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World |
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do Related U.S. Army Center of Military History Air Force History Support Office Air Force Historical Research Agency |
By
Chris Schreiber The tremendous need for soldiers during World War II created an unprecedented demand for military nurses. Fewer than 1,000 nurses were on active duty in the Army Nurse Corps (ANC) on Dec. 7, 1941, when the Japanese bombed Pearl Harbor. By the end of the war nearly five years later, almost 60,000 nurses had served in the ANC alone, both stateside and abroad. In July 1945, the Navy Nurse Corps, which still today serves both the Navy and the Marines, listed more than 11,000 nurses on active duty-almost six times the number of active nurses at the end of World War I. Navy Corps nurse Lt. Ruth Erickson was stationed at Pearl Harbor the day of the attack. Her story was collected as part of an oral history project by the Navy's Bureau of Medicine and Surgery. "I leaped out of my chair and dashed to the nearest window in the corridor. Right then there was a plane flying directly over the top of our quarters, a one-story structure. The rising sun under the wing of the plane denoted the enemy," she said. "The first patient came into our dressing room at 8:25 a.m. with a large opening in his abdomen and bleeding profusely. They started an intravenous and transfusion. I can still see the tremor of [the physician's] hand as he picked up the needle. Everyone was terrified. The patient died within the hour. Then the burned patients streamed in." Stories like Erickson's did not dampen the military's recruitment efforts, which were widespread. Advertisements in nursing journals and nurses who traveled the country giving speeches were among the military's strategies to recruit nurses. The recruiting efforts worked-no service branch ever reported any nurse shortage. Second Lt. Lillian Kraus Muller, RN, was 22 when she enlisted. "I was walking to work one day in Wisconsin and I thought, I've got to do something," she said. "I just felt like I was not doing enough at home at the local hospital." Despite limited training that included marching drills and timed gas mask readiness, nurses in World War II came closer to the front lines than ever before. Navy nurses worked on land at naval hospitals and at sea aboard non-combatant hospital ships, sometimes in hostile waters, and some nurses were captured as prisoners of war. Other nurses worked in the lesser-known fronts, like Muller, who served in India from August 1944 until December 1945. "We were surrounded by jungles and tea gardens, and surrounded by the Japanese," she said. "We went through the monsoons and hot weather. We were always a full house. We just did our best with what we had. You either dwelled in the misery over there, or you made yourself happy. You could make light of something and hate it in the next second. It was unreal. But if I were 50 years younger, I would do it all over again. We put [all the misery] in the backs of our minds. But we will never forget those faces and those young kids over there. Never." |
