Vincoe Charity Mushrush Paxton

Click here for Part 1 — Paxton Origins, or Part 2 — The Young Hall Paxton.

Part 2 ended with the marriage of Hall Paxton and Vincoe Mushrush.  This flashback talks about Vincoe.

Vincoe Charity Mushrush was born March 18, 1906, in Lawrence, Illinois.  She was the daughter of Oscar and Clara Allen Mushrush, the youngest of four daughters. Her parents divorced in the 19-teens – unusual at the time.  Vincoe and her sister Birdie remained on the farm with her father.

Described as a slight person, Vincoe graduated from Bridgeport High School and continued her education at Wyoming University in Laramie and at Washington University in St. Louis.  She took her nurse’s training at Presbyterian Hospital in Denver, Colorado, in 1930.

Early in 1934, she became the public health school nurse for Moberly and Randolph County, Missouri. By the end of the year, she decided to do missionary work in China. She began training for that work at Hartford Seminary in Connecticut in January 1935 and sailed for China on September 7.

In China, Vincoe was assigned to the 76-bed Disciples of Christ Hospital in Nantungchow, a neighborhood in Nantong.  The city of Nantong is on the Yangtze River about 80 miles inland from Shanghai.

The hospital was mistakenly attacked by Japanese bombers in August 1937. Her ingenuity there in devising the Stars and Stripes from her uniform and a bed sheet is believed to have saved the missionary hospital from destruction by Japanese bombers.

She was in one of the buildings when a squadron of Japanese bombers flew over the institution and release their projectiles. When the main building was demolished, Vincoe decided to display an American flag over what was left of the institution in the hope of saving the remaining structure and the patients from further attacks by Japanese airmen. Lacking suitable material with which to make the flag, Vincoe tore bed sheets into long strips. Half of these she died with a mercuric solution to make the red stripes. The field for the stars she made by cutting up her blue flannel nurse’s cape. Large enough to be recognized a considerable distance from the air, old glory was mounted in a conspicuous place on the roof of the hospital.

The city of Nantong was occupied by the Japanese in March 1938 where Vincoe had remained. She took a position at the gate of the hospital compound hoping that the columns of Japanese soldier would see an American and the U.S. flag still on the roof and pass by. Promising protection, a Japanese officer placed signs on the gate for soldiers to stay out and put a cordon around the compound.

By August 1940, Vincoe was in Manhattan speaking to a church group there, and in September to a missionary conference in Indianapolis. She returned to speak in Moberly, Missouri, in June 1941.  Sometime late in 1941, Vincoe joined the Army Nurses’ Corp – perhaps related to the Japanese attack on Pearl Harbor.  During the early part of the war, she served 12 months with the First Army in Europe.  By 1943, she was assigned to the Army and Navy General Hospital in Hot Springs, Arkansas.

On January 9, 1943, Vincoe Charity Mushrush, former missionary to China and active-duty Army nurse married J. Hall Paxton, ex-consul to Nanking. The wedding took place in the First Christian Church at Hot Springs, Arkansas, with a former pastor, the Reverend Claude L. Jones, reading the service.  Vincoe was expected to remain in this country for the duration of the war unless assigned to foreign service with the Army.  Hall received a brief assignment to Tehran, Iran.

Stay tuned for Part 4 — Hall and Vincoe’s amazing escape from China over the hump.