MEET A PARAMEDIC PIONEER NURSE TENDED WOUNDED IN TRANSIT.

Byline: Lisa Mascaro Staff Writer

Granada Hills great-grandmother Kathryn Feehan doesn't want to be in the spotlight.

There were a lot of women like her, she says, Army Air Force flight nurses who rode on cargo planes to World War II's combat zones and transported the wounded back to hospitals. Like modern-day paramedics, her group shuttled hundreds of wounded young men during the year she was stationed in the South Pacific.

``It was our job,'' said Feehan, who went on to work in emergency rooms at San Fernando Valley hospitals and at the Van Nuys Jail's medical dispensary.

``The way I see it, everything I did was being done for the first time. From that has flown all the trauma stuff for the hospitals, paramedics.''

First Lt. Flight Nurse Katie Beal, as she was known then, had been a registered nurse, working in a Chicago hospital, when she heard a radio commercial pleading for flight nurses. She and her roommate enlisted in November 1941 - a month before the Japanese attack on Pearl Harbor.

She completed the training and graduated to the Army Nurse Corps, attached to the Army Air Force, helping launch a new legion of women in the military.

By spring of 1942, she was sent overseas to begin trailing troops in the South Pacific.

Everyday, Feehan would climb aboard a cargo plane, head out on the hours-long flight to pick up the wounded. Sometimes they'd fly into combat zones - she'd carry her pistol - sometimes they'd be close to the front lines.

Often the only nurse aboard, she'd care for two dozen men at a time, lying in rows of bunk-like beds lining the sides of the aircraft.

Mostly the men had already been triaged at the scene, But with her footlocker of supplies she could find morphine or oxygen to keep them stabilized until they got to hospitals.

``They were all such nice boys. They'd go through all their pockets seeing if there was something they can give you.''

Now 86, she flips through old, black-and-white photos showing the islands' swaying palm trees, the fresh-faced young soldiers, the planes where she worked.

She and the troops were in their early 20s. They'd kid around and get in some laughs in the middle of the 20th century's biggest war.

Her one year in the service quickly grew to four - including a year back in the States as a domestic flight nurse shuttling men from New York City to hospitals closer to their home towns - before she was ultimately discharged.

She met her husband and, after he finished up his studies, they relocated in 1950 to the San Fernando Valley near his teaching job in Hollywood.

She raised nine children, and worked on and off at hospital ERs in the Valley before retiring, then went back to work at the medical dispensary at the Van Nuys Jail. After five years, she retired in 1984.

She went to the 50th anniversary of D-Day in Normandie, France, in 1994, and longs to add more countries to the list of those she's already visited.

She kept in touch over the years with her friends from her war years, but last Christmas was the first holiday that passed without any cards for her.

``Over the years, they slowly faded away.''

Lisa Mascaro, [phone]

lisa.mascaro(at)dailynews.com

CAPTION(S):

2 photos

Photo:

(1 -- color) Kathryn Feehan, one of the 5th Army Air Force's flight nurses, holds a photo of herself, second from right, and other nurses in 1942.

John Lazar/Staff Photographer

(2) In uniform, then Kathryn Beal, the nurse stands in front of the mess hall in 1942 while she was stationed in New Guinea. She and other nurses provided care on transport planes for wounded soldiers being flown back to hospitals.