Ohio History Journal

SOME OHIO ASPECTS OF MILITARY NURSING, 1861-1945*

 

by MARY JANE RODABAUGH

Managing Editor, Ohio Nurses Review

 

The history of modern nursing in the United States has its

beginnings in the Civil War. At the outbreak of the Civil War

there was no group of trained nurses in the United States, but after

the first battles the demand for nursing service became imperative.

Secretary of War Cameron appointed Dorothea Lynde Dix-already

well known for her work as a reformer of mental hospitals-as

superintendent of female nurses for the army in June 1861.

Miss Dix took up her new assignment immediately and issued

a circular announcing: "No woman under thirty years need apply

to serve in government hospitals. All nurses are required to be

very plain-looking women. Their dresses must be brown or black

with no bows, no curls, no jewelry, and no hoop-skirts." Restrictive

as such requirements were, Ohio women responded to the call by

serving with the army, the United States Sanitary Commission, and

various religious orders. Other women-many, wives of soldiers-

cared for their own and other wounded men in various hospitals.

Throughout the war military nursing was seriously handicapped

by a lack of organization. Individual nurses, however, showed

devotion and heroism which have won them a place in our history.

Ohio can claim as her own the most picturesque of all Civil War

nurses, Mary Ann Ball Bickerdyke. Her work on the battlefields

won her the reputation as the outstanding practical nurse of the

era and the title "Mother." Mrs. Bickerdyke was born on a farm

near Mt. Vernon, Ohio. She was one of those women who was

selected by the community to serve as its nurse. When she moved

with her family to Illinois in 1859, Mrs. Bickerdyke advertised her

abilities as a "botanic physician" and found a warm welcome and

success in the new community. At the outbreak of the Civil War

she was living in Galesburg, Illinois, a widow, forty-four years

 

* Read before the Committee on Medical History and Archives of the Ohio State

Archaeological and Historical Society at its annual meeting, held at the Ohio State

Museum, April 5, 1952.

339

• 1
 

340    Ohio State Archaeological and Historical Quarterly

 

of age. Packing her carpetbag, Mrs. Bickerdyke immediately volun-

teered as an army nurse. During her service she was matron of

several post hospitals and was described as "commissariat, diet-

kitchen, ambulance service, and nursing staff." Her calico-clad

figure moved among the wounded at Fort Donelson, Shiloh, Corinth,

Memphis, and Lookout Mountain, and she served with Sherman's

army on its march to the sea. Mother Bickerdyke is credited with

the establishment of three hundred hospitals for Union soldiers

during the Civil War.

Less spectacular but motivated by the same humanitarian spirit

was the contribution of the wives of soldiers who came to army

camps to care for the wounded. Typical of this kind of service was

the experience of Lucy Webb Hayes. Major Rutherford B. Hayes,

later the nineteenth president of the United States, left Columbus

with his regiment, the 23d Ohio Volunteer Infantry, on July 25,

1861, for Virginia. The next month Mrs. Hayes wrote to her husband

what many other Ohio women were thinking: "I have not been

fretting or worrying about my dear one-for I have not regretted

your determination. Every day I feel that our cause is more holy and

just-if I could only do something myself-could lighten the

hardships of camp life what joy it would be to me."¹ The next

year Lieutenant Colonel Hayes was severely wounded during the

Battle of South Mountain. Mrs. Hayes left Ohio in an attempt to

locate her wounded husband. After several days' search of Wash-

ington hospitals Mrs. Hayes learned he was at Middletown,

Maryland. There she nursed Hayes back to health and helped in

other military hospitals in the town. According to a memoir written

by President Hayes, Mrs. Hayes also nursed in army hospitals in

Washington and other cities of the East.

At the outbreak of the Civil War the only organized nursing

service available in Ohio was that of three Catholic sisterhoods in

Cincinnati-the Sisters of Mercy, the Sisters of Charity, and the

Sisters of the Poor of St. Francis. As early as 1852 the Sisters of

Charity opened St. John's Hospital for Invalids, the Sisters of

 

1 Lucy Webb Hayes to Rutherford B. Hayes, August 3, 1861. Lucy Webb Hayes

Papers, Hayes Memorial Library, Fremont, Ohio.

• 2
 

Ohio Aspects of Military Nursing              341

 

Mercy arrived from Ireland in 1858, and the Sisters of the Poor of

St. Francis came in the same year.²

Because of its nearness to the western front, Cincinnati was

called upon to provide doctors, nurses, medicines, and other supplies.

Each of the Catholic orders sent members onto the battlefield.

Most notable was the work of Sister Anthony O'Connell of the

Sisters of Charity, who volunteered to work among the wounded

on the battlefield and on the "floating hospitals" on the Ohio River.

On a hospital ship at the Battle of Shiloh, she was assistant to

Dr. George Curtis Blackman, the leading surgeon of St. John's

Hospital and considered by many the most gifted surgeon of the

Ohio Valley. She has left this record of her experiences in the

bloody engagement:

 

At Shiloh we ministered to the men on board what were popularly known

as floating hospitals. We were often obliged to move farther up the river,

being unable to bear the terrific stench from the bodies of the dead on the

battlefield. ... At one time there were 700 of the poor soldiers crowded

in one boat.... Often the decks of the vessels resembled a slaughterhouse,

filled as they were with the dead and dying.³

Sister Anthony continued to give efficient nursing care to wounded

Union soldiers throughout the Civil War, and won for herself a

place in the history of our nation as the "Angel of the Battlefield."⁴

The level of medical care given the Union army during the

Civil War can be deduced from the fact that 11,237 Ohioans were

killed in action or mortally wounded, while 13,354 more died

as a result of disease. In other words out of each thousand Ohioans

in the army thirty-seven were killed and another forty-seven died

in hospitals or sick beds. The nursing care given to the Civil War

soldier was of the attendant type. As one nurse saw her duty, it

was to "sooth and sustain, tend and watch."

It was the Civil War which made people in the United States

conscious of a twofold need for more hospitals and for the train-

2 Journal of Medicine (Cincinnati), October 1941, 338.

3 Victor Robinson, White Caps: The Story of Nursing (Philadelphia, 1946), 182.

4 Anne Austin, "Development of Nursing in Ohio," Ohio State Archaeological and

Historical Quarterly, L (1941), 353.

• 3
 

342     Ohio State Archaeological and Historical Quarterly

 

ing of nurses. In 1861 there were only sixty-eight hospitals in

the United States. By 1872 there were 178 hospitals, and thirty

years later there were about 2,000. With the establishment of

hospitals after the war came the beginnings of the training schools

to prepare nurses. Schools of nursing in the United States may be

said to be an outgrowth of the Civil War as they were in England

following the Crimean War.5

By 1883, just ten years after the establishment of the first

training school for nurses in the United States, there were twenty-

two schools, from which some 600 nurses had been graduated. It

was not until 1884, however, that a training school was established

in Ohio. By 1900 sixteen schools were preparing nurses in this

state. While civilian nursing had been vastly improved in the

period between the Civil and Spanish-American wars, military nursing

had been dormant. When the United States Battleship Maine

was blown up on February 15, 1898, in the harbor of Havana,

the medical department of the army had made little progress in

organizing nursing service.

There was, however, a nucleus of trained nurses available, and

two organizations had been formed which could be helpful in

recruiting nurses for the war effort. In 1882, after the acceptance

of the Treaty of Geneva, the work of the American Red Cross

began. The graduate nurses of the United States had in 1896

organized the Nurses' Associated Alumnae of the United States

and Canada-now the American Nurses' Association. There were,

therefore, these significant differences between available nursing

service at the beginning of the Spanish-American War as compared

with the Civil War-a corps of trained nurses had been produced,

and there were two organizations qualified to assist in securing

nurses.

Unchanged, however, was the basic attitude of the medical

department of the army. Surgeon General Sternberg stated: "I

recognize the value of trained female nurses in general hospitals

and we expect to make use of their service to such an extent as

 

5 Ann Doyle, "Nursing by Religious Orders in the United States, Part III, 1871-

1928," American Journal of Nursing, September 1929, 1085.

• 4
 

Ohio Aspects of Military Nursing           343

 

seems to be desirable. But I do not approve of sending female

nurses with troops in the field, or to camps of instruction."⁶ The

medical department was determined to retain control of such

female nurses as were employed. It is, therefore, understandable

that General Sternberg did not turn to the relatively new Red

Cross or Nurses' Associated Alumnae for help in recruiting nurses.

In April 1898 the surgeon general was granted authority to employ

by contract as many nurses, male or female, as might be required

during the war with Spain at the rate of thirty dollars a month

with a ration.⁷

No doubt this prompt action was influenced by Dr. Anita

Newcomb McGee, a physician of some influence in official circles

in Washington. Realizing that only graduate trained nurses should

be selected, Dr. McGee offered the services of the Hospital Corps

Committee of the Daughters of the American Revolution to act

as an examining board to screen applicants for army nursing

service. This offer was accepted. Dr. McGee proved so valuable

that she was appointed an assistant surgeon to direct female nurses

in the army. Of about 1,500 nurses who served under army contract

during the Spanish-American War, more than 1,000 were appointed

on recommendation of the D.A.R.⁸

In spite of the opposition of General Sternberg and the medical

department of the army to accepting Red Cross assistance in pro-

viding nursing service for the army, some Red Cross units did take an

active part-probably because of the influence of such prominent

members as Mrs. Whitelaw Reid. She was chairman of the committee

which sponsored Auxiliary No. 3 of the Red Cross, which was

active in securing nursing service for American troops. One ex-

pedition sponsored by this group is of particular interest to Ohioans.

Some twenty-seven nurses were sent on board the Lampasas to Cuba

in July 1898. With this group was an Ohio woman, Mary E.

Gladwin of Akron, who had not yet completed her nurse's train-

6 Lavinia L. Dock and others, History of American Red Cross Nursing (New

York, 1922), 57.

7 Ibid., 37.

8 Portia B. Kernodle, The Red Cross Nurse in Action, 1882-1948 (New York,

1949), 20.

• 5
 

344     Ohio State Archaeological and Historical Quarterly

 

ing.⁹ In the official report of this expedition, special mention is

made of Mary E. Gladwin for her management of the diet kitchen.

Miss Gladwin served in hospitals in the United States as well as

in the Philippines during the course of the conflict. This was the

beginning of a remarkable nursing career which brought Miss

Gladwin international recognition.

Nursing in the Spanish-American War was almost uniformly

successful. Nursing service to the armed forces was so successful,

in fact, that an army nurse corps seemed indispensable. Not only

Dr. McGee but nursing leaders and the women of Auxiliary No. 3,

American Red Cross, worked to bring it about. After a bill of

1899 failed to pass, these women continued to work until a pro-

vision for an army nurse corps was included in the army re-

organization bill of 1901.10 In 1908 the navy nurse corps was also

established by act of congress.

The period between the Spanish-American War and World

War I witnessed the rapid growth of the young profession of

nursing. In Ohio signs of professional growth are manifested in

education, organization, and steady progress toward the goal of

state registration. We have already noticed that in 1900 Ohio had

sixteen hospital schools of nursing. When the first nurse examining

committee met in 1916, recognition was granted to seventy-four of

the eighty hospital training schools then operating. That same

year the profession advanced one step more when the school of

nursing and health, University of Cincinnati-Ohio's first collegiate

program-was established. As early as 1904 the graduate nurses of

Ohio had organized the Ohio State Association of Graduate Nurses,

which became affiliated with the national professional organization.

Aware that without some plan of certification of women who had

had proper training anyone might put on a uniform and call

herself a nurse, the graduate nurses of Ohio worked hard in each

session of the legislature to secure the passage of a nurse practice

act. These efforts were successful in 1915. This achievement is due

in part to public recognition of the contribution which Ohio nurses

9 Ibid., 26.

10 Ibid., 35.

• 6
 

Ohio Aspects of Military Nursing         345

 

had already made with the Red Cross in the European conflict

which began in 1914 and soon became World War I.

The first group of Red Cross nurses to leave for the European

front sailed from New York on September 8, 1914. Among the

nurses in this unit was Augusta M. Condit of Columbus-well

known for her work with the Columbus Instructive District Nurses

Association. Supervising nurse of this group, known as American

Red Cross Serbian Unit No. 1, was Mary E. Gladwin. After

Miss Gladwin had served throughout the Spanish-American War

she then completed her training at Boston City Hospital, graduating

in 1902. She had also served as a nurse in the Russo-Japanese War

and was decorated by the Japanese government. Returning to Ohio,

Miss Gladwin founded the George T. Perkins Visiting Nurse

Association in Akron. During the disastrous Ohio flood of 1913

she commanded a unit of 110 relief nurses in Dayton.

The Red Cross unit sent to Serbia in 1914 made a remarkable

record. This group experienced the closest contact with the war

among the American Red Cross units. Reporting first to Nish,

Serbia, the unit was soon moved to Belgrade, which was under

constant bombardment. Here they were placed in a modern hospital

with about 250 wounded Serbian soldiers as patients. Because of

the almost continuous shelling it was often unsafe to be on the

streets or even in the hospital grounds.

Late in November the Austrian army began its second invasion

of Serbia, and the Serbs were soon in full retreat. In thirteen

days following the capture of the city, 6,000 Austrian wounded

passed through the American hospital. The nurses worked day and

night with hundreds of cases of frozen hands and feet, dysentery,

typhus, and typhoid fever, and other hundreds of rifle, shrapnel,

grenade, and bomb wounds. Then the city was retaken by the Serbs

in the middle of December.

Disaster struck Unit 1 when typhus broke out in Serbia and

among the doctors and nurses in the unit. Of the entire staff one

doctor and two nurses died of typhus. Mary Gladwin and her

group returned to the United States in December 1915 after a

service of fourteen months. Miss Gladwin returned to Serbia in

• 7
 

346      Ohio State Archaeological and Historical Quarterly

June 1916, to serve there throughout the remainder of the war.

Her services won her the Serbian Order of St. Sava, the Russian

medal and ribbon of St. Ann, the Japanese Imperial Red Cross

Medal, and the Florence Nightingale Medal of the International

Red Cross.11

While the Red Cross units were in Europe, events were

threatening American neutrality. The tempo of preparedness for

war increased during 1916. A number of American nurses in the

Red Cross Reserve had a taste of army discipline when they were

assigned to various hospitals during the Mexican border trouble of

1916. Seventeen Ohio nurses were assigned to serve on the Mexican

border in this period.12 This incident hastened military plans that

had been in process for some time, culminating in the passage of

the national defense act in June 1916. As a part of the preparedness

program the American Red Cross began to organize and equip

base hospitals from the staffs of civilian hospitals. These units,

including doctors, nurses, and other personnel necessary to care

for a 500-bed hospital, were to be trained for military service in

case of war.

The Lakeside Hospital unit of Cleveland formed the first complete

base hospital in the United States and was the first to be mobilized

into active service. The idea of the base hospital had been con-

ceived in 1914 by Dr. George W. Crile of Lakeside Hospital,

Cleveland. He was named director of the Lakeside unit when it

was organized, and Grace E. Allison, principal of the school of

nursing of Lakeside Hospital, was named chief nurse. The Lakeside

unit, approved by the hospital trustees in April 1916, became of-

ficially American Red Cross Base Hospital No. 4. On May 8, 1917,

just a month after the United States declared war on Germany,

the unit sailed for Europe, the first to leave for overseas duty.13

Cincinnati formed a base hospital during the summer of 1916 which

 

11 Mary E. Gladwin, "Experiences of a Red Cross Nurse in Serbia," American

Journal of Nursing, June 1916, 911.

12 Proceedings, Ohio State Association of Graduate Nurses, June 6, 1917. Ohio

State Nurses' Association, Columbus.

13 American Journal of Nursing, August 1917, 1095.

¹⁴ Ibid., July 1918, 1108.

• 8
 

Ohio Aspects of Military Nursing           347

 

was known as Base Hospital No. 25, with Helen Gallagher as

chief nurse.¹⁴ The third base hospital unit sent from Ohio was

No. 31, organized by the Youngstown Hospital, with Frances M.

Kehoe as chief nurse.¹5 Ohio provided three of the fifty base hos-

pital units organized by the Red Cross for the army. Columbus

and Toledo each organized American Red Cross naval station

hospital units, Carrie E. Churchill of Grant Hospital serving as

chief nurse of the Columbus unit and Daisy Mapes as chief nurse

of the Toledo unit.16

It is estimated that more than eight hundred Ohio nurses saw

active duty overseas in the army nurse corps, the navy nurse corps,

or the American Red Cross Nursing Service. They served in England,

France, Italy, Belgium, and Serbia-in base, evacuation, mobile,

and camp hospitals; on convalescent hospital trains; on transports;

and with surgical teams in field hospitals. Twenty-eight Ohio nurses

lost their lives while in the service of their country.¹⁷

The end of World War I found the nursing profession greatly

enhanced. There were public heroines among its members, such

as Ohio's famous Mary Gladwin and Grace Allison. A number of

Ohio nurses won foreign decorations for their services and courage

under fire. Miss Allison was decorated with the British Royal Red

Cross, First Class, and two of her nurses in the Lakeside unit,

Helen Briggs and Inez McKee, were honored by Field Marshal

Haig; Harriet L. Leete, a member of the Lakeside unit who went

to Serbia after the war to establish nursing facilities, received the

Serbian Red Cross; and Frances M. Kehoe, who organized the

Youngstown base hospital unit, was honored by the French govern-

ment.

The army nurse corps had been established in 1901. When the

United States declared war on Germany in 1917, there were 403

nurses in the army nurse corps. These nurses were paid forty dollars

 

15 Ibid.

16 Ibid., October 1917, 130.

17 Proceedings, Ohio State Association of Graduate Nurses, May 7, 1919. Ohio

State Nurses' Association, Columbus.

• 9
 

348     Ohio State Archaeological and Historical Quarterly

 

a month and were classified as contract laborers.¹⁸ During World

War I the army relied on the American National Red Cross to

recruit and assign nurses to army duty. Although these nurses were

members of the army they had no definite military status as officers

or commissioned personnel. Problems arose because they had not

been given command authority within their own hospitals. Grace

Allison reported to the Ohio State Association of Graduate Nurses

in 1919 that army rank for nurses was a necessity. Miss Allison,

who had served as chief nurse of the Lakeside unit, reported that

orderlies refused to carry out nurses' orders and that this lack of

authority produced inefficient care of the sick.¹⁹ In recognition of

outstanding professional work during World War I, army nurses

gained, in 1920, appointment to relative ranks of second lieutenant,

first lieutenant, captain, and major. At the same time army nurse

minimum pay was increased from forty to seventy dollars a month.

The outbreak of the second World War found the army and navy

nurse corps much better established and less dependent on outside

help. The American Red Cross, for example, did not establish base

hospitals for the armed forces, nor did the Red Cross establish

hospitals of its own. The procurement and assignment of nurses

in the war effort became a function of the war manpower com-

mission. The Ohio State Nurses' Association through its state

committee on procurement and assignment, assisted in meeting the

needs of the armed forces. Altogether, 4,007 nurses entered military

service from Ohio, approximately five percent of the total number

of United States nurses in World War II. In 1944, while Ohio

nurses were serving throughout the world, they gained full military

recognition-Army nurses advanced from "relative rank" to

temporary commissioned status as officers in the Army of the

United States. Actual rank was granted navy nurses in the same

year.

For her job in World War II, the nurse was trained for a

 

18 Cora M. Templeton, President's Address, in Minutes, 39th Annual Meeting,

Ohio State Nurses' Association, May 8, 1942. Ohio State Nurses' Association,

Columbus.

19 Proceedings, Ohio State Association of Graduate Nurses, May 6, 1919. Ohio

State Nurses' Association, Columbus.

• 10
 

Ohio Aspects of Military Nursing          349

 

different kind of nursing service under combat conditions both on

the ground and in the air. She learned how to live in the field, im-

provise equipment, and adapt her professional techniques to meet

changing needs. In this war nurses landed on the beachheads just

behind the troops, and they advanced on the battlefront on the

heels of the infantry. One Ohio nurse, Lt. Blanche F. Sigman of

Akron, was chief nurse of the 25th Evacuation Hospital. She

arrived on the beachhead at Anzio shortly after the landings were

made on January 22, 1944. On February 7 a German bomb struck

one of the hospital buildings, killing Lt. Sigman and five other

nurses. Soon after her death an army hospital ship was named in

her honor.²⁰ Training under combat conditions, the heroism of such

nurses as Lt. Sigman, and the use of new drugs and equipment made

possible the remarkable efficiency of the medical department team.

In World War II ninety-seven percent of all battle casualties were

saved, and the rate of death from disease was reduced to one-

twentieth of that in World War I.

Two hospital units were organized in Ohio to serve in World

War II. The Lakeside Hospital unit, activated in May 1940, left

Cleveland on January 13, 1942, and landed in Melbourne, Australia,

February 26. This unit, with Olga C. Benderoff as chief nurse, served

in the Pacific until 1945. The other Ohio unit was organized by

the college of nursing and health, University of Cincinnati, early

in 1942. With Lt. Hattie E. Pugh as chief nurse, this unit became

the 25th General Hospital unit and was assigned to the European

theater.

The experiences of Ohio nurses in World War II were many

and varied. Some stayed at home to work in military camps and

hospitals; some served in isolated hospitals on islands of the Pacific,

far from the fields of battle; some moved with the fighting troops

in retreat and in victory. Eleven Ohio nurses gave their lives in the

service of their country. These nurses and their colleagues on the

battlefronts proved themselves the equal of the men under combat

conditions.

 

20 Ohio Nurses Review, April 1944, 66.

• 11
 

350     Ohio State Archaeological and Historical Quarterly

 

World War II had an important influence on nursing education

which we should notice. The demand for more nursing service--

civilian and military-put pressure on the schools of nursing to

increase their enrollments. To attract more girls to attend schools

of nursing, for the first time in the history of nursing education

federal funds were made available for educating nurses. In 1943

the United States Cadet Nurse Corps was established and all-expense

scholarships were granted to students who enrolled in a school

participating in the program.

The cadet nurse corps program did increase enrollments. The

sixty-one Ohio schools participating in the program had a total

enrollment of 9,773 cadet nurses. Ohio ranked fourth among the

forty-eight states in the number of students graduating under this

program. In all a total of $10,117,433 was spent for nursing pro-

grams in Ohio from Bolton Act funds.²1

We are still too close to World War II to evaluate properly its

impact on the nursing profession. From this brief account of the

contributions of Ohio women to nursing service in its military

aspects from 1861 to 1945 certain definite trends can be traced. The

story is more than the account of the unusual women-Mother

Bickerdyke, Sister Anthony O'Connell, Mary Gladwin, Augusta

Condit, Grace Allison, Olga Benderoff, and Hattie Pugh. It is also

a record of the steady development of nursing service from the

untrained, practical, attendant type of the Civil War era to the

well-prepared professional nurse of today. Each conflict brought

changes: the Civil War impressed the public with the necessity

for the establishment of hospitals and training schools for nurses;

the Spanish-American War brought about the army and navy nurse

corps; World War I was followed by the grant of relative rank

to the nurses in military service; and World War II advanced

military nurses to commissioned status. Nursing education has also

been influenced by the experiences of our nation at war: the

Civil War pointed up the necessity for trained nurses, which led to

the establishment of hospital schools; the Spanish-American War

 

21 Lucile Petry, Facts About the Cadet Nurse Corps in Ohio. Unpublished manu-

script, Ohio State Nurses' Association, Columbus.

• 12
 

Ohio Aspects of Military Nursing          351

 

served to emphasize to graduate nurses that graduating from any

hospital school was not enough to make a nurse capable of efficient

patient care and resulted in the movement for state registration and

the setting of standards; finally in World War II the insistent

demand for more and more nursing service-both civilian and

military-brought the federal government into the field of nursing

education by the granting of scholarships to students. From the

Civil War to the end of World War II there has been a complete

change in the attitude of the military toward the nurse. In 1861

she was accepted with reluctance as a contract laborer; in World

War II she was eagerly sought to serve under combat conditions

with officer's rank. As we look at the situation today it seems that

this demand will continue.

• 13