Danger Everywhere
Trained nurses were essential to the Army on both sides of the Atlantic. We may think that working stateside at an Army camp was safer than being in Europe, treating men from the Front -- but that was not so for a nurse. The global influenza pandemic was at its peak in the U.S., and spending a day face-to-face with thousands of soldiers – who were fresh from overcrowded cross-country troop trains that took them from one huge training encampment to another – was highly risky. During the war, 272 ANC nurses died of disease; many had never left the U.S.
In this context, note that the Army did not knowingly send women to or near the Front at that time. Nurses and orderlies at the Front, or in Field hospitals, were male. The closest female nurses came to combat were the Base Hospitals, often near but still removed from the Front. Note that Hicksville’s Mary Keller spent some months assigned to a Base Hospital.
