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Flight Nurse's Creed

I will summon every resource to prevent the triumph of death over life.

I will stand guard over the medicines and equipment entrusted to my care and ensure their proper use.

I will be untiring in the performances of my duties and I will remember that, upon my disposition and spirit, will in large measure depend the morale of my patients.

I will be faithful to my training and to the wisdom handed down to me by those who have gone before me.

I have taken a nurse's oath, reverent in man's mind because of the spirit and work of its creator, Florence Nightingale. She, I remember, was called the "Lady with the Lamp."

It is now my privilege to lift this lamp of hope and faith and courage in my profession to heights not known by her in her time. Together with the help of flight surgeons and surgical technicians, I can set the very skies ablaze with life and promise for the sick, injured, and wounded who are my sacred charges.

...This I will do. I will not falter in war or in peace.

The Flight Nurse's Creed first appeared in a speech given by Maj. Gen. David N. W. Grant, the Air Surgeon of the U.S. Army Air Forces, on Nov. 26, 1943, to the seventh graduating class of flight nurses of the Army Air Forces School of Air Evacuation at Bowman Field, Ky. 

Click here to return to the WWII Flight Nurses Overview.