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.

Flight Nurse in CBI

LADY DON’T STOP HERE, THE TRUE STORY OF A YOUNG WOMAN’S ADVENTURES AS AN AIR EVACUATION NURSE IN THE ARMY AIR CORPS OF WWII, 1988. by Esther Baer Moseley

Assigned to the CBI theater of war, Esther found a whole new world. The 803rd Air Evacuation Squadron was based in Chabua, India, but they were to collect patients from China to fly over “The Hump”, the Himalyan Mountains between India and China, bringing the wounded to Chabua. From there patients were taken to hospitals in Karachi, Calcutta or Bombay.  The nurses had regular routines and stayed often in these cities. At “home” in Chabua, there were often air raids from Japanese planes. While picking up patients in Burma, Esther and her fellow crew members were strafed by a Japanese plane, which killed one patient and injured several others.

Many great adventures are told, including the story of her friend, Lt. Jeanette “Tex” Gleason, the only nurse who had to parachute out of a plane over China.  After leaving the patients off in Kunming, China, the plane took off with Tex and four crew members. The sky was overcast and it soon became dark. The pilot tried to avoid the weather, but after a while announced they were lost and didn’t know if they were over Japanese-held territory or not. They were going to have to parachute, and hope for the best. After putting Tex in a parachute, and instructing her in the procedure to open the chute, they all evacuated, in the darkness, not knowing what was ahead for them. Tex was able to pull the ripcord and soon landed in a tree. Alone in the darkness, she got to the ground, and wrapped herself in the parachute to wait the dawn. Following a nearby stream, she found her way to a village, where the Chinese people fed her and helped her find her way to another village where the doctor spoke English. Eventually another of the crew arrived, and after a few days, all the crew were miraculously reunited, and returned to the base.

This book is a well-written memoir of the life of a brave flight nurse, and the many people and family she found herself involved with before, during and after the Second World War. Often the term Greatest Generation is used, and this book shows the spirit and strength that makes that title so accurate.

The Story of Air Evacuation 1942-1989, edited by Evelyn Hill Page, is a collectible yearbook of the first flight nurse training school, and includes numerous photos of the classes and support staff. Published in 1989, the nurses of that initial program relate the adventurous experiences they had been through during the war years.  Find these books through Interlibrary Loan, or online used-book dealers.

Army Nurse and the Ledo Road

Camp, LaVonne Telshaw. Lingering Fever: A World War II Nurse’s Memoir. Jefferson, NC, McFarland. 1997. China-Burma-India

The CBI theater of war is seldom mentioned when WWII is talked about, but it was a major part of the war against Japan. Nurses were stationed in many areas of these countries and this book is the experience of one Army nurse who writes of “climate that wrested our energy and vitality, diseases that the western world rarely heard of  or had ways to treat, loneliness that sapped our spirits, and encounters with other cultures that were completely foreign to anything we had known.” Among other stories, reading about the black leopard that climbed in her bed one night will take your breath away.
Also see books by Moseley, who was a CBI Flight Nurse, Hager, Korson, and Fessler.

The books mentioned in this blog are available through the Interlibrary loan dept. of local libraries, and can be purchased from Online used book dealers.