A Brief Glimpse: Navy Medical Facilities in Naples

U.S. Navy Infirmary Afragola, Italy (ca. 1952).*

11-0009-01

All Photographs from BUMED Library and Archives

The Navy established its first shore-based medical activity in the Naples area during the latter months of 1951 when the personnel of USS Adirondack moved ashore to establish the Headquarters, Support Activity, Naples. To augment this dispensary, and to provide for an increasing number of military and their dependents, a 50-bed infirmary was set up in Afragola (20 miles outside of Naples). In March 1954, the infirmary was moved to a remodeled building in Naples. All medical services were centralized within this "new" structure, and the dispensary and infirmary were decommissioned.

"Plankowners" at U.S. Navy Infirmary Afragola, Italy (ca. 1952) **

11-0009-02

U.S. Naval Hospital Naples (ca. 1954)

11-0009-05

In July 1965, construction began on a new eight story, reinforced concrete structure on the slopes of a volcanic crater within the city limits of Pozzouli, a suburb of Naples. The new hospital was occupied in October 1966 and in July 1968 was commissioned as Naval Hospital Naples. After severe damage to the hospital as a result of a series of earthquakes in the Pozzuoli-Agnano region the Navy began planning a newer facility that would keep pace with the latest seismic requirements. In April 2003, the new Naval Hospital opened in the Gricignano area of Naples.

U.S. Naval Hospital Naples (1966-2003)
11-0009-07

*1st floor - officers + 12 bed medical ward. 2nd floor - 21 bed Surgical ward + Operating room. 3rd floor - Dependents Ward + Del. Room. SOQ not shown.

**1st row L-R: LT M.M. Lepine, LT A. Vitillo, LT J.E. McCarthy, LT R.D. Clarke. 2nd row: Lt. M Petrusky (MSC), CAPT F.J. Weddell Jr. (MC), CDR P.J. McNamara (MC). 3rd row: LT D.C. Dixon (MC), LT D. Mundie (MC).

Sources
Kane, Joseph. Naples Delivers: The Birth of a Naval Hospital. Navy Medicine Magazine. July-August 2003.
Patton, W. Kenneth. “Naval Hospital Naples.” History of Navy Hospitals (unpublished), ca 1970.
Smith, Robert L. Naval Pharmacist-Italian Style. U.S. Navy Medicine Magazine. Volume 58, August 1971.

The War's First Christmas

LCDR Grace B. Lally
Chief Nurse, USS Solace, 1941
BUMED Library and Archives 09-5043-039


***

The War's First Christmas

(Originally Published in The American Magazine, January 1945)

By LCDR Grace B. Lally, NC, USN

I was a chief nurse aboard USS Solace, Navy’s hospital ship attached to the Pacific Fleet, when the Japanese struck at Pearl Harbor. From that fateful morning until Christmas Eve, neither I nor the twelve nurses who served under me had much sleep or peace of mind. But in spite of weariness, all of us were aware of the Navy tradition that a tree rides the mast on Christmas, and we had managed to collect four scraggy cedars in Honolulu, together with enough tinsel, holly, decorations, toys, and knick-knacks so that every man aboard the Solace would have a gift and a celebration.

Now, on Christmas Eve, the nurses’ quarters were bustling with preparations.

Suddenly, I remembered we needed a Santa Claus.

“Get the yeoman who stands with the Commander at quarters—the plump, jolly-looking boy,” someone suggested.

“He’s perfect, “ I agreed. “Send for him, and the sailmaker.”

In our wardroom, the nurses who were off duty and I worked frantically against time.

“Trees on the mast, the quarterdeck, and in the mess hall,” we instructed the corpsmen.
“And take these trimmings to the wards. Let the up-patients help you decorate.”

“You’re Santa Claus,” we told the rotund yeoman, who grinned delightedly. “Be prepared for anything.”

“Here’s the bunting; make him a suit,” we told the ship’s sailmaker. “Get some rope and make him a beard.”

The sailmaker’s fist hit the table. “A department-store Santa Claus won’t hold no candle to him!” he swore, piloting the yeoman from the room.

Some of our presents were already wrapped; the majority were not. We had 32 pounds of candy to be divided into small, gay packets. We had one gift for each of our 327 patients and one for each member of the ship’s crew.

Fortunately, the paper held out until the last small present had swapped its cheap commercial bindings for the trappings which to every boy there would spell Christmas, and be a symbol of the gifts from which, this year, would not come through.

The nurses segregated the toys for the most critically injured, and learned that there would not be enough of the nicer gifts to go around. Over the last, a tawdry mechanical ballet dancer, they argued hotly, loyally:

“But Swenson’s blind. He’s got to have something he can feel. He could wind her up and feel her dance.”

“Look. I’ve got a machinist’s mate. He’s old and very critical. He’s got kids at home. This is the sort of silly present he’d bring home to them for Christmas. Maybe it’s his last. Maybe it would bring them closer.”

The machinist’s mate got the little dancer. There was compromise and exchange. Some of the girls still weren’t satisfied, so they went to their quarters and dug around in the bureau drawers.

***

The girls were beautiful that evening, I thought. They sort of shone, as if the lights had been turned on inside. There was a mother-thing in all of them that fought fiercely to protect its own from hurt, from neglect. It went beyond nursing, beyond self.

Before December 7 we had made tentative plans for Christmas Eve. A famous choir was to have come out from Honolulu and sung on the deck. But now our decks would be dark, only the black shadow of the tree would ride high on the mast. Maybe the stars would etch its silhouette.

Carols we must have, and luckily I remembered there was a corpsman who played a sweet accordion. Immediately we routed him out.

“Sure, I can play carols,” he said proudly. “I was weaned on ‘em. And I’ll get six of the boys who can sing.”

And so at nightfall, when the wards had been fed and the nurses had changed into their best uniforms, Santa Claus—more beautiful than a department store’s—with a bulging seabag on his back, led our small procession below. We sang Jingle Bells as we went, and out of nowhere the ship’s captain appeared. “I’m with you, Miss Lally,” he said.

The captain had second sight, I knew, when anything of harm or benefit to his ship was concerned. But I did not know that he was aware of our Christmas celebration, nor of how much his presence on such an occasion would mean to the patients.

He fell into step behind Santa Claus, and I followed him, first to the G.U. War, where, after the Japanese attack, we had placed our most serious burn cases. Behind us came the girls and the corpsmen, all singing. I could not sing right then, being too terribly aware of the eyes that looked at me from some of the burn-blackened faces.

War and Christmas seemed suddenly incongruous. Only yesterday these kids were sneaking down the stairs to watch their mothers and dads place the last glimmering icicle on the tree, tuck a walnut deep in the toe of a stocking. Pain now made the young faces seem mature. But even eyes that had been almost lifeless brightened miraculously as the nurses distributed their presents and Santa Claus his bounty.

“Shaving soup! You know, Miss Lally, I’ve worked for months to grow this beard. You wouldn’t be hinting or anything?”

“Hey, look at Wilkins. He got vilet talcum powder. Oh-h-h, Wille-e-e-e!”

***

We continued to walk, singing from ward to ward, and gradually a real procession formed behind us—a line-up of most of the ship’s officers, all the junior officers, and the crew.

Up in the nurses’ quarters we had our own party afterward. We had eggnog, and all of the girls talked at once, comparing notes on the different boys’ reactions to their gifts.

-“That big landlubber, Ogonski said, ‘Geez, the scrub me from top to toe twice a day, and then give me a cake of poifumed soap to remember them by!’”

-“We were right to give the ballet dancer to the machinist’s mate. When I went back to say good night, there he was, fast asleep, a bit of smile on his face, and the toy clutched in his hand—just like a kid.”

-“You know, it’s funny,” Tess Duggan said suddenly. “It’s the biggest Christmas Eve we’ll ever know. I mean the most important. We’ve all the ornaments, and glitter, and fine presents, and family. We’ll all have those things again, too. But it will never again be quite so big tonight.”

**A few minor edits were made to the original article

Oral History: Telephone interview with Rosella Asbelle, Navy nurse at Pearl Harbor on 7 December 1941

Telephone interview with Rosella Asbelle, Navy nurse at Pearl Harbor on 7 December 1941, and later assigned to Naval Hospital Oakland's Occupational Therapy Department with amputee patients during the Korean War.  Conducted by Jan K. Herman, Historian, Bureau of Medicine and Surgery, 13 June 2002.

 

Where are you originally from?

I was born in Oklahoma but we came out to California when I was about 7 years old--a little town called Dinuba near Fresno.

 

Where did you go to nursing school?

I went to St. Mary's Hospital School of Nursing, San Francisco, CA.

 

And you were a Navy nurse.

I was very definitely a Navy nurse.  I was at Pearl Harbor on December 7th, 1941.

 

What do you remember about that?

Everything.  I saw Japanese planes coming over.  They were so low, they were right on top of the building.

 

Then you knew Ruth Erickson.

We were all together.  Ruth is a very knowledgeable person.  I have all the addresses of the 29 Navy nurses who were at Pearl.  We try to keep in touch with each other.  I think there are about eight of us still living.

I remember vividly the planes flying over the buildings right next to the nurse's quarters.  The nurse in the room next to me and I were looking out the window and she gasped, "Ahh, Rosella, it's war."  I'll never forget that.  The planes were just above the buildings.  You could see the heads of the pilots.

 

Ruth Erickson told me that they were so close that if you had known who they were, you could have recognized them.

That's right.  One came over the building so low, maybe at the height of a flagpole.  You could see their heads.  This grinning Japanese guy probably was thinking, "Boy, we've got you where we want you."  I'll never forget that guy with the goggles and the smile on his face.

 

Did you have duty that morning?

It was 8 o'clock in the morning and I don't remember if I had duty that morning.  But it didn't take long before the chief nurse called everybody over to the wards and casualties started coming in.  And they continued coming in throughout the day.  The heads or toilets were right outside the wards and there was a walkway between the ward and the head.  The bodies were laid out like stacks of wood on that passageway connecting the ward and the toilet.

 

Did you work in the surgical area?

I was in the surgical ward and when they needed surgery they went to the operating room.  Later on, I was transferred to the burn ward because there were so many people who were burned from the fires.

 

I read that you sprayed tannic acid on the burns.

That's right.

 

You must have seen some pretty horrible things that day.

It was really tragic.  These kids were so young and so burned.  I remember a radio blaring the song, "I Don't Want to Set the World On Fire," when some kid at the end of the ward yelled out, "Lady, you're too late.  It's done been set."  At that time, the wards had anywhere from 20 to 30 patients per ward.  And I was on the burn ward.  These kids were all lined up with tannic acid applications all over.

The saddest thing, though, was having night duty.  That's when these severely burned kids would die.  And you'd know when that was going to happen.  Many a time, I'd sit by the bed of a young man, boy, who was burned, as he died talking about his family.  It was generally about 4:30 or 5:30 in the morning when most of them went.  You'd hold their hands and talk to them about their families.

 

That must have been terribly sad for you.

Yes.  These kids were so young.

 

I'm sure that even if you don't remember everything that happened subsequently at Oakland, you'll probably never forget that day as long as you live.

I don't think anyone would.

 

Where did you go after Pearl Harbor?

I think I was sent back to Oak Knoll--that is the Naval Hospital in Oakland, CA.

 

My intent today is to talk to you about your time at Oakland.

I was at Mare Island first.  They had a rehabilitation plan for amputees there.  Then we were all transferred to Oak Knoll.

 

Were you still in the Navy at this time?

I went into the Navy in 1937.  I was in San Diego first and then I was transferred to Pearl Harbor and several other places, and then was at Mare Island.  As an occupational therapist, I used to teach the arm amputees how to use their prostheses.

 

When would you have been at Mare Island?

I went to occupational therapy school in Boston.  It was the Boston School of Occupational Therapy.  It wasn't a Navy school but there were a group of us who were sent there.  They gave us our choice of either going to the school for occupational therapy or physical therapy.  I chose occupational therapy.

 

How long were you there at the school?

Eighteen months.

 

Where did you go after leaving the school?

When we finished, I was sent to Mare Island.  I guess that would have been about 1948.

 

Were you at Mare Island when the Korean War broke out?

Yes.

 

Did you start seeing patients coming in from Korea right away?

Being in occupational therapy, we had a department of our own.  I wasn't involved in the actual admitting of the patients.  They were admitted to the wards.  Then we got them as a spinoff from treatment that was needed for arms.  I used to train the arm amputees how to use their prostheses.

 

When did you go to Oakland?

When Mare Island closed and my whole department was transferred to Oak Knoll.  That was in 1950.

 

What would a typical day have been like for you at Oakland in 1951 or so?

It was all routine.  We had a rather large occupational therapy department which I was in charge of.  The leg amputees were across the street in the physical therapy department where they were trained to use their leg prostheses, and I was in the occupational therapy department with the arms.

 

Why would there have been a difference?  Why would physical therapy gotten the legs, and occupational therapy the arms?

With occupational therapy, we would have been training them to use their prostheses through a variety of activities and crafts that required them to manipulate their prostheses, and in physical therapy they were training them to walk.  They had a very active walking program for the amputees.

 

Could you describe the walking program?  How long after the fitting of a leg prosthesis would the patient have begun therapy?

They started them out right away.  There was no need to wait.  They would put them on their prosthesis and have them adjust their walking to the height of the bars.  The nurse there would very carefully monitor them.

 

How would the arm program have worked?  Let's say you just got a new patient who had been fitted with a prosthesis.  Would you have gotten them at that point?

Yes.  They would first be assigned to our department and we had activities that required them to use their prosthesis.

 

What types of activities would they have done?

We had everything.  We had a woodworking shop and a leather shop, ceramics.  They could choose whatever they wanted, and patients often did several activities.

 

Which of those activities did you oversee?

I had all of them.  We generally had corpsmen who actually worked with the amputees.  I was more like a supervisor.

 

Do you ever remember any specific patients.  Sarah Chapman mentioned to me that most of your patients were very young and, for the most part they were in very good spirits.  Is that your recollection?

Oh, yes.  They had a hilarious time.  After all, they were young kids and there wasn't very much that would keep them down, including the loss of a leg or an arm.  They went with the tide.

 

Were there any specific patients you might have remembered as being exceptional or didn't take that well to the training?

No.  I think they all did very well.  They were intent on getting the most that they could out of their rehabilitation and went for it.  I can't remember any patient who didn't profit from the training because they had others to look at.  When they saw that others were doing okay, they'd say, "If he can do it, why can't I?"  They were eager to learn as much as they could and get on with their lives.

 

So they were motivated by their comrades.

Yes.

 

How long would a patient have been in occupational therapy with an arm before they would be discharged?  Was there a set time or did it depend on the progress they were making?

It depended on the progress they made, the nature of their injury, and their attitude.

 

Were you involved in making those decisions as to when you thought they were ready to go?

No.  That was done by the medical staff--by the doctors.

 

Do remember Dr. Canty?

Very well.  He was very dedicated to his patients.  As a matter of fact, my husband, who worked with him, was right there and that's all they did was train the leg amputees.

 

How did the typical arm prosthesis function?  What did it look like?

It was made out of metal and there were cables that attached to the shoulder muscles.

 

Was the hand a hook or some other kind of device, or did they have some kind of hand?

They had both.  They had hooks.  Later on they developed the hand.  The hand wasn't as convenient as the hook, which you could grasp anything with very quickly.  It was just a two-pronged unit.  The hand was a bit more difficult to control and harder to use.

 

In the shops, such as the woodworking shop, what kind of things would the patients make?

They made little bird cages and small furniture like chairs and footstools and other things.  In the leather department they made wallets, women's purses, belts.  In the ceramics department, we had forms that they could pour the clay into.  Some would do free-form also and make whatever they wanted.  We had four or five looms and patients made rugs, too.

 

How long did you stay at Oakland working in the occupational therapy department?

I was there about 2 years and then got married.  At that time, females in the service could not be married so I was required to resign.

 

Was it after the war was over?

Oh, yes.  I was in the Navy 15 years.

 

What did you do after you got out of the Navy?

I got married and we had two children. After the kids were raised, then I took a course in real estate, got my license, and sold real estate for 10 or 12 years.

 

Did you know the Surgeon General at that time, Admiral Pugh?

He was a special friend of mine.  He used to tease me on the ward.  He always teased the nurses.  He had a nice little smile.  He was just a very good doctor and I enjoyed working with him.  He had a marvelous sense of humor.

 

Thank you so much for spending time with me this afternoon.

Good luck to you.

Archives; Casey & Williams Photograph Albums

Casey Photograph Album
Personal papers
1939-1941
1 box, arranged, unrestricted, no finding aid available

Dr. Jerome (Jerry) Casey's photograph album of southeast Asia including
China, Japan and the Philippines from 1939-March 1941. Casey apparently
served on the USS Guam river gunboat in China and then on the USS
Blackhawk. Snapshots include tourist scenes mostly but also other
medical staff such as Dr. Pete Machung.

Williams Photograph Album
Personal papers
1917-1918
1 box, arranged, unrestricted, no finding aid available

From the front cover: "Ann Williams; 1883-1939; Navy Nurse; World War I;
Stationed at Portsmouth, Virginia; Photo album depicts her life and that
of her fellow nurses and sailors. Album donated by great-niece Linda
Troolin; Duluth, Minnesota." Photographs are snapshots of nurses,
usually socializing or relaxing.

Archives: Kline Scrapbook

Kline Scrapbook (2011.0003)
Personal papers
1917-1922
1 box, arranged, unrestricted, no finding aid available

1 scrapbook of photographs of Navy Nurse Grace DeWitt Kline, ca.
1917-1921 or World War 1. Includes photographs of the USS Princess
Matoika and its crew, a boxing match aboard the ship, some sailors and
troops ashore in Europe, the USS Zeelandia, and photographs of a city,
possibly New York by Major Hamilton Maxwell, New York City. Also
includes a loose newspaper portrait clipping of "Miss Edith C. Whitlam,
Formerly of the New York Post Graduate Hospital, Who Has Been Awarded
the Royal Red Cross for Distinguished Service with the Canadian Troops."

Archives: Nursing Service Scrapbook

Nursing Service Scrapbook
Organizational records
1961
1 box, arranged, unrestricted, no finding aid available

Scrapbook compiled under CAPT Ruth Erickson, NC, USN, Chief, Nursing Services at National Naval Medical Center, Bethesda. Includes photographs and brochures.

Oral History: Nancy Crosby, USS Haven hospital ship nurse

LTJG Nancy Crosby, NC, USN with LT Marion Pearson, MC, USNR

All photographs shown are part of the Nancy Crosby Collection, BUMED Library and Archives

USS Consolation, Inchon Harbor

Telephone interview with Nancy “Bing” Crosby, Navy nurse aboard USS Haven (AH-12 ) during the Korean War. Conducted by Mr. Jan K. Herman, Historian, Bureau of Medicine and Surgery, 26 December 2001.

Where are you from originally?
Baltimore, MD.

When did you decide you wanted to be a nurse?
When I was a little girl. My mother’s closest friend was a nurse and I guess she influenced me.

Where did you go to nursing school?
Union Memorial Hospital in Baltimore. Then the Navy sent me to the University of Pennsylvania for my baccalaureate, and then to Boston University for my masters. They treated me very well.

When did you join the Navy?
I joined in 1949.

What do you remember about that?
I was a little nervous. My parents never said they were against it at all. We were kind of a Navy family. We grew up with webbed feet. We spent our summers at the Magothy River off of Chesapeake Bay. I was very delighted because both of my brothers were in the Navy. One went to the Naval Academy, and my other brother served in submarines. I was the only one that had to go to war. Would you believe that? Two brothers in the Navy and I was the only one who went to war.

Where was your first assignment?
Bethesda, MD. Then I went to Beaufort, SC, about 2 years later, and then to the Haven.

How did you hear that the war had broken out in Korea?
I don’t remember much about it except that we were at war, Korea was near Japan, and North Korea had invaded South Korea. I heard they needed nurses because they were commissioning a hospital ship and they were looking for volunteers. I was delighted.

So you actually volunteered for service on the Haven?
Oh, yes. All the nurses were volunteers.

USS Consolation and Danish Hospital Ship Jutlandia

Who was your chief nurse?
Nell Harrington. She’s since died. She was a courageous little lady.

What do you remember about reporting to the Haven?
Oh, my, I was impressed. There was a big red cross on the side of it. It had a few rust spots because the men hadn’t finished all the painting. We painted it on the way over to Hawaii and Japan.

Where did you work on the ship?
I worked on the surgical wards because that’s where most of my naval experience had been. I also worked on the A deck for a while with patients with head injuries.

What do you remember about one of your patients, Sergeant Harry Smart?
I don’t remember him specifically because we were so busy then. We were working 18 hours a day. Patients were coming in so fast by helicopter and landing craft.

When did you get to Korea?
We were there in 1952 and ‘53. We went first to Pusan.

Do you remember CAPT Hamblett, the ship’s skipper?
Oh, Balloon Head?

Why do you call him that?
Because he had such a large head. First of all, he got himself a little car that he kept on the deck of the ship so that he would have transportation when he went ashore. He’d go out with the Korean women. He’d want to date us but after we dated him one time, we swore we’d never go again because he was kind of a lecherous fellow. He was bad news.

But he came up with this idea for the two pontoon floats.
Yes, he did.

Hospital Corpsmen carry a critically wounded patient aboard USS Haven

What do you remember about that?
I have pictures I took of those floats. They lashed them to the sides of the ship with great big cables. Then they practiced landing to ensure that the helicopters could land without too much wind influence on the side of the ship. It worked quite well.

Did you see the first flights land?
I don’t remember whether they were the first ones or not but we watched several of them come in. Then they brought the men up on stretchers, lifting them by litter hoist. It was marvelous.

Smaller copters lashed two stretchers, one on each side. Larger copters held several patients.

Bell HTL-4 aboard one of the Haven's pontoon landing floats, July 1952

And they could land more than one helicopter at a time?
Oh, sure. They could land them on each side of the ship where barges were lashed.

How many on each side?
One at a time on each side.

Were the pontoons decked with wood?
It was wood. They had painted large circles where the copters should land.

How long did you stay on the ship?
I was there pretty close to 20 months.

Were the floats then used while you were in Inchon?
Yes. Later, our helicopter landing pad was built on the afterdeck of the ship and barges were not needed.

I guess that was because you had to stay pretty far offshore because of the tides.
Oh, yes. They were 19- to 21-foot tides; they were impressive. The mud flats used to come out for miles.

You say you took pictures of the floats being used?
Oh, yes. I was impressed by their effectiveness.

How many do you have?
I have about six or eight slides showing the helicopters landing. I also have another one with Nell Harrington climbing into one. I also have slides of critically ill Marines being landed on our helicopter deck on the aft deck of the ship.

How did you get a picture of Ted Williams?
He was a patient on our ship. He was a Marine pilot during the Korean War and was on my ward. When he was getting better I asked him if he would mind if I took a couple of pictures. He was the most gracious fellow.

Marine pilot and Boston Red Sox star, Ted Williams, patient aboard USS Haven, March 1953. Glove courtesy of Haven's Welfare and Recreation Committee.

So he just went up on deck with a baseball glove and posed for you? Where did he get the glove?
Apparently, he kept it with him all the time. He was a neat guy.

Outside orphanage in South Korea.

Did any of the nurses ever get ashore to help Korean refugees?
We didn’t deal with Korean refugees until the battles quieted down. Some of the nurses volunteered to work at the orphanages. I never did that. But we used to get clothes from home for the children and we’d take the children on picnics and distribute the clothes. I have some pictures of that. Between battles we cared for Korean children. They were quickly evacuated when we again became busy. In appreciation, the children were brought to the ship to entertain us with Korean dances.

Do you know any of those nurses who may have worked in the orphanages?
I don’t know whether Pat Leisure did that or not. She worked in the operating room.

Did you treat any Korean patients?
Yes. Frequently, our Korean patients had worms. Because farmers periodically used human excreta for fertilizer, many of our Korean patients had worms. They really caused problems. Patients who had abdominal surgery sometimes needed a Levin tube. These were used to suction stomach contents. Worms frequently clogged the tubes and actually came up around the tube and were pulled from the nose.

"E" Medical Company, 6 miles from the front

LTJG Crosby aboard USS Haven.

Could you tell me the story of how you and Harry Smart found each other?
It was a delight because he went to a reunion up in North Carolina where he bumped into Frances Omori, the woman who wrote the book about the nurses in the Korean War. She told him that she had interviewed me and that she had my address. So she wrote me and asked if I would mind if she gave him my address. I wrote back to her and said I’d be pleased to talk with him. So he wrote the nicest letter and asked if he could someday come to see me. But we didn’t meet until about 2 years later. Just recently, he drove all the way down to Florida. He lives in Texas, but he was in North Carolina at the time. He drove all the way down just to see me. And we spent 5 hours here talking.

What was that meeting like for you?
Oh, it was very emotional at first. We hugged and cried. It was very warm and touching. I still get emotional when I talk about it. I don’t know where the feelings welled up from but they really were something. I was very, very moved. He made all those years in Korea worthwhile.

He was a Marine patient?
Yes. He says I saved his leg but I don’t remember. But, apparently, I did care for him on the ship. There were so many to care for.

He remembered you because he recalls they called you Bing. And that was your nickname.
Right. Crosby so they called me Bing.

Do you keep in touch?
We write letters and email. He’s a delight. I can’t believe he went to all that trouble to find me.

You were very important to him.
Apparently, I made a difference.

Do you ever think about that time back in Korea?
Yes, particularly when this war’s going on and when they talk about Vietnam. It makes me mad. You always hear about these wars but never hear about the Korean War until recently. And I believe that more of our men were lost in the Korean War than in the Vietnam War.

Surgery Tent, "E" Medical Company, 1st Medical Battalion, 1st Marine Division, August 1952.

Papa-san smokes his pipe. Pusan, April 1952.

"E" Medical Company.

LTJG Virginia Brown, NC, USN, posing beside USS Haven then moored at Pusan, South Korea, March 1953.

Archives: Danner POW Collection

Danner POW Collection
1939-1989
Personal papers
2 boxes, arranged, unrestricted, no finding aid available

Dorothy Danner, NC, USNR (nee Dorothy Still, aka Dorothy Terrill) was a
POW in Los Banos Internment Camp, Philippines during World War II. The
collection consists of photographs, letters, photocopies and other
material related to her nursing career and subsequent captivity by the
Japanese. Includes Stateside material compiled by her mother. Danner was
awarded a Bronze Star for her care of the sick and wounded while a
prisoner. Later material includes recognition of service, an oral
history and reunions.

Oral History: Anna Corcoran, nurse aboard USS Haven during the evacuation of defeated French survivors of Dienbienphu

Telephone interview with Anna Corcoran, nurse aboard USS Haven during the evacuation of defeated French survivors of Dienbienphu from Saigon in September 1954.  Conducted by Jan K. Herman, Historian of the Navy Medical Department, 26 May 2004.

 

Aren't you from Massachusetts?

Yes.  I grew up in Boston.

 

Where did you go to nursing school?

At the Carney Hospital School of Nursing, which at that time was in South Boston.  I graduated in February of 1948.

 

When did you decide to join the Navy?

I wanted to join when I first got out, but at that time, being at the end of the war, they said you needed several years experience.  Of course, Korea hadn't yet started.

As soon as we finished, a couple of us went to work in New York and then to New Orleans because we thought it would be fun.  We ran into some other nurses who wanted to go to California so we went there.  Korea started in June of '50 and I went to Los Angeles and applied to join.  In those days, of course, we didn't have computers and they had to send all the material back to Boston to make sure I was who I said I was.  So it took a few weeks, and I didn't go in until February of '51 and didn't go on active duty until May of '51.

 

Where did they send you for your first assignment?

San Diego.

 

I'll bet you enjoyed that.

I did.  I had a great time.  All my duty stations were great.

 

I know that for a nurse to be assigned to a hospital ship was the ultimate assignment at that time.  Did you feel that way about it?

Well, I did.  But you see, I went overseas to Guam and Japan.  Then we were due to rotate home--Ruby [Brooks], myself, and two other nurses.  There were about six of us.  The chief nurse called us in and said, "You will be having your orders back to the States but would you like to be assigned to the hospital ship?"  At that time they had reassigned a lot of their nurses either to Yokosuka or somewhere in the Pacific.  So they were short of nurses and asked us if we'd go aboard to supplement their number.

So four of us said yes.  When we got back to the States we would come into Long Beach and would then be given orders to our new assignments.  We went aboard in Yokosuka in the first part of September '54.

 

What was your first impression of the ship when you went first went aboard?

I loved it.  I had been in Yokosuka and had seen ships going in and out all the time.  I was assigned to a three-bed room with Martha Bruce and a Medical Service Corps pharmacy officer--Kay Keating.  Kay was the first woman non-nurse to be assigned to a ship.

 

When did you learn what the ship's mission was going to be?

They told us when they asked us if we wanted to go.  They told us that we would be evacuating people who had just been released from prison and would be taking the Foreign Legion back to Oran, Algeria, and the French soldiers into Marseille.  So we knew that right away.

 

What do you remember about your arrival in Saigon?

Saigon was a beautiful city.  It was so pretty and the buildings were so white.  There were nice roads and streets.  We didn't see a lot of destruction or anything like you'd see later.  There was a cocktail party for us the first night after we arrived.

 

Had you and your other nurse colleagues been aware of what had been going on?  Had you heard about Dienbienphu and all of that?

Yes, we did.  One of our doctors at Yokosuka had been sent up to evacuate a lot of the Christians from the north down to the south part of Vietnam.  His name was Dr. Tom Dooley.  He was my ward medical officer.  He loved life and he was great to the patients.  He would push the piano up there and play on the wards in the afternoon.  All the nurses were very fond of him, even though some of the doctors were a little envious.  Consequently, the Medical Department has never spoken well of him.  The CO and XO weren't crazy about him.

 

He had gone earlier up to Haiphong to help care for and evacuate the refugees.  That was called "Operation Passage to Freedom."

That's right.

 

So you knew about what had happened to the French and that you were going on this mission of mercy to Saigon to pick them up.  Did you have any idea before you saw them what condition they were in?

No.  I only knew about the Foreign Legion from the movies.

 

What do you remember about the loading of the patients aboard the Haven?

We loaded them in the middle of the night.  And there were two rumors as to why we were doing that.  One was that they didn't want the Viet Minh to know how many we were taking, and the other was that it was cooler in the middle of the night.  We loaded over 700 patients starting somewhere about 3 or 4 o'clock in the morning.  We had them all aboard by 10 o'clock.

 

Were you up close to this action or were you below decks?

We saw them being loaded.  A lot of them walked aboard and some came aboard on stretchers or in wheelchairs.

 

What was your impression of their condition?

They were very thin and kind of grimy looking.  They looked malnourished but they all gained weight on the ship before we got to Oran.

 

Before you cast off and headed back down the river, was there any kind of ceremony or fanfare or was it just a routine parting?

As I recall, it was quiet.  I don't remember any band or anything to send us off.

 

Once you got underway, what was your role in caring for these patients?

I was assigned to the lowest deck where we had patients, the E deck, I think.  There were two wards and there were 87 patients in each ward.  We had triple-deck bunks.  On that floor they all had to be able to walk up stairs to get their meals because there was no elevator that came all the way down and therefore no food carts could come down.

I will never forget sick call.  Most of the patients down there were Foreign Legionnaires and many did not speak English or French but mostly Arabic.  We had one man who was our interpreter.  He had been a German SS trooper and had been a prisoner in Canada.  He spoke perfect English, perfect French, perfect German, and a little Arabic.  When we had sick call, the doctor would stand on the second bunk to examine the guy in the third bunk and the interpreter would squat on top of the third bedside table.  Then the doctor would ask a question, the interpreter would ask the patient, and then the answer was relayed back to the doctor.  It was certainly a very interesting and very different sick call than I'd ever done before or since.

 

Where did they get this interpreter from?

He was a Foreign Legionnaire.  A lot of the Legionnaires were ex German soldiers.

 

Besides malnutrition, what kinds of problems or diseases did these patients have?

Almost all of them had worms.  When I'd go down in the morning, they would bring their little boxes with stool samples to me to look at.  We had to make sure the heads were on the worms.  And after we had been underway for awhile, we found that almost all of them had body lice.

 

It must have been bad for all of you.

It was bad for one of my corpsmen.  He had long hair on his arms and he got some.  We all felt so bad.  But then when everybody found out that we had them in both wards, I went up to the wardroom for the movie one night and all the fellas said to me, "You can't sit here!  You can't sit here!  We don't want your lice."

 

How did you get rid of the lice?

I hate to tell you because we'd be arrested today.  We lined them up in the heads and sprayed them with DDT.

 

Well, that was very effective.

It was very effective but it wasn't good for them or us to inhale.  But we did it.  We didn't know any better.

 

What about the worms?  How did you deal with that problem?

We gave them medicine for that and had to check their stools all the time.  Most of them had Ascaris, a kind of worm that people got in those countries.

 

So these were the biggest problems then, the lice and the worms.

Yes.  And then when we first got underway the patients enjoyed getting in the shower.  We had to tie the showers off and only let them have a shower once or maybe twice a week because we were out of water.  And the other thing they all did was eat bread.  They ate so much bread that the bakery couldn't keep up with them.  And a lot of our food, of course, was foreign to them.

I imagine that because most of the North Africans were Muslim, there were probably restrictions on their diet as far as pork and things like that.

Yes.  The crew tried to accommodate them but at that point, most of them were so hungry that they didn't adhere to the restrictions.  They just ate whatever they could.

 

I know they all spoke French and Arabic and you didn't speak those languages.  Did you manage to communicate despite this restriction?

Yes.  They would come up and try to tell you about themselves and their families.  We managed to communicate with them because we were with them all day.

 

Did any of them talk about their experiences at Dienbienphu or any of that?

Very little.  Most of them wanted to talk about their families.

 

On that voyage, the ship went up through the Suez Canal.

It did, and we had a problem in the Suez Canal.  We had a wonderful skipper.  His name was CAPT Clark.  We got to the Canal and were to be there at a certain hour in the morning.  He waited and waited and they didn't respond to his messages so he figured that he was supposed to go ahead.  So he started in.  Well, I'll tell you.  That pilot came aboard buttoning his pants.  He pulled us all the way over to the side because there were ships coming out.  It happened so suddenly that we broke our anchor.

 

The ship probably pulled into the Great Bitter Lake at the south end of the Canal.

Yes.  We went into the lake while they repaired the anchor.  We were there for 2 days.  Once the pilot got us into the lake, he left.

 

Did another pilot come aboard to take you through the Canal?

Yes.  I remember that the Suez Canal was more interesting than the Panama Canal.  It was very pretty.

 

Once you transited the Canal you went on to Oran to drop off the North African soldiers.  Was there some kind of ceremony at Oran when that happened?

There was a band and they took the Foreign Legion patients off.  Most of them, at this point, were ambulatory.  Some of their wounds had healed and they were in much better shape than when they had come aboard.  We had a couple of hours liberty in Oran.

When we left Oran later that afternoon and got underway, one of the soldiers jumped overboard.  He had been drinking all afternoon in Oran.  He wrapped his wallet in plastic and decided to go back.

 

So he hadn't had enough liberty?

That's right.  They put the small boat in the water and the captain turned that ship around so quickly we almost crushed the sailor between the small boat and the ship.

 

The sailor must have been in some kind of trouble.

We had a court martial for him, which was the first court martial I had ever gone to.

 

Marseilles was the next stop.  What do you recall about that?

The Catholic chaplain had arranged for anyone who wanted that could afford to, to go up to Rome to see the pope.

 

Did you go?

Yes.  It was very, very exciting.  We saw Pius XII.  He had been ill so we couldn't have a private audience with him.  But we went by train and got to Rome in the morning.  The Catholic USO people there met us and took us where we could shower if we wanted.  Then they took us out to Castle Gondolfo, where he was for the summer.  He addressed the sailors from the Haven, who were on a mission of mercy.  It was probably one of the most interesting things in my life to see him.  He spoke perfect English and in seven other languages.

 

When you off-loaded the French soldiers in Marseilles, was there some kind of ceremony?

There was a ceremony.  It was an emotional homecoming for them.  In fact, one of them had died en route.  His sister had come aboard.  They off loaded the body in a casket with the French flag draped over it.  That was very, very emotional to watch.  Of course, at that time, we didn't know how many of our own would be going home that way from Vietnam.

 

Were there a lot of relatives waiting on the pier for their men?

There were a lot of people and we assumed that a lot of them were relatives because of the greeting they gave.

 

Where did the ship go after leaving Marseilles?

We picked up a few patients from the 6th Fleet.  One was a patient in a cast and someone else who needed to go home.  In those days, we weren't flying patients a lot.  We went around Gibraltar and then crossed the Atlantic before going through the Panama Canal.  We ended the trip at Long Beach having completed a round-the-world cruise.

 

It will be 50 years ago this year since you did all that.  Do you ever think about it anymore?

Well, I remember a lot about my shipmates.  They were a great bunch of people.  In fact, I've been going to some of their reunions.  Of course, the ship has been out of commission for so long and most of the people are getting pretty old.

 

Of course, you couldn't have imagined back in 1954 that 10 years later we would be involved in Vietnam just like the French were.

That's right.  And we'd suffer the same defeat they did.

 

When did you retire from the Navy?

I retired as a commander in 1977 after being on active duty for 26 years.

 

What do you do with your time now?

I do some volunteer work and I wonder when I ever had time to work because I'm so busy.

 

You live part of the year in Marshfield and where do you live the rest of the year?

In Cocoa Beach, FL.

 

Near the Kennedy Space Center.

Yes.  We sit on the porch and watch the Space Shuttles take off.

 

I've really enjoyed hearing your story about the Haven.  Thank you for sharing it with me.

I'm glad to be able to help you.