Kingsley Girl Tells Of Cold Nights On Duty In Sunny Italy.
Storm Blew Down Tents While She Was On Nursing Duty.
The following letter was received by Mr. and Mrs. D. F. Walden of Kingsley, from their daughter, Lieut. Bernice Walden, somewhere in Italy. She is a nurse in the armed forces and the letter which appeared in the Kingsley News-Times, follows:
Dear Mother:
How about some heat? It’s cold again, but I am on nights. Yes, and it rained. We had all our tents full of patients, and we had a storm. The tents blew down and the ones that stayed up had holes in them. Of course our tent went down. Everything got wet and it was terrible but I had a lot of fun the first time in a tent in a storm. We had to hold on the sides to keep it up. The patients were very nice. They all moved to other tents and went to bed. We had a mess as far as finding where they belonged and giving medicine. One is enough. I don’t care for any more.
You said in one letter you were going to get some slacks. I hope they are on the way by now. I can really use them, with all the things we lost. Love Bernice.
Lieut. Bernice Walden
In Italy.
(The reference made by Lieut. Walden to needing clothing, refers back to a former letter in which she told her parents she was a passenger on the hospital ship which was torpedoed and sunk in the Mediterranean on Sept. 13. All patients were saved but thirteen doctors lost their lives. Everyone on board lost everything they had. Nearly all the nurses went into the ocean without a stitch of clothing. Bernice said she went overboard with only her wristwatch on, but an American sailor gave her a pair of pants and an English sailor a shirt, after being picked up by a rescue ship.)
Source: LeMars Globe-Post, Monday, October 25, 1943
