When Mary Turich Duckworth enlisted in the Navy in 1942, she had never worn pants or learned to drive a car. And she still hasn't.

But Duckworth, a registered nurse, had no trouble adapting to some of the more challenging conditions in World War II and in the process helping save lives in the jungles of the South Pacific.

Now 93, she doesn't mince words when asked why she joined the Navy at a time when the U.S. victory over Japan was anything but secured.

"They needed RNs," she says, "and I wanted to be in the middle of it."

Born in 1914 in Mansfield, Ohio, Mary Turich was the daughter of Croatian immigrants who fled their homeland, part of the Austro-Hungarian empire, shortly before World War I broke out.

When she was 4, her mother died in the Spanish flu epidemic that swept the world in 1918.

Lured by the promise of fame and fortune, or at least better pay, Duckworth enlisted in the Navy Nursing Corps in October 1942 and soon found herself on an 18-month working tour of the South Pacific.

First up was Espiritu Santo, an island in the New Hebrides archipelago, followed by Talgi in the Solomons (the same base from which John Kennedy a year earlier captained the PT-109 on its fateful destination with a Japanese destroyer) and Noumea, New Caledonia.

Along the way, she and 90 other nurses once spent a month in Suva, the capital city of Fiji, waiting for Japanese submarines to clear the area. A sub sank a troop ship with all hands lost, Duckworth says, and Navy brass knew the publicity would be terrible if a boatful of nurses were lost in similar fashion.

It was on Espiritu Santo that she got a lesson in the relativity of amenities. Seabees -- members of the Navy's Construction Battalions -- erected Quonset huts with running water for Navy nurses, she says, while Army nurses across the way had to be content with tents.

"They didn't have running water and they were cooking over open fires," Duckworth says. "We gave them a hard time, and we meant it, too."

After the war, then-Lt. Turich was forced to retire from the Navy in 1948 after she met and married Donald Duckworth, a civilian Navy engineer.

While getting married ended her military career, it didn't hurt that of her husband, who specialized in weapons systems and went on to help develop the Sidewinder missile.

Not until their third child, Andrea, was almost out of high school did Duckworth return to work outside the home. The year was 1970, and she got a job as an operating room nurse.

* Chris Bristol can be reached at 577-7748 or cbristol@yakimaherald.com.