Nurses of D-day: oral history courtesy of the Naval Historical Center

All Hands, March, 2008

The Navy Nurse Corps was officially established in 1908. The first 20 women nurses-the first women to serve formally in the Navy-were known as the "Sacred Twenty." The Nursing Corps' history is long and distinguished but the nurses who served alongside Allied troops during the World War II Battle of Normandy in 1944 are among its most revered heroes.

Navy nurses Lt. Helen Pavlovsky and Lt. Sara Marcum Kelley, both members of the Naval Reserve, were stationed at Navy Base Hospital No. 12 at Royal Hospital, Netley, England, when Allied forces stormed the beaches of Normandy, France. Excerpts of their oral histories are here.

Ramsey: "We knew ships were gathering for the invasion. It seems to me it took at least a week for all the ships to gather just outside our hospital in Southampton Water. We could go outside and sit on the waterfront and watch. One day it seemed like the whole area was full of ships and the next morning there was not a single one.

"We knew the invasion was beginning. We were on alert. We could not leave and were on duty 24-hours a day. We didn't know what we were waiting for.

"And then the casualties came. It took about three or four days afer the invasion before we started receiving casualties. I remember how busy we were and how they kept coming and coming and we had no place to put them. We put them out in the halls and everywhere.

"We took the casualties, took care of them, removed the bullets and shrapnel. ... Until very recently, I had the first bullet I had removed myself and managed to keep it for many years but I have lost it.

"Anyway, we were busy and we never thought about food or sleep or anything else. The doctors as well as the nurses and corpsmen were taking care of patients. We did not sleep for the first 24 hours, and then finally sleep had to be rationed because no one would leave their work. The captain issued an order. ...

Kelley: "We treated mostly Army personnel but there were also a few Navy men as well. I remember a lot of the casualties were suffering from "shell shock." Some of them didn't know who we were. They thought we were Germans and wouldn't tell us anything except their names and serial numbers. They were classified as mentally ill. Some of them were just farm boys and the shock of war was just too much for them."

Ramsey: "I also got to use penicillin for the first time. We had these little tin cans that looked like salt shakers. They contained a mixture of penicillin and, I'm sure, sulfathiazole, and we would use them like salt shakers and sprinkle it into the wounds. And I've read since, that it was that mixture of sulfa and penicillin used in those early days that saved many a limb and kept infections down to almost zero. They were both miracle drugs. Of course, we also gave penicillin intravenously.

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"We received casualties fairly steadily but not the rate we did at

the beginning. As soon as the troops landed on the beaches and went farther inland, the Army went right in and set up their hospitals so they could do a lot of the immediate work that we were having to do at the beginning. And that took a load off of us."

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