Treating the wounds of war

• Bendt

julie buntjer/daily globe Ruth Bendt of Luverne holds a photo of the 24 men and women who served together as nurse’s aides at the Amarillo, Texas, Air Base during World War II.

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LUVERNE — Ruth Bendt dreamed of nothing more than becoming a registered nurse like her mother.

Growing up in an apartment inside the Soldiers and Sailors’ Home in Milford, Neb., where her mom tended patients and her dad worked as the night watchman, she was surrounded by inspiration to help the sick and heal the wounded.

What she didn’t have was opportunity — her parents couldn’t afford to send her to nurse’s training.

Despite pinching pennies by working in a home for unwed mothers, and later as a doctor’s assistant, Bendt’s dream was never quite in reach.

So, at the age of 17, Bendt told her parents she wanted to enlist in the military. She saw it as her opportunity to get free nurse’s training while serving her country.

“My dad says, ‘Well, we don’t like to see you go, but go ahead and try it,’” Bendt recalled earlier this week from her Luverne home.

She enlisted at the Lincoln (Neb.) Air Base, just 30 miles north of her hometown of Milford, and was sent to Des Moines, Iowa, for her assignment.

“My mother said to call when I had my address,” said Bendt. “I called and she said, ‘We just got your clothes home.’ They had to go to the bus depot to get it. (Mom) said that was the worst Thanksgiving they had ever had.”

Bendt said she enlisted on Nov. 11, 1941, with hopes of entering training soon after to become a registered nurse. She couldn’t have known that just 27 days after her enlistment the Japanese would launch an attack on Pearl Harbor, Hawaii, and mark the beginning of World War II.

Bendt said she was on the drill field when she learned of the surprise attack. At the time, she couldn’t think about her training being put on hold — she was called into action.

Bendt was assigned to the surgical ward of the base hospital in Amarillo, Texas, where she changed bandages, checked IVs and performed general care for wounded soldiers. In the three years she served in the military, being able to do what she could to aid the “boys of war” was her greatest accomplishment.

“They wasn’t much older than I was,” she said of the soldiers. “That was the saddest part. They were all injured and homesick.

“Some didn’t have legs, some didn’t have arms, some couldn’t see. Some of them could never talk again,” she added. “A lot of them had to be fed.”

The base hospital housed approximately 500 injured soldiers. When there was no room, Bendt said cots were set up in hallways and wherever else they could be put.

Bendt usually worked the day shift — from 7 a.m. to 4 p.m. — and was responsible for the care of 24 patients with the help of another nurse’s aide.

“We would have to give baths, give people bedpans,” she said.

Eventually, Bendt was asked to help transport the recovered soldiers home.

“When the doctor said they could leave, but they couldn’t ride in a car, the Army paid … to fly them home on an Army airplane,” she said. It was her job to accompany them on the flight and assist in delivering the soldier to a veterans hospital.

Bendt accompanied soldiers to Chicago, Ill., Lubbock, Texas, and Des Moines as part of her job as a nurse’s aide.

“They always said we were the Women’s Army Air Corps,” she said.

At one point in her military career, Bendt spent three months assigned to a WAC recruiting station in Chicago.

“You’d go to these schools and tell people what you do in the service, what you can expect,” she explained. “I didn’t have very good luck.”

Bendt said she was honest with the young women, telling them they couldn’t just leave the military if they grew homesick.

She went through her own period of homesickness. It wasn’t easy, but letters from home helped. In addition to her parents, Bendt had three brothers and two sisters. None of them served in World War II.

“My folks wrote to me every night and we would always look forward to mail call,” Bendt said. “That was twice a week.”

After her brief stint as a WAC recruiter, Bendt was offered the opportunity to return to Amarillo and her job as a nurse’s aide in the base hospital. She was eager to return not only to her job caring for soldiers, but to the boyfriend she’d met while working in the surgical ward.

“He was just like I was — an aide,” said Bendt of Ferdinand “Fritz” Bendt, whom she married on the air base in November 1943. “He helped put bandages on and see that the IVs were running, and go get patients and take them into surgery.”

While the two had their jobs in common, they didn’t talk about work when they were done for the day. Instead, Bendt said they chatted about their hometowns and their families, or went to shows offered on the base.

“We hardly ever went off the base,” she said. “We didn’t have a car.”

The couple made it a point not to talk about their patients while off duty. It was too sad to think about all of the young men and the injuries they would have to overcome or deal with for the rest of their lives.

“We had to walk from the hospital to our barracks — maybe a half-mile,” she said. “It gave us time to relax.”

Bendt recalled one time when a soldier, just 16 years old, went up to her and thanked her for her “good care.”

Sixteen was awfully young to be serving in the war.

“You’d be surprised how many lied about their age,” said Bendt. “Some of them just wanted to get away from home. You heard a lot of hard-luck stories — mother and father divorced, or they don’t know where they’re at.”

So many young men, so many injuries and so many fears led to lots of tears.

“If a storm would come up, they’d think someone was shooting at them,” Bendt recalled.

It was her job to calm those fears.

“I just told them that we’re here and it’s safe. Nobody’s going to come in and get them,” she said.

Bendt often wondered if there was something she could have done better to ease the pain of the men she cared for.

“But, you only had so much time with so many patients,” she said. “I always hoped that I could make all these kids well and able to go home, which wasn’t possible.”

When Bendt completed her three years of military service, she was given the option to stay in Amarillo to get her training to become a registered nurse or go home.

“It was a difficult decision — I always wanted to be a nurse,” she said.

Still, she chose to go home with her husband and make a life in Rock County. They settled on a farm west of Luverne after their discharge in November 1944, and remained there until their daughter’s asthma forced them to move into town. Fritz worked for the county highway department, while she was a stay-at-home mom until the youngest of their three children entered high school.

Bendt was 36 when she went to work for the Luverne Hospital as a nurse’s aide, and stayed there until her retirement at age 70.

Now 87, she thinks about the advancements in the medical industry, and how the work of the nurse’s aide has changed from World War II to today. Back then, she said, the nurses had a lot more they could do.

For her service to her country, Bendt was honored with the Victory Medal, the American Theater Ribbon and the Good Conduct Medal.

Bendt will be among approximately 110 World War II veterans to take part in the fourth and final journey of Honor Flight Southwest Minnesota Sept. 30-Oct. 1 to Washington, D.C., to view the World War II Memorial built in their honor.

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