HONORING THE SILENT PATRIOTS.

Byline: Bob Welch The Register-Guard

Of the 18 nurses in the 45th Field Hospital Unit who splashed ashore at Normandy soon after D-Day, only four are still living. As part of a group honoring the women this June - 60 years to the day of their arrival in France - I recently received an RSVP from one of them.

Yes, said 85-year-old Betty Belanger Quinn of Manchester, N.H., she and her husband planned to come to Arlington, Va., for the June 9-10 event. "I'm enclosing a check for $200 to help toward some of the cost of the banquet," she wrote.

I looked at the check and mentally shook my head. As America offers what will essentially be the last hurrah for the World War II generation this May and June - more than 1,000 veterans are dying each day - the selflessness of such people amazes me. And concerns me. Amazes me because few understand the depth and duration of the sacrifices made by the women who served. And concerns me because the vets' self-effacing attitudes might mean a more muted spotlight than they deserve at two historic events this spring: the May 29 dedication of the World War II Memorial in Washington, D.C., and the June 6, 60-year anniversary of D-Day.

In a day when "respect: demand it" is the unofficial baby-boom mantra, it's easy to ignore 85-year-old women who look in the mirror and don't see the heroines that they truly are.

"People might understand that there were women in World War II, but most don't understand how many were involved, how many served overseas and how many were killed by enemy fire," says Judith Bellafaire, chief historian of the Women In Military Service For America Memorial Foundation.

In 2001, New York Times columnist Maureen Dowd wrote that members of the World War II generation, after being encouraged to share their war stories, had let the attention go to their heads. They "can't stop gushing and celebrating themselves," she wrote, their latest alleged chest-thumping being a decision "to violate the beautiful mall here with a kitschy memorial to themselves."

Ms. Quinn's offer to help pay for a small banquet at which she will be honored hardly suggests self-absorption, particularly when considering that after returning from Europe, she was so war-scarred that she would wake up in the middle of the night screaming. And particularly when considering that, unlike two-thirds of the soldiers whose lives she was trying to help save, she volunteered to serve - as did all of the 350,000 women who served in armed forces units in World War II.

"We are here because we have to be," Millard Ireland, a GI in Luxembourg, wrote to the Stars and Stripes newspaper in a 1944 letter aimed at the nurses. "You are here merely because you felt you were needed."

As a journalist, I've interviewed dozens of World War II vets and nearly all - men and women - look back at their experience with a "we-just-did-what-needed-to-be-done" attitude.

Seventy-five women served as medical officers in the Army and 35 with the Navy. Women piloted bombers to strategic positions, fixed engines, drove vehicles, operated radios, patched wounds, packed parachutes and performed myriad other jobs.

"There was nothing heroic about what we did," said Eugene resident Sallylou Cummings Bonzer, an 86-year-old nurse in the same platoon as Quinn. "Once, one of my daughters saw an article someone had written on me and she said: 'That's you? You were in the war?" I said, 'Yeah, so were a lot of people.' '

When you say "World War II nurses in France," most people, I've found, conjure up thoughts of women in starched white dresses gliding down the hallways of French hospitals, carrying breakfast trays.

In fact, Bonzer, Quinn and other Normandy-landing nurses splashed ashore in 3-pound helmets, boots and Army fatigues. And were greeted, field hospital reports show, by "17 truckloads" of wounded soldiers.

If most women had low-risk jobs during World War II, some put their lives on the lines each day. Nearly 500 died from combat and noncombat causes. Thirty-eight members of the Women's Air Force Service Pilots died in training or on ferrying missions. Sixteen Army nurses died in combat. Eighty-one were held as prisoners of war.

"They were the silent patriots of World War ll," says Mary Sarnecky, author of "The History of the U.S. Army Nurse Corps."

In the European Theater, nurses such as Quinn and Bonzer - and those in 88 other field hospitals - worked 12-hour shifts virtually nonstop for nearly a year. In a 600-mile grind from Normandy to Czechoslovakia, the 45th Field Hospital set up and broke camp 27 times. The nurses often bathed only with water-filled helmets, sometimes slept in foxholes and, in the early days in Normandy, went to the bathroom in slit trenches.

The 45th's nurses treated 4,950 patients and watched 223 of those soldiers - and three of their own - die.

"Certainly women who served in World War II have not been accorded all the respect they deserve," says Sarnecky.

That's nothing new. When women began joining the new Women's Auxiliary Army Corps in 1942, they were under military control and wore uniforms like male soldiers, but lacked military rank, equal pay, retirement privileges and veterans' rights.

Few people took them seriously. Military newspapers featured them in cheesecake shots. Cartoonists had a field day with bras and bosoms and "petticoat Army" quips. The public at large was even less kind, in part because women who freed up stateside soldiers to fight were sometimes blamed by soldiers and their families for putting the men in harm's way.

"There were horrible rumors that they were all either hussies or very manly women," Bellafaire says.

What finally earned World War II women respect was the one thing that should have earned them respect in the first place: their contributions.

"In the case of nurses, these women were far more skilled than male medical technicians because they had three or four years of training in civilian hospitals, whereas a male tech might have a couple of months," Bellafaire says.

Soldiers who might have been cat-calling nurses when the women hit Utah Beach in June 1944 were singing their praises a month later.

"The determination and will of the Army nurses shall never be surpassed - not even by the GI himself," wrote Warrant Officer Russell Preston to Stars and Stripes in November 1944.

Wrote Sgt. John W. O'Donnell: ` ... Relieving the suffering. Cleaning up the blood, guts and filth of us from the battlefields. Dying with us. Dreaming and sweating out the time with us. ... Oh, you know what I want to say. God bless every one of them. These influences will always be with us."

If soldiers didn't forget their female counterparts, the country at large did. After the war ended in 1945, only a handful of women in uniform were allowed to remain in the military, which was fine with many but not all. They were barred from being part of groups such as the Veterans of Foreign Wars. They rarely were written about or honored. And they rarely spoke about their experiences.

"Many had such horrific experiences they, too, wanted to forget all about it," Sarnecky says. "That contributed to their disappearance from the public consciousness and lack of public appreciation as well."

Finally, in 1989, women veterans were officially recognized at the first National Salute to Women Veterans of World War II in Atlanta. And in 1997, the opening of the $21.5 million Women in Military Service for America Memorial at Arlington National Cemetery gave female vets a long-awaited place of honor.

I was there the day it officially opened, having come to Washington, D.C., for a journalism conference but deciding watching history "live" would be better than cruising journalism's tribute to itself, the "Newseum."

It was a wise choice. The scene had a hint of Oscar night to it: the celebrated ones emerging from their vehicles to reap their rewards. Not the beautiful people in Hollywood chic, emerging from stretch limos. Instead: the forgotten people, emerging from school buses and Blue Top cabs, wearing musty military uniforms and buttons with photographs showing how they looked during World War II.

These were the girls in "League of Their Own" coming to their very own Cooperstown for honor that had been long overdue. Army. Navy. Air Force. Coast Guard. WACs. WASPs. And more. Some relished the attention; others, amid a crowd of 30,000 people, felt a bit sheepish about getting so much.

"We ask them on their registers to list their memorable experiences and so many of them say, 'Oh, I didn't do anything interesting,' ' Bellafaire says. "It's heartbreaking. They don't believe anyone would be interested."

A lot of people apparently aren't. The first edition of the National Standards for United States History, published in 1994 as a guide for what teachers should teach grades 7 through 12, included only a single reference to women and World War II.

In my home state, Oregon, most of the approved history textbooks for high schools at least now mention that women served in World War II, but none point out that women were on the front lines, died, were wounded and taken as prisoners of war.

"You hear about Rosie the Riveter," says Carrie Petersen, who graduated in 2003 from Seattle Pacific University with a degree in history, "but not much beyond that. I don't think it crossed my mind that women in World War II were in the middle of combat zones."

Thanks, in part, to WIMSA's steady presence, that's changing. A few years ago, after a return visit to the memorial, I was encouraged by the spontaneous gratitude offered by three young girls who had signed the guest book.

"I think the women who serve are very brave," wrote one. "They rock!"

"Women who died for us: Thank you. If it wasn't for you I wouldn't be here."

"You go, Grandma!"

Go, indeed. As America pays respect to the World War II generation this spring, may we do so with gusto. With reverence. And with an appreciation for not only the men who fought at Omaha Beach and Okinawa and in North Africa but for the women who did their part, as well.

Which is why, after Quinn's RSVP arrived in the mail with the $200, I returned the check with a short note.

"Thanks," I wrote, "but this is our chance to honor you. You've already given."

Bob Welch is a columnist at The Register-Guard. His latest book, "American Nightingale: The Story of Frances Slanger, Forgotten Heroine of Normandy," will be published in May by Atria Books.

CAPTION(S):

Women from the 45th Field Hospital Unit, shown here aboard their landing craft, were among the first nurses to touch foot in France on the afternoon of June 10, 1944. The nurses landed at Utah Beach four days after D-Day. Within hours, they were faced with `17 truckloads" of wounded soldiers. Sallylou Cummings Bonzer At Fort Bragg in February 1944, members of the 45th Field Hospital set up tents in the North Carolina pines to simulate an on-the-go medical facility. Once in France, platoons would set up and break camp more than two dozen times as they helped patch up wounded soldiers.