During their six-day stay, those in the 807th were given final medical exams, their gear and records were double-checked, and they received instructions on what not to reveal in letters back home in case their correspondence was to fall into enemy hands. After being repeatedly told to avoid giving any details, one of the nurses sitting near Jens at dinner announced, “I wrote my boyfriend today and told him the wind was blowing, but damn if I’ll tell him which direction.” Even the long-distance calls they were allowed to make were monitored, with military operators prepared to end them if those on the phone mentioned the camp or their orders. The 807th still, however, did not know exactly where they were headed.
It was a busy few days, but after passing final inspections they were given twelve-hour passes. “Many fellows took advantage of passes… and the only regret was that the time limit was against them and they couldn’t put enough liquor on board for the long journey ahead,” wrote one of the 807th’s enlisted men. While some spent their time blowing off steam, others, like Jens and Rutkowski, visited the sites in New York City. Patriotic well-wishers surrounded Rutkowski and another nurse when they stopped for cheesecake at the landmark restaurant Reuben’s and enjoyed a night at the celebrated 21 Club, where they chatted with new friends until four thirty in the morning. They barely made it back to Camp Kilmer by their curfew at six a.m. The break was short-lived, however, and when the members of the 807th returned, they were restricted to the camp in anticipation of their departure.
Close to midnight on the evening of August 16, they received word that they were leaving for the ship that would take them overseas. Nurses, medics, and everyone else in the 807th strapped on their helmets, slung their canvas musette bags and gas masks over their shoulders, and grabbed their barracks bags. If any of them had any doubts about whether they were going off to war, all they had to do was glance in a mirror.
After a mile hike to the train station, a train ride, and a ferry ride across the Hudson River to a pier in New York, the 807th arrived just as the sun rose over an eerily dark city. The U.S. Army had ordered a nightly dim-out along the East Coast to prevent ships in the harbor from being silhouetted against the bright lights after Germany had deployed a series of successful U-boat attacks in attempts to damage the vital supply line to Britain. The attacks had started with the mid-January 1942 assault on the British steamer Cyclops as it sailed near Cape Cod and continued throughout the Atlantic. U-boat commanders called their victories the “American Shooting Season” and the “Second Happy Time,” referring to their earlier success in the second half of 1940 when U-boats had sunk three million tons of Allied shipping. In the first six months of 1942, U-boats destroyed 171 ships off the East Coast of the United States, 62 in the Gulf of Mexico, and 141 in the Caribbean Sea. Most of the ships attacked were slower supply ships, but troopships were also targeted.
At the Casablanca Conference in January 1943, President Roosevelt and British Prime Minister Winston Churchill had agreed that winning the U-boat battle had to be the Allies’ priority if they were to complete the buildup of troops and supplies necessary to liberate Europe. Within months, the Allies had a new strategy in place that incorporated increased sea and air escorts and advanced radar. Though the tactic was successful in curtailing the attacks on the American East Coast, German submarines continued to pose a threat to Allied ships.
Loaded down with gear, the 807th approached the gangplank that led to the Santa Elena, a former Grace Line cruise ship. A brass band on the pier belted out the hit song “Pistol Packin’ Mama” while young women serving as Red Cross volunteers handed the men and women coffee and doughnuts.
Once on board, the nurses and flight surgeons were crammed into staterooms. A few of the nurses were assigned quarters in the brig, while the medics bunked in one of the ship’s holds, which, in its civilian days, would have stored cargo. Though the officers had their own bunks, the enlisted men were assigned two to a bed and had to take shifts sleeping.
For the next twenty-four hours, more troops boarded the Santa Elena in the August heat until several thousand were squeezed onto a ship built for a few hundred, and it took on the smells of a locker room. By noon, the ship’s lines to the pier were finally raised, the sound of whistles pierced the air, and the Santa Elena gave a slight lurch before sailing into the harbor and becoming part of a large convoy of ships.
Navy airplanes and blimps flew over the convoy initially as it sliced its way through the water. The sight of the Statue of Liberty faded in the distance as emotions on board ran high. Some, including Rutkowski, were filled with thoughts of their parents who had told stories of first seeing the Statue of Liberty when they arrived in the country as immigrants, while others wondered what it would be like to go to war.
The convoy soon entered the open sea and began to zigzag across water as smooth as glass to make it more difficult for U-boats to project its course and successfully fire on it. On board the Santa Elena, wild speculations on its final destination ran from one end of the ship to the other.
Time on the ship passed slowly, with the exception of the required abandon-ship and battle-station drills, which kept the passengers on alert. Officers walked the decks reserved for their use, while enlisted men cleaned their weapons or played poker games in the ship’s former library. Though they couldn’t officially play for money, they stuffed cash into tin boxes under the tables. To avoid sleeping in the suffocating hold, many of the enlisted men fought for space outside each night, while the officers sweated in their fatigues; the portholes in their rooms were covered because of blackout regulations.
By the time the Santa Elena passed through the Strait of Gibraltar, the narrow channel between Spain and northern Africa that connected the Atlantic Ocean with the Mediterranean Sea, ten days later, the large convoy had broken into smaller ones. Those still traveling with the Santa Elena were joined by two camouflaged British aircraft carriers for increased security. When the former cruise line ship was well into the Mediterranean, the personnel were given olive-drab bags filled with cans of foot and louse powder, a booklet of Arabic, French, and Italian phrases, and a copy of Reader’s Digest magazine that featured an article on penicillin. It was the first time Hayes had read about the use of this newly available antibiotic.
In the early evening of September 1, as many on board watched a movie featuring beloved actress Alice Faye, other ships in the convoy sent up red flares into the night sky. Some on the decks of the Santa Elena marveled at their beauty, unaware of their significance as warning signals. Jens was sitting on one of the boxes stashed with life preservers and was trying to glimpse the coast of Africa when she heard aircraft approach. Seconds later, fighter planes dove toward the convoy and fired at them, and the ship reverberated as its guns fired back. Alarm bells pierced the night as a voice came over the loudspeaker and ordered, “Clear the decks! Clear the decks! Air raid! Get below!” Those who weren’t wearing their life jackets as ordered rushed to put them on. Jens sprinted down a staircase, and Hayes, who was already below deck, reported to his battle-aid station. The station was below the anti-aircraft guns, and every time the powerful guns fired, the room shook.
Another short burst of gunfire exploded into the air before the raid ended. One of the destroyers in the convoy had received a direct hit, and several men were wounded. Though the Santa Elena was unharmed, the baptism of fire left those in the 807th wide-eyed and wondering what else was coming their way.
The following night at dusk, they found their answer as the ringing of another alarm sent everyone on board running for cover. As the moments passed, there was no sign of enemy planes, but word spread that they were under a submarine attack. After an all clear sounded, they learned that a torpedo fired by a submarine had just missed the bow of the ship as it changed course.
The Santa Elena may have had luck on her side on that trip, but three months later that luck ran out when a German plane dropped a torpedo that struck her hull while she navigated the Mediterranean. Roughly s
eventeen hundred Canadians, including some one hundred nurses, were forced to abandon her and were rescued by another ship traveling in the convoy. The following morning the Santa Elena was accidentally rammed by another transport under tow and sank, killing several crewmen.
The Santa Elena arrived in the Bay of Bizerte outside Tunis in the morning on September 4 with five other ships from their convoy, and it was only then that the men and women of the 807th learned it was where they would disembark.
When the members of the squadron finally stood on firm ground later that day for the first time in weeks and piled their barracks bags on the dock, they stood in awe of the destruction all around them. Bizerte’s strategic location along the Mediterranean allowed whoever controlled it to also control the Strait of Sicily. In German hands in 1942, Bizerte had fallen to British and American forces in May 1943 after bitter fighting during the North African Campaign, and the area now lay in ruins.
A handful of men from the squadron, including Hayes, remained on the docks to watch over the 807th’s bags, while McKnight and the others boarded a nearby barge that took them across a channel to waiting jeeps and toward the loud whistles and gasps of tanned soldiers who noticed the twenty-five nurses headed their way.
After traveling over bumpy roads and hiking a short distance, the squadron arrived at its temporary desert campsite, home to thousands of men waiting for their next orders. The camp was chaotic, with tents pitched in every direction, mess kits hanging from trees, and wet clothes strewn about to dry.
As they found a spot to rest, those in the 807th opened their first C rations and swigged water from their canteens while flies buzzed around them. The rations consisted of two tin cans, one filled with stew, hash, or chili, and the other containing biscuits, candy, a few sheets of toilet paper, some powdered coffee, and cigarettes. Originally intended for troops to eat for a day or two, the bland and monotonous C rations would feed them and soon make them cringe.
It didn’t take long for the squadron to realize that the nurses were the only women at the camp, and there was no getting away from the extra attention they attracted. While the enlisted men set up their pup tents, the nurses were welcomed with their own large tent already outfitted with twenty-five cots and electric lights from a generator. Other soldiers dug latrines for the nurses, and a few even dug foxholes for them. That same evening, British officers came by and invited the nurses to their tents across the road for tea and offered them the use of the shower they had rigged. One member of the 807th wrote, “It was soon apparent that our area would be besieged by soldiers coming to see what an American woman looked like, having so much time elapse from their last contact with them.”
The differences between the men and the women, however, were quickly forgotten the following night when those in the camp found themselves thinking only of their survival. When they first heard gunfire, some of the nurses and doctors were on duty in the sick tent they’d established. With many of the enlisted men spending their free time swimming in the Mediterranean and walking on the beach, the medical personnel had kept busy removing old shrapnel from swimmers’ feet and giving immunizations. Others in the 807th were sleeping in their tents or watching a movie outside.
As the noise grew and red flares erupted in the night sky, they realized they were in the middle of an air raid and scrambled for cover as shrapnel fell to the ground. “Still being rookies as far as war was concerned,” one enlisted man of the 807th wrote, “it was taken more or less as a joke, but in less time than it takes to tell, each and every one had wished that [their foxhole] had been many times deeper and made of the heaviest timber available, because more hell broke loose than any of us had ever experienced.” Those who hadn’t dug their own foxholes as ordered tried to find room in someone else’s as they choked on the sand swirling in the air. Jens crawled into the snug foxhole she’d built and covered it with branches as the British soldiers had taught her, to protect herself from the fragments of anti-aircraft shells that fell like rain. One of the flight surgeons kept yelling, “I’d like to get that guy that talked me into this!”
As Rutkowski ran for cover, a British lieutenant grabbed her arm and yelled, “Keep pumping!” The lieutenant guided her to an old German bunker now packed with a cot, a table, two chairs, and an opening in one wall through which soldiers were shooting anti-aircraft guns. He offered Rutkowski a chair and a glass of wine, and she eagerly accepted both. She hoped the wine would help calm her shaking hands. Watching the raid through the opening, she saw one of the flight surgeons, adrenaline pumping, lift a large log onto his shoulder, run toward a foxhole yelling, “Timber!” and throw the log over the top before jumping into the hole. When she saw him the next day, he was unable to move the log by himself.
The onslaught, aimed mostly at the ships in the harbor, finally ended after an hour, and the all clear was sounded, though further warnings continued throughout the night. One bomb had hit an oil tanker close to the Santa Elena, and though the blast rocked the ship and frightened those on board, including Hayes and the other men from the 807th, it was undamaged.
Those in the camp who’d chosen to play cards or go swimming over digging shelters as previously ordered furiously dug foxholes over the next few days. It was during this time that the 807th—along with the rest of the world—learned that Italy had capitulated to the Allies. Announced by Gen. Dwight D. Eisenhower on September 8, the surrender had been signed five days before by Marshal Pietro Badoglio, Italy’s prime minister since the overthrow of Italian dictator Benito Mussolini in July. President Roosevelt warned the American people that, despite this triumph, the war in the Mediterranean had not yet been won. “The great news that you have heard from General Eisenhower does not give you license to settle back in your rocking chairs and say ‘Well, that does it. We’ve got ’em on the run. Now we can start the celebration.’ The time for celebration is not yet.”
After several days in the camp trudging through ankle-deep sand, swatting at flies, and bathing in the ocean, the entire 807th, including those who had been ordered to stay with the ship, climbed in the back of military trucks and took a forty-mile ride through the desert to their next temporary home in eastern Tunisia near the capitol of Tunis. As the trucks drove along the desolate roads, they passed ancient Roman arches and a German fighter plane lying abandoned in the sands.
Word that twenty-five nurses were on their way reached the small town of Fochville before they did, and flyboys in P-47 Thunderbolts, P-38 Lightnings, and C-47 Skytrains, apparently eager to show off their skills and welcome the young women, buzzed the convoy as it arrived.
While most in the 807th settled into their new camp and waited anxiously for their next orders, the squadron’s flight surgeons were sent to various stations in the Mediterranean to watch the more experienced 802nd—the first squadron activated from Bowman—in action. The rest of the men and women had little to do as they waited for the arrival of transportation and supplies.
An old apartment building in the town functioned as the 807th’s temporary headquarters and as barracks for the men, while the nurses were billeted nearby in two small houses. Sports, movies, and gambling filled much of the men’s time, while local children camped out in front of their barracks hoping they would be given candy bars for themselves and cigarettes for their parents. With a continuous supply of young officers offering to escort the nurses wherever they wanted to go, the women spent their days shopping in the few stores still open in the nearby capital of Tunis, going to see one of the AAF bands playing at a local club, or swimming on one of the beaches littered with debris from the war.
More than three weeks after its arrival in Fochville, the 807th finally learned it was being sent to Catania, a small town on the eastern side of Sicily. Catania would serve as its headquarters, and from there the nurses and medics would fly to evacuation stations around the Mediterranean to pick up patients and accompany them on flights to better equipped medical facilities. It was a welcome relief for those g
rowing impatient to help the war effort.
As the 807th packed its gear and chartered planes to relocate the unit to Catania, the squadron was called into action. Lt. Edith A. Belden, a nurse from Illinois, and medic Lawrence Abbott flew from Fochville to Corsica to pick up patients and successfully delivered them to Algiers.
It was early October 1943 when the 807th arrived in Catania, and the Allies’ recent victories were irrefutable. They had turned the tide in the Pacific by winning the Battle of Midway in 1942. By February 1943 they had achieved another series of victories in the southern Solomon Islands, and Hitler had suffered his first major defeat at Stalingrad. Three months later, the Allies had taken North Africa from the Germans and Italians, and on July 9, they had launched Operation Husky, which led to the successful invasion of Sicily. Mussolini had been deposed from power, and on September 3, the Allies’ 15th Army Group, composed of the U.S. 5th Army and the British 8th Army, had landed on mainland Italy and forced Italy to surrender to the Allies.
In response to the invasion, Hitler had rushed more troops into Italy, including into Rome, sent in paratroopers to rescue Mussolini from prison, and appointed him as the leader of the German-controlled state in northern Italy. The Allies were now struggling to capture the Italian capital, slogging their way north through the country while battling a brutal enemy.
As the fighting exploded in Italy, the 807th set up its headquarters in a former military school that had recently housed German soldiers. From there, McKnight and the other flight surgeons assigned the nurses and medics to go to specific evacuation stations. The medics were also stationed in the same building while the nurses and other officers were billeted in a villa overlooking the Mediterranean in a town just north of Catania on the island’s east coast. The setting was so picturesque that it was easy for some to forget, for just a moment, that the world was at war.
The Secret Rescue Page 3