When we arrived in Mayen, Germany, at the German orphanage we found the nuns still moving personal effects from the building.  But the wards were set up, and one hour later we were on duty, and officially at work.

Our flying beginning set the pace for the whole stay.  Patients arrived in a never ending stream.  The number wasn't overwhelming but the constant day and night turnover made us wonder at times if it would ever slack up.

We let German medics take over a large share of the bedside care of the prisoners, and we found that, as in the bulge, if we get important treatments done the little things could wait.

Gradually the Rhine battle moved ahead; and we decided we were well on our way to Berlin when told our next stop would be Kassel in Germany.

We found upon arriving there that we were to bivouac and move on, and bivouac we did with an unexploded bazooka shell in a closed off room, and various shells and hand grenades on the lawn.  The rooms never really seemed like ours even when our equipment and cots were in place; for pictures and maps - unmistakably German Flight Training School, hung on the walls.  In the lockers were clothes, books, notebooks, old letters, odd ties, and German song books.

It was easy to read the story of what happened there - the unexpectedly swift advance that had caused the Jerries to leave quickly, confusedly.

                                                                                      Crossing the Rhine

It was on our way to Kassel that we crossed the Rhine.  The longest tactical pontoon bridge in the world they told us.  A sign said "Keep moving in case of Air Raid".  We scanned the sky and looked carefully at the soldier who sat with field glasses watching the current for floating mines.  The Rhine didn't look very big but going across seemed to take rather long.

After a few days of recreation, of sleeping, resting. we were glad to start to work again.  On April 13th, a cold rainy, gray day we started to Thamesbruck;  back to tents we thought, to mud,a nd misery, but by the time the ride was over the sun was out; the hospital tents were neatly lined up, the red and white markers made gay roads between them, our flag waved out front, and we couldn't wait to get our tents up and move in.

Beautiful weather, not too much work, made our stay a nice one.  We began to be able to get extra time off, and go on a few sight-seeing tours.  One, none of us will forget was Buchenwald.  I have never read a description that expressed the full filth, despair, and misery that made up Buchenwald. A gray, barren place with a  smell of starvation, death, and suffering, the human mind staggers under murder made so commonplace one cannot comprehend it even while looking right at it.  Living skeletons with eyes nobody could look at long.  It was the proof to us of what the Germans really were doing.

On April 26, our path across Germany turned south and we bivouacked for four days at Weiden.  It was cold and rainy, the tents leaked, the ground was soggy and the circles of warmth around the stoves were not  very wide.

The few hours the sun came out found us fishing, and rowing along the river.  The night of April 28th found us listening with that peculiar tenseness of body and mind to a plane droning overhead as it strafed, not far away, and we jumped to the old familiar cry of "Lights Out".  The excitement put an end to the rumor we'd heard that the war was over.

Early April 30th we packed our musette bags, rolled our bed rolls, and looking every inch the field soldier in our usual fatigues, field jacket, helmet, pistol belt and canteen, we climbed in the ambulances, headed for Regensburg.

The trip was the old, old story of the ANCs, luggage, helmets, canteen, K-rations, little personal belongings and odd junk piles high - cigarettes, candy, magazines, stories and rumors exchanged; snapshots taken out the window; sleep snatched in odd positions, singing and snacks of whatever food was handy during the breaks.

Just outside Regensburg we ran into a thick, cold sleet storm.  For miles along the road stretched the stockade where thousands of German soldiers huddled together behind barb-wire, and crouching in groups to keep warm.

They are being punished, but we, in our way, wonder what the future holds.  Another war-picture.

We work, we paly, we gripe and let boredom get us down sometimes; we wish out loud we'd never been so foolish as to leave home - but all of us have something inside that makes us happy and proud we're here and are Army Nurses doing our share at caring for the casualties of warfare.