Rose DeMarco, a young Army nurse from Stowe, scrambled into her life jacket as the general alarm bells rang out on the S.S. Uruguay somewhere in the South Pacific in 1943.
She prepared to board a lifeboat in the event the ship sank into the ocean waters that were teeming with blacktip and great white sharks.
As the ship that triggered the alarm came closer, Capt. Albert Spaulding of the Uruguay confirmed it was a British man-of-war, not a Japanese warship hunting for American or British vessels.
The Uruguay, an ocean liner converted into an American troopship, would have made a tempting target for the Japanese. Packed aboard the ship were 3,000 servicemen and women, making a 14,400- mile journey from California to Bombay, (now Mumbai) India, with stops in Australia and New Zealand. The ship's newspaper, The Khaki Klipper, called the vessel a “sardined sea palace.”
The Uruguay made its way to India after being at sea for over a month. DeMarco, who had been working in the ship’s hospital, switched to treating sick and wounded American soldiers on land.
Her voyage across the South Pacific was just one of many sometimes dangerous challenges DeMarco faced while serving as a lieutenant in the Army Nurse Corps from April 1943 to September 1945. She worked on ships, at military hospitals in India and in U.S. detention camps, where she supervised medical care for Italian and German prisoners of war.
She was one of over 50,000 American women who gave up the comforts and safety of civilian life to volunteer during World War II.
Six nurses were killed at the Anzio beachhead in Italy during the war. Many succumbed to the same tropical diseases that felled thousands of American servicemen fighting in the Pacific theater. Others fell victim to exhaustion and psychological breakdowns as they coped with treating thousands of men crippled, wounded and dying in their care.
Their stories comprise a little-known chapter in the history of the war. Army nurses shared many of the same dangers as enlisted men. They ran hospitals near the front lines in Normandy, pioneered the conversion of C-47 transport planes into flying hospitals and battled tropical diseases like malaria and dengue fever.
DeMarco, who died in 2001 at age 91, left behind another legacy as well.
“Rose saved everything,” said her niece, Claire DeMarco, who lives in Kennedy.
Along with Rose's daughter, Gail Moser, the two women kept all DeMarco’s memorabilia from her days in the military.
What they saved represents a treasure trove of military documents, photos and correspondence that offers a unique glimpse into the life of an Army nurse during wartime.
Claire DeMarco will donate all of the records to the Italian American Collection of the Heinz History Center, which documents the contributions of Italian Americans in Western Pennsylvania. But, they allowed a reporter to see them first.
Growing up Italian
Rose DeMarco was the daughter of Vincenzo DeMarco and Angela Berardi, who emigrated from the small town of Campolieto in Southern Italy. DeMarco grew up in a close-knit Italian neighborhood centered on Russelwood Avenue in Stowe.
“Rose was an independent-minded person who grew up in a time when Italian women were expected to stay in the home, cook and raise a family,” Claire DeMarco said.
But she wasn’t the staying home type.
DeMarco studied nursing at Ohio Valley General Hospital in Kennedy, then went on to earn her registered nursing degree from Duquesne University.
Always proud of her Italian heritage, she carved out time to study the language in night courses at Schenley High School. Her language skills would later come in handy during her military service.
DeMarco worked as a nurse at Ohio Valley Hospital and at Woodville State Hospital in Collier. In 1940, she headed for California with her new husband, John P. Gawaldo, who suffered from severe asthma attacks. The couple believed California, with its warmer and sunnier climate, would be better for his health than living in Western Pennsylvania.
She continued to work as a nurse, but also found a second job working for a real estate and insurance company for $25 a week — more than she made in Western Pennsylvania, where her top pay as an RN was $16 a week.
Before long, she was running the insurance company office, which didn't surprise her niece.
“Rose was a very hard worker, always well organized and she could handle people in a tactful yet firm way,” Claire said.
When the U.S. entered the war on Dec. 8, 1941, she decided to give up her business career to put her nursing skills to work in service of her country.
Rose goes to war
Army nurses went through much of the same training as American enlisted men. They took basic training, learned military protocol, mastered survival skills and did a lot of marching.
Thanks to the documents Rose saved, it was easy to trace her many assignments at Army bases ranging from Fort Douglas in Utah, to Fort Hamilton in New York, and Camp Beale, near Marysville, Calif.
By the summer of 1943, she was ready for overseas assignment, and reported for duty aboard the Uruguay, treating patients for disorders ranging from appendicitis to heat stroke. The tropical sun and heat in the South Pacific was especially dangerous for American servicemen from states like Pennsylvania, Michigan and Vermont. They were unaccustomed to the tropical heat.
Once in India, DeMarco worked in military hospitals for six months. Many American soldiers struggled with malaria while serving in the Pacific theater.
The disease was spread by the bite of anopheline mosquitoes, and there was little available to treat the soldiers other than quinine and bed rest until late in 1942, when the drug atabrine was introduced. But the medicine did not work in all cases. Many servicemen recovered quickly; others had to be sent home.
After six months working in India, DeMarco made the return trip to America on an Army troop ship, treating wounded and sick Americans during the voyage home.
In the United States, she cared for servicemen returning from combat in Europe in camps including Fort Hamilton. And she began supervising care for German and Italian POWs in detention camps set up in the United states.
"Rose used the Italian language skills she learned at Schenley High School at the POW camps, but she had a hard time communicating with many of the Italian soldiers,” Claire DeMarco said.
“The Italian dialect she learned at Schenley was the dialect spoken by the educated class of Italians, while many of the soldiers were from small towns and farms in Southern Italy, where they spoke different dialects."
Despite this, she managed to communicate with the Italian POWs, who appreciated her efforts to talk with them in their own language. One prisoner, Milt Corti Ugo from Turin, wrote to her soon after the war when he returned to his homeland in February 1946. The letter read in part:
"I am at home already and I won't miss to write you. I am more than glad since I found my mother in good health, but the country's are not so nice. A big part of the house are down, and the life is very expensive, it's very difficult to live in this way. I just came home but it's my pleasure to get back in America....
:I hope to find a correct way to leave my country because I can't find the job. My old boss is in one terrible condition since the laboratory has been bombed, and is not there any opportunity to get back to work....
“I will appreciate you forever. I had lots of talking with my people about your kindness. I'd show your picture to my mother and I told her who you are and what you did for me. I kept your letter and I hope you won't miss writing me, because I love to hear from you very much. Now that I am away from my friends, I miss them and I tell you if it was possible to be an American citizen when I was there....”
Rose returns home
As the war wound down in 1945, DeMarco requested a discharge so she could return home to take care of her husband, who was still suffering from asthma.
When she returned to California, she was chosen to be a student in the first physical therapy class taught at the University of Southern California, according to her daughter and Californian Gail Moser. DeMarco later earned a degree from UCLA in public health.
DeMarco, who always loved children, became the school nurse for the high school and elementary schools in the Montebello School District in Southern California. She finally retired at age 80, telling the school administrators she couldn't run onto the playground anymore if a child was injured. The school district had other ideas.
“We will buy you a go-cart,” they told her in hopes that she would continue working. But, DeMarco stuck to her plan. She retired and moved to live with her daughter outside of San Francisco.
“My mother was stoic when it came to war, and didn't talk about it much,” her daughter said.
But she did offer some valuable life advice:
“‘Put a smile on your face. Go out and face the world, and don't complain.’”
Bob Podurgiel is a freelance writer who lives in Carnegie.
First Published: March 13, 2025, 9:30 a.m.
Updated: March 13, 2025, 9:59 a.m.
