When they rotated after a six-month stint at a POW camp, the nurses usually ended up at a segregated base where they encountered whites-only and colored facilities, or at hospitals that had both POWs and Allied soldiers and which frequently expected black nurses to tend to German POWs whenever possible. Even the contingent of black nurses who traveled overseas that previous fall had been misled about their duties. Captain Mary L. Petty, a high-ranking African American officer, led a group of sixty-three black nurses to England in September 1944. Petty reportedly told the nurses that they had “come to foreign soil to render the greatest possible service in this theater and to do everything within its power to improve race relations.”11 Unbeknownst to them, however, the nurses had been sent to England to relieve a unit of white nurses as the hospital turned into one exclusively for prisoners of war. With ongoing shortages and wounded Allied men in desperate condition, it was agonizing for black nurses to be the military’s go-to choice for POW care. Fortunately, after a few months, the army converted that particular hospital in England from a POW ward to a facility for Allied soldiers, which made the service of the black nurses who remained there into 1945 much more fulfilling.12

This minor improvement did nothing, however, to address the overall treatment of black nurses in the military. They still weren’t utilized in large numbers and the army refused to give an adequate explanation.

In the spring of 1945, it was evident that Germany was losing badly, and Elinor and Frederick feared imminent separation. She knew that she could be transferred to another post at any moment. It was unheard of for a black nurse to want to stay in an isolating place like Florence, but Elinor remained there, so she must have assured her commanding officer that continuity of care was the most important thing and that she was fine continuing on in her post.