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.
No Time for Fear: Nurses of World War II 