Rose Jackson, a nurse during World War II who landed at Omaha Beach four days after D-Day to treat the wounded, died Jan. 23. She was 104.
Jackson died at her Chattooga County home the Chattanooga Times Free Press reported. She lived in north Georgia for more than 70 years, the newspaper reported.
Born in Pittsburg, Kansas, on Oct. 4, 1917, Rose Benedict Jackson enlisted as a nurse on Oct. 22, 1942, according to Kansas Historical Society online records.
Jackson, who achieved the rank of first lieutenant, was one of 20 U.S. Army nurses with the 5th Evacuation Hospital, which landed in France on June 10, 1944. She followed the U.S. Army after the D-Day invasion at Normandy into Germany, her nephew, Ken Henderson, of Ocala, Florida, told the Times Free Press.
“She was a one-of-a-kind person. Like I said, you imagine being in the war and taking those troops in day after day after day after day... the conditions they were coming back in,” Henderson told the newspaper in a telephone interview. “They saw stuff that nobody should ever have to see.”
Jackson’s unit crossed the English Channel and debarked in barges and ferries, according to the WW2 US Medical Research Centre’s website.
“From then on, (what we saw was) fallen soldiers,” Jackson told the Times Free Press in 2018. “We went through five campaigns, so we got five battle stars.”
Jackson said the trip across the English Channel was scary.
“If you ever crossed the English Channel, you’re a dead duck,” Jackson told the newspaper. “Some of the boys got real sick. I mean, it was rocky.”
After the war, she married Grover C. Jackson, according to her obituary. Grover Jackson, who was a captain in her unit who was born and raised in Chattooga County, died in 1986, the Times Free Press reported.
After the war, the Jacksons settled in Lyerly, Georgia, where Grover Jackson ran a hardware shop that served as a general store, Henderson told the newspaper. The couple later lived in Summerville.
Rose Jackson worked as a nurse for Dr. G. H Little for 23 years and for Bigelow-Sanford Inc for almost five years before retiring in 1972, according to her obituary.