The Cherry Ames Page: War Nurse, page 5

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Cherry Ames, War Nurse
Fiction Meets Reality, page 5

In this section

Life in the Army

Training

Conditions

Life in the Army

Training

Cherry takes to army life right away. Though she already has a history of difficulties with authority, she is ready to accept the discipline of the army, and enjoys the orderliness of the army world. When she goes to a local army base for her required physical examination before induction, she is impressed by what she sees:

Cherry felt a glow of gratitude and an enormous liking for these swarms of friendly, hard-working young men in khaki, or in green fatigues, who crowded the dusty, sunny camp. Tanks and jeeps roared by. Half a mile away, the sky was gray with planes buzzing over the new airfield. Cherry decided she was going to like Army life. (Army Nurse, pp. 9-10)

Like any soldiers, Cherry and her friends in the Army Nurse Corps must undergo basic training. As they arrive at their post, Fort Herold, an unctuous captain tells them:

"You'll be taking sizable hikes yourselves, and wearing camouflage and flinging yourselves in foxholes in a day or two."

"We will?" Cherry gulped. ...

"Certainly. You're going to have basic training like any soldier, except for handling guns. Don't you want to know how to protect yourselves in case there's no military man around to protect you?" (Army Nurse, p. 45)

In actuality, a formal four-week course of training for new army nurses had been established in July 1943, after the nurses' unfamiliarity with military procedures had created some problems earlier in the war. The course included instruction in army organization; military customs; field sanitation; defense against air, chemical, and mechanized attack; administration; and military requisitions. This is the course of training that Cherry undergoes:

... they would have classes in ward management and nursing practice (Army style), including all reports and paper work, transportation and care of the wounded, military discipline, customs, and courtesy; and they would learn how the Army and the Army Nurse Corps were organized. (Army Nurse, p. 51)

Drill and calisthenics are also part of their basic training; the nurses learn to climb swaying nets, practice with gas masks, and crawl across an exposed field under fire, and they accompany troops on maneuvers:

Sergeant Deake had them dive into foxholes and slit trenches; march along a road, then run for cover in the woods, throwing themselves flat; crawl cautiously on their hands and knees searching for booby traps; wiggle through mud and plow through sandy marshes. They certainly were learning how to take care of themselves, getting ready for anything. (Army Nurse, pp. 56-57)

Like the other nurses, Cherry is responsible for training several medical corpsmen, who work under her supervision and are actually responsible for the bedside nursing of the patients. Later, when Cherry and the other nurses are stationed in Panama, they continue to have regular drill and are taught field surgery techinques, in preparation for transfer to a battle zone.

When Cherry later volunteers for duty as a flight nurse, she undergoes six weeks of further intensive training at the Army Air Forces School of Air Evacuation at Randolph Field, Texas. The description of Cherry's training fairly depicts the actual training of nurses for flight duty. She learns how to use a parachute, how to survive crash landings in a variety of environments, and, especially, how to adapt nursing procedures to high altitudes:

"You, the flight nurse, will be in complete medical charge on the trip," Major La Rosa said. "From the time you pick up the wounded in the combat zone, until you unload them at the base hospital, you alone are responsible for the lives of eighteen wounded soldiers. Of course, you will have your medical or flight technician to assist you. ..."

So Cherry had to learn to manage everything by herself, once the flying ambulance was in the air.

Cherry already knew how to arrest hemorrhage, dress wounds, adjust splints, set fractures temporarily, administer blood plasma and give shock treatment. Now she learned how to do all these things, never easy, under the difficult and special conditions of flight. She learned that patients with head injuries must be flown at as low an altitude as possible--that chest injuries require oxygen at any altitude--that certain medicines must be adjusted to certain altitudes--and she learned when to substitute the rules with her own good sense. (Flight Nurse, pp. 15-16)

Cherry's ambulance plane is the Skytrain--a Douglas C-47. This "muddy-colored giant had four motors and a wingspread of nearly a block on each side" (Flight Nurse, p. 11). A transport cargo plane, the C-47, like the C-46 and C-54 planes also used for evacuation, carried not only patients but also military cargo, and consequently the flight crew had "no right to the protection of a Red Cross painted on their aircraft. Instead, the white star of the American combat forces was painted on its broad dark side" (Flight Nurse, p. 11). Of course, this dual use meant that the flying ambulances were fair game for enemy attack--which made flight duty highly hazardous for the nurses who volunteered for it.

Figure 5

Figure 6

Figure 5 depicts Cherry inside her C-47 ambulance plane, ministering to the wounded soldiers, and Figure 6 is an actual Army Nurse Corps photo of a nurse on an evacuation mission. Both show how the plane's interior had been specially adapted for transporting patients:

The walls were partitioned off, on either side, into three sections. In each section, stowed away in canvas containers on the walls, were four webbing-strap litter supports, at four different heights. These strong straps were pulled down, and a litter or stretcher was placed across them, parallel to the plane wall. The four litters went one above the other, bunk or Pullman fashion, from the floor to the ceiling. This left an aisle down the middle of the plane. There were additional straps to keep the patients from falling out of their stretchers. (Flight Nurse, p. 12)

Though she adapts easily to the "orderly, comradely Army world" (Army Nurse, p. 49), Cherry is not terribly military-minded. When she and the other nurses go on bivouac, as members of the "Tans" who will fight a simulated battle against the "Blues," she "was a little vague as to the military techniques involved, except that there was going to be a lot of shooting and spying and secrecy, but she loyally wanted the Tans to win" (Army Nurse, p. 93). When she is being briefed about nonmedical matters by her new superiors after her promotion to acting chief nurse:

Cherry tried to look intelligent. She did not understand clearly what all this meant, except that they were going to be up near the fighting, and that this stern and hard-bitten old warrior was in charge of everyone and everything. (Chief Nurse, pp. 7-8)

Cherry also manages to ignore a few army regulations along the way. She and the other nurses enter the army as lieutenants--officers, who are not to fraternize with enlisted men. But, later, "Cherry--an old Army girl by now--had learned that the American Army is a friendly one" (Flight Nurse, p. 81), and she manages an occasional private visit with Bunce, the medical technician on her evacuation team. She also deliberately and secretly leaves bivouac without permission to administer first aid to an injured child and arranges for a civilian malaria patient to be treated in an army hospital.

Conditions

When Cherry's initial training at Fort Herold is over, she and her unit are placed on alert for imminent departure:

Before daybreak the following morning, at five A.M., Cherry was awakened and told that a train was waiting for the Spencer unit. She dressed swifty, took her suitcase, and with the other girls, rapidly boarded a bus in the chill gray light. Fort Herold did not see them streak down the withering country roads. The train reserved for them carried other troops too, sleepy boys in olive drab who waved at them out the window as the nurses boarded their own car. Cherry was filled with strange feelings. They slipped away like thieves, under cover of darkness and silence. So this was what war was like! (Army Nurse, p. 115)

Initially, Cherry serves at a large base hospital in Panama, far from the battlefronts. It is a two-thousand-bed facility, a sprawling old building to which additional wings have been tacked on as needed. Later, she is sent to a Pacific island, Port Janeway, which has been recaptured from Japanese control and is being used as "a resting place for the hard-pressed or wounded American soldiers who were driving the enemy off the forward islands." It is "one of the larger islands which dot the vast Pacific Ocean. These islands, like a chain of irregularly-spaced steppingstones, lead to war-making Japan" (Chief Nurse, p. 3). Port Janeway is a jungle island, hot and steamy, with wooden hospital buildings and thatched huts. Cherry travels from there to one of the forward islands, Island 14, where an evacuation hospital will be set up, under her supervision.The medical director explains:

"It's a big, rough, but complete hospital, quite near the fighting, so that we can evacuate--bring out--the wounded from battle promptly. It's supposed to be more or less mobile, and we can pack up and move in a day, but it's too big a hospital to move around much. So we'll pick a good jungle spot and stay put as long as there is fighting in that general area."

"A complete hospital will suddenly grow out of the wilderness!" Cherry breathed. She thought of the soldiers fighting out there who would know that the Medical Corps was standing by, ready to take care of them. Suddenly she was grateful that she was a nurse--not only for the adventure which loomed ahead, but for the lives she could save and the courage she could bring. Her dark eyes shone. (Chief Nurse, p. 8)

In the chain of medical care set up by the army, the wounded were first brought to field hospitals close to the front lines for triage. As Cherry comments, "If we were in a field hospital, we could go within six miles of combat ..." (Chief Nurse, p. 39). At these field hospitals, immediate surgeries were performed when needed, and other wounded soldiers were stabilized and transported to the larger, more fully staffed evacuation hospitals, farther away from the front. Cherry's evacuation hospital is thirty miles away from the fighting, on an island that was recaptured from the Japanese three weeks before the nurses arrived. The soldiers receive a high level of care at the evacuation hospital:

The most common surgeries were the removal of shrapnel fragments from exploding shells. But there were also a perforated ulcer, a delicate skin graft, fractured arms and legs, an arm with lacerated nerves which had to be tied together again. There was even, in this jungle hut, one infected brain wound, where the team of doctors and nurses held their breaths while Major Pierce cleansed the wound, grafted leg tissues over the skull gap, and saved the patient from paralysis and blindness. No finer neurosurgery could have been done in the most modern hospital at home. (Chief Nurse, pp. 103-04)

Both the field hospitals and the evacuation hospitals were mobile and stayed close to the shifting battlefront. If necessary, the wounded needing additional care might be sent from the evacuation hospital to station and general hospitals, which were housed in fairly permanent locations and were able to provide long-term and specialized care. This system of care and the skill and dedication of the medical personnel translated into a very low mortality rate for the American wounded--as Cherry accurately realizes: "against tremendous odds, the Army and Navy Medical Corps managed to save ninety-six men out of a hundred" (Flight Nurse, pp. 45-46).

Cherry's evacuation hospital consists of tents, huts, sheds, and thatched pavilions. The sixty nurses live in a long, bare shed with a dirt floor, which they call the Ritz Stables. To make it livable, they scrub the interior, cover the floor with bamboo and eucalyptus bark, and make blackout curtains from towels.

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In addition to caring for the wounded brought from the battlefront, and worrying about the real threat of enemy bombing and strafing, Cherry and the others must also deal with the tropical weather and jungle conditions that are a constant enemy, especially the devastating rains:

... the rain came down in torrents, flattening the convalescents' vegetable gardens and the wild orchids Ann had just planted around the Ritz Stables and her own ward. Tents tugged at their moorings in the lashing rain, and one did blow away, with Cherry and her girls chasing it like drenched demons. The high surf broke loose two barges and they washed up on the beach. Little, friendly lizards climbed up their screens and had to be discouraged from such neighborliness. The ward tents got wet and would not dry out, and Cherry worried about her patients. There was no use worrying about wet floors, nor about the mud that everyone carried in large cakes on his shoes. It rained till the roads were all ditches, the sopping palms drooped like weeping women, and nobody cared whether tomorrow ever came--for tomorrow it probably would be raining again. (Chief Nurse, p. 134)

Evidencing how little civilians at home can understand the conditions the soldiers face, Cherry's mother writes to her: "do wear your rubbers when it rains" (Chief Nurse, p. 140). When the rains stop, the insects come out in force, and the vegetation must be treated with anti-malaria spray, for malaria was a major problem in the tropical areas. As a precaution:

... despite the intense heat, the patients had to wear long-sleeved, high-necked pajamas, and well soldiers had to wear all their clothing--not only outer shirts but every article they possessed, right down to leggings and gloves and buttoned collars--to foil this onslaught of disease-laden insects. (Chief Nurse, p. 135)

The danger of enemy attack is constant, and of course strict blackout regulations must be followed. One night, the Japanese do attack Cherry's island:

That evening, shortly after twilight, as soon as the first darkness came, guns roared and fire spat down from the sky. The enemy, whom Cherry had suspected to be in hiding, showed themselves with a vengeance. They opened an offensive attack on the Americans on their forward islands, and their deadly Zeros swooped down in the night and bombed Island 14. (Chief Nurse, p. 173)

When Cherry is later sailing to Europe on a transatlantic liner for assignment as a flight nurse, her ship narrowly avoids a German torpedo:

Early one morning, at five-thirty, a violent lurch of the ship and a sharp blast of the ship's whistle tore them out of their beds. They hurried sleepily up the steep companionways to their lifeboat stations for another one of those drills. But this was no mere drill. For an hour later, at dawn, the officers took the nurses on deck and showed them sinister debris floating in the ship's wake. A German submarine had shot a torpedo under water at their bow. The ship's personnel had detected it by instrument, and the captain had instantly swerved the huge liner out of its path. They had been saved by seconds and inches. The floating bits were what was left of the submarine. (Flight Nurse, pp. 29-30)

In England, Cherry is stationed at a base hospital and supervises the care of a planeload of patients on trips to the holding hospital in Prestwick, Scotland, where patients awaited transport back to the United States. From Prestwick, "Four hundred wounded were flown out every morning, westward over the Atlantic, fifteen enormous C-54's at a time" (Flight Nurse, p. 53). Her plane also flies combat missions, going right to the edge of the battlefield to evacuate patients from holding stations.

The connection between the civilians at home and the soldiers on duty is poignantly illustrated in a description of mail call, a much-anticipated event for the men and women so far from home. When the mail boats come in:

The soldiers were so happy that the mail had arrived, so eager and clamorous as they pushed forward to help sort it and hear their names called, so pathetically afraid there might be no mail for them after all. When the boys heard their names, they ran forward shouting, "That's for me! Here I am! Oh, boy, let me have it!" ... Here and there, a soldier who had received no mail, went up to the mail clerks, whispered an anxious question, and turned away forlornly, empty-handed. Cherry saw several of these boys turn away with tears in their eyes: big, husky youngsters who had seen battle and who were not afraid of anything, except being forgotten at home. ... Cherry stood with her own letters in her hand, thoughtfully watching this strange, touching, reading crowd on the beach, as the sun rapidly sank into the cobalt water. She thought mail call was the happiest and saddest day in camp. (Chief Nurse, pp. 137-39)

No matter what hardships the soldiers endure, they are comforted by knowing that their sacrifices are acknowledged and appreciated.

Next: Mother Cherry -->

Figure 5: Frontispiece by Ralph Crosby Smith, from Cherry Ames, Flight Nurse, copyright © 1945, Grosset & Dunlap.
Figure 6: Army Nurse Corps photograph.