Lt. Aleda E. Lutz (Emily L. Von Vasold)
Born in 1915 to German immigrants, Lt. Aleda E. Lutz was the youngest of 10 children and grew up on a farm in Freeland, Michigan. She grew up speaking German and English, which later benefitted her during her service in WWII. Her older brothers served in WWI, serving as both medics and translators.[i]
Throughout WWII, the Lutz Farm became part of Camp Freeland, one of about 250 German POW Camps in the Midwest.[ii] The Lutz family, who belonged to St. John Lutheran Church-Amelith, helped minister to the German POWs.
Lt. Aleda E. Lutz (Emily L. Von Vasold)
As a staff nurse at Saginaw General Hospital, Lutz herself began to look for ways to contribute to the war effort and enlisted in the Army Nurse Corps in 1942. All nurses were asked to volunteer for duty as Air Evacuation Nurses. Of the 59,000 nurses in WWII, only 2 percent were qualified flight nurses. Before Lutz and her fellow nurses could complete the flight nurse training, their unit was activated and sent to North Africa. It seems they received their training in the middle of a war zone.[iii] [iv]
Assigned to the 802nd Medical Air Evacuation Squadron, this highly classified unit consisted of C-47 cargo planes that flew to the battlefront with ammunition and supplies and then took wounded-emergency cases back to the hospitals. These planes flew without the Red Cross insignia, which made them legal targets for enemy fire.[v]
Lt. Aleda E. Lutz (Emily L. Von Vasold)
Following the first American landing in Africa, Lutz participated in six separate battle campaigns over a 20-month period, accompanied air combat missions, and conducted all-weather medical evacuations in Tunisia, Italy and France. She once made four sorties in a single day onto the Anzio beachhead flight-strip while it was still under shell fire from the German Army. Lutz was known to volunteer for every mission. As her friends and peers noted, “Lutz tried to win the war all by herself…When the weather was the worst and the C-47s bounced around and sank into air pockets and buffeted their way through the nasty fronts of the Italian and French mountain country, at those times she was calmest and at her best.”[vi]
On November 1, 1944, she was fatally injured in a Medevac C-47 crash near Saint-Chamond, Loire, France. The Medevac was transporting 15 wounded soldiers (6 German POWs and 9 American soldiers) from Lyon to a hospital in Italy when the plane crashed. The official explanation was that they encountered violent storm . The pilot lost control of the plane and it crashed on the side of Mont Pilat. There were no survivors. Lutz was 28 years old, and the only woman on the plane. Lutz was buried with full military honors in the Rhone American Cemetery and Memorial in Draguignan, France. She is the only woman buried there.
Lutz is believed to be the first servicewoman to die during WWII. At the time of her death, Lutz was perhaps the most experienced flight nurse in U.S. military service. She had the most evacuation sorties (196), most combat hours flown by any flight nurse (814) and the most patients transported by any flight nurse (3500+).
Lt. Aleda E. Lutz (Emily L. Von Vasold)
Among her many honors and awards, Lutz became the first servicewoman to receive the Distinguished Flying Cross, the second woman to receive the honor after Amelia Earhart. Her honors and awards, earned both during her lifetime and posthumously, make Lutz the second-highest decorated woman in the US military, second only to Civil War Doctor Mary Edwards Walker, the sole female recipient of the Medal of Honor.
[i] National Museum of the Army. https://www.thenmusa.org/biographies/aleda-e-lutz/
[ii] Sumner, G. D. (2009). Michigan POW Camps in World War II. United States: Arcadia Publishing.
[iii] Massman, E. A. (2015). Hospital Ships of World War II: An Illustrated Reference to 39 United States Military Vessels. United Kingdom: McFarland, Incorporated, Publishers.
[iv] Michigan History Magazine. (1995). United States: Michigan Department of State.
[v] Massman, E. A. (2015). Hospital Ships of World War II: An Illustrated Reference to 39 United States Military Vessels. United Kingdom: McFarland, Incorporated, Publishers.
[vi] U.S. Congressional Record Proceedings and Debate of the 79th Congress, First Session. Appendix, Volume 91, Part 12. June 11, 1945 - October 11, 1945. (Pages A2767 to A4294)
