The Nurses of Base Hospital #28
Jessica Wilkins The Nurses of Base Hospital #28
Moya Peterson, PhD, APRN Assistant Professor,
University of Kansas Schools of Nursing and of Medicine
On May 23, 1918, with great enthusiasm, 100 nurses from the Kansas City area received orders to prepare to be sent to France to care for soldiers with Kansas City's Base Hospital #28. Most of these nurses were from Kansas City hospitals. Miss Eleanor Kealy was the chief nurse, and after her service came home to become the director of the St. Luke's School of Nursing in Kansas City, Missouri. As a Red Cross organization, the unit was recruited and equipped by the local Red Cross chapter. However, when they reached France, the nurses became members of the Army Nurse Corp. All the equipment it takes to organize a hospital was purchased and shipped to France by the Kansas City Red Cross chapter.
Newspaper Photo of Base Hospital #28 Nursing Superintendent
After three months' training at Camp McPherson, Georgia, the nurses arrived in Limoges, France, on June 28th, where they would stay for the duration of the war. When they arrived at the site of the hospital not only were there no buildings completed, most of the construction had yet to be started. On July 23rd the first patients arrived at the hospital. Although the unit was originally planned as a 500 bed unit it had already been expanded to 1,500 beds. Because the need for care for the wounded was so great the hospital was put into service before it was completed. They had the minimum needed with which to care for the patients - beds, blankets, food, simple emergency equipment, and one trunk with instruments and dressings. They had no electricity and had to proceed with care using only candles and lanterns.
Bellaire Seminary Hospital Ward
There was nothing in these women's lives or training that prepared them for this experience. The hospital continued to expand capacity until they cared for nearly 3,000 patients. The nurses were proud of that fact that they provided quality care with the lowest mortality rate among the American Expeditionary Force hospitals.
The nurse's role in the early 20th century was to do as the physician ordered and not to question his motives, treatments, or actions. Nurses were dependent on the medical profession for their jobs. Therefore, it was felt that the nurse should do what she was asked and do it above and beyond expectations. Although there is little information about their exact duties, the nurses of the Base Hospital #28 went to work with little preparation for this new work situation that demanded independent actions and decisions to treat wounds that they had never seen before. However, each nurse was the manager of her ward, training and directing corpsmen - privates and corporals - who provided most bedside care. Women managing men, a new experience for them.
Unidentified Base Hospital #28 Nurse Preparing for Duty
Some of the new trends in the work of this hospital included the use of surgical gloves. By 1918 research had shown a marked decrease in infection and mortality rates when sterile rubber gloves were used in surgery. Another advance came in the use of antiseptic preparations, such as Wright's and Dakin's solutions. There were directions for the nurses to make these germicidal solutions and then use them - sometimes as a constant irrigation of wounds - to prevent infections such as gangrene.
Local Nurses Who Served with Base Hospital #28
The significant work of the nurses cannot be underestimated. Nurses had to be far more than extensions of physician and surgeons, because of their experience, education, and direct responsibility for their patients. The hospital census could change by up to a thousand in the course of one day. The resourcefulness of these nurses was taxed but made it possible to care for so many soldiers. Often, at night a ward with 40 to 80 or more seriously wounded patients was assigned to one nurse. Fearing air raids, rounds were made using a shaded lantern. Nurses, during a heavy drive, were asked to open dressings to inspect wounds, and were given the authority to make decisions for emergency operations. The surgeons - who until this time were thought to be the only ones capable of making these decisions - were in the operating rooms and could not come to triage, so nurses accepted this responsibility and discharged it well.
The nurses endured extreme weather conditions, few comforts, little communication with home, massive numbers of patients to care for, long hours on duty, and working in a situation that was ever-changing in responsibility and severity. It did not take long to recognize that the men of the unit and the nurses faced the same dangers from the enemy, the environment, and other issues. Yet men received preferential treatment in rations, lodging, travel, and pay. Nurses recognized that even though they were officers - a courtesy rank - there was a general lack of respect for their rank and their authority. Resolution of the rank issue would not occur for many years.
Nurse Photos From BH #28 Scrapbook
A problem faced by all was the influenza epidemic in the autumn of 1918. The flu took the lives of soldiers and nurses who were caring for them. Of the 392 Kansas women who served in the military - most of them nurses - thirteen lost their lives, most from pneumonia, a common complication of the flu.
After caring for wounded and sick soldiers under extreme and adverse conditions the nurses came home. The Base Hospital #28 medical staff arrived at Camp Dix in April of 1919, however, none of the nurses came with them. The nurses returned in small groups on civilian ships. Once home they had to readjust to new lives and nursing in civilian hospitals. They questioned their professional autonomy, or lack thereof, and the inequalities they noticed because of gender. They were expected to do what they were told with efficiency, dignity and without question.
Nurses as Pictured in The Kansas City Star Newspaper
The war experience had removed them from the complacent world in America they left in 1918. They had been thrust into a new social order, mandated by the needs of the war and the wounded. One nurse said, on her return home, that the experience made her different not only from other nurses but from other women and she no longer fit in. As nurses they had to change from making crucial decisions in the war to being unable to make even the simplest decisions in their community hospitals. As women they had to give up an independent living situation and being a valued part of an organization. They had learned to work independently; confident, strong, and resourceful. They had adjusted to working alone for days without sleep and solving problems without medical guidance. Responsibility, work, and decisions were shared between the medical and nursing staffs of Base Hospital #28 during the war and the romantic notions of war were buried by what they had seen and done. It is not known where the nurses of Base Hospital #28 went after the war. Some, like Miss Kealy, came home to teach and it is surmised that many of the nurses returned to the bedside to care for patients in Kansas City hospitals. These women, the nurses of Base Hospital #28, tempered by the war, became leaders in their profession.
