INQUISITR.COM / News & Politics

The Heroine of Ardennes, Augusta Chiwy, Dies At 94 — WWII Nurse Saved Hundreds Of American Soldiers

By Shelley Hazen
Published on: 03:50 PST, Aug 26, 2015

During the Battle of Ardennes, Augusta Chiwy dodged mortars and machine-gun fire to fetch wounded American and Belgian soldiers on the front lines. The doctor who came to her door days before, desperate for volunteer help, said her tiny size helped keep her alive.

“A black face in all that white snow was a pretty easy target,” she replied. “Those Germans must be terrible marksmen.”

Chiwy, long afterward considered a heroine of the battle for her valiant efforts, which saved countless American lives, has died at age 94, the Brussels Times reported.

Augusta was born in 1921 on the Rwandan border; today her village is part of Burundi. Her father was Belgian and her mother was from the Congo. At 9, Chiwy went to Belgium, where she spent her childhood dreaming of becoming a teacher, added the New York Times.

The war had other plans for her; Augusta turned to nursing and soon would find herself amidst the Battle of the Bulge.

In the last stages of World War II in 1944, Adolf Hitler launched a massive offensive against the Allied forces through the forests of Ardennes and laid siege to the town of Bastogne. The battle ended with 80,000 American soldiers killed, captured, or wounded, the Associated Press explained.

A young Vermont doctor named John Prior was treating the wounded by himself. At the time, Augusta was 23 and worked in a hospital in Louvain; in mid-December, she visited her family in Bastogne, a town that would soon be reduced to rubble during Hitler’s attack. One day, Prior knocked on the door, asking for volunteers to help him.

Chiwy said, “He told me that he had no one left, that his ambulance driver had been killed.”

She and a friend, Renee Lemaire, volunteered. Then, on Christmas Eve, a 500-pound German shell exploded next door to the aid station where Augusta and her friend were working. Augusta was thrown through a wall, and Renee — her best friend — was killed along with 30 wounded American soldiers.

During the battle, Chiwy and Prior treated wounded soldiers in a makeshift aid station under “atrocious conditions,” the Brussels Times noted. She worked tirelessly for more than a month and saved several hundred lives, including the lives of many Americans. Black nurses were officially banned from treating white soldiers, and Dr. Prior broke the rules by insisting she was a volunteer. The siege ended December 26.

In the years later, the pair, who spent a harrowing and traumatic month in battle tending to the wounded and dying, never shared their wartime experience, though they exchanged chocolates at Christmas and spoke fondly of each other. Chiwy married a Belgian soldier, had two children — who survive her — and continued her work in nursing.

Chiwy’s story only came to light thanks to the dogged work of her biographer, Martin King, who tracked her to a nursing home — where she suffered from selective mutism — after seeing her portrayal in the TV series Band of Brothers. His book, The Forgotten Nurse, and TV documentary Searching for Augusta: The Forgotten Angel of Bastogne, finally revealed her story.

Official accolades for Augusta have been plentiful. She was given the civilian merit medal for humanitarian missions in 2011 and received the Knight of the Order of the Crown medal from Albert II. Now, in recognition of those remarkably brave weeks in the Belgian woods around her home, Chiwy will be honored with a civilian and military funeral service.

For Augusta, the decision to follow Dr. Prior out into battle that fateful day in 1944 was an easy decision.

“What I did was very normal. I would have done it for anyone. We are all children of God.”

[Photo Courtesy Twitter]

Share this article: The Heroine of Ardennes, Augusta Chiwy, Dies At 94 — WWII Nurse Saved Hundreds Of American Soldiers
history world war II nursing
More from Inquisitr