Reclaiming Our History: A Nurse at War, 1943-1945
Carol Toussie Weingarten, RN, PhD

Colonel Julia Boland Paparella, USA, ANC (retired), an associate professor emeritus of nursing at Vil­lanova University, has graciously agreed to meet with me. At a quiet back table in a local restaurant, our server brings us chocolate ice cream and beverages. Paparella begins to speak, and time suddenly seems to turn back­ward, as if we were in a movie.

0n July 6, 1944, a month after D‑Day, nurse Julia Paparella, a 22‑year‑old sec­ond lieutenant with the Harvard University Unit, Fifth General Hospital, landed with her colleagues on Omaha Beach in Normandy, France. Crossing the English Channel in a crowded landing craft with room only to stand or sit on the floor, Paparella arrived at the beach in bright daylight. Her unit of about 80 nurses was divided into four groups .so that everyone wouldn't be lost at once if shelling or another disaster occurred.

"We landed on the sand, rather than in the water like the soldiers did a month before," she said. Omaha Beach had been recently secured and deemed safe enough for the medical units to proceed.

Upon arrival, the nurses marched to the top of the nearby cliffs. Camping for three days under apple trees, they witnessed the digging of the first cemetery for American casualties ‑ a grim reminder of their presence in a war zone. Then they finally boarded trucks bound for a general hospital at St. Lo. Due to heavy fighting in the area, Paparella and a group of 20 nurses were rerouted to the port of LeHavre, where they lived in ambulances for a week before being taken by truck to Carentan, a small town near St. Mere Eglise, not far from Omaha Beach. A hospital, consisting of "acres of tents with Red Crosses," was established there in the Normandy farmlands, Paparella recalls. The hospital was surrounded by an ammunition depot, an airfield, and a hedgerow (a thick mixture of shrubs and bushes used for centuries by Normandy farmers to form natur­al barriers). At times, cows from neighboring pastures would wander the dirt "streets" between the tents.

Trying Times Lay Ahead

Paparella, a 1942 graduate of Abington Hos­pital School of Nursing, Abington, Pa., had only three months of night shift experience at Abington Hospital when she joined the Army Nurse Corps through the American Red Cross. Told to bring whatever white uniforms she had because there was no standard uniform avail­able, she was stationed for five months at the Valley Forge Military Hospital, Valley Forge, Pa. Without any basic training, she worked on an eye unit and cared for men who'd been blinded during fighting in North Africa.

Later assigned to a post in England, she and other nurses made an 18‑day ocean crossing on a troop transport ship that carried 5,000 soldiers. "We nurses slept 16 to a room in hammocks that squeaked all night long," she recalls, "...but the soldiers ... (berthed below) ...rotated bunks due to the lack of space. Everyone got two meals per day."

Paparella and her colleagues disembarked in Liverpool and arrived by train in Cirencester Southern England, before Thanksgiving. They found a hospital of tents and huts, with potbellied stoves but no patients and not much to do. In January, a nurse with the Harvard University Unit visited to speak about nursing in the military. Gathering her courage and approaching the speaker after her presentation, Paparella asked if that unit had any openings. They did, so Paparella volunteered, along with her roommate and three other nurses. These five, nurses became members of the Harvard University Unit, Fifth General Hospital in Salisbury, England, where they helped care for the military and civilian populations.

Working Under Difficult Conditions

With only eight months of varied experience, Paparella, who'd still be considered a new graduate by present standards, began her work in the post-op wards of the tent field hospital at Carentan, Normandy. During the first month after her arrival, the staff admitted and cared for 25,000 patients. Instead of entering through the "doors" of the military tents, patients were often just admitted through the raised side tent flaps. Ten operating tables, lined up in an operating tent, were staffed constantly. The nurses worked 12-hour shifts and more.

"There was a lot of rain," Paparella recalls. "We were often wet and wore battle fatigues and galoshes to protect our feet from the ever present mud. We were supposed to wear helmets at all times, but they were very heavy.”

Paparella was also on a detached service assignment (nicknamed the "shock ward”) with a field unit. Each team had a nurse, corpsman, and physician. She describes this dangerous and demanding work. "We moved ahead to another area to evaluate ... (and triage) ...incoming patients ...I carried 10cc bottles of morphine in my pocket to medicate those in severe pain. We used our own discretion, because this was war." With great under-statement, Paparella added, "We all became very good at assessment."

"The Second General Hospital and our Fifth General Hospital units worked together," she explains. "We kept moving as the war moved across France, leap frogging over each other and rotating our times on detached service detail. Sometimes the American artillery was behind us and firing over us, because we were near the front. You'd feel your clothing blow away from your skin from the force of the artillery blasts. I prayed a lot, but I never had time to be afraid. I was grateful we weren’t among the patients. Fortunately, none of the  nurses got hit."

Never Far From Danger

In December 1945, Paparella's unit moved via a boxcar‑like train from Carentan to Toul, in Western France near Alsace‑Lorraine. Since the hospital at Toul wasn't ready, the nurses got off at Metz. "We were housed in empty psychiatric hospital with an hourly bell that drove us nuts," Paparella says, shaking her head. "After years of war and deprivation, the surrounding population was starving; people came to eat our garbage."

The nurses finally arrived in Toul two days before Christmas 1944. "We slept six to a room, and on the first night we had straw mattresses," Paparella remembers. "In the morning, we were all covered in flea bites and had to discard the mattresses."

On Christmas Eve, German bombs fell so close to the hospital that windows were blown out. "That night, everyone of every religion or no religion came to midnight mass," Paparella says. "Rather than being afraid, we sang and actually had a good time being together in a big group at a religious service for all denominations. We then had coffee and tea together in the mess hall and were grateful that no one got hurt."

A Job Well Done

War often brings advances in medical and nursing care, due to factors like the need to shorten hospital stays or limited supplies. Paparella recalls how the American surgeons from the Fifth General Hospital unit at Toul instituted early ambulation for postop patients to get them up and out as soon as possible. At that time, the American stateside standard of care was to keep patients in bed after surgery, and it was shocking to many of the nurses to have patients out of bed. "Research was going on all the time, and to our surprise, this really worked," Paparella says. "Today, early ambulation is a major staple of postoperative care."

The war in Europe ended on May 8, 1945. "VE (Victory‑Europe) Day" was a celebration. "A truck arrived... and for some reason, we were all treated to hot Coca‑Cola," Paparella says, still remembering the taste.

Paparella stayed in Toul until October 1945, when along with 30 or 40 of her nurse colleagues, she departed for New York on a troop transport ship, leaving from Cherbourg. During the voyage, she was promoted to first lieutenant. After a train ride from New York to Ft. Dix, N.J., she returned by train to Philadelphia. She was greeted by her parents, who had read her name on a troop passenger list printed in the newspaper.

Back home after the war, Paparella went on to develop distinguished careers in the Army Nurse Corps Reserve, from which she retired with the rank of Colonel, and as a nurse educator who helped develop the nursing programs at Villanova University's College of Nursing.While at Villanova, Paparella served as acting dean of the college for one year, among her many other positions. Recently, she was honored by the Federation of French War Veterans, Inc., with the 50th Anniversary Medal and Diploma for those who served in the liberation of Normandy and Provence in France.

Nearly three hours have passed since we began talking. My coffee has become cold and my chocolate ice cream, barely touched (a first for me), has puddled in its dish. I marvel at having worked on the Villanova faculty with Julia and yet never knowing that she'd served in Normandy until our chance conversation before my own trip there.  I recall my thoughts as I stood on Omaha Beach and realized now how much I’d have missed if not for this day.