For related
materials see Alumni in the Armed Forces: UWRF
Series 44; Student Army Training Corps: UWRF
Series 29. Arnett
Special Collections Photograph, WWI.
Featured
Collection
River Falls SC 149: Deloris
Buckley,
Front Line Nurse
Ruth Deloris Buckley, of Spring Valley, Wisconsin, was only 19 years
old when she found herself serving her country on the European Theater
in World War II as part of the 95th Evacuation Hospital Unit in Italy.
In Front Line Nurse, Buckely provides vivid and harrowing recollections
of war from being attacked by a Nazi dive bomber while separated from
her unit to aiding wounded soldiers amid ramshackle conditions in Naples.
Excerpts from Front Line
Nurse:
There was
no sense fooling myself. I was plenty scared. I suppose the other
nurses were too, although none of them let on. Anyone seeing
us standing around speaking calmly about boyfriends and food, the
two favorite topics of conversation, would never have guessed that
we were on our way to the battlefront...
We heard the sounds of warfare after the third day at sea. The dull
heavy boom of canon fire sounded from the other side of the horizon.
It was D plus three - Army parlance for the third day after the start
of the invasion - that we moved into the Bay of Salerno. I could see
the pinpoints of colorless flash flame from the muzzles of the German
88's...
Deloris Buckley was born in Prescott,
WI, in 1918 to John and Pearl Buckley. Photograph from Spring Valley
Sun publication.
River Falls, WI 54022 
