Agnes Gray, a nurse and a first lieutenant in WWII When asked about her experiences during World War II, 88- year- old Agnes Gray immediately replied, "It was awful… but we got through it."

She said she continues to tell about her time in the war because she wants people to know what the women did and the hardships they suffered. She said there is plenty told about the harshness the fighting men endured but little about the women.

Gray spent three and one half years as an army nurse in England, France, and Germany, in the 1940s. She and her fellow nurses lived in huts about the size of a bedroom, eight young ladies to a hut. The latrine was located quite a ways from their huts, a long walk in the dark of night in the cold with bombers flying overhead. They heated their quarters with a pot- belly stove taking turns building the fire each morning. Gray said that many of the girls had never built a fire, and on many freezing mornings it was difficult to get it going. She remembers vividly the winter… the long, terrible, cold winter.

A South Carolina native, Gray was originally from Whitmire. She trained for her nursing career first at Anderson Jr. College, later graduating in Charleston in 1942. She worked in a Newberry hospital for a brief time before volunteering for the army and an overseas tour of duty where she cared for troops injured in battle.

Mrs. Gray explains that she was stationed at Fort Jackson when a group of nurses from New England arrived, already trained and ready to deploy. Three of the girls from the New England group became ill so three Fort Jackson nurses were sent in their place. Agnes Gray was one of the chosen. She says they had to learn "everything" as they went along.

As an army nurse, Gray's rank was First Lieutenant; she said that all nurses were First Lieutenants because they had to outrank the "boys" so they would have to listen to their orders.

Mrs. Gray told how the bombers flying overhead and the air raid sirens would awaken and scare the patients. She said she saw patients with every type of injury, some with loss of limbs. There were many instances where nurses had to send patients they didn't think were healed back to their duty stations before they were ready.

When the air raid sirens sounded, the nurses had to quickly get dressed, dress their patients, and have them ready at a moment's notice, in case of evacuation.

One of the nurses, Mrs. Gray said, had a Ouija board, and they consulted it every evening before bedtime. If the Ouija board said there would be an air raid during the night, the nurses slept with their clothes on to save time. If the board said all would be quiet, they would change into their nightgowns to sleep.

With all the fear and stress going on around them, the nurses found the occasional time for fun. Even though it was against the rules, they would sometimes hitchhike from their camp to London or other towns, carrying apples and oranges and other items that were hard to obtain in war- torn Europe, to use to barter for meals and rooms. They fashioned makeshift purses out of their gas mask cases in which to carry the barter items. Mrs. Gray recalls one such incident. They were supposed to carry their gas masks with them at all times. The surprise gas mask inspection revealed cases with no gas masks inside. Gray laughingly said they got into a bit of trouble for that one.

After returning from her tour overseas, Mrs. Gray worked in the VA hospital in Atlanta for a few years before returning to South Carolina to continue nursing in the VA hospital in Columbia.

During her three and one half years as a World War II army nurse, Agnes Gray saw fearful sights and endured brutal hardships, hardships that were awful, but that she and many survived.