Looking Back...from October 1962, Virginia Cooley Strong

We arrived in London on September 8, 1944 via Liverpool on the hospital ship USAHS Blanche Sigman, a small converted liberty ship. We had waited three weeks in Charleston Port for the ship. There were 19 American Red Cross personnel to be used in various U.K. hospitals as replacements. The "invasion" was successfully completed and U.S. troops were rolling across France, but with fearful casualties - the war in Europe had eight months to go, and our 188th General Hospital in Cirencester, old Roman town in the Cotswolds, was one of 98 or so from the Channel to the Scottish border. It had been in operation four months only, but by the next May it would have its 10,000th patient - its capacity was normally 1500 beds. Even so, deaths were few and far between. Until late Spring of 1945 not more than half a dozen had occurred. In a way it was a recuperative hospital - when a man was able to be flown from the war zone, yet needed considerable surgery and care, say 60 days of it, he would go to England to be rehabilitated for limited service, or to be sent home if long treatment was needed.


An Assistant Field Director, her secretary, and three recreation workers comprised the average Red Cross staff.l I was at the bottom, a lowly staff aide, just where I belonged. I had no musical ability, no recreation experience, and no social work in my background. I was in college an English major, later a dress sales woman, an office clerk, an interviewer, and a publicist for the U.S. Employment Service. Also, I had worked a year on the Federal Writers Project, helping to compile the "Ohio Guide". I had written some historical articles for a trade publication, and done some freelance newspaper work on the side. My only qualification for "work with sick soldiers" (as one of the Washington staff called it) was an adventurous spirit and a compeling desire to be of direct, tangible service to wounded men far from home and family. It was selfish enough and no credit is expected. We worked harder than ever before or since in our lives, and enjoyed it more. We were forever admiring the nurses and doctors with whom we shared an equal military status socially, and "in case of capture". But we never were allowed to give a patient medical aid, not even a glass of water. Ours was personal service and diversion, and I think we succeeded except that we were spread too thin. Hospital experience, as a patient, is one that is most easily forgotten and should be, but I hope some of the 10,000 remember the Red Cross gals with a friendly feeling, even if they have forgotten us individually. Seldom did they write back from home, nor did we expect it. We just wanted them to be happy and successful. We weren't allowed to date G.I.s, hence the endless cups of Mess Hall coffee. But I married mine (one of mine!), and admit that it is nobody's fault that we did not live happily forever after. At the time we needed each other as a hope for the future. Later, it was not the same world at all, and we were not even the same people.


So, I took our child nine years later and went back to England, probably trying to find a little of what I'd lost. I never did, of course. But in traveling 13 countries in six years I found Europe, and also some wonderful G.I.s, healthy but homesick as ever. We slept in the same little London hotel where her father and I had rested nine years before. Now it is quite modern, not at all the same. We saw he honeymoon hotel from a car window as we drove through Malvern, and visited the old hospital, now mostly in ruins. Next time I go back I expect the heartache will be cured, nothing lasts forever. I will find out by visiting St. Gabriel's Church, parish of Hanley Swan, Worcestershire, England.


Nothing before had been so exciting as arriving in Liverpool and going to London in the black-out of September 1944. To me it was as good as dying and arriving in heaven. In fact, during the later bombings when no one went to shelters, we hardly cared what happened to us; we were so interested in being in London. Would I go to San Francisco if bombs were dropping? We went to London - to shop and see plays, and eat at Grosvenor Mess! I had never heard of Cirencester, but it was made to order for me.

By October the twilight began at 4 o'clock and soon it was dark, and colder by November than I'd ever been. Our Nissen hut had six beds, one a spare for guests. Its heart was an old iron stove that never wanted to burn, especially coke. It usually went completely out at night so we took turns getting up to start it, after which we made tea, coffee, and toast, and served our mates in bed. This way we got an hour's extra sleep and missed the powdered eggs at the mess. Once somebody made a fire on one match, but it was agreed that to be a champ you had to do it with the only match in the hut.

We didn't get our diaries until Christmas so they missed the best time. Space made me leave out much, but I wasn't writing for posterity, but release of some kind. I could have told the story of Wayne's little hen that came into Paris triumphant on his third tank's green turret, of Hamilton Greene's bullet wound that carried off his ulcer neat as pie, of the bath-robed G.I. who didn't congratulate me on my marriage until he'd found I'd taken a G.I., not a limey or an officer. Or the prize-winning Christmas tree that didn't get a prize in the hospital competition because its loveliness was due to condoms blown up into silvery white balloons. And the Winter wonderland that Ward 16 became when it was festooned with four dozen rolls of toilet paper. Or the party for the 200 children that lasted too long and became a grand escorted tour to ward latrines. But a low point to end them all was Paddy Chayefsky's talent show skit, uncensored, that sent us females right through the floor...

(pictured: USAHS Blanche Sigman)