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This day in Military Aviation History, 18 February 1943: The 1st class of 39 flight nurses graduated from the U.S. Army Air Force School of Air Evacuations at Bowman Field, Louisville, Kentucky. Second Lieutenant Geraldine Dishroon, the honor graduate, received the first wings presented to a flight nurse. Major General David N.W. Grant, Air Surgeon, U.S. Army Air Forces, removed his flight surgeon wings and pinned them on Lieutenant Dishroon as a sign of respect. In 1944, Dishroon served on the first air evacuation team to land on Omaha Beach after the D-Day invasion.

More than 500 USAAF flight nurses served with 31 medical air evacuation squadrons during World War II. (Seventeen of them died during the war.) Bowman Field opened in 1921. It is the oldest continually operating airport in North America. 

Thank you to all who serve or have served in Military Medical Evacuations!

The Flight Nurse’s Creed

I will summon every resource to prevent the triumph of death over life.

I will stand guard over the medicines and equipment entrusted to my care and ensure their proper use.

I will be untiring in the performances of my duties and I will remember that, upon my disposition and spirit, will in large measure depend the morale of my patients.

I will be faithful to my training and to the wisdom handed down to me by those who have gone before me.

I have taken a nurse’s oath, reverent in man’s mind because of the spirit and work of its creator, Florence Nightingale. She, I remember, was called the “Lady with the Lamp.”

It is now my privilege to lift this lamp of hope and faith and courage in my profession to heights not known by her in her time. Together with the help of flight surgeons and surgical technicians, I can set the very skies ablaze with life and promise for the sick, injured, and wounded who are my sacred charges.

. . . This I will do. I will not falter in war or in peace.

first class of 39 flight nurses

Photo (L – Above) World War II-era USAAF Flight Nurse badge.

Photo (L – Below)  Flight Nurses training to evacuate patients aboard a C-47 transport at Bowman Field (USAF)

Artwork (R) 2515th Naval Air Ambulance Detachment MH-60S by – Squadron Posters

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