It was 1944, and Marie Tucker was finishing up the last year of her nursing program at Bellevue Schools of Nursing in New York City.

Marie, now 93, remembers that her family, like many others, was feeling the strain of war, with blackouts, rationing, and the ever-present heartache of loss of life and uncertainty.

She had finished high school at age 16, and entered the nursing program as soon as they accepted her.

"It was the war," she recalls, "and there were nursing shortages."

One day during her last semester, a naval recruiter approached her graduating class with a tempting offer. The students’ schooling would be paid for if they agreed to commit to at least two years of active duty (more if the war continued).

"You don’t know how that was a relief. Because in those days, money was not like it is now," she says, shaking her head.

"We all jumped on it…. I think there were only two in our class that didn’t go."

And so Marie Tucker’s career in the Navy Medical Service Corps began.

Marie was especially inclined to accept the invitation because her father had been a Seabee. Although she had a sister, Marie was the only one from her family to pursue a military career.

"I don’t know why, but we were the direct opposites. She was dark hair, dark skin, I am blonde -- or was blonde," she says, laughing, "I think she just wanted to get married and have a family."

Soon after graduation, Marie was put on a train for boot camp. The girl from Marine Park, Brooklyn was headed for San Diego.

It took three long days to make that cross-country train trip.

"They put us in between a bunch of Marine recruits and Army recruits. And you had to go through them to get to the mess car, the dining car.

"Well, I can’t tell you the things we went through … for three days. That was enough. They’d say, ‘Nursey, Nursey, I don’t feel good.’ And I would just say take an APC [all-purpose capsule] and call me in the morning.

"You’ve got to roll with it, or suffer with it."

"In the beginning," she continues, "I saw there was a lot of resentment of women. It was a man’s world."

When she arrived at boot camp, she was greeted by some men, ready to supply the required uniform.

"I said, ’I wear a size 7 shoe,’ and he gives me a 7½. And I said, ‘No.’ He said ‘You’ll grow into them.’

"The only thing that I got was blood blisters. But that’s the way they were."

When it came to clothes, things weren’t much different. "I was size 7 and they gave me size 10. They always thought it should be bigger.

"I know a little about sewing, so I just altered them. "

Life at boot camp was regimented and physically demanding for the women, as it was for their male counterparts. The facilities were spartan, but Marie adjusted.

"You marched everywhere, except to the bathroom.

"They put us in barracks that used to be a housing project," and it was there that Marie faced her first major hurdle.

There was a coal shortage, so the living quarters were quite cold. Marie had a top bunk, but slept on top of her covers with a spare blanket (called an "admiral" by the nurses) because she was afraid that she could never make the bed in a manner that would meet inspections without the corners of her sheets hanging.

"And for, well, I can’t tell you for how long, l forgot how it felt to fall asleep under the covers with sheets."

While the food was plentiful, it wasn’t the home-cooked cuisine to which Marie was accustomed.

"You go to chow the first morning, and there’s a big sign: ‘Take all you can eat, but eat all that you can take,'" she recalls. While the men ate burgers and beans for breakfast, Marie had "tea and toast," which eventually earned her the nickname T&T.

Military service meant learning how to use a weapon.

"When I went on the rifle range, I refused the gun," she remembers. "I said I couldn’t kill anybody, even if they were trying to kill me. Well, they said, ’You have to [learn], to get out of basic training.’

One day a determined gunnery sergeant who Marie describes as "a pain in the neck" made her lay on the ground and put a Thompson .45 submachine gun in her hands, urging her to take aim and fire.

"One shot and I dislocate my shoulder," she recalls. "I never had to fire a gun again."

The academic rigor was also difficult. One test, in particular, she remembers. "There were 72 of us, and only five of us passed that test."

Basic training "wasn’t all peaches and cream, but, you know, we survived."

After basic training, there were about 20 nurses in her unit, assigned to the Brooklyn Naval Shipyard. They would work eight-hour shifts. "It was eight on, eight off. And on your eight off, you had to do ambulance calls."

It was something Tucker didn’t like.

"I remember one night we had to go out to a bar, and there were two men, and one of them got slit straight up. And I said, ‘God, what are we going to do?’

"We didn’t have sutures or anything, so you know what I did? I got safety pins from everybody, and pinned him until we got him to help. And he was so drunk he wasn’t feeling anything. ...

"Almost every bar fight we went on during an ambulance call was between a British and an American. I said to them, ‘You know, we’re both on the same side.’

"The British did not like American service people. According to some of them, the United States only committed towards the end [of the war], when it was ready to be over."

After those bar fights, Marie says, "I didn’t like to put anyone on report. In those days, with men, if they didn’t like you, they didn’t deploy you, they’d put you someplace where you wouldn’t want to be."

After Brooklyn, her next assignment was back on the West Coast, at the San Diego Naval Hospital.

Each naval hospital was focused then on a particular specialty, she says. San Diego "was the cosmetic one ... putting noses back, putting faces back …."

There’s a long pause.

"Unless you’ve been there," she says, "you couldn’t feel what I feel. And it’s been many, many years."

A lack of technology and a shortage of resources during the war made nurses’ jobs particularly challenging and their days long.

"In those days, we had to make our own Q-Tips. We had autoclaves -- we didn’t have sterilizers. There weren’t patches for colostomies. We had bags of rubber which had to be washed."

Adding to that, "there were so many shortages during the war. You had to make things on your own."

"Nurses did everything. Anything and everything."

Regardless of the difficulty of their work and the professionalism with which they approached it, the disdain for women who were serving was pervasive from the top on down.

Harsh treatment of the nurses also crossed the gender line, coming from other females in positions of authority, remembers Tucker. One was an officer named Rose McIntyre.

"We called her Demerit McIntyre. She’d walk in back of you and tap you on the shoulder.

"‘Two demerits,’ she’d shout.

"‘What for?’ we’d ask.

"‘The seam in your hose was crooked,’ she’d say.

"Oh, she was a nitpicker!"

One male colleague broke the mold, however.

"When I was stationed in San Diego, Dr. Vogel, a captain who was a dear friend of mine -- he let me take out an appendix, and he let me close."

There was also a chance to assist during the delivery of babies.

"We had a saying, ’Nine months after the fleet comes in, we’re going to be loaded with babies.’

"We had 16 one night. So we were doing episiotomies. He [Dr. Vogel] really believed in me.

"I think I would have made a good surgeon," Marie says. But in the end, "I worked as a scrub nurse, handing instruments that I wanted to be using, but life has its plans …."

One particular patient in San Diego she remembers fondly.

"There was a young sailor, Corning -- he was from the Ozarks someplace, and he was 17. Turned 18 in the hospital."

Corning had lost his leg. He was married and distraught.

Turning to Marie one day, he asked, "What is my wife going to say to me?"

She didn’t know how to respond, but managed to blurt out, "She didn’t marry your leg."

She adds: "That seemed to keep him going for a while."

Her last assignment was at the Chelsea Naval Hospital near Boston, and she was there when the war officially ended.

It started off as a day like any other.

"We woke up for chow at 7 o’clock. Some guy stood up and started yelling, ‘I’m going home, I’m going home.’ And I thought, ‘What the heck?’

"Then they announced it over the loud speaker that we had bombed [Japan] and that the war was over. And all of us that weren’t assigned could go on liberty.

"So I went to Times Square.

"What a day that was! Every place we went, people were like, ‘Come in, come in, let me fix you something to eat.’ Everyone was so happy and so giving.

"I remember there was a man in back of me, and he handed me a wristwatch. And I said, ‘Thank you, but I have one.’ And he said, ‘No, I want you to take this.'

"I still have that watch. Keeps perfect time.

"[Everyone] just wanted to give you things. It was like, ‘I’m happy, so you’ve got to be happy.’

"And then there were the people who were saying, ‘If only this had happened when my son was alive.’ That hurt."

Marie celebrated in Times Square with two of her fellow nurses, Frankie and Dusty. They decided to treat themselves to a meal at a special place.

"It was one of the most expensive restaurants in New York. Sure enough, we got fed and they didn’t charge us a penny. Then, at night we went to Iron Horse Night Club and they were saying, ‘Here, have a drink.’ I didn’t drink, but they did."

It was a day and night of celebration, on the house.

"It was like there wasn’t a care in the world, and everything was going to be all right…."

In the weeks that followed, however, reality hit.

"Everybody was in a hurry for the war to be over. But when it was over, a lot of those men had no training. A lot of the men re-upped, because they didn’t know what they were going to do."

Many who returned from the battlefront were scarred physically and mentally.

"We had men after the war was over, coming back from the South Pacific, that had been in a cage so long they couldn’t stand up. Their spine was curved," she remembers, shaking her head.

For others, the scars were mental and emotional.

She was particularly close to "Frankie," a nurse named Frances Grogan. "She was my roommate, she was my friend. I am her daughter’s godmother.

"And then, suddenly, out of the blue, she blew her brains out. Nobody knew why. Her daughter called me. I couldn’t believe it.

"She felt the war. I always tried to distance myself a little bit from it."

Marie’s life moved on after the war. While serving on active duty, she had put off a marriage proposal from a young man she had met at the YMCA near Williams Air Force Base in Arizona.

"You can’t concentrate on two jobs and do them well," she explains.

After she completed her active duty, they married and she continued on in the Naval Reserve, serving until she wasn’t allowed to continue.

"When my son was born, that’s when they handed me my discharge papers."

She retired from the military as a lieutenant commander, but was hired at the first place she submitted an application, Kings County Hospital in New York City, as a scrub nurse. The military had given her the experience and the confidence she needed to continue pursuing her career.

Looking back at her service in the Navy, Marie Tucker has no regrets. Despite the obstacles she encountered as a trailblazing woman in the military and her unceremonious discharge, she says, "I would never want to miss that time."

THIS EVENT HAS BEEN CANCELED: In honor of Women’s History Month, the VA Providence Healthcare System is holding a Women Veterans Celebration at the Providence VA Medical Center in the fifth-floor auditorium, Thursday from 1 to 3 p.m.

Do you know a veteran with an interesting story? Do you offer a program or service focus on serving retired military? Are you planning an event aimed at veterans or their families? Email Mary K. Talbot at ThoseWhoServedAmerica@gmail.com