Johns Hopkins Magazine -- November 1998
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NOVEMBER 1998
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WOMEN OF WAR

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Women of War
Recalling the Great War

Johns Hopkins Base Hospital 18 was touted as the first university-affiliated medical unit to be sent to France in World War I. About 35 doctors and 60 nurses treated casualties in a 1,000-bed hospital, originally set up for 500 patients, in the town of Bazoilles-sur-Meuse. Ann Spedden Rogers, who served with the unit, wrote a letter to her parents in spring 1918. Excerpts appeared in The Sun:

"It is such a gratification to us to know our people at home are awakening to [our situation]. Any contribution to our cause, however small and apparently trivial, is sent to us and we use it. . . .To give you an idea, we use burnt match sticks in making cotton swabs; every sort of bottle for sterile water; discarded cans and cold cream jars for our ointments; wash and rewash the gauze dressings many times...

"As I said before, we are living under military discipline, rise and retire at bugle's call and are invited to our meals, or as the 'Sammies' say, 'chow,' by the same melodious instrument. It was very strange to us at first, but then how easily one can adapt herself. We have also learned that the Army has many rigid rules which apply equally to us, for we are a part of that vast body, even though we have not, as yet, any kind of rank. How we hope for a ranking of some sort! It is awful to be just nothing, as rank means so much in the Army."


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