Lieutenant Thelma Kellgren ANC (née Reynolds)

	Service in America, Ireland and England.
	This page: service in North West Europe.

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Route March Gear

Following D-Day, Thelma became aware that the hospital would move to France. The nurses were issued with combat gear and taken on route marches. Soon the order came for them to move to the embarkation zone before boarding the HMS Louth on 6 July 1944 destined for Omaha Beach. The landing craft beached at 0900 hours at St Laurent-sur-Mer. There were signs of battle, but the beach had been cleared although shellfire could be heard in the distance.

While the enlisted men were busy setting up the unit in Carentan, several of us were sent on detached service to the 12^th Field Hospital as soon as Cherbourg fell; fell is hardly the word - it was literally flattened. We took over a German Hospital that they had abandoned as they retreated, leaving their dying and wounded in the cellar. Although it was felt that the enemy was gone our soldiers were not too certain and insisted on guarding us. We soon had some kind of order out of chaos and there were a lot of dreadful injuries to be coped with. The only water tap was in the yard and the men would only allow us out there with an armed escort... The whole situation was surreal and a mass of confusion and suffering. It was astonishing how many people were still alive in Cherbourg - they crawled out of bombed cellars. I saw a crowd set upon a girl and shave her head because she had slept with German soldiers. It was cruel.

The 5^th General Hospital was soon established in Carentan. There was a bed capacity of 1,000 with a staff of 43 doctors, 83 nurses, 5 Red Cross workers, 30 administrators and 500 enlisted men.

The battle went on and the flak was plentiful as ever and we were in the middle of a field. Six of us shared a tent and the boys made central water points everywhere. It was very well organized. We girls were less enthusiastic about digging our own foxholes, but were given no choice. We dove into them almost nightly.

We were very, very busy and not all our patients were soldiers or even adults. One beautiful August day a crowd of little boys in Carentan decided to see what mischief they could get into. Throwing discarded land mines against a rock to make them go off was a favourite pastime. This time it worked a bit too well and screaming parents carried armfuls of wounded children into our 'shock tent'... Andres (the ringleader) had not run away fast enough and was hit by the full blast, which took away one leg and both eyes. Two little boys were killed outright and three others had serious wounds but survived.

We were a gullible lot and when the laundry lady offered us 'boeufstek' we cooked it for two days before we realized it was an ancient horse that had stepped on a mine. How did that laundry woman always look so smart? She'd had a hell of a war, but her hair always looked great and her clothes, although threadbare, were very chic. The French women were fantastic - I take my hat off to them.

5th General Hospital, France

Little French patients, Carentan

By November the hospital moved to Toul in Lorraine. Thelma was sent to work at the 16^th Field Hospital at Sangermines in the Ardennes. During the Battle of the Bulge, she nursed wounded of many different nationalities. She became aware of the 'immediacy of battle', although the severely injured were initially treated on the field before they reached the hospital. Years after these experiences, Thelma wrote this poem,

           July 1944

It was not really a quarrel
More a contest of wills.
He, gasping, in pain, in German
I, tired, frustrated, in English.
The tent was full of wounded.
For the third time I put
The needle back in his arm.
Why did he rip it out repeatedly?
I had hardly turned away when
I heard his distressed breath;
Yet again with his one good arm
He had pulled off the oxygen.
I put the mask back,
I railed at him like
An old fish wife.
He cowered and
I took his hand.
I was determined that he would not die.
I did not know
He was afraid of me;
He had been told that
I would kill him.
I won't - Please God
Help us.

Thelma returned to Toul around Christmas time. She felt they were too far behind the lines to be much use. There was a large POW compound in the vicinity and some of the Germans who had been attached to medical units were given work on the wards. Thelma became particularly attached to Heinrich, a young Austrian who had been shot and seriously injured when he reached for a handkerchief from his pocket.

One day I stood at the window of the ward office on the second floor of that old French hospital and gazed out... We had all been entranced for a week watching the construction of a flag pole base with surrounding stone and grass design. The big day had arrived, clear and sunny, and the pole was being raised... the raising of the American flag was being done earnestly and enthusiastically by defeated members of the Third Reich. One of these in uniform, swung and swayed in the breeze atop the pole. Two studious, disheartened figures ignored him completely, picked up stones by hand and tidied the driveway.

Nurses lunch break

On 15 May, the war in Europe was over, and Thelma attended a victory celebration and service at the Cathedral in Toul. By June she was impatient to leave France and be reunited with Jonky. A friend in the USAF offered to take her, and having received a three day pass to Rheims, she crouched in the back of his Mustang Trainer and they flew to Naples where Jonky was waiting. They had a romantic reunion, and Thelma returned to her Unit, again with Jimmy in his Mustang, to be informed she had been granted ten days compassionate leave with her husband in Italy!

Back at the Unit I was working on the amputee ward and did not find it easy. It didn't seem wise having them all on the same ward. The job certainly did not bring out the best in me. I tried to be jolly and optimistic... but whatever pep talk I tried to dream up, they just gave me that 'who do you think you're kidding' stare. Those lads whose stumps were pretty well healed were being evacuated back to the States. It was clear from the way they looked at you that they did not believe a word you said about prosthesis. One day something so marvelous happened I could not believe the US Army Medical Corps could be so clever. We were told one morning that some entertainers would be along in the afternoon to cheer up the boys. In the past this had been very strained and usually fell flat on its face. At 2pm in swaggered four good looking lads in smart uniform. They started to sing and dance a bit and the patients looked bored. Suddenly one of them said, "Boy, it's hot in here," took off his jacket and threw it on one of the beds, leaving one arm in the sleeve and just went on dancing. The patients began to sit up and take notice. The show went on and suddenly one of them grabbed hold of me and said, "Come on, baby, how about a dance?" just as suddenly he stopped dancing and dropped one leg on the floor. He grinned at me and said, "Look what you've done now!" I was speechless and the patients started yelling and clapping and from then on it was great. I couldn't imagine they were the same lot of patients they had been yesterday. It was very moving and I had to go into the office for a little weep.

The Unit was closed at the end of August, having treated some 35,000 patients in its ETO (European Theater Operations) duration. Thelma went from unit to unit until she managed to get a transfer to 300^th General Hospital USA stationed in Naples. Jonky returned to England in January 1946 and Thelma, now pregnant, followed in April.

	Service in America, Ireland and England.
	This page: service in North West Europe.