Newswise — Although the United States did not officially enter World War I until 1917, Johns Hopkins nurses joined the American Red Cross in 1914 and were already serving throughout Europe. Others joined nursing units from Canada and France. After America entered the war, Base Hospital 18, staffed mainly with Hopkins nurses and physicians, was established in France. The correspondence from nurses serving in these units, often published in the Johns Hopkins Nurses Alumnae Magazine, poignantly describes the hardships and horrors faced by both soldiers and their caregivers.
These accounts, so unflinching and distressing, represent war’s realities and the stresses and traumas each nurse encountered and pushed through. With only limited equipment and drugs, the care was basic, hurried but nonetheless present for each soldier arriving from the field—a testament to each Johns Hopkins graduate who served throughout World War I.
Alice Fitzgerald, 1906, served with a base hospital of the British Army in France in 1916. She wrote often to the Alumnae Magazine about her experiences.
June 18, 1916The rain and cold persist. I have rarely felt colder than I have here: tents are old and leaky but fortunately I am in a hut and the leaks are few and far between. I light my little oil stove every day and try to imagine I am hot!
September 30, 1916Just as I was going to get leave, I received orders to move, and am now at 2/2 London Casualty Clearing Station, the nearest to the front, and the nearest any nurse gets.Let me tell you that we are all but in the trenches: in fact, we are surrounded by trenches, because we are on ground evacuated by the Germans.We are so situated that we have shell fire on three sides and the noise is simply fierce at times; so far the shells have not reached us but bombs have and the other night we were missed by about 30 yards. …Talk of hard work! I have 2 tents holding 70 patients each and they have to lie on stretchers and pretty close, and making dressings practically on the floor, nearly breaks my back, but I get through somehow or other and am not much the worse for wear. … The most comfortable and comforting time of the day or night is when I get into my sleeping bag with a hot water bottle and tuck in for the night with my tent flap well open and try to go to sleep to the music of the bombardment.
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Ellen N. La Motte, 1902, an accomplished writer as well as a nurse, was so affected by her war experiences that she never again practiced. The Backwash of War, a graphic account of her war experiences was published in 1916, and in articles written for other publications and reprinted in the Alumnae Magazine she vividly recounts the terrible ordeals endured by so many soldiers and of those driven beyond the brink of sanity.
When he could stand it no longer, he fired a revolver up through the roof of his mouth, but he made a mess of it. The ball tore out his left eye, and then lodged somewhere under his skull, so they bundled him into an ambulance and carried him, cursing and screaming, to the nearest field hospital. … He was a deserter, and discipline must be maintained. Since he had failed in the job, his life must be saved; he must be nursed back to health, until he was well enough to be stood up against a wall and shot. This is War.
More letters are at Johns Hopkins Nursing magazine.
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