From the October 2007 issue: A Combat Nurse’s Exhausting Sorrows, Unexpected Joys

Army nurse June Wandrey stood five feet two inches tall with, in her words, “finely honed muscles that were dynamite ready.” That forceful spirit was evident in her wartime letters as well; Wandrey did not mince phrases when it came to her disdain for Franklin D. Roosevelt (“our horrid, war-loving president”), her impatience with army officers insensitive to the needs of enlisted soldiers, and, most of all, her fierce love for the young GIs under her care. On August 14, 1943, she wrote the following letter from Sicily describing why she felt so committed to the troops brought into the hospital:

Dearest Family,

Working like slaves. Too tired to write and it’s always too dark to see when I get off duty. We were so close to the lines we could see our artillery fire and also that of the Germans….

In our pell-mell existence, we received our first naval casualties. A ship right off shore from us was bombed and strafed. Even our dentists were doing minor surgery we were so swamped…. Working in the shock wards, giving transfusions, was a rewarding but sad experience. Many wounded soldiers’ faces still haunt my memory. I recall one eighteen year old boy who had just been brought in from the ambulance to the shock ward. I went to him immediately, he looked up at me trustingly, sighed and asked, “How am I doing nurse?” I was standing at the head of his litter. I put my hands around his face, kissed his forehead and said, “You are doing just fine, soldier.” He smiled sweetly and said, “I was just checking up.” Then he died. Many of us shed tears in private. Otherwise, we try to be cheerful and reassuring.

I’ve seen surgeons work for hours to save a young soldier’s life, but despite it they die on the operating table. Some doctors even collapsed across the patient, broke down, and cried.

There are many dedicated people here giving their all.

Very tired.

June

Two days later, Wandrey wrote to her sister about one of the war’s most famous generals and an incident that infuriated countless service members, herself included.

Dear Betty,

Today, I had a ride in a car, which had springs. Our backs and ovaries take a terrible beating riding in the back of a truck and over pock-marked roads. We moved to Falconie. Saw General Patton and General Wilson.
Yesterday General Patton was visiting wounded patients at the 15th Evacuation hospital. He spied a patient who wasn’t wounded and asked him what his problem was. He didn’t like the answer and using his gloves slapped the sad soldier across the face. Lucky it wasn’t one of my patients or I’m sure I would have hit him back. When I was in eighth grade, my short-tempered teacher hit Bill, our slow-paced neighbor boy over the head with a fat geography book. I grabbed the book out of her hands and bawled her out for hitting him. She flunked me in deportment.

A bomber crashed very close to us, but the crew bailed out safely.

Went swimming.

Love, June

As much as Wandrey was worn down by fatigue and the stress of being in harm’s way (hundreds of American nurses were killed during the war), there were moments of unforeseeable exhilaration. Wandrey wrote the following letter on March 28, 1945:

Dearest Betty,

When I got off duty, I heard that our troops had liberated a POW hospital with hundreds of patients several miles from us, in a place called Heppenheim. Although it had started to rain and was getting dark and I was exhausted, I wanted to visit the prisoner-patients….

Two hundred and ninety of the prisoners were scruffy, starving, wounded Americans. The prison population included Russians, French, Italians, Slavs and Moroccans. Some of our men had been there for seven months. Their smaller wounds were covered with toilet paper, their brutal amputations were covered with rags. The men had torn their field jackets in shreds to bind the primitive dressings. Their bodies were covered with scratches, inflicted when they clawed at their body lice.

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