Welcome everyone! I invite you all to check out the gift I'm
giving to a friend of mine at my church, former Lt. Ginny from the
Naval Nursing Corps. She wasn't exactly at Pearl Harbor during the
attack, but she was serving aboard the USS Mercy when it pulled in to
Pearl three hours after the last Japanese planes finished their attack.
She told me stories about what she went through on that day; having to
step over patients who were placed anywhere there was deck space
because there were so many; about her working for three days straight
without sleep trying to deal with all the wounded and burned sailors.
She went on to tell me how she served the next four years on the Mercy
following the fleet all over the pacific assisting the wounded from all
the Island invasions throughout the Pacific: Tarawa, Kwajelein,
Peleliu, Luzon, Iwo Jima, Okinawa; she was at them all. Her stories and
her service prompted me to try and do something to thank her and honor
her service to our brave troops throughout that war. So, I found an old
Revell USS Hope kit and proceeded to do what I could to build it up and
more or less 'backdate' it to a 1940's configuration. I had no pics of the actual USS
Mercy to go by so I just made do with what I had in the kit to make a
representation of a hospital ship similar to the one she served on. Just
last week, I finally finished this kit. These pics show the final
results of my efforts to build her a gift worthy of her service.
Here she is all set up on her base and ready to go:
This is a more detailed shot showing the ship and the (barely readable) plaque:
The Plaque reads:
"In Honor Of Your Service
Navy Nurse Corps
1941-1945"
I'm finally glad to have been able to finish this. I'll be posting any
presentation pics I get here after the 17th, provided she lets me take
any. Thank you for looking in.
Comments are welcome.