Veterans Benefits Information

To honor the 70th anniversary of the Battle of the Bulge, American Legion Media & Communications Deputy Director Henry Howard interviewed surviving veterans, including Katherine Nolan of Worcester, Mass. Nolan was one of more than 60,000 members of the Army Nurse Corps who served during World War II. She came ashore at Utah Beach in July 1944 and treated soldiers, as well as concentration camp survivors, in the Allied march across Europe in the war’s final chapter. She passed away in 2019. Following is an excerpt from Howard’s 2014 article.

Katherine Nolan served as a nurse with the 53rd Field Hospital, which was attached to various infantry and armored units throughout the war. The field hospital team often had only four hours to find a new location, prepare medical tents and be ready to receive severely wounded patients. “Sometimes the incoming wounded arrived before we were ready, so you learned how to set up the hospital in the order they needed it. You improvised a lot,” she recalls.

The nurses’ primary mission was to keep the patients alive and warm. Two potbelly stoves generated minimal heat in the makeshift hospital. Nurses often swaddled patients like babies in whatever blankets they could find. It was hard work, especially given the severe winter. “I’ve been cold since the Bulge,” says Nolan (93 at the time of the interview).

Once a patient was stabilized, he would be evacuated to a full military hospital. “We never heard back about how they made out after they left us,” Nolan recalls. “We often wondered if they made it all the way home.”

Nearly 70 years later, she still wondered what happened to one patient in particular: Hamilton Greene, war correspondent for The American Legion Magazine. Nolan was mentioned in a story about Greene in the February 1945 issue. “There’s a nice girl nurse, Lt. Katherine Flynn of Worcester (Mass.), in charge of his ward,” the article says, referring to Nolan by her maiden name.

Nolan says Greene was a model patient. “He was in a lot of pain, but you wouldn’t know it. He always had a smile on his face. He was always very upbeat and, as it mentions in the article, he really helped me with the other patients because he had such a great sense of humor. You would never believe anything was wrong with him. But his wounds were worse than some of the others.”

Unbeknownst to Nolan, after Greene left her field hospital, he recovered fully. He picked up his correspondent duties, and was aboard USS Missouri when Japan formally surrendered. Later, Greene returned home to his wife and two young children and continued to work as a freelance illustrator.

Upon learning, after all these years, that he had survived, Nolan smiled and beamed. “That’s the best news I’ve heard in a long time.”

To read “Our Man Ham Greene” in the February 1945 American Legion Magazine, visit legion.org/library/digitalarchive, click on the The American Legion Magazine link and search for February 1945. Greene, who had been writing and illustrating about the war for The American Legion Magazine, was wounded in the lungs and stomach during a sniper attack on Nov. 19, 1944. He met Katherine Flynn (Nolan) at a field hospital during his recovery.

The American Legion provides media tools; a chronology of the organization’s role before, during and after World War II; video links; graphic elements and more to help local posts honor the 75th anniversary of war’s end. Click here to download the media kit.

Participating Legion posts are also welcome to submit their stories in the “My WWII Story” section of legion.org/legiontown. They are also encouraged to add to their post histories on the national Legacy & Vision website at legion.org/centennial. Both platforms offer easy sharing for social media. Selected submissions will be edited for publication in the September 2020 American Legion Magazine.

Under different circumstances, the first American Legion Boys State program of 2020 would have been underway this week, as Tennessee Boys State had been scheduled to take place May 17-22 at Tennessee Tech University.

But Tennessee and most other Boys State programs, along with their counterparts in the American Legion Auxiliary Girls State programs, have canceled their 2020 programs due to the COVID-19 pandemic. Likewise, American Legion Boys Nation and American Legion Auxiliary Girls Nation, both scheduled for late July in Washington, D.C., have been canceled.

However, two Boys State programs are trying to conduct “virtual” programs this summer, while others are considering the possibility of sessions later in the year.

Texas Boys State will take place online June 6-12. Delegates will begin initiating online accounts a week before, with tests of the technology the first week of June to ensure that it works under the stress of several hundred delegates and staff logging on at once.

“We’ve got a great crew that permitted us to batten down the hatches and wargame on whether we ought to do a virtual program and then would people come, can we make it engaging,” said Texas Boys State Chairman Casey Thomas. “It was never intended to be a replacement for the onsite; you can never duplicate what it’s like to have a thousand young men together, figuring out how to relate. … This is not a substitute, this is just a different version.”

Thomas expressed his gratitude to the Department Executive Committee for allowing the virtual Boys State to take place.

“We’re very grateful for the DEC to hear us out, to step out of the box a little bit,” he said.

About 650 students are expected for the virtual program, a little more than half the usual number who attend the program at the University of Texas.

“We’re very happy with 650, that’s plenty of young men to do this with,” Thomas said.

By eliminating parts of the schedule that just aren’t possible in a virtual program, Texas Boys State has been able to schedule more time for debate, he said. And only the top six state offices will be up for election.

“I’m excited because it’s still really meaningful,” said Thomas, noting that the program won’t be just logging in to watch slide presentations. Each day of the program will begin and end with city meetings; the statesmen will be divided into 16-18 cities for the week.

Likewise, Rhode Island Boys State is planning a virtual session to take place June 14-19.

“Once the (virtual) class is completely formulated, we will send links to each student registered for this year’s session,” said Rhode Island Boys State Director Ronald Levasseur.

Missouri Boys State leadership is holding out hope for an in-person session later in the summer. In a post on the program’s website, Director Matt Dameron said, “Although we are postponing Boys State, we are not giving up. Missouri Boys State leadership is actively working to develop an alternative plan providing some form of Boys State later in 2020. Any program scheduled for later in the year will comply with recommendations from public health officials and local authorities.”

Missouri Boys State was originally scheduled for June 13-20 on the campus of the University of Central Missouri. A decision on whether a later session is possible is expected to be announced by June 12.

Maryland Boys State noted on its website that it is also “exploring options for a possible program later in the summer.” Maryland’s program was originally scheduled for June 21-27 at McDaniel College.

Meanwhile, many programs are already planning for 2021, with some looking at the logistics of inviting those who would have attended this year to come to Boys State next year.

While the recommended guidelines for Boys State programs suggest that only males who have completed their junior year of high school and have at least one semester of high school remaining should be considered for the program, that doesn’t have to be the case. In a memo to American Legion departments, Americanism Commission Chairman Richard Anderson noted that Public Law 112-66, passed in 2011, amended the Legion’s federal charter so that “American Legion departments possess the authority to establish their own criteria for Boys State program eligibility, selection, participation and operation and should proceed with their respective programs accordingly.”