Tribute to World War 2 Nurse

I recently visited the Portland, England D Day museum and the beaches of Normandy shortly before the 80th anniversary of the D-Day landing on June 6, 1944, that freed northern Europe from Hitler’s clutches. As a retired VA nurse, I fondly remember caring for so many World War 2 veterans. Most of them have now passed on including my father. May 24 would have been his 100th birthday.

I want to share with you the story I learned of 2nd Lt. Frances Y. Slanger. She was born in Lodz, Poland, in November 1913 to Regina and David, both of the Jewish faith, who had married just the year before. Frances’ birth name was Friedel Yachet Schlanger but her parents changed this when they moved to Roxburg, Massachusetts in 1920.

David, her father, sold fruit, and with her younger sister, Chaja, Frances had a loving but poor upbringing.

She enrolled in the Boston City Hospital School of Nursing, graduating in 1937, and enlisted in the US Army Nurse Corps in 1943 against her parent’s wishes. “Nice Jewish girls don’t join the Army” they advised.

In early March 1944, she sailed on the SS Pendleton to England and was assigned to the Second Platoon, 45th Field Hospital, and billeted temporarily at Upton-on-Severn, Worcestershire.

On the 10th of June 1944, just 4 days after D-Day, she waded ashore from a Landing Craft onto Utah beach with 3 other nurses. Immediately they began field nursing duties following the front line through France, Holland, and Belgium, often driving ambulances into combat zones to retrieve wounded men.

Described as a “shy, bookish woman with a sense of humor”, she was short and plump with brown hair and brown eyes. But what set her apart from the other nurses was the psychological support she gave her patients. Through her soft words, holding of hands, and, on occasion, singing to them, she gave wartorn young men (boys) the will to live.

On the evening of October 21, 1944, she was camped in the Field Hospital grounds at Elsenborn, Belgium, very close to the German border, when the Germans laid down an artillery barrage. Frances was hit in the stomach with shrapnel and died shortly thereafter. She was 30 years old and the only American nurse killed by enemy fire in the European Theatre of War.

Initially buried in France, in 1947 her remains were repatriated to the USA and she is buried in the Independent Pride of Boston Cemetery. 2nd Lt. Frances Slanger – Friedel Yachet Schlanger – was posthumously awarded the Purple Heart medal.

59,000 American nurses served in the Army Nurse Corps in the Second World War.