Merle Dustin wasn’t on the front lines, but the Contoocook resident now finds herself trying to fight for the rights of some of the unsung heroes from World War II.

In June 1945, President Harry Truman signed an executive order that made the United States Public Health Service a part of the military until the war was over.

Although the nurses, including Dustin, were recognized during the war, they are not recognized by the government as veterans.

“It’s sad because it has taken so long, and yet we are still not recognized,” said Dustin, who served as a cadet nurse during the war.

Dustin was accepted into Salem Hospital Nursing School in Massachusetts, with the agreement that she would serve in the military upon graduation. After training for two weeks at Fort Devens in Ayer, Mass., she began treating soldiers who had been wounded in battle.

“I did my best to make it comfortable for injured soldiers. It touched all of us nurses,” said Dustin. “We were thrust into a tremendous situation. We saw these young people coming back broken, some who may have never been well again.”

Among her duties as a cadet nurse was giving back rubs to injured soldiers to keep them comfortable in their beds. It was this duty that lead Dustin to a ward boy whom she would get to know well.

Several off-duty soldiers came to Dustin’s post at Cushing General Hospital in Framingham, Mass., and challenged some of the nurses to see who gave the best back rub. The losing contestant would have to go to dinner with one of the soldiers.

Unaware at the time, Dustin had been set up by the group and ended up on a date with Eben “Dusty” Dustin, whom she would befriend and eventually marry.

“My favorite memory from my time as a cadet nurse would have to be when I met my husband,” she said. “That wasn’t my intention at all. I was going to be a nurse, and life was going to deal me what it dealt me.”

The two married just days before the war ended, with friends and relatives pooling together enough gas coupons to get the couple off on a honeymoon to Wolfeboro.

With the war over, Merle Dustin took her state board nurses exam and worked for a variety of hospitals in the Boston area, and now recalls making the walk home to the couple’s Boston apartment, often late at night.

After the war ended, the nurses’ connection to the military did as well, and they were not considered veterans.

Dustin recently found out there is a bill before Congress that would grant cadet nurses from World War II veteran status, and has taken up the cause by writing letters to local newspapers searching for her fellow nurses.

“It is sad to find that there are so few of us. We are a fast-disappearing generation,” she said. “There were 124,000 graduates, and how many are living? I have no idea.”

Following her letters about the bill, Dustin has received seven letters from cadet nurses around New England, with each promising to spread the word to anyone they can.

For Dustin, earning veteran status is a matter of respect. “My goal is for us nurses to get our just due,” she said. “What that’ll give us as veterans, I don’t know except the fact that we’re being thanked.”