Worn-Out Marching Shoes
Dublin Core
Title
Worn-Out Marching Shoes
Subject
Flight Nurses Show of Worn Shoes After Being Rescued from Albania
Description
Agnes Jensen Mangerich and twelve other US Army nurses were supposed to transport wounded soldiers away from the front lines in Bari, Italy, on November 8, 1943. However, en route to their destination, their planes were crashed in a Nazi-occupied area of Albania due to bad weather and being targeted by German fighter pilots. These women, along with the other personnel aboard the crashed flights, had to make their hazardous way across enemy territory to the Adriatic coast.
President Franklin D. Roosevelt monitored their progress, and several groups of Albanian partisans tried to help the group find a British Intelligence Mission to get aid, but these nurses and the other military personnel with them had to spend a little over two months climbing the highest mountains in Albania during a blizzard, avoiding being bombed, protect themselves from German aerial attacks at close range, and witness a rescue mission be thwarted by the enemy right in front of them.
These people walked for 800 miles across this landscape, with minimal resources and with the enemy at their backs, until they finally made it to the coast and were taken to Italy by an Allied launch.
The shows the nurses are wearing in the photo were given to them by Albanian locals and friendly guerrilla fighters who helped hide them from the Germans. The soles of the boots were clearly worn out and destroyed, thanks to carrying these women through the wilderness for nine weeks.
This is one little known example of the horrible experiences American nurses faced during World War II, and how they had the grit and determination to see it through. These women were more than they were often given credit for. These "girls" dealt with a situation that many of them had not realized they had signed up for and still managed to come out of it with smiles on their faces.
This was the reality of nursing overseas during World War II, not the perfectly put-together images of nurses in spotless uniforms with endless feminine charm touted by recruitment media and propaganda back at home in the US.
President Franklin D. Roosevelt monitored their progress, and several groups of Albanian partisans tried to help the group find a British Intelligence Mission to get aid, but these nurses and the other military personnel with them had to spend a little over two months climbing the highest mountains in Albania during a blizzard, avoiding being bombed, protect themselves from German aerial attacks at close range, and witness a rescue mission be thwarted by the enemy right in front of them.
These people walked for 800 miles across this landscape, with minimal resources and with the enemy at their backs, until they finally made it to the coast and were taken to Italy by an Allied launch.
The shows the nurses are wearing in the photo were given to them by Albanian locals and friendly guerrilla fighters who helped hide them from the Germans. The soles of the boots were clearly worn out and destroyed, thanks to carrying these women through the wilderness for nine weeks.
This is one little known example of the horrible experiences American nurses faced during World War II, and how they had the grit and determination to see it through. These women were more than they were often given credit for. These "girls" dealt with a situation that many of them had not realized they had signed up for and still managed to come out of it with smiles on their faces.
This was the reality of nursing overseas during World War II, not the perfectly put-together images of nurses in spotless uniforms with endless feminine charm touted by recruitment media and propaganda back at home in the US.
Creator
Unknown Photographer, United States Air Force
Source
Sarah Sundin Author Website and Blog: "Medical Air Evacuation in World War II-The Flight Nurse," by Sarah Sundin, November 13, 2018, image courtesty of the US Air Force: https://www.sarahsundin.com/medical-air-evacuation-in-world-war-ii-the-flight-nurse/
Publisher
United States Air Force
Date
Accessed April 25, 2020
Relation
"Albanian Escape: The True Story of US Army Nurses Behind Enemy Lines," Agnes Jensen Mangerich, as told to Evelyn M. Monahan and Rosemary L. Neidel, accessed from Legends of the Flight Nurses of WWII Webpage/Archive: http://www.legendsofflightnurses.org/Newspapers/Publications.asp?NewspaperID=96
http://www.legendsofflightnurses.org/Uploads/Newspapers/NewspaperArticles/Albanian%20Escape%201944.pdf
http://www.legendsofflightnurses.org/Uploads/Newspapers/NewspaperArticles/Albanian%20Escape%201944.pdf
Format
Photograph (jpg)
Language
English
Type
Still Image
Identifier
US Flight Nurses after Albanian Rescue WWII
Coverage
US Flight Nurses of WWII
Still Image Item Type Metadata
Original Format
black and white photograph
Collection
Citation
Unknown Photographer, United States Air Force , “Worn-Out Marching Shoes,” US Nurses in World War II, accessed April 18, 2024, https://usnursesww2.omeka.net/items/show/49.