Hell... Heaven's Nurses

In Korea I accompanied wounded men carried out by the airplanes, and I talked with a great number of the two hundred and fifty nurses who at the present hour perform the task of transporting the sick and the wounded to the rear of the armies. In the space of eight months they have taken part in transporting twenty thousand fighting men.

These women know what most people do not know: they know that the Korean war is an unbelievable "barbarity"! The laws of "classical" warfare have become outworn laws that time has passed by. Soldiers must school themselves in new methods of combat, in which bodily struggle plays the chief part. There they learn to strike with their hands and to kill with daggers, or sticks, or stones. And everyone is armed, from the doctors to the cooks to the supply clerks. This war demands of the nurses absolute self-sacrifice, whether they are on land or in the air.

Since the beginning of mobilization only two nurses have left service at the front, even though the number of flying hours — and most of them are subject to it — is killing and exhausting; and in a war of this kind leave is granted only if the nurse's condition weighs heavier than the wounded man's. On the stretchers of the wounded in Korea lie men with grave wounds and men with deadly diseases. Were it not for aviation, and were it not for the wonderful treatments now within people's reach, three quarters of these men would have died.

In the last war in Europe the roads were in good condition for the ambulances to speed along them, and there were great numbers of buildings converted into hospitals. In Korea, the wounded man's one chance is to be moved quickly. And the airplanes used for transport, toward Japan first and then to the islands of Hawaii,

The belief prevails that this age is the age of woman, and that in modern civilization there is a happiness and an ease the woman of old never knew. But the opinion of Ellen Ely, a nurse in the air force in Korea, contradicts this widespread belief.

are freight planes that carry the wounded, and on their return they carry ammunition; and often the loads are discharged without the pilot's resorting to stopping the engine. On the ground, as in the air, the nurses neither sleep nor eat at regular hours: they work until the mission is done.

When the plane reaches Tokyo, the nurse's name is written at the bottom of the list. She must make herself ready as soon as her name stands fifth among the names; and when it becomes second, the plane's departure is certain from one minute to the next. So she has no time to wash her hair, or to take a bath, or to change her clothes. When her name is called, the nurse knows that there are thirty or forty wounded men in grave condition about to be carried to the plane. She begins by studying their cards, then assigns them their places according to the nature of their wounds: those from whom contagion is feared are placed in the front; those whose ribs and thighs have been broken are propped against the walls of the berths; while those whose limbs have been frozen go in places where the nurse can change their position constantly. To do her work, each nurse must stand one meter sixty centimeters tall, so as to be able to attend to those in the upper berths; she must also feed those wounded in the face or the throat by means of tubes.

There are no doctors on the plane, and the nurse alone looks after the men, with the help of a single orderly.

In urgent cases, ten additional berths are set up on the floor of the plane; and when she distributes the medicines, the food, the water, and the bedpans, the nurse must perform acrobatic feats in order to make her way among the wounded.

In planes such as these it is impossible to install sound-deadening apparatus, for installing it requires space that cannot be spared; so the clatter of the engines rises above every other sound, until a person feels himself a prisoner within metal walls on which hammer-blows rain down. And since voices cannot be heard in such conditions, the nurse must keep up the motion of a "shuttle" to make sure that all is well.

In the air, some people are seized with headache when the plane reaches an altitude of 3,500; and when it reaches an altitude of 4,500 a

person loses control of his movements, and a man may find it impossible to write his own name. And the wounded man's condition changes from what it was before rising off the ground. Wounds bleed in a different manner; the flow of pus likewise increases; breathing raises a host of problems; the muscles of the body slacken, so the secretions increase, and the nurse is compelled to carry out cleaning operations continually, to distribute the medicines, to administer oxygen, and to inject the patients with artificial blood.

...And she must stay beside the dying, and conduct herself in such a way as to conceal their death from their comrades!!

And before the plane sets down in Hawaii, the nurse must write thirty or forty reports on the condition of each wounded man, must supervise the unloading of the patients and the discharge of the medicines, and must sign the customs papers and the inspection certificates.

If, at the hour of her arrival, there is at the airfield a plane on the point of departure, she climbs aboard it, and is able to surrender herself to rest after an effort that has lasted fifteen hours. She stretches out on the ammunition crates or on the drums of petroleum, rocked by the rattle of the engines, and at last... she sleeps!

And scarcely has she reached Tokyo when she sets out once more, to accompany new wounded.

"From the French Selections"

★

Does not the reader feel, as she reads this article, that woman's life in the darkest ages of mankind was no harsher than the life of "some" working women in the age of civilization and light?

...And yet... there is one small difference: she finds her present pains sweet and surrenders to her struggle, because she relieves so much of the pain of this wretched humanity!