Contribute your WWI Army Nurse to National USA Centennial Site!

Nurses of Base Hospital #19 on board their ship to France, May 1917.

Many thanks to the National WWI Centennial website for publishing my article about how I became interested in the ARMY NURSE CORPS and those brave women who volunteered in 1917 and 1918!
Please go here to read it all:  3025-four-questions-for-jo-ann-power.html

Send me your memorabilia and photos of our family and friends who joined the Corps to:
joannpower2@gmail.com 

AMAZON buy link for HEROIC MEASURES: 

http://amzn.to/1dWojVz  

Gates to American Cemetery in Paris, Suresnes American Cemetery where many nurses are buried.
(Photo by Jo-Ann Power)

Jo-Ann Power, Curator of Army Nurse Corps Site

Ward uniform, left, and service cape, right.
Jo-Ann Power photo from Ft. Sam Houston exhibit, 2013.

WWI ambulance, 1917
Jo-Ann Power photo from Ft. Sam Houston Medical Museum exhibit, 2013.

Group of Nurses folding bandages, WWI
Fort Sam Houston Medical Museum photo by Jo-Ann Power, 2017.

AEF Operating Rooms, trauma care in WWI France, Nurses take active roles

Accession number	1991.86
Description	Black and white photograph. Hospital scene. Man with leg in traction and having a cast applied. Medical personnel surrounding him, including one nurse. From the service of Lieutenant Colonel Clarence Benjamin Francisco, American Medical Officer, assigned to 1st, 32nd, and 35th Division in France after working at Old Mill Hospital, Aberdeen, Scotland.

Accession number

1991.86

Description

Black and white photograph. Hospital scene. Man with leg in traction and having a cast applied. Medical personnel surrounding him, including one nurse.

From the service of Lieutenant Colonel Clarence Benjamin Francisco, American Medical Officer, assigned to 1st, 32nd, and 35th Division in France after working at Old Mill Hospital, Aberdeen, Scotland.

Archives of National World War I Museum

Accession number	1991.86
Description	Black and white photograph. Operating scene in an operating room. Female nurse and another male assisting doctor while averting eyes away from patient. From the service of Lieutenant Colonel Clarence Benjamin Francisco, American Medical Officer, assigned to 1st, 32nd, and 35th Division in France after working at Old Mill Hospital, Aberdeen, Scotland.

Accession number

1991.86

Description

Black and white photograph. Operating scene in an operating room. Female nurse and another male assisting doctor while averting eyes away from patient.

From the service of Lieutenant Colonel Clarence Benjamin Francisco, American Medical Officer, assigned to 1st, 32nd, and 35th Division in France after working at Old Mill Hospital, Aberdeen, Scotland.

American Nurses in WWI trained in Army camps and marched in parades!

   Women recruited for Army Nurse Corps and for American Red Cross all had field training by the American Expeditionary Forces. Army Nurse Corps recruits were all registered nurses, or the equivalent, having had two to three years professional nurses training. American Red Cross recruits, on average, had only a few months training (and as a result took on lesser responsibility in the wards). But all of them went through medical training specific to the care and treatment of those with wounds, or suffering from trench foot, trench fever, dysentery and Spanish flu.

   Army Nurse Corps recruits went to Army posts for training and many of them had French and British instructors. All were considered contract labor, without rank and yet were expected to act like regular Army recruits, "falling into line."

  They were housed in separate barracks, ate in mess halls separate from officers. When ready to ship out, they were housed in hotels near their embarkation points. A few of these were in Hoboken, New Jersey and others in Manhattan. Sometimes depending on the Navy's warnings of U-boat activities, nurses waited for more than 2 months in these hotels ready to leave at a moment's notice. And what could they take with them? One steamer truck (no larger than 36" wide), one small suitcase and a blanket roll!

   Many were also expected to march in parades. Here is a unit from Houston, Texas, marching together before they ship out!

Accession number	1999.20
Description	Black and white photograph of a Red Cross parade in Houston, TX. From the service of Rose Baker (?), American Red Cross Nurse - Army Nurses Corps.

Accession number

1999.20

Description

Black and white photograph of a Red Cross parade in Houston, TX.

From the service of Rose Baker (?), American Red Cross Nurse - Army Nurses Corps.

 
And here, in dress uniforms, a group of Army Nurse Corps recruits march in France!

A group outside their barracks.

18+ Days in AEF's footsteps, DAY 5: OISE-AISNE American Cemetery, France

     I had girded myself for months before this first venture into an American cemetery where Americans who served in the First World War are buried. I feared the worst: I feared I would sob.

     I knew I would clutch. But I told myself I would be fine. Just fine. After all, over the decades, I had visited Arlington National Cemetery, watched the Vietnam War Unknown Parade and Dedication in Washington. I had gone to sites like Gettysburg, Antietam, Valley Forge, Yorktown, Concord and Lexington and more. I had taken my children, too, and frankly the only other time I ever cried was the day I saw a re-enactment of General Pickett's ill-fated charge at the 130th Anniversary of the Battle of Gettysburg. 
       
     No, I was not related to anyone buried in France. I knew no one who knew anyone who had served and was laid to rest here. Furthermore, the topic of nurses who served in France in 1917-1919 had originally been simply a unique bit of American history I liked investigating. As a child I loved to hear my mother tell tales of her childhood and my father tell very salty tales of his. I predicted that walking the cemetaries of those who repose in France would not affect me.
     But the closer the day came to our departure, and the closer the hour arrived when my husband and I would walk into those grounds came sooner than we anticipated. Quite by accident, we drove a different route than planned from Compiegne to Chateau Thierry where we had reservations for a few nights at a B&B. As we sailed down one rolling hill in the Champagne, admiring the miles of forests with pink and white cherry blossoms and yellow flowers and well-tended fields of flax, suddenly there stood a sign, American Cemetery.
     We were stunned. 
     That was not on our map, we told each other. 
     Why and how did I miss that one, I asked myself, in all my detailed planning for this trip?
     My husband, chauffeur extraodinaire and kind fellow, said we'd better go back.
    We did.
     Here far off the main road where we saw that sign is the stunningly peaceful sight of Oise-Aisne Cemetery. With 6,012 of our men and women buried here in Fere-en-Tardenois, this cemetery is the third largest of those serving those who fought and died in The Great War. Named for the rivers the campaigns fought to retain for the Entente, this cemetery was originally a temporary one for the 42nd Division, or the Rainbow Division. While most resting here fought in that Division, many others lie here also, including nurses who served in hospitals and mobile facilities along the front lines.
     The grounds strike you for their pristine beauty. Carefully manicured and lovingly tended, each grave is marked by white marble cut to the exact measurements of every other. The linden trees are an exact square so that they grow in unison and provide a canopy and protection from the summer sun.
     When you go, do enter the reception area and introduce yourself to the director. Here at Oise-Aisne as at all the other  cemeteries we visited, each of the personnel was warm and welcoming. They are, too, a font of knowledge about those whose graves they care for. Do ask them. They love to share their insights and they recommend reading for you, too!
     None of my pictures can possibly portray the grandeur or the solemnity of this site. The vast number of graves shocks your breath from you. The peace, the birds chirping in the trees and the chimes on the hour and quarter hour belie what happened here nearly a century ago. I will simply tell you that you must go when next you go to France. You will feel confident and fulfilled to have paid these men and women your homage. 

     To walk among the graves is heart-wrenching. To read their names, their rank and their duties, reminds you of the variety and the breadth of what is required to prosecute a war. Their ages, their youth startles you, you who have lived so long and so well and they, who died so young to ensure you might endure longer than they.
     
Here are two of the nurses buried here. Both are Army Nursing Corps volunteers.

Gertrude O'Connor, Army Nurse Corps, Base Hospital 7
Massachusetts, February 8, 1919

Alice A. Ireland
Army Nurse Corps, Base Hospital 34
Pennsylvania, February 3, 1919

     Here are a few of their compatriots who aided them in their duties. Note the variety of duties—and the fact that working in medical services could be as hazardous as combat.

William F. Lacey, Private, Field Hospital 44
Rhode Island, March 1, 1919

Paul Farnum, Private, 101 Sanitary Train, 26 Div.
Massachusetts, March 18, 1918

William Carstensen, Wagoner, Camp Hospital
Iowa, July 3, 1919

Thomas E. Wilcox, Private 1st Class, 18 Evacuation Ambulance Company,
Pennsylvania, October 18, 1918

First aid to American wounded soldiers, where, when, how

     A wounded soldier passed through many posts as he was removed from the front. Some of these travels took, sadly, days. Stories abound of men left on the ground in rain, snow and sleet as medical teams walked among them to analyze the severity of their injuries and determine how quickly and where they might be evacuated for treatment. Many men waited close behind the front lines, hearing the sound of the guns, bombs and airplane strikes that hurt them and their fellow soldiers even as they lay wounded. In fact, many doctors and nurses lamented that had they been able to treat their patients sooner, the men would have had a higher rate of survival and faster recovery. (In fact, improving the immediacy of treatment for a wounded soldier was the foremost goal of medical response teams throughout the war by all combatants and was implemented and improved on in each succeeding war.)

     When a soldier was wounded, he was assisted to the first aid station, dressing station or casualty clearing station by his pals or by stretcher bearers. (These first stops along the route backward from a front lines had many names and saw many variations, depending on numbers of medical teams, type of equipment and surgical and nursing specialists available. Triage was a function at each stage back of the line.) But before he got to such a station, the solider had in his possession a field dressing. (I have not yet found a U.S. field dressing picture. If anyone knows of one, I would heartily appreciate the url.)
    Here, courtesy of the British site, The Warwicks 1914-1918 (http://thewarwicks1418.com), I show you their First Field Dressing, FFD and their description:

Courtesy of and Copyright to  http://thewarwicks1418.com

"First Field Dressing (FFD) and Iodine ampoule carried on Active Service inside the lower right of the jacket."

Applied by the soldier himself or by those near him (if capable), this dressing consisted of iodine, the only easily packaged and affordable antiseptic/cleansing agent at the time. Penicillin was not yet used as a means to kill bacteria. Morphine was not readily available at the front lines, only backward of the line.

French church opened as ward used by Field Hospital #1, 2nd Division, June 16, 1918

   The next receiving station was a more intensive care unit. This post was a Mobile Hospital unit, literally moving by truck to one to four miles in back of an active front. This included a surgical team of doctors, nurses, and nurses assistants (what we would call orderlies) and/or stretcher bearers who were generally able-bodied types to carry wounded men. This mobile unit team, in the case of American facilities, assessed soldiers and divided them according to type of wound or disability. A team of doctors and nurses assessed each soldier and sent him either to surgery (in order of severity of wounds and operability), to a mental health receiving station or to a hospital treating only those with diseases. (These divisions were not rigorously applied because not all facilities were available in each sector. And at the end of the war, as fighting and casualties increased especially during the last Big Push from September 1918 through November 1918, dividing became nigh unto impossible.)

Nurse cleansing U.S. Marine's eyes of mustard gas during battle of Belleau Wood, June 1918

This mobile unit moved by truck, motorized or horse drawn, lived in tents and operated in tents. Their patients recuperated in tents, as well. Those who recovered to a stage where they could be transported farther back of the line were taken by ambulance. At this point, they went to a larger recuperative facility far back of the line in what the Americans called a Base Hospital.

Mobile Hospital #2, loaded and prepared for change of location. Carries sterilizers.

At the Base Hospital, the wounded were reassessed for fitness for duty. Some were returned to the front. Many received physical therapy by rehabilitation aides, or re-aids as they became known. Most were sent on down the line toward ports and ships home.

PHOTO, J. Power. Copyright of Illustration: 
Fort Sam Houston Medical Museum, San Antonio, TX

Planning transport into France of soldiers and wounded from front lines to home

Photo Copyright, Jo-Ann Power.
Exhibit:
Fort Sam Houston Medical Museum,
San Antonio, Texas.

Transporting all Americans, both military personnel and medical staff, into France to the front lines was a huge logistical problem.
This is one reason why arrival of American fighting force levels took nearly a full year from the date of declaration of war.
The flow of personnel in presented one challenge. However removing wounded American soldiers from the A.E.F. front lines back through French countryside to base hospitals, rehabilitation sites, onward to the French Atlantic coast and home to the United States was an immensely more complex logistical challenge.
Planning routes was the first task, but in fact, the simplest. Drawing lines on a map seems easy, yet the best routes were not the ones which could be used. The front lines of British and French troops meant a southwest exit from American lines northeast and east of Paris was necessary. But huge problems existed.

Most American soldiers did not speak French. Secondly, they served in a terrain new to them.  Still more confounding was the fact that French rail lines were badly in need of repair and without synchronized gauges to lock one train route/system to another. (French trains transporting nurses from their embarkation point in St. Nazaire often stopped at the end of a line for hours awaiting the next train east. Nurses recount stories of waiting, tired, hungry and often bitterly cold.)
Here are a few pictures of the types of transport and machinery needed to ensure adequate transport home for wounded American soldiers.

Horse-drawn ambulance
Photo, Copyright Jo-Ann Power.
Exhibit: Fort Sam Houston Medical Museum,
San Antonio, Texas

Interior of motorized ambulance, U.S. Army Ambulance Service

Transport by boat and barge was also necessary. These, like ambulance trains, had nursing staff to aid wounded during their journey across country and on the Atlantic Ocean.

Hospital barge, stretcher bearers and nurse on board.

Interior of hospital train ward car, shown from attendant's compartment.

Nurses served as attendants on these transports because the nature of many soldiers' conditions were precarious. Doctors were needed at the front, as were male stretcher bearers. Nurses on board responded to the immediate needs of wounded men whose physical needs could change in an instant.

Here is the photograph of the interior of an operating room on board a hospital train.