World War II Woman

An Army Nurse’s Interview (continued)

See yesterday’s post

Mary explained to the children how she learned that the atomic bomb had been dropped (”I heard it on the radio.”), and answered questions about rationing (”you needed a coupon to buy a pair of shoes. Just because you had the money didn’t mean you could buy them.”), Victory Gardens (” gardens at home were you could easily grow vegetables so they didn’t have to be shipped.”), and PXs (”it means Post Exchange—it’s like a Seven-11″).

A letter from one of her brothers serving in France asked for “anything in cans,” ham, crackers, and chocolate bars. Mary took the occasion to explain that mail was censored and you could only send a package to a soldier if he or she had requested something.

Mary described the hardship borne by her father’s sister, also a nurse, who had requested an assignment in Europe after her husband died in battle there. She was being treated in a hospital in Europe that was buzz-bombed and she fell three stories. She required daily plastic surgery for weeks and never fully recovered her facial muscles.

Mary explained the excitement of GIs returning to San Francisco and she recounted the celebrities, including Helen Keller, who were often there to great them. She vividly recalls the joy of her family getting back together despite the struggles they had been through.

Toward the end of the interview, my mother stated several times that war is terrible, that World War II had several causes that we should be smart enough to avoid in the future, and that “Old men plan the wars, and young men fight the wars. And they do. They send the young men off to war and they die. I think it’s terrible.”

She told the students about a patient who had survived as a prisoner of war for three years and then came home to learn he would soon die of throat cancer. She told them of losing one of her nursing buddies who was killed by a taxicab when she was getting off the trolley car after her shift at the Army hospital.

Then she said, “You had to move on. Life doesn’t stop just because you want it too. After you got home, you didn’t want to talk about it and you needed to get on with your life. You couldn’t stand there and think about it. It was vital that you do whatever you had to do next. Life doesn’t stop just because you would like it to even though sometimes you would like it to.”

Mary died in 1995, proud of knowing she would be buried at Indiantown Gap National Cemetery, where her husband and two brothers were earlier laid to rest.

For more on World War II, go to http://www.peggeorge.com/.

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