“An American Nurse in Paris”: As shells explode, an aspiring journalist shifts gears

Editor’s note: In this excerpt from “An American Nurse in Paris,” journalist Alice Simmons, in France during World War I, has found her path to covering the war thwarted by sexism in both the media and military. A German bomb attack while she visits with her friend and fellow nurse, Trudy, forces Alice to use her nursing skills and sends her on a different path.

The small office has a desk and two chairs coated with a layer of dust. A row of worn thumbtacks line the bottom of a smudged cork bulletin board above the desk. I slump into the swivel chair and lean back with a squeak.

A knock on the door five minutes later is followed by a key scraping into the lock and a click. Stan closes the door as soon as Trudy is in.

“Dad told me to meet you in secret. What’s this all about? He wouldn’t say.” Trudy’s smile melts into a concerned frown. She gives me a hug, stands back, and narrows her eyes. “What happened to you?”

“Long story.”

“Are you sick?”

“At heart, maybe, but physically okay. Mentally, I won’t swear to sanity.”

“You look like you got beat up after pulling one of our all-nighters back in nursing school. Where’s your locket?”

Trudy’s iridescent blue eyes glow against her porcelain complexion. She wears the dark blue serge uniform of the Army Nurse Corps with polished black shoes and a snug fabric belt around her tiny waist. An Army Nurse Corps pin shines on her left collar—a gilded medical caduceus with the white enameled NC just below the snake’s heads in the center.

I plop into the desk chair, motioning for Trudy to sit. “How was your voyage?”

“Came over on a tub called the SS Caserta. They kept me and the girls in the upper decks—officer country—to protect our virtue. Jack Johnson’s dad, Ab, was on the boat, so I had good company. He’s with Dad now, in his office.”

“How is Jack? I haven’t seen him since graduation.”

“Not sure. His dad told me they’d had a falling out over Jack joining the marines. I think he respects my Bill’s decision to enlist in the army more, even though Bill is only a private. Jack’s a lieutenant.”

“Any word from Bill?”

“No. It’s driving me buggy. I send letters, but none come back. He’s in France, but they apparently keep moving the Second Division around so much the mail never catches up.”

“How about Jack?” I ask.

“Bill told me he was in Virginia, last he heard. Training as a replacement officer.”

“I hate to think about why they will need replacement officers.” Trudy wasn’t the only one who tried to set me up with Jack in college. We hit it off—best of friends. But I was reticent over relationships with men at the time. He’s a handsome, rugged Montanan—he can do better than the Librarian. And I’m not ready for more. “When did you arrive?”

“We landed in Brest a few days ago.” Trudy chuckles. “You French have a strange way of naming things. Anyway, after that, a long train ride. But really, how are you?”

“Not sure where to begin. Angry, frustrated, and maybe a little afraid.”

“What about?”

I tell her about the events of the last week, leaving out nothing. At the end, my hands tremble. I’m drained. “And that’s where my locket is. In Martel’s possession, I assume.”

“Dad know?”

I nod, looking down at the floor.

“That explains his mood. There must be something he can do.”

“I fight my own battles.” My face is tight. “You know me.”

Trudy holds her hands up in surrender. “That’s the Alice I know.” She puts her hands down. “But if you’re planning to take on the US Army, don’t do it by yourself. You have friends. Lean on them. Dad can probably help. Maybe Mr. Johnson too. He’s a major, like Dad.”

“When I reported it, it seemed like the first action was to circle the wagons and blame me. I’m honestly not sure how to fight that.” I need to change the subject. “Where will you be working?”

“I report to Nurse Enright at Red Cross Military Hospital Number One. Know where that is?”

“Yeah. I start on Monday as an aide.”

“Aide?” Trudy’s eyes widen. “You’re one of the best nurses I know.”

“Didn’t bring my papers. I guess I was so full of my dreams that I didn’t have a plan B. Mrs. Enright is waiting for my credentials. Where are you planning to live?”

“At the hospital. There’s a dorm. That’s what they recommended. You?”

“I found a room a couple of blocks away—”

An explosion knocks the air out of my chest and obliterates my words in midair. A loud crash sounds, my ears ring, and the office fills with dust through the shattered window. We rush to the door. A sneeze catches me amid the dust storm as I open the door. I reach for a handkerchief to put over my face. It doesn’t smell like fire—not yet—just plaster and dust.

“What just happened? Did a boiler explode? What?” Trudy shouts.

I peer into a corridor that’s suddenly too narrow for all the staff surging by. Panicked reporters dodge past, several with cigarettes stuck to their lips, eyes terrified. An army captain touches my elbow, and I glance at a worried face and uninjured hands. “Better get along, miss. Have to evacuate.” He wears medical pins. I follow him through the hall, down the stairs, and out into the street, Trudy at my heels.

Chaos and panic greet us when we reach the sidewalk. The shattered windows of the café where Ira invited us to breakfast hang on strips of tape. Tables and chairs lie upended in the rubble. Trudy dashes toward the café when Ira and Jack’s father emerge, looking like snowmen, covered in white dust. Mr. Johnson holds a cloth napkin over his bleeding nose. Ira pulls a chair out of the rubble as Trudy arrives and eases Mr. Johnson into it. Trudy doesn’t need my help—she can handle this. I look around, trying to decide what to do. Reporters write furiously in notepads, their cameramen snapping photos, helping nobody, and I realize how useless the press is at a moment like this.

The facade of the building above the café has collapsed across the street, crushing a taxicab, the driver still in it. The sides of the building stand, smoke rising from the cratered center. The rubble is a jumble of glass, stones, and wooden framework fractured like a tornado blew through. And people. Bodies. Shouts. Barked orders. To my left, a man holds a small girl with a red stain spreading across the front of her pink-and-white-striped pinafore. I start in their direction. Shouts to the right draw my eyes to a woman, her right arm a gory mess. A small man wearing an immaculate navy uniform shoves by to tend to the young girl, so I pick my way toward the woman with the ruined arm.

Two army medical officers stumble through the debris alongside me, the captain from the hallway and a colonel. The woman stares at her right arm, whimpering. She mumbles confused French. Her hand is crushed, two fingers hanging by threads. Bright blood spurts from torn arteries. Bone fragments jut through her wrist. The colonel grabs the arm above the elbow while the captain fumbles with his Sam Browne belt. I speak in French to the victim while the captain gets his shoulder strap off. “Don’t worry. You won’t die. I have two fine doctors here with me to care for you.”

The navy surgeon rushes up, shouting at the colonel. “You fool, that’s the wrong spot.” He shoves the colonel aside and uses both hands to compress above the elbow. Why did he do that? The colonel had good compression on the artery. I work my way behind the woman and wrap the captain’s belt around the arm, above the doctor’s hands, and tighten it. The captain hands me a window frame remnant. I tighten the tourniquet, glance into the Navy doctor’s intense gray eyes, and nod. He wears US Navy medical collar pins and the sleeve stripes of a lieutenant, junior grade. “I think it’s tight enough to try loosening your grip, sir.”

The surgeon’s hands ease off. No bleeding. “Great work. Can you stay with her? There are others . . .”

“Thanks, Lieutenant—what’s your name?”

“Beck.”

“Thanks, Lieutenant Beck. I’ve got this.” The navy surgeon and the army captain pick their way toward the remains of the café. The adrenaline is flowing, but my hands are steady. An odd feeling settles in. I’ve felt it before while working in the emergency room at Minneapolis General during training—like being in a hurricane, chaos surrounding me but I’m the calm at the center. Trudy holds a towel over Mr. Johnson’s nose, red spreading around her hands. I’d like to help others, but this is my patient now. My job is her care. I’m her nurse.

Martel stands on the building’s stoop shouting orders, though I can’t understand them. His voice is strangled—it makes me smile for a moment. My boot took away part of his baritone. He locks anger-filled eyes on mine. I focus on my patient and ignore him.

Sirens wail and bells clang as emergency vehicles squeal to a stop near me. The clatter of shod hoofs on pavement and shouts in French grow louder—the fire brigade arrives and unwinds their hose with a loud grinding noise. Two ambulance attendants bring a litter. The colonel and I help settle the woman onto it, and the four of us carry her to the ambulance. The attendants slide the stretcher in, and the colonel says, “Didn’t I see you with the press corps earlier?”

“Yes, sir.”

“What’s your name, if I may ask?”

“Alice Simmons.”

“And you’re a reporter?”

“Been trying to be.”

“You must have some medical experience.”

“Yes, sir. I’m also an RN.”

“A suggestion, Nurse Simmons, from a doctor who knows his nurses. Quit wasting your time with reporters. The army is desperate for nurses like you. Call me if you need a reference.” He hands me a card. I glance at it and then back as Colonel Wadhams stumbles through the detritus toward the café.

The ambulance attendant says in French, “Nurse, are you able to ride with the patient? My assistant is new and has already vomited once after seeing the wound.”

I clamber into the back of the ambulance and sit next to the pasty-faced assistant. “Where are your dressings?” I say in French. The assistant stammers a few words and points to a box. I paw through paper-wrapped Red Cross dressing packets. These are like the ones I helped Mother make last year. What would she think if she could see me? I rip open one with a white label, cursing the person who made it—too much glue. I slip the gauze sponges out of their sterile packing and lay them on the wound. “Please, sir, lift the arm so I can get this underneath.”

The patient screams when the attendant raises the arm a few inches off the stretcher. I swathe the hand, wrist, and lower arm with a roll of sterile gauze. I’m afraid the sweaty attendant will erupt again and need to distract him. “How long to the hospital?”

“A few minutes. At the most, five.”

“Good. Ease the arm down, please.”

The ambulance careens through the streets, jerking us around a corner, then to a stop. The driver comes to the back. I help him slide the stretcher out, then grab the other end while the assistant vomits next to the rear wheel. “It’s going to be a long day with your friend.”

We carry the woman into the receiving area and lay the stretcher on a cart. A doctor walks over, trailed by two nurses. “And what have we here?” he asks the ambulance driver. The driver nods to me.

“Right hand crush injury,” I say in French. “She has extensive palmar and digital lacerations, near amputations of the fourth and fifth digits, open wrist fracture with bilateral arterial lacerations. There was severe hemorrhage at the scene with shock. I applied a tourniquet, then four-by-fours to the wrist, an absorbent dressing to the hand, and wrapped it with gauze on the ride here.”

“You are perhaps a physician, mademoiselle?”

“No. I’m a nurse.”

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