2nd Lt. Suella Bernard smiles and shakes hands with Lt. Foster, head nurse, while 2nd Lt. Marijean Brown of Columbus, Ohio, looks on. Nurses Brown and Bernard were two of the five nurses who brought poppies together with wounded from a beach head in Normandy. The five were first to go on this Ninth Air Force Evacuation mission, and first to return with wounded to England. (U.S. Air Force, National Archives)
This month of the 80th Anniversary of D-Day, Stars and Stripes is republishing a number of articles as reported by its staff writers at the time. This article first appeared in the Stars and Stripes London edition June 12, 1944. It is republished unedited in its original form.
A NINTH TROOP CARRIED COMMAND BASE, Britain, June 11 — Five U.S. Army nurses Saturday [June 10, 1944] became the first Allied women to land in France when they assisted in evacuating by air 14 stretcher cases, including seven Nazis and a Jap, from the Cherbourg peninsula.
While shells bursts near the landing strip and P51 Mustangs circled overhead to war off enemy aircraft, the nurses, a doctor and six enlisted medical technicians formed the first Ninth Air Force evacuation unit to land in France.
The nurses were 2/Lts. Marijean Brown, of Columbus, Ohio; Suella Bernard, of Waynesville, Ohio; Eleanor A. Geovanelle, of Kersey, Pa.; Mary E. Young, of St. Petersburg, Fla.; and Helen Melissa Clark, of Cornwall, Conn.
The first group of casualties to be flown to Britan were the seven prisoners, one a Luftwaffe officers and a Japanese in a German Army uniform, six American soldiers ranking from lieutenant colonel to private, and a Frenchmen who fought with the underground.
The C47 skytrains — first Allied aircraft to make scheduled landings on the Continent — took off at 8:49 AM Saturday [June 10, 1944], landed on hard dirt strips in a Cherbourg peninsula beachhead, and were back in Britain at 1:10 PM with their cargoes of wounded.
Roses lie in sand at Omaha Beach in Ste-Laurent-sur-Mer, France, to remember the women who served during the D-Day invasions during the 70th D-Day anniversary commemorations June 7, 2014. (Joshua L. DeMotts/Stars and Stripes)
The aircraft were on French soil for about an hour and a half while medical personnel rushed stretcher cases an eight of a mile from the field hospital to the landing strip.
The landing field, 3,600 feet by 200 feet, had been hurriedly constructed by Ninth Air Force engineer units, which arrived on the beachhead Wednesday [June 7, 1944]. Bulldozers already were at work on new strips when the hospital planes arrived Saturday.
The flight nurses were under the command of Capt. Thomas L. Phillips Jr., of Kuttawa, Ky., only medical officer to make the trip.
“That heavy fighter escort certainly looked good,” S/Sgt. Wilfred C. Brand, of Chicago, one of the technicians, said upon his return.
The other technicians were S/Sgts George L. Snook, of Los Angeles; James M. Gillespie, of Elizabeth, N.J.; Clarence Tracy, of Drumont, N.J.; Louis Bergantino, of Chicago, and Eugene Boyles, of Bluefield, W.Va.
2/lt. Glenn E. Linder, of Ft. Lupton, Colo., piloted the plane.
Find Stars and Stripes’ reports on the 80th Anniversary of D-Day here:
https://www.stripes.com/special-reports/featured/d-day/
https://europe.stripes.com/d-day/
Looking for more of Stars and Stripes’ historic D-Day and World War II coverage? Subscribe to Stars and Stripes’ historic newspaper archive! We have digitized our 1948-1999 European and Pacific editions, as well as several of our WWII editions and made them available online through https://starsandstripes.newspaperarchive.com/
