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Gabrielle Gorski holds
some of the medals she was presented with Monday in Waterville,
Maine for her military service during World War II.
Staff photo by Jim Evans
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She doesn't recall the
names of the battles, but former 1st Lt. Gabrielle Gorski vividly remembers
the soldiers wounded on the battlefields of World War II, with injuries she
has tried to forget.
"It was sad, but you didn't have the time to
cry," said Gorski, 87, a former civilian nurse who joined the Army Nurse
Corps in March 1943 and served until the end of the war. "You have to keep
on working. There were some that had terrible injuries. You'd put them to
bed and they'd wake up and find out they had a leg missing. That is so
horrible. ... I try not to remember it because it was so sad. You tried to
do as much as you could."
Gorski now lives at Mount St. Joseph Long
Term Care Community in Waterville, Maine, the former Sisters Hospital where
she trained to become a nurse. She sat in a wheelchair Monday as she
received several medals for her service to the military more than 60 years
ago: a World War II Victory Medal; an American Campaign Medal; an Army of
Occupation Medal; a European African Middle Eastern Campaign Medal; and an
Honorable Service lapel button.
"She landed on Omaha Beach and took care of
our wounded soldiers," said Command Sgt. Major Gregory Small of the Maine
Army National Guard, who helped present the medals along with U.S. Rep.
Michael Michaud, D-2nd District.
Gorski, born Gabrielle Giroux, was the ninth
of 10 children born to her French-Canadian immigrant parents in Waterville.
She graduated from Waterville High School in 1938. She said her parents
weren't happy when she decided to join the Army after graduating from
nursing school, but they didn't try to stop her.
"Every day I would hear on the radio about
the need for nurses," she said. "There was a big need, and there weren't
enough nurses in the service. I wanted to help. My parents were scared,
especially when I was in Europe and there was fighting. A nurse friend,
Aileen Horne, called me up and asked me if I wanted to join the Navy with
her," she said. "I said, 'Well, gee, I can't swim.' But I had already joined
the Army."
She was assigned to the 96th Evacuation
Hospital, which traveled to England, Belgium, France and Germany to treat
soldiers after battles. Each nurse worked 12 hours a day and cared for up to
90 patients, who were arranged on cots 30 to a tent, she said. Nurses cared
for the dying, stabilized the seriously wounded before evacuating them for
surgery, and treated those with minor injuries so they could return to
battle.
"We gave them medication, whatever they
needed," she said. "There were enlisted men who helped take care of the men
in the tents, too."
The American hospitals also treated enemy
prisoners of war, she said.
"We had some of the German prisoners as
patients," she said. "It was a little scary, especially on night duty. But
the idea was, if we treated the Germans nice, then they would treat the
Americans nice if our men were captured."
Gen. Omar Bradley once paid a visit to the
hospital where she was working.
"He went through the tent," she said. "He was
a very nice man, medium height. He was a nice-looking man. I told him I was
from Waterville because he knew Dr. (John) Towne from World War I."
In France, she met Gen. George S. Patton Jr.,
whom she also described as "nice-looking."
"The hospital was set up in the woods, in
tents," she said. "Some other nurses and I were able to go shopping in
Paris, and we met the general when we were on the walk back. He was a very
nice man."
But the best day of all was the day she
learned the war was over.
"I forget where we were, but I remember the
day and we were so happy," she said, smiling. "We wanted it to end. I just
remember we were in a sort of a dormitory with quite a few nurses, and
everybody was so happy; oh, so happy when it ended."
She rode back to the U.S. on the Queen Mary.
Gorski said she's not sure why it took so
long for the Army to give her the medals, but she wasn't too concerned.
"I really didn't care whether I got medals or
not," Gorski said. "I was doing something and if it helped people, I was
pleased."
She said she hasn't spoken much about the war
since she came home.
"I didn't want to think about it," she said.
"You feel so sad. These things shouldn't happen."
Christina Sobran -- 207-861-9253
csobran@centralmaine.com
Copyright
© 2006 Blethen
Maine Newspapers Inc.
