Before the start of the German counteroffensive in the Ardennes on 16 December 1944, this densely forested region of Belgium and Luxembourg was described as a ghost front, an area where nothing much was happening, a quiet sector. But on 21 October 1944 this is where Lieutenant and nurse Frances Slanger’s life was cruelly cut short when the 45th Field Hospital came under German artillery attack near Elsenborn. Frances Slanger was born into a Jewish family in Poland and arrived in the US as an immigrant after World War I. She decided to enlist in the Army Nurse Corps in the earliest days of World War II. As she pushed forward with the troops from Normandy to the German border, Lieutenant Slanger was deeply affected by the physical and mental wounds of the GIs in her care. She became very popular with the troops when The Stars and Stripes published a letter in which she eloquently thanked the men for their service. When the news broke of her death in Belgium, American soldiers across Europe responded with grief. Some even gave their aircraft her name in her memory. Lieutenant Slanger was buried in Henri-Chapelle, Belgium. Her remains were later repatriated and buried in Boston.
