Nurse Girl

The public image of the nurses was highly favorable during the war, as the simplified by such Hollywood films as "Cry 'Havoc'" which made the selfless nurses heroes under enemy fire. Some nurses were captured by the Japanese, but in practice they were kept out of harm's way, with the great majority stationed on the homefront. However 77 were stationed in the jungles of the Pacific, where their uniform consisted of "khaki slacks, mud, shirts, mud, field shoes, mud, and fatigues." The 20,000 nurses in Europe were safely behind the lines. They had two missions one provide technical nursing services to military hospitals and second to train and the male Army medics and male pharmacy mates in the Navy. These men handled frontline nursing care, and also staffed homefront hospitals, where the nurses directly supervised them. The medical services were large operations, with over 600,000 soldiers, and ten enlisted men for every nurse. Nearly all the doctors were men, with women doctors allowed only to examine the WAC. Forward medical units, were emergency surgery was undertaken, was done without the benefit of nurses. Well behind the battlefield, the nurses worked in evacuation hospitals, primarily in the role of supervising the medics and the Navy’s pharmacy mates. The closer to the front, the more flexible and autonomous was the nurse’s’ role. The women wanted to be much closer to the front, but they had too weak a voice to counter the Pentagon’s highly protective attitude.
Down to 1942, the American Red Cross controlled access to the military. The Red Cross was controlled by civilian men, professional experts and social work and fundraising. The new leaders emerging from the war had learned command skills, maneuvering in complex bureaucracies, the taste of equal pay an officer status, and autonomy within military medical system. New technical skills validated their demands for an autonomy as they learned and employed in crisis situations the latest trauma and medical techniques and technologies. The military nurses returned home as the nation’s experts in blood transfusion and the application of new drugs like penicillin. When the nurses returned home they used the previously powerless American Nurses Association to take control of the nursing profession.
• Britain
Military nursing had only a small role for women in Britain, where 10,500 nurses enrolled in Queen Alexandra's Imperial Military Nursing Service (QAIMNS) and the Princess Mary's Royal Air Force Nursing Service. These services dated to 1902 and 1918, and enjoyed royal sponsorship. There also were VAD nurses who had been enrolled by the Red Cross.