3 Important Women of World War Two

 Elsie S. Ott: Flight Nurse 

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Already trained as a nurse, Lieutenant Elsie S. Ott, joined the Army Air Corps in 1941. While stationed in Karachi, India, Ott was assigned to the first evacuation flight to be conducted by The Army Air Corps. Aside some basic first aid supplies Ott’s plane had no medical equipment and only one army medic to help her care for the passengers having variety of injuries, diseases, and mental illnesses. Otts plane left India on January 17, 1943 and made several stops, picking up more patients, during its 6-day flight finally arriving in Washington, D.C. Upon her return to India a few months later Ott was placed with a new unit, the 803rd Military Air Evacuation Squad, where she was promoted to captain in 1946.  Elsie S. Ott was the First woman ever to receive the U.S. Air Medal.

Reba Whittle: POW Nurse

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Lt. Reba Whittle served a flight nurse with the 813th Medical Air Evacuation Squadron, logging over 500 hours. In September of 1944 while a flight from England to France to pick up casualties, her plane was shot down over Aachen, Germany. One of the few survivors to be taken prisoner  the Germans did not know what to do with Whittle, as she was their first female military POW and in fact the only U.S. female soldier to be imprisoned as a POW in the European theater of war. Whittle was allowed to minister to the wounded in camp until a Swiss legation that negotiated POW transfers arranged for herself and 109 male POWS to be escorted by the German Red Cross away from the camp on January 25th, 1945.
Although Whittles status as a POW was undocumented by the U.S. military, she was awarded the Air Medal and a Purple Heart, and promoted to lieutenant. Unfortunately, Whittle was denied disability or POW retirement benefits. Whittle's story was kept quiet by the Army and barely noticed by the media due to precedence of celebrations of the war's end.  Whittle’s POW status was officially conferred, although posthumously, by the U.S. military in 1983.

Aleda Lutz: Flight Nurse 

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As one of the most celebrated flight nurses of World War II, 1st Lt. Aleda E. Lutz volunteered for duty with the 802nd Medical Air Evacuation Squadron where she logged more flight hours than any flight nurse. Lutz flew 196 missions and evacuated over 3,500 men. In November 1944, during an evacuation flight from the front lines near Lyons, Italy, her C-47 crashed killing all aboard.  Whittle earned six battle stars before her death, and has been recorded as the first military woman to die in a combat zone in World War II. Lutz was awarded the Red Cross Medal, the Oak Leaf Cluster, the Purple Heart and  four times she was awarded the Air Medal. Whittle posthumously received the Distinguished Flying Cross.

 

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