Frances Slanger

When the letter arrived at the magazine, the staff were so impressed that they chose to publish it as an editorial. It quickly found popularity, proving so inspirational that many readers, military and civilian alike, wrote to her to thank her for her sentiments. But Slanger never saw the acclaim her letter received; hours after writing it, she was killed by a barrage of artillery in the field, becoming the only American nurse to fall to enemy action in the European theater of the war. It was reported that even as she was dying, she expressed concern for those others who had been injured in the fighting. Slanger died in Elsenborn, Belgium. Initially buried in France, in a military cemetery, her remains were repatriated in 1947, to be reinterred at the Independent Pride of Boston Cemetery in Roxbury. Boston's mayor was among the thousands who paid their respects at the ceremony.

Slanger was posthumously awarded the Purple Heart, and in 1945 became the namesake of an army hospital ship, the USAHS Frances Y. Slanger, which had been converted from the Italian ocean liner Saturnia earlier that year. The ship was later returned to Italy. She is also the namesake of the Lt. Frances Y. Slanger Post #313 of the Jewish War Veterans of the United States of America, the first post of that group to be named for a woman. She is the subject of a book, American Nightingale: The Story of Frances Slanger, Forgotten Heroine of Normandy, by journalist Bob Welch. A collection of archival material related to Slanger's life and career is currently held by the Howard Gotlieb Archival Research Center at Boston University.

Frances Y. Slanger (born Friedel Yachet Schlanger, 1913 – October 21, 1944) was an American military nurse of Polish Jewish birth. The only American nurse to die due to enemy fire in the European theatre of World War II, she gained posthumous recognition for a letter she had written regarding the sacrifices of American soldiers which was published as an editorial in the military newspaper Stars and Stripes.

On October 21, 1944, Slanger submitted a letter to Stars and Stripes, the military newspaper:

A native of Łódź, Slanger came with her family to the United States in 1920; they lived in Roxbury, Massachusetts. Her father had already emigrated shortly before she was born; he was a fruit peddler, and she assisted him in his business while attending high school. Choosing to become a nurse, she enrolled in the Boston City Hospital School of Nursing, from which she graduated in 1937; she then began working in hospitals. She enlisted in the Army Nurse Corps in 1943, and thanks to persistent requests was deployed to Europe in 1944. Assigned to the 45th Field Hospital, she was one of four military nurses to enter Normandy after D-Day. She soon gained recognition for her ability to improvise under pressure and for her compassion towards those in her care.