There are five volumes in this series, all written during the World War II era by Martha Johnson and published by Thomas Y. Crowell Company. This is a very scarce series, difficult to find and expensive. Martha Johnson is a pseudonym for Elisabeth Lansing. Ms Lansing also wrote the Naycy Naylor series. Nancy was a nurse/stewardess who also had military experience. (Nancy is also discussed in this Military section). Other books written under the name of Martha Johnson are Kate Russell:Wartime Nurse and Sandra Mitchell Stands By. I keep trying locate a copy of Kate Russell but so far have not been able to afford one.

Ann Bartlett becomes a Navy nurse in the first book. Throughout the series she has a lot of adventure, danger and suffers many hardships.

The synopsis below from the dust jacket of At Bataan gives a pretty good indication of what this series is all about.

At the beginning of Ann Bartlett in the South Pacific Ann is stationed at a hospital in Sydney Australia. She has been given lighter duty after getting malaria and having some harrowing experiences in Bataan in the previous book. At this time she has recovered and is wanting to be transferred to front line duty. Due to some rather odd circumstances it gets falsely reported in the newspaper that she marries an old boy friend. This news item ends up in the hands of her fiance Bruce who is a war pilot. In his depressed state he volunteers for a dangerous mission. Ann gets her transfer at this time and only knows that Bruce is listed as missing in action. There is a lot of adventure and danger that follows this, including being lost in the jungles of New Guinea and another bout of malaria.

In Ann Bartlett Returns to the Phillipines she is shipwrecked at sea, then spends many days in a small boat with a few other sailors, suffering from the heat and lack of water. An airplane even shoots at them when they are drifting. She washes ashore where there are bands of Japanese soldiers. In one of the earlier titles she is nearly injured at Pearl Harbor. The books are a bit more realistic than most series books and some of the descriptions are rather graphic. I think Ann marries in the last title (as did Nancy Naylor).

This message was issued on the page following the copyright page. "For wartime reasons, locations of military installations mentioned in this book have been purposely changed. All the characters are fictitious, and no reference is made or intended to any actual person, living or dead."

The titles in this series are:

1. Ann Bartlett, Navy Nurse (1941)
2. Ann Bartlett at Bataan (1943)
3. Ann Bartlett in the South Pacific (1944)
4. Ann Bartlett Returns to the Phillippines (1946)
5. Ann Bartlett on Stateside Duty (1946)