The Secret Rescue by Cate Lineberry Read Free Book Online Page A

enlisted on top of their other responsibilities. By the time the country entered the war, many of those who were appointed chief nurses were as new to the military as their trainees and lacked the necessary experience in teaching and protocol. In late 1942, the Office of the Surgeon General recognized the need for more formal instruction of nurses and issued guidelines that required them to have a month of instruction on everything from military courtesy and customs to physical training defense against chemical, mechanized, and air attacks.
    As months of dinner dates and dancing ticked by, Jens had realized that life for her had changed very little since joining the Army, even as the rest of the world erupted into chaos. When the AAF put out a call for graduate nurses to join the air evacuation program in late 1942, she was excited at the prospect of a job that promised travel, adventure, and flying.
    Several of the other nurses who followed Jens on board the plane that morning had worked as airline stewardesses before the war, including Rutkowski. For years, some airlines had required stewardesses to be nurses after they recognized that many skittish passengers fearful of flying took comfort in having the trained women on flights. Gertrude “Tooie” Dawson from Vandergrift, Pennsylvania, Pauleen Kanable from Richland Center, Wisconsin, and Ann E. Kopsco from Hammond, Louisiana, who was almost always referred to as Ann E., were also former stewardesses. Others who piled into the plane that morning had worked in hospitals or in private nursing before they joined the Army and had responded to the country’s pleas for nurses to join the military.
    The youngest of the women was curly-haired Lillian Tacina, who, like Jens and Rutkowski, had grown up in Michigan. Tacina, or “Tassy” as the other nurses called her, was from Hamtramck and was one of five children. Like many of those on board that morning, she had siblings who were also in the military. Elna Schwant from Winner, South Dakota, had a younger brother Willard, a lieutenant junior grade in the Navy Reserve who had been missing in action since August. He had been a copilot on a patrol bomber in the Atlantic Ocean when the crew reported seeing an enemy submarine and was preparing to destroy it. The plane was never heard from again.
    Also on board were Ann Maness from Paris, Texas; Ann “Marky” Markowitz who, like Watson, was from Chicago; Frances Nelson from Princeton, West Virginia; Helen Porter from Hanksville, Utah; and Wilma Lytle from Butler, Kentucky. Of the thirteen, only Watson and Nelson were married.
    The thirteen medics, including Hayes, Owen, Abbott, and Wolf, followed the nurses into the cabin and filled the empty seats. Hayes had always loved planes. He’d been fascinated by them since his dad, who had served in World War I as an airplane mechanic, first pointed at one that was flying over their home when Hayes was just four years old. In high school Hayes had dreamed of becoming an aeronautical engineer. He’d first wanted to be a pilot, but he knew his poor eyesight ruled that out.
    When Hayes graduated in 1940, his family couldn’t afford to send him to college, so he held a series of odd jobs until he was drafted and reported for duty in Indianola on November 3, 1942. He was immediately sent to Camp Barkeley, Texas, where he learned, to his disappointment, that he had been assigned to the Medical Department. He started his training as a sanitary technician, a specialty within the Medical Department designed to help prevent the spread of diseases, and found, much to his surprise, that he enjoyed it. He finished the program, and the Army shipped him to Bowman Field, where he started working with McKnight in setting up a dispensary. When McKnight was made commanding officer of the 807th, he asked Hayes to join as a flight medic, a request Hayes gladly accepted.
    Paul Allen from Greenville, Kentucky, the youngest in the group at only nineteen,