On June 6, 1944, as Allied forces stormed the beaches of Normandy, U.S. Army nurses were positioned offshore on hospital ships and in rear staging areas — officially barred from the initial landings.

Lt. Ellen Ainsworth of the Army Nurse Corps was among the first nurses to cross to the French coast. Within hours of the landings, she was ashore treating the wounded under conditions no peacetime training had approximated.

Nurses had been pushing forward into dangerous positions throughout the war. In North Africa, six Army nurses had been killed in a German bombing raid in February 1943. In New Guinea and the Pacific, nurses worked in conditions that would have qualified as combat service for any male soldier.

The Army Nurse Corps served 59,000 women during World War II. Sixteen were killed in the European theater. Sixty-seven were prisoners of war in the Philippines following the fall of Bataan.

U.S. military nurses were not officially recognized as military personnel with full rank, pay, and veterans' benefits until 1947 — three years after D-Day. Before that, they received partial pay and uncertain status despite doing the same work under the same fire.

The official record of military sacrifice on June 6, 1944 rarely mentions them.