuation Museum, Brooks AFB, San Antonio, Texas, not published.
8. Harold Bosner interview.
9. Tobiason, Reba Whittle. Diary of 2nd Lt. Reba Whittle Tobiason.
10. Letter from Capt. Kyle Lawrence, Group Chaplain, Headquarters 27th Air Transport Group—APO 744, 6 December 1944.
11. “Tobiason, WW II POW Finally Receives Recognition.”
12. Baron, Scott. They Also Served: Military Biographies of Uncommon Americans. Spartenburg, N.C.: MIE Press, 1999.
13. Grimes, Charlotte. “Women POWs of WW II.” St. Louis Post Dispatch, 19 April 1992.
14. “Tobiason, WW II POW Finally Receives Recognition”
_________
Photo courtesy of Stanley Tobiason
