Anita Gaydos, Navy Nurse, World War II
Percy has been writing about some of the men who served in the Armed Services and we felt that it was important to remember the women who served, too. Anita Callens was one of the nurses who joined the Navy Nurse Corps the week after Pearl Harbor. She has allowed me to use her excellent notes about her service days.
Anita was raised outside of Anaheim, California. The family, her father and mother, one brother and three sisters, grew English walnuts on a 50 acre ranch. When she was eleven, her father died and her Belgium-born mother continued to raise her children on the ranch.
Anita graduated from Queen of Angels School of Nursing in August, 194l, and worked as a surgical nurse in Orange County. Then, December 7th, “The Day That Will Live in Infamy,” was upon the nation, and Anita enlisted. It took over 6 months to complete all the requirements, physicals and fittings for their uniforms before she could report to Corona Navy base. She says, “I joined the Navy to see the world and my first station was 28 miles from home.” The base, a converted country club and hotel was luxurious, but nurses still had to march in formation and learn about Navy protocol.
Their patients were from the Pacific war theater. She worked in the operating room and was part of a team that built new faces, did bone grafts, and nerve repairs—all followed by physical and occupational therapy. The medical staff was from the Mayo Clinic and every specialty was represented.
In September, 1943, Anita received orders to report to the hospital ship, Solace, which means comfort or consolation. The ship was a 410 foot long converted passenger liner with a cruising range of 7,000 miles and a speed of 18 knots. Fully outfitted as a modern hospital with a complete staff of physicians, dentists, nurses and hospital corpsmen, it was stationed at Pearl Harbor and was commended for its service to the wounded after the attack. It continued to serve in the Pacific until it returned to San Francisco with a load of wounded heroes. After three days in port, all of the nurses aboard except the chief nurse were replaced and Anita was among the fresh crew that reported for duty.
The new nurses were told to salute the flag and then request the Officer of the Deck for permission to come on board. This they did, and later discovered to their horror that they had saluted the bow of the ship, when the flag was flying from the stern. They were quickly underway for battleship destinations in the Pacific.
There were 13 nurses aboard, 17 doctors, and pharmacists, corpsmen , all the line officers and the crew. The ship could accommodate 500 patients and sometimes it was necessary to place another 200 on the deck. Anita worked in the operating room on an upper deck that had windows, not portholes, and because of this good light, the burn patients were treated there.
All of the ship was painted white with a green band above the water line. A large red cross was painted on each side. It traveled fully lighted at night which was always quite a shock to the troops when it neared a convoy.
The Solace was the first Navy hospital ship ordered to enter a combat region for evacuation of fresh casualties. This lonely, white, unarmed hospital ship darted in and out of beaches like Apamama Atoll, Tarawa, and Eniwetok of the Marshal Islands, evacuating wounded.
After a week under way, they received their first patients from the battle of Tarawa. The Marines had to leave their landing crafts and wade ashore where the Japanese were firmly entrenched. Because of this, many, many came aboard with severe chest wounds. A triage unit was on deck as the patients were brought in on landing crafts. As each patient was brought aboard, he was assessed and tagged as to which ward he was to be sent to, or which operating room. They operated around the clock. Nurses had twelve hour shifts with four hours rest in between. As soon as the ship had taken all it could hold, it steamed out to the nearest hospital with beds available.
When they were in area like Saipan, and they were taking patients right from the battle area, the ship was in blackout. They were between the battleships which were firing over their heads toward the shore. Shelling continued all night and when each volley was fired, reverberations could be felt on board the ship. The records show that in June and July of 1944, the Solace evacuated 1335 casualties to base hospitals in the Solomons and over a thousand more during the battle of Guam.
Their fireworks for the fourth of July were the bombs bursting around them. Flames from fuel storage area on Guam were so high that those stationed on board ship couldn’t see the top of them.
When their patients came aboard right from the field, they learned early to sort through their pockets before tossing their clothes to be burned after a grenade exploded in their incinerator. There were times when the ship was loaded in four or five hours. Anita says, “We were exhausted, so tired we could not think of the horrors we saw and this was a good thing.” They would operate, dress wounds, and give antibiotics. They did not have penicillin when they first went on board, and when they did get it, it was in short supply. There was plasma aboard and the crew would give blood. Many times when they discharged patients to hospitals on land, marines and sailors would come aboard to donate blood so that they would have a supply for the next shipload of patients. To be continued next week.
Mary