JO STELLE
Age: 100
Born: July 10, 1910
Hometown: Lake City, Iowa
Residence: Palm Desert
Military branch: U.S. Army Nurse Corps
Years served: May 1942- October 1945
Rank: First lieutenant
Family: Husband George Stelle (deceased); sister Virginia Paul of Indio; niece Carol Ritter Vance of Indio; nephew Larry Paul of Morongo.
About this series
Staff writer Denise Goolsby will profile desert veterans from World War II through the end of 2010 — the 65th anniversary of the end of the war. Contact her at (760) 778-4587 or via e-mail at denise.goolsby@thedesertsun.com
Coming tomorrow
U.S. Army Airborne veteran Russ Snell of Desert Edge.
LEARN MORE: Read about other Coachella Valley residents who served in World War II at mydesert.com/wwii.
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U.S. Army Nurse Corps veteran Jo Stelle was a surgical nurse with the 30th General Hospital — the first American hospital to arrive in England during World War II.
After the invasion of Normandy, the group traveled to France and Belgium, where Stelle was assigned to detachment service — working in tent hospitals out in the field near the troops.
“When the battle was close, they would come in to be triaged,” Stelle said, explaining that each man's wounds, injuries or ailments would be assessed, “To see how quickly they should be treated.”
Stelle, 100, worked primarily in orthopedic surgery, helping repair the broken bones of wounded soldiers.
Stelle spent three years overseas and was eventually promoted to chief nurse — with the accompanying rank of first lieutenant.
Soon after Stelle graduated from Lakefield High School in 1927, the Minnesota farm girl launched her career in nursing — two years before the stock market crash plunged the U.S. into the Great Depression.
Stelle, who was 17 at the time — too young to qualify for nursing school — lied about her age.
Stelle enrolled in the Kahler School of Nursing at the Mayo Clinic in Rochester, Minn., where she graduated in 1930.
During this time, her father took a business trip to California, passed through the Coachella Valley and fell in love with the desert. He bought property in the east valley, which would become Indio Ranch.
From 1934 to 1941, Stelle worked as a nurse in Los Angeles and Palm Springs, including a stint at Cedars Sinai Hospital.
While working for a doctor in the Bing Crosby building in Los Angeles, “Her office location allowed her to rub elbows with celebrities, and from time to time, she was on call at Paramount Studios whenever a nurse was required to be on duty because a child was on the set,” said Stelle's niece, Carol Ritter Vance, of Indio.
Stelle was back working in Palm Springs when Pearl Harbor was bombed on Dec. 7, 1941. Shortly thereafter, a friend connected with the University of California, Berkeley called and told her the Army was forming a unit of nurses.
“I went up to San Francisco and got in right away,” she said. “We didn't have any training,” she added. “We didn't know how to salute or anything.”
There was no time for formal military training, as the corps of nurses that had been assembled were ordered in May 1942 to the New York Port of Embarkation.
“We left right away,” Stelle said.
The nurse corps was assigned to the 30th General Hospital — an affiliated unit of the University of California — a unit that had just recently been activated for duty.
On June 4, 1942, Stelle and the other members of the Army Nurse Corps boarded the RMS Queen Elizabeth, a converted luxury liner, for the ship's maiden voyage carrying U.S. troops to Europe.
The QE-1, loaded with 16,000 military personnel, zigzagged across the Atlantic to avoid enemy submarine attacks.
“The course was changed every three minutes,” she said. “We had no escort.”
The ship's ability to travel at high speeds allowed it to outrun German U-boats.
Soon after arriving in England, on June 9, structured military training commenced.
“We learned how to salute, and we had to go on hikes,” and learned about military protocol, she said.
On her first Thanksgiving abroad, Stelle was one of five nurses and several representatives from other Allied armies invited to travel to London to meet King George VI and Queen consort Elizabeth Bowes-Lyon.
“We attended the first service they gave in Westminster Abbey for American troops,” she said. After the service, “We were escorted to Buckingham Palace to visit the royal family.”
Stelle said most of the people in the small delegation were given “jobs” — greeting the royalty or other tasks.
“I didn't have an assignment,” she said.
But, as she stood there, she realized she'd soon be shaking hands with royalty.
“I thought, ‘What on earth am I going to say?'” Stelle recalled.
Of Irish descent — she was Jo O'Connell at the time — Stelle had heard all about the conflict between the Irish and the British, who faced off during the Irish War of Independence from 1919 to 1921.
“I'd heard from my father all about the ‘horrible Brits,'” she said, quickly adding — to the contrary — “They were really wonderful to us.”
But she thought she'd yank the Queen Mum's chain anyway — just for the fun of it.
Knowing there were a number of Irish Navy men in attendance, Stelle quipped to Queen Elizabeth, “Oh, it must be disconcerting to have all these Irish coming through.”
The composed queen politely replied, “‘Oh it's lovely having you,' or something like that,” Stelle said.
“It was not politically correct, but I couldn't resist it,” Stelle said, laughing.
More than two years after landing in England, the nursing corps was on its way across the English Channel — six weeks after the invasion of Normandy, France, on June 6, 1944.
The group arrived on Utah Beach on July 22, 1944. The servicemen and women of the 30th General Hospital would soon join the action near the battlefields.
“We always were on call, unless we'd been on for 12 hours,” she said. “We worked hard. But I wouldn't have missed it for anything.”
