World War II was rapidly coming to an end when Gloucester resident Sandy Thornton enlisted in the Army Nurse Corps, but that didn’t mean there was nothing left to do. The Army was “screaming for nurses,” she said, and she heeded the call.

Twenty-four-years old and fresh out of St. Luke’s School of Nursing in Richmond, Thornton left her home on Walton’s Mountain and rode the train to Washington, D.C., to sign up to serve her country. It was the day after Easter, 1945. Two weeks later, she was commissioned a second lieutenant at Fort Lee, and in short order she was on a ship full of nurses headed for the Philippines.

Assigned to Clark Air Field near Manila, Thornton said she worked eight hours a day at a field hospital and recalled watching as war planes landed at the field, looking “pretty butchered up, with holes in the wings.” She said she wondered how they could even fly.

One afternoon, an ammunition depot was bombed and, although she do...