She stood by me for hours is a 1944 U.S. Army Nurse Corps recruiting poster. A photograph of a wounded paratrooper in a hospital bed with a traction rig sits beside a first-person account credited to Sergeant Hampton Scofield of Cold Spring, New York (NAID 515399).
What the poster shows
The archive describes a photograph: a shirtless soldier lies in a hospital bed, rigged for traction, with a nurse's profile at one corner. The headline is in quotation marks because it is his. Most of the text is his account.
"SHE STOOD BY ME FOR HOURS"
SERGEANT HAMPTON SCOFIELD, air-borne infantryman from Cold Spring, New York
"I dropped on France at H Hour minus five. That's five hours before the troops hit the beaches on D Day. [...] As we stood up to jump, the tracers started coming through the sides of the plane and through the windows. There was heavy mortar and machine-gun fire and sniping. I got mine nine days later, storming a machine-gun nest. A sniper put bullets through both my legs. I was carried first to an evacuation hospital, then to a station hospital in England. A nurse gave me my first bath in two weeks and watched over me like I was a baby. She stood by me for twelve hours and it will be a long time before I forget her."
MORE NURSES ARE NEEDED
U. S. ARMY NURSE CORPS
[imprint: P-141-RPB-9-9-44-15M]
The passage cut above describes the flight in, with mimeographed sheets telling the men that "the eyes of the world are on you," and the jumpers wondering how many German eyes were watching as they crossed Carentan at 700 feet.
Who issued it
The U.S. Army Nurse Corps is named on the sheet, and the imprint code includes the letters RPB and the figures 9-9-44. The archive lists the purpose as recruitment and the audience as the domestic public. It records no print run and no place of display.
Testimony as recruiting
The archive tags testimonial and fear appeal. The testimonial is obvious: a named man, a named town, a rank, a wound. The fear is in the details of the jump and the sniper. Together they make the case that a nurse's care is something a wounded soldier will remember, and that more such women are needed.
One small thing deserves notice. The headline says "for hours." The text says twelve. The large type uses the vaguer phrase, and the reader who stops to read finds the larger number.
The record does not say how Sergeant Scofield's words were gathered or edited, and nothing in it confirms his account beyond the poster. This page reports it as the poster's quotation. As a recruiting appeal it asks a woman to volunteer for hard and useful work, and tells her why it matters through a patient's voice rather than a slogan. Compare Sgt. Henry McAlear's poster More Nurses Are Needed, from the same corps and year, and the Public Health Service's Enlist in a Proud Profession.
Sources
FRAME object record, She stood by me for hours, 1944. U.S. Army Nurse Corps. Rights as recorded: public domain (U.S. government work).
U.S. National Archives and Records Administration, Record Group 44, World War II Posters, 44-PA-1728, NAID 515399, retrieved by the archive 4 October 2026.
