Aleda E. Lutz
1915 - 1944
On November 11, 1988, the Department of Veterans Affairs announced that its medical center in Saginaw was to be named in honor of First Lieutenant Aleda E. Lutz, the first American woman to die in combat in World War II. The hospital, which opened in 1950, has 120 interim care beds, 33 operating beds and a staff of 500. It was simply called the Veterans Administration Hospital for 38 years although Representative Fred Crawford had proposed that it be named for Lt. Lutz in 1949.
Aleda Lutz was born in Freeland, Michigan, on November 9, 1915, attended local schools and Arthur Hill High School and entered the Saginaw General Hospital School of Nursing from which she graduated in its 18member class of 1937. Her graduation photo in the Saginaw News showed a serious, compassionate young woman who seemed well-suited to face the dangers and heavy responsibilities that were to come.
In February of 1942, shortly after the United States entered World War II, she put her training and experience into the service of her country by enlisting in the Army Nurse Corps. The idea of flying hospitals was new at the time and she was trained in the just-created Aerial Evacuation Service. When the Allies invaded North Africa in February of 1943, she was sent to Tunisia to evacuate wounded troops from positions near the front lines, the planes bumping in and out of barely-adequate landing fields.
After Tunisia, she took part in campaigns in Sicily, Naples, Rome and southern France. Lt. Lutz wore the European-African Theater of Operations campaign ribbon with five battle stars. She was also awarded the Air Medal with four oak leaf clusters. The invasion of Anzio, Italy is remembered as one of the bloodiest battles of World War II. Aleda Lutz flew into Anzio when the enemy was still shelling its flight strip.
A war correspondent with the Associated Press filed a story on the hospital transport planes on March 5, 1943. He wrote: “Aerial nurses have the task of caring for wounded American, British and French soldiers—and occasionally wounded German and Italian prisoners of war—as big hospital planes hurry their cargoes back from the front lines to Tunisia. That’s the war job being performed by two Saginaw County nurses, Lt. Aleda E. Lutz of Freeland and Lt. Frieda Pagels of Birch Run. The unit’s flying ambulances, transport ships capable of carrying 20 to 22 patients, equipped with medical supplies, take men from the areas of action back to base hospitals. It is the first unit of its type to serve in any theater of the war. Perils are such that the flying ambulances frequently must proceed with fighter escort.”
When southern France was invaded by the Allies in 1944, Lt. Lutz was transferred from the Italian sector to France. On the fateful day of November 1, 1944, she was aboard a C-47 airborne ambulance caring for 18 patients being transported from the front lines to a hospital in Italy when the plane encountered severe storms. Rocked by high winds, the plane went out of control and crashed near Lyon, France.
Aleda Lutz was just short of 29 years old. A member of the 802nd Medical Air Evacuation Squadron, she had flown on more than one hundred ninety missions of mercy and had led her squadron in the number of missions flown, the total number of flying hours overseas and the number of patients evacuated. She had cared for more than 3500 wounded soldiers.
In addition to the hospital named in her honor, a U. S. Army hospital ship was named the Aleda E. Lutz in 1945. The ship was a former French luxury liner converted to hospital use and equipped to give treatment to 800 patients with a staff of 18 surgical, medical and dental attendants.
Lt. Aleda Lutz was posthumously awarded the Distinguished Flying Cross with six oak leaf clusters, the first honor of its kind made to an army nurse in World War II. The citation accompanying the medal read, “For outstanding proficiency and selfless devotion to duty.”
In Saginaw, a memorial exhibit devoted to Aleda Lutz was on display at the Historical Museum of Saginaw County in November of 1979.