After an exhilarating visit to the new World War II monument, I am finally telling my own story, sixty years late. As a child I dreamed of becoming a nurse, but my dream was only fully realized when I became a member of an army evacuation hospital. Caring for the brave men in the European theatre was a privilege that taught me nursing beyond all my expectations. I have had many different nursing and educational experiences throughout my career, but none were equal  my experience in the 44th Evacuation Hospital in Europe.

 

My Story 

I was born the third of six children in Winston-Salem, North Carolina on April 30, 1920. I was considered a “puny kid” always complaining of abdominal pain. No one believed me until finally my mother, trying to get to the bottom of what was wrong with me, took me to her favorite country doctor in Mount Airy. Dr. Flippin told my mother “this child had appendicitis; take her to the best surgeon in Winston-Salem now.” The next day, I was in the Baptist Hospital operating room. I had evidently been suffering from chronic appendicitis, which caused my appendix to become attached to other organs by adhesions and made it very difficult to remove.

As I was waking up, very sick from the ether used for anesthesia in those days, my mother said “Smile, Kathryn.” My student nurse, Lucille Cain, told my mother “she cannot smile.” She understood how sick and frightened I felt. I looked at her and thought she was so beautiful. That was when I decided I wanted to be a nurse.

Even after my surgery, when I was much healthier, I always struggled with a lack of self-confidence; however, I remained determined to become a nurse. After graduating from high school at age seventeen, I was still too young to enter nursing school. I would have to wait for my eighteenth birthday. It was during the depression and times were tough. My mother needed me to stay at home to care for my five-year-old sister and that gave me something to occupy myself until I could start school.

The time finally arrived for me to apply for nursing school and to sit for the entrance exam. I was very scared about taking the test to qualify for nursing school. My high school principal, “Pop” Joyner, was giving the test to a group of applicants and he sat next to me, keeping me calm with his usual kind remarks. Soon I was thrilled to learn that I passed, and would become one of eighteen girls to enter the North Carolina Baptist Hospital School of Nursing in September of 1938.

For the first three months of nursing school, we were “probbies,” probationers. We learned cleanliness, a first rule of nursing care, by scrubbing everything in sight over and over. And proper bed making had to be mastered before ever seeing a patient. The only graduate nurses were our supervisors on the wards and our teachers in the classrooms. In those days, student nurses were the backbone of the

hospital nursing staff at most hospitals. Once we had passed our probationer period, we started working eight-hour shifts on the wards. There was only one RN in the whole hospital during the 11pm-7am shift. We learned to give direct patient care and to follow doctor’s orders. Our experience was different from today in that we really got to know our patients because they stayed in the hospital much longer in those days.

 

After graduating from nursing school, I worked as a private duty nurse. I liked private duty more than the other primary role of graduate nurses in those days, which was the supervisor/teacher role in hospital work. Seeing patients through their journeys from illness to recovery helped me to learn more about the whole spectrum of nursing care.

While there was much I loved about private duty nursing, I worked twelve hour days with pay little more than six dollars a day. Making $90 a month with full benefits in the Army looked mighty good compared to that. Eight months after graduating from nursing school, I decided to join the army. I was told that nurses would not be sent overseas unless they volunteered to go. This promise enabled me to win my parent’s reluctant permission, so I signed on and entered the Army Nurse Corps with a rank of 2nd Lieutenant on June 15, 1942. My best friend, Lucy Denny, and I requested to go to Fort Benning, Georgia together.

 

We worked twelve hours a day with one day off a month but at least the pay was much better and the work was not hard. However, I found myself pretty much in the situation of the graduate nurses working in civilian hospitals. Nurses sat in the office doing paperwork while enlisted men performed all the direct patient care and I quickly found that this was as boring as I imagined it might be.

When I complained about the paperwork and said I wanted more patient contact, I was moved to the Officers’ Ward. Evidently, officers rated real nurses. That was when I learned the definition of “goldbricking.” I was making beds for officers who did not appear to be very ill and who went out every night but complained of some sort of pain the next morning. I felt that I might as well have been a hotel worker.

My next complaint got me sent to the Female Ward to care for army dependents. The duties on this ward turned out to be what I thought of as real nursing. Another challenging assignment that came to me because of my nursing school experience with iron lungs was caring for a paratrooper who had landed on his head and had a serious spinal injury. Of all the experiences I had at Fort Benning, my favorite came when I was assigned to cover for a sick head nurse. While this was the supervisory role I had not relished before, I did have the opportunity to work with the physician responsible for that ward as we discussed patients’ needs together. We developed such a good collaborative relationship that he asked that I remain on as head nurse. I was only allowed to stay long enough to honor the doctor’s request, though. The chief nurse discreetly told me she could not leave me in that position because I did not have the seniority in the army to earn this status. Rank had its privileges.

Several more boring day and night assignments followed. Then an epidemic of what was called atypical pneumonia hit Fort Benning, and I was assigned to open a ward that was not yet ready in order to care for the pneumonia patients; it had beds but no sheets and none of the essential supplies. Patients’ sick with pneumonia started arriving almost as soon as I did and filled the new ward fast. After a fifteen-hour shift the first day on that ward, I was checking my mail when I ran into the chief nurse. She greeted me saying, “I hope you are satisfied now!” This really was my most difficult assignment at Fort Benning.

Nurses were the only women at Fort Benning as far as I can remember. So of course, there were a lot more men than women. Nurses could literally pick and choose from the many officers as escorts to the officers’ club. Nurses were required to wear uniforms for all activities except swimming and dancing. But there were so many opportunities that I wore out bathing suits and evening clothes fast. Our work schedules did not keep us from having lots of fun.

This was my first experience being away from home and family for such a long time. Even with the long working hours and busy social life, I was very homesick for the first month, and could not go home. When I finally had home leave, my mother, who was an excellent seamstress, made me a blue dress uniform, several evening dresses and a black velvet evening cape that I still have.

After a year at Fort Benning, and working hard to get as many different experiences as possible, I was ready for a change. I was always looking for new adventures. About that time, the chief nurse called and asked if I would be willing to volunteer to serve with an evacuation hospital. She said that she needed a quick answer. I wasn’t even sure what an evacuation hospital was, but I understood that it would mean going overseas. I hesitated, remembering that I had assured my parents that I would not be sent overseas unless I volunteered. I was having trouble saying no to the chief nurse and to adventure, so I said “You can put me on that list only if Lucy will go.” I was sure that Lucy would refuse, getting me out of the commitment as well, and she did say no. But somehow my name stayed on the list anyway and that changed my life forever.

I was shipped off to Camp Atterbury in Indiana on July 5, 1943, supposedly for military training. When we enlisted, nurses weren’t given any military training—we went straight to work in the base hospital. I don’t recall much real military training at Camp Atterbury except for Captain Tony Luvara trying to teach us nurses to march. Inevitably, I put my left foot forward when I should have put my right one forward. Tony kept saying to us “Come on girls! You could be a nasty old civilian!”

 

On August 10, we moved on to Elkin in West Virginia where we learned to live and work in tents. Our hospital, the 44th Evacuation Hospital, acted as a Station Hospital for the West Virginia Maneuver Area. This was the site of a huge war games operation, training soldiers for combat and providing us with training as a . mobile evacuation hospital. We had mock operations with fake patients much like practice drills for disaster workers today. These drills provided ambulance drivers and hospital personnel with practice for functioning in a war zone, as well as practice for the soldiers themselves. Some of our patients were actually injured during training, learning to climb mountains or during practice maneuvers.

We lived in tents with five nurses in each tent. We slept on cots with our clothing folded and organized into a bedding roll that we rolled out for sleeping, making a very comfortable mattress. Then it could be rolled up and packed and moved for us along with our tents on trucks when we actually got to the war zone and had to move frequently. We had mussette bags, sort of like a backpack or shoulder bag that held all our personal items, which we carried ourselves when moving. Our helmets doubled as washbasins and held enough water for what we called a bath. We got water for brushing our teeth from lister bags, which were huge community bags of water we used to fill our canteens. All the nurses used the same "ladies’ room" which consisted of four holes in a quartermaster box set over a trench and surrounded by a wall of canvas.

It was during these maneuvers that I met and began dating Pat, a 2nd lieutenant in the quartermasters. Even though we were working hard, we both had time to play and we spent a lot of time together. Our camp was on the banks of the Cheat River where we frequented a swimming hole as often as possible. After a month of war games on the Cheat River, we moved on to big city life at Fort Dix, New Jersey, which was a staging area for overseas deployment. Pat and I were able to continue our courtship during this time while we were mainly waiting for orders to ship out. We were able to see each other every day, and to get off base most nights. We made trips into New York City, Philadelphia and Trenton.

We did not know for sure, but we thought that both of us would be sent to the European Theater. We decided that we wanted to get married before that happened. The day before Pat’s unit got their orders, we went into New York City where Pat bought my ring. With the help of a Red Cross worker, we got our blood tests, marriage license, and found a chaplain willing to marry us. On the elevator up to the chaplain’s office, we recruited two willing people to witness our marriage. We were married on October 6, 1943. We got the bridal suite in the Pennsylvania Hotel for the night and we dined and danced while Tommy Dorsey’s band played Glenn Miller jazz. Tommy Dorsey even joined us at our table and wished us happiness. Dorsey had his band play our favorite tune for us—“People Will Say We’re in Love.” All this in one day!

True to our hopes, I soon followed Pat to Europe. My unit was scheduled to cross the Atlantic on the Acquitania. In peacetime, the Acquitania was a leisure British Ocean Liner, but when I crossed on her, she was serving as a military transport ship. Rain was falling and it was the dead of night as we followed the military police that were directing us and herded us all the way from the first step on the gangplank to our quarters on board. The Army Chief Nurse was aboard to wish us a safe voyage. She greeted each of us as we were ushered to our cabins. Six of us were assigned to a very small cabin. It was no doubt a low-priced single cabin when the ship was used as a liner, but additional bunks had been installed and we were literally stacked three deep on each side of a small sink. This little cabin was our bed and bath for our thirteen-day crossing.

I saw no one else on board except my roommates until day break the next morning when we were summoned on deck for a drill. I found myself second in line to follow the MP’s directions—we were supposed to be learning what to do if we had to abandon ship. The person ahead of me went one way; I went the other, still following the MP’s white gloves pointing the way. I was the first nurse to see the ocean—and found myself the only American, only nurse, and only one in a drab khaki overcoat standing at attention with hundreds of Canadian Air Force Pilots in their royal blue uniforms. Then I hear over the loudspeaker “All nurses to the officer’s lounge—will that nurse on C Deck go to the officers’ lounge?” With a very red face, I followed the white gloves to the officers’ lounge. I got a bit of a dressing down for being in the wrong place.

We had a smooth crossing the Atlantic Ocean on the Acquitania; only two meals were served each day. They put raw fish in front of us every morning before asking us what we wanted for breakfast. Fish for breakfast may be on the menu in England, but for sure it wasn’t on my menu. The person who sat next to me at every meal complained constantly of seasickness. Later I was glad that she was one of the five nurses who were transferred out of our unit. My own appetite never seemed to be diminished by seasickness or by those complaining of seasickness around me. I believed that seasickness was all in the mind.

We docked in Gorick, Scotland on November 24, 1943. It was night and we went directly into trains to carry us to our destination in England. We never even had a glimpse of the land or the trees. On the train all the windows were covered for blackout so that we saw nothing until the next day when we reached Maidenhead, England—twenty-seven miles from London. We arrived on the day before Thanksgiving. The train trip had taken all night, but it seemed much longer to me.

 

We were being put up in private homes, twenty nurses in each house. The army had evidently procured available houses just anywhere in the town because we weren’t near each other. On our first night in Maidenhead, my roommates went out and left me there alone. There was an air raid and I ran outside looking for someone to show me where the foxholes were. We had been told in training that in the event of an air raid, we should head for a foxhole. I found no help and no foxholes, so I went back into theuse and headed for the safest place I could think of, the little bathroom under the stairs. I was kidded unmercifully for days after that, with friends saying that when we got to France I would be putting a bedpan over my head in air raids instead of under my patients. As it turned out, we had a lot of air raids while we were there, and soon my fear was forgotten. It didn’t take long for us to learn that Maidenhead was not being bombed. The planes were bombing London. After covering our windows to keep the Germans from being able to see our house lights, I could go outside to see the sky lit with their “candilier flares.” They used the flares to light up London so the bombers could see their targets.

Next door to the house I lived in were two pre-school age kids, Rosemary and Paul. I took them to see Snow White and the Seven Dwarfs and gave them handfuls of candy and chewing gum. While we were in line, other kids were drooling, obviously wishing for some of the candy. Rosemary and Paul didn’t want to share with the other kids until I promised them more goodies when we got back home. After that, they gave most of their goodies away. Their mothers were so grateful for this treat that the next day, I received a handwritten note inviting me to tea. These English ladies must have used their month’s food allowance to make such a nice spread for me that day.

Pat and I were reunited one month to the day after our wedding day. He was stationed close to Oxford, near enough to Maidenhead that we were able to see each other nearly every week. We spent our time together boating on the River Thames near Oxford or in Maidenhead. It was actually against army regulations for a man and wife to be in the same theater (both in Europe or both in the Pacific). However, we had not asked or told anyone we were getting married before we were sent to England, and the army was too busy organizing the war effort to realize that we had married until we were both there. My unit went to England with an army commander who went by the book. He was ready to send me to Japan as soon as he knew that I was married and that my husband was in England. But before he could get me transferred, headquarters transferred him. Pat and I were grateful when he was replaced by Colonel Blatt, who was a much more liberal commander. He allowed freedoms that no other army personnel enjoyed. Once I realized he wasn’t going to take steps to send me to the Pacific, I felt free to ask him if he would be willing to request that Pat’s laundry unit be attached to our hospital. Colonel Blatt’s response was “I thought of that but then I would have to admit that I know you are married. As it is now, you will be able to see each other.”

 

After Colonel Blatt took command, a lot of things changed. We were in England for seven cold months. “Nasty” was the word that Englishmen used for the weather. We had to scrape slate to burn in the small fireplace that was our only heat until Colonel Blatt helped us to get better fuel to burn. We had a lot of time on our hands during those months. We did do some marching, but we mostly entertained ourselves. My three roommates and I spent many hours trying to teach ourselves to play bridge with no instruction books or other aids. We ended up getting in lots of fights over the rules but finally found that some of the doctors could help us out.

We got to take a few sight seeing trips. The chaplain must have been organizing these field trips. I mostly remember graveyards. We did have one really spectacular opportunity. Lady Astor invited the nurses to her estate in Clivedon where I fell completely in love with her beautiful formal gardens. All we had to wear was our khaki fatigues and she told us we looked like tramps. But she graciously invited us back for Easter sunrise services. I have a happy memory of hearing my familiar hometown Moravian Sunrise service later that Easter day.

It wasn’t all play and sightseeing at Maidenhead. One really important happening was the announcement that we would be using a new medication, a wonder drug called penicillin. We were given very strict instructions on preparing and administering it. It came as a yellow powder that we had to mix with distilled, sterile water. We used ether to cleanse the skin and be sure that it would be dry. Technique changed drastically by the time we got to Germany. We had to soak our syringes in alcohol rather than autoclave them. Of course, there was no such thing in those days as disposable syringes. We used to have to sharpen the needles occasionally too.

 

Our days at Maidenhead ended when we moved to Camp Hersley, which was the staging area for leaving England from Southampton to cross the English Channel. After spending one night and part of the next day in Southampton, we boarded a very small boat called a Landing Craft Infantry boat. We were loaded with our equipment (mess kit, canteen, mussette bag, and gas mask) strapped to our fronts, our sides, and our backs. It was just before sundown on June 18, 1944. Before we left Maidenhead, we had learned that the Channel was subject to large waves under normal conditions, but was very, very rough in bad weather. Little did we know what lay ahead, weather-wise or otherwise.

We were among the first to be loaded on our little LCI, (landing craft infantry), so we moved out from shore and sat weaving back and forth while waiting for the others to be loaded. There were forty-five boats in our convoy, and while the Navy may have labeled them “ships,” they were certainly not built for comfort. There were only two sleeping rooms below deck—we called them holds—one for men and one for women. There were forty men, doctors and other officers, in the men’s quarters and forty nurses and two Red Cross workers assigned to the women’s hold. Bunks were four deep, with just enough space between them to crawl in, not enough to sit up once in there. We could just manage to walk sideways between the rows of bunks if we had no equipment strapped to our backs or fronts.

There was only one restroom for the forty-two of us and it could accommodate only two at a time. As you might suspect, privacy was out of the question. Only two of us could “go” at any one time, and then we sat facing each other. This got rather complicated with all the barriers we had to deal with. Room enough to strip down was hardly adequate, and the clothing we wore presented many problems. Although it was June, the winds over the English Channel could feel like winter to us. But while the army dressed its nurses for “warmth and protection from the enemy,” we had a battle on our hands in carrying out an otherwise simple procedure. Imagine wearing long johns designed for men with a fly opening in front and no backdrop. Over the long johns we wore fatigues that were properly designed for females, but then came the chemically impregnated fatigues that were designed for males. These gave off an odor that made our stomachs feel like we had swallowed butterflies. The chemicals were intended to protect us in case the Germans used poison gas, but were more trouble than protection in our circumstances.

As we were waking up at sunrise, there were rumors that we had lost an anchor. That was the beginning of a long day. When the call to chow came, I started my descent from the third level bunk eagerly but with great effort, hungry for my usual army breakfast. I made my way to the top deck to fill my mess kit. Standing in line, still feeling hungry, I got a big serving. But suddenly I was not so sure I could eat it. I gave it to McDonald at the end of the line and got some dry cereal. Many of us found that the more we stayed vertical the less we felt the need for food. I took my cereal to my bunk, and soaked it with a little water to help me get it down. I lay on my bunk still trying to tell myself I didn’t believe in seasickness. I wasn’t the only one. Some felt the need to be lying down as I did. Others felt that their most pressing need was fresh air, so they stayed on deck and slumped down to wait for the promised quick landing. For some, the beauty of the Normandy coast from our vantage point was almost, but not quite enough to make us forget the constant movement of our landing craft.

Little did we know that we would be there, pitching and rolling, until the sun began to disappear in the west. Only later were we to learn that the long delay in landing was due to storms that had raged at their height a week before, badly damaging the docks that had been installed by our engineers. Many who had sought the refuge of their bunks soon found that the butterflies in their stomachs demanded release. Unfortunately, this led to a real challenge to the meager “facilities.”

Rumors kept flying about the anchor. Someone said we had lost two more anchors. By mid-afternoon our boat stopped rocking back and forth and started rolling side-to-side, hitting something each time. A Victory ship was on our left side and a Liberty ship was on the right, positioned to prevent us from drifting. However, as they tried to steady us, the heavy rolling of our ship and bumping against our protectors was causing damage, and after a hole was ripped in the side of our boat, we were ordered in for an emergency landing. We had to go ahead of a much-needed boatload of soldiers. No doubt the Navy officers managing the landings decided that putting us ahead of the soldiers was a necessary risk in order to prevent us from sinking in the Channel.

Finally, we were ordered on deck for landing. I was the first to gather my equipment, and with leggings in hand, made it to the deck. Lieutenant Colonel Avent helped me put on my leggings, and then I slumped down in a spot where I hoped I would not be noticed. Because of our emergency situation, our boat was one of the few able to tie up to a floating iron causeway.

As we prepared to disembark, we could see that our plight was nothing compared to what our soldiers were facing on the beaches. Mines were exploding as infantrymen were leaving their landing crafts and walking in waist deep water to the war-littered beach. This was our first experience with the reality of combat, with the Germans still making an effort to repel our forces. But we were too seasick to know that we were in the midst of an invasion that still had the possibility of failure. Naïve, perhaps, but we were also excited and anxious to set foot on French soil and start to work.

Before I could get in line to walk off the boat, Assistant Chief Nurse Loring looked at me and said “Mary Kay, you are green!” She didn’t think I was going to be able to stay on my feet so she gave all of my equipment to my friends behind me who were in better shape than I was at the time. I managed to get myself off the boat and I remember feeling grateful to be off that boat and very ready to admit that I wasn’t imagining seasickness—it was, after all, very real. There was a picture of nurses arriving in Normandy in the first letter I got in France from my mother-in-law. She thought she saw me in the picture, but all the nurses in that picture were carrying their own equipment. I had to tell my mother-in-law that I was not in that picture.

We set foot on Omaha Beach on the coast of France on June 19, thirteen days after D-Day. That night, we watched dogfights between the Allied planes and those of the German Luftwaffe. Our “ack-ack” gunners (ground-to-air artillery), just a hedgerow away, made their contribution to the melee of noise and tracer bullets. The whole scene with the noise and the sky lit up reminded us of Fourth of July fireworks. Of course, what we were seeing was no celebration. Although we were in relative safety a few miles beyond the beaches, our minds and hearts were with the soldiers whose landing was being delayed by the damaged docks and with all the opposition the Germans could muster. Just across the road from us there was a cemetery and the odor of bodies yet to be dropped into rows of graves already dug is a memory that remains with me to this day. Because of these memories, I have never wanted to return to Normandy’s beautiful graveyard.

 

The 44th was the first evacuation hospital to open to receive patients. Between D-Day and our opening, there had been only small field hospitals and medics to care for the wounded. Our first installation to receive battle casualties was really an expansion of the beachhead that was at places very thin. It was close to LaComb on the Bayeux-Carentan-Cherbourg Highway. Nurses and doctors slept on cots, five in each tent. Our corpsmen were happy to bed down in the foxholes that had been dug by the preceding infantry until they had time to set up their own pup tents.

The 44th Evacuation Hospital had crossed the channel before Pat’s unit and I was looking for news every day that they’d safely crossed the channel too. The morning after I heard that his unit had arrived in France, I woke to find Pat sitting on the end of my cot. None other than Colonel Blatt had directed him to my tent.

We received less than 500 patients at this first camp and had only one death. Little did we know that this was just practice for progressively greater challenges? As an evacuation hospital, it was our procedure to accept wounded men directly from battle, perform emergency surgery, and then keep them just until they could be moved. Then we sent them out to station hospitals, further from front lines and not mobile. While we were evacuating patients who were ready to move out to a station hospital, we stopped taking new casualties and another evacuation hospital moved ahead of us. We leap frogged each other across the continent this way.

 

From left, Rose Skartvedt, Major James Weinberg, Capt. Peter Kaminsky, Val Thompson, Mary K Hampton.

As we emptied out our beds and our workload became lighter, we had some time to play. My free time was spent looking for Pat. It was always easy to find someone with a jeep to drive me around to find him. Once I was told that we had gone through the front line on our search, but I still don’t believe we really did. We didn’t see any fighting!

 

Packed up and Ready to move to Percy.

 

We were following the 29th and 30th Divisions and the Third Armored Division and other units of the First Army commanded by General Bradley. By July 7, we had moved on and set up again in Briqueville in the Calvados Province. Then, on August 6, we were ordered to move forward, without rest, forty miles to Percy in Manche Province to be ready for our first big battle. Our tents were set up quickly before the engineers had even finished sweeping the ground for land mines. Our hospital was set up but nothing was happening. While I was waiting impatiently, my good friend Mil Roberts, came to see me. I had not seen Mil since we were at Fort Benning together. When I complained to him about how I disliked having to “hurry up and wait”—the hasty move followed by nothing to do—he told me that he expected we would be busy by nine that night. Since he was an aide in our Corps headquarters, I was sure that he knew what was about to happen. Incoming patients began reporting that a big break-through was about to occur.

Mil Roberts was right and by nine o’clock that night our two pre-op wards were more than filled. Normally, new admissions came into the pre-op wards where doctors evaluated them and directed the most seriously wounded straight to the operating room. My ward, which was the post-op ward, had no doctor and it was our routine to receive patients from the operating room along with doctor’s orders for their care. When the two pre-op wards were overwhelmed with admissions, there was no place to send them but to post-op. It seemed that within minutes we were filled with pre-op patients many of whom were seriously wounded and needed to be evaluated by a physician.

 

Emma Landrum, Rose Skartvedt and Mary Kay. We are sitting on my bed.

 

We were desperate for a doctor to evaluate and direct them appropriately. Just as we were at the breaking point, the Third Surgical Auxiliary team arrived to help us. Surgical teams like this one were started during the African campaign and had worked their way north by way of Sicily and the Italian campaign to support the front line hospitals. This team was a wonderful addition to the 44th and stayed with us as long as we needed them. A plastic surgeon came to my rescue and it seemed to me that God sent us this help at that very moment. He quickly evaluated and took my most severely injured patient to the operating room.

Most patients were not with us long as they were evacuated as soon as possible to station hospitals, which were not mobile, where they could have continued needed care. There was a young soldier had been shot in the mouth, and as I recall he was the only patient we kept for more surgery before sending him back to a station hospital. He was unable to speak. Another patient had an injury that impaired his vision. I remember watching the soldier who couldn’t speak writing a letter that the soldier who couldn’t see dictated for his mother.

 

My painting rendering the damage at Saint Lo.

We really learned what war was like when extremely heavy casualties from the Battle of St. Lo began arriving. St. Lo was a small town just in front of our location at Percy. When we were completely filled, another evacuation hospital moved ahead of us to receive casualties while we evacuated our remaining patients. The ward I was working at that time, called “chest and belly,” kept patients longer because they needed more time before they were able to travel. We worked twelve to fourteen hours every day for fifty-three days.

When we had emptied our hospital, we moved on without rest through St. Lo, which had become a ghost town during the battle. It appeared to have been pulverized—another painful picture of the terrible results of war.

From Percy, we went on to Domfront, in Orne Province, which was situated on the southern part of the Argentan-Falaise Pocket. Casualties there were light. We only received 283 patients and we were able to have several free days.

French farmers welcomed us into their homes with open arms and wonderful food. One family invited Rose Skartvedt, Dr. Wainright, Dr. Mathers and me for dinner. After weeks of ham and eggs or hash with what we called “rubber” butter and jam, having fresh tossed salad was more than a gourmet treat. My salad plate was refilled so much that I accepted it as my complete meal. Then came a large steak cooked perfectly to my taste. After making room for the steak, I still managed to enjoy fresh strawberries dipped in sugar.

We had a chance to explore the west coast of the Cherbourg Peninsula. The highlight of our travels was a trip to Mont St. Michel, the great abbey built on an island in the twelfth century. There we climbed the steep stairways to the top, and viewed the surrounding ocean and countryside. We had wonderful omelets that were equal to the farmers’ steaks on that trip.

Our troops moved rapidly through France as the Germans retreated to the shelter of their Siegfried Line. For a while, there were no battlefields in front of us, thus no need for Evacuation Hospitals.

 

44th EVAC Hospital setup.

On August 29th, we moved to a concentrated area of the 68th Medical Group at Senonches in the Provinces of Eure and Loire with a number of other hospitals. With no work, we had some free time, and many of us became hairdressers. We all enjoyed washing our hair with water gathered in our helmets from the nearby creek, and we gave each other Toni Permanents sent from home. Our families were only allowed to send what we asked for, so we had all asked for Tonis. I went to bed one night with my head covered with Toni curlers. The next morning, I woke up with Toni curlers still in my hair and word came that anyone who wanted to go to Paris must be ready now. Paris had just been freed! For sure I wanted to be among the first so I covered my head, full of Toni curlers, with my helmet, stuffed my pockets with cigarettes, and took off for Paris.

We got there before the Parisians had started their big celebration, but the perfumeries were ready for us. They sprayed us with their best perfumes in order to get the cigarettes we’d brought. We all returned with bottles of expensive French perfume. One full ounce of Channel #5 for one pack of cigarettes was our biggest black-market bargain. I returned with a bad headache, from mixing perfume with Toni fumes, no doubt.

After the wonderfully exciting holiday in Paris, we moved rapidly along central France along roads strewn with wrecks, crossed the Seine River, and got close to the Siegfried Line. On September 11, we spent one night in La Capelle, and then crossed into Belgium. The next day, September 12, we set up in what was known as the beautiful forest of St. Hubert, but my most vivid memories are of nothing but mud. We received a lot of casualties and worked hard, long hours. For two weeks we struggled to plod through mud that came to our boot tops. Finally, the ground began to freeze and then we started to slide on ice instead of sinking into mud. Many of our casualties were also suffering from the cold and had frozen feet along with their other injuries.

 

My room in Gotha, Germany.

From St. Hubert, on September 30, we moved to the border city of Malmedy. We lived in comfortable private homes there, and were able to set up our hospital in school buildings. It was the first time we were in warm buildings instead of tents. I had the luxury of a private room, prettily decorated by the Belgians. The people there were mixed, speaking both French and German and we found that there were many German sympathizers. We learned that the Nazis had indoctrinated the school children. We found a book with a picture of a church-like interior with a swastika in place of a cross.

The front lines were stabilized for over two months, so we functioned as a station hospital for a time, working shorter hours with some days off for fun and relaxation. Pat was able to visit me frequently, and I visited him often. He was living in a lovely private home with a prominent lawyer and his wife who came from a wealthy family. The lawyer spoke English, but his wife could not. We were able to play bridge very well with them. There was just no table talk—all we needed to know were the French words for numbers and for Spades, Hearts, Diamonds, and Clubs.

Oysters were considered a delicacy in this region, but our hostess had never heard of cooking oysters. Our love for oyster stew fascinated her enough for her to send her husband to Brussels to get oysters. He bought twelve oysters at a very high price, so she gave Pat only six oysters to make a stew for the four of us and two of their friends. Each of us had one oyster in the stew and one raw oyster, which was the way they were accustomed to eating them. Pat made friends with another Belgian family who were very good cooks. They served us gourmet meals they made with our “K” and “C” rations.

Malmedy was close to Liege where the famous Belgian crystal is made. Nearly all the nurses went to Liege to buy crystal. Pat and I went, and I spent sixty dollars, saved from my fifteen dollars a month spending money, for forty-eight pieces of stemware. Pat paid fifteen dollars for six of the most beautiful long stemmed glasses and a decanter liqueur set for my Christmas present. Unbelievably, we got them all home unbroken.

We had many parties and very good food, and it seemed for a while to be a peaceful time. But we were reminded of war again when the infamous “buzz bombs” (the German V-1 rockets) flew over our heads en route to Liege and Antwerp with their flashing tails of fire. I recall making bets over when their bright taillights would cut off. We soon learned that they would not go down in Malmedy.

I adopted a dog from a major who was forced by his commander to give him up. The major was quartered in a very fancy building, and poor George was a little puppy and not house broken. When I took George to my ward, my chief sergeant, Zets, said “Don’t bring that dog in here!” but soon George became Zets’s dog too, and a pet for all the patients.

 

Mary K, George and Pat.

All patients routinely received penicillin and a sulfa pill every four hours. Some of the patients thought George had a cold and they asked for a sulfa pill for George. They gave him half of a pill and of course George got well. George proved to be the best therapy for some of the men. Two patients who had lost a leg from the same land mine seemed to be not really mentally clear until they had a therapeutic visit with George.

Our time in Malmedy had seemed good under the circumstances, but all good things come to an end. The relative peace at Malmedy came to a sudden and drastic end. Pat and I had had a peaceful day and night together. Then on the next day, December 16, German railroad guns shot over our hospital and landed in a courtyard where the local people were leaving church. A new ward was hastily set up to care for the injured civilians. The nurse working with me was sent to staff that ward. I had four schoolrooms full of soundly sleeping post-op patients. With the help of four skilled corpsmen and God’s blessing, we lost none of the one hundred fifty patients we received that night in my ward.

 

My painting of the Malmedy Hospital

Because of the concern that the enemy was moving closer, we were told to wear our Red Cross armbands and stay in quarters. No problem for me as I was exhausted after my long shift. I slept soundly until Pat awakened me to ask how I felt. He was worried that I might be afraid. HA! Who could be scared while sleeping so soundly? I just went back to sleep. Next thing I knew, everybody, it seemed, was telling me to get out of bed, and put my clothes on—THE TANKS ARE GOING THE WRONG WAY! Then the rumors started flying.

Confusing orders about evacuation came every few minutes and tensions were mounting steadily. Our motor pool was ordered to evacuate a field hospital some distance ahead of us and in the path of the enemy’s advance. Soon after they arrived, a small unit of German soldiers appeared and took our truck drivers and the field hospital personnel prisoners. Fortunately, a truck filled with American troops arrived almost immediately and was able to overpower the Germans, so the field hospital staff and truck drivers were German prisoners for less than one hour.

We learned later that all but one of our trucks reached the field hospital safely. Only much later, we learned the fate of our missing truck driver, Donald Pickard. His body was found some distance out of Malmedy with a gunshot wound to his chest. It was never clear what happened. We thought he might have made a wrong turn and gotten separated from the convoy of trucks, or that he might have been shot by a sniper with no one else noticing that he was wounded. He was the only member of the 44th Evacuation Hospital who lost his life in the war.

At the time Colonel Blatt sent our trucks forward, he expected that they would be returning very soon. And he did not feel at the time that we were in immediate danger. But while we were still waiting for the trucks to return, the evacuation orders did come. Now we really had to pull out even though we didn’t have our trucks. First we were told we could take one bag; then we were told no bag, just our gas mask and canteen. My Christmas packages had arrived and I knew what was in all of them, although I was waiting to open them on Christmas Day. So – I sat down, opened all of them, and stuffed myself with goodies from home. I had to leave some behind, but I took as much as I could the only way I could—in my stomach!

Colonel Blatt had somehow managed to get one truck to evacuate the nurses. The officers and men would have to walk. The colonel ordered the nurses to get onto the truck but one nurse, O’Brien, refused to get on the truck. She did not want to leave her patients. Colonel Blatt had to bodily force her onto the truck. We left eighty-five patients with a few doctors and men to take care of them. They were safely evacuated the next day.

 

Emma and George.

As I was getting into the truck I saw Zets, and I yelled “Bring George.” As usual his reply was “I ain’t got time.” Later his friend told me Zets had looked everywhere for George and could not find him. George was hiding. We all knew he was scared of the bombs.

The Germans were headed for Malmedy. We heard that they had already rounded up 150 American soldiers, including some of our ambulance drivers, took them out in a field and shot them. We heard the shots. Later we learned that we were caught in the beginning of the Battle of the Bulge and that we made a very lucky escape.

During our two and half months in Malmedy, we were working part-time, traveling and having fun. We had plenty of time to write home, to request our favorite foods to be sent to us for Christmas, but most of all, to tell our families about the good parts of being away from home. For the first time we were told that we could tell the home folks where we had been. While we were moving around, it was not safe to write anything about our locations. We were told the Germans could have gotten information from our letters if they managed to get them.

I had a great time writing Mama about where we had been in France, thinking my news to her was perfectly safe. Little did I know she was following our moves every day. Later, I saw how she kept up with my brothers and me—she completely wore out her world atlas to ragged paper. She saw in the Winston-Salem Journal, my hometown paper, a picture of Malmedy and the story of the massacre of 150 Americans. It was not long before I received a letter from her saying “This is where I think you were.” I never did write where I was after that, but she did not lose track of my moves.

 

Mary K and Betty Witt.

With all the women in one truck, and the men walking, we retreated about fifty miles to Spa, Belgium. We spent one night at the 4th Convalescent Hospital, which had evacuated ahead of us. We slept on the floor wrapped in white wool blankets that had been left behind when they evacuated. Having left all our belongings in Malmedy, we were told that we would need blankets and to take them when we moved. I still have one of those blankets. The next day, we moved to Huy, Belgium. The weather was getting colder every day there and we felt truly blessed to be received by the nuns of St. Marie Convent who put us up in little cubicles, in tiny five-foot long beds. There was one schoolroom provided to the officers and nurses for recreation. There was no other room warm enough to sit in. We played bridge until we got tired, then we wrapped up, went outdoors to play in very cold ice and snow.

Although we were crowded in the St. Marie Convent the nuns did all they could to make us feel at home. We sang Christmas carols with them and they gave thanks to God for our planes flying overhead. I painted twenty-five pictures of places and events from my Army experience. Perhaps my favorite is the one of the snowy convent garden with the statue of Bernadette praying to the Virgin Mary. It reminds me today of how the nuns welcomed us and helped us to feel at home that Christmas.

Soon after we got to Huy we learned that the Germans never actually took Malmedy. Our hospital had not been captured, but the local civilians had helped themselves to much of our equipment and our personal belongings. As soon as a road to Malmedy was open, an expedition was organized to retrieve what could be found in our abandoned hospital and personal living quarters. Two nurses went along to collect some of our personal belongings. Merle Harper was assigned to look for things in the house that I lived in. Each of us could request two items, I asked Merle to look for my partial dental bridge that I left at the sink in my room, and my Belgian lace tablecloth.

 

 

Pat’s unit was located along the river in Pepinster, Belgium along the Meuse River.

December 18, 1944 at Huy, Belgium

I had not heard from Pat since we left Malmedy, and Chaplain Walthall told me that if Pat had not come to see me by Christmas he would take me back to find him. While Merle and the others were off to Malmedy, I was on my way to find Pat. Two days after Christmas, Chaplain Walthall and I took off for Pepinster, Belgium where Pat’s unit was supposed to be. I had visited him there many times and I knew how to get there. We were traveling down what was called “buzz bomb alley,” thinking nothing about flashing fire from those V-1 rockets, or that one could land on us. As we approached the curve around the river were Pat’s company was stationed, first I was shocked to see the damage where a buzz bomb had hit. Then I was truly frightened when I saw one of Pat’s men, his face covered with bandages, standing guard at the entrance to their camp. His wounds were not actually as serious as all those bandages implied. He told us that most of his company had evacuated and that they would soon all be gone. He had no news of Pat. We assumed he had evacuated with the others. Before we returned to Huy, we heard that the German’s new V-2 rockets, reputed to travel faster than sound were going right over us.

After all this excitement in one day I was grateful to get back to my little cubicle in quiet St. Marie Convent. Merle had returned from Malmedy and there was my beautiful lace tablecloth (I still have it) along with a full set of false teeth—not my missing bridge. Without a thought I hollered loudly “that’s not my teeth!” Merle told me she found my tablecloth and those teeth in the doorway between my room and the next room. Next I learned that Pat had come to find me while I was gone to find him.

 

Pat’s Unit was housed in this building before German Buzz Bomb hit the road across the Meuse River.

While our hospital equipment was being salvaged and restored back to working order, or replaced as necessary, some of our operating staff was sent through Dispatched Service to temporary assignment with the 102nd Evac. and the 45th Evac Hospitals. The rest of us had nothing to do for a while. We were there for about six weeks—about the same amount of time we were in Malmedy—but it seemed to be forever to us. Again, we got to play tourists a few times and take some excursions. One that everyone wanted to do was to visit the famous “Manneken Pis” statue in Brussels. The story we heard was that a wealthy man had a sculptor to make a statue of his five year old son to commemorate having been discovered relieving himself in the garden to be erected on the very spot where the boy was found. We laughed a lot about it, and Toni Luvara bought a souvenir copy of it to Mary Johnson, his girl friend, whom he later married. She was so embarrassed. My own trip to Brussels was a sightseeing tour along with Val Thompson that was carefully planned for us and chaperoned by Chaplain Walthall. He gave us a wonderful tour but managed to be sure we missed the Manneken statue.

After dinner with the chaplain, Val and I decided to take a walk with some male officers we met on our tour to see some of Brussels nightlife. Soon after we walked out of the hotel, a man approached us telling us he could take us to where there was music and we could dance. He took us to a small upstairs room across the street. There was a woman playing a piano, but not dance music. We quickly figured out that our escort was a pimp. We decided not to accept the drinks that were offered and made a hasty retreat. So much for Brussels nightlife.

One of my most remarkable adventures was on that trip. One of the men in our unit had fallen in love and married a young woman who was a refugee from eastern Russia. As I recall, she had gone through front lines several times crossing Europe to escape the Russians and the Germans. She spoke three or four languages, which had helped her to make her way. Our job was to help her get to a safe place where she could wait to leave for the United States. It required crossing two borders and getting through the border checkpoints. She had now entered territory where she didn’t know the language. And of course she didn’t have proper papers. One time we dressed her in army fatigues and got through the checkpoint without being challenged. The other time, she wore her civilian clothes. We put her on a bus near the border and traveled behind the bus. She got through somehow and we picked her up on the other side of the border. We were sad and dismayed when we left this young bride in Brussels with people who did not speak any of the languages she knew. I learned later that she did make it across the ocean, but I lost track of her after that. I wish I knew more about her amazing journey and about her new life in a strange country.

Finally our hospital had gotten back in working order, having retrieved or replaced what was lost after our hasty departure from Malmedy. Our orders were to move on to Vielsam. We opened our hospital there on February 1st in a building that had been badly damaged. It turned out to be so bad that we only stayed open four days and had less than six hundred patients. We were on the move again.

Our move from Vielsam was a long one during which we saw the cement dragon teeth that marked the famous Siegfried line. These were rows of pillars made of cement and placed along the German defense line to thwart tank advances. The Germans had believed this line was impenetrable but our forces had broken through and we followed. We moved into large barracks at Brand, Germany that had not sustained any damage. We had another rest period in those comfortable buildings during our stay at Brand until the push across the Roer River began. This rest period no doubt had to do with the complicated problems the Army had in preparing to cross the river. In order to cross the Roer, the Army had to first take the dam that controlled the water emptying into the Roer River. If the Germans were able to release the water behind the dam as our troops prepared to cross, the floods would wipe out anyone and anything along the banks.

There were several other Evacuation Hospitals at Brand, all waiting for the next move. The 44th had been particularly lucky in that we had as our Chief Nurse, Dottie Gerhardt and as our commanding officer Colonel Blatt. While they expected superior teamwork, they were not sticklers for the rulebook where it wasn’t necessary. However, after enjoying many freedoms other hospitals didn’t have, our Chief Nurse, Dottie Gerhard, called us all together to warn us to act and appear as military nurses. We behaved and dressed accordingly. We didn’t want our beloved chiefs, Colonel Blatt and Dottie, to get in trouble.

Our patients were chiefly medical until February 23rd, when the push across the Roer River finally began. Then we began receiving casualties from the first army platoon to cross the Roer and we heard fascinating stories of their bravery.

On March 14 we had orders to take to the field again. Following the advanced units of the First Army we crossed the Roer and traveled the thirty five miles to a small village, Dunstokoven, about ten miles south of Bonn. We had reached the Rhine River. We set up our hospital tents up March 17 on an airfield near Ludendorf. There was a huge push and heavy fighting as our forces crossed the Rhine. In order to try to stop our advance the Germans had bombed most of the bridge across the Rhine. The troops were crossing the river on pontoon bridges at the famous Remagen bridgehead.

It wasn’t yet possible for our hospital to cross the river and the pontoon bridges weren’t safe for transport of wounded back to us. So we became the first hospital to receive glider-borne patients. Two gliders were assigned to our hospital unit to transport wounded men back to us. A glider would cross over the river carrying supplies to the forward troops and return with wounded soldiers. We had 4,581 admissions there.

We got to know Colonel Lewis who was in charge of the glider operation and the pilots. These young fliers were eager to get back to flying the P-51 fighter planes they loved, but they still enjoyed their brief time with our modified home life. One day Martha, one of my tent mates, brought them to our tent while I was giving another nurse a Toni permanent. Colonel Lewis for some reason was fascinated by this procedure, and wanted to try rolling her hair on the Toni curlers. What a sight that was! Later, I had my first ride on an airplane with one of the glider pilots. Standing up behind the pilot as we lifted off the ground is still the most exciting experience I have ever had on an airplane, although there were to be a few more air adventures.

We moved to Honnef, Germany two weeks later. At Honnef, we had our first experience with American soldiers who had been prisoners of war. We also had many German prisoners. They soon filled our hospital. Evidently they had been living in sorry conditions. The Americans were happy to be with us but they had numerous medical problems. To start with, they were covered with body lice. We got them clean and powdered them with DDT. I didn’t believe it—I had never seen such a thing. When I said to one man “I don’t believe you have bugs” he told me to look at his back, where I saw two big bugs crawling up between his shoulder blades. My reaction was enough for them to cover me with DDT.

The Germany prisoners were not happy; they were scared. We were trying to take care of them and wanted to treat those with infections with penicillin. My corpsman, who spoke German very well tried to convince those sick Germans that they needed penicillin, but without success because they thought any shots we gave them would be dangerous. They had been told that our tetanus vaccinations were in a different solution from that used by the Germans and that it would make them ill. Because of this, they were unwilling to allow us to give them any kind of injections. Penicillin was very new at the time and they knew nothing of this miracle drug.

From Honnef we moved to a bivouac site near Wrexn where we rested for nine days while our troops started moving forward across the Ruhr Pocket. While we were at Wrexn, a Black Widow fighter shot down a German transport plane that was attempting to carry supplies and mail to German troops in the Ruhr Pocket. Two “Jerries” were killed, but the other two crew members parachuted into our area. One of them surrendered to our Captain Serena, but I have no idea what happened to the other one.

Our next move took us to Nordhausen where we set up our hospital on April 16. We found ourselves attempting to care for casualties that were enough to fill our hospital before we could even get our tents up. As hard as it had been to deal with the terrible injuries that the war caused so many of our young soldiers and as painful as it was to loose so many men, what we now faced was beyond our imagination. The slave labor camp near Nordhausen, called Dora, had been liberated on April 11. This had been the sight of the manufacture of the German rockets. What we saw outside our hospital was worse than anything we had seen in our hospital. The German’s had brought more than 60,000 captives from countries they had invaded and forced them to work in this underground factory.

Touring the underground factories where the V-Bombs were built was the beginning of our unit’s personal history lesson of the Holocaust. Our tour guide told us the Germans had been working on these tunnels for twenty-five years. Prisoners were forced to labor under extreme conditions, exposed to dangerous chemicals and provided with almost no food. They were required to work with little rest until they could no longer stand. Then they were put on top of the mountain and left to die or else they were hanged. There was a large Red Cross on the building at the top of the mountain, intended to indicate that there was a hospital and that it should not be bombed. Our tour guide said that no bomb could penetrate that mountain enough to damage the factories anyway.

I was heart broken from the experience of seeing and talking to some of those emaciated imprisoned laborers. One of our nurses, Belanger, whom we called “Frenchy” because she spoke French, was with me to translate one poor soul’s story. He told us that they had to share cots with other prisoners and that when the other person sharing his cot died, he was too weak to push the body off the cot. He just slept with the dead man. If I had not heard this story first-hand, I would not have believed it. My mind was so overwhelmed with the horror of his story that my thoughts moved to the simple question of how two people could possibly sleep on one narrow cot. I suppose that when these prisoners were able to lay their broken bodies down, they could sleep under nearly any conditions.

Later, seeing the crematories where we were told some prisoners were burned alive when the Germans knew the Allies were approaching was not as disturbing. My mind just could not take it in. I could not accept that it really happened—man’s inhumanity to man! As we were trying to cope with the horror of Nordhausen and the death camps being discovered, we got news that President Roosevelt had died. While it seemed that Allied victory might be very near, we were worn out and traumatized by these events.

From Nordhausen, we moved south to an airfield at Gotha, the center of German aircraft manufacturing on May 5th. We expected to receive large numbers of released Allied prisoners of war. However, the prisoners never arrived so our hospital didn’t open.

By the time we had our bedrolls unpacked, we were hearing exciting rumors. We heard by radio the next day that the Germans had surrendered. As soon as I heard this news, I got hold of Pat with the plan for us to take off for Paris. I was desperate to be in Paris to celebrate VE day. May 8th was the official day of surrender and Pat and I flew to Paris. The city was lit in all colors, and the streets were more than crowded.

The Red Cross was on hand helping people find places to stay. They directed us to a hotel that was accommodating married WAC’s. Since nurses were not allowed to be married, I had continued to use my maiden name. Now, I needed some way to prove I was married in order for Pat and me to be allowed to stay there. Luckily I had a letter from my mother-in-law with me, which the hotel accepted as proof of my marriage. We got a room on the third floor where we watched happy Parisians moving slowly, shoulder-to- shoulder, packed crowds carrying brightly painted signs.

We joined the crowds of joyful Parisians the next morning in an effort to get to the Army Officer’s Hotel, which we thought would offer better accommodations. Much to our surprise, the first person we met there was a friend of Pat’s from his hometown. He knew Paris well as he was an intelligence officer who had been in Paris for some time. He offered to be our guide to see the city and he was a wonderful guide.

His tour down “Pig Alley” enlightened me as to tales that a man is not safe walking alone in “Pig Alley.” This was the nickname for the walk from the subway station to the main center of nightlife. Soon after we got out of the subway, a highly painted redheaded woman rubbed herself up against Pat. I grabbed hold of him and pulled him to me tightly. Not to be deterred, the lady of the night switched her attention to Pat’s friend and I just locked my arms with Pat and his friend and held firmly onto them. I felt as important with an officer on each arm as I saved them from the woman of the streets.

We saw the follies and other wonderful, artistic Parisian shows. There was even one performance in which the women had one breast uncovered. I was absolutely amazed that the audience full of sex-hungry GI’s watched these shows without a single whistle or catcall. All I can think of to explain their quiet behavior is that the performances were so wonderfully artistic and creative that they were entranced.

There is no way that I can adequately describe the displays of French creativity to show their joy at the end of the war. In such a short time they had covered buildings throughout the city with French, British and American flags. Models in department store windows were dressed with flags. The opera house was glowing with bright red lights. Bands were playing in the streets throughout the city.

 

Pat in front of Miss Mary K.

It was all so exciting and time passed so quickly that we gave no thought to our need to leave Paris at the end of our three-day pass. It was as though the German surrender changed our responsibilities to the Army. We extended our time for two more days. Finally, we were headed back to where we were each supposed to be. When we got to the airport to return to Germany, I saw an airplane with the name “Miss Mary K” painted on its side. I had Pat stand in front of “Miss Mary K,” making my own souvenir of my celebration in Paris for VE day. Of course, I do tell the truth—the plane was obviously not really named for me. It was some general’s plane, I’m sure. Pat had named his jeep Mary Kay though; so all my friends always knew when he was coming to see me.

 

Paris, France

After five days in Paris, the most exciting experience of my life, I returned to the 44th, not thinking once about the fact that I was AWOL. And my Chief Nurse, Dottie Gerhardt apparently didn’t think about it either. Until two weeks later when she told me that she had orders from headquarters to discipline me. Someone had evidently notice my absence and decided to make an issue of it. All of my friends, in fact all 44th personnel, were still celebrating VE Day, and I was to be confined to quarters for two weeks. No problem for me. I had already partied in Paris and did not need to go out to parties. I had a lovely private room, and Pat was able to be with me most of those two weeks.

Soon I learned that added to the joy of celebrating VE Day in Paris, I was pregnant. Being pregnant meant getting sent back home immediately. Back to Paris I went, where I was housed in a hospital for two weeks while paperwork was getting processed. Even though I was just waiting for the paperwork, I was treated more or less like a patient because there really weren’t other facilities available to me. During that time a chaplain, whom I had met months earlier visited me. He tried to help me contact Pat and sent many messages for me. I got no replies.

During the night before I was scheduled to leave for home I had a miscarriage. So clearly I recall my doctor standing by my bed holding my hand. He felt so bad for me. Now of course my reason for going home no longer existed. He kept me in the hospital for ten days before he said that I could still go home if I wanted to. I chose to go back to Germany instead, because I wanted to be with Pat.

I got orders to travel by train but I didn’t want such a slow trip, maybe three days sitting on the hard wooden benches in an old train. It seems it was easy to find my way to an airport, but I really don’t remember how I got there. After standing in line a long time I was told that without orders to fly I would have to wait until the next day, and that I may be able fly then if there was extra space then. I left my bags in the guesthouse next door, and went back to the airport reception room. I was just sitting there, hoping for something to happen when I overheard a lieutenant talking on the phone. He was saying “I have got to get rid of money I got in Denmark before I go back to Germany.” When he was off the phone, I quickly asked him if he had space for an extra passenger. His reply was “I will have to ask the Colonel. We decided to go together to eat, and then I got my bag. In no time, I was on a B-24, headed for Germany. And who should be sitting right there in front of me but my old friend, Colonel Lewis. Without a second thought, I said, “Col. Lewis, the last time I saw you, you were rolling up a nurse’s hair. Then I had the second thought. I whispered to the lieutenant that I should not have said that to the colonel in front of his men. The kind lieutenant assured me that I should think nothing of it, the Colonel as likely to forget I ever said it.

The destination of the flight I was on was Frankfurt. During the flight I started thinking about how I would get from Frankfurt to Pat’s outfit. I desperately wanted to know why I had not heard from him, and I had no intention of going back to the 44th until I saw Pat. The lieutenant said he could arrange for me to spend the night with Red Cross workers and that he would help me find a ride the next day to Pat’s unit which was then at Bad Hersfeld, about ten miles from Rotenburg where my hospital was then camped. Colonel Lewis offered to let me stay in his apartment, but I told the lieutenant that I would prefer to stay with the Red Cross. His reply was, “You go with the Colonel. He’s okay,” and he was. When we got to his apartment, he took his bedding roll, walked out the door and locked it. I still did not sleep!

The next morning Colonel Lewis asked Major Stimpson to take me with him on his trip to Kassel. He was to leave me off in Bad Hersfeld. When we got to Pat’s unit I found that all my letters and telegrams sent to him from the hospital in Paris were there. But Pat was not. His Sergeant told me that Pat was in a hospital at Nancy in France. Major Stimpson said he would take me on to Kassel and get me a flight to Nancy the next day.

Again I had the benefits that the Army Air Corps enjoyed. Major Stimpson arranged for me to stay in a general’s guesthouse; I left my bags there, then Major Stimpson and his friends took me to their officers’ club while they were having a meeting. I didn’t have much to do but wait for him, so I was again eavesdropping on another officer talking on the phone. With my ears wide open I heard him say, “I need to get some flight time in.” Wasting no time, I asked him, “Could you get your flight time by flying to Nancy?” Of course he could, so off we went to the general’s guesthouse to pick up my things. While sitting in the general’s reception room, I saw the general come down the steps, and next came Major Stimpson and a colonel with their news, “We have a flight for you to Nancy on a P-51 Fighter plane.”

I don’t remember apologizing to the lieutenant but I’m sure he got his flight time in. Nor did I feel weak or tired from ten days in bed in Paris followed by two days of traveling. But this was just the beginning of my “hitch-hiking” over Europe. What an exciting trip! First I had to change from a skirt to pants. The P-51, known as the Mustang, had no room for a passenger. I would have to sit behind the pilot with my legs wrapped around him; I think I was where a radio was supposed to be.

We landed uneventfully as the sun was going down. Another wonderful Air Force sergeant was very helpful to me. He checked and found that Pat was a patient in the 24th General Hospital. It happened to be the hospital that activated at Fort Benning, Georgia at the time I was there. The sergeant got a jeep and a driver to take me to the 24th Gen Hospital. It was so good to see some old friends from Fort Benning, and their hospitality was greatly appreciated. They gave Pat and me a private room in their personal quarters.

Not until then did I know why Pat was in the hospital. Soon after I was hospitalized in Paris, Pat had an accident with his gun. He had gotten himself a German Luger and was trying to clean it or unload it and it went off and shot his wedding band off his finger and made a mess of the finger. I wanted him to go back to my hospital.

I knew our orthopedic surgeon was among the best, and I felt that Dr. Hagerty could save Pat’s finger. Pat would not go, and he lost his finger.

When I left Pat in Nancy, I flew to Frankfurt, but I was not able to get a flight back to Bad Hersfeld. I knew that if I could get there, I could get to the 44th in Rotenburg. After several inquiries, I found a young corporal who was driving a two and half ton truck my way, so within a short time, I was on my way north with him. He was the first person from my hometown that I had met in Europe. His grandmother had lived near us during my childhood. We talked a lot about home and about our dreams of getting back there. I had gotten a bottle of good Cognac from a coworker of Pat’s and I gave it to the corporal for helping me

I don’t think anyone in the 44th thought I would be returning. They knew I was pregnant and had gone to Paris to be discharged and sent home. They did not know all that had happened since. So much had changed while I was away. Our hospital had merged with another evacuation hospital. Some of our personnel had already left for home. There was a point system based on length of service overseas that was supposed to determine when we got to leave for home. The doctors and nurses who had already left were those who had joined us after coming up from North Africa, Sicily and Italy. They had the most points of anyone in our hospital unit. This point system was on everyone’s mind. Rumors were flying. Those who had fewer points feared they would be sent to the Pacific instead of home.

After five days in Paris, the most exciting experience of my life, I returned to the 44^th, not thinking once about the fact that I was AWOL. And my Chief Nurse, Dottie Gerhardt apparently didn’t think about it either. Until two weeks later when she told me that she had orders from headquarters to discipline me. Someone had evidently notice my absence and decided to make an issue of it. All of my friends, in fact all 44^th personnel, were still celebrating VE Day, and I was to be confined to quarters for two weeks. No problem for me. I had already partied in Paris and did not need to go out to parties. I had a lovely private room, and Pat was able to be with me most of those two weeks.

Soon I learned that added to the joy of celebrating VE Day in Paris, I was pregnant. Being pregnant meant getting sent back home immediately. Back to Paris I went, where I was housed in a hospital for two weeks while paperwork was getting processed. Even though I was just waiting for the paperwork, I was treated more or less like a patient because there really weren’t other facilities available to me. During that time a chaplain, whom I had met months earlier visited me. He tried to help me contact Pat and sent many messages for me. I got no replies.

During the night before I was scheduled to leave for home I had a miscarriage. So clearly I recall my doctor standing by my bed holding my hand. He felt so bad for me. Now of course my reason for going home no longer existed. He kept me in the hospital for ten days before he said that I could still go home if I wanted to. I chose to go back to Germany instead, because I wanted to be with Pat.

I got orders to travel by train but I didn’t want such a slow trip, maybe three days sitting on the hard wooden benches in an old train. It seems it was easy to find my way to an airport, but I really don’t remember how I got there. After standing in line a long time I was told that without orders to fly I would have to wait until the next day, and that I may be able fly then if there was extra space then. I left my bags in the guesthouse next door, and went back to the airport reception room. I was just sitting there, hoping for something to happen when I overheard a lieutenant talking on the phone. He was saying “I have got to get rid of money I got in Denmark before I go back to Germany.” When he was off the phone, I quickly asked him if he had space for an extra passenger. His reply was “I will have to ask the Colonel. We decided to go together to eat, and then I got my bag. In no time, I was on a B-24, headed for Germany. And who should be sitting right there in front of me but my old friend, Colonel Lewis. Without a second thought, I said, “Col. Lewis, the last time I saw you, you were rolling up a nurse’s hair. Then I had the second thought. I whispered to the lieutenant that I should not have said that to the colonel in front of his men. The kind lieutenant assured me that I should think nothing of it, the Colonel as likely to forget I ever said it.

The destination of the flight I was on was Frankfurt. During the flight I started thinking about how I would get from Frankfurt to Pat’s outfit. I desperately wanted to know why I had not heard from him, and I had no intention of going back to the 44^th until I saw Pat. The lieutenant said he could arrange for me to spend the night with Red Cross workers and that he would help me find a ride the next day to Pat’s unit which was then at Bad Hersfeld, about ten miles from Rotenburg where my hospital was then camped. Colonel Lewis offered to let me stay in his apartment, but I told the lieutenant that I would prefer to stay with the Red Cross. His reply was, “You go with the Colonel. He’s okay,” and he was. When we got to his apartment, he took his bedding roll, walked out the door and locked it. I still did not sleep!

The next morning Colonel Lewis asked Major Stimpson to take me with him on his trip to Kassel. He was to leave me off in Bad Hersfeld. When we got to Pat’s unit I found that all my letters and telegrams sent to him from the hospital in Paris were there. But Pat was not. His Sergeant told me that Pat was in a hospital at Nancy in France. Major Stimpson said he would take me on to Kassel and get me a flight to Nancy the next day.

Again I had the benefits that the Army Air Corps enjoyed. Major Stimpson arranged for me to stay in a general’s guesthouse; I left my bags there, then Major Stimpson and his friends took me to their officers’ club while they were having a meeting. I didn’t have much to do but wait for him, so I was again eavesdropping on another officer talking on the phone. With my ears wide open I heard him say,  “I need to get some flight time in.” Wasting no time, I asked him, “Could you get your flight time by flying to Nancy?” Of course he could, so off we went to the general’s guesthouse to pick up my things. While sitting in the general’s reception room, I saw the general come down the steps, and next came Major Stimpson and a colonel with their news, “We have a flight for you to Nancy on a P-51 Fighter plane.”

I don’t remember apologizing to the lieutenant but I’m sure he got his flight time in. Nor did I feel weak or tired from ten days in bed in Paris followed by two days of traveling. But this was just the beginning of my “hitch-hiking” over Europe. What an exciting trip! First I had to change from a skirt to pants.  The P-51, known as the Mustang, had no room for a passenger. I would have to sit behind the pilot with my legs wrapped around him; I think I was where a radio was supposed to be.

            We landed uneventfully as the sun was going down.  Another wonderful Air Force sergeant was very helpful to me.  He checked and found that Pat was a patient in the 24th General Hospital. It happened to be the hospital that activated at Fort Benning, Georgia at the time I was there. The sergeant got a jeep and a driver to take me to the 24^th Gen Hospital. It was so good to see some old friends from Fort Benning, and their hospitality was greatly appreciated. They gave Pat and me a private room in their personal quarters.

Not until then did I know why Pat was in the hospital. Soon after I was hospitalized in Paris, Pat had an accident with his gun. He had gotten himself a German Luger and was trying to clean it or unload it and it went off and shot his wedding band off his finger and made a mess of the finger. I wanted him to go back to my hospital.

I knew our orthopedic surgeon was among the best, and I felt that Dr. Hagerty could save Pat’s finger. Pat would not go, and he lost his finger.

            When I left Pat in Nancy, I flew to Frankfurt, but I was not able to get a flight back to Bad Hersfeld. I knew that if I could get there, I could get to the 44^th in Rotenburg. After several inquiries, I found a young corporal who was driving a two and half ton truck my way, so within a short time, I was on my way north with him. He was the first person from my hometown that I had met in Europe. His grandmother had lived near us during my childhood. We talked a lot about home and about our dreams of getting back there. I had gotten a bottle of good Cognac from a coworker of Pat’s and I gave it to the corporal for helping me

            I don’t think anyone in the 44^th thought I would be returning. They knew I was pregnant and had gone to Paris to be discharged and sent home. They did not know all that had happened since. So much had changed while I was away. Our hospital had merged with another evacuation hospital. Some of our personnel had already left for home. There was a point system based on length of service overseas that was supposed to determine when we got to leave for home. The doctors and nurses who had already left were those who had joined us after coming up from North Africa, Sicily and Italy. They had the most points of anyone in our hospital unit. This point system was on everyone’s mind. Rumors were flying. Those who had fewer points feared they would be sent to the Pacific instead of home. We were working very little then and most everyone was going on sightseeing trips, knowing that we wouldn’t be in Europe much longer, we hoped.

            All I could think of was seeing Pat, and when I got the news that the Japanese had surrendered, I lost no time getting back to Nancy. I got over to Pat’s unit, which was still nearby and got Pat’s sergeant to drive me to Frankfurt. I was confident that Colonel Lewis or Major Stimpson would get me to Nancy. When I arrived in Frankfurt, all of their officers were having a big party, celebrating VJ day. They needed more ladies for their party, so they were glad to offer me transport to Nancy if I’d stay for the party.

The next morning we learned that all unofficial flights were cancelled, because there had been some accidents after VE day. I was sitting on the steps of their headquarters building with Major Stimpson when a captain drove by and said he was flying to Paris and he would be willing to drop me off in Nancy. My dear Major Stimpson (whom I had begun to look to as a father) advised me to wait—“Colonel Lewis may find you a way.” Sure enough, he did. He got me a ride in the bombardier’s seat of a P-38. They put a parachute on me, and I crawled up into that double fuselage airplane without fear until I saw that the floor was a trap door. Thinking that all I had to do was put one foot on that door and I would drop out of the plane, I kept my feet propped up high and did not wiggle a toe. I was surrounded completely with glass. I could see in all directions except behind me where the pilot was. I could talk to him but I could not see him. Soon I heard a third voice, from the ground no doubt. After that, we did not say another word. No one was supposed to know he had a passenger and we didn’t want our conversation overheard on the radio. We landed safely in Nancy without my falling out the trap door.

 Again the 24^th Station Hospital staff gave Pat and me the use of a room in their quarters, and we celebrated VJ day with them. That was the last I saw of Pat in Europe. We were later divorced. It was one of many marriages that lasted just about as long as the war.          

After the VJ day celebration, I made my way back to the 44^th, which was still mostly in Rotenburg, although some members of our staff were no longer there. In addition to the end of the war, VJ day meant that none of us had to worry about being redeployed in a war zone in the Pacific, something that had been much on our minds.

The following weeks were difficult in some ways. So many of us had been together through thick and thin. Now we were so mixed up with other units that we were no longer the 44^th. Separating from close friends was becoming a sad reality. There was much confusion. Soon after I returned to Rotenburg, the remaining nurses were sent to a staging area. As I recall, there were about ten of the nurses from the 44^th still together, all of us griping because we never knew what was going to happen next. The area of this camp reserved for nurses was called Camp Carlisle. It was surrounded with barbed wire, and German prisoners were used to maintain the grounds. The male officers were in another camp. According to Tony Luvara, who wanted to be with Mary Johnson, “no one but German prisoners could get in there with the nurses.”

All we could think of was “How soon will we go home?” Rumors continued to fly. At one time we thought we would go to Marseille and soon be on a ship sailing to the good old USA. We were all counting and comparing our points with other nurses we had never seen before. Many times we thought we should be the first to go home. We believed our points added up to higher totals than others because we had added a point for every month we were in Europe and a point for each of the five battles we were in as we followed the troops to the total time we had been in the army.

The unfortunate nurse who was given command of all nurses in Camp Carlisle accidentally let us hear that she had just sent one hundred nurses home and we were aware that they had less points than any of us. Some of those sent home had only fifty points, and most of us had over eighty, and some had over one hundred. I had eighty-seven points, and for sure I joined the angry gripers. The chief nurse did not live peacefully until she went to Paris headquarters to beg for plans to send us home.

After ten long days waiting, we were told that we would go to Le Havre,France and leave for home the next day. Instead, we found ourselves in another staging area, Camp Philip Morris. There were a series of camps named after American cigarettes. It turned out this was just one more stepping stone on our long road home.

Imagine our dismay when we finally arrived in La Havre to find a tent city of nurses waiting to go home. As we walked by, many were sitting in front of their tents doing needlework or reading or just sitting. We asked them if they were waiting to leave. “Yes,” they said. “When did you get here?” we asked. Some said a few days ago, others as much as three weeks ago. Then we asked, “When did they tell you that you would be leaving?” The disappointing answer was always “The day after we got here we were supposed to ship out.” We were so depressed. As it turned out we were in La Havre ten days before we boarded the USS West Point.

This trip was a far cry from what I remembered of crossing the Atlantic the other way. While the West Point was a military ship, not a luxury ship like the Aquitania, we were actually in much more comfortable quarters. The American food was good, and we got to know the Navy crew. I heard that we would be crossing the north Atlantic and then coming down the American coastline to finally dock at Norfolk. One of the sailors told me we might see the Statue of Liberty as we passed off shore by New York. I was so excited by this idea that I embellished it and started a rumor that we would actually circle the Statue of Liberty before making our way down the coastline to Virginia. Actually, our route did take us across the north Atlantic and down the east coast, but we were so far out that we really didn’t see land until we got to the Navy port at Hampton Roads, Virginia.

            Our first view of home before landing was a spectacular display of brightly painted red, white, and blue signs—WELCOME HOME—GOOD JOB DONE—and many more praises for our mission accomplished. The Red Cross was there with milk and donuts before we put a foot on American soil. We were loaded directly onto trains for a short ride. I drank almost quart of milk almost without stopping on that train ride. I had not had any milk since I left the states. All we had in Europe was powdered milk and it was nothing like the quality of powdered milk available today. I could not drink it at all.

            We were herded from the train into a theatre where a colonel was giving us a welcome home speech in an effort to prepare us for the adjustment to the many changes that had taken place during our two years away. Then he gave us directions to our accommodations for the night and instructions about what would be happening next. I didn’t hear a thing he said. I was looking around for a telephone and the minute we were dismissed I made for it. I was the first one to get to a telephone to call Mama. Just the day before, she had received my despondent letter written from Camp Philip Morris saying that I had lost hope that I’d ever get home. She nearly had a heart attack when she heard me on the phone.

            I spent one night in Norfolk. The next day I went to Fort Bragg for my discharge. After one night of sleep and a few hours getting my discharge that I hardly remember, I was overwhelmed when I walked out the door of my last day in the army. THERE STOOD MAMA, DADDY, AND PETE, my baby sister. Mama’s hair had turned gray, Daddy’s hair had thinned considerably, and Pete had doubled her height while I was gone—no longer my “baby sister,” she was taller than I was.

            When we got close to home I was thrilled to see the Reynolds Building that was essentially the whole skyline of Winston-Salem at that time. I still kind of resent the taller buildings that now form my home town skyline for obscuring that landmark I was so glad to see.

            Once we got home, all the family, including Aunt Dott, Uncle Paul and sister-in-law Marion, and Margaret were there. Only Robert and Howard were missing—they were still in the Pacific waiting to come home. The family had already cooked our famous Southern fried chicken and our usual potatoes and beans. Then Mama said “Get that can of pineapple from the shelf.” She had been saving it for my first meal home because she knew I loved it. I said, without thinking, “Oh, no! Not canned pineapple!” The only fruit we had while overseas was canned, and most of it was pineapple. Now I just craved fresh fruit. Immediately I felt bad to realize she thought she was doing such a special thing for me.

            Everybody laughed as they tried to catch me up with all the latest in the states. I remember everybody talking about something called Hadacol that was being advertised as some sort of miracle cure. I think it turned out to be mostly alcohol. The day after I got home, my brother Robert’s wife, Marion, took me shopping. There was a sale at Thalhimer’s and I wanted to buy some new shoes. I was wearing my uniform because that’s all I really had. What I wanted was a regular pump, but the salesman only had the latest fashion. They were open-toed and had only a strap around the ankle. When I complained that he didn’t have just what I wanted, he said angrily “Lady, if you don’t want these shoes, it’s fine with me. There are at least a  hundred women in this town who do.” So I decided I would take them. Then he asked me for my ration coupon. I didn’t know what he was talking about. I rushed off to find Marion who provided me with the required coupons. Being home was going to require some adjustment!

 Acknowledgements

I could  not  have  written  the account  of  my  experiences in  the  44^th  Evacuation Hospital without our  Chaplain David B. Walthall’s  historical  record of our unit - PASS IN REVIEW.   I was able to check dates  and  places  of  our hospital’s movements from my own brief pocket diary that I carried throughout the war with  the  Chaplain’s record.  I  was pleased to find that our records matched. In addition, his descriptions  of our activities often jogged or confirmed my own  memory of events.  As  I  read  and reread  his account of  our hospital,  I  recall  many happy  days  with  him. The  44^th  was  truly  blessed  to  have  a loving, caring,  talented Chaplain. During the war, he tended to us as his flock. Afterwards, he continued his ministry to us by writing his history of our unit.

Many  friends  and even professional scholars  have  told  me  that  my  story  was  worth  writing,  but  I  was  not  sure  I  could  write  a  readable account of  my story until my good friend Anne Carter volunteered  to  edit  my  writing. She  did  such a good job  that  my  number  one  critic, Gordon Kendall, quickly called  me with his surprising praise appraisal. Both Anne and I were inspired in this project by the oral historian at the Women’s Memorial in Washington. When we visited there last year, Anne made sure that I met and talked with her and that’s really where it all began. Whenever my confidence faltered, Anne would not hear of it.

                Anne’s  mother, Juanita Irvin, who is my long time close friend since nursing  school, and who was also an army nurse offered to proofread. It turns out that she is a skilled and meticulous proofreader. I truly appreciate her contribution and support for my project.

                After my  story  was  printed  and  shared  with  army  and  other  friends, Bob  Stern, a  retired Winston-Salem Journal editor, read  my  manuscript. His  appraisal complimented  Anne’s  editing  so  much  that  I  feel  I  owe  her  more  thanks.  Bob  also did  some  editional  editing  for  which  I  am  grateful.