Portuguese women para-troop nurses (1961-1980)

Resumo

Portugal had a group of military Para-Troop women composed by trained Nurses, whose main mission was to respond to evacuation calls for wounded soldiers, nursing them, keeping them alive until they could reach military hospitals in the rear. The idea, the path to convincing the men in power, the creation and development of this very small but very significant and effective force, along with the service it delivered, constitute a dramatic historical and noble part of the Portuguese Colonial War. The action of these paradigmatic women proved, beyond any honest doubt, the capacity of apparently common women to perform even the harshest and most difficult tasks, never losing, in their case, the profound sense of humane action that had been the ethic core of their formation as Nurses.