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American Nightingale
(March 27, 2010) |
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March 16, 2010 -- I was reading a book I bought at a silent auction, at a
Nightingale Nursing Awards Banquet; the
American Nightingale
by Bob Welch. My
wife the Colonel, the Air Force nurse, had a group of local women over for an
evening of Bunko. I was in the basement trying to keep the dogs quiet and keep
myself from crying as I read this book about an Army nurse who served in WWII.
Frances Slanger was Jewish. She was born in Lodz, Poland, after her father left
his pregnant wife and older daughter to go to America. The plan was to earn
enough money to bring the by then, three family members to Boston, but WW I
broke out and Frances spent her first five years in German occupied Poland.
Frances, her mother and sister arrived in New York in September | |
Van E. Harl |
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1920. The following year the immigration laws got extremely more restrictive.
Most likely she would have never immigrated to the US. |
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She was a small little Jewish girl who was not expected to make anything of
herself, just find a good man who could provide for her. She worked with her
father, the fruit peddler, in the early morning before school. Her personal
callings were to write and to be a nurse. Jewish boys became doctors, but Jewish
girls did not become nurses, especially immigrant ones from the old country with
their old country ways.
She struggled during nursing training at Boston City Hospital. The overbearing
pressure of the nursing instructors and her lack of preparation in high school
followed her throughout her training. She had studied home economics, not hard
sciences in high school, because good Jewish girls needed to know how to take
care of their family, not find skills they could use in the work world. Caring
for the injured and the ill became her life's passion.
By the time the US entered WWII, Frances knew what was happening to her
relatives in once again German occupied Poland. She wanted to join the Army and
even started the process, but because of family health issues and the continuing
belief that nice Jewish girls did not join the Army, she put off entering the
military until 1943. After training at multiple Army camps in the States, at the
age of 31, Frances, shipped out for England with the Forty-Fifth Field Hospital.
Her unit landed on Omaha Beach in Normandy, on 10 June 1944, only four days
after the first combat troops went ashore. Frances almost drown after jumping
off the end of her landing craft and stepping down into a hole in the sand,
under the surf that had been made by an artillery round exploding. They set
their field hospital up and in two weeks the combined nursing experience of the
eighteen nurses, saw more dead and dying than in their total nursing careers
back in the States.
Moving with the fighting the Forty-Fifth established their field hospital in
Elsenborof, Belgium on 7 Oct 1944, so close to Germany they could see Hitler's
Siegfried Line in their field glasses. There had been articles in the Stars &
Stripes newspaper the troops read, that had talked about the tireless work and
sacrifice of the Army field nurses.
Frances Slanger did not see it that way. She felt it was her duty and an honor
to serve and help save those who were wounded on the field of battle. As an
immigrant who had already survived the First World War, she understood how great
her new country was and the freedoms it gave her. In a letter to the editor of
the Stars & Stripes she expressed her devotion and thanks to the wounded
patients who passed through her field hospital.
On 21 October 1944, 2Lt Frances Y. Slanger became the first US Army nurse killed
in the European Theater of Operations by a German artillery round. She died in
the arms of a fellow Army nurse in the same way she had held many of her fellow
dying soldiers. Her letter to the editor of Stars & Stripes was published as a
featured column without anyone at the paper knowing Frances was dead. She became
the sweetheart of the American soldiers for her professed devotion to their
wounded and dying, and now she was gone. I finished the book and went upstairs
and hugged my wife the military nurse. Army, Navy and Air Forces nurses, the
American Nightingales. | |
By
Van E. Harl
Copyright
2010 About Author:
Major Van E. Harl, USAF Ret., was a career police officer in the U.S. Air
Force. He was the Deputy Chief of police at two Air Force Bases and the
Commander of Law Enforcement Operations at another. Major Harl is a graduate of
the U.S. Army Infantry School, the Air Force Squadron Officer School and the Air
Command and Staff College. After retiring from the Air Force he was a state
police officer in Nevada.
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