WELL THAT BEAUTIFUL NURSE CAN GIVE ME A SHOT WITH A HYPO ANY TIME......   HER TENDER MERCY SHOWS ON HER ANGUISHED FEATURES AND SURELY SHE WILL DO ALL THAT NEEDS TO BE DONE.... HEARST WAS CERTAINLY ONE OF THE PRIME SELLERS OF HOME FRONT WORLD WAR I PATRIOTISM.   EVERY YOUNG GAL WANTED TO DO HER PART....  BE A NURSE,,,,, SAVE THE SOLDIERS AND GIVE THEM COMFORT...THE AMERICAN WAY..... ONE NEVER FORGETS THE NURSE YOU WOKE UP TO......

PLEASE SEE PHOTO FOR DETAILS AND CONDITION OF THIS NEW POSTER

SIZE OF POSTER PRINT - 12 X 18 INCHES

DATE OF ORIGINAL PRINT, POSTER OR ADVERT - 1918

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DESCRIPTION OF ITEM: additional information:

NURSING IN WORLD WAR 1: 

As a German plane buzzed overhead, nurse Helen Dore Boylston dropped face down in the mud. Boylston, an American nurse serving at a British Army base hospital near the Western Front in 1918, had been running between wards of wounded patients that night, trying to calm their nerves during the air raid. Now, all she could do was brace herself for the hissing bomb that hurtled toward her. She covered her eyes and ears against the deafening roar and “blood red flare.” About a half hour later, finally realizing she had not been hurt, Boylston stopped shaking.

Boylston’s vivid account of her World War I nursing experience, published in 1927, depicts her work with the first Harvard Unit, a U.S. medical team that treated more casualties than any other group of American doctors and nurses during the conflict. In May 1917, U.S. medical teams became the first American troops to arrive in the war zone, and many remained through mid-1919.

Over 22,000 professionally-trained female nurses were recruited by the American Red Cross to serve in the U.S. Army between 1917 and 1919 — and over 10,000 of these served near the Western Front. More than 1,500 nurses served in the U.S. Navy during this period, and several hundred worked for the American Red Cross. Additionally, a handful, like Boylston, worked in American units of the British and French armies. The U.S. military rejected for overseas service nurses who were African Americans or immigrants, despite drafting men from these groups.

Although Allied military leaders wanted to keep the (female) nurses far from danger, they soon realized that many more combatants’ lives could be saved if wounds were first treated near the front rather than at far-away base hospitals. Numerous nurses served at front-line casualty clearing stations or with forward units. In August 1917, U.S. Army nurse Beatrice MacDonald, on duty at a casualty clearing station, came under enemy fire during an air raid, and fragments of shrapnel from a bomb blast sliced through her eye. After being evacuated, MacDonald refused orders to go home, reportedly stating, “I have just started doing my bit.” With only one eye, MacDonald remained on duty in France until after the armistice, and was awarded the Distinguished Service Cross.

War nursing’s more common hazards included infected fingers, sickness, and physical strain. “My back is busted in two tonight. Slowly, [moving] down the ward, doing the dressings and making the beds,” Boylston wrote in her diary. This frequent changing of dressings and application of antiseptic, though physically exhausting, served a critical medical function in the pre-antibiotic era: It became the most effective method for healing infected war wounds and prevented many limb amputations.

In her diary, Boylston also described the social side of war — how ever-present reminders of mortality and the transience of military life lent special intensity to otherwise ordinary human relationships. For nurses, close friendships became indispensable, while romances served as welcome distractions or led to engagements.

But Boylston differed in some respects from most U.S. military nurses. She was 23, and came from an affluent family, while many U.S. Army and Navy nurses had working-class or rural origins. Laura Huckleberry, who served in Base Hospital ?12, the “Northwestern Unit,” more typically exemplifies these nurses. In 1909, she left the Indiana farm where she grew up to study at the Illinois Training School for Nurses in Chicago. After graduating in 1913, Huckleberry worked as a public health nurse investigating contagious diseases in the city’s immigrant neighborhoods. When Huckleberry’s unit sailed to France to take over a British hospital at Dannes-Camiers, she was 29 and already dating the man she would marry, John Erle Davis. During her time at war, Huckleberry wrote over 150 letters to Davis, who was also stationed in France.

Huckleberry’s letters highlight the fact that U.S. Army and Navy nurses served without rank or commission, and that this lack of status created problems. After the Colonel in charge of Huckleberry’s unit unceremoniously replaced their beloved chief nurse with a younger, prettier woman, Huckleberry fumed to Davis in a letter, “If we had the commissions we should have had before leaving the U.S.A. we would not be at the mercy of such men. They would have to give a reason not only to us but to headquarters for such performances.”

Some nursing leaders agreed. A campaign to accord the U.S. military nurses rank, which coincided with the Woman’s suffrage movement, led in 1920 to a compromise in which U.S. Army and Navy nurses were accorded “relative ranks” of Lieutenant, Captain, and Major. Actual commissions would have to wait until 1947.

Nursing played a crucial role during the First World War. Emergency medical practices evolved enormously during the war years (1914–1918) and thousands more medical workers were involved than in previous wars. New and innovative practices included blood transfusions, the use of antiseptics, local anesthetics, and painkillers. During the course of the War, membership in the American Red Cross grew from 17,000 to more than 20 million, and 20,000 registered nurses were recruited for military service. In the United Kingdom, 38,000 members of the Voluntary Aid Detachment (VAD) served in hospitals or worked as ambulance drivers and cooks.

Modern medical nursing finds its origins in the remarkable career of Florence Nightingale, the “ministering angel” and “lady with the lamp” who served day and night during the Crimean War (1853–1856). Her understanding of the importance of hygiene saved countless lives and set the stage for nursing as we know it today. Nightingale’s model was followed and greatly expanded upon during the First World War by remarkable women such as Edith Cavell, who saved many lives from both sides of the conflict but ended up before a German firing squad; and the subversive motorbike-riding team of Mairi Chisholm and Elsie Knocker, who left their military medical stations to set up their own clinic closer to the front lines where they could save lives rather than simply provide transportation to the morgue. Similarly, novelist Mary Borden founded a field station that she called “the second battlefield” close to the front lines.

The works exhibited align with the quasi-myths of wartime nursing as described by author Christine Hallett: the courageous voluntary aid detachment, the romantic nurse, and the “nurse-as-heroine.” We only know the identity of one of the nurses seen here, Olga Bing, who set down her experiences in drawings that were then reproduced as a portfolio. Although nothing is known of Bing beyond this portfolio, it is a wonderful testament to the care and dedication of nurses during the First World War.

This exhibition is drawn primarily from a highly significant gift of more than 3,000, predominantly French WWI works donated to the Spencer Museum of Art, University of Kansas, in 2014 by Professor Eric Gustav Carlson and is on loan to the National WWI Museum and Memorial from the Spencer Museum of Art. This exhibit is sponsored by the Francis Family Foundation, Kansas City, Mo.

ARTIST:  UNKNOWN