The Cherry Ames Page: War Nurse, page 2

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Cherry Ames, War Nurse
Fiction Meets Reality, page 2

In this section

Introduction

War on the Homefront: Facing War; Changing Times

Introduction

When the first book in the Cherry Ames series was published in 1943, World War II was raging, and the United States needed nurses both at home and overseas. A keen awareness of the war pervades the first two books of the series, in which Cherry Ames attends nursing school; during the subsequent four books, Cherry actually serves in the military, seeing action in both the Pacific and the European theaters as a lieutenant in the Army Nurse Corps.

Although the later books in the series are not rooted in a specific historical context, these initial six books clearly reflect the times in which they were written, and World War II is a real presence that affects the everyday lives of Cherry and the other characters in her orbit.

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From the beginning of the series, the importance of nursing in wartime is emphasized. As eighteen-year-old Cherry is leaving home to attend Spencer Hospital nursing school, her ever-supportive mother assures her, "Well, Dad and I feel you've chosen just about the finest profession there is. And just about the most necessary one in wartime" (Student Nurse, p. 9).

The books frequently appeal--both directly and indirectly--to young girls to serve their country by becoming nurses. The nursing profession is depicted as an enormously intoxicating and near-irresistible brew of femininity, unselfish service, romance, high adventure, and patriotism. In wartime, particularly, nursing is the best way a woman can serve her country--but it is not simply a temporary wartime job:

"Shucks," she thought, "war or no war, I'd be a nurse anyway." Nursing--restoring health and giving peace of mind to the sick--was the most exciting thing in Cherry's life. For Cherry knew that, in peace just as much as in war, the world needs brave and understanding girls in that most feminine, most humane, and most beloved of all professions. (Chief Nurse, pp. 13-14)

In the world of Cherry Ames, nursing is a noble, beautiful calling, an efficient way to serve humanity and fight evil--and, incidentally, a passport to adventure and romance as well.

War on the Homefront

When Cherry begins nursing school, she is of course well-aware of the war, but to her the war has so far meant only minor hardships and inconveniences. Cherry has spent her life in the idealized world of the American Dream, in a comfortably middle-class home in Hilton, Illinois, a Midwestern small town where her family has deep roots.

She has supportive parents--a breadwinner father and a stay-at-home mother who gardens and does good works--a twin brother who teases her, caring friends, and

Figure 1

Figure 2

friendly but mostly unobtrusive neighbors. Hilton, a "neighborly, tree-shaded little town" in the "rich corn and wheat countryside" (Senior Nurse, p. 21) is comfortably ordinary--it is home-sweet-home.

The war is being fought to preserve exactly the "family values" represented in the simple, day-to-day lives of the Ames family and their community; to prevent the evils of foreign totalitarianism from tainting the idyllic American existence: "Lose this war, and there would be no Hilton to come home to" (Army Nurse, p. 17). No one ever questions the rightness of the American participation in the war, for fighting the encroaching evil is the only way to preserve the quiet, uncomplicated joys of home.

Though women were the idealized keepers of the home, during World War II they were prodded and challenged to leave home and hearth to participate actively in the war effort--by taking factory jobs to free men for military service (as depicted in the widely popularized image of Rosie the Riveter; see Figure 1), by becoming stenographers and typists (see Figure 2), by enlisting in the military themselves to fill support roles, by working as Red Cross volunteers, and, of course, by becoming nurses.

Publicity campaigns reassured women that they would not sacrifice their femininity by venturing to work outside the home--women who did go off to work were glorified and idealized, presented as dedicated models of femininity as they did their bit for home and country. Cherry, of course, chooses nursing as the best way for her to serve her country and the soldiers who are fighting to preserve her home and her way of life. As she observes later, after she has joined the Army Nurse Corps:

"[W]e can help them!" When she remembered that these uncomplaining young men had said good-by to their families, given up promising careers in midstream, left safe comfortable homes to protect the rest of us, she thought, "Why, if we weren't here to help them, it would be like--like abandoning them!" (Chief Nurse, p. 26)

Cherry and the nurses do not abandon their duty, nor did the many women who served in various capacities in World War II, in both the civilian and military realms.

Facing War

As Cherry begins her training as a nurse, fierce battles are being fought in Europe and Asia, but they are far away, both actually and emotionally, from Cherry's world--a world that she mostly takes for granted. Though Cherry never experiences a profound epiphany, early in her hospital training, she begins to put a human face on the war:

In the bed lay a tiny girl. She could not have been over six or seven years old. Her pinched little face looked imploringly at Cherry from the pillow, and Cherry saw that the child's leg was enormously bandaged in a plaster cast and raised at a steep angle by a pulley. She was pale and restless. "She must be in pain," Cherry thought, "with that great weight pulling at her hip."

"I say, have you seen my mummy?" the child piped. "I'm dreadfully lonesome for my mummy. I call and call, but she never comes." (Student Nurse, p. 67)

Her face tearstained, the little girl explains, "I haven't seen my mummy since London. I was asleep in the shelter and Jerry came over and I got hurt and I don't know where my mummy is" (Student Nurse, p. 67). Cherry is deeply moved by the little girl's simple story, and her sad plight:

"Oh," Cherry said. London. Bombings. Perhaps that was why this forlorn scrap of a girl lay half-crippled in a hospital, waiting for a mother who might have been killed. Cherry had read of children and wounded people being evacuated from the Allied countries. But the reality she saw before her now was so cruel it was almost unbearable.

"I came over on a big boat," the child offered conversationally.

Cherry could not talk. She was angry--fighting mad at the bitter evidence she saw before her. She choked in her fury and took the child's hand. ... Cherry had known there was a war raging on the other side of the world, but she had not thought much about it. Now it occurred to her that it was very much her business--her personal business and her business as a nurse-to-be. (Student Nurse, pp. 67-68, 76).

For Cherry, actually encountering a victim of war is unusual, though she does later help save the life of an important military commander--he had been stealthily brought into Spencer Hospital and hidden in a secret room, where he was tended by a private nurse:

Dr. Wylie lifted his eyes to their faces. "Do you know who this man is?" he said sternly. "He is General----" And he spoke a name which Cherry and Jim heard with the profoundest respect, one of the greatest names of their time. He had been wounded and had been flown to the United States. (Student Nurse, p. 192)

But for the most part, during her training Cherry is still quite insulated from the ravages of war. She sees war's effects mostly in the shortage of skilled medical personnel at the hospital. Her mentor, Dr. Joseph Fortune, needs a technician to assist with his drug research, but there are no technicians to spare in wartime, so Cherry herself tries to help him. When Cherry suggests that Dr. Joe take a little vacation, he responds almost angrily, "Vacation! With our hospitals desperately understaffed? Does malaria, or the other tropical diseases, take a vacation? Do our soldiers in the Pacific get vacations from danger and infection?" (Senior Nurse, p. 49).

The clear, often reiterated, message: one's own desires must take a backseat to the overweening demands of duty. Cherry is disappointed to miss the first senior dance when she must work extra hours because "the hospital was short of nurses since so many had gone off to the battlefronts" (Senior Nurse, p. 56). Even on Christmas Eve, she leaves a holiday dance to go on ward duty because the hospital is shorthanded. She feels an odd sensation as she changes from her frothy party dress to her uniform:

It was as if she were giving up all the happiness and reward that the black lace dress stood for--no, not exactly. It was merely that the hospital uniform came first. The black lace dress was still there, and she was earning the right to enjoy it with a free mind.

"Puritan!" Cherry laughed at herself, as she entered the darkened ward. "Why, you early American!" But her sense of duty was deep and strong. She would not have had it otherwise--and absolutely not in wartime, when her country, and therefore her own fate, was in danger. (Senior Nurse, p. 107)

Changing Times

The home that the war intends to preserve is starting to change, more and more. At Spencer Hospital, for example, preparations are being made for possible casualties of war. Miss Reamer, the superintendent of nurses, shows Cherry's class new facilities that have been set up in the vast basement of the hospital:

Here, far under the building, was a complete Operating Room! Beyond it, deep in shadow, they saw a great hall constructed with steel beams and thick brick walls. It was filled with at least a hundred cots. More cots, and stretchers, stood stacked against the walls. Adjoining it were a kitchen, bathrooms, a thoroughly stocked laboratory.

"Our country is at war," Miss Reamer said. "This new equipment is here in case of air raid or other catastrophe. I hope we will never have to use it." (Senior Nurse, p. 88)

Cherry's mother writes, "Hilton is so changed. ... That little old airfield at Wabash City is being enlarged, and is teeming with Army men" (Senior Nurse, p. 162). Cherry and her family are most directly affected by the war when her twin brother, Charlie, drops out of college to enlist in the Army Air Forces. Cherry is jolted, but mostly philosophical about the news: "Well, heaven knows, we need fliers to win this war--and nurses too" (Senior Nurse, p. 22).

Like other civilian volunteers who served diligently on the homefront during World War II, working for the Red Cross and as hospital aides, selling war bonds, collecting scrap metal, and saving ration points by growing their own produce in so-called Victory gardens, the Ames family, of course, did their part. Mrs. Ames writes:

"Dad is very busy these days. He spends more time selling war bonds than real estate. Dad and Midge help me with our Victory garden. ... Midge and I are going to put up cherries and corn as soon as the first crop is in, and this summer we will can vegetables. It will save our ration points. ... The clinic here has asked me to be a nurse's aide and I am going to see if I can't make the time for it. ... We had another air-raid drill two nights ago. We sat in the dark most of the evening and the puppy barked the whole time." (Senior Nurse, pp. 162-63)

Later, Cherry learns from her father's letters that "the whole family did volunteer work at Hilton Clinic, now considerably understaffed because so many doctors and nurses had gone to war" (Chief Nurse, p. 9). Her mother has made the time to help out at the clinic; she writes, "I am working as a nurse's aide in Hilton Clinic, and Midge volunteered to do occupational therapy in arts and crafts" (Chief Nurse, p. 140). Of course, the Ames family steadfastly continue to tend their Victory garden and sell war bonds, and they are only able to get gasoline occasionally from the war ration board because Mr. Ames is in the real estate business.

Next: The Need for Nurses -->

Figure 1: "We Can Do It." Poster by J. Howard Miller. Produced by Westinghouse for the War Production Coordinating Committee. National Archives and Records Administration, Washington, D.C.
Figure 2: "Victory Waits on Your Fingers." Produced by the Royal Typewriter Company for the U.S. Civil Service Commission. National Archives and Records Administration, Washington, D.C.