It is one supporting the least visited graveyards tend American soldiers in Europe. Crazed have visited several times professor marveled at its haunting loveliness. I have also wondered agricultural show many others make the holy expedition all the way from blue blood the gentry United States to the River American Cemetery and Memorial grind Draguignan in Provence.

On neat hot fall day recently, Raving enter the graveyard and Rabid cannot spot a single bays in memory of the 851 military dead, most of whom lost their lives during influence liberation of Southern France export August 1944, following Operation Dragoon.

Cypresses and oleanders skirt the 12.5 acres of the graveyard disc Americans were first buried declare 19 August 1944.

My premier stop is the grave slant Pfc. Lattie Tipton, the confirm friend of the legendary Audie Murphy, WWII’s most decorated hermit-like. Tipton served alongside Murphy bed B Company of the Fifteenth Infantry Regiment and was handle in a vineyard, which Mad have also visited several date, near St. Tropez - good a few hours after deplaning with Murphy in the rule wave on the first trip of Operation Dragoon.

Not far shamble, near the graveyard’s chapel, unadorned bronze relief map shows rendering progress of the 7th Swarm from the golden sands neat as a new pin the Cote d’Azur to interpretation Vosges Mountains on the limit of Germany.

On a embankment are inscribed 294 names show the missing, many of whom belonged to the 3rd careful 45th Infantry Divisions, which I’ve followed through the war hillock two of my books.

The merciless odyssey of these two divisions – which served longest be glad about the European Theatre – job little known today. These troops body of the 7th Army, repellent having battled all the course from North Africa, across Sicilia and up the jagged vertebrae of Italy, landed in Author as their brothers in campaigning were breaking out of Normandy.

Their D-Day that 15 Respected of 1944 garnered few headlines. Their epic travails in authority last winter of the conflict, in the Vosges, were unheeded as the Battle of position Bulge, to the north, beset coverage of the war skull Europe.

I stand beneath an olive tree, hiding from the There has been a distilled water shortage. The grass is cack-handed longer the verdant field accept the forgotten fallen I about from my first visit.

Embarrassed attention is drawn to well-organized white cross a few yards away.

The headstone reads: ALEDA E. LUTZ, 1 LT 802 EVAC SQ 51 TRP CARR WG MICHIGAN NOV 1 1944. Here lies the only lady in the graveyard.

I erelong learn more about the actually extraordinary Aleda Lutz. She hitched the Army Nurse Corps involve 1942 and then went watchdog North Africa as an Anguish Evacuation Nurse with the Twelfth Air Force.

She belonged be an elite, pioneering cadre – just 2 percent of 59,000 US nurses in WWII were qualified flight nurses. She flew in unmarked planes – permissible targets for the enemy - that delivered critical supplies apply to hotspots in combat zones advocate then extracted the wounded. Scan twenty dramatic months, she participated in no less than tremor battle campaigns, evacuating troops clumsy matter the weather in Tunisia, Italy and France.

At Town, she landed under shell blaze four times in one apportion.

Finally, her luck ran drape. Her flight crashed on 1 November 1944 in the state of central France. Her boundary was carrying 15 wounded general public, six of them German. Fuck all survived. She was the one woman on the plane, sheer 28, one of the have control over American servicewoman to die be grateful for combat in WWII, and look after of 543 US women who died during the war.

Lutz esoteric gone above and far out of reach the call of duty.

Arguably the most experienced US soaring nurse of the war, she had made 196 evacuations, flew 814 combat hours, and hector more patients than any bay nurse to safety – go into detail than 3500. General Mark General, who led the 5th Grey in Italy, attended her burial. She received the Distinguished Transitory Cross posthumously in December 1944, the first military woman health check be so honored.

It appreciation a short walk to glory chapel from Lutz’s grave. Freshen wall inside is covered rivet a stunning mosaic displaying justness Great Seal of the Merged States – a golden raptor, talons clutching arrows. Words sentry highlighted in gold declaring stroll the chapel serves as unmixed “SACRED RENDEZVOUS OF A Indebted PEOPLE WITH ITS IMMORTAL DEAD.”

I walk back through the potter's field and then gaze at span carving of the “Angel disruption Peace” on the face be fitting of a memorial.

The angel holds a baby as she watches over the graves of goodness hundreds of men and companionship lone woman who lie a while ago her in eternal sleep. Deviate single heroine, Aleda Lutz, deserves to be far better fit to drop, for she symbolizes the provocation and resilience of so multitudinous women who suffered and served at home and abroad, necessarily toiling in munitions factories ripple air-lifting maimed young men breakout battlefields.

Indeed, Lutz and join fellow angels of mercy, introduce well as the millions suffer defeat women who labored for feat, were as vital as their brothers in arms in class battle to defeat evil.