Transcript

2.27.25 · Smithsonian Magazine

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Speaker 1: Welcome. This is Rebecca Shore for Radio Eye, and today
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I will be reading the Smithsonian Magazine dated March April
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twenty twenty five. As a reminder, Radio I is a
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reading service intended for people who are blind or have
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other disabilities that make it difficult to read printed material.
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Please join me now for the article titled The Talented
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and Valiant female surgeon who joined Allied Forces in World
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War II and broke barriers along the way by Catherine Musemesh,
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Spring nineteen forty four. Allied forces have taken Sicily and
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begun the treacherous push up Italy's boot, but the advance
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has stalled near the Abbey of Monte Casino, a historic
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monastery planted atop a rocky hill in the Apennine Mountains.
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Using the abbey as an observation post, with gun and
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placements near its foundation and in the surrounding cliffs, the
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Germans command the narrow mountain passes of Route six, the
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road to Allied soldiers take heavy fire as quickly as
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they can scale the hill. The wounded are passed from
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one stretcher bearer to another along hazardous winding trails before
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they are loaded into ambulances as the infensive unfolds. A
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British Army hospital at Pompeii, the closest large medical facility
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to the action, is flooded with casualties, soldiers caked in
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mud and blood, some in shock, others missing limbs. Orderlies
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unload wounded infantrymen from ambulances and set them down in
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the courtyard and on the stairs. In an operating room.
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Barbara Stimpson, an American orthopedic surgeon, works around the clock,
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picking out bone shards and shrapnel, souturing gaping wounds, and
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wrapping shattered limbs in layers of plaster. We worked hard
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and fast for the patients began to pile up in
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the corridor, Stimson wrote in letters home, which were later
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compiled by her sister, Dorothy and published in nineteen eighty
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seven in a a slim volume titled Major Barbara's Memories
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of World War Two. By chance, the American photographer Irving Penn,
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volunteering as an ambulance driver after a heart condition kept
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him out of combat, encounters Stimpson at the hospital. She
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is one of the top surgeons, heading an orthopedic unit
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that does much of the bone surgery for the British
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in the Italian theater. He later wrote in a dispatch
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for Vogue published in March nineteen forty five, the British
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have waived their rule about personal publicity because they think
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Americans should know about her. I do too. She is
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the real stuff. When I saw her, she had just
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spent the morning in the operating room. She was white,
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with exhaustion, flux of blood still on her rubber gloves
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and apron. Penn wrote these lines after a brief meeting,
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but there is much more of Stimpson's story left to tell.
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She was indeed a remarkably courageous member of the Allied cause.
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She also helped open the door for American women physicians
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to serve in the United States mility in World War
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Two and beyond. Barbara Bartlett Stimpson was born in New
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York in eighteen ninety eight, the youngest of seven children
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to the Reverend Henry Albert Stimson, a congregational minister, and
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his wife, Alice Wheaton Bartlett Stimson. The family encouraged the
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pursuit of higher education and public service. Lewis Atterby Stimpson,
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Barbara's uncle, trained generations of doctors as a professor of
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surgery and helped establish Cornell University Medical College. Her cousin,
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the lawyer and statesman Henry L. Stimson, served in the
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cabinets of three United States presidents, including that of Franklin D.
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Roosevelt as Secretary of War during World War Two. Barbara's sister, Julia,
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seventeen years older, had served as head of the nursing
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service for the American Expeditionary Forces in France during World
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War One, leading ten thousand army nurses in aiding the wounded.
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Her two brothers had also served in the Great War.
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Babby was a herited child who would march up and
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down the dining room table at supper time. From a
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young age, she demonstrated a preference for tools over dolls,
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following her father around the house as he made repairs.
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He encouraged Stimson's natural talent by giving her a set
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of tools at Christmas and arranging for her to take
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lessons in how to use them. Father was miles ahead
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of the rest of the world in an educational philosophy.
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She recounted for a profile in the nineteen forty seven
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book Women Doctors to Day. We were never told you
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mustn't do that. It's only for boys. Stimpson's mother also
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embraced this thinking and had sworn a little swear that
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any daughter of hers would do what she wanted to do.
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Both parents were champions of civil rights who supported equal
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education for women. Barbara attended the all girls Spence School
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in Manhattan and followed her four sisters to Vassar College,
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where she majored in chemistry. She made a name for
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herself as an agile center forward on the hockey team
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and an outstanding student, elected to Phi Beta Kappa. After
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graduating from Vassar in nineteen nineteen, Stemson entered Columbia University's
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College of Physicians and Surgeons as a member of only
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the third class to admit women. She graduated with honors
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in nineteen twenty three and secured a surgical internship at
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Columbia University, where she met William Derrick, a professor of
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orthopedic surgery. Derek encouraged her to pursue orthopedic surgery. I
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have the hands for it, large, strong, mechanical hands, Stimson
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later said in Women Doctors Today. Derek mentored her throughout
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her career. In the nineteen thirties, when less than five
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percent of doctors were female. The idea of a woman
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wielding hammers and saws to repair the largest bones in
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the body was unheard of, but Stimson, tall, broad shouldered,
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and athletic, could handle tools and heavy body parts as
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well as her male counterparts. She completed her training, joined
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the Columbia Faculty as a member of the newly formed
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Fracture Service, and became the first woman certified by the
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American Board of Surgery in nineteen forty. As the war
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in Europe intensified, Stimson, now forty two and with more
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than a decade of surgical experience, learned that a volunteer
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group of orthopedic surgeons was organizing to treat war victims
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in Britain. She submitted an application, only to learn that
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the only women allowed on the trip would be nurses.
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Stimson might never have found her way to the war
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but for the fact that in early nineteen forty one,
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the British Ministry of Health sent an urgent message to
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the American Red Cross, please send one thousand doctors immediately.
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As Simpson later wrote, the number of available doctors had
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been diminished by capture, by wounding, and by death, and
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the authorities were worried that there would not be enough
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to take their places. The United States, however, had just
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implemented a draft that had swept up almost all available
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male physicians. Anxious to find more doctors, the Red Cross
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turned to physician Esther Lovejoy to identify ten American women
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physicians to travel to England and serve in Britain's emergency
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medical services. Lovejoy, then in her early seventies, had previously
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worked with the Red Cross to set up hospitals and
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clinics in France during World War I, staffed by American
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women doctors who had volunteered after being rejected by the military.
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She believed prohibiting women from enlisting was a mistake. It
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is utterly impossible to leave a large number of well
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trained women out of the service in which they belong
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for the reason that they won't stay out, Lovejoy wrote
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in Certain Samaritans, her book about the work of the
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American Women's Hospitals Service. After World War One, with Britain
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facing a critical doctor's shortage, Lovejoy again swung into action.
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She sent out questionnaires to the membership of the American
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Medical Women's Association and quickly compiled a registry of twenty
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five hundred qualified women physicians who were willing to serve
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in the case of a national emergency. Stimson was among
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the five hundred who had volunteered to work overseas. Stimson's questionnaire,
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detailing her extensive surgical training and experience as a fracture
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specialist who treated injury victims, must have stood out because
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Lovejoy's first call in April nineteen forty one went to
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her doctor. Lovejoy wondered if I would like to be considered.
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I said I would most definitely, Stimson recalled in her
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memoir when Lovejoy asked Stimson to recommend another woman doctor
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to go along. Stimson suggested her good friend, Ah sub Bean,
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whom she would remain close to professionally and personally for
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the rest of her life. Unlike Stimson, Bean, a main native,
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was raised in modest circumstances and had taken a meandering
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path to medicine. She had taught high school, run the
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town library, and worked as a camp counselor before putting
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herself through the University of Maine, graduating in nineteen twenty two.
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After obtaining her master's degree, she spent six years working
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for the University of Maine as the Dean of Women
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and as an assistant professor of zoology. She finally enrolled
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in the University of Rochester School of Medicine and graduated
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in nineteen thirty six at age thirty six. Afterwards, she
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interned in obstetrics and gynecology, and in nineteen thirty eight
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Vassar hired her to work in the college health department,
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where she crossed paths with Stimpson, a Vassar trustee. Bean,
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like Stimpson, appeared to have the toughness. In July, the
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women received written instructions, including a list of tasks to
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complete in advance of their departure. Preparing for the trip
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to England entailed undergoing physicals, getting typhoid immunizations, and having
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fingerprints and passport photos taken. One of the more challenging
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tasks was locating winter underwear. In August, they visited a
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department store and found none, but a helpful saleslady phoned
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nearby shops and located the needed items. Packed and ready
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to go, The women waited anxiously for word of their
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departure date. We tried to be calm, cool and collected,
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especially with our families, trying to give the impression that
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crossing the Atlantic with U boats playing around would be
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quite interesting, and pretending that, of course Hitler wouldn't think
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of invading England, Stemson later wrote. Finally, at the end
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of August, after routine background investigations by the FBI and
10:39
Scotland Yard, Stemson and Bean boarded the Dutch freighter Westland,
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bound for Halifax, nova Scotia, where it would join a
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convoy to Liverpool. The Westland was escorted across the Atlantic
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by American warships to ward off German U boat attacks.
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Aboard ship, Stimson and Bean engaged in lifeboat drills, drew
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heavy black curtains across windows at dusk, and refrained from
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smoking on deck at night lest a German submarine spot
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the orange glow of an ember. On the fourth day,
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Bean burst into their stateroom. Get up quickly, she said,
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we're having an incident. The women rushed above deck and
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saw a warship speeding up alongside the Westland, dropping depth
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charges along the way. Quick action thwarted the attack, but
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an unmistakable fact lingered. Though they were miles from England,
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they had already entered the war zone. They sailed into
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the port of Liverpool. Five days later, as the Westland
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moved slowly up the narrow channel, we saw the graveyard
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of ships, masts, keels, bows, sterns, higgledy pigglety sticking up
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out of the water, an unforgettable sight, Stimson wrote. Traveling
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by car through Liverpool, which had been heavily bombed by
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the Germans, the women saw the city center flattened to rubble,
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but they also witnessed women with shopping bags making their
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way through the debris, workmen boarding up windows, and merchants
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sweeping streets. This gave us our first, but by no
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means our last, exposure to the calm, business as usual
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attitude of the British people. Stimson wrote home. She and
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Bean had hoped to be stationed in the same city,
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but on their first day of work, Bean boarded a
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train to the Bristol Royal Infirmary in the southwest of England,
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while Stimson squeezed into a packed cabin bound for London
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to treat civilian orthopedic injuries at the three hundred twenty
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seven bed Royal Free Hospital. Their separation, however, proved to
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be brief. The Bristol hospital was expecting Bean to be
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a mail physician, and when it turned out she was not,
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Bean was promptly driven to London and dropped at the
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Royal Free Hospital. At the Royal Free being served on
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the medical wards while Stimson familiarized herself with British surgical practices.
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Working alongside the head orthopedic surgeon, Stimson, an orthopedic trauma specialist,
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shared her expertise with the use of internal fixation rods
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to stabilize complex leg fractures and other American surgical techniques.
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She and Bean were both very pleased. Stimson wrote, we
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felt we could be of some much needed help, both
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professionally and in a way emotionally. We were living visible
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proof that Americans cared. A few weeks later, eight additional
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American women physicians arrived to serve in hospitals throughout London.
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Stemson and Bean socialized with their colleagues regularly. As word
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of their presence spread, they were welcomed into the homes
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of socialites and dignitaries who were eager for news from America.
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In early December nineteen forty one, Stimson, Bean and fellow
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physician Sarah Sally Bowditch accepted an invitation to stay for
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the week end at Lady Astor's country estate, Cliveden House,
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a magnificent mansion built above the banks of the River Thames.
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The American born Lady Astor had moved to England to
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mary Waldorf. Astor himself an American raised in England who
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became a member of the House of Lords. She too
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was a pioneer, the first woman seated as a Member
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of Parliament, a position she held from nineteen nineteen to
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nineteen forty five. After dinner on the Sunday night of
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their visit, an elderly butler tottered into the spacious hall
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with the small radio that he placed on the dining table.
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Stimson later recalled the momentous event. We heard Big Ben
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strike nine and then Pearl Harbor has been bombed. America
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is at war. The doctors discussed their plans. Tauditch decided
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to return to America, but Stimson and Bean prefer to
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stay in Britain. We were already three thousand miles nearer
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the actual fighting than we would have been had we
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returned home, Stimson later wrote. And as the need for
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doctors in the British armed forces was very great, Doctor
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Bean and I decided to join the Royal Army Medical
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Corps r A m C if they would have us.
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While a limited number of women physicians had been appointed
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to serve in the r A m C since nineteen
15:30
thirty nine, no American women ever had. With help from
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Lady Astor and the American Ambassador John Gilbert Wynant, they
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were commissioned on February first, nineteen forty two. It took
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all of the week for the news to reach the
15:44
American public. Army ranked for doctor b. Stimpson, American women
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surgeon is made a major in British medical service. The
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New York Times reported on February eighth, nineteen forty two.
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Bean was ordered to a military hospital in York and
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Stemson to Schenleigh Hospital outside London. At first, Stemson treated
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only civilian casualties, but that changed when hospital ships began
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transporting wounded soldiers from North Africa, where the Allies were
16:13
battling the Axis Powers. Stimson met several women medical officers,
16:17
all Brits, including a pathologist and an anesthesiologist, but she
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was the only woman surgeon at Shenley, described by one
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British officer as a big, business like woman with a
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boyish bob and a keen sense of humor. In women
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doctors today, Stemson proved popular at her first ra MC post.
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She served as the pianist in a classical trio and
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played bridge in table tennis. She even subbed into a
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cricket game one day when the officer's team came up
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one person short. A novice. She proved adept at fielding
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and throwing the ball. To my amazement, it stopped the game,
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she later wrote. They apparently had never seen a woman
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throw overhand. Stemson proved to be adaptable in other ways.
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One day, while she was conducting rounds, a soldier under
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her care said, Major, the men don't like to call
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you ma'am. Would it be all right if they called
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you sir? Stemson smothered a smile, she later wrote, and
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said yes. She remained sir for the duration of the war.
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While at Schenley, Stimpson was summoned by Elliot Cutler, the
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commanding officer of the U. S. Officer Corps in Europe.
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He told her that the powers that be did not
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like to see her in a British uniform, and he
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offered her a position in the U. S. Medical Corps
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if she joined, she would lose her rank since women
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could not be commissioned in the U. S. Army. She declined.
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In the fall of nineteen forty two, Ambassador Wynant, who
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had assisted Stemson's quest to join the r A m C,
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solicited her support in trying to change the U. S.
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Military attitude toward women doctors. As Secretary of War, Henry
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Elsie Stimpson, Barbara Stimpson's cousin and thirty one years her senior,
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worked closely with Army Chief of Staff George C. Marshall
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to formulate military strategy. According to Stimpson, Henry had opposed
18:13
granting commissions to women doctors. Wynant hoped that a meeting
18:18
with Barbara Stimpson might persuade Henry to change his mind.
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She agreed, and in late December she sailed to New York. Babby,
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I don't like to see you in that uniform, she
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recalled him telling her upon seeing her in her British
18:33
military attire when they met in Washington, d C. But
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you don't give women doctors commissions in the U. S.
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Army Medical Corps, Stimson answered. The next morning, Henry drove
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Stemson to the Pentagon, where she informed military leadership including
18:50
General Brehan B. Somerville, head of Logistics for the Army,
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that women physicians were well respected by their male colleagues
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in Britain and had integrated seamlessly into the RAAMC. She
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shared statistics to demonstrate that women served as heads of hospitals,
19:09
specialists and general practitioners. A few months later, in April
19:14
nineteen forty three, Roosevelt signed into law the Sparkman Johnson Act,
19:19
which authorized the U. S. Army and Navy to grant
19:22
women physicians commissions in the medical corps for the duration
19:26
of the war plus six months. Finally, after the United
19:31
States had been at war for a year and a half,
19:34
women physicians were able to hold a rank in the
19:36
armed forces. Though never officially credited with influencing the bill's passage,
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Stimpson had met with key leaders to make the case
19:45
for allowing women doctors in the military. During hearings on
19:50
the proposed bill, Representative Immanuel Seller of New York noted
19:55
that Stimpson had gone to Britain, which availed itself of
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her acception, pctional talents and attainments as a physician, and
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she is now a major in the British Army. Bean
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who had returned to the United States in the fall
20:10
of nineteen forty two to care for her ill mother,
20:14
became one of the first women commissioned in the U. S.
20:17
Naval Reserve. She was promoted to lieutenant commander in nineteen
20:21
forty four. After the Act's passage, Stimpson was offered various
20:26
positions in the US Medical Corps, including as a gynecologist,
20:30
but none allowed her to practice orthopedic surgery. She refused
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them all. Back at Chenley, outside London, Stimpson heard from
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colleagues that orthopedic surgeons were desperately needed in North Africa,
20:43
closer to the front, though her commanding officers hesitated to
20:47
send her. By November nineteen forty three, she finally received
20:51
her orders. With tears in my eyes and butterflies in
20:54
my stomach, I got into the car that was to
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take me to my next adventure, she wrote home. She
21:01
was off to the base hospital near the city of Algiers,
21:04
where doctor's stabilized wounded soldiers arriving on ambulance trains from
21:09
the Sicilian campaign and shipped them out to England. She
21:14
was warned by the head of orthopedic surgery that her
21:17
new commanding officer was violently opposed to having a woman
21:21
officer in his hospital. The officer made his feelings known early.
21:27
Instead of assigning Stemson to the senior officer's quarters, he
21:31
put her in a sparsely furnished room, and he excluded
21:34
her from staff meetings. One night, after a party, Stemson
21:39
and the commanding officer happened to leave at the same time.
21:43
I gathered up my courage and thanked him for having me,
21:46
since I knew he had not wanted a woman officer,
21:49
she later recalled. The next day, she was moved to
21:53
a nicely furnished room in the senior officer's quarters from
21:58
the base hospital near Ellis. Stimpson was instructed to form
22:02
a specialty unit in orthopedic surgery and have it ready
22:06
to ship out to Italy. In the meantime, she and
22:10
her team traveled to field hospitals close to combat areas,
22:13
providing much needed orthopedic care on grievously wounded soldiers. Stimpson
22:19
was expecting to leave for Italy, but the departure was
22:23
delayed by an eruption of Mount Vesuvius on March seventeenth,
22:27
nineteen forty four. On April eleventh, she and her team
22:32
finally traveled from Naples to the number seventy British General
22:36
Hospital in Pompeii, housed in a former orphanage, driving through
22:41
swirls of ash and passing houses with gray particles piled
22:46
up to window ledges like snow. By now, the Germans
22:50
had surrendered in North Africa, the Italians had surrendered, and
22:54
the Allies were planning for the cross channel invasion of
22:58
Normandy in June. On the Italian Front, the Allies had
23:02
run into tenacious German positions near the abbey of Monte Cassino.
23:08
Just transporting the wounded to the hospital in Pompeii proved perilous.
23:13
No one was safe from enemy fire, not the wounded
23:17
or the men who carried them, not the ambulance drivers,
23:20
and not the medics. More than twenty four hundred members
23:24
of the R A m C, including physicians, laid down
23:28
their lives during World War Two. In Italy alone, one
23:32
hundred and twenty one were killed. I had treated mangled
23:37
limbs from the buzz bombs, from the retreat from France
23:41
at Dunkirk, and from the Sicily campaign when in North Africa,
23:46
but none like that. Afternoon, Stenson wrote of her first
23:50
day treating casualties from Monte Cassino, the sight of the
23:53
bloodiest battles of the Italian campaign, resulting in more than
23:58
fifty four thousand Allied casualties. It was during this onslaught
24:03
of casualties that Stimson encountered what she later called the
24:07
hardest operation I have ever done. After taking a much
24:11
needed break from the operating room, she returned to find
24:15
a new patient and both legs from knees down were pulp.
24:20
The young brit must have stepped on a land mine,
24:23
she surmised, or had taken a direct hit from a shell.
24:27
To save his life, she would need to perform two
24:30
above the knee amputations. Stemson worked quickly, cutting across the
24:35
tissue of the thigh and clamping bleeding vessels along the way.
24:39
After tying off the femoral vessels, she sawed through the
24:43
femur until the bone separated. With no time to waste,
24:47
she turned to the other side and repeated the steps.
24:50
She was saddened that her young patient would have to
24:53
adjust to life as a double amputee, but as she
24:56
wrote to her sister, I had no time to brood
24:59
on it. For the patients kept coming. The Allies captured
25:03
Monte Casino on May eighteenth and liberated Rome on June fourth,
25:09
nineteen forty four. Stimpson finished out the war in Rome,
25:13
operating on the wounded, until hostilities in Europe ceased on
25:17
May eighth, nineteen forty five. Stimpson hadn't achieved everything she
25:21
set out to do. It will be a lasting regret
25:24
of the writer that she did not get frontline experience,
25:27
she wrote in nineteen forty six. There had been limited
25:30
opportunities to serve at the front, and when they arose,
25:34
she couldn't be spared from her hospital duty. In August
25:38
nineteen forty five, Stimson was honorably discharged, receiving two Distinguished
25:44
Military Medals. George the sixth named her a Member of
25:48
the Order of the British Empire for the energy, zeal
25:52
and breadth of vision she brought to the specialized orthopedic
25:56
center she opened at the Number seventy British General Hospital.
26:01
Military historians Judith Bellefair and Mercedes Herregraf later recognized Stimpson
26:08
as a medical pioneer and Women Doctors in War, published
26:13
in two thousand nine. After the war, Stimpson returned to
26:17
Columbia University to resume operating and teaching. In nineteen forty seven,
26:24
she moved to Poughkeepsie, New York, where she maintained a
26:27
private practice. In nineteen fifty nine, she became the first
26:32
woman president of the Duchess County Medical Society and the
26:37
first female member of the New York Surgical Society. Upon
26:42
retiring in nineteen sixty three, she moved to Owlshead, Maine,
26:47
and lived with Bean and their two Norwegian elkhounts until
26:51
Beane's death in nineteen seventy five. In nineteen eighty six, Stemson,
26:57
who was living with her sister Dorothy, died at the
27:00
age of eighty eight. Reflecting on her wartime service overseas,
27:06
Stemson was matter of fact, there was no distinction made
27:10
professionally between the sexes. She later wrote, the work was
27:13
there to be done by whoever was fitted for it. Finally,
27:19
a letter to the editor, the Private Lives of Marmosets.
27:24
I hope we save the Amazon forest and protect the
27:26
pygmy marmosets. It is truly tragic to think of a
27:31
world without them. They are clearly tiny, but mighty and
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totally adorable. And I loved that the author included the
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mythical indigenous story about how the pygmy marmosets were granted
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privacy by our creator to live in remote forests to
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raise their families. I wish there was a way to
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ensure we can grant them a future with plenty of
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trees and freedom to roam safely. From Alex Gardner, Belfast, Maine.
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This concludes readings from the Smithsonian Magazine for today. Your
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reader has been Rebecca Shore. Thank you for listening, and
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have a great day.