No one in war has a purer mission than nurses. Even doctors must sometimes inflict pain for the better good of a patient, but a nurse is there only to soothe and comfort. The ideals that a nurse carries into any wartime hospital are challenged by the daily arrival of bodies broken in battle. Every personal experience — camaraderie with fellow nurses, relations with superior officers, romantic entanglements — is magnified by the intensity of a profession that demands courage, compassion and above all, composure.
Featured Story: Frances M. Liberty
"Nurses were classified as lower than low in those days."
Few nurses can claim the distinction of serving in three wars, and in all of them at duty stations near the action. But Frances Liberty's assignments ranged from hitting the beach at Anzio to supplying a hospital train in Korea to dressing down a derelict nurse in Vietnam, as well as caring for celebrity patients at Walter Reed Army Medical Center in Our Nation’s Capital. Her blunt personality earned her a reputation with her superiors as a straight arrow. She had the pleasure of seeing the status of Army nurses improve dramatically as well as having her father, originally skeptical of her enlistment, send her off to serve in Korea with his blessing.
