Laura Jensen Walker: Death of a Flying Nightingale
Recently, while reading the Jungle Red Writers blog, I was entranced by Laura Jensen Walker’s description of how she got the idea for this book: a TV show about nursing orderlies in the WWII British Women’s Auxiliary Air Force (WAAF). Dubbed the “Flying Nightingales,” these women, some as young as 17, were give a mere six weeks medical training before being put in charge of the care of 24 wounded soldiers per flight. Since the planes carried supplies that included munitions, they could not be marked with a red cross, making them fair game to German fire. As Walker explained in her blog post “On the flights back to England, the nursing orderlies weren’t allowed to wear parachutes. They were expected to remain on board with the wounded if the plane crashed […]. The Nightingales changed bandages, emptied colostomy bags, cleared tracheotomy tubes, wedged sick bags beneath the chins of the wounded, and provided tea and comfort to soldiers with horrific injuries.”