Chinworth Enlisted, Served As WAC Nurse
July 28, 2016 at 4:25 p.m.
Jane McConnell Chinworth, 81, vividly recalls where she was and what she was doing when she heard about the Japanese attack on Pearl Harbor, Hawaii.
She, along with other nursing students, huddled around a radio as reports of the tragedy were broadcast. Japanese bombs sank or beached five battleships and destroyed 10 warships Dec. 7, 1941, a Sunday morning. More than 2,400 Americans were killed during the attack from the East. The nation was stunned and outraged.
Chinworth, then an unmarried student in South Bend, had completed her first six weeks of training. The Pearl Harbor weekend was the first she hadn't gone home to Warsaw.
"I remember all of us girls sat in one room listening to the radio," she said, "talking about what this was going to mean in our lives and what was going to happen."
Chinworth is a 1941 graduate of Warsaw High School. At the time, nurses in training had to have 365 work days logged in a three-year period before being eligible to take the state certification test to become a registered nurse. Chinworth and her classmates went about the business of their profession's requirements.
In the early 1940s, the nursing students were to remain unmarried as a requirement of the school. But as their beaus enlisted or were drafted, many classmates married against the rules.
"Some of the girls were wanting to get married and they got married secretly. Finally the school, the powers that be, decided they could get married."
She married John Chinworth in December 1943, after the restriction was lifted, and graduated in June 1944.
In Warsaw, she secured a position at Murphy Medical Center.
"One day Dr. Murphy came in with a letter he had received from the state about the fact they were considering drafting nurses in Indiana. I was 1A and I would be one of those. They suggested he find a suitable replacement.
"I got to thinking about it and got to talking to my roommate from Edwardsburg, Mich., (John had enlisted in the Army in 1939 and was an Army sergeant in the Army's European theater) and we decided we would enlist."
The roommate was placed with the Air Force. Chinworth went into the Army.
"Of course, during basic training we had gas mask drills," she said of one training session at Fort Knox, Ky. "And a young (male) lieutenant was instructing us. He said, 'Now, ladies, you mustn't have any Robert pins.' And we wondered what he was talking about. Robert pins? We finally came to the conclusion he was talking about the 'bobby' pins in our hair."
After officers' candidate school at Fort Benjamin Harrison, Chinworth was stationed at a military hospital in Martinsburg, W.Va.
"We always said, 'West, by-God, Virginia.' By the time I got there, it was late in April 1945. I'd enlisted in February and couldn't figure out why it took so long, but it did."
In Martinsburg, the second lieutenant learned and practiced the latest in medical advancements, in treatments and medicines. The treatments she used every day in "West by-God Virginia" finally caught up with her profession 10 years later.
Her patients were wounded men from the European theater first and later they came in from the Pacific.
"They tried to send men to a hospital close to where they lived. We had a 90-day rotation. They had corrective surgery and things, and when they were able to go home, they went home on leave. Then they'd bring in another contingent.
"I worked in an orthopedic ward. I would take casts off of the people who came from the South Pacific. If they had gangrene, you had to get it off right away. It was an anaerobic organism and if you got it to the air, it would kill it. That's something that I never did in civilian life."
Orthopedic patients with repaired spinal injuries would be wrapped in body casts.
"We'd send them home in those body casts for their leave and wondered how they made out with their families.
"The guys, they were fantastic. They never, ever, dwelled on the fact that it was so bad. It was somebody else they were worried about. There were always jokes and laughs. It was always positive."
Of course, they teased the nurses. And the nurses teased back.
"How people that were so injured kept their morale up like they did - to this day it amazes me. These guys, they never looked at the negative part of it. It was amazing."
Chinworth had a roommate who worked in the "plastic wards." Body parts - ears, noses and the like were made as replacements.
Soldiers came in with burns so bad their noses or ears were missing.
"We worked. We were busy all the time."
Each hospital cubicle had four men and there were eight cubicles, 32 men in each ward. Half the section was for ambulatory people. The other half housed paraplegics and quadriplegics.
After V-E Day, May 8, 1945, Chinworth receive orders to CBI - the China-Burma-India theater.
"I called home to let my folks know we'd be going to Fort Leonard Wood, but then V-J Day (Aug. 15, 1945) came along and they quarantined us and didn't let us know we weren't going. My folks got to Fort Leonard Wood to see me off but I never got there."
Chinworth was given the option to stay in the Army or be decommissioned. It wasn't a hard decision to leave. She had a subset of orders. When her husband, John, went overseas, he said, "Don't join the Army."
"I thought I'd better get out before he got home."
The Chinworths have three daughters and one son. One daughter spent time in the military as did two grandsons.
John made a career of the military. He was stationed at a disciplinary barracks in Pennsylvania for American GIs who were to be court-martialed.
"Like what's going to happen to those guys in Iraq now - and they deserve it," she said of the revelations about U.S. soldiers' treatment of Iraqi prisoners.
During the Korean War, John was a forward observer. He died in 1979.
Chinworth went overseas once, as a missionary to Liberia in the early 1990s.
"I only stayed there for a short time, too. I decided never to do anything like that again because the kids were all upset."
Chinworth's sister, Sally McConnell Nichols, joined the Navy. Once the siblings' leave overlapped and formal portraits were taken. Chinworth's olive green dress uniform sports the two bars of a second lieutenant and her hat is tilted at a jaunty angle. She admits to being pretty jaunty back then.
"To me, to this day, I have a soft spot when someone wants to do something for the veterans. I remember all of those guys in those hospital wards who were paralyzed. I had a friend whose husband in the Navy was in a submarine and he never got over it.
"They probably don't get over a lot of stuff."
Countless women served in the military during World War II. Nurses received 1,619 medals, citations and commendations during the war.
"It was a wonderful experience," she said of her time as a WAC. "I wouldn't have missed it for the entire world. The thing is, tragedies like things that happened in World War II, like the Twin Towers tragedy, bring out the greatness in people." [[In-content Ad]]
Latest News
E-Editions
Jane McConnell Chinworth, 81, vividly recalls where she was and what she was doing when she heard about the Japanese attack on Pearl Harbor, Hawaii.
She, along with other nursing students, huddled around a radio as reports of the tragedy were broadcast. Japanese bombs sank or beached five battleships and destroyed 10 warships Dec. 7, 1941, a Sunday morning. More than 2,400 Americans were killed during the attack from the East. The nation was stunned and outraged.
Chinworth, then an unmarried student in South Bend, had completed her first six weeks of training. The Pearl Harbor weekend was the first she hadn't gone home to Warsaw.
"I remember all of us girls sat in one room listening to the radio," she said, "talking about what this was going to mean in our lives and what was going to happen."
Chinworth is a 1941 graduate of Warsaw High School. At the time, nurses in training had to have 365 work days logged in a three-year period before being eligible to take the state certification test to become a registered nurse. Chinworth and her classmates went about the business of their profession's requirements.
In the early 1940s, the nursing students were to remain unmarried as a requirement of the school. But as their beaus enlisted or were drafted, many classmates married against the rules.
"Some of the girls were wanting to get married and they got married secretly. Finally the school, the powers that be, decided they could get married."
She married John Chinworth in December 1943, after the restriction was lifted, and graduated in June 1944.
In Warsaw, she secured a position at Murphy Medical Center.
"One day Dr. Murphy came in with a letter he had received from the state about the fact they were considering drafting nurses in Indiana. I was 1A and I would be one of those. They suggested he find a suitable replacement.
"I got to thinking about it and got to talking to my roommate from Edwardsburg, Mich., (John had enlisted in the Army in 1939 and was an Army sergeant in the Army's European theater) and we decided we would enlist."
The roommate was placed with the Air Force. Chinworth went into the Army.
"Of course, during basic training we had gas mask drills," she said of one training session at Fort Knox, Ky. "And a young (male) lieutenant was instructing us. He said, 'Now, ladies, you mustn't have any Robert pins.' And we wondered what he was talking about. Robert pins? We finally came to the conclusion he was talking about the 'bobby' pins in our hair."
After officers' candidate school at Fort Benjamin Harrison, Chinworth was stationed at a military hospital in Martinsburg, W.Va.
"We always said, 'West, by-God, Virginia.' By the time I got there, it was late in April 1945. I'd enlisted in February and couldn't figure out why it took so long, but it did."
In Martinsburg, the second lieutenant learned and practiced the latest in medical advancements, in treatments and medicines. The treatments she used every day in "West by-God Virginia" finally caught up with her profession 10 years later.
Her patients were wounded men from the European theater first and later they came in from the Pacific.
"They tried to send men to a hospital close to where they lived. We had a 90-day rotation. They had corrective surgery and things, and when they were able to go home, they went home on leave. Then they'd bring in another contingent.
"I worked in an orthopedic ward. I would take casts off of the people who came from the South Pacific. If they had gangrene, you had to get it off right away. It was an anaerobic organism and if you got it to the air, it would kill it. That's something that I never did in civilian life."
Orthopedic patients with repaired spinal injuries would be wrapped in body casts.
"We'd send them home in those body casts for their leave and wondered how they made out with their families.
"The guys, they were fantastic. They never, ever, dwelled on the fact that it was so bad. It was somebody else they were worried about. There were always jokes and laughs. It was always positive."
Of course, they teased the nurses. And the nurses teased back.
"How people that were so injured kept their morale up like they did - to this day it amazes me. These guys, they never looked at the negative part of it. It was amazing."
Chinworth had a roommate who worked in the "plastic wards." Body parts - ears, noses and the like were made as replacements.
Soldiers came in with burns so bad their noses or ears were missing.
"We worked. We were busy all the time."
Each hospital cubicle had four men and there were eight cubicles, 32 men in each ward. Half the section was for ambulatory people. The other half housed paraplegics and quadriplegics.
After V-E Day, May 8, 1945, Chinworth receive orders to CBI - the China-Burma-India theater.
"I called home to let my folks know we'd be going to Fort Leonard Wood, but then V-J Day (Aug. 15, 1945) came along and they quarantined us and didn't let us know we weren't going. My folks got to Fort Leonard Wood to see me off but I never got there."
Chinworth was given the option to stay in the Army or be decommissioned. It wasn't a hard decision to leave. She had a subset of orders. When her husband, John, went overseas, he said, "Don't join the Army."
"I thought I'd better get out before he got home."
The Chinworths have three daughters and one son. One daughter spent time in the military as did two grandsons.
John made a career of the military. He was stationed at a disciplinary barracks in Pennsylvania for American GIs who were to be court-martialed.
"Like what's going to happen to those guys in Iraq now - and they deserve it," she said of the revelations about U.S. soldiers' treatment of Iraqi prisoners.
During the Korean War, John was a forward observer. He died in 1979.
Chinworth went overseas once, as a missionary to Liberia in the early 1990s.
"I only stayed there for a short time, too. I decided never to do anything like that again because the kids were all upset."
Chinworth's sister, Sally McConnell Nichols, joined the Navy. Once the siblings' leave overlapped and formal portraits were taken. Chinworth's olive green dress uniform sports the two bars of a second lieutenant and her hat is tilted at a jaunty angle. She admits to being pretty jaunty back then.
"To me, to this day, I have a soft spot when someone wants to do something for the veterans. I remember all of those guys in those hospital wards who were paralyzed. I had a friend whose husband in the Navy was in a submarine and he never got over it.
"They probably don't get over a lot of stuff."
Countless women served in the military during World War II. Nurses received 1,619 medals, citations and commendations during the war.
"It was a wonderful experience," she said of her time as a WAC. "I wouldn't have missed it for the entire world. The thing is, tragedies like things that happened in World War II, like the Twin Towers tragedy, bring out the greatness in people." [[In-content Ad]]