British Nurse WWII Books

QUIET HEROINES and A NURSE’S WAR

The nurse stories and reviews in this blog have been about American nurses of WWII, but of course there were medical units from other Allied countries, as well as enemy medical people. Often fighting alongside Americans were the British, and these are two remarkable books written by a nurse from England. A Nurse’s War is the memoir of Brenda McBryde, who lived through the bombing attacks in England, beginning in 1939, and became an army nurse, to serve until 1946.
Once when I was speaking to a group about the brave American nurses in my book, I began stating that ” the war started December 7, 1941, in Hawaii.” A woman spoke up to say that the United Kingdom was bombed in 1939, and she was there. Never again did I make that stupid remark.
While going through nurses’ training, Brenda McBryde tells of the local preparations for war, evacuating patients to countryside hospitals, gas masks issued to civilians, and air raid shelters. She tells of the war activity heard over the BBC, knowing that they could be invaded soon, as German bombers destroyed the airfields.
Graduating in April 1943, she promptly became an army nurse, assigned to an army hospital in Scotland, as the war took over the surrounding countries. Two weeks after D-Day in 1944 nurses landed in France, to care for the thousands of wounded British soldiers. Descriptions of wounds of war and the intensity of the work to treat the fighting men, is the strength of Brenda’s writing. She and the other nurses continue this through the fighting in France, Brussels, and Germany. British prisoners were released to their hospital, and soon the war ended. Caring for the thousands of refugees, civilians and military from many countries, is thoughtfully related.

After this memoir was published, hundreds of wartime nurses wrote letters with accounts of their own experiences. Quiet Heroines, Nurses Of The Second World War, describes countless stories of sacrifice. An excerpt from the book cover states: “The early disasters in France and the providential escape from Dunkirk; the blitz at home and the scars of Greece, North Africa, Malta and Italy; the brutal horrors of Hong Kong and Singapore; and the ordeal that so many nurses suffered in the Far East as prisoners of war” are described from first-hand sources .
At times American nurses and British nurses tell of the same experience, such as at Anzio, and being on the same hospital ship Newfoundland as it sank, bombed by the Germans. For years British nurses had served in countries in the Far East that were taken over by Japan, and as the troops and civilians tried to escape, many were imprisoned or murdered. At the end of the book are listed, by name, the nurses who died at sea, killed in action, murdered by the Japanese, or died in internment camps.
These two books by Brenda McBryde are similar, yet very different, from most of the books by and about American nurses mentioned throughout this blog. She describes wounds and treatment explicitly at times, in ways that are necessary and sympathetic. Looking at the Second World War through her eyes, as a British nurse, is very informative and moving.

Nurse Describes Kamikaze Attack

Doris Gardner Howard was honored on Veterans Day 2019, when she was 99, for her service as an Army Nurse during WWII.

In World War II Japanese kamikaze planes, loaded with explosives, deliberately made  suicidal crashes on an enemy target, usually ships.

On April 28, 1945, the USS Comfort hospital ship had just loaded injured patients in Okinawa, and was at sea on the way to Guam, unarmed as all hospital ships were. At 10:41 p.m., with full illumination, and marked with red crosses in several places to clearly mark it as a hospital ship, the kamikaze pilot crashed the plane into the ship where three operating rooms were located. Though injured, Doris was able to help the wounded in the operating area, where other nurses, doctors and patients were killed and injured by the explosion.

30 persons were killed, including six army nurses, and 48 others were wounded. Though damaged severely, the ship was able to continue to Guam, to unload the patients, including the deceased hospital staff. Doris was able to remain on the Comfort as it made its way to the west coast of the U.S. for repairs.

One of many army nurses who served on hospital ships, her memories of being aboard the USS Comfort when hit by a Japanese kamikaze plane are recorded in a 2019 online website:
http://www.rallypoint.com/answers/what-question-can-you-pose-to-a-nurse-from-wwii

Doris celebrated her 100th birthday March 23, 2020, in Reno, Nevada. Dale Harper’s book, Too Close For Comfort, tells the story of the attack very well. Also see Massman, and Daly for excellent books on hospital ships.
Available from the Interlibrary loan at most libraries, these are also found for sale at Used online book dealers. My WWII nurse book collection is listed in this blog at: https://ww2nurses.wordpress.com/world-war-ii-nurse-books/

During the Battle of the Bulge

Nurses in Europe remembered December 1944 through January 1945 as a time of great amounts of wounded patients coming through the hospitals. It was a cold winter and the Battle of the Bulge was the last offensive by Germany; a time of many thousands of casualties on both sides of the war.
Virginia Grabowski Shannon tells of the 21st GH being in Mirecourt, France, “ten miles behind the lines”.  “On Christmas Eve I was in my bunk when we were bombed. My heart was pounding, and of course I had no idea what was hit or how much damage was done. We were near a railroad depot, which was what they were aiming at.”  She  continues, “Wounded and injured were brought in from the Rhine, and as fast as we could evacuate them, more were brought in. It was nothing for us to evacuate two hundred to three hundred patients, and get three hundred to four hundred right on top of that.  Being young and having a purpose, we could work twenty-four hours a day.”

Esther Edwards relates that the 10th FH moved constantly. “We moved from buildings to tents and back to buildings, and sometimes the patients had to be moved from one floor to another for surgery, which was a hard job for the corpsmen. Near Saint Avold, the Allies fired artillery shells over our building, then the Germans answered back, over the hospital again. One nurse was using her helmet to bathe when the firing came too close, so she dumped out the water, put the helmet on her head, and sat there naked until the firing stopped.”

Dr. Austin Grant, surgeon with the 100th EH, tells of volunteering to assist another hospital during the Battle of the Bulge and “got as far as Malmedy, Belgium. We checked in and found everyone was retreating because the Germans were coming up the hill, so we left too. I later heard the doctors who were still operating were captured, but the nurses had been evacuated. At one time, we all had to jump into ditches because of the German advance.”

These excerpts are from No Time For Fear, Voices of American Military Nurses in World War II, written by this blog’s author. Posts to the blog are not as frequent as earlier, but will continue as time permits. Books by and about WWII nurses contain many references to the Battle of the Bulge, and the list is online at:

https://ww2nurses.wordpress.com/world-war-ii-nurse-books/

Nurse POW in Germany

Reba Whittle already flew 40 missions in Europe, transporting wounded to hospitals in England, and some to the States, after arriving with the 813th Medical Air Evacuation Squadron in January 1944. Her next flight, September 27, 1944, was to pick up patients  in France for evacuation back to England, when the plane flew off course, entering enemy airspace over Germany.

“Suddenly we hit the ground…myself landing in the navigators compartment head first,” Reba describes later in her diary. “Crawling out the top hatch” she followed the crew as they escaped the burning plane. German soldiers appeared immediately. The injured crew members, including Reba whose head was bleeding, were bandaged by one of the Germans, and then marched away, eventually to a nearby village.

Thus began a trek through German territory for the only American nurse captured in the European theater. Her diary and reports of the treatment in Germany are found in several books, and a completely thorough, lengthy report written by Lt. Col. Mary Frank in 1990 for the Army War College. This can found at the following online site:
https://apps.dtic.mil/dtic/tr/fulltext/u2/a223404.pdf

Books that relate Reba Whittle’s time as a German POW in Germany include Beyond The Call of Duty by Judith Barger; Angels on Board by Nancy Polette; And If I Perish by Evelyn Monahan.

Five months after being captured, Reba Whittle was repatriated through Switzerland, arriving in the States in February, 1945.

Germany had signed the Geneva Convention about treatment of prisoners, along with other European countries, but not the Japanese. The excellent report by LTC Frank, mentioned above, begins with the nurse POWs in the Philippines. The years of their internment have been told in many books, and in film. Five Navy nurses stationed in Guam were captured in January, 1942, sent by ship to Japan where they were imprisoned. In June, 1942, they were repatriated in exchange for Japanese prisoners, arriving in New York in August.

Books in my collection can be obtained through online Used book dealers, and through a library Interlibrary Loan dept.

Red Cross Nurses 1941

• Before Pearl Harbor, Dec. 7,1941, twenty-nine American Red Cross Nurses volunteered for duty in England to help staff an installation for the study and treatment of communicable diseases under wartime conditions. At the time, graduate nurses were asked to join the ARC, which was recruiting for the Army Nurse Corps. Ten of these nurses, who were still civilians, sailed from Halifax aboard the Norwegian merchant ship Vigrid in a British convoy in June, 1941. On June 24 the ship was torpedoed by a German submarine and sunk. Wearing lifebelts, the nurses were lowered into lifeboats – two in one boat, and four each in two other boats, along with other passengers and crew.
• One lifeboat was rescued by an Allied ship, after 12 days of drifting in the open sea, cold and hungry. The four nurses were taken to Iceland, and eventually returned to the U.S. Drifting for 19 days, the lifeboat with the two nurses was rescued by a destroyer, and all taken to England. The four nurses from the Vigrid in the remaining lifeboat were never found.
• June 27, three days after the sinking of the Vigrid, the same convoy was torpedoed by another German sub. Seventeen nurses were aboard the Maasdam when it was hit, and all safely abandoned ship. Two nurses lost their lives at sea, and the other 15 were rescued by two Norwegian ships and taken to England.
• After war was declared by the U.S., the hospital in Great Britain was taken over by the U.S. Army, and many of the nurses volunteered for the Army Nurse Corps, and remained in the European theater of operations.
• George Korson’s book, AT HIS SIDE, The Story of The American Red Cross Overseas in WWII, tells the story of these two ships. Another source is https://uboat.net.
• More books by and about nurses of WWII are listed at this website:  https://ww2nurses.wordpress.com/world-war-ii-nurse-books/

Nurses at Pearl Harbor

“I’d just served breakfast to the patients who couldn’t go to the mess hall when I heard a horrific explosion. I looked across the water at the hangar on Ford Island. It looked like it was picked up into the air and dropped down–PLUNK! There was nothing but smoke where there had been that great big airplane hangar with all the planes sitting in a row. A plane with a huge red circle came close enough to tell it was Japanese. It dived over the hospital, and if I’d had a gun I could have killed him.”  Valera Vaubel Wiskerson, U.S. Navy, at Navy Hospital.

“Hearing the explosions, I ran outside and saw the red sun on a plane that was coming in so close that I could see the faces of the pilots. One of them looked at us and smiled. I rushed to the hospital. Casualties were coming in fast and furious because the barracks were right along the runway and that’s where the bombs hit first.” Sara Entriken, U.S. Army,  at Hickam Field.

“I was asleep that Sunday morning on the hospital ship Solace out in the middle of Pearl Harbor, “in the stream,” as we say. ‘COMMAND BATTLE STATIONS!’ was the first thing I heard. Our sailors were in their dress whites waiting to go ashore on liberty, but when the explosions started, they went around in the liberty boats, picking up injured and wounded out of the water. We worked all through the day without stopping. Late at night, I was sitting at the dinner table with other nurses when the executive officer came and talked to us for a while. ‘Well,’ he said, ‘we don’t know what’s going to happen next. But we’re all still here, kind of like rats in a trap.’  It began to dawn on me that we were really in a precarious and dangerous position in the harbor.”  Agnes Shurr , U.S. Navy on the USS Solace.

“I went to my duty station and saw all these litters in the hallway. ‘Where does one start?’ I thought. But I guess God gives nurses strength to do what has to be done. Nurses and corpsmen in teams gave tetanus and morphine to the patients, marking T and M on foreheads because there wasn’t time for paperwork. We evaluated those who needed surgery, sending them to the operating room, and those with no recovery possibility, or DOA, to the makeshift morgue. There was a constant stream of injured being brought in, and we were still working next morning.  About 5:00 A.M. we all sat on the floor and cried.”  Gelane Matthews Barron, U.S. Army, at Tripler Hospital. 

“Ambulatory patients immediately left the hospital to get back to their ships. One patient, whose eyes were both bandaged, got out of bed, crawled underneath, and pulled a blanket down to lie on, so we could use the bed for the wounded. Everyone was worrying about the others and not themselves.”  Lenore Terrell Rickert, U.S. Navy at Navy Hospital.

“Casualties were arriving on stretchers as I reported to the operating room, with ambulance sirens wailing in the background. In a short time the nine operating rooms were extremely busy, while patients waited for care in the corridor. I kept hearing planes overhead, but we were too busy to be afraid or to ask what was happening. All day and into the evening I went from one patient to the next without sitting down or having a cup of coffee. Someone brought fried chicken in but few of us felt hungry, as we had seen too much death and were involved with the most serious wounds and bravest of men. Many wanted to go out and fight back. Some wanted a prayer said, or to hear the 23rd Psalm, and we obliged them along with the surgical procedures.” Mildred Irene Clark Woodman, U.S. Army, at Schofield Barracks. 

These excerpts are from No Time For Fear, Voices of American Military Nurses in World War II.   
More books by and about WWII military nurses can be found on this website:
https://ww2nurses.wordpress.com/world-war-ii-nurse-books/

WWII Hospital Ships Named For Nurses

Five U.S. Army nurses were honored by having U.S. hospital ships named for them during WWII.
Aleda E. Lutz
The first flight nurses were assigned to go overseas at the end of 1942, with the 802nd Medical Air Evacuation Squadron to North Africa. Aleda was one of them, moving with the 802nd to the European continent. November 1, 1944, she was on a C-47 plane with 15 wounded who were being transported from France to a hospital in Italy. The plane crashed during a storm, and there were no survivors. For her service Aleda was awarded the Distinguished Flying Cross, among many, many other awards.

Emily H. M. Weder
First joining the army in 1918, Emily’s first assignment was in Vladivostok, Siberia with 12 other nurses. The following years were not as dangerous, but as a career army nurse she eventually died of cancer in 1943.

Ernestine Koranda
Entering the army in 1941, Ernestine sailed with the 12th Station Hospital to Australia. She was killed in an airplane crash, shortly after take-off in December 1943, while on leave.

Blanche F. Sigman
As chief nurse of the 95th Evacuation Hospital, Blanche and the others in the unit had been saving lives for 11 days at the Anzio beachhead. German bombs hit the hospital and killed three nurses, including Blanche. The 95th was among units sailing on the Newfoundland, an English hospital ship, which was bombed crossing the bay from North Africa. All were rescued, returned to Africa, then 3 months later made the crossing again, only to be attacked on land.

Frances Y. Slanger
Born in Poland, Frances’ family came to America in 1919. She became an army nurse in 1943 but didn’t get her overseas assignment until 1944 when, with the 45th Field Hospital, she waded ashore at Normandy on June 10. During the next few months the unit saved lives under heavy battle conditions, moving with the fighting. In October the 45th was in Belgium when they were bombed, directly on the tent where Frances was with other nurses. She died soon after. A writer, Frances had sent a letter to the military newspaper Stars and Stripes addressing it to the GIs, explaining what a privilege it was to be able to care for them as a nurse in war. The letter was published after she died, and became known worldwide. A book about Frances by Bob Welch is titled American Nightingale, The Story of Frances Slanger, Forgotten Heroine of Normandy. 

Much of the info on this page came from Massman’s book, Hospital Ships of World War II, which is a really interesting book to read. It is not a dull reference book. These nurses are mentioned in other books on the list of Books By and About WWII Nurses, and the previous page of this blog.

Army and Navy Hospital Ships

More U.S. Army hospital ships than U.S. Navy hospital ships during WWII?
It’s true. Emory Massman’s book, Hospital Ships of World War II, is a terrific reference with many illustrations and histories. Simply put, the army wanted to have their own ships, and by the end of the war had 24, five of them named to honor army nurses. Four doctors were honored as well.

Aleda E. Lutz                                          John J. Meany
Emily H. M. Weder                                 Jarrett M. Huddleston
Frances Y. Slanger                                  Charles A. Stafford
Ernestine Koranda                                  Louis A. Milne
Blanche F. Sigman

In my book Margaret Carlson Larson served aboard the USS Dogwood both in the Atlantic and Pacific. The USS Comfort, jointly operated by the army and navy, was attacked by a Japanese Kamikaze plane where 29 people were killed, including six army nurses. More information about the above named nurses and doctors can be found in Massman’s book. Dale Harper wrote about the USS Comfort in his book, Too Close For Comfort.  Emily Weder is mentioned often in the book, From Nightingale to Eagle by Edith Aynes.  American Nightingale, by Bob Welch, is subtitled The Story of Frances Slanger, Forgotten Heroine of Normandy. The next page in this blog has bios of these nurses.

U.S. Navy hospital ships served everywhere, with navy nurses and crews. USS Solace was in Pearl Harbor on December 7, 1941, and served the rest of the war in the Pacific theater.  Ensign H.C. ‘Pat’ Daly wrote the history of this ship in a book titled, The USS. Solace Was There. 

Front cover of my book features U.S. Navy nurses at the rail on the USS Refuge, which served in the Atlantic and Pacific. Included are interviews with navy nurses of the USS  Solace, USS Refuge and USS Benevolence.

More sites that share the story of the USS Comfort:
http://www.dorishoward.vet/USS-Comfort-1945.htm
http://www.kamikazeimages.net/books/ships/comfort/

Books by and about WWII nurses can be found at this site:

https://ww2nurses.wordpress.com/world-war-ii-nurses-books/

Books by and about WWII Nurses

Looking for info about your grandmother, or aunt, or father who went overseas with a hospital unit in WWII?
Many books have been published by the military members who were there, or the families who come upon a collection of letters written in the 1940s. That is how my book, No Time For Fear, was begun.
The letters my aunt wrote, and her family saved, tell a lot about the people she lived with in tents, sloshed with through the mud in chow lines, and spent months with in France and Japan. For instance, anyone who wants to know about members of the 166th Station Hospital can learn from the letters and interviews in my book. You will read about the atmosphere, hardships, and feelings expressed in that chapter. The other chapters lead the reader all over the world, in hospital ships, evacuation planes, and POW camps.

World War II Nurse Books

The above is the link for the booklist in this blog.
Nurses are the focus of my book collection, but the corpsmen, doctors, and the many others who were important members of these medical units will have similar experiences. Often the title will tell what unit or location the group was in.  I have had requests for info about someone who was with a particular hospital unit, or in France or New Guinea, and these places are noted for each title.
Many of the books are out-of-print but your local or university library can find them through the Interlibrary Loan Dept. They also can be found online from Used Book Dealers.  I usually get the book from the library first to see if it is informative before buying it.
When looking for a particular unit, or ship, or name, I try to search online, usually adding “WWII”. Most of the info I have needed will come through a link that way. I am happy to try to help locate information as well.
Thank you, dear readers, for being interested in these wonderful people.

Civilian POW Nurse Returns As Army Nurse

The Road Back, A Pacific POW’s Liberation Story

This is a unique memoir told by a U.S. Army nurse who returned to the Philippines in 1945 after being imprisoned there at the beginning of the war as a civilian with her family.

(Excerpt from the book jacket): “Born and reared in Shanghai, Dorothy Davis Thompson was the daughter of an American businessman. In 1937 she left Shanghai to attend nursing school in New York. Shortly thereafter, the Japanese invaded China, and her family fled to the Philippines. Graduating from Columbia University, she rejoined her family in Manila. Manila fell to the Japanese New Year’s Day, 1942. Thompson and her family were taken prisoners and interned in nearby Santo Tomas. Putting her nursing skills to the test, Dorothy managed to establish a hospital in the camp. Twenty-two months later she herself was ill enough to be released with her mother in a prisoner exchange.”

While in the U.S., Dorothy was commissioned in the Army Nurse Corps, and eventually in January 1945 was able to return to the Philippines with the 49th General Hospital, which landed after the U.S. takeover.  Reunited with her father and sister at Santo Tomas, she worked with the internees and patients that had been recently freed, while the Japanese were still shelling the compound. This is a well-written book that shares unusual experiences not usually told by the POWs. Dorothy relates how she felt, what she saw and did, with heartfelt sincerity. She lived through the first days of the Japanese attack as a civilian nurse, alone in the hospital after all the military staff had departed. Engaged to be married, she found out in 1945 how her fiancé had died. Descriptions of the work and frustrations is excellent, as well as including all the varieties of people she encountered throughout the years.

This author is amazed that after first interviewing so many nurses for my book, NO TIME FOR FEAR, and reading more than 100 books about and by WWII nurses, there is yet another story to be heard. If the readers want to find this or any other book in this blog series, please check out the titles through the Interlibrary loan department, or it can be purchased used through used book dealers. This is the link to my collection of more than 100 books about and by WWII nurses: https://wordpress.com/post/ww2nurses.wordpress.com/