Ruth M. Gardiner: The Flight Nurse Who Gave Her Life Saving Others
I have been learning about the people who served during the Wars,
and I want to tell you about Ruth M. Gardiner.
She was born on the 20th of May 1914 in Calgary, Alberta,
Canada. She was drawn to care for others, so she trained as a nurse at a
sanatorium in White Haven, Pennsylvania, where she graduated in 1934. She worked
as a civilian nurse before joining the United States Army Nurse Corps in 1941.
She trained for a new and dangerous role as a flight nurse.
She was assigned to Bowman Field in Kentucky and went on to serve in Alaska
with a medical air evacuation unit. Flight nurses travelled with wounded
soldiers, tending to them in the air, often in harsh weather and over long
distances. It must have required huge courage, she would have known that the
conditions could change very quickly.
On the 27th of July 1943, while on a medical evacuation
mission near Naknek, Alaska, her aircraft crashed. She was only twenty-nine
years old and became the first Army Nurse Corps flight nurse killed during the
war.
In 1944, an Army hospital in Chicago was named in her
honour, the first named after a woman or a nurse, a wonderful way to ensure that
her service would not be forgotten.
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