Issue link: https://digital.copcomm.com/i/1241832
Working Nurse l WorkingNurse.com 21 April 27–June 15, 2020 A HOSPITAL AT SEA "MY POOR SHINS STILL BEAR WITNESS" ✚ Twelve Navy nurses were assigned to the ship at any given time. Each headed a department like surgery, isolation or burns. The nurses were treated as commissioned officers, each starting with the "relative rank" of ensign. They supervised a staff of enlisted corpsmen, some of whom the nurses trained to serve as medics for landing forces. Nurses also served in a Red Cross role, helping the sick and wounded with more personal issues. Nurses' living quarters were on Deck 6, where pairs of nurses shared cozy double staterooms with bunk beds. The nurses had a separate mess (with surprisingly good food), their own stewards and even their own sun deck. As Navy Nurse Corps Superintendent Lenah S. Higbee noted in 1921, hospital nurses needed not only good clinical skills, but also "a basic optimism and … a spirit of cooperation." Those were not always easy to maintain throughout a full 18-month cruise. Dexterity was another important attribute. Just moving around the ship without bruises took practice. "I must always remember to step up," wrote the anonymous nurse in 1923. "[T]hat I forgot many times, my poor shins still bear witness, for at every doorway and at the top of every ladder is a portion of the bulkhead over which one must step or bear the consequences." BY 1941, USS RELIEF was back in Norfolk, Va., providing med- ical care to soldiers, sailors and civilians injured in hostile Atlantic waters. When the Japanese attacked Pearl Harbor that December, Relief was docked in Newfoundland. The ship quickly deployed to the Pacific Fleet, arriving in New Caledonia in April 1942. The fight to reverse Japanese territorial gains was particularly brutal. Relief was kept busy ferrying soldiers, marines and sailors from holding stations to better medical facilities in other parts of the Pacific. She treated not only servicemen wounded in combat, but also those suffering from dysentery, malaria and dengue fever, all of which plagued troops in the Pacific Theater from the very beginning of the conflict. Battlefield casualties were remarkably varied and often grue- some. Bomb bursts and mortar fire left survivors with flash burns, gaping chest wounds and massive hemorrhages. Broken limbs and amputations were frequent occurrences, as was the psycho- logical trauma associated with combat, including PTSD (then commonly known as "shell shock"). Because the fighting in the Pacific took place on islands, the first step for most wounded was to somehow make it to the beach. Medics went ashore with landing forces and cared for the wound- ed inland at aid stations or on the beaches until field hospitals could be set up or the wounded moved to the next level of care. The same landing craft that deployed combatants to the beach often carried the wounded on the trip back. "KAMARETTA RED" ✚ The work was hard and frequently dangerous. Although attacking a hospital ship is a war crime, not all belligerents respect those rules, and torpedoes, bombs and shells don't dis- criminate. Hospital ships are unarmed and often travel alone, leaving them vulnerable. During its wartime service, Relief endured only minor strafing damage, with no casualties, but other hospital ships suffered direct hits. In 1945, Relief's sister ship, USS Comfort [not to be confused with the modern ship of the same name], was hit by a Japanese kamikaze pilot. When fighting began, Relief usually remained well to the rear — often in international waters, where she could maintain the constant illumination required by international law without endangering other naval vessels. Only when combat abated would Relief move closer to shore. Even from the rear, those aboard ship could hear the bombard- ment and watch aircraft of both sides fighting overhead. "When we stopped retiring out to sea at night all lit up, we could stay where we were anchored, ready to pick up casualties," recalled Capt. Ann Bernatitus, RN, in an oral history she recorded with a his- torian from Ohio State University in 1994. "Every time the kamikazes would come, we would get the alarm over the loudspeak- er. They would say, 'Kamaretta red — smoke boat, make smoke.'" THE HAGUE CONVENTION AND HOSPITAL SHIPS L ike the better-known Geneva Convention, the Hague Convention was an international accord establishing rules for modern warfare. The articles of the 1907 convention on maritime warfare included a series of regulations for hospital ships. Those articles required that a hospital ship be clearly marked and lighted at all times. Using a hos- pital ship for any military purpose other than treating or transporting the sick and wounded — particularly "for the pur- pose of injuring the enemy" — was strictly forbidden. Article 4 also prohibited using a hospital ship to "hamper the movements of the combatants" and required that a hospital ship "afford relief and assistance to the wounded, sick and shipwrecked … without distinction of nationality." The convention forbade attacking any hospital ship that obeyed these rules. Belligerents were free to search, inspect or detain a hospital ship and could capture or arrest its patients, but Article 10 prohibited taking the hospital staff as prisoners of war or confiscating their personal property.