It's My Country Too

by Jerri Bell, Tracy Crow

  During the debate on the House floor, Smith learned that unnamed service legislative liaisons had privately told representatives that so-called biological differences, including temperament, pregnancy, and menopausal disability and illness, would make a regular women’s component too costly. When the bill moved to a joint House-Senate committee to work out a compromise, Smith contacted Secretary of Defense James Forrestal and demanded that he investigate and expose the duplicitous collaboration of Navy officials with Andrews, Vinson, and other congressmen to prevent establishment of a regular women’s component:

  April 22, 1948

  Honorable James V. Forrestal

  The Secretary of Defense

  Washington, D.C.

  My Dear Mr. Secretary:

  Yesterday the Honorable Dewey Short in opposing the proposal to grant women Regular Status in the Armed Services stated:

  “We were told that because of certain biological differences in the sexes when they reach the age of menopause or go through the change of life, with the physical disabilities or illnesses that result, the cost of the program would be stupendous if not prohibitive. Those are a few of the fundamental and essential facts, unpleasant as they might be, which we must as legislators wisely and soberly consider.” [Smith enclosed a clipping of the statement from the Congressional Record.]

  This statement, coupled with reports that I have received, that although the civilian and military heads of the respective Armed Services had unanimously urged Regular status for women in the Armed Services, the Legislative and Liaison officer representative of the Armed Services had “behind closed doors and in executive session” opposed Regular Status for women.

  Mr. Short’s statement on the floor of the House confirms these reports that the Armed Services had officially through their legislative and liaison representatives opposed Regular Status for women at least on a cost basis.

  This, to say the least, is duplicity that gravely questions the integrity of the administration of the National Military Establishment. I believe that it is incumbent upon you as the head of your department to determine and identify the Armed Services representatives whose statements were the basis for Mr. Short’s statement. The basic question is whether we are to accept the official “on the record” statements of the executive and military heads of the Armed Services or the “behind closed doors” statements of your legislative representatives to individual members of the Committee.

  Since S. 1641 is now in conference, I believe that immediate action and reply on your part is imperative.

  Sincerely yours,

  Margaret Chase Smith, M.C.

  Forrestal immediately sent members of the joint committee messages of support for the Senate bill authorizing an active women’s component. The joint committee merged the bills for the Army and Navy women’s components into one favoring regular status for women. President Truman signed the Women’s Armed Services Integration Act into law on July 12, 1948.

  Smith, having developed close ties with the Air Force during her earlier efforts to help establish it as a separate service from the Army, was commissioned as a lieutenant colonel in the Air Force Reserve in 1950. She served in manpower and administration for eight years, concurrent with her service in the Senate. Although she is most remembered for her courageous stand against the excesses of the McCarthy Commission, which she expressed in her famous 1950 “Declaration of Conscience” speech, she remained a strong advocate for military women throughout her career.

  Eunice Coleman

  (1903–1983)

  U.S. Army Nurse Corps

  Maj. Eunice Coleman, chief nurse for the First Mobile Army Surgical Hospital, and twelve other Army nurses landed on the beach at Inchon, Korea, September 26, 1950—eleven days behind the invasion force. After treating Korean civilians there for just over a week, the hospital moved to Pusan with the Seventh Infantry Division. Battle lines moved rapidly and the MASH units were close to the front; early on the morning of October 9, the convoy in which the nurses were traveling came under attack. Coleman and her nurses took cover in a roadside ditch for several hours, and then treated the wounded in place before continuing to Pusan. After the ambush, the nurses began calling themselves “The Lucky Thirteen.” This excerpt is taken from Coleman’s personal letters.

  15 November 1950

  On 22 September 1950, we sailed from Yokohama on the General Mann and arrived Inchon Beach 26 September. This was our first experience in going down the side of a ship in what seemed to be mid-ocean, onto a small boat that carried us to the sand on the beach. Even though it was a first experience for most of the nurses, not a trip or slip was made and no delay in debarking was caused by the nurses.

  After we were secure on land, the possibility of a place to live seemed for a while to be narrowed down to our pup-tents, but without too much delay we were told that an old school building would be used to accommodate the entire hospital unit. And so, through one of the most disagreeable sand storms, we put all our gear on backside again and hiked to where we had been told that transportation would take us to the school. Sure enough, the truck was there and did take us about three miles to the designated place. Perhaps the narrative should stop here lest I not give the school credit for any good points it might have had. It really was pretty awful. Our work began that day by opening wards in the school and within two days we had over 300 South Korean civilian casualties of the worst type. Much surgery was needed to save lives, so for six days we were very busy. We had no beds or cots because our equipment was still on the ship and our priority was low on the list for unloading. Matter of fact, we never did get our hospital equipment until we finally reached the Iwon Beach. Anyway we did what we could with what the Marine Corps gave us and when we left there 6 October we had all of the patients (civilian Koreans) in civilian hospitals or homes. Many infants and children we placed in Christian Orphans Homes.

  I wish I could really tell you about some of those poor people and their wounds and burns. The nurses showed themselves to be real soldiers by working until late if not all night. There was no time to feel that you could “go off duty.” I had to make the girls go off duty after 16 to 20 hours of caring for these people. We had all the patients on the floor so you can imagine how our knees and backs felt after hours of bending, stooping, and jumping in and around the sick and dying.

  From Inchon we convoyed to Pusan on 7, 8, 9 October. On the morning of the 9th at 0300 our convoy was attacked and the nurses spent the remainder of night in a ditch. Without a single word being spoken or a light on, when the First Sergeant opened the back of the ambulance we were in and whispered that we were attacked every nurse quickly put on her gear, grabbed a blanket, and moved quietly until we found a ditch not too far away. About 0430 I decided to check on everyone under my charge so with my blanket completely over my back and head I crawled down the ditch, calling the roll, so to speak, in whispers. Everyone except one girl answered me back and most of them asked how I was making out. I kept feeling about and calling this one nurse who had not responded but still no answer; so then I decided to count for 12 and by elimination could locate her if she were still with us. This I did and when she was located and found to be O.K. I inquired why she had not answered. Her reply was that she was afraid the enemy would hear her!

  The entire sky was lit up from gunfire and burning vehicles. About sun up we got out and started treating the wounded who, by this time, were coming in pretty fast. All that day until about 3 p.m. we worked on the roadside giving blood, operating, etc.—treating for shock and putting the wounded in ambulances for care. We lost 8 men and quite an amount of supplies and vehicles. After all was clear, the convoy started out again and arrived in Pusan around midnight. We were put up with the 64th Field [Hospital] and worked several days with them caring for POW patients. The stay there was uneventful and on 17 October we boarded ship, the E. Patrick, which planned to sail next day for Wosan, North Korea. Something changed this and not until 29 October did we move from
the Pusan Bay. So we had almost two weeks of clean comfortable living again—eating from a table and sleeping in a bed. It was really wonderful and it seems now as I look back on those days that we washed our hair every day.

  On the 29th we sailed and arrived Iwon Beach 4 November. That night we nearly froze. We were in a building that had been a house once but now it had no doors or windows or furniture—the worse though is that it had no stove. Next morning we were mighty glad to start out again. This we did about 6 a.m. And arrived here in Pukchon where we are doing an active business for the 7th Division. All three surgical teams are working steadily, and the postoperative section is just as busy. Our main problem now and since we opened here is getting the patients evacuated to the 121st Field [Hospital]. We are having to keep them four or five days due to bad weather or poor roads or enemy activity. All this cannot be avoided so the crowded wards and personnel shortage is made the best of under the circumstances.

  As for clothing, we are wearing the same winter issue that the men wear and the smallest shoe they have for the soldier is an eight. We put two or three pairs of socks under these and do fairly well. Have heard very few complaints about this and none of the nurses have asked to go back to Japan. Our food has been good. Cannot say that anyone has gained weight but no noticeable loss either. On the whole we are in fine shape . . . all thirteen of us living in one big room in the school and we have two stoves up and going full blast all the time. One is an oil stove and one wood-burning. We thought this up ourselves just in case one of them went on the blink. It is so cold here you think a lot of things.

  Jean Kirnak

  (1925–2010)

  U.S. Army Nurse Corps

  Jean Kirnak grew up in eastern Montana and joined the Army Nurse Corps in 1948 to take advantage of a government-sponsored nurse training program. On November 14, 1950, she received orders to join nineteen doctors and sixteen other nurses at the 8076th MASH unit at Sunchon. She returned to the United States in August 1951 and was discharged a year later. She used her GI Bill to earn her bachelor of science in nursing at the University of Oregon Medical School. In 1994 she retired from nursing. She published personal essays about her war experiences, of which the excerpt below is one, in local newspapers. She died in 2010.

  Kunuri

  Kunuri, North Korea, is about twenty miles from the Yalu River at the Marchurian border and the Communist Chinese. The year was 1950 and I was a pre-op nurse in the 8076 MASH unit. . . . I had just joined the unit ten days earlier on November 15th in Sunchon, as replacements for two burned out nurses who were being sent back to Japan. They had been there since the war began on June 25th.

  Our unit moved up from Sunchon to Kunuri, about twenty miles, the day before Thanksgiving in the bitter cold. Our living quarters were in an old, dilapidated hospital, my army cot next to a blood spattered wall. We tacked up army blankets over the broken windows. The weather was freezing cold and the oil heater in the middle of the room was quite inefficient.

  On Thanksgiving would the menu be the usual canned pork or beef and gravy, canned vegetables, biscuits and fruit cocktail, we nurses wondered as we headed up the creaky hall, mess gear in hand, to stand in the long line for dinner.

  To our surprise, sliced turkey, cranberries, sweet potatoes (all canned), dried mashed potatoes, gravy, biscuits, and red jello with raw apples were served. A surgeon carrying his dinner to the table stepped through the rotten floor and everything spilled.

  After we washed our mess gear, Mary and I headed for the pre-op tent to start our twelve hour night shift at 7:00 p.m. Since we were expecting a quiet night, only fifty army cots were set up. We couldn’t hear any small artillery and very little big artillery. But by nine o’clock litters were pouring in, wounded soldiers freezing cold and in shock quickly filled up the fifty cots. The ground outside was covered with more casualties on litters waiting while additional tents were quickly going up. An extra supply of blankets were needed to cover the hypothermic, shot-up soldiers on the icy ground. The little oil heaters in the tents weren’t much help, even when they worked. We nurses wore heavy jackets over layers of warm clothes, but couldn’t wear gloves on our cold hands.

  Before the night was over, the fifty anticipated wounded turned out to be over six hundred stretcher casualties plus many more ambulatory patients. Every available doctor, nurse, and corpsman worked feverishly, crawling around on the tent floor, cutting off six or seven layers of sleeves and pant legs in order to take blood pressures and get blood transfusions started. There was no such thing as a type and crossmatch. Icy cold, type O positive, and sometimes negative, blood in glass containers, was given to everyone. Sometimes four transfusions at once were pumped into the shock patients. As soon as they had a pulse and blood pressure, off they went to the operating room, where the litter was the operating room table. The electric lights went out from time to time and the doctors had to use flashlights to complete an operation.

  Wounded Chinese communist prisoners started showing up, and we knew that what had been a fear was now a reality. The Chinese had hit. Some soldiers reported that the Chinese had horse cavalry and were tooting bugles. Still we had no idea that things were so serious.

  “This transfusion won’t run. I’m sure it’s in the vein. Will you try?” “No use. He’s gone.” This happened many times. By 5:00 a.m., our tanks were moving back, leaving us unprotected. I was too naive and too busy to be scared. This is the U.S. Army. We don’t lose battles, I thought, not against a little country like North Korea.

  At 7:00 a.m. I went off duty. I could hear the Colonel yelling our code on the inadequate telephone, “This is Red Hot Six. This is Red Hot Six,” and more yelling about orders, but I was too exhausted to be alarmed. I broke the ice on some water in my mess cup and brushed my teeth, even put on my pajamas, and crawled into my freezing mummy bag, pulled blankets over my head and fell asleep. At 9:00 a.m., a nurse shook me and yelled excitedly, “Get dressed, pack up, and go back on duty so the day nurses can get packed. We’re moving out.”

  The stench of gangrene greeted me as I walked into a room. Some American prisoners had been recaptured from the North Koreans. Their feet were badly frozen; black and gangrenous. They undoubtedly had to be amputated later. As each new bunch of casualties came in, I asked them where they had been hit. One group said, “We were ambushed between Kunuri and Sunchon,” which meant we were nearly surrounded. We certainly couldn’t escape the way we had arrived, but had to take a much longer route in order to get to Pyongyang.

  Nurses usually rode in ambulances when we moved, but this time all the ambulances were needed for evacuating patients. In fact, some of the doctors, corpsmen and other staff had to stay behind until all the patients were evacuated. Bell helicopters and ambulances evacuated the patients to a small, nearby air strip where C-47s got all the patients out. Those who stayed behind to complete the evacuation barely escaped. They were drawing mortar and small arms fire, but luckily no one was injured.

  We rode in the back of an army truck, our knees crowded against the generator which took up the center space. I kept my eyes on the mountainous horizon, thinking any minute the Chinese in their off-white quilted cotton uniforms would come swarming like ants to devour us. By 3:00 p.m. our convoy was on its way, but travel was very slow on the bumpy dirt roads. It seemed like we were always being delayed.

  We stopped at the 8063 MASH for dinner. They were relieved that the rumors that we had been captured were false. Once during the night, our convoy got on the wrong road and was heading toward the front line. Sometimes we had to wait for other convoys with a higher priority to pass us on the narrow roads. The night was long and cold and we were uncomfortably cramped in the truck. We finally arrived at the 363rd Evacuation Hospital in Pyongyang at 3:00 a.m., where we were greeted by the chief nurse, Major Bradley.

  “Are we happy to see you! We heard that everyone in the 8076 MASH had been taken prisoners. We can’t wait to get out of here.”

  The 8063 MASH joined us
the next day, and the evacuation hospital moved to South Korea. While we were at Pyongyang for a week, hundreds of casualties came through each day. Some men had gone berzerk [sic] and had to be restrained. I remember vividly the soldier with both hands blown off, another who had been shot through both kidneys and slowly died. The report “Everyone in our company was killed but us” was heard over and over again.

  By the end of the week, the enemy was getting dangerously close. We were packed up, prepared to leave the next morning. All of the nurses, except me, went to sleep with their clothes on, even their combat boots.

  “I wouldn’t be able to sleep if I had to wear my clothes,” I insisted.

  About 4 a.m., I was awakened by the sound of small arms fire. It sounded like it was just outside the door. Quickly, I got dressed, although I was shaking so badly I could hardly lace up my boots. Even after I crawled back into my mummy bag, I continued to shake uncontrollably. I have never been so scared. A few hours later, we were heading south over a long bridge across the Nam River, while below us on the water, many Korean civilians were fleeing in boats. (We heard that a short time later, the bridge we had used was bombed.)

  Our convoy stopped at the Pyongyang air strip and dropped off the nurses who were evacuated by plane to Taegu, South Korea, where there was a large evacuation hospital. We arrived there at lunch time and sat down to eat in the mess hall, where we overhead the conversation at the next table.

  “Isn’t it terrible! All the nurses in the 8076 MASH were taken prisoner!”

  “Are you sure? I heard that everyone was killed.”

  We introduced ourselves. We were very much alive. After a day or two, we rejoined our outfit, never again to return to North Korea. That was okay with me. I was in no hurry to go back.