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undamaged.
    Those in the camp who’d chosen to play cards or go swimming over digging shelters as previously ordered furiously dug foxholes over the next few days. It was during this time that the 807th—along with the rest of the world—learned that Italy had capitulated to the Allies. Announced by Gen. Dwight D. Eisenhower on September 8, the surrender had been signed five days before by Marshal Pietro Badoglio, Italy’s prime minister since the overthrow of Italian dictator Benito Mussolini in July. President Roosevelt warned the American people that, despite this triumph, the war in the Mediterranean had not yet been won. “The great news that you have heard from General Eisenhower does not give you license to settle back in your rocking chairs and say ‘Well, that does it. We’ve got ’em on the run. Now we can start the celebration.’ The time for celebration is not yet.”
    After several days in the camp trudging through ankle-deep sand, swatting at flies, and bathing in the ocean, the entire 807th, including those who had been ordered to stay with the ship, climbed in the back of military trucks and took a forty-mile ride through the desert to their next temporary home in eastern Tunisia near the capitol of Tunis. As the trucks drove along the desolate roads, they passed ancient Roman arches and a German fighter plane lying abandoned in the sands.
    Word that twenty-five nurses were on their way reached the small town of Fochville before they did, and flyboys in P-47 Thunderbolts, P-38 Lightnings, and C-47 Skytrains, apparently eager to show off their skills and welcome the young women, buzzed the convoy as it arrived.
    While most in the 807th settled into their new camp and waited anxiously for their next orders, the squadron’s flight surgeons were sent to various stations in the Mediterranean to watch the more experienced 802nd—the first squadron activated from Bowman—in action. The rest of the men and women had little to do as they waited for the arrival of transportation and supplies.
    An old apartment building in the town functioned as the 807th’s temporary headquarters and as barracks for the men, while the nurses were billeted nearby in two small houses. Sports, movies, and gambling filled much of the men’s time, while local children camped out in front of their barracks hoping they would be given candy bars for themselves and cigarettes for their parents. With a continuous supply of young officers offering to escort the nurses wherever they wanted to go, the women spent their days shopping in the few stores still open in the nearby capital of Tunis, going to see one of the AAF bands playing at a local club, or swimming on one of the beaches littered with debris from the war.
    More than three weeks after its arrival in Fochville, the 807th finally learned it was being sent to Catania, a small town on the eastern side of Sicily. Catania would serve as its headquarters, and from there the nurses and medics would fly to evacuation stations around the Mediterranean to pick up patients and accompany them on flights to better equipped medical facilities. It was a welcome relief for those growing impatient to help the war effort.
    As the 807th packed its gear and chartered planes to relocate the unit to Catania, the squadron was called into action. Lt. Edith A. Belden, a nurse from Illinois, and medic Lawrence Abbott flew from Fochville to Corsica to pick up patients and successfully delivered them to Algiers.
    It was early October 1943 when the 807th arrived in Catania, and the Allies’ recent victories were irrefutable. They had turned the tide in the Pacific by winning the Battle of Midway in 1942. By February 1943 they had achieved another series of victories in the southern Solomon Islands, and Hitler had suffered his first major defeat at Stalingrad. Three months later, the Allies had taken North Africa from the Germans and Italians, and on July 9, they had launched Operation Husky, which led