Gwendolyn Eunice Yniestra was born in Pensacola on January 18, 1915 to the union of William Brent Yniestra and Ethel E. Foster. Her father was an accountant living in a spacious home at 1205 North Palafox Street. Gwen attended Pensacola High School, graduating in the class of 1933 before attending nursing school in Mobile. She tried her hand as a private nurse before working in several different hospitals.
Finally, she enlisted in the Army in 1940 for a one-year tour of duty. She reenlisted in the Army's Nursing Corps on November 1, 1942 after the war began, eventually reaching the front. While serving in a field hospital in Belgium on November 24, 1944, they came under a German aerial attack resulting in many of the wounded being killed and wounded. They were forced to evacuate over a thousand patients including a wounded Lt. Yniestra. Her parents were notified that her wounds were not life threatening and that she had been evacuated to Paris for recovery.
She is believed to be the first female soldier wounded in the line of duty from the Pensacola area. Gwen would return from the war with her Purple Heart and marry Legrand Marable Berry in 1956. She would pass away in 1990 and was buried in St. Johns Cemetery in Pensacola, Florida.
Lt. Gwendolyn Eunice Yniestra, US Army, WWII
Pensacola News Journal 1-7-1945
The Yniestra home at 1205 North
Palafox Street, Pensacola, Florida
St. Johns Cemetery, Pensacola, Florida