Questioning orders was not part of military protocol, but the black nurses wondered among themselves why they were being sent to treat Germans instead of American soldiers. Why were Germans even in the United States when the war was being fought overseas? None of it made any sense. Being told to care for the enemy was unfathomable. Their question was partly answered when they were brought together by the commanding officer, who told them that black nurses were being shipped to POW camps because there had been too much fraternization between the POWs and the white nurses who were stationed at those facilities.37

The news angered Elinor and her peers. Some wrote to Mabel Staupers and the NAACP to complain about the POW assignment. Would they be in danger caring for Nazis? These were the very people who thought nonwhites were subhuman. Why should African American nurses be exposed to such a potentially volatile group of people? They could barely handle the discrimination they faced from their fellow American citizens. The assignment also seemed counterintuitive to Jim Crow laws. If blacks weren’t supposed to be in contact with whites, then it didn’t make sense for black nurses to treat German soldiers. The sad truth was that the military had a quota system that didn’t allow for a substantial number of black nurses to participate in the war effort. It didn’t matter that there was a serious nursing shortage. A decision had been made that black nurses were to be utilized strictly for the care of black troops or POWs. White nurses were shipped out whenever possible to care exclusively for Allied soldiers. And though white nurses would have to care for a substantial number of prisoners of war throughout World War II, whenever there was an opportunity to replace white nurses in POW camps with black ones, the swap was made. Either the U.S. military thought there would be no risk of fraternization between Germans and black nurses or it didn’t even care enough to be concerned. However insulting these assumptions, there was nothing Elinor could do to protest her assignment. Black nurses, from the start, were not a welcomed group, and the army expressed this rationale explicitly.

With her new khaki-colored Army Nurse Corps uniform, which had finally arrived, she boarded a train for the two-hour trip to Camp Florence, where the staff consisted of white guards, white military police (MPs), white doctors, and a handful of white nurses they’d be replacing. The reality of Elinor’s situation was grim. If she hadn’t realized it at the start of basic training, she certainly did when she arrived at the POW camp. She was defending her country’s freedom at the expense of her own.

4. German POWs in the United States

4.

German POWs in the United States