"Girls!" the young men cried in disbelief. "Never mind the pants and helmets--they're American girls! What are you girls doing wandering around in the jungle?" "We're nurses!" Cherry replied proudly. And the young men cheered them.
The following article examines the treatment of World War II and the use of teenage novels to deliver propaganda messages in the Cherry Ames series (Student Nurse, Senior Nurse, Army Nurse, Chief Nurse, Flight Nurse, and Veterans' Nurse), all written by Helen Wells during the war years.
Introduction
When the first book in the Cherry Ames series was published in 1943, World War II was raging, and the United States needed nurses both at home and overseas. A keen awareness of the war pervades the first two books of the series, in which Cherry Ames attends nursing school; during the subsequent four books, Cherry actually serves in the military, seeing action in both the Pacific and the European theaters as a lieutenant in the Army Nurse Corps.
Although the later books in the series are not rooted in a specific historical context, these initial six books clearly reflect the times in which they were written, and World War II is a real presence that affects the everyday lives of Cherry and the other characters in her orbit. From the beginning of the series, the importance of nursing in wartime is emphasized. As eighteen-year-old Cherry is leaving home to attend Spencer Hospital nursing school, her ever-supportive mother assures her, "Well, Dad and I feel you've chosen just about the finest profession there is. And just about the most necessary one in wartime" (Student Nurse, p. 9).
The books frequently appeal--both directly and indirectly--to young girls to serve their country by becoming nurses. The nursing profession is depicted as an enormously intoxicating and near-irresistible brew of femininity, unselfish service, romance, high adventure, and patriotism. In wartime, particularly, nursing is the best way a woman can serve her country--but it is not simply a temporary wartime job:
"Shucks," she thought, "war or no war, I'd be a nurse anyway." Nursing--restoring health and giving peace of mind to the sick--was the most exciting thing in Cherry's life. For Cherry knew that, in peace just as much as in war, the world needs brave and understanding girls in that most feminine, most humane, and most beloved of all professions. (Chief Nurse, pp. 13-14)
In the world of Cherry Ames, nursing is a noble, beautiful calling, an efficient way to serve humanity and fight evil -- and, incidentally, a passport to adventure and romance as well.
War on the Homefront
When Cherry begins nursing school, she is of course aware of the war, but it has so far meant only minor hardships and inconveniences. Cherry has spent her life in the idealized world of the American Dream, in a comfortably middle-class home in Hilton, Illinois, a Midwestern small town where her family has deep roots. She has supportive parents -- a breadwinner father and a stay-at-home mother who gardens and does good works--a twin brother who teases her, caring friends, and friendly but mostly unobtrusive neighbors. Hilton, a "neighborly, tree-shaded little town" in the "rich corn and wheat countryside" (Senior Nurse, p. 21) is comfortably ordinary--it is home-sweet-home.
The war is being fought to preserve exactly the "family values" represented in the simple, day-to-day lives of the Ames family and their community; to prevent the evils of foreign totalitarianism from tainting the idyllic American existence: "Lose this war, and there would be no Hilton to come home to" (Army Nurse, p. 17). No one ever questions the rightness of the American participation in the war, for fighting the encroaching evil is the only way to preserve the quiet, uncomplicated joys of home. Though women were the idealized keepers of the home, during World War II they were prodded and challenged to leave home and hearth to participate actively in the war effort--by taking factory jobs to free men for military service (as depicted in the widely popularized image of Rosie the Riveter; see Figure 1), by becoming stenographers and typists (see Figure 2), by enlisting in the military themselves to fill support roles, by working as Red Cross volunteers, and, of course, by becoming nurses.
Publicity campaigns reassured women that they would not sacrifice their femininity by venturing to work outside the home--women who did go off to work were glorified and idealized, presented as dedicated models of femininity as they did their bit for home and country.
Cherry, of course, chooses nursing as the best way for her to serve her country and the soldiers who are fighting to preserve her home and her way of life. As she observes later, after she has joined the Army Nurse Corps:
"...But, at least, we can help them!" When she remembered that these uncomplaining young men had said good-by to their families, given up promising careers in midstream, left safe comfortable homes to protect the rest of us, she thought, "Why, if we weren't here to help them, it would be like--like abandoning them!" (Chief Nurse, p. 26)
Cherry and the nurses do not abandon their duty, nor did the many women who served in various capacities in World War II, in both the civilian and military realms. As Cherry begins her training as a nurse, fierce battles are being fought in Europe and Asia, but they are far away, actually and emotionally, from Cherry's world--a world that she mostly takes for granted. Though Cherry never experiences a profound epiphany, early in her hospital training, she begins to put a human face on the war:
In the bed lay a tiny girl. She could not have been over six or seven years old. Her pinched little face looked imploringly at Cherry from the pillow, and Cherry saw that the child's leg was enormously bandaged in a plaster cast and raised at a steep angle by a pulley. She was pale and restless. "She must be in pain," Cherry thought, "with that great weight pulling at her hip." "I say, have you seen my mummy?" the child piped. "I'm dreadfully lonesome for my mummy. I call and call, but she never comes." (Student Nurse, p. 67) Her face tearstained, the little girl explains, "I haven't seen my mummy since London. I was asleep in the shelter and Jerry came over and I got hurt and I don't know where my mummy is" (Student Nurse, p. 67).
Cherry is deeply moved by the little girl's simple story, and her sad plight: "Oh," Cherry said. London. Bombings. Perhaps that was why this forlorn scrap of a girl lay half-crippled in a hospital, waiting for a mother who might have been killed. Cherry had read of children and wounded people being evacuated from the Allied countries. But the reality she saw before her now was so cruel it was almost unbearable. "I came over on a big boat," the child offered conversationally. Cherry could not talk. She was angry--fighting mad at the bitter evidence she saw before her. She choked in her fury and took the child's hand....Cherry had known there was a war raging on the other side of the world, but she had not thought much about it. Now it occurred to her that it was very much her business--her personal business and her business as a nurse-to-be. (Student Nurse, pp. 67-68, 76).
For Cherry, actually encountering a victim of war is unusual, though she does later help save the life of an important military commander--he had been stealthily brought into Spencer Hospital and hidden in a secret room, where he was tended by a private nurse: ...Dr. Wylie lifted his eyes to their faces. "Do you know who this man is?" he said sternly. "He is General----" And he spoke a name which Cherry and Jim heard with the profoundest respect, one of the greatest names of their time. He had been wounded and had been flown to the United States. (Student Nurse, p. 192)
Still, during her training Cherry is still quite insulated from the ravages of war. She sees war's effects mostly in the shortage of skilled medical personnel at the hospital. Her mentor, Dr. Joseph Fortune, needs a technician to assist with his drug research, but there are no technicians to spare in wartime, so Cherry herself tries to help him. When Cherry suggests that Dr. Joe take a little vacation, he responds almost angrily, "Vacation! With our hospitals desperately understaffed? Does malaria, or the other tropical diseases, take a vacation? Do our soldiers in the Pacific get vacations from danger and infection?" (Senior Nurse, p. 49).
The clear, often reiterated, message: one's own desires must take a backseat to the overweening demands of duty. Cherry is disappointed to miss the first senior dance when she must work extra hours because "the hospital was short of nurses since so many had gone off to the battlefronts" (Senior Nurse, p. 56). Even on Christmas Eve, she leaves a holiday dance to go on ward duty because the hospital is shorthanded.
The home that the war intends to preserve is starting to change, more and more. At Spencer Hospital, for example, preparations are being made for possible casualties of war. Miss Reamer, the superintendent of nurses, shows Cherry's class new facilities that have been set up in the vast basement of the hospital:
Here, far under the building, was a complete Operating Room! Beyond it, deep in shadow, they saw a great hall constructed with steel beams and thick brick walls. It was filled with at least a hundred cots. More cots, and stretchers, stood stacked against the walls. Adjoining it were a kitchen, bathrooms, a thoroughly stocked laboratory. "Our country is at war," Miss Reamer said. "This new equipment is here in case of air raid or other catastrophe. I hope we will never have to use it." (Senior Nurse, p. 88)
Cherry's mother writes, "Hilton is so changed .... That little old airfield at Wabash City is being enlarged, and is teeming with Army men" (Senior Nurse, p. 162). Cherry and her family are most directly affected by the war when her twin brother, Charlie, drops out of college to enlist in the Army Air Forces. Cherry is jolted, but mostly philosophical about the news: "Well, heaven knows, we need fliers to win this war--and nurses too" (Senior Nurse, p. 22). Civilian volunteers served diligently on the homefront during World War II: working for the Red Cross and as hospital aides, selling war bonds, collecting scrap metal, saving ration points by growing their own produce in so-called Victory gardens.
Cherry learns from her father's letters that "the whole family did volunteer work at Hilton Clinic, now considerably understaffed because so many doctors and nurses had gone to war" (Chief Nurse, p. 9). Her mother has made the time to help out at the clinic; she writes, "I am working as a nurse's aide in Hilton Clinic, and Midge volunteered to do occupational therapy in arts and crafts" (Chief Nurse, p. 140). Of course, the Ames family steadfastly continue to tend their Victory garden and sell war bonds, and they are only able to get gasoline occasionally from the war ration board because Mr. Ames is in the real estate business.
The Need for Nurses: Recruiting Nurses
Cherry Ames repeatedly reminds us how essential nurses are to the success of the war effort. For example, after she has joined the army, when her Spencer Unit nursing colleagues arrive at Port Janeway in the Pacific to travel to Island 14, Cherry, who is now their supervisor, addresses the group: "...We nurses are the only women who go right up front with the soldiers. If we weren't serious, we wouldn't have taken the Army oath or the Florence Nightingale pledge, in the first place. I don't have to remind you," Cherry said with some difficulty, and her voice dropped, "that we are here to dedicate our lives so that others may live." (Chief Nurse, pp. 17-18)
As Cherry and the other nurses work frantically in a terrible emergency, trying to save as many lives as they can, they are exhausted and overworked, desperate for help:
That night and even the less turbulent nights that followed tested Cherry's idealism and her worthiness to be an Army nurse to the utmost. For all the tragic things she saw, there was no horror...she only felt, more strongly than ever before, the glory, the beauty almost, of the service she could give. But something else worried, almost frightened, Cherry. As the war deepened, and there were more and greater battles, more and still more nurses were going to be needed...if thousands of men were to be healed and returned to battle...if we were to win. Cherry wished she could cry out to other girls, and her voice carry beyond this crowded pitiful room, far across the Caribbean and all over the United States, how desperately nurses were needed. (Army Nurse, p. 193)
In reality, nurses were desperately needed. When the Japanese bombed Pearl Harbor on December 7, 1941, the U.S. Army Nurse Corps, which had been established in 1901, had very few nurses. Through extensive recruitment efforts, there were 12,000 nurses in the corps six months later, and between July 1943 (when the army instituted a month-long training course for nurses) and September 1945, more than 27,000 nurses underwent army training. Even so, late in the war, President Franklin D. Roosevelt proposed a bill to draft nurses into the military, which came within one vote of passage. When Cherry becomes chief nurse, she is responsible for scheduling ward assignments--a frustrating task because the shortage of nurses is acute:
With at least one nurse, and several corpsmen, needed for each twenty patients, and with their sick list growing, Cherry found there simply were not enough nurses...."The only solution," Cherry scowled, "is to load each girl with forty patients or get more nurses. But there aren't more nurses! And there aren't going to be more nurses until more girls become student nurses! Oh-h!" (Chief Nurse, pp. 60-61)
But it is not only student nurses who are needed: older women can, and do, help also, as illustrated when a new nurse-anaesthetist is flown in to join Cherry's unit. (The skills of nurse-anaesthetists were in high demand during the war.) The new nurse, Bessie Flanders, tells Cherry that she had trained as a nurse ten years earlier, but left the profession to marry. When her husband was killed in action a year before:
Bessie's first thought had been to return to nursing. She had wasted no time on grief, she only wanted to serve.... "So I went back into a civilian hospital at first," Mrs. Flanders told Cherry. "They certainly do need more nurses! My, there are lots of older, retired, patriotic nurses returning to help out in this shortage. Some of them grandmothers, that's how shorthanded we are. The real young student nurses are a great help." (Chief Nurse, pp. 96-97)
Naturally, the demand for nurses by the military severely strained the resources of civilian hospitals, and the shortage provided the impetus for the federal government's successful U.S. Cadet Nurse Corps.
U.S. Cadet Nurse Corps
Recognizing the dire need for nurses, the U.S. Congress, in June 1943, passed the Bolton Act, sponsored by Frances Payne Bolton, a congresswoman from Ohio. This act created the U.S. Cadet Nurse Corps under the auspices of the Public Health Service. The corps was a federally funded program to subsidize the education of nursing students, who in return agreed to serve in essential military or civilian nursing after graduation. The program also subsidized nursing schools that accelerated their training programs to two and a half years instead of the customary three years. Lucile Petry was appointed as chief of the Division of Nurse Education, the federal office charged with administering the program.
Each of the first five books in the Cherry Ames series features at least one scene in which the merits of joining the U.S. Cadet Nurse Corps are extolled. Becoming a Cadet Nurse is presented as a way to serve both the national interest (and it is therefore a highly patriotic action) and one's self-interest, because those lucky enough to be accepted will receive free career training and acquire skills that will always be in demand. Cherry and her nursing school classmates are even a bit jealous of the Cadet Nurses, especially of their distinctive uniforms, with scarlet epaulets and a Maltese cross--one of the earliest symbols of nursing--on their left sleeves: ...Cherry noticed, in growing numbers, a certain stunning red-trimmed gray uniform, worn with a dashing gray beret. Most of the new girls sported it. Cherry half envied them. She knew what it was: the U.S. Cadet Nurse Corps. Those lucky girls were getting their nursing training free, with their rooms at Spencer and their meals and uniforms and pocket money provided for them, too. (Army Nurse, pp. 30-31)
The "pocket money" was a monthly allowance that ranged from $15 to not less than $30, depending on the length of service in the corps. High school graduates up to age thirty-five, both single and married, were eligible to participate.
Highly successful, the Cadet Nurse Corps provided an impetus to the establishment of additional nursing school programs throughout the country and provided some 150,000 nurse graduates, giving the United States a large pool of nurses to meet both military and civilian demands, before the program was discontinued in 1948. Even Cherry's madcap young friend, Midge Fortune, is imbued with the desire to join the Cadet Nurse Corps. She writes enviously of a mutual hometown friend who has been accepted, and notes: "Golly, if I ever escape from high school, I'm going to try for the Cadet Nurses. I'm bound and determined to have a profession and go places like you, Cherry!" (Chief Nurse, p. 142).
Civilian Nursing or Army Nursing? Civilian Nursing
Though army nursing is presented as a noble calling, the first two books, especially, clearly indicate that a civilian nurse is equally patriotic, because nurses are also needed at home. Cherry's most pressing concern throughout her senior year in nursing school is what kind of nursing she will do after graduation, and the importance of both civilian nursing and military nursing is evenhandedly emphasized. Cherry realizes that she can "nurse right here on the home front--for civilians were fighting this war, too" (Senior Nurse, p. 92).
When she is called on to work with premature infants because no experienced nurse is available, she asks her supervisor, Miss Towne, "Would you--would you call this home-front nursing?" (Senior Nurse, p. 93). Miss Towne confides to Cherry, "The Army's calling for nurses and I want to go....I'm raring to get out of the hospital routine and taste some excitement!" (Senior Nurse, p. 94). But then Miss Towne looks at the premature infants in incubators that are in her care:
"I ask myself what will become of these little creatures if I walk out on them. Someone has to save soldiers' lives. Someone has to save these infants' lives, too."
"The hospital will get another nurse to take your place," Cherry suggested.
"There isn't anybody to take my place. You see for yourself," Miss Towne said worriedly, "how all the young nurses are leaving here in droves for the Army hospitals. Why, our staff here is depleted!"
It was true. Cherry was pinch-hitting here right this minute, for that very reason. She remembered the extra nights she had put in on the wards a month and two months ago, because they were short-handed. Ann and Gwen had been pressed into service for extra hours, too. Suppose--on top of this shortage--suppose there were an emergency? Not necessarily an air raid: it might all too possibly be a train wreck, a flood, an epidemic. Where were the extra nurses to come from then? (Senior Nurse, p. 94)
Cherry's decision is doubly difficult because she never really considers if she herself would rather go to war or remain a civilian--her criterion is not what she wants, but what will be best for others. Though she is restless with the hospital routine, though she loves adventure, her wants are not important; what is important is how she can help others. Nursing is to be a life of service, not selfishness:
Although she finally decides to join the army, Cherry continues to respect and acknowledge the contributions of the nurses who remain behind. A brand-new student nurse wistfully tells her:
"I wish I were going to save soldiers' lives, like you. But no, I have to stick around here doing little jobs, like folding bandages and taking temperatures and making patients swallow their medicine."
"Little things!" Cherry shook her head. "Those are big things. And you are helping to save soldiers' and sailors' lives. For every new girl who starts her nursing training, a graduate nurse can be released to the Army. If you and Mildred weren't on the job here, I'd have to stay and do your work." (Army Nurse, pp. 32-33).
Army Nursing
Though Cherry herself worriedly debates enlisting in the Army Nurse Corps, some of her classmates are determined to volunteer from the beginning of their training. Her best friend, Ann Evans, has two brothers and a fiance in the army, and she explains, "My father was maimed in the last war. He would not be lame today if there had been enough nurses to send even one into the area where he was....I'm going to be an Army nurse" (Student Nurse, p. 46).
Another classmate, Mai Lee, a Chinese-American, also dreams of becoming an army nurse, for more dramatic reasons: nursing will be her way of fighting against her enemies and avenging their wanton destruction of her home and family:
"I am going to be an Army nurse, too....I was born in this country but my family is in China. Two years ago I went back to see them and the village where my ancestors have always lived in peace." Her ivory face was impassive but her voice shook. "When I had been there five days, Japanese planes bombed our little village." Her small hands gripped the back of the chair before her. "My family was killed, the village isn't there any more. But I'm going to learn to be a nurse and I'm going back." (Student Nurse, pp. 46-47)
Their teacher, Miss McIntyre, says, "I expect that many of you will answer the Army's call for nurses" (Student Nurse, p. 47). Later, Miss McIntyre herself leaves the hospital to become an army nurse and is stationed in North Africa, as she tells the class in a letter:
"...two thousand men and us thirty nurses on that ship, and was it exciting....The soldiers call us 'angels in long underwear'...the bravest, nicest bunch of boys I ever knew. And there they lie. They're so grateful for the least little thing we nurses do for them...how we nurses drill. You ought to see us run for cover and throw ourselves flat in foxholes. The soldiers say we're good...can't wait to get well so they can get right back and fight...exotic towns here, curious food, veiled women, necklaces of beaten silver. We washed our stockings in a river they say stems from the Nile...such a romantic officer and we're Army lieutenants ourselves, you know...."
Far places, adventure, danger, action--Cherry's breath came faster. "Some of the things I see are pretty sad...nurses are badly needed. There aren't nearly enough...here is where you can put to good use all the training you have had...and here is where you feel that at last you are really useful. Our boys do need you, so won't you please come?" (Senior Nurse, pp. 159-160)
That letter, and another from her brother, Charlie, who is being shipped out--"Don't know where, but anywhere we can eliminate a few Nazis is all right with me..." (Senior Nurse, pp. 161-162) -- set Cherry to thinking seriously about being an army nurse. But she does not make her final, momentous decision to enlist in the Army Nurse Corps until the last minute. As Cherry's class assembles for graduation exercises, an army nurse who escaped from Corregidor appeals to the class: In her face was reflected all the horror and suffering she had seen--landing barges full of sick and wounded; boys lying fever-ridden and helpless in jungle hospitals; doctors working tirelessly day and night, often without a nurse to help. A note of urgency crept into her voice as she pleaded with them to answer their country's call. "You are needed, desperately needed! If we are to save our men out there fighting for us--if we are even to win this war--you nurses must help. Are you ready to serve?"
Cherry and her classmates had heard other appeals. But this appeal was different. It was being put directly up to each one of them. For the first time, Cherry felt personally responsible for the lives of Charlie and all the other American boys. (Senior Nurse, pp. 214-215)
As Cherry's classmates volunteer, she realizes that "she felt responsible for those boys--way down deep, she had thought of them as her patients! That was her answer! Cherry raised her hand....She, Cherry Ames, was going to be an Army Nurse!" (Senior Nurse, pp. 216-217).
Related Books and Movies: Books
Several other nurse series were written during the war years, but most did not long survive the end of World War II, as the Cherry Ames series did. They include the following:
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Ann Bartlett series, by Martha Johnson
Ann Bartlett, Navy Nurse, 1941
Ann Bartlett at Bataan, 1943
Ann Bartlett in the South Pacific, 1944
Ann Bartlett Returns to the Philippines, 1945
Ann Bartlett on Stateside Duty, 1946
Nancy Naylor series, by Elizabeth Lansing
Nancy Naylor, Air Pilot, 1941
Nancy Naylor Flies South 1943
Nancy Naylor, Flight Nurse, 1944
Nancy Naylor, Captain of Flight Nurses, 1946
Nancy Naylor, Visiting Nurse, 1947
Nurse Blake series, by William Starret
Nurse Blake, USA, 1942
Nurse Blake Overseas, 1943
Nurse Blake at the Front, 1944
Some individual titles that featured nurses during World War II include:
Anderson, Betty Baxter. Anne Porter, Nurse. NewYork: Cupples & Leon, 1942. To overcome her feelings of uselessness and frivolity, a young girl conceals her society-deb background and begins to study nursing so she can enlist in the Army Nurse Corps.
Franklin, Frieda K. Road Inland. New York: Crowell, 1956. (Paperback reissue from Pocketbooks retitled Combat Nurse.) Lee Caine is a nurse working as part of a surgical team at a field hospital in the European Theater.
Gaddis, Peggy. Cadet Nurse. New York: Arcadia House, 1945. Mona Lochran decides to join the Cadet Nurse Corps after she graduates from high school, when the boy she loves enlists in the army.
Hancock, Lucy Agnes. Student Nurse. Philadelphia: Triangle, 1944. At home on vacation from nursing school, Gail Weston is torn between her affection for a childhood sweetheart, whose manufacturing plant may be a target of World War II saboteurs, and a hospital doctor who comes to visit.
Radford, Ruby Lorraine. Nancy Dale, Army Nurse. Racine, Wisc.: Whitman, 1944. Nancy Dale suspects a fellow nurse is a pawn for German spies; later, in the Pacific, she seeks information about her missing-in-action brother and survives when her ship is torpedoed. This book is part of the Fighters for Freedom series, which also depicted other women in the military, including Sally Scott of the WAVES and Norma Kent of the WACS, both by Roy J. Snell, 1943.
Taber, Gladys. Nurse in Blue. Philadelphia: Triangle, 1943. During World War II, Janet Alden travels from her home in Wisconsin to New York City to become a navy nurse, despite opposition from her childhood sweetheart. On the way, she meets a dashing young navy ensign. Her attraction to him, and her growing involvement in her work, make her question what she really wants from life.
Some nonfiction books and articles about nurses during World War II include:
Archard, Theresa. G.I. Nightingale: The Story of an American Army Nurse. New York: Norton, 1945.
Bellafaire, Judith A. Army Nurse Corps: A Commemoration of World War II Service. Washington, D.C.: Center of Military History, 1994. CMH Pub. 72-14.
Bolton, Angela. The Maturing Sun: An Army Nurse in India, 1942-45. London: Imperial War Museum, 1986. Experiences of a British army nurse.
Cox, Mary. British Women at War. London: 1941. Includes a chapter on British nurses during World War II.
Danner, Dorothy Still. What a Way to Spend a War: Navy Nurse POWs in the Philippines. Annapolis, Md.: Naval Institute Press, 1995.
Flikke, Julia. Nurses in Action: The Story of the Army Nurse Corps. Philadelphia: Lippincott, 1943.
Gaskins, Susanne Teepe. G.I. Nurses at War: Gender and Professionalization in the Army Nurse Corps During World War II. Doctoral dissertation, University of California at Riverside, 1994.
Kalisch, Beatrice J., and Philip A. Kalisch. "Cadet Nurse. The Girl With a Future." Nursing Outlook, vol. 21, no. 7 (July 1973): 444-49.
Kalisch, Beatrice J., and Philip A. Kalisch. "Nurses in American History. The Cadet Nurse Corps in World War II." American Journal of Nursing, vol. 76, no. 2 (February 1976): 240-42.
Kielar, Eugenia M. Thank You, Uncle Sam: Letters of a World War II Army Nurse From North Africa and Italy. Dorrance, 1987.
Korson, George. At His Side. 1945. Covers the work of the American Red Cross during the war.
Leone, L.P. "The U.S. Cadet Nurse Corps." Imprint, Journal of the National Student Nurses Association, vol. 23, no. 1 (February 1976): 20-22.
Leone, L.P. "The U.S. Cadet Nurse Corps: Nursing's Answer to World War II Demands." Imprint, Journal of the National Student Nurses Association, vol. 34, no. 5 (February-March 1987): 46-48.
McBryde, Brenda. Quiet Heroines: Nurses of the Second World War. London: Chatto & Windus, 1985.
Movies
Two notable movies about army nurses were made during World War II: So Proudly We Hail and Cry Havoc; another, entitled Parachute Nurse, was a much lesser effort. A later movie about army nurses who became POWs was entitled Women of Valor.
So Proudly We Hail, 1943, starring Claudette Colbert, Paulette Goddard, Veronica Lake, and George Reeves. Directed by Mark Sandrich, 126 minutes, B&W. Claudette Colbert heads the top-notch cast as Lieutenant Janet Davidson, in charge of nine army nurses who serve on Bataan.
Cry Havoc, 1943, starring Margaret Sullavan, Ann Sothern, Fay Bainter, and Joan Blondell. Directed by Richard Thorpe, 97 minutes, B&W. This picture also deals with the plight of army nurses on Bataan; it is not as well done as So Proudly We Hail, but the picture is still interesting.
Parachute Nurse, 1942.
Post-War Productions:
Women of Valor, 1986 (made for TV), starring Susan Sarandon, Kristy McNichol, Valerie Mahaffey, and Patrick Bishop. Directed by Buzz Kulik, 100 minutes, color. Army nurses in the Philippines are taken prisoner by the Japanese during World War II in an old-fashioned film.
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© Copyright 1999 by David W. Tschanz.
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