Draft Women?

Somewhere in France, after an evacuation-hospital outfit was forced to fall back before the fury of the German counterattack, Captain Jean Trucky of the Army Nurse Corps wrote:

"Our hospital commanding officer told me we must leave five nurses behind to care for the most serious cases and to assist in the operating room. For a moment I couldn't see how I could choose five when I myself was not allowed to remain. So I decided to ask for volunteers. ... I had a lump in my throat at the hands which went up before the words were scarcely out of my mouth, and at the cries of 'Please let me stay!' ... As our trucks pulled away at dusk, it was the saddest day in my 32 months in the Army."

Back home, Captain Trucky's sisters were not so eager. Few nurses raised their hands for any kind of military service.

P: Army Nurse Corps strength has been increased by only 2,000 officers since last spring.

P: Eleven general hospitals had to be sent overseas last month without any nurses. Standard nurse strength of eleven such hospitals is 913.

P: Besides the Army's immediate need of 10,000 nurses are the Veterans' Administration's need for 2.000, the Navy's estimate that it will need 4,000 by July.

P: In Army hospitals in the U.S., there is only one nurse to every 26 patients. At the Percy Jones General in Battle Creek, Mich., the ratio is one to 43.

P: In contrast is the situation in civilian hospitals, where the average ratio of nurses to patients is one to 12. Major General Norman T. Kirk, Surgeon General, said that one hospital in New York has 826 nurses to care for 743 patients.

The President, addressing the Congress (see The Presidency), added some other facts: "More than a thousand [Army] nurses are now hospitalized and part of this is due to overwork. . . . 280,000 registered nurses are now practicing in this country . . . 27,000 additional nurses could be made available to the armed forces without interfering too seriously with the needs of the civilian population." Mr. Roosevelt's proposal: draft nurses.

This proposal may well have shocked many a citizen: no other group in the U.S. had been so singled out in World War II. But soldiers would understand the justification: military necessity. Said Franklin Roosevelt: "The need is too pressing to await the outcome of further efforts at recruiting."

This file is automatically generated by a robot program, so reader's discretion is required.