American Nightingale: The Story of Frances Slanger, Norman’s Forgotten Heroine. Bob Welch. Dutch: Atria Books. 2004. 308 pages with additional notes, bibliography and index. 8 pages b&w; pictures ISBN: 0743477588. Available from Amazon.com for $14.96.
Early on the morning of October 21, 1944, in a field hospital near Elsenborn, Belgium, Army nurse Frances Slanger could not sleep, so she wrote a letter to Stars and Stripes, a weekly magazine. U. forces. It was a letter praising the soldiers;
“We dig a hole in the deep mud. We lie down in it. We are restricted to our immediate area, the cattle grazing or the meadow, but then who is not restricted? We have a stove and coal. We also have a washing line in the tent. .
We are indeed irritated, but in comparison with the way we receive, we cannot complain, and we do not feel that we owe a bouquet. And you, the men behind the guns, the men running our lakes, flying our planes, sailing our ships, building bridges, and paving the way for men, and leaving men behind, we tip our hats to you. . To every American GI who wears the uniform, we have the utmost admiration and respect for you.”
On the same day, she signed a letter with her three roommates, and with the permission of her superior sent her to work at the Stars and Stripes in Paris.
The letter appeared in the November 7 issue, not in a literal column but as a guest editor (only General Eisenhower had the honor before this time). Across Northern Europe, over 100,000 issues were returned to soldiers, sailors and airmen. Many of them were greatly moved, and answered with their letters, acting upon him for his words.
Francis Slanger never read. She had been dead for seventeen days, killed by shellfire just hours after she finished writing her husband’s paean to the American war.
The author raises the biography of Bob Welch, finally chronicles the spirit of the energetic woman who survived her childhood as a Jewess in Lodz, Poland during World War< /a> 1. Later his family immigrated to America … arriving at Ellis Island when she was seven graduated from in 1937 the school of nursing, in 1941 he refused to go to the Army.
She begged her superiors to send her to France, and on June 10, 1844, she and 17 other nurses from the Forty-fifth Field Hospital landed at Utah Beach, along with several hundred soldiers to augment the forces fighting in Normandy. The first American nurses were in France…months before the destination was due to the fiercest battle casualties facing the Americans. Together with other nurses, Slanger works with the help of doctors, comforts the sick and wounded, expresses his emotions and observations in letters and journals.
Welch tells Frances Slanger’s story against the world’s major cold retreat, from the persecution of Polish Jews by the Russian Cossacks, to the automation of the Elijah Island church, to immigrant life in Boston’s Jewish community. Frances intends to make something of herself … to leave a mark on the world, through the story of her arrival in Normandy, the progress of the invasion, work and relationships to the forty-fifth and her death. She was the first American nurse killed in the line of duty during World War II.
This is a fast paced narrative and a meticulously researched work. Welch interviewed many of the Slangers’ contemporaries, especially the four surviving nurses with whom she worked. The appendix presents excerpts from the many letters that GIS wrote to the Stars and Streets in response to his editorial (before they knew of his death, the news of which was not published until weeks later).
Welch is a contributing general columnist for the Royal Guardian newspaper, and has written seven other books, including A Father for All Times and Where the Roots Grow Deep.
Report:
- womenshistory.about.com/ – About Women’ Historywww.militarywoman.org/;- Military Women
