Mary Frances Keller
Keller: Abstract of her ANC Service Record
Mary Frances Keller was an experienced nurse when she joined the ANC “from civilian life” in September 1918. She was 33, and she had resided at – and presumably worked at -- Greenpoint Hospital. (In this era, many hospitals still demanded that nurses be single and live in the hospital’s nurses’ residence, where senior nurses were expected to guide and “keep an eye on” the younger nurses.) Keller began her ANC duties at the Army’s NYC Mobilization Station, assisting doctors who assessed draftees and recruits by taking temperatures, recording test results and observations, treating/bandaging minor infections, looking for signs of communicable disease, etc. The hours would have been long, and the work monotonous.
She soon was added to the Base Hospital #91 team, which, in early November 1918, set sail for Europe to relieve another B.H. team, which had spent months dealing with the carnage of the intense American advance through the Meuse-Argonne region. The willingness of Germany to finally seek an Armistice is often attributed to this determined and extremely bloody effort. Although the fighting was over when B.H. #91 took over, Nurse Keller would be busy for months, caring for hundreds of gassed and machine-gunned soldiers -- not all of whom would survive.
