WWII Nurse Recalls Three Years Overseas
By Carol Burke, NurseZone Editorial Director
When war was declared Dec. 7, 1941, Lee Marie Mowat, RN, was already working
as a nurse with the American Red Cross. Within two months she would be
voluntarily inducted in the Army Nurse Corps, joining hundreds of other nurses
who were sent overseas. "It was only supposed to be one year," she
explained. But the war carried on and it was more than three years later before
Mowat and the other nurses would return to the States.
Mowat, (her last name at the time was Mazzola), said that it has been several
years since she recalled her days as an OR and post-op nurse, healing the war
wounded and sick during her three-plus year stint with the Army’s 28th
Surgical Unit in Australia, New Guinea and the Philippines.
When she was called up for overseas duty, Mowat, a 22-year-old 1st
lieutenant, had to leave more than her homeland, she also had to leave her
boyfriend, Bill, and her parents—who weren’t too keen on her Army nurse career.
Bill was also in the Army. He was an Ordnance Corps Officer stationed in Long Island. When Mowat was sent overseas, she
was unaware that it would be three years before she would see Bill again.
However, it was February 1942 and she was needed in the South Pacific.
The trip
from New York through the Panama Canal to Australia took more than 40 days to
complete before she and several other nurses reached Melbourne for their initial
job at Melbourne Hospital.
"It was during the battle of Coral Sea," she said. "I had a
tendency to be seasick. The zig-zagging was miserable and here I still had to
take care of sick troops."
Fortunately, upon arrival in Australia she received a
respite, staying in a hotel awaiting her duty assignment.
The first-class accommodations were short-lived, however, as Mowat and the 30
other nurses joined a traveling surgical unit soon after, working long hours and
sleeping in makeshift tents. The unit was what she termed a ‘roving’
surgical unit, similar to the one in the hit Korean War movie, M*A*S*H. Often
they would have to move within a day and set up quickly to treat the injured and
infirmed.
"I wouldn’t say it was difficult," she said. "It was just
what you did."
Mowat said that during wartime the nurses received no induction or training
period, carried their own duffle bags and they also took on a lot of the medical
responsibilities, often because there simply weren’t enough doctors.
The nurses tended to Marines fighting in Guadalcanal, soldiers on islands
surrounding Australia, and areas on and around New Guinea. She said the most
common illness among the soldiers and other wartime personnel was malaria. Mowat
recalled dispensing quinine, dibriding wounds and mixing penicillin, which had
just recently been developed. In fact, she said that her unit was one of the
first military medical untis to use penicillin. It came in a powdered form and although
conditions seemed less than ideal, the nurses were careful to mix the medicine
with sterile equipment.
"Everything was sterile," she explained. "We did it the way we
were taught, the old fashioned way."
Although soldiers died, Mowat said she "tried not to get too close to
it. A lot of men died. There was malaria and dengue fever. You just had to go
on."
The nurses dressed in long sleeve khaki shirts and slacks with boots and
leggings to protect them from mosquitoes and the dreaded malaria the bugs
carried.
Mowat said they were always conscious of the fact that they were in wartime.
She explained that Japanese soldiers were known to be on the islands surrounding
Australia and that the American nurses were assigned soldiers to protect them—at
all times—even when they used the latrine. The soldiers were also there to
protect the nurses from the allied soldiers. They were the only women in the
area.
Fortunately, she said the nurses in the unit all became very close and most
of them were together between 18 months and three years. She did recall that
sadly, one of her friends was killed in an automobile accident while they were
stationed in Australia. Another of her friends had taken ill and was sent home.
She said some others showed signs of depression, but that most of her memories
of her time spent with the nurses are fond ones.
"We made our own fun," she said. "We stayed in touch after the
war but then after a while it stopped."
Mowat recalled that one day the unit’s colonel gathered all the nurses
together for a talk.
"He looked at us and said, ‘here’s a list of the married men. I don’t
want any problems after this,’ " Mowat said. It was, she explained, as
normal a life as could be expected in unfriendly times.
Mowat recalled that after leaving Australia and its surrounding islands, her
unit moved to the Philippines.
"McArthur wasn’t allowing anyone from Southeast Asia to go home,"
she said. "There was a point system established in Europe but it was a
while before nurses in the Philippines could go back."
The nurses tended to Merchant Marines and British and American civilians
during their transport to the Philippines. Many of them were undernourished.
Mowat recalled that she also had to wash the women’s hair to make sure they
didn’t have lice.
Mowat said that living arrangements improved for the nurses—they moved into
a building for part of the time that they were stationed in the Philippines.
"We had spray water and we could brush our teeth with it—it was the
little things that I remember," she said.
It was finally in ’45 that Mowat saw Bill again. She was aboard one of
the liberty ships and he came aboard to see her. Luckily they were soon to be
reunited in America. Although the separation for Mowat and her boyfriend was
long, they sent letters back and forth and created their own code to let one
another know what they were doing and where they were stationed. The mail was
censored, she explained, and at times letters were received with holes where
sensitive information was removed by the military. Finally, after 38 months,
Mowat and the other nurses landed in San Francisco on V-E day in May 1945.
"It just worked out that we came in that day," she said.
"There was celebration, kissing, hugging and a mass of people in the
streets."
Mowat was stationed in Framingham, Massachusetts, upon her return. She was promoted to
captain but decided to leave the Army Nurse Corps as she was soon to marry
Bill. She did, however join the reserves. Bill returned to the States in December ’45 and they were married shortly
after.
Their first son Barry was born while Bill was stationed at Fort Dix, New Jersey. A year later, Bill received orders to Germany. Their second son, Charles was born five years later at Ft. Meade, Maryland, after the Mowats received orders to return to the States.
"I enjoyed the reserves," Mowat said. "But I received a notice
from the DoD (Department of Defense) that said if dependents were under 18 then
I had to get out."
Mowat said she continued working intermittently in nursing—there wasn’t a
shortage of jobs, she explained.
She also said that she had fond memories of nursing and her time in the service.
"There were things when I was young that I was keen to do, like
traveling across the world during the war as a nurse," Mowat said. And certainly the Allied war effort would be
thankful that she was keen to do them as well.
May 8, 2001 © 2001. NurseZone.com. All Rights Reserved.