James T. Lingg - WWII
Page 17 - 30th General Hospital and Some Nurses Remembered

That bombing did make it rather difficult each night, staying in the hospital until the Americans finally evacuated us out of there. We were there for about four more nights. We were evacuated out the last day of August. I show in my records I was in the Cherborg Hospital on the first of September. I had one night out of the hospital and on 31 August 1944, I was evacuated from Hospital Ste. Simone to the 3d Hospital Unit of the 42^nd Field Hospital in Paris.

I was flown by air and admitted to the 30^th General Hospital on the Cherbourg Peninsula the 1^st of September 1944. This hospital had just started to set up. It had long hospital tents with wooden floors. It was really a nice system that they had set up to receive the patients.

I was in the gunshot ward, or the chest and back ward, or something like that, whatever they called it. At this point the Germans and French had done everything to me. All I had to do was recuperate. So I stayed in the 30^th General Hospital until the 21^st of October 1944, when I was finally released to duty and sent to the 19^th Replacement Depot.

During my stay in this hospital, I reached the point where I sometimes walked off and went to a little town. We weren't supposed to but we would go to town and have a few cognacs. Also, back at the hospital, we had an Engineer Battalion that was one of the all Negro Battalions. They made real good fried chicken. At this point, I had no thought of prejudice. To me we were all in it together. It didn't make any difference what they were doing or what I was doing or what their color was or what my color was. I later learned prejudice, as time went on. People foster prejudice on you, you don't have it to start with. It's something you have to learn.

In the 30^th General Hospital, I can remember a few of the nurses’ names and I believe they should be immortalized by me saying their names, if it does that. We had: Ruth Borden or Bogan, I'm not sure; Amy Alexander, I'm sure of that one, and gosh, I should be able to remember three or four other names but I don't. All these nurses were wonderful girls. They made sure that us soldiers didn't get bed sores. They rubbed alcohol on our backs and they really took care of us good. Anytime they could get extra P.X. rations, they would pass them on to us so we were very well off in the 30^th General Hospital.

Each day when we got up, (remember this was in September and the weather was beautiful) we would all get together and roll the sides on the tent all the way up. That way the nice cool breezes could blow through our tent and we could lie there and about the only thing we could do was read books. The Red Cross people would bring us books and we would lie there and read whatever was brought to us.

We were pretty restricted. We weren't supposed to go any place, although at times we did. It was such a nice life, not to worry about how far we would have to hike that day, what hill are we going to see and take, how fast can we get from point A to point B, how deep is the water across that river, all these little things that bothered us over there. It was nice just to lie on our beds and feel the breeze coming through.