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to the successful invasion of Sicily. Mussolini had been deposed from power, and on September 3, the Allies’ 15th Army Group, composed of the U.S. 5th Army and the British 8th Army, had landed on mainland Italy and forced Italy to surrender to the Allies.
    In response to the invasion, Hitler had rushed more troops into Italy, including into Rome, sent in paratroopers to rescue Mussolini from prison, and appointed him as the leader of the German-controlled state in northern Italy. The Allies were now struggling to capture the Italian capital, slogging their way north through the country while battling a brutal enemy.
    As the fighting exploded in Italy, the 807th set up its headquarters in a former military school that had recently housed German soldiers. From there, McKnight and the other flight surgeons assigned the nurses and medics to go to specific evacuation stations. The medics were also stationed in the same building while the nurses and other officers were billeted in a villa overlooking the Mediterranean in a town just north of Catania on the island’s east coast. The setting was so picturesque that it was easy for some to forget, for just a moment, that the world was at war.
    The nurses and medics began routinely evacuating patients from near the front lines to more fully equipped hospitals around the Mediterranean and were finally doing the work they had been trained to do. McKnight’s four flight surgeons oversaw six flight teams consisting of one nurse and one medic who cared for up to twenty-four patients per flight. While in the air, responsibility for the patients ultimately fell to the registered nurses, who had far more medical training and experience than the medics. Heavy fighting and the resulting casualties, however, quickly required the teams to split up and handle flights on their own, with the nurses receiving the more severe cases. The 807th’s primary responsibility was to care for British troops from the 8th Army advancing on the eastern side of Italy, while the 802nd was assigned to support American troops from the 5th Army as it made its way up Italy’s western side.
    To help with the casualties pouring in from the front lines near Foggia on the heel of Italy, McKnight sent flight surgeon Capt. Edward Phillips and a few enlisted men to start an evacuation station at Grottaglie, a small town less than 120 miles from the fighting. Wounded and sick patients who had already received some medical care were taken by plane from Grottaglie to designated facilities.
    McKnight sent Hayes a short time later to temporarily help the British operate a station at Bari—just seventy miles from the fighting and as near to the front lines as transport planes could safely reach—until flight surgeon Capt. Philip Voigt could arrive and take over. While Voigt secured the use of transport planes that flew into Bari, and a Royal Air Force medical officer ran the holding unit, the men faced significant challenges with coordinating planes and patients, and dealing with the unpredictable autumn weather. “Weather, no planes, no patients; too many patients, too many planes, delays in arrival of patients… lack of cooperation on the part of the hospitals, failure to have planes gassed up, delay in unloading freight, all conspire to make the job a hectic one,” wrote one member of the 807th.
    Flights also required the nurses and medics to be ready for anything, and they were. On one of Hayes’s first runs, one of the plane’s engines stopped, and the pilots, who seemed unfazed by the development, calmly adjusted their flight plan to pick up another plane. On one of Rutkowski’s flights from Naples, she found the door of the plane missing. When she asked the pilot about it, he responded, “Yeah, we lost it on the way up.” Her patients on that flight included one German prisoner of war along with seventeen British soldiers. During the flight, the British patients noticed the German POW, and, while eyeing the