THE VIRGINIAN-PILOT
Copyright (c) 1995, Landmark Communications, Inc.
DATE: Thursday, December 21, 1995 TAG: 9512280859
SECTION: NORFOLK COMPASS PAGE: 10 EDITION: FINAL
TYPE: Cover Story
SOURCE: BY PHYLLIS SPEIDELL, STAFF WRITER
LENGTH: Long : 115 lines
WITH HER FIRST glimpse of the Statue of Liberty, Lt. Mary Louise Martin knew she was home. Fire boats arced fountains of water, and strains of the new holiday song, ``I'll Be Home for Christmas,'' floated through the wintry air from a bandstand on a barge circling the West Point, a troop carrier.
It was mid-December 1945. Martin, a 25-year-old Army nurse, had served more than two years in England and France. The homecoming, still vivid 50 years later in the memory of the Suffolk resident, was ``marvelous, marvelous.''
She and the hundreds of other soldiers who crowded the ship's rail as they entered New York harbor were too excited for even tears of joy, she said.
It had been a long voyage as the ship traveled in a convoy, following a zig-zag course across the Atlantic to elude enemy attacks.
From their New York landing, the troops were whisked to Fort Dix, N.J., for discharge, then sent home. Martin and a few friends slipped off the Army base and headed for the nearest big city, Trenton.
``We heard the bells ringing, saw all the lights and all the Santa Clauses. After all those nights of blackouts, we were like children in a fairyland.''
No brass bands or cheering crowds welcomed Martin back to her home in Suffolk, however. She was among scores of veterans who would be returning home over the next few months. And like many others, Martin would be embarking on a new, peacetime life.
Fiance Raleigh Martin, an Army sergeant, returned home to Suffolk from the South Pacific a few days after Mary Louise arrived. On Jan. 11, 1946, they were married in Saint Paul's Episcopal Church, where he had been an alter boy a few years earlier. The couple moved into one of four apartments carved out of Mary Louise Martin's former family home on Main Street. ``Everyone was coming home and getting married, so there were lots of parties then,'' she said. Other apartments in their house also were occupied by returning servicemen and their new brides.
Mary Louise Martin, always an individualist, had joined the Army nursing corps in 1943, shortly after graduating with honors from St. Vincent DePaul Hospital School of Nursing in Norfolk. She was the first woman from Suffolk to enlist, much to the dismay of her fiance.
``He told me he would never speak to me again, and it did take a month of my being in the Army before he would write.''
After six months of stateside duty, Martin was sent to the 94th general hospital, 18 miles outside Bristol, England. The temporary structure was built on grounds of Tortworth Castle. Working 14-hour shifts with one other nurse and three corpsmen, Martin cared for 64 patients - 32 in the ward and 32 in a tent hospital.
``I don't believe in all this starched-up stuff,'' Martin said, ``so I treated them all like brothers.''
She organized picnics on the castle grounds for ambulatory patients. She made popcorn and hot chocolate on the coal-fired, pot-bellied stoves that heated the ward. She cajoled extra sugar from the mess hall staff and begged popcorn from friends back home.
But life was not all picnics and laughter. The reminders of war were constant.
``The Germans were bombing the hell out of London night and day, and we could hear the bombers flying over,'' she said. Although the hospital was not intentionally targeted, she said, German pilots racing for home after a raid would empty their bomb bays not far from the castle - occasionally shattering every outside hospital light and a few windows.
On Martin's first leave in London, air raid sirens wailed. She, along with everyone else on the street, was rushed into the shelter of a subway tunnel. ``That was the first and only time I remember thinking, `Am I going to die?', and something came up tight right here,'' Martin said, holding a fist to her heart.
``After that, I never had any fear about anything. ``We all thought, `we will live for today, we will party today, we will do what we want today because, tomorrow, we don't know where we will be'. ''
The casualties of war were never far from mind, however. Martin watched several young soldiers die and lost her own 18-year-old brother, Terry, while he was on an Army peacekeeping mission in Germany in 1946.
After a six-month tour at an Army hospital next to a POW camp in rural France, Martin boarded the West Point, bound for home.
In her new life back in Suffolk, Martin became a public health nurse in Nansemond County, a career she followed for 36 years. She went back to school, earning degrees from the University of Virginia, and Emory University in Atlanta. Raleigh Martin died in 1979, and she raised their two daughters.
Today, Martin lives in Suffolk, among many of her childhood friends and classmates from Suffolk High School.
``Looking back, I am amazed at the things we did,'' Martin said.
``The way never changed my opinion about what was right or wrong. I was glad that I was a part of it all. We all had a job to do and did it.''
Even after 50 Christmases, Martin continues to hear from some of her Army friends - including the three women who stood with her at the rail of the West Point and sang with her, ``I'll Be Home for Christmas. You can count on me. . MEMO: OTHER STORIES, on the following pages.
[The cover story and related stories ran in all community tabs over the
holiday period.]
ILLUSTRATION: ON THE COVER: "HOME FOR CHRISTMAS"
Associated Press Photo
Dec. 14, 1945: Happy to be back in the States, and most of them
headong for home after years of world war, GIs disembark from the
Liberty ship Joseph Hooker. The ship docked in Brooklyn, with 526
soldiers, after a 17-day voyage from France.
ABOVE: Army nurse Mary Louise Martin, center, on the way home from
Europe and World War II.
JOHN H. SHEALLY II
Staff
RIGHT: Martin, at home in Suffolk, reflects on Christmas 1945.
KEYWORDS: CHRISTMAS by CNB