DORIS: A Life in the Greatest Generation
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The new biography by breaking author Wm Leslie Howard
I can not wait to read this book…
What a remarkable and inspiring woman — and what fascinating times!
💠 Melinda Miller, RN, Retired, VA
Doris' remarkable memory spanned the Flapper era, Great Depression, WWII, and every decade until the end of her extraordinary life 103 years later.
Come with us on the adventure of a lifetime: following, coincidentally, in Amelia Earhardt's footsteps time and time again.
This is the story of a young girl reading adventures through the dark winters of Wisconsin, and making up her mind to live them for herself. In 1938 a stewardess was required to have a Registered Nurse degree. So that's what Doris set out to do, whether her parents could pay for the specialized training during the Great Depression or not. Three months after graduating, WWII broke out and Doris signed up.
Put me where you can most use me. I am young, I am energetic, I don't have a family to raise. Put me at the front.
And that's exactly what the Army Nurse Corps did. With her new-found specialty of broken bones and the maimed, after caring for mothers and babies in the Waukesha Public Hospital in Wisconsin, Doris was assigned surgical duty on the USS Comfort, the bright white ship adorned with blood-red crosses that traversed the Pacific Theater of War dozens of times in search of wounded in need of emergency care.
The Comfort was to go into battle with D-Day invasions throughout the Pacific: 16 battles in all, including the great Battle for Okinawa, after which she was the target of a Kamikaze attack hours outside the bay.
But why did the Japanese go out of their way to target the brightly lit, Geneva Convention-protected ship making way all alone through the quiet and scintillant night waters of a full moon, striking only after the lights came on and all onboard thought they were safe?
Doris knew exactly why. She also knew the ship would be targeted. Before embarkation and in secret, Doris was told that the U.S. had sunk a Japanese hospital ship in Subic Bay. The Japanese would retaliate with sinking the Comfort the first chance it could get. The Comfort was making ready to head straight into harm's way. Now will you please get off this ship? But she refused the harbor master who tried to get her to offboard:
These are my best friends. This is what I signed up for. Of course I'm not getting off this ship. We face death every moment. I will face it again. I will face it now, if that is the will of God….