U.S. ARMY NURSES EVACUATE THE WOUNDED

By Linda Lee Greene, Author & Artist.



Summaries of today’s fighting will go out to newsrooms all across the free world. A gaggle of foreign correspondents follow the battles around like phantoms, uniformed, wolfing down the awful C-rations, chugging the sickening, chemical-tainted water from their canteens, running or crawling on their bellies among the sheets of bullets and overhead bombs, all for the sake of finding a story to send back home. They will report only what will pass the censors, things like the amount of ground gained, the heroic act of an anonymous GI, or excerpts from an official report by General So and So. Tomorrow, families will gather around their radio sets, their ears perked for any nuance in the stories that might give them some clue as to the status of their Johnny or Billy. And they will scan their newspaper hoping for the same revelation, to no avail. Their kid’s name won’t pop out among the sentences of yet another story about the current raging battle in Salerno, Italy. Instead, a telegram handed over by a man at the front door will inform unlucky parents of the missing or dead.

            I know full well that the folks back home have to stay on top of what is going on, not only because they are worried sick about their son or daughter, but because otherwise they just might give in and let the Nazis and Japs win. It’s a sure bet that there are very few mothers and fathers who have slept soundly through the night since World War II began—my parents included, of course. My mother still hasn’t forgiven me completely for joining the US Army as a nurse, and she is even less inclined to let me off the hook since I was deployed overseas. My dad doesn’t believe in sending any female into harm’s way for any reason, no matter how pressing. I literally want to throw up at the idea of my name, or God forbid, a photo of me doing my job of evacuating the wounded from a battlefield and having it show up in our local newspaper. I can’t stand the thought of how that would terrify my mother. So when I see one of those journalists, I turn my head away and pray he will focus his attention elsewhere.

            I sailed abroad in late May, only four months ago now, but it has been another lifetime. I was one of a large contingent of medical personnel, nurses and doctors and aides, onboard an enormous ship, which was a luxury cruise liner in its peacetime identity. It was converted to a troopship ever engaged in transporting troops and other personnel to fields of operation across the Atlantic. The ship and others like it on return trips to New York Harbor are directly connected to my job. They carry the walking-wounded and others back home, among them Prisoners of War who are subject to internment in various camps across America.

            Even though we medical personnel were assigned to specified quarters on the ship, still there were occasions when rubbing elbows with the troops came up. The ship was packed stem to stern with them, short, tall, rail-thin, and brawny, sprawled out in hallways, on decks, stretched out on bunks, all of them uniformed and helmeted and attached like glue to their guns and field packs. A chalked number unique to each one marked on their helmets and linked to a manifest in their commanding officer’s possession gave them a strange individuality. I was careful not to look at any of their faces. I figured there was a chance I would see too many of them again under different circumstances. It was likely that I would carry some of them out of a battlefield on a stretcher; that I would stitch-up for some of them bullet-shattered arms and legs, or stuff their guts back through gaping holes in their bellies. Some of them I might not be able to save at all.

            Today, September 17, 1943 was my first assignment on a field of battle in Salerno, Italy, and a weird coincidence happened. A young lieutenant among a group of soldiers lifting a wounded comrade on a stretcher to my outstretched hands where I stood at the open door of the evacuation plane called out my name and touched my hand. “Evelyn!” the lieutenant shouted. “It’s me, Benny.” I couldn’t believe my eyes. It was Benny for sure, my neighborhood friend, one of a group of us who had been playmates since we were kids. How many warm afternoons did we play kick the can, hide and seek, and tag, or build snowmen and igloos during our cold Midwest winters? One year Benny got a telescope for Christmas, and one by one he let us look through it—he gave us our first real view at the stars, the same stars we had oohed and aahed over when on hot summer nights we had stretched out on blankets in our back yards. Sleeping under the stars was a happy childhood adventure. Dear God, please keep Benny safe as he beds down under those same stars tonight, somewhere out there on that battle-churned war-site in this hostile, Godforsaken, foreign land.©



Image: Air evacuation from Italy to North Africa

Recommended Reading:          https://history.amedd.army.mil/booksdocs/wwii/MedSvcsinMedtrnMnrThrtrs/chapter3.htm

Note: the above is a work of historical fiction inspired by true events.

Books by Linda Lee Greene are available for purchase in eBook and soft cover at Amazon.com and by request at other booksellers.