Joyce Sherman

Served in North Africa during WWII as an Army Nurse.

By John Williams, BucksLocalNews.com


Joyce Abramson was headed home after serving two and a half years in the United States Army Nurse Corps in North Africa. She was about to receive her honorable discharge at Fort Dix, N.J.
Meanwhile, her pen pal during the war, Herbert Sherman, was a young Army Pfc. serving in the Aleutian Islands in Alaska. He had just gotten into a cab with his cousin and was wondering if she had safely returned to the States. It just so happened that a fellow cab rider knew Joyce, and soon the two would meet face-to-face.

Not too long after in September of 1946, Joyce and Herbert married.


“I told him that he had to take orders from me because I ranked higher than him,” Sherman, 89, laughed. She was a Lieutenant and Herbert was a private first class.


Born and raised in Philadelphia and Bryn Mawr, Sherman eventually attended nursing school at the former Jewish Hospital on Old York Road in Philadelphia (the hospital is now Albert Einstein Medical Center).


She attended the educational hospital for three years and graduated in 1942. She was one of 25 girls in her class. Twenty went on to serve in the Army and one in the Navy.


In June of 1943, she was sworn into the Army Nurse Corps at the age of 21. She subsequently reported to Aberdeen Proving Ground in Harford County, Maryland.


Then in September, she was ordered to report to Port of Charleston in South Carolina for embarkation. She boarded and sailed on the S.S. Delaires and arrived at the 67th Station Hospital on October 27, 1943 in Accra, Africa, which is now modern day Ghana.


Sherman reported to a former Pan American Airlines base taken over as part of the ATC (Air Transport Command).


“It was a very modern hospital, equipped with air conditioned rooms and good living quarters,” Sherman said. “We received many flights from the China-Burma theatre of operation.”


“I remember the first Christmas or New Years that I was in Accra we had a young private with meningitis,” said Sherman. “I was assigned to treat him. This is during a time when penicillin was very new, its full potential wasn’t realized fully and not everyone had it.” She said penicillin was brought from Cairo and stored in refrigerators in the pharmacy, which wasn’t located at the same site as the hospital.


“An orderly would go to the pharmacy and bring back one dose and I would have to inject it. This young man had almost passed away before I could give him the injection,” she said. “But he survived.” Not too long after, the Philadelphia Inquirer published a story on her heroic actions.


Malaria was a big problem at the time and one of the illnesses medical workers treated. It was required that everyone receive Malaria injections.


“Because of the mosquitoes, boots and long sleeves were a necessity and if we went to the movies every 15 to 20 minutes they would go up and down the aisles spraying mosquito repellent.”


“Any place that I was we couldn’t eat fresh fruit because of the dysentery,” she said. “When there would be a sandstorm we would have to take sheets, wet them and put them over the windows so sand wouldn’t get in.” She got dysentery once because she ate tainted strawberries.
Sherman also has a collection of occupation issues from Italy, Cairo and a handful of other Western European and African countries. Occupation issues are a type of currency, which are printed in time of war in order to sustain the national and local economy of a nation.


“During World War II, soldiers heading off to war would bring bank notes inscribed with their friends’ signatures on it,” said Sherman. “This was called short snorting.” It’s almost like a “keep sake” for the soldier.


She said Accra was a nice place to serve because it was close to the beach.


In September of 1944, Sherman transferred again. This time she advanced to the 93rd Station Hospital in French West Africa. While in Dakar, she went on leave to Casablanca to celebrate Hanukkah.


“The hospital was right in the medina quarters, a walled in area of the town,” she said. “We couldn’t go outside of the grounds walls because of the plague.” She was vaccinated while in Casablanca.


Sherman transferred to the 38th General Hospital in Cairo, Egypt in March of 1945. The Jefferson Hospital unit from Philadelphia provided treatment at the base.


“When I got to Cairo, the combat was already in Europe,” said Sherman.


“Cairo was very interesting,” she said. “I got to see the sphinx statues and the pyramids. I saw a lot of camels, but never got the chance to ride one. Every place I traveled to was nice in its own way because it was all new experiences.”


Sherman also visited Cyprus while on leave as well as Israel, twice.


She is a member of Jewish War Veterans Post 697 in Levittown. Her JWV group named her “Woman of the Year” in 2008. She was also awarded a World War II veteran medal, American Campaign medal and European-African-Middle East Campaign medal from the United States Army.


Sherman lives in Bensalem, where she has lived for the past 36 years.