Biweekly Newsletter - Ethel Anderson, 1917-2019

Ethel “Ettie” Anderson was the daughter of Swedish immigrants. One of three sisters, she graduated from OAHS in 1933 and went on to study nursing at Goddard Hospital School of Nursing from which she graduated in 1938. In 1942 she was working at Massachusetts General Hospital from where she was recruited into the Army Nursing Corps. Her unit served in North Africa and Italy. In 1944 Ethel was promoted to First Lieutenant before returning home in 1946.

Ethel left South Station on May 15th, 1942; to begin her service and said she never regretted her choice. My account comes from a longer document written by Ethel herself. Here are a few interesting stories from her record:

• While training in Florida 16 nurses shared one bedroom and one bathroom.
• In North Africa the nurses’ hospital was a four-story apartment building with another building known as the Moroccan Building for overflow patients. During the night rats and mice were abundant, which was nightmare for the nurses and patients.
• Later in Algeria the nurses slept in tents and learned to wash their clothes and their hair in helmets.
• In Oran Ethel met a man she had treated at Mass General and later dated. He took her aboard his naval ship for a lovely dinner.
• Ethel worked in various hospitals in and around Naples. While in Naples she ran into two Easton men, Charles MacEntee and Joe Lyons, who was an army photographer.
• Near Rome there was much destruction, including overturned tanks.
• One day Ethel was with a group that visited a Military Cemetery. The dog tags of the fallen blew in the wind where they were strung on row after row of crosses while a bugler played taps. “We were all crying,” she said.
• Outside of Rome she worked in a makeshift hospital that smelled of “filth and death”. Patients flooded in and many ended up in corridors and porches. The nurses lived in tents. 
•  At Bologna University the patients were German prisoners.
•  Some good times included leave on the beautiful island of Capri, and a 5 day leave to a town called Fedela near Casablanca at a beautiful hotel with tennis courts and a golf course.

We owe a debt of gratitude to Ethel Anderson and all the nurses who served in WWII. After Ethel returned home, she continued to care for others as a nurse at local hospitals and doctor's offices until her retirement in 1990. Ethel passed away in 2019 and is buried in the South Easton cemetery.

Anne Wooster Drury