Hometown: Oneida, TN
Branch: U.S. Army (Air Forces)
Unit: Nurse Corps, 172nd General Hospital in Kunming, Yunnan province, China
Date of Sacrifice: March 4, 1945 - KIA in Ledo, Assam, India
Age: 22
Conflict: World War II, 1939-1945

Jane Marcum Blevins was born on September 22, 1922, one of six children born to Isaac and Elizabeth Blevins. The family lived in Oneida, Tennessee, where Jane attended public schools and graduated from Oneida High School in 1939. She received her nurse’s training at Baroness Erlanger School of Nursing in Chattanooga, Tennessee, graduating with the class of 1943.

Blevins worked briefly in Oak Ridge, Tennessee, and later moved with her family to Somerset, Kentucky. As soon as she passed her State Board Exams, Blevins applied for a commission in the Army Nurse Corps and entered the service on February 8, 1944.

Less than six months earlier, her brother Howard was among the first Army paratroopers to land in “Operation Husky,” the Allied invasion of Sicily that followed victories in North Africa. On July 11, 1943, he was captured and taken as a prisoner of war by the Germans. He survived POW camps and was liberated two and a half years later by the Russian Army in their march of Berlin.

Jane Blevins was sent to Lowry Field in Denver, Colorado for basic training. From there, she was stationed at Amarillo, Texas, then sent to Bushnell General Hospital in Brigham, Utah for additional training in August 1944. She deployed to the China-India-Burma theater of operations at the 172nd General Hospital in Kunming, Yunnan province, China, just before Christmas, 1944.

Being an Army Nurse in a war theater is often dangerous duty. One of Lt. Blevins’ assignments was to give medical attention to wounded soldiers during air transport from the battlefield to Army field hospitals. This meant landing and taking off from airstrips where the fighting was hottest.

In World War II’s China-India-Burma theater, the United States needed China to fight Imperial Japan from the northwest. The U.S. Army constructed the “Ledo Road” (later renamed “Stillwell Road”) through the jungles of India and the mountains of Burma. The road was vital to Allied efforts in the Pacific theater to send American supplies and equipment to the Chinese Army. The land route from Ledo, India, to Kunming, China was China’s last available overland link with the outside world.

On Marcy 4, 1945, Lt. Jane Blevins departed from India’s Dinjan Airport aboard a Douglas C-47 Skytrain. Their destination was Ledo Airfield in India’s far northeast corner—the entry point for the Ledo Road. Her aircraft crashed one mile from the Ledo airstrip. There were no survivors among the 2 crew members and 25 passengers.

Lt. Blevins was 22 years old. While the cause of the crash was never officially determined, the incident report says there was a ¾ mile visibility that day, and the aircraft crashed while making a low turn in an attempt to land. It is unlikely that the plane crashed as the result of an enemy attack, as the War Department listed the deaths as “killed in action, non-battle.”

Lt. Jane M. Blevins was laid to rest in Somerset, Kentucky.

Sources
Artist’s rendering by Craig Du Mez
Details submitted by the East Tennessee Veterans Memorial Association
East Tennessee Veterans Memorial Association: Jane M. Blevins
The Independent Herald: Salute to Service
Chattanooga Daily Times, March 16, 1945: Lt. Jane Blevins Killed in India
U.S. Army Center of Military History: India-Burma
Defense POW/MIA Accounting Agency: 2nd LT Rita F. Erard
Burial Site: Find a Grave