Veterans Are Recognized

As Veteran’s Day approaches, we will again take time to thank our veterans for their service and sacrifices on this, the sixty-first anniversary of the end of World War II.

While we will pay tribute to all veterans, at this particular time we are reminded of the women who served in the military during the most violent armed conflict in the history of the world.

More than 59,000 American Nurses served in the military and the Army Nurse Corps during WWII.
One of those great American women was Wynette Williamson of Shady Dale.

Mrs. Williamson (Edwards at the time) graduated from Monticello High School in 1941. She was 17 at the time when HS only went through 11 grades.
In August, 1943, Mrs Williamson entered nurse’s training at Georgia Baptist Hospital in Atlanta, just four months prior to the Japanese attack on Pearl Harbor.

“We had just returned from church that day in December when we heard about Pearl Harbor on the radio,” Mrs. Williamson said. “We were required to go to church just like we were required to go to class at the Georgia Baptist Nursing School.”

There were less than 1,000 on the rolls of the Army Nurse Corps at the time, but six months later, to help fill the tremendous need for nurses, the Nurse’s Cadet Corps (NCC) was formed.

Mrs. Williamson became one of the original members of the NCC. “We weren’t officially assigned to any particular branch of the service to begin with,” she said. “However, upon graduation we were commissioned as an officer, and our uniforms were gray.

“The Red Cross administered the NCC. They would contact the student nurses and inform them of their draft status and where they would be needed and assigned to when they graduated. Once an assignment was received you were frozen in that position until the cessation of hostilities.

“I was assigned to the NCC as an instructor and put in charge of the newborn nursery. My service was taking care of the soldier’s babies.

“We were in downtown Atlanta outside the Paramount Theatre when we heard the news that the war was over. Somebody had a radio and when the announcement was made everybody began throwing their hats in the air and yelling. I just can’t remember the name of the movie playing at the Paramount that day, but I knew I could finally move on because our release from services was effective when the treaty was signed in the Pacific.”
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Often ignored by history is the story of the women prisoners of war taken captive during WWII. Sixty-seven Army nurses and 16 Navy nurses spent three years as prisoners of the Japanese. Many were captured when Corregidor fell in 1942 and were subsequently transported to the Santo Tomas Internment camp in Manila, in the Philippines.

Santo Tomas was not liberated until February, 1945. Five Navy nurses were captured on Guam and interned in a military prison in Japan.

Nurses received 1,619 medals, citations, and commendations during the war, reflecting the courage and dedication of all who served. Sixteen medals were awarded posthumously to nurses who died as a result of enemy fire.

Thirteen flight nurses died in aircraft crashes while on duty.

Sixteen women received the Purple Heart, awarded to soldiers injured due to enemy fire. The Bronze Star was awarded to 565 women for meritorious service overseas. Over 700 women received medals and citations at the end of the war.

During WWII a young woman from Baltimore, Virginia Hall, went to work for the French as an agent and was so successful that the Nazis began an all out hunt for her. In the winter of 1941, just before the Nazis arrested her, she escaped on foot over the Pyrenees Mountains into Spain.

This was no easy task since Ms. Hall had a wooden leg. Not content to rest she trained as a radio operator and then transferred to America’s OSS.
In November 1943, disguised as an elderly milk maid, she returned to France and resumed her espionage duties.

The Gestapo circulated a wanted poster for “the woman with a limp,” but Ms. Hall painstakingly taught herself to walk without a limp. She collected and sent invaluable intelligence and coordinated air drops in support of D-Day.

After the war, Ms. Hall was awarded America’s Distinguished Service Cross and continued to work for the OSS, and later the CIA until her retirement in 1966.