Beginning in June 1918 in some quiet hour, maybe at night or early morning, Emma Elizabeth Weaver would sit down at Base Hospital No 20 in central France and pen her impressions. She wrote about things she had seen, and things she could never un-see. There were the buildings decimated, reduced to heaping “piles of mortar, bricks, and stone” [1]. Whole villages razed and erased and tombstones blown apart, “the dead out of their graves in every direction.”

There were the trenches, deep and muddied, where soldiers had camped out for hours, sometimes days. And then there were the bodies, mangled and burned, shredded and oozing with infection. They came to her at all hours, from places across the globe, the young men naked and writhing in agony. Some she could help, but too many were beyond saving. Despite being one of the best trained, Weaver never imagined the conditions of war and the work she had volunteered to do.

In February 1918, almost, nine months after the United States officially entered World War I, Weaver felt compelled to join the thousands of all white nurses going abroad as medical volunteers–despite the increased need and recruitment, we cannot forget nor ignore that Black nurses were refused entry into the Army and Navy nurse corps, a gross oversight on the part of the US government.**

Some balked at her decision. At 40, she was considered too old—most nurses were between the ages of 25-35—but she ignored the naysayers. Possessing a confidence that younger women didn’t have and guided by 14 years of nursing experience (she graduated from the University of Pennsylvania in 1904) she joined the service. Within days along with 65 other nurses, Weaver had taken the oath allegiance and was preparing to leave for embattled Europe. On a crisp morning, the nurses, some of the best in the country, departed from the Broad Street Station in Philadelphia and headed to their mobilization  center at New York’s Ellis Island. Weaver writes about the moment:

Had a wonderful send off. The morale was excellent…A fairly large crowd had collected at [the] station to see us depart & we were given, flowers, fruit [etc.] A special car was engaged for us. On the way to New York we passed a long train of khaki clad raw recruits. We flocked to the windows & there was wild cheering & waving & exchanging of salutes.

But, it would take two more months before the nurses sailed for France.

Works Cited

[1] https://www.armyheritage.org/images/stories/Education_Content/Weaver_on_the_Ruins_of_Europe.pdf

[2] https://www.womensmemorial.org/exhibits/detail/?s=world-war-i-nurses-the-journal-of-emma-elizabeth-weaver

[3] https://www.womensmemorial.org/exhibits/detail/?s=world-war-i-nurses-the-journal-of-emma-elizabeth-weaver

[4] https://www.armyheritage.org/images/stories/Education_Content/Weaver_on_Patients_and_Gas.pdf

*Thumbnail image from WomensMemorial.org