Interview of Laura Georgina Frost Smith 
on her service as an Army nurse during WWI


My name is Laura Smith and I’m a member of the Santa Clara Unit of the WOSL.  They have asked me to make a tape about my experiences in the First World War as an army nurse.  I’ve written a book for my grandchildren called Grandmother’s Story, so I’ll use some part of that for this tape.  The war had been going on in Europe since 1914, and the Germans were getting nearer and nearer to Paris.  My graduation as a nurse in Massachusetts Homeopathic Hospital in Boston almost coincided with our declaration of war, April 6, 1917.  June 5 was fixed as registration day under the draft.  So many young men rushed off to offer their services, it was difficult for the regular army officers to handle them all.  At least one German submarine was off the Atlantic Coast all the time.  The largest number was in August when they were active in attacking coast [inaudible 01:02] vessels.  The Lusitania was sunk on May 13.  Five submarines sunk in all, about 110,000 tons of shipping according to the U.S. Official Picture of WWI.  The greatest loss was the San Diego off Fire Island, July 19, 1918.  All the crew were saved, but six were lost and six injured.  This was the same week we were crossing the Atlantic in a convoy.   

The Red Cross organized Base 44 from our hospital, and most of my class signed up for it.  There were 100 nurses chosen from a large number volunteering.  Also, 250 men from other departments and 32 doctors. A hundred-bed hospital was planned.  We all practiced marching down Commonwealth Avenue in Boston for the New York Parade where we marched for a bond drive.  It was 20 blocks long.  Finally, we were issued our uniforms and given our shots.  The army took us over then, and I had an olive drab footlocker to put my clothes in.  We all dressed in our navy blue ankle-length uniforms with a blue star sailor hat and high boots, also issued a felt hat and trench coat for winter.  They herded us into the cemetery of Old Trinity Church in Boston to take our pictures.  We were a lugubrious lot.  I took the oath on February 15, 1918, and was sent with the contingent to Fort Oglethorpe, Georgia.  I was put in the black medical ward, and the work was not as difficult as my private duty had been, and we had more time off.  In 1918, blacks and whites were kept separate in the South, even when sick in a hospital.  White orderlies were supposed to give their personal care to the men, but when one refused to give an enema to a black man, I was so angry, I put up a screen and took care of the patient myself.

Although we were under army regulations and were allowed insurance, we did not have the pay or any rank that the men had.  Also, terrible lies were told about the nurses having to be sent home because of pregnancy.  We laughed it off, but during World War – the Second World War, it was so vicious there had to be an inspection and an investigation for it was hurting the recruiting of the WACs who were needed so badly.  They were all trained for secretaries and telephone operators [where 03:35] it took months to train them in.  At first it was thought to be Nazi propaganda, but the sad discovery was the rumor being spread by the men who resented the women [inaudible 03:48].  They thought they would be shipped overseas as soon as enough women could be recruited.  

We used to have good times on our hours off.  Lookout Mountain was one of the places we went on picnics.  It was a grand view, and you could see the Tennessee River winding through the country below.  I also had a chance to ride horseback.  I hadn’t brought my riding pants so borrowed a pair of olive drab from one of the enlisted men.  The next day, a fr-, – it was on the bulletin board, nurses will not be allowed to wear any part of a soldier’s uniform­­.  One day when I had time to ride with a soldier – Soldier [inaudible 04:29] this time, I was invited somewhere else.  I called Evelyn Petrie, who liked horses.  She took the horse I was supposed to have that day, and it ran away with her.  Another horseman trying to save her, rode straight onto her horse stopping her so abruptly she was thrown and her neck broken. I was shaken up when I heard what had happened.  Some of the new recruits had never been more than a mile away from their [inaudible 04:55] home, and the move was too much for them.  I had been transferred to help in the psychiatric ward.  The first day on duty, when I entered the room, I found everyone cringing in corners or under beds.  A young fellow was brandishing a straight razor.  I didn’t know what was happen…  

We had waited so long, we thought we would never get overseas, but finally, our orders came to leave Fort Oglethorpe, Georgia, June 17, 1918, and report to the Nurses Mobilization Station in Hoboken, New York.  On June 18, we were quartered in the Holly Hotel in New York.  My sister came to see me, and since it was near my birthday, mother had made me a cake and we had a party in my room.  After being in New York about a month, we left July 14 on the troop ship, the Northland.  It took us about 18 days to get to Liverpool for we sailed right up to Halifax, Nova Scotia where the convoy was formed.  There were many troop ships with the destroyers and battleships to protect us.  I never knew how many there were but guessed about 18.  I learned from reading Admiral Sims’ Victory at Sea that troops had been going over since May 1917, and in July 1918, we part of 300,000 that went over that month.  General Pershing had been there a month getting things organized.  I had packed my little box camera and material for developing.  We were told not to throw anything overboard as any floating object would reveal our course to any lurking submarine.  Lookouts were posted around all the decks for 24 hours.  We watched – to watch – and for the telltale periscopes.  No sonar system then.  

The convoy arrived in Liverpool about August 1.  The next day, a group of volunteers took us to see Stonehenge.  It was a quiet and beautiful, peaceful place.  The next night, we crossed the channel with no light shining anywhere.  I slept well in a little hammock and didn’t worry even though I didn’t know then that the Americans had laid 56, 611 mines in the North Sea and the British 13,552 at the cost of $40 million.  With the mines blocking the German submarines in the north and all the sub chasers in the Atlantic, 20,079,000 men and women were convoyed to England, and not a ship was lost.  We landed in Le Havre, France, in the early morning, and a notice was sent to our friends that we had arrived safely.  The next day, we were sent on to Paris, and on August 4, I was put on duty in Evacuation Hospital No. 7 [inaudible 07:51] Souilly District.  If there hadn’t been the amputation ward, it might not have been such a shock and been so devastating, but helping dress those quivering stumps and hearing the laughter and jokes in spite of their misfortune was too much for me, and I cried almost all day.  I thought they had made a mistake in putting us through that experience so soon, but maybe it was best and I could stand anything after that miserable week.  

We were all lined up one morning, all 12 of us were [cut off 08:22] off right between Marion and myself.  We called ourselves The Dirty Dozen after that.  Marion went to Pougues-les-Eaux with Base 44 and lived in a hotel for the duration.  [Cooper 08:35] and I became buddies and went to Evacuation No. 5 where we were equipped with a helmet, gasmask, mess kit, and canteens.  While we were being conveyed across the Atlantic and making our way to France, the Americans were planning their first big offensive in trying to turn the Germans back at Belleau Woods in their advance on Paris.  But the fighting was intense, and the French general gave the order for the marines to retreat.  No one knows how many – no one knows now who took the order, but the officers receiving it said, “Hell no, we just got here.”  It was then the initiative was snatched from the Germans who were at Château-Thierry and nearing Paris.  It never ended until November 11, 1918.  

It was here that we 12 came into the picture and set up a mobile tent hospital with about 30 other nurses.  We were camped at what had been a town near Château-Thierry on the River Marne.  The nurses traveling with the – was about, uh, 12 in an ambulance, had a red cross painted on the roof.  A seat made of planks was on each side.  In spite of all the equipment and all the personnel on the move, we never saw any other truck or car on the way.  They were all stretched out some distance apart so that some enemy plane coming over would not spot any unusual troop movement.  When we were finally set up and the wounded began to come in, the stretchers were laid on the ground and the corpsmen stripped’m of their muddy clothes and deloused them.  Those that could stand it were given a shower before we received them in the operating tent.  I did find one cooty on me once.  Most of my work was in the operating tent, and I can still hear the sound of a leg being sawed off.  I remember the boy who had one side of his face blown off asking me, “Do I look bad?”  We worked 8 hours on and 8 hours around the clock.  By the time we got up and back into bed, it was more like 6 hours off in the 24.  

The patients were given only necessary operations and were sent back to the base hospital as soon as they could be moved or when a train was available.  The trains were setup to hold the stretchers three deep and side by side the whole lengths of the car.  It was a long way back to the base on a jolting train, but it was the first leg of their journey home for some.  It was unbelievable what the engineers did in replacing tracks that had been bombed out and getting trains running.  Twenty thousand cars and 1,500 locomotives were shipped to France for the railroad troops.  The cost of each engine was $45,000.  Our next move was to Villers-Cotterêts where we were set up in a wheat field.  The wheat was still in stacks, and the corpsmen all moved in and the huge space was all cleaned in a few minutes.  I think this was called a [inaudible 11:49] front.  The marines had been fighting here since July 18, 1918, but were pushing the line back when we arrived in August.  The 26th or “Yankee” Division had been on the line for 8 days and nights and lost 500 men.  They were relieved by the 42nd and the 32nd, the Wisconsin Division.  We always asked the patients what division they were in but never realized how many were being sent up to the front to live sometimes for weeks in the muddy trenches.  

I had collected the insignia of dif-, of different ones and divisions, but when my bag was lost on one of our moves, everything went, including my diary and some films that I had developed.  Our tents were large and our locker fitted under the cot with a box between to keep our things in.  A cone-shaped stove was in the middle of the tent called a Sibley.  It took off some of the chill.  One of the enlisted men had the chore of keeping it stocked with coal or something that looked like coal.  A wooden floor kept us out of the mud for it rained a lot and there were many tramping feet.  We had to walk on slippery duckboards everywhere.  The operating tents were covered with khaki blankets to keep the light from showing at night and we couldn’t have any light showing in our tent.  That made it difficult to find our way back and crawl into bed.  When she came off duty, one used to make herself – one nurse used to make herself a cup of tea on her little alcohol lamp.  She kept a small pail of water under her cot.  Also one in case she had to get up in the night.  One late night, we were awakened by her cussing.  She had mistakenly used the wrong bucket for her tea. 

I don’t remember much about our menu or the mess as we called it.  We joked about the Santa Clara Prunes.  Little did I know that someday I would be living in Santa Clara Valley.  One dish comes to mind, a cabbage leaf wrapped around a spoonful of canned bully.  The cook was really proud of that one.  A basin and pitcher for hot water that we heated over a bonfire in a big can was used for our washing and bathing when a big push was over.  The only real bath we had was when we were taken back to R&R.  Sometimes it was a French bath and they lined the tub with a sheet [inaudible 14:2] a place for us to have a tub bath.  Sometimes we were invited to dances.  The English and the French could go home for rest, but it was too far for the Americans so recreation was planned in plays and dances.  I put on a show for our own group one time.  I taught Maude, who was only a little over 4’ tall, to put on gloves and have a make-believe fight with Marion Thomas, who was almost 6’.  One of the medics acted as referee and it was quite a boxing match.  Why, of course, Maude knocked Thomas down.  

I had never learned to dance and when a soldier came and asked me, I said, “I can’t dance,” but he grabbed me and said, “You’ll dance with me.”  Sure enough, that was my first lesion.  I learned during the evening that he was a drummer in the band.  I guess he thought if he could make a drum keep time, he could make me dance.  I still have an invitation to the 39th Engineers that they sent me so long ago.  I think this is the one where they asked me to dance with a French general sine I spoke a little French.  He never said a word, and he was a terrible dancer.  Afterward, I hid in back of the barracks so I wouldn’t have to dance with him again.  I think his name was Pétain.  When we were being moved to another front, we often stopped at interesting places along the way.  We visited some of the Napoleon castles, Pierrefonds was one, and Compiègne was being renovated where it had been bombed.  One time we stopped at the entrance to Verdun Citadel where the French held out for so long.  It is a huge underground fortress, and the last shot of the German army was fired at at November 11, 1918.  In spite of all the sandbags around the Reims Cathedral, it was pretty well shot up but nothing compared to the devastation we saw later in Belgium.  

Our next move was to the Meuse-Argonne Sector.  I didn’t know that at that the time.  Our movements were kept very secret, and we were never told a name of the town where we were going to set up our camp.  France was France, just somewhere without any geographic distinction.  The Americans launched their attack on the Meuse-Argonne front the 26th of September at 5:30 a.m.  The German soldiers had been living on the land for four years, and they had built some clever housing for themselves, even with running water and toilets.  Reims was taken that first day of fighting.  The German characters were so great they weren’t published at home.  

…127 years before, Louis XII and Marie Antoinette were captured here and turned back to Paris and the guillotine.  By October, the strengths of the First Army, including the French, was one million men.  There was a rolling artillery barrage, and the infantry advanced.  On October 2, the Second Army was created, and the wounded were pouring in from the 28th and 35th Divisions.  

I remember very little of the setup of our hospital there.  Flu was beginning to take its toll along with the other causalities.  I came in one day and found mys-, – I came to one day and found myself in bed in a little tent all by myself.  I hadn’t seen a bed before as all our patients were put on army cots and that’s what we slept on too.  The head nurse took care of me and I’m sure she saved my life.  Although I was isolated, my friends, Maude, Margaret, and Emma came to the little opaque window and sang silly songs to me.  That helped me to get well, and after a few weeks, I was up and back on duty again.  This was October 1918 when the Americans were fighting the greatest battle in the American history.  But General Foch called upon General Pershing to assist the French Army in Belgium.  General Pershing complied and sent the 37th and the 91st Divisions to the Front.  They entered the fighting October 30 and shared the German offensive for the French in Flanders until the Armistice.  There were 4,000 causalities, and I don’t know how many came through Evacuation No. 5; maybe they all did.  

So we packed up and moved again, this time by train.  The men were riding in boxcars that had 40 Hommes/8 Chevaux printed on their sides.  We were six nurses in one small compartment and on several trains.  When it came night, we put all our luggage on the floor and laid on them, head to foot, all of our heads on one side and our feet across on the other.  We always brought along some food on our travels, and one day, I tried to heat a can of soup on my stern stove.  Just then, the train was shunted and everything tipped over, including the burning alcohol from the stove.  There was a nice little stream of fire running down the train corridor but I soon stomped it out.  So much for army shoes.  We were fortunate to have a toilet on board, but the men stopped along the way at different sidings.  Lieutenant Evans, one of our nice doctors, was caught with his pants down when the train started up unexpectedly.  He usually – he really got an ovation from the crowd as he scrambled aboard clutching his clothing.  We made fun out of every little incident and were hilarious at times.  

We sang all the songs written for the times, Over There, Pack Up Your Troubles in Your Old Kit Bag, Keep the Home Fires Burning, There’s a Long Long Trail A-Winding, and The Rose of No Man’s Land sung in our own way:  “ ‘Neath the war’s red curse stands a cross red nurse, she’s the rose of no man’s land.”  We finally arrived in what had been a village in Belgium.  The name Staden was still on one of the ruined walls.  All our equipment was set up, and we didn’t move again until after the Armistice on November 11, 1918.  Our own supplies seemed large but you can imagine the volume of work performed by the SOS. if you knew that each combat division of 28,000 men required 25 French carloads of supplies every day and they had to get everything to 2 million men.  The average shipment of supplies approximated 1 million tons a month.  

While waiting for the causalities to come in, we discovered lots of interesting things to do: Visited the bombed-out homes, pushed ourselves on the little flatcars of the Narraguagus Railroad.  It had been used to bring ammunition up to the front line.  Collected German helmets and other souvenirs.  I found a large [inaudible 21:04] that was to carry a German [howitzer 21:08] shell and it got home – I got it home by packing it with my clothes in my sleeping bag.  It made a fat-looking bag, but no one noticed.  To think I’m ashamed of bringing it home with a U.S. 40 automatic.  One of the corpsmen knew he couldn’t get away with it and asked me to take it for him.  So to be nice to him, I agreed.  We soon learned the sound of the German Fokker plane.  I didn’t have the – it didn’t have the same droning sound of the allied ones, and we were hardly – waited for the sound of the alarm to take cover and go into an [arbory 21:46] for safety.  It seemed cruel to leave the bed patients but reasonable that someone should be left to take care of them in case the hospital was bombed.  

One of the ambulances was returning to the Front one morning.  Margaret and I asked the driver if he would take us up there.  It was about an hour’s ride over muddy, bumpy roads.  When we arrived at the field hospital, one of the officers balled us out and said, “You girls better get out of here.  Do you see that hill over there?  It was shelled this morning.”  He was still shaking.  I got some pictures of the empty trenches before leaving.  The Germans were getting desperate now and used more and more mustard gas.  Our casualties were 20 and 30 percent gas.  It, it made huge blisters on their skin and they suffered painfully.  Even though they were cleaned, I sometimes got a whiff of the stuff.  Margaret and I became very fond of one of our patients.  We kept him several days trying to get him to talk.  He was only about 18 years old and had a bullet hole right in his – middle of his forehead.  All he would say was [inaudible 22:56] but he wasn’t paralyzed.  When he wanted something, we would keep asking him until we hit the right thing, and he would nod his head.  One day, Margaret sang Over There to him, and he followed along saying all the words.  That was a great day for us.  When he was finally evacuated, we went to the train with him and sat by his [inaudible 23:18] until the train pulled out.  

At the end of one ward, there were several wounded German prisoners, young, towheaded, blue-eyed boys.  A guard stood over them with a US .45.  Having American and German patients together brought home the fact of how stupid war could be.  Why can’t they settle things in some civilized way?  Jesus taught us to love one another, maybe it will take another four-letter word to be the answer: fear.  About November 7, we began to hear rumors that an armistice was being planned.  We didn’t believe it for we still heard the guns and the wounded were still coming in.  Finally one day, the 11th of November, everything became quiet about 11 a.m., and you wondered what was different.  There wasn’t a sound for there were no birds to sing or cows to moo.  We still couldn’t believe it possible as the wounded were still coming in by the [inaudible 24:15].  A group of French trumpeters came and played for us in the afternoon, and that was our only celebration.  

Finally, all our patients were moved back to the base hospital, and Margaret and I thought we would go to Bruges if we could find a train.  We walked to a siding where a train was sitting with its engine puffing.  It was headed in the right direction, but it was a freight and there were no passenger cars.  That didn’t faze us.  A big Pierce-Arrow truck was on a flatcar, so we climbed aboard and settled down in the front seat to ride in luxury to Bruges.  Some stores had been opened although they showed signs of having been bombed.  I bought some plates.  One said in Flemish, The Clock Ticks Nowhere Else as It Does at Home.  The other is a blue Delft.  I still have them.  We visited a little corner shop where they were making pillow lace just as if there had never been a war.  I bought a few things, including a table runner that is wearing out after 60 years of use.  My French was still use – of a – to us here and after having lunch in a little Belgium bistro, we bought a ticket for a train ride back to Staden. We had no idea where to get off and it was so dark, we couldn’t recognize anything, but a kind French soldier told us when we got to our destination.  Then we found our way back to camp.  

Evacuation 5 was about to be disbanded, but it took a while to load everything and get us all reassigned.  Colonel Leary, who was our commanding officer, asked four of us if we would like to drive to Ypres.  This was a great adventure.  Ypres is a city that had been bombarded for four years.  It was about 20 miles away.  We set out one morning in a touring car with a driver.  The devastation along the way was unbelievable.  Houses just a pile of rubble, dead cows in the fields, bloated bodies of horses along the muddy roads where rats were scurrying out of the way.  

We arrived about lunchtime, and our English officer greeted us as mayor of the city.  He invited us to his quarters for tea.  We couldn’t imagine where he could live in that ruin but were escorted along a boardwalk down into a basement that was unique in the way it was furnished, even had a carpet on the floor.  His orderly brought us tea and biscuits, which was to be our only meal that day.  The officer took us around and told us what the different buildings had been.  I took several pictures of what had been the cathedral, then it began to rain and I placed my little No. 2 Brownie on a wheelbarrow and took a time exposure of a tower, all that was left of Cloth Hall.  The developed picture was on a slant.  Life magazine had a – printed one of the same tower before it – last bombardment, saying it was a cathedral.  I was always going to correct them but never did.  

We started to drive back in the late afternoon, but partway home, the car stopped.  Our driver wasn’t a mechanic, so the five of us started to walk.  I felt very sorry for the driver.  Colonel Leary told him he would send a car for him in the morning, but I shivered at the thought of that poor kid sitting there all night among the dead horses and the rats.  After walking for hours in the dark, we only had a flash ­ ­­– one flashlight – no one was sure of the way.  Luckily, we saw a light in the [shelter 27:41] and a Belgium soldier came along way with us to point out the right road to take.  We trudged on all night until 4:00 in the morning.  We were happy to see our tents, and I fell into bed.  All I could think of how lucky we were to have been with a commanding officer; coming home at that hour in the morning would’ve been a disaster.   Winter was still on its way, and the rain with it.  Since the troops were sent back from what had been the Front, we were sent back too and set up a smaller hospital in what had been a hotel at Malo-les-Bains near Dunkirk.  It was good to be in a building at last.  The patients were mostly flu and pneumonia.  

On our hours off, we would ­– which were 8 in the 24 now, we walked on the beaches.  Huge mines had washed up on the shore, and at Christmas, the men put on a boxing match.  We tried to cheer the patients up on Christmas Day by singing carols, but some tears we saw made it doubtful if we succeeded.  The U.S. Naval Air Station was in Dunkirk, and the officers invited us to dance there.  On our last day, they gave us a farewell party at the casino in Malo-les-Bains.  It took a long time to send us all home as there weren’t enough ships for so many people.  The nurses were sent to Tulle to Base 82, and I went on duty in the [inaudible 29:04] Clinic.  Walking by a bed in a ward one day, I happened to look down, and under the bed on the floor was a [cone 29:10] of clotted blood.  I pulled down the clothes and took one look.  The hemorrhage was leaking right through the mattress.  He was rushed to the operating room and given a transfusion.  

Travel was – Tulle was so near Paris, Margaret and I went there every chance we got, once without leave.  We got away with it because, as one MP said, “There was no jail available.”   A troop train loaded with returning soldiers heard our rather flippant conversation with the officer and egged us on.  We overstayed our leave one night too so we could go to the opera.  It was Aida and well worth the balling out we got.  The only tickets available were from a scalper, and we paid nearly a month’s wages for them.  Visiting the Louvre was wonderful.  To really see the Mona Lisa, she looked so small, and to stand before the Venus de Milo, it was so huge, was a great experience.  The Eiffel Tower was closed, but I don’t like heights anyway.  On the way to Tulle, we stopped at Base 44, the Nièvre Hospital Center in Nièvre, France.  It seemed we were getting nearer and nearer to the coast, yet they managed to put us to work as we moved along.  It was on January 29 we found ourselves in Tulle, and on my record, I find I was given leave on March 1, 1919, for 7 days.  

The traveling Margaret and I did certainly did took more than a week, and I find I returned from leave on March 15.  A group of us visited Coblenz and took a ride down the Rhine River passing many old castles and a huge escarpment, the Lorelei of legend.  It was quite a sight to see the American flag flying from Ehrenbreitstein, the great impregnable fortress.  It was occupied then by U.S. 17th Field Artillery, the 2nd Division.  Margaret and I went on to Nice and stayed at the Hotel [Anglican 31:11], but it was so expensive, we discovered the [pension  31:12] was more fitting for what we were able to spend.  Margaret and I went to Monaco and saw the Monte Carlo Casino where the king lived – and where the king lived.  It must have been very different before the war.  There was only a few service people about and they certainly went – weren’t gambling.  We took the train to [inaudible 31:39] to see the French Alps.  On the way, we met two officers who were on leave and enjoyed their company.  Emma was with us now, and all five of us entered the hotel at the same time.  The clerk was puzzled that there were three women and only two men.  She finally put us in adjoining rooms with a connecting door that was locked.  

On return to Tulle, we were ordered to Base 87 and were there from April 3 to May 7 when we were ordered to [Inaudible 32:12].  This was a quaint old town on the southern coast of France. The people were very friendly and several of us were invited to a wedding in our – in an old church.  We thought the bride would receive the money they were collecting, but I learned it was to pay the sexton of the church.  After the ceremony, a procession was formed and led by an accordion player, and we walked about a mile out into the country.  The little – the bride’s family was entertaining us with a dinner of soup and some kind of stew that was delicious.  It was served on a long table in a backyard of an old farmhouse.  We thanked the host and hostess, and one of them walked all the way back with us to town.  Another day, we took a long walk out into the countryside.  It was good to see whole houses and trees that had not been touched by the war.  We sat down by the side of the brook to listen to the birds sing and for the first time, I heard a cuckoo bird.  This is one of the species that lays its eggs in another bird’s nest to be hatched.  

After staying in a large camp made up of barracks like buildings, we were moved on to [inaudible 33:21], a hospital center near Brest.  While there, the Masonic Lodge gave us a huge party with music and food.  We all gathered at the beach and had our pictures taken.  There must’ve been all the people who were waiting to go on the next boat to the U.S.  The navy also gave us a dance on May the 24 on the ship USS George Washington.  It was at anchor in the Brest Harbor then.  Finally, on May 31, [inaudible 34:02] was ready to take us aboard.  It had been a long wait, so everyone was happy to be on their way at last.  On – one deck was given over to the French war brides and their soldier husbands.  I felt sorry for some of the pretty French girls and also for some of the really young boys who would be facing unknown problems.  Coming into New York Harbor was an unforgettable event.  Tug boats and fire boats came out to meet us, and in my exuberance, I flung my blue straw hat right at the Statue of Liberty.  Bands were playing on board, and rolls of toilet paper were strung all over the ship like confetti on a happy cruise ship.  All the returning nurses were put up at the Hotel Albert, and we had plenty of time for shopping in New York.  I bought another hat almost like my uniform one.  

Saying goodbye to all the friends we had made in service was very sobering.  On the train and the streetcar home, I never felt so depressed and forlorn in all my life.  No one knew me or noticed that I was a returning veteran.  I do have empathy for the Vietnam Veterans, but the war was over and that was all that mattered.  So I’ll sign this, Laura Frost Smith.


/lj