her heroic work in Iwo Jima, she was sent back to the U.S. to participate in a War Bond drive. Soon after she started that assignment, she requested to be sent back into the Pacific combat zone. She flew her missions with Agana, Guam based Air Evacuation Transport Squadron One (VRE-1), which was an elite unit of the Naval Air Transport Service (NATS). Korea The need for naval medical facilities in Asia grew when the Korean War began. A small naval dispensary at Yokosuka, staffed by only six nurses, evolved into a full-fledged hospital staffed by 200 nurses. The Navy Nurse Corps expanded its ranks by recalling Reserve nurses with World War II experience. It temporarily reduced staffs at continental hospitals to staff the forward area. The Navy also commissioned civilian nurses. These nurses served in hospitals as well as aboard the USS Haven and two other Haven-class ships, where almost 35 percent of battle casualties were admitted through September 1952. These hospital ships were a new type of mobile hospital, moving from place to place, sometimes supporting the Inchon invasion or aiding the Hungnam evacuation, or simply shifting about the Korean coast as needed. Two senior Navy nurses, Commander Estelle Kalnoske Lange and Lieutenant Ruth Cohen, received the Bronze Star for their work on the Navy hospital ships. Lt. Sarah Griffin Chapman, who had lost her lower left leg in an accident and retired prior to Korea, fought to be recalled to active duty so that she could teach other young amputees how to walk again. Though outside the Korean theater, one aviation accident claimed the lives of 11 Navy nurses. The mishap occurred on the South Pacific island of Kwajalein on 19 September 1950. These women were en route to hospitals in Japan to care for war casualties when their plane crashed into the Pacific shortly after take off. Vietnam In 1963, LT Bobbi Hovis volunteered to go to Vietnam, where she and four other nurses were tasked with converting a run-down Saigon apartment into the first US Navy Station Hospital—in four days. In 1965 George M. Silver became the first man to be commissioned in the Navy Nurse Corps. The first four Navy Nurse Corps officers to be injured in combat support were injured in Vietnam [Saigon] when LT Ruth Mason, LT Frances Crumpton, LT Barbara Wooster and LTJG Ann Darby Reynolds were wounded and later received