- Women in North Carolina History
- Sample Article and Assignment from
- Session 3: Women in War
- On the Outskirts: North Carolina Women in World War I
- --by Vivian Lea Stevens
This Red Cross poster from 1917 shows a nurse holding
a wounded soldier.
Its caption, pleading for the American public to join
the Red Cross, reads
"The Greatest Mother in the World -All You Need is
a Heart and a Dollar."
Like most young women volunteering for service, Hoskins probably had visions of nursing sick and wounded soldiers near the frontline trenches. But the Red Cross had other plans for her. She was assigned to work with the Children’s Bureau in France. Arriving in France in October of 1917, Hoskins settled into her work as chief nurse at Evian-les-Bains, a resort on the border of France and Switzerland on the banks of Lake Geneva. She described her accommodations to her sister:
We are on the beautiful lake, in a quaint little town of Evian. It is a summer resort, the wonderful baths of Evian. . . The A.R.C. has taken over this, oh really splendid property--Hotel Chatillet. The hotel is to be the hospital and the [staff] cottages the nurses homes. . . We will not open before [the middle of] November. The refugees come in at certain times--one thousand at a time--then there is a rest--and then again they come--a thousand again--old men, women, and children--poor, poor children.The refugees were sent to Hoskins’s hospital from German prisons and war-torn regions of France and Belgium. Many of the children had lost their homes, had been separated from their parents, and had only the clothes they were wearing.
Suzanne Hoskins, front, standing outside a Red Cross ambulance. Photo courtesy Greensboro Historical Society. |
Drawings were often a part of Hoskins’s
letters to her sister. On November 24, 1917, she described one of the children
she helped: "Another, a fat little gentleman of five--very much rolled
up in an immense tippet--He very determinedly blinked away his tears and
when I got him unpacked, I said ‘Well--how do you do, sir?’ He dimpled
up at me and said, ‘Oui, Madame!’ very heartily."
Hoskins and her staff provided these children with basic medical care as well as warm clothes and a clean bed. "Our part of the game is this, here on the border to get all sick and diseased children and to care for them--to keep disease from the entire country of France--we have scarlet fever, diphtheria, measles, mumps, chicken pox, tuberculosis, pneumonia, and many feet tired out." In addition to her work at Evian-les-Bains, Hoskins worked at La Choux, where she was responsible for setting up a children’s hospital. She and the staff helped care for 175 children. When she first arrived there, the head of the hospital, Dr. Lamb, wanted to examine every child thoroughly. Hoskins wrote her sister of the event: |
Now, there were no cards or numbers made out, no numbers on beds and nobody was sure which child was which. So we lined up 90, had 90 physicals, 90 cards made out which took from 10 a.m. to 6 p.m. The next day we did 85, and then 175 beds were numbered and names assigned. Then came the dentist and his assistant who worked for three days from 10 until 5, until every tooth was examined, filled, pulled, or cleaned. Then the throat specialist and his assistant came to check the children. If this were not enough, there were three meals a day out under the trees, the line-up at 8:30 each a.m. for throat examinations, toothbrush drill, etc. Getting a place like this [organized] is some job!Hoskins and the nurses she supervised performed an important job in caring for the children of war-torn France. These children needed the skilled care that the nurses could provide. Hoskins wished to be at the front and often commented on this in letters to her sister. But she never got a chance to work with wounded soldiers before she returned home in 1919. After the war was over, Hoskins wrote an article for Ladies’ Home Journal based on her experiences. She titled it "On the Outskirts: The Diary of a War-Baby Nurse." The title makes it seem that Hoskins felt she had been on the fringes of war work and that her job had not been that important. Yet the sick, cold, and hungry children she helped would have strongly disagreed with her. Hoskins and the nurses who worked with her played a small but vital role in helping France and Belgium survive the destruction of World War I.
Click on http://userpages.aug.com/captbarb/femvets4.html for more information on how American women served in World War I. Go to http://www.redcross.org/museum/history/ww1a.asp and http://www.redcross.org/museum/history/00-19_b.asp to learn more about Red Cross nurses in World War I.
Assignment #3: North Carolina Military Women in Your Community
Option 1:
Using the above information as a resource for how North Carolina women have served the military throughout United States history, identify and interview at least one woman in your community who has assisted in wartime efforts. These could include World War I, World War II, Korea, Vietnam, or Desert Storm. Write an article on this person and her role during the war. Articles should be 800-1,000 words in length.
Option 2: (Choose this option if you are
seeking reading credits for the course.)
Personal accounts such as these can be found in books, archives, and, increasingly,
on the Internet. Here are some Web sites to try:
Create a lesson plan appropriate for your curriculum in which your students compare personal narratives, letters, or oral history transcripts of women (two or more) involved in the same war or in different wars. The women can be involved either on the home front or in the military itself. Have your students explore questions such as:
Compare women's and men's war experiences.