Book description
"Weaving together information from official sources and personal
interviews, Barbara Tomblin gives the first full-length account of the
U. S. Army Nurse Corps in the Second World War. She describes how over
60,000 army nurses, all volunteers, cared for sick and wounded American
soldiers in every theater of the war, serving in the jungles of the
Southwest Pacific, the frozen reaches of Alaska and Iceland, the mud of
Italy and northern Europe, or the heat and dust of the Middle East. Many
of the women in the Army Nurse Corps served in dangerous hospitals near
the front lines-201 nurses were killed by accident or enemy action, and
another 1,600 won decorations for meritorious service. These nurses
address the extreme difficulties of dealing with combat and its effects
in World War II, and their stories are all the more valuable to women's
and military historians because they tell of the war from a very
different viewpoint than that of male officers. Although they were
unable to achieve full equality for American women in the military
during World War II, army nurses did secure equal pay allowances and
full military rank, and they proved beyond a doubt their ability and
willingness to serve and maintain excellent standards of nursing care
under difficult and often dangerous conditions.
