WWII Army nurse recalls time in service

A shy young girl from south Louisiana never thought she’d make so many friends or travel so far from home and perform a role in World War II.
Irma Boulet Darphin, of Iota, said, “My sisters and sisters-in-law talked me into being a nurse. I didn’t know what I wanted to do. I got into nursing. I’m glad I did. I enjoyed it. I made a lot of friends which surprised me because I was just a timid girl from Crowley.”
Darphin was 17 when the war started, and at 93, she easily recalled where she was when the war began.
“I was playing cards at a friend’s house after dinner when we found out,” Darphin said. “That’s how long it took information to get over.”
She continued, “I went to nursing school in Port Arthur, Texas, and some of my friends who had finished school were already at Camp Claiborne training, and they wanted me to go with them. When I got there, we learned basic training like marching and calisthenics.”
Among her friends were fellow Army nurses Helen Stevens from Des Allemands and Florence Fay Armstrong and Eunice Shexnayder, both from Texas.
Darphin and the other nurses volunteered for the 127th General Hospital, the John Sealy Hospital in Galveston, Texas, and in August of 1943, the nurses traveled to Fort Devon, Massachusetts for more training after their train did not arrive in time to catch a ship across the Atlantic.
In October 1943, Darphin and her fellow nurses boarded the USS Mauritania at New York, bound for England. The ship was headed to the war zone, with troops, doctors and nurses on board.
“The ship was built to transport 1,000 people, and there were 10,000 on it,” Darphin said. “We slept triple decker and even on the floors. We played cards, had Mass and ate two meals a day.
“A German submarine tried to come after the ship on the way. We zig-zagged to get away and went near the Azores islands. A British boats and a plane kept us safe.”
Darphin said the voyage took nine days, and the ship arrived at Liverpool, England, to unload its passengers. A train then took the nurses to Lydham, Bishop’s Castle, near Taunton.
At Lydham, Bishop’s Castle, a hospital consisting of 45 huts and a mess hall was established.
“We didn’t treat any injured soldiers there,” Darphin said. “At that time, we were treating soldiers in training, stabilizing them and treating those going into combat.”
In May 1944, the hospital was turned over to another unit, and those in the Darphin’s unit moved to a tent city near Stonehenge.
“We were there for D-Day, and our activity was very restricted,” she said. “We marched nearby as planes flew over, getting ready for D-Day.”
The D-Day Normandy landings took place on June 6, and in late July, the unit was moved across the English Channel to Utah Beach, one of the places were Allied forces landed on D-Day.
“We were transported there on an Indian boat,” Darphin said. “They served us dinner on tables with white table cloths, but then we had to climb down a rope ladder to a Higgins boat to get to the beach.”
“The GIs there were excited to see American women, too,” she added.
Darphin said they spent the first night in Normandy in a bombed out church, before traveling to Rennes, France.
“The Germans were only about 10 to 15 miles away, but our anti-aircraft were keeping guard,” she said.
She continued, “The saddest part of that trip to Rennes was the families looking through bombed buildings, looking for what was left.”
When the unit arrived at the hospital, everything at the hospital had to be cleaned and thrown out.
“The Germans had been there,” Darphin said. “We had to throw everything, even the band aids, as bad as we needed them, and the hospital opened 10 days after we got there.”
Fighting was going on near the hospital, and the nurses were escorted from their sleeping quarters at a convent to the hospital for their shifts. The nurses treated patients that were on board a boat that had been bombed.
In January of 1945, the unit was transferred to Nancy, France, and the hospital they were stationed at as well as several others nearby were treating patients from the Battle of the Bulge.
“We gave candy to the children as we walked through town to the hospital,” Darphin said. “One of the nurses gave a child a toothbrush, and the child told her it was the first tooth brush he had ever had.”
In their spare time, Darphin said they played baseball. In a nod to the unit’s Texas roots, a sign with a Texas longhorn was placed in front of the building.
“We had a lot of people come to us with their cows and horses thinking we were a veterinarian,” Darphin said.
By the spring, the tide of the war had taken a sharp turn, and many prisoners of war were being liberated from POW camps. Some of the soldiers were treated at hospital were Dauphin was stationed, and the soldiers were treated and stabilized before being shipped back stateside.
The unit left Nancy for Marseilles, France, when the war ended in September 1945. There the nurses and other hospital staff had to be immunized and pass physicals before heading back home.
“I left and came home on almost the same day,” Darphin said.
Darphin kept up with her three closest friends from her time in the service, and all have since passed on.
Once she was back stateside, Darphin lived in Texas for a short time before moving back to Louisiana and marrying George Darphin of Jennings, who served in the Air Corps during the war. Darphin took a job with the public health office in Jennings, and she and her husband had four children. After her children were grown, Darphin went back to work at the State School in Iota, now called the Arc of Acadiana.
Darphin eventually retired, and about seven years ago, she became involved in the Women Veterans of Louisiana organization. The group is comprised of women from all branches of service and those who have served since WWII. There are two other WW II nurses in the organization, and they both reside in Baton Rouge. As a member of the group, Darphin has traveled to Washington, D.C. to visit the WW II Memorial, to France when the French Resistance celebrated the anniversary of D-Day and most recently, to Hawaii to tour the USS Arizona Memorial.
Darphin still has her uniform, pins for service, including two Battle Stars and a European Theater of Operations, many black and white photos from her time over seas and her yearbook from the 127th General Hospital. She also has a lifetime of memories.
“I’ve had a good life,” Darphin said. “I’m glad I joined the Army. It helped develop me.”