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Wwii Army Nurse Speaks
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Posted 20 September 2004 - 03:33 AM
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| "There were 600 nurses killed in World War II. Do you ever read about that?" Heckinger said. "You never saw stories of nurses coming ashore at Normandy or Africa or Italy. The government didn't want people to hear that. The government didn't want the American public to know we had women in dangerous situations or had so many killed." |
http://www.bradenton.com/mld/bradenton/living/9634973.htm
Bradenton woman was nurse during World War II
NICK MASON
Herald Staff Writer
MANATEE - Long before Jessica Lynch became a household name, there was unheralded Ruth Firsching Heckinger.
Heckinger was a second lieutenant in the U.S. Army, nursing wounded and sick soldiers in the China-Burma-India theater during World War II.
She and her colleagues never received the recognition awarded to Lynch, the American female soldier who survived capture in Iraq last year and became famous because of her daring rescue.
Sixty years ago, most women in the military were shielded from publicity about their bravery and service, such as Heckinger parachuting from a C-46 transport plane with faltering engines or caring for hundreds of soldiers with life-threatening wounds or typhoid fever or other communicable diseases.
Heckinger, 81, of Bradenton, does not feel personally cheated from lack of acclaim, but she wants civilians to understand clearly the vital role military nurses assumed in helping defend America and defeating the enemy.
"There were 600 nurses killed in World War II. Do you ever read about that?" Heckinger said. "You never saw stories of nurses coming ashore at Normandy or Africa or Italy. The government didn't want people to hear that. The government didn't want the American public to know we had women in dangerous situations or had so many killed."
Heckinger has highlighted the contributions of military nurses around the world.
She was interviewed by the British Broadcasting Corp. three years ago in Washington, D.C., when she was the only woman among about 200 men attending the China-Burma-India Hump Pilots Association annual conference. She has told her war stories to Manatee High School students and to other veterans at the American Legion Kirby Stewart Post 24 in Bradenton. She is scheduled to speak to members of the Florida Nurses Association in November.
And she tells her tales well.
"She has got some real stories. She keeps you glued all the time," said Bob Millard, commander of the Kirby Stewart post. "Every time she comes over, people just gather around her and want to listen."
Although Heckinger was based at the Army's 142nd General Hospital in Calcutta, many of her vivid stories focus on the Hump, the military nickname for the Himalaya mountains.
"One of the first trips I made over the Hump, the pilot was heading to China to bring back a load of wounded troops," Heckinger said. "We were in northern Burma when one engine went out and the other started conking. But it wasn't until the door came off the plane that they said I would have to jump.
"I said, 'I'm sticking with the plane.' But the guys were shoving me out," she said. "I landed in a tree, which was fortunate because they could see me. They came and cut me down."
Heckinger then hesitated. Her voice dropped to almost a whisper: "The pilot didn't make it."
Every story Heckinger tells has a common thread, and that common thread is the one thing that still makes this tough-as-nails lady shed some tears.
Eighteen coffins. All in a row. All draped with American flags. All containing remains of nurses killed in a single plane crash while heading to duty.
"There were a lot of bad memories," she said. "You think of the guys who died right in your hands. And finding out about the pilot who crashed in the plane I had jumped from, that was pretty bad. But it's because of those coffins, that's why I talk about it. To honor the service of those 18 nurses and all like them."
But there also are fond memories of lasting friendships, of success in curing many wounded and ill soldiers despite not having modern medicines, of sharing and surviving prickly heat, and of a special set of silver wings.
"They are the ones pilots wear," Heckinger said of the silver wings. "One pilot made it into a bracelet and gave it to me on my 22nd birthday. He was the pilot who bombed the bridge made famous in the movie 'The Bridge on the River Kwai.' Some of that movie was real, and some of it was fictitious. It was bombed by a B-24. Gene Morris was the pilot's name."
Military men respect Heckinger, even if they did not know her during World War II, because of her unwavering devotion to others who fought for freedom.
"She is a heroic figure," said Joe Cordrey, a friend and fellow member of the Bradenton/Sarasota chapter No. 38 of the Military Order of World Wars. "She is a great fun-loving person, but she also is very caring. Even though she is no longer a practicing nurse, she still takes sort of a professional interest in everybody's health."
"Ruth is a great model for any woman of any age at any time," Cordrey said. "The world could certainly use a lot more Ruth Heckingers."
On the job training
Born and raised in New York City, she told her male friends in high school that she would be with them if they enlisted in the military.
She received nursing training at Columbia University's St. Luke's Hospital in New York for three years before heading to Fort Dix, N.J., for Army basic training. After a monthlong stint in an Atlantic City hospital caring for amputees, she was headed to Calcutta.
"It was a crapshoot," Heckinger said of soldiers surviving their wounds and diseases. "We cured some, but we didn't have the kind of medicines we have now. I remember bathing their feet in this purple stuff."
After World War II, Heckinger initially was a nurse and later a school teacher while traveling the world with her husband, Warren, who worked for the U.S. Department of Defense. After they divorced, she lived in Australia before moving to Florida in 1988.
Heckinger is an author, writing a spy novel titled "Switched" that was published by Vantage Press in 1983. She is a competitive swimmer, winning medals in competitions across the world. She still works for a temporary employment agency in office jobs.
"I'm a Kelly girl," she said. "I love it. After 50 years, now if I make a mistake, nobody dies."
NAME: RUTH FIRSCHING HECKINGER
AGE: 81
LOCAL RESIDENCE: Perico Island
OCCUPATION: Kelly Services temporary employee and former nurse and teacher
BIRTHPLACE: New York City
FAMILY: Divorced. One grown son.
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