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In 1953, Republic Pictures made a movie based on her life, вЂњFlight Nurse.вЂќ In 1961, she was the subject of one of the most-watched episodes of вЂњThis Is Your Life.вЂќ How are you? IвЂ™m Lillian,вЂќ she said, kneeling beside the wheelchair of yet another stranger, 97-year-old Ed White of Rhinebeck, N.Y., who was captured by the Nazis in France in December 1944.ДЄ short time later a man approached and said simply, вЂњIвЂ™d like to shake your hand.вЂќ They shook and he left.ДЄfter Korea, Keil went home, got married, had two daughters and became a homemaker. On Saturday, she walked through the crowds still tending, in a way, to the wounded. She evacuated the wounded during the landing at Inchon, the fighting at Chosin Reservoir. Four years later, the war in Korea broke out and she signed up for more duty, notifying United only afterward. In 1946, a year after the war ended, Keil returned to United Airlines and became a stewardess again. Many pilots were sent home after 50 missions Keil flew five times that number. She was there for D-day and the Battle of the Bulge. Keil was in London when the first buzz bombs came in.

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And they seldom returned with less than a full load. When they returned, they were loaded with the wounded and the dead.

When they lifted off in Britain, they were loaded with hundreds of jerrycans of gasoline, 101-millimeter artillery shells, drums of oil to supply Gen. Had the planes served only to evacuate casualties, Keil and the other crew members might have enjoyed the minor comfort that came with a red cross painted on their tails or fuselages. вЂњWeвЂ™d wrap it real tight like that so they wouldnвЂ™t know theyвЂ™d lost their leg.вЂќ ThatвЂ™s how we did it when it was a spinal injury.вЂќ Another manвЂ™s leg ended at the knee, the stump wrapped in gauze. ThereвЂ™s not another litter on top of him. вЂњBurns,вЂќ Keil said.ДЄnotherвЂ™s wounds were unclear. One patientвЂ™s arms were covered with bandages. It was of the inside of one of her C-47s, and the carnage from Normandy. bombers folding in on themselves and plummeting through the sky, Keil pulled from her purse a small black-and-white photograph she had taken. On Saturday, as a giant television screen on the Mall flashed pictures of men dying in the surf on Utah Beach and U.S. On D-day, her crew went into Normandy behind glider planes, clumsy, powerless transports whose pilots, if they made it through the flak, often crashed among the trees and hedgerows of France. 45 pistols and M1 Garand rifles.ДЄnd then she shipped out to Britain, and the desperate fight to turn back HitlerвЂ™s charge across Europe.

One exercise had her swimming through a burning oil slick, another firing Colt.

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She learned how to survive in the desert, in the cold, how to escape an airplane that had to ditch at sea. In 1943, with World War II raging from Europe to the Pacific, Keil wrote a letter to the War Department, and was soon headed to the Army Air ForcesвЂ™ Air Evacuation School at Bowman Field near Louisville, Ky. Keil recalls serving coffee, tea or milk to the likes of Eleanor Roosevelt, Charles Lindbergh and Cary Grant. The early days of commercial aviation were pure romance. Within weeks of visiting United AirlinesвЂ™ base in Oakland, however, she became one of the carrierвЂ™s first вЂњstews.вЂќ Keil had never heard the word вЂњstewardessвЂќ or even seen an airplane up close. In 1938, Keil was working as a registered nurse when her mother suggested a route to adventure: Take her medical skills to the sky and become a stewardess. Some of them were waving, вЂHere we are! Here we are!вЂ™ But we couldnвЂ™t land. вЂњThere were 12 litters in the snow, 12 men. This was at Thionville, France,вЂќ not long after D-day in mid-1944, she recalled. вЂњIt was snowing, snow thick on the ground. The stories she tells tend to be about the limbs she couldnвЂ™t sew back on, the warmth she could not provide patients in the bitterly cold belly of a C-47 cargo plane, the wounded she could never tend to. вЂњMost of them were unconscious or on anesthesia or morphine,вЂќ she said, вЂњso they donвЂ™t remember me.вЂќ

Keil seldom discusses the dangerous routes she traveled for others, though, or even the lives she saved. She wears 16 ribbons and medals, marked by 11 different battle stars. By rough calculation, the retired Army Air Forces captain tended to more than 10,000 wounded soldiers, sailors and Marines in the air, often while her plane was being rocked by antiaircraft fire, punctured by flak. The diminutive, black-haired Keil, who always demurs when asked her age, saying, вЂњIвЂ™m a lady,вЂќ flew 250 combat evacuation missions during World War II as an in-flight nurse, and an additional 175 during the Korean War. But her story, as admirers noted, is one worth telling. KeilвЂ™s story, sheвЂ™s the first to say, was but one among many Saturday, a tale largely of good fortune that includes a long life in spite of two wars.

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