State-Journal.com - Veterans Day her day in many ways

Photo By Hilly SchifferMartha Ueltschi Penn, who turns 90 today, holds a frame filled with medals and her memoirs during her military service as a first lieutenant in World War II.

Photo By SubmittalWhile in Luxembourg, Martha Ueltschi Penn spotted a hat in the window of a shop. She still owns the red hat with a blue and white feather.

Martha Ueltschi Penn received a letter last week awarding her France’s highest honor – the Legion of Honor – recognizing her service as a nurse in World War II.

It’s fitting that the award comes at this time, almost 65 years later. Today is set aside to honor veterans, and today is her 90^th birthday.

Martha, a Frankfort native, enlisted in the nursing corps in 1943 at age 24. “Why did we join?” she repeated the question, relaxing in a recliner at her caregiver’s on Old Dailey Avenue.

“Our country was fighting a war. We were needed. Nurses were in short supply. It was what we needed to do. Plus, it seemed a great adventure.”

Six months after her return from the war in 1945, she recounted her adventures in “My Memoirs – Army Nurse Corps World War II, 1943 – 1945.”

“We landed on Omaha beach 17 days after D-Day,” she wrote in the preface.

“We could set up our hospital in two hours time and by the same token dismantle it and be on our way. Sometimes we were three to five miles from the front lines.”

She tells of the nurses, the first few uneasy nights, sleeping in a large tent in bed rolls on the ground. Once, a nurse awoke, screaming that a German was in the tent – but it turned out to be another nurse who’d gone out in the rain to get her luggage.

“I saw Patton once, she recalled from the recliner. “He was a tall, big man – and of course his reputation made him larger than life. I watch the movie (“Patton”) every time I can.”

Another time, a hospital was set up in a basement. The nurses bunked on the top floor of the building. “I’ll always remember those 107 steps to the top after 12 hours duty in the basement,” she wrote.

In their 67-day stay in one French city, the hospital staff had 4,899 casualties, performed 2,479 surgeries and took 8,711 X-rays.

“I will never forget what a beat-up group of boys went through our operating room.”

Her unit held its service of thanksgiving in a dandelion field on VE Day, May 1944, remembering the boys who gave their all.

Martha writes that next morning the sun beamed through a hole in their tent that had been covered by a Red Cross banner.

“As I looked up, I couldn’t help but associate it as a symbol of the blood which I had seen so much of in the operating tents during the past months. I thought of the boys that I had seen die and how brave they all were. No one will ever know what they went through.”

She took part in campaigns in Normandy, Northern France, Rhineland, Ardennes and Central Europe – and the U.S. government gave her the Meritorious Service Unit Plaque; Victory Ribbon; and the European, African, Middle Eastern Theater campaign ribbon.

Of the Legion of Honor award, the French government said in its letter: “Created by Napoleon, it is the highest honor that France can bestow upon those who have achieved remarkable deeds for France.”

Martha also remembers the good times.

“We worked like hell and played like hell,” she said of the way they survived.

Such was the case when Martha and three friends went to Paris. They had no way of getting back to the base at a late hour. Enter the Navy and a jeep.

Of course the men would gladly return them, but not without first stopping for champagne.

She laughs recalling the nurses going into the Ritz dressed in their uniforms and carrying their helmets while the elegant ladies sat in their finery acting as though a war was not even going on.

There’s also the hat story. While in Luxembourg, Martha spotted a hat in the window of a shop. In fact, there were four, but the red one caught her eye.

The owner said the four hats had been made for the Duchess of Luxembourg to choose her favorite. In other words, not for sale.

But she longed for the red one. An Army major even helped her polish her German so she could tell the shop owner how much the hat meant. Her new found words fell on deaf ears.

Months later Martha returned to Luxembourg and searched for the hat shop. The hat and the owner were still there – the red hat with a blue and white feather. This time, the owner sold it to her saying he’d saved it for her.

After Martha’s return to Frankfort, she married Charles Penn, an Air Force veteran and childhood friend. Upon his return, Charles ran his father’s taxi company until it was sold. It ultimately became Frankfort’s Yellow Cab service. The rest of his career was spent with the state Transportation Cabinet. They have two sons, Ron, and Mike, who runs Holbrook Towing Service.

Ron sat with his mother in her room as she discussed her experiences. A retired 37-year member of the Kentucky National Guard with one tour in Afghanistan, he understands the important role Martha played.

Penn spent her career working as a nurse. For 12 years she was in the emergency room of the old Kings Daughter’s Hospital. But later, she followed the men whom she tended in battle and worked for 20 years at the Veterans Hospital in Lexington.

Time has taken its toll on her health.

“I was in great shape until after I turned 80, she said. “Since then I have become an old lady fighting Parkinson’s and lymphoma.”

But her spunky spirit remains.

She downplays her role as part of America’s Greatest Generation. She says they did what needed to be done. But don’t mention Tom Brokaw to her.

“I got so mad at him calling it his generation. I wrote him a letter explaining just because he wrote about those brave soldiers, it did not make it his generation.” Penn still chafes at his words that angered her.

“He wrote me back – a long letter – apologizing for insulting me.”

Penn’s medals, bars and patches hang in a frame along with her picture. A large box contains other memorabilia including the red hat. “We worked hard and through great adversity. We did what we could to help out,” Penn said with the humility most find in those of the Greatest Generation.

But the memories and faces of the women and men she worked along side are captured forever in her mind.

You can almost hear them proclaiming “Happy Birthday, Martha, and thank you.”