![]() I went to see him at Carnegie Hall when I got home,” Cottrell said.Ĭottrell also recalled “Bed Check Charlie,” a single plane that made regular night-time nuisance bombing runs. It was so peaceful, it felt like being in heaven. station played the most beautiful music - Mantovani. The bulletin board, she said, was where they “found out all the dirt, the scoop.” She recalled that cigarettes were 20 cents a pack and booze was $2 a bottle, which they bought at the officer’s club. … It was just party, party, party, like they did in the ‘M*A*S*H’ TV show.” A bar was in the sitting room, and we partied. “I can’t go in public places, but I learned.” That was not good,” she said.Ĭottrell said she thought their nine-hole latrine would be the end of her. “It was brutally hot in Korea, and we spent six weeks without showers. We were to be ready for patients in case they came, and they came,” Cottrell said. “We had to have it set up in 12 hours to receive patients. There was only one dialysis machine, at a unit north of them, so he was shipped there.īesides her work at the evac unit, Cottrell was sent to set up a M*A*S*H unit at the front lines near the 38th parallel. The orders from headquarters were finally carried out, and the doctors were right - the soldier did go into kidney failure. The evac unit’s doctors didn’t want them removed for fear he would go into kidney failure. Later, the 8th Army Headquarters wanted the bandages removed. She was there for 12 of the 18 hours he spent in surgery. ![]() He had third-degree burns from his chest to his ankles,” she said. “It was lying on the ground and he stepped on it. She recalled one young man who had a trip flare go off in his abdomen. Those with less severe injuries came in by train. We’d hear choppers and made a beeline to surgery,” Cottrell said. “The (severely wounded) patients were brought in by helicopter. We also had two rooms that were private for major surgery.”Ĭottrell was in charge of the 12 nurses in surgery and the GI medics. ![]() “We had 10 tables in a big room, and we kept moving them in and out for minor surgeries. More than 40,000 soldiers came through the evac unit during the time Cottrell was stationed there, she said.Ĭottrell was an operating room supervisor, tasked with seeing that the tables were set and ready to go for each surgery. They had a lot of work, treating an average of 100 patients every day. Our hospital was a burned-out school building.” “We had quite a large unit,” the Manheim Township resident said. Six months later, she was transferred to Korea, where she spent the next 14 months as a first lieutenant with the 121st Evac Unit, near Seoul. She was sent to Fort Leonard and Fort Dix before heading overseas to Osaka, Japan, in January 1952. It had become apparent that more surgical nurses were going to be needed to help the large numbers of wounded soldiers.Īt so in April 1951, at age 30, Cottrell began basic training at the San Antonio Hospital. Cottrell’s weight hadn’t changed, but this time the military welcomed the Long Island native. When nurse Marie Cottrell tried to enlist in the Army during World War II, her 5-foot-7 1/2-inch, 120-pound frame was deemed “too thin,” and she was turned away.Ī few years later, the Korean War began. M*A*S*H In Real Life – Nurse Recalls Korea, ‘The Forgotten War’
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