Aleda E. Lutz

Aleda Ester Lutz (9 November 1915 to 1 November 1944) was a United States Army flight nurse, born in Freeland, Michigan, the youngest of ten children of German immigrants. She graduated from the Saginaw General Hospital School of Nursing in 1937, worked as a staff nurse there, and enlisted in the Army Nurse Corps in February 1942. Qualifying as a flight nurse, she joined the 802nd Medical Air Evacuation Squadron and served in North Africa, taking part in six battle campaigns over twenty months and conducting all-weather medical evacuations in Tunisia, Italy and France aboard unmarked transport planes. She was one of sixteen American servicewomen killed in combat in the Second World War and the first military woman to receive the Distinguished Flying Cross, awarded posthumously.