Back Home to Celebrate
Returned soldiers with visitors at a lounge in Debarkation Hospital #3Nurse Bergold’s active service in the ANC ended in the Spring of 1919 when she was honorably discharged. Officially, Nurse Keller’s European tour and active service ended in mid-July; she was discharged stateside two weeks later. However, she was able to “cut class” and get back to Hicksville by July 4th.
We don’t know if Nurses Bergold and Keller had been acquainted before the war, but on that day, they surely met. All of Hicksville stopped what it was doing that morning and began a celebration for all the village’s sons and daughters who had served in uniform.
The festivities were grand and varied, including a parade that featured as many of the honored 141 survivors as could make it, not to mention Hicksville’s two surviving veterans of the Civil War. There were speeches, a picnic, a baseball game at Cantiague Park, a formal dinner, and open-air dancing nearly until dawn on Broadway.
The names of Hicksville’s ANC Nurses are listed on the WW I commemorative boulder, taking their proud places among the names of the men from Hicksville who also had served in uniform during the war.
