Mary Juergens Welsh pulls out a long white piece of paper. On it are the names of "all the boys" who served in World War II from her neighborhood -- in the 2400 block of Central Avenue and White Street in Dubuque.
"There was hardly a family that wasn't touched," she said.
Add the two sons of Clara and Herbert Juergens, and their daughter Mary, to that list (one brother a medic and the other a tail gunner on an Army bomber). Service to the country dates to the Revolutionary and Civil wars in the extended Juergens and Welsh families.
"I don't think we were unusual," Mary said.
At age 21, she graduated from the Loyola University School of Nursing in Chicago. She listened to an Army recruiter, liked the pitch, and was commissioned a second lieutenant in the U.S. Army Nurse Corps.
"When I enlisted, I read on the paper 'expendable,'" Welsh said. "The recruiter told me no extraordinary circumstances would go to save you. You're expendable, there are more like you. I thought, 'Yeah, right.'"
There
Veterans Day |
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events scheduled today: * 10:30 a.m., Washington Square, Vietnam veteran Gregory E. Tanner, of Platteville, Wis., will be the featured speaker at the annual American Legion Post 6-sponsored Veterans Day observance. * 2 p.m., on Chaplain Schmitt Island, the new Veterans Memorial Plaza will officially open to the public with a dedication ceremony. |
Welsh still has stenciled "Mary E. Juergens 2nd Lt. ANC" on a worn, canvas pack. In it was a gas mask, a first aid kit and other items.
Welch's journey began with basic training at Fort McCoy, Wis., and took her across the Atlantic Ocean to England, France and Germany. Her eyes saw much. She cared for Japanese and German prisoners of war, psychiatric patients, seriously wounded American soldiers and concentration camp survivors.
Based on her own experiences, Welsh proudly says she could sit and talk to her son, Kevin (one of three sons), who served in Vietnam with the U. S. Marine Corps and her late husband, Ronald, who did 3 1/2 years in the European Theater from North Africa to Italy with the Army's 39th Combat Engineers -- as well as other soldiers and sailors.
"They knew I knew what they were talking about because I've been there, done that and seen that," she said.
Welsh saw war from a different perspective, including the carnage of the invasion of Europe, late June of 1944, and working in the psychiatric wards.
"There were no tranquilizers," she said. "Our teams worked 'round the clock. These men were sad, suffering from battle fatigue ... A lot of them saw their friends die. Some were unable to withstand the pressure."
Welsh remembers treating wounded teenagers, 17, 18 and 19, suffering from head wounds. There was a young man, his kidneys in terrible shape.
"He didn't die right away," she said. "He cried and cried, calling for his mother. That didn't help. When he died, everybody was relieved, grateful."
In France, Welsh served with the Army's 23rd General Hospital. She saw wounded German POWs, fresh from the front.
"They were at that point, 15-year-old kids and guys 50 and older," she said.
While overseas, Welsh always slept with a knife under her pillow.
"All women were very cognizant of the situation, aware of people with different attitudes," she said. "War changes everything. They could be cruel, and we were the only women over there."
When the concentration camps were liberated, Welsh was there.
"We got those who weren't dead; most came in on stretchers," she said. "All were emaciated, only a few days away from kicking the bucket ...These people weren't fed, worked to death and left to die."
Welsh returned home in 1946, having seen numerous European cities. She and Ron had three daughters and three sons. Welsh proudly notes she has two granddaughters currently serving in the military, one an officer in the U. S. Navy and the other a sergeant in the Air Force.
Welsh worked as a public health care nurse in the Dubuque area. After Ron died in 1981, Welsh "went on the road," as she calls it. She became an itinerant traveler, driving her motor home solo cross-country and to Mexico and Alaska. From 1989 until 2002, she volunteered as a seasonal campground host at Death Valley National Park in California.
"I had it great," Welsh says of her time in the military that also included extreme frostbite, the result of blizzard during a voyage on the English Channel. "I didn't feel like I was suffering at all. I felt like there was nothing I couldn't handle."
