For the Boys

"This novelistic narrative captures both the violence and trauma of WWII and its subject’s remarkable heroism."― Publishers Weekly

A month after her 24th birthday, Lt. Mary Elizabeth Balster collapses among the rubble of a shelled supply room. Has the young nurse finally succumbed to the mounting emotional toll caused from months of caring for the sick and wounded just behind the front lines of General Patton’s Third Army? On the night of November 30, 1944, holed up in the Heinrich Himmler Barracks in Morhange, France, Lt. Balster’s evac receives a typical patient load (over 200 soldiers, including wounded enemy), but this time one of the admissions is a 19-year-old tanker she’d nursed back to health five months before in Normandy. The charge nurse on Surgical gently informs the lieutenant that the private is critical, admitted with two gunshot wounds and almost half his body consumed by burns. Rising determined to save him, Balster limps toward the shelled supply room determined to search for any blood plasma bottles still intact after Luftwaffe strafing.

Recaptured from her mother’s reminiscences and letters home, N. C. R. Davis takes the reader through every heat-of-battle harrowing moment as Balster lived it, achieving a rare glimpse of one nurse’s point of view during the latter part of the European conflict.

The book mixes Lt. Balster’s observations, memories, and dreams to re-tell the true story of a richly rebellious and intense woman trying to navigate her life and nurture her sanity while nursing the wounded and dying frontline soldiers of the Third Army. Her strong-willed, beguiling personality fosters the grit necessary for her success as a combat nurse, but these same characteristics cause two men to fall in love with her. And the personal cost of war comes to a heartrending conclusion, as she must choose one man over the other to save herself.

Table of Contents

Acknowledgements
Author’s Note
Preface

PART I: St. Paul, Fort Leonard Wood, Middle Tennessee, Winter 1933–Winter 1943
1 On a Streetcar, Guilt Takes a Prisoner
2 During Quarantine, a Nurse is Born
3 Under Control
4 Mail Call
5 The Cave
6 Hotel Jefferson, St. Louis
7 Please Forgive This Depressing Missive
8 No Excuses
9 Pickled Caterpillars and Wood Tick Juice

PART II: HMS Andes and Altrincham, Spring 1944–Summer 1944
10 Shave Tail
11 The Buckleys
12 A Doctor Captain

PART III: European Theatre of Operations, Summer 1944
13 Christmas in July
14 Bed-Check Charlie
15 Poppies
16 On a Grassy Knoll near Sainte-Mère-Église
17 Lost Cots and Litters in the Sun
18 It’s Just the Little Things, Daddy
19 You Can’t Blame These Boys
20 Got into a Little Dutch
21 Toul
22 These Boys
23 Snow Globe
24 Redmond
25 General Patton’s Vagabonds
26 KAR 98
27 Blue 88
28 For the Boys
29 Lucky Strikes and a Limey
30 Luxembourg
31 Deposed Queens
32 Buchenwald
33 Hopes Unrealized
34 The Green Danube
35 Isolation Has its Perks
36 Winter Storm Brewing

Afterword

NCR Davis lives in the north Georgia mountains. Under a pseudonym, she writes about the impact of technology on culture, currency, and politics in the western world. She holds a Bachelor of Arts in History and a Master of Arts in English.