She Blazed a Path in Wartime

A former flight nurse who flew 425 rescue missions in World War II and Korea is now spending her days attentively watching the television set in her Covina home as a new generation of women soldiers takes an ever riskier role in the Gulf War.

And, even though she doesn’t approve of women at the front lines in combat roles, former U.S. Air Force Capt. Lillian M. Keil nevertheless takes a bit of pride in what she did to blaze the way.

In 1943, Keil--a registered nurse working as a United Airlines stewardess--was one of a pioneer group of stewardesses trained as Army Air Corps flight nurses. Keil earned 28 awards, trophies and citations--including the Air Medal with three oak leaf clusters, and 11 battle stars. She left the Air Force in 1954.

She calls Korea “the forgotten war,” but for Keil it was unforgettable, particularly the battle at the Chosin Reservoir in North Korea near the border with China.

“The survivors are called the ‘Chosin Few,’ ” she said. “It was a terrible battle. We had about 125,000 Chinese Communists against about 15,500 Marines.

“It was in the winter of 1950. . . . The Marines had worked their way up to the Chosin Reservoir and were trapped there.

“It was horribly cold. The Marines had spent many, many days in the snow. Their hands and feet were so frostbitten they could hardly hold a gun or walk.

“There were 24 nurses and a chief nurse in our air evacuation squadron. The 801st Medical Air Evacuation Squadron was known as the ‘Angels of Mercy.’

“We wore hats and gloves and flight suits with fur-lined jackets. Sometimes I gave my outer clothing to the shivering GIs that came aboard.

“Our goal was to get the wounded back to rear echelon and give them immediate emergency care. We flew back and forth to MASH (Mobile Army Surgical Hospital) facilities. There were a lot of wounded and a lot of dead.

“We were fired upon and often had to land in slush, which was dangerous because the planes could skid. One of the nurses was killed.

“Somehow, the Marines came through.”

To honor those who served in Korea, Keil is now helping to raise funds for construction of an International Korean War Memorial scheduled to be installed at Land’s End in San Pedro in July, 1993.

As approved by the Los Angeles Cultural Affairs Commission, the monument--a bronze sculpture by artist Terry Jones--will depict a life-size field hospital nurse and 11 soldiers.

Sharing the monument’s glory won’t be Keil’s first honor.

She was dubbed “Miss Mercy Missions,” and the 1953 movie “Flight Nurse,” with Joan Leslie and Forrest Tucker, was based partly on her experiences.

In 1961, her exploits were commemorated on television’s “This is Your Life.”

More recently, Keil was honored last year as a special guest at the Altadena Veterans’ Day Memorial Service.

Retired Air Force Col. Barney Oldfield, public information officer for the North American Air Defense Command during World War II, is a longtime friend.

“So few of the women who are now serving would even know of her existence,” Oldfield said. “Yet what they’re preparing to do now, she was doing in 1943. They’ve got an established procedure, but she had to make it up as she went along. . . . She was an airborne Florence Nightingale.”

In 1954, after leaving the Air Force, she married Walter G. Keil, a public relations entrepreneur who died in 1980. They raised two daughters in Covina.

She calls her military years the “happiest of my life.”

“I never felt discriminated against,” she said. “I always felt a great deal of pride in what I was doing.”