thedrifter
08-09-09, 06:31 AM
Echoes of war linger for former Navy nurse
By Ramón Rentería / El Paso Times
El Paso Times
Posted:08/09/2009 12:00:00 AM MDT
EL PASO -- Scars of war never fade for Eva Jane Bolents.
Alone in her West Side apartment, Bolents recalls the agonizing late-night screams in her ward, wounded and dying soldiers, sailors and Marines begging for anything to kill pain.
"We had so many amputees," she said.
Bolents, 87, witnessed a lifetime of suffering as a young U.S. Navy nurse at a base hospital in Guam during World War II. She was 23, an adventurous young woman from Clearfield, Pa., (about 150 miles north of Pittsburgh), who gave up her day job as an operating room nurse and enlisted in the Navy.
As the world observes the 64th anniversary of the U.S. atomic bombings of the Japanese cities of Hiroshima and Nagasaki on Aug. 6 and Aug. 9, 1945, Bolents reminisced recently about her brush with history and her own battles to help save the wounded and the dying, men who still dwell in her thoughts.
The two atomic bombs unleashed the threat of nuclear annihilation for future generations, killed more than 140,000 Japanese people, wounded thousands more and ended the war with Japan's surrender just a few weeks later.
Bolents, 5 feet, 3 inches tall and weighing in at 110 pounds, once served as a personal nurse in Hawaii for five-star Gen. Omar Bradley, one of the distinguished Army field commanders of World War II. Bradley died in 1981 at Fort Bliss.
In Guam, Bolents cared for survivors of the USS Indianapolis, which sank in 12 minutes on July 30, 1945, after being struck by Japanese submarine torpedoes in the Philippine Sea.
Historians have described what happened to the Indianapolis as among the worst naval losses in U.S. history. Of the 1,196 men on board, 300 went down with the ship while 900 were left floating in shark-infested waters with only a handful of life rafts. Only a third of them were rescued four days later.
The USS Indianapolis had delivered the components for the world's first operational atomic bomb to the Pacific island of Tinian on July 26, 1945. The ship had been ordered to the Gulf of Leyte in the Philippines to start preparing for an invasion of Japan.
Back in the States, the Clearfield Progress published a wire service photograph depicting hometown nurse Eva Jane Savel tending to a survivor of the USS Indianapolis.
"You can't imagine what our men went through. Nobody wondered where the USS Indianapolis was," Bolents said. "I was privileged to have 12 of them in my ward."
Bolents enlisted in the Navy after spotting a placard on an office window urging nurses to sign up and see the world. She ended up at Pearl Harbor, site of the 1941 Japanese attack that provoked the U.S. into World War II. She made the rank of lieutenant junior grade.
At base hospital No. 18 in Guam, her most memorable assignment, she learned to live with limitations and without paved roads and stores. Nurses lived in Quonset huts and routinely treated the battlefield wounded.
"I remember a patient who came in with his mouth full of maggots. He died two days later," she said. "That left an indelible impression on me."
A Japanese prisoner of war in Guam painted her portrait in 1943, a piece of war memorabilia that she cherishes.
Bolents likes to tell the story of how she might have saved her fiancé, John Bolents, from an explosion that killed two of his Army buddies in France. Ordered to evacuate a foxhole, he hesitated a bit to finish reading a letter from his sweetheart. His friends left the foxhole and were killed moments later.
Eva Jane Bolents married after the war, taught pediatrics at the university level and eventually moved to Las Cruces in 1974 because of her husband's health. She moved to El Paso last year to be closer to her children.
Last year, Bolents visited the World War II Memorial in Washington, D.C., where she had her picture taken with former U.S. senator and presidential contender Bob Dole. She also posed for a picture with 33 war veterans.
"I was the only World War II woman. Boy, did I get attention," she said, giggling like a schoolgirl.
Bolents keeps her war memories in a 15-page journal, hangs out with a pet poodle and still drives a 12-year-old Honda with 81,000 miles on the odometer. She has outlived two husbands, and has two sons, a daughter and three grandchildren.
"Memories can never be taken from you," she said. "The war put women on the map, but we (Navy nurses) were never praised afterward. I'm conceited enough to say they couldn't have done it without us."
Eva Jane Bolents thinks of the horrors she has witnessed and cries sometimes. She sits in her Royal Estates retirement community apartment, surrounded by images and memories of a war she is convinced will never be forgotten, not even after she and all the others who put themselves in harm's way are all gone.
"There was just something about World War II that was different," she said. "For me, it was a God wink. Just look at where I've been."
Ramón Rentería may be reached at rrenteria@elpasotimes.com; 546-6146.
Ellie
Eva Jane Bolents of El Paso holds a portrait of herself done in 1943 by a Japanese prisoner of war in Guam. Bolents was a Navy nurse during World War II. (Rudy Gutierrez / El Paso Times)
By Ramón Rentería / El Paso Times
El Paso Times
Posted:08/09/2009 12:00:00 AM MDT
EL PASO -- Scars of war never fade for Eva Jane Bolents.
Alone in her West Side apartment, Bolents recalls the agonizing late-night screams in her ward, wounded and dying soldiers, sailors and Marines begging for anything to kill pain.
"We had so many amputees," she said.
Bolents, 87, witnessed a lifetime of suffering as a young U.S. Navy nurse at a base hospital in Guam during World War II. She was 23, an adventurous young woman from Clearfield, Pa., (about 150 miles north of Pittsburgh), who gave up her day job as an operating room nurse and enlisted in the Navy.
As the world observes the 64th anniversary of the U.S. atomic bombings of the Japanese cities of Hiroshima and Nagasaki on Aug. 6 and Aug. 9, 1945, Bolents reminisced recently about her brush with history and her own battles to help save the wounded and the dying, men who still dwell in her thoughts.
The two atomic bombs unleashed the threat of nuclear annihilation for future generations, killed more than 140,000 Japanese people, wounded thousands more and ended the war with Japan's surrender just a few weeks later.
Bolents, 5 feet, 3 inches tall and weighing in at 110 pounds, once served as a personal nurse in Hawaii for five-star Gen. Omar Bradley, one of the distinguished Army field commanders of World War II. Bradley died in 1981 at Fort Bliss.
In Guam, Bolents cared for survivors of the USS Indianapolis, which sank in 12 minutes on July 30, 1945, after being struck by Japanese submarine torpedoes in the Philippine Sea.
Historians have described what happened to the Indianapolis as among the worst naval losses in U.S. history. Of the 1,196 men on board, 300 went down with the ship while 900 were left floating in shark-infested waters with only a handful of life rafts. Only a third of them were rescued four days later.
The USS Indianapolis had delivered the components for the world's first operational atomic bomb to the Pacific island of Tinian on July 26, 1945. The ship had been ordered to the Gulf of Leyte in the Philippines to start preparing for an invasion of Japan.
Back in the States, the Clearfield Progress published a wire service photograph depicting hometown nurse Eva Jane Savel tending to a survivor of the USS Indianapolis.
"You can't imagine what our men went through. Nobody wondered where the USS Indianapolis was," Bolents said. "I was privileged to have 12 of them in my ward."
Bolents enlisted in the Navy after spotting a placard on an office window urging nurses to sign up and see the world. She ended up at Pearl Harbor, site of the 1941 Japanese attack that provoked the U.S. into World War II. She made the rank of lieutenant junior grade.
At base hospital No. 18 in Guam, her most memorable assignment, she learned to live with limitations and without paved roads and stores. Nurses lived in Quonset huts and routinely treated the battlefield wounded.
"I remember a patient who came in with his mouth full of maggots. He died two days later," she said. "That left an indelible impression on me."
A Japanese prisoner of war in Guam painted her portrait in 1943, a piece of war memorabilia that she cherishes.
Bolents likes to tell the story of how she might have saved her fiancé, John Bolents, from an explosion that killed two of his Army buddies in France. Ordered to evacuate a foxhole, he hesitated a bit to finish reading a letter from his sweetheart. His friends left the foxhole and were killed moments later.
Eva Jane Bolents married after the war, taught pediatrics at the university level and eventually moved to Las Cruces in 1974 because of her husband's health. She moved to El Paso last year to be closer to her children.
Last year, Bolents visited the World War II Memorial in Washington, D.C., where she had her picture taken with former U.S. senator and presidential contender Bob Dole. She also posed for a picture with 33 war veterans.
"I was the only World War II woman. Boy, did I get attention," she said, giggling like a schoolgirl.
Bolents keeps her war memories in a 15-page journal, hangs out with a pet poodle and still drives a 12-year-old Honda with 81,000 miles on the odometer. She has outlived two husbands, and has two sons, a daughter and three grandchildren.
"Memories can never be taken from you," she said. "The war put women on the map, but we (Navy nurses) were never praised afterward. I'm conceited enough to say they couldn't have done it without us."
Eva Jane Bolents thinks of the horrors she has witnessed and cries sometimes. She sits in her Royal Estates retirement community apartment, surrounded by images and memories of a war she is convinced will never be forgotten, not even after she and all the others who put themselves in harm's way are all gone.
"There was just something about World War II that was different," she said. "For me, it was a God wink. Just look at where I've been."
Ramón Rentería may be reached at rrenteria@elpasotimes.com; 546-6146.
Ellie
Eva Jane Bolents of El Paso holds a portrait of herself done in 1943 by a Japanese prisoner of war in Guam. Bolents was a Navy nurse during World War II. (Rudy Gutierrez / El Paso Times)