by Larry Miller
The short, soft-spoken former Army nurse was asked how she coped with the harsh realities of working in an Army hospital in war-torn Europe during World War II.
The short, soft-spoken former Army nurse was asked how she coped with the harsh realities of working in an Army hospital in war-torn Europe during World War II.
Marcella LeBeau - July 17, 2016 |
You could hear a pin drop as this 96-year-old veteran nurse
stood under the shade of a small tent outside the Fort Meade Museum at Sturgis,
South Dakota last weekend (7/17/16).
She shared stories of her experiences during
World War II, from the D-Day landings at Normandy to the historic “Battle of
the Bulge” that helped change the direction of the war.
Marcella Ryan LeBeau’s story began on the Cheyenne River
Reservation at Promise, South Dakota, where she was one of five children born to
Joseph and Florence Ryan. Her old hometown
of Promise – nestled along the banks of the Moreau River – is gone now,
inundated by the massive waters of Lake Oahe.
Her name belies the rich Lakota heritage of which she is so proud. Her mother was a
member of the Two Kettle Band of the Cheyenne River Sioux Tribe and a
descendant of Rain in the Face, who fought at the Battle of the Little Big
Horn. Her great grandfather,
Joseph Four Bear, was a reluctant signatory to the infamous Fort Laramie Treaty
of 1868. Her father, a rancher, was
Irish.
Marcella’s Lakota name is Wigmunke Waste Win, which in
English means “Pretty Rainbow Woman.”
“Growing up we had no
electricity and had to haul water in.
I remember my father had a big garden, and geese, horses, and other
animals.
“My mother died when I
was 10, and I was sent to the boarding school at the Old Cheyenne River Agency. It was a horrible experience. If you didn’t speak English, it was
terrible. Students would be beaten
– whipped – and there were instances of rape and attempted rape. It was very traumatic.”
She convinced her father that she and her siblings weren’t
getting a proper education, and they transferred to the St. Elizabeth Mission
School at nearby Wakpala. After
getting her diploma from St. Elizabeth’s, Marcella enrolled at St. Mary’s School of
Nursing in Pierre. She completed her studies there in three years, graduating in 1942.
“When I graduated from
St. Mary’s, I had no uniform or shoes for the ceremony. I was fortunate that my father was able
to buy them for me.”
After working for a time at the Public Health Hospital at
Fort Thompson, Marcella took her first out-of-state job in Pontiac, Michigan.
“It paid $140 a month,
plus room and board. It seemed
like a lot of money.”
World events, however, were deteriorating, and the United
States was in the clutches of World War II.
“I was working in the
surgical ward in Pontiac, and we kept hearing radio announcements about the
need for Army nurses.”
Lieutenant Marcella Ryan - 1944 |
But Marie was assigned to go to Colorado, and Marcella was
sent to Torney General Hospital in Palm Springs, California for "training." It was the old El Mirador Hotel, which the Army had bought at the outbreak of the war and converted into a 1,600-bed general hospital. While undergoing no real military training, Lt. Ryan was issued her uniforms and was temporarily assigned to work in the psychiatric wards.
She then received orders to join
the 76th General Hospital unit in Boston and was soon on a troop train headed for Chicago
and then Boston, where she and others awaited their overseas assignments. Shortly thereafter, she found herself
aboard the troop transport USS George
Washington for the 14-day voyage to Liverpool, England. The United States was making
preparations for an invasion of Nazi-occupied France.
After arriving at Liverpool, nurses of the 76th General
Hospital were transported to the coastal community of Llandudno, Wales, where
the new arrivals underwent orientation to the European Theatre Operations and
preliminary professional evaluation. While there, medical personnel lived in hutted camps or were
billeted with families. After about a month, Lt. LeBeau, who had
lived with a family in a private home, was assigned to the medical facility at
Leominister, England, about 100 miles northwest of London.
There she worked in the psychiatric ward – but soon
submitted a request to be transferred to surgery.
In May 1944, their first patients began arriving in the
surgical ward. The work schedule
was somewhat routine.
Then came June 6, 1944 – D
Day.
“We were called to our
duty stations at 2:30 in the morning, and we began getting soldiers from D-Day.
We were pretty busy after that.”
The work continued at a hectic pace for days on end. By mid-August, the Allies
had secured Normandy and were on the march toward Nazi-occupied Paris. Lieutenant LeBeau and her unit were ordered to Southampton to
embark aboard boats headed for Normandy.
Channel storms kept the vessels carrying the Army nurses and
other troops at bay for three days on their crossing to the continent. As they finally approached the shore,
they wrestled their way down a rope ladder to a landing barge for the final leg
of the journey to the beach.
LeBeau had been suffering from a severe toothache and
immediately went to a field hospital – literally in a cow pasture – for a root
canal. Nurse LeBeau became patient
LeBeau, but not for long. She
was soon back on the job.
Although much of Normandy had been secured, it was
definitely a war zone.
“There were still land
mines and many German tanks that had been knocked out in the invasion,” she
remembered.
On August 25th, the Allies liberated Paris from German
control, and Lt. LeBeau and her colleagues were on their way the French
capital. The tide was turning for
the Allies as they began pushing German troops back toward their homeland. LeBeau
was temporarily assigned to the 108th General Hospital in Paris,
where they treated Allied casualties as well as German prisoners of war.
A few weeks later, Allied forces regained the Belgian cities
of Antwerp and Liege. LeBeau’s 76th General Hospital was ordered northward to the 1,000-bed hospital at Liege,
where they would handle casualties from France and other war zones along front.
While the Allies seemed to be gaining the upper hand against
the German army, things changed quickly.
On December 16, 1945, the Germans launched a massive surprise counter-offensive through the rugged Ardennes forest in an effort to reach Antwerp and disrupt Allied supply shipments. The Allies had considered the Ardennes impenetrable and had left the area largely undefended. Liege was between the front line and Antwerp. For the U.S. Army, it would be bloodiest battle of World War II – the “Battle of the Bulge.” “
“At one point we were
told to get packed and be ready for evacuation,” LeBeau remembered.
“It
never happened. I was young and
didn’t know what war was. It was
probably a saving grace.”
With more than 600,000 Americans engaged in the fighting,
casualties were high – more than 89,000, including 19,000 deaths. Many of the wounded were sent to Liege
for surgery and hospitalization.
Marcella and friend Bette Rohay |
Army reports indicated the city was blasted with as many as
1,500 such devices. Hardest hit among the medical facilities was Lt. LeBeau’s
76th General Hospital unit on January 8, 1944. The Army reported 24 patients and staff
killed, another 20 injured, plus buildings and equipment that were damaged.
Additional documents revealed that the 76th General Hospital staff “cared for their own casualties, cleared away rubble, and kept on working.”
Additional documents revealed that the 76th General Hospital staff “cared for their own casualties, cleared away rubble, and kept on working.”
“There were body limbs all over,” LeBeau
remembered. “The buzz bombs continued night and day, but our work did not stop, as
we cared for wounded troops and gave blood transfusions. We were blessed with plenty of blood
and penicillin, which was relatively new at the time and had to be administered
every four hours.”
“I remember one of our
hospital corpsmen, named Coffee, was deathly afraid of the buzz bombs and his
situation became increasingly apparent, as he was going without sleep. As we ate lunch together one day, I
gave him a sleeping pill and had another corpsman put him to bed. He was finally able to get some
sleep. I think if I hadn’t done
that, he would have gone berserk.”
There was little time to relax. While there was an Officer’s Club in Liege, Marcella and
many other nurses never went there, because they felt there was too much drinking. They often found respite by visiting
the home of a Belgian woman who worked at the hospital laundry. She would invite them for tea and
tarts, real treats in a time of severe food rationing.
The ravages of war leave behind many casualties. For Lt. LeBeau, one incident remains
vivid in her memory.
“It was an American
soldier who had been a prisoner of war and was rescued. He was so gaunt. Skin stretched over his
bones. He was so emaciated. Your first inclination was to feed him,
but of course, we couldn’t immediately do that. His eyes. A
vacant stare. I can’t forget that
look.”
1st Lt. Marcella Ryan LeBeau's uniform |
“American soldiers all
have pin-up girls to help take their minds off the war,” he boldly
proclaimed to LeBeau while handing her a photograph of himself.
“Now I want to be your
pin-up boy!”
The photo was promptly tacked up on the bulletin board.
Within ten days of the German assault on the Ardennes, Adolf
Hitler ordered his troops to halt their advance, stifled by dogged Allied
resistance. By early February
1945, the Allies had retaken all the territory they had lost. The “Battle of the Bulge” was over, and
the war was nearing its end. Hitler committed suicide on April 30, and the Germans surrendered unconditionally a week later. The war was over.
Lieutenant LeBeau completed about one year at the
hospital in Liege and then was on her way home. She was discharged at Des Moines, Iowa in February 1946.
She was awarded three bronze stars – for the Rhineland, Northern France, and the Battle of the
Bulge. The government of Belgium
also presented her and others of their unit with special medals. Those, however, would not be the end of many special
awards for the girl from Promise, South Dakota.
As she contemplated returning to South Dakota, there was
little to attract her. Her father
had fallen ill and was living in the “Old Soldiers Home” in Hot Springs. So she went to Chicago and moved in
with her younger sister, Johanna, who was in the Army Nurse Cadet Corps at St.
Luke’s Hospital. Marcella
took a job as a private duty nurse. But in the next year or so, went to work
for a hospital in Rapid City.
The following year, on September 4, 1947, Marcella Ryan married Navy veteran
Gilbert LeBeau at Moreau, South Dakota.
Both hailed from the Promise area. “Gib” was a Gunner’s Mate Petty Officer and served at Pearl Harbor and later aboard two ships during the war.
The LeBeau’s had eight children. After they returned to the Cheyenne River Reservation,
Marcella was active in her children’s school activities and as a leader in
4-H. She also continued her
nursing work with the Indian Health Service at Eagle Butte, South Dakota, retiring
as Director of Nursing after 31 years of service.
She and a granddaughter established a sewing business, and
Marcella also became involved in gardening, care giving, and continued to share
her experiences from many years in nursing. She became a member of the tribal council – one of just two
women elected to the body, and she also served as secretary for the Wounded
Knee Survivor’s Organization. As a
long-time nurse, she was also instrumental in getting smoking banned from
tribal offices.
Ties to her Lakota culture run deep for Marcella. In 1999, after she and her son,
Richard, had worked many years to recover a Lakota Ghost Dance shirt from a
museum in Scotland, it was finally returned to South Dakota. The shirt had been wore by a Lakota
warrior who died at the Wounded Knee Massacre in 1890.
As an Army officer and nurse, Marcella managed to rise above
the cultural and economic barriers that faced her as a young Lakota woman in
the mid-20th century.
She served her country honorably, and it was no ordinary “tour of duty.”
But sometimes, people forget. Society forgets.
So it is good to remember.
Her many friends and colleagues from the 76th General Hospital at Liege, Belgium, held reunions numerous times over the years to recall their experiences and renew friendships. The gatherings took place in Des Moines, Iowa, and were, she said "great therapy." Mrs. LeBeau and her friend Esther Westvelt Pierce made the trip every summer they were held. Alas, the once robust group of Army medical personnel has dwindled and the reunions are no more.
Her many friends and colleagues from the 76th General Hospital at Liege, Belgium, held reunions numerous times over the years to recall their experiences and renew friendships. The gatherings took place in Des Moines, Iowa, and were, she said "great therapy." Mrs. LeBeau and her friend Esther Westvelt Pierce made the trip every summer they were held. Alas, the once robust group of Army medical personnel has dwindled and the reunions are no more.
Marcella LeBeau in Washington, DC |
When she was inducted into the South Dakota Hall of Fame in 2006, Mrs. LeBeau was recognized not only for her Army achievements, but also for her 31 years of dedication to nursing. A founding member of the North American Indian Women’s Association nearly a half century ago, Marcella remains a mentor and confidante for many young Lakota women – and her inspiring story reaches across generations and cultures.
More than 60 years after her service in the Army, Marcella
told a researcher from the University of Arizona that she was never subjected
to any discrimination or harassment while in the military. But that was not the case after the war
when she returned to South Dakota.
She remembered seeing signs in Rapid City that said, “No Indians or dogs
allowed.”
“I couldn’t buy
vanilla extract in a grocery store, or rubbing alcohol in a drug store, because
I was Native American. Then in
1955, I think, the laws were changed, but to me, a law doesn’t change the
hearts of men.”
Of her many experiences during World War II and in her long
nursing career that followed, Marcella particularly remembers and often shares
one story – about Eugene Roubideaux from the Rosebud Reservation in South
Dakota.
“I was working one
night in a Shock Ward – like an Intensive Care Unit – and was asked to see this
patient. He had lost both legs,
and they were afraid that he might try to commit suicide. So I went to see him. His name was Eugene Roubideaux. I took him newspapers from home,
visited with him, and offered to write letters home for him, but he didn’t want
to contact anyone.
“
I went over to see
him often…and then, one day, he was gone.
“After the war, I came
back to the United States. For 40
years I looked for him. Every
place I’d go to a nurse’s meeting, I’d ask if anyone knew Eugene Roubideaux,
but I could never find him.
“Then one day I met a
young lady who came to our hospital to introduce us to a new form to be used at
the hospital.
“The next morning I
got this call, and she said ‘This is Ann Lafferty. Do you known Eugene Roubideaux?’
“I said ‘yes, I do.’”
“’He was my father,’
she said.”
It was an emotional moment for Marcella, who was overcome by
the news.
Mrs. Rafferty gave Marcella her father’s address and phone
number and told her that he had divorced, remarried, and raised a large family.
He was living in Yankton.
“I couldn’t call him
right away, but eventually I did.
“I asked if he
remembered the nurse who stood at his bed in Liege, Belgium?”
“I’ll never forget,”
he responded.
For Marcella, who shared the story with the Veteran’s
History Project, it was an emotional moment.
It is not surprising that Marcella Ryan LeBeau wanted to
honor another veteran. Nor that
she continues to be active in community and tribal activities. That she remains a steadfast advocate
for her family and her people.
More than 16 million men and women served in the military
during World War II. They are
dying at a rate of about 492 veterans each day. That means our nation will likely loose almost all of them within
the next decade.
How fortunate we were to have had this “Greatest Generation” as
our elders, our family, our friends, and members of our community – defending and
nurturing us during one of the most difficult times in American history.
For many of these veterans, like Lieutenant Marcella Ryan
LeBeau, the challenges they faced and their achievements, were particularly
significant.
And a handful of them, like Marcella, continue to make
meaningful contributions to their families and communities.
We are blessed to have them in our midst.