NAVY  FLIGHT  NURSE  OF  WWII

During the early stages of World War II transportation of injured service personnel was often performed utilizing aircraft.  However, it was not until March 5, 1945 that Navy evacuation missions carrying female flight nurses were flown to active battlefields.  On this date a plane of Air Transportation Evacuation Squadron One flew from its base at Guam to Iwo Jima.  When it arrived, the island was under bombardment from offshore Navy ships which forced the plane to circle for ninety minutes as the crew watched bursting shells beneath them.  Upon landing, history was made as the first female Navy flight nurse arrived at an active battlefield to care for casualties.  The flight was so successful that soon regular air evacuation flights carrying female nurses were being made to Iwo Jima as well as Okinawa so wounded personnel could be flown to Guam hospitals.  Okinawa became particularly significant in the program as it marked the first time the Navy evacuated more casualties by air than sea.

LT Stella Makar was one of the nurses who participated in this urgent endeavor.  During April 1945, she was among a group of six Navy female flight nurses photographed as they walked away from an air evacuation R5D which had landed at a Mariana Island airfield.  Flights normally departed with their patients within 45-minutes after landing.  Nurses were responsible for all patients aboard and cared for all their needs, thus dressing wounds, administered whole blood or plasma, giving medications, and feeding the patients.  The training of Navy female flight nurses was vigorous as it required they undergo eight weeks of training learning such things as air evacuation techniques, physiology of flight, first aid with emphasis on shock, and water landing/crash scenario.  Additionally, they were required to swim under water, swim one-mile, and be able to tow victims 440-yards in 10 minutes.  Navy flight nurses remain a footnote in most histories of military nursing as they received few medals for their service let alone much notoriety.  Most nurses would say they were just happy doing their jobs and as one flight nurse is known to have remarked, “Our rewards are vane smiles, a slow nod of appreciation, a gesture, a word.  Accolades greater and more heart warming than any medal.”

Available historical records report that Stella Makar worked as a nurse at Columbus Hospital in Chicago before enlisting in the Navy Nurse Corps on January 7, 1942.  Her first nursing assignment was at the Naval Hospital in Mare Island, California, followed by assignment at Navy Pier, Chicago.  In early 1945 she was accepted for training as a Navy flight nurse and underwent the required specialized training at Alameda, California.  She was then assigned to squadrons participating in the transport of wounded personnel from Iwo Jima and Okinawa.  Following the end of World War II she was assigned to the Naval Hospital, Bethesda, Maryland, where she was discharged on November 24, 1946 with the rank of Lieutenant Commander. 

During her time in the South Pacific, she became acquainted with MAJ Roy T. Smith Jr. USMC, who she subsequently married which necessitated her discharge as Navy nurses where required to be single.  Following her naval service Stella Makar Smith continued her nursing career working as a registered nurse in several  hospitals and was a volunteer for the Red Cross.  She died on March 24, 2013, survived by her four children and five grandchildren.

                    LT MAKAR is second from the left

Submitted by CDR Roy A. Mosteller, USNR (Ret)