Marjorie Butterfield was born in Pittsburgh’s North Side in 1920. She trained as a registered nurse at Sewickley Valley Nursing School, graduating in 1941. 

Several months later, she heard about the Pearl Harbor attacks while listening to the radio in her room at the nurses’ home; she enlisted in the US Army in September 1942. Marjorie spent 18 months training at seven different Army camps before landing in Liverpool, England on June 6, 1944 — she heard about D-Day while still on the ship. 

Marjorie’s unit was attached to the 3rd Army; they landed on Omaha Beach in Normandy on July 31, 1944 and staffed a field hospital, treating the most seriously wounded servicemembers. 

Later she was stationed in Belgium, where she cared for soldiers injured in the Battle of the Bulge. Marjorie’s unit then moved into southern Germany, then arrived in Linz, Austria in May 1945. At this time they entered the Gusen concentration camp (a subcamp of Mauthausen), where Marjorie treated the survivors upon liberation — mainly, she cared for the female survivors. 

Marjorie attained the rank of 1st Lieutenant by the end of the war, and later set up and staffed a hospital for the armies of the occupation troops in Czechoslovakia at the war’s conclusion. 

Marjorie Butterfield and James Butterfield headstone markers

MARJORIE R BUTTERFIELD

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1ST LT

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MOUNT ROYAL MEMORIAL PARK

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