United States Navy Nurse Corps
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The United States Navy Nurse Corps was formally established by the Congress in 1908. For nearly 100 years previously, however, women had worked as nurses aboard Navy ships and in Navy hospitals.
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[edit] Pre-1908
A Navy Department circular order established the designation of Nurse (19 Jun 1861), to be filled by junior enlisted men. Fifteen years later, the duties were transferred to the designation Bayman (US Navy Regulations, 1876). Although enlisted personnel were referred to as Nurses, their duties and responsibilities were more related to those of a Hospital Corpsman than to a nurse.
During the American Civil War, several African American women are noted to have served as paid crew onboard the hospital ship Red Rover in the Mississippi River area in the position of nurse. The known names of four nurses are: Alice Kennedy, Sarah Kinno, Ellen Campbell and Betsy Young (Fowler). In addition volunteer nuns from the Catholic Sisters of the Holy Cross also served aboard as nurses.
- Fowler, William M., Jr. "Relief on the River: the Red Rover." Naval History (Fall 1991): 19.
During the 1898 Spanish-American War, the Navy employed a modest number of female contract nurses in its hospitals ashore and sent trained male nurses to sea on the hospital ship Solace.
[edit] 1908-1917
After the establishment of the Nurse Corps in 1908, twenty women were selected as the first members. These nurses, who came to be called "The Sacred Twenty", were the first women to serve formally as members of the Navy. Navy Nurses gradually expanded their number to 160 on the eve of World War I. In addition to normal hospital and clinic duties, they were active in training local nurses in U.S. overseas possessions and the Navy's male enlisted medical personnel.
For a few months in 1913, Navy Nurses saw their first shipboard service, aboard Mayflower and Dolphin.
[edit] World War I
The April 1917 entry of the United States into the First World War brought a great expansion of the Nurse Corps, both Regular and Reserve.
In 1917-18, the Navy deployed five Base Hospital units to operational areas in France, Scotland and Ireland, with the first in place by late 1917. Also serving overseas were special Navy Operating Teams, including nurses, established for detached duty near the combat frontlines. Some of these teams were loaned to the Army during 1918's intense ground offensives and worked in difficult field conditions far removed from regular hospitals.
During the war, 19 Navy Nurses died on active duty, over half of them from influenza. Three of the four Navy Crosses awarded to wartime Navy Nurses went to victims of the fight against the deadly 'flu.
By the time of the Armistice on 11 November 1918, over 1550 nurses had served in Naval hospitals and other facilities at home and abroad. Shortly after the fighting's end, a few Navy Nurses were assigned to duty aboard transports bringing troops home from Europe.
[edit] Intrawar Years
The first permanent shipboard positions came in late 1920, when Relief went into commission with a medical staff that included Navy Nurses. Paid retirement for longevity and disability was authorized. In addition to caring for Naval personnel at home and abroad, they responded to a number of civil disasters and assisted in the evacuation of dependents from war-torn China in 1937.
[edit] World War II
The Nurse Corps' strength contracted to less than five hundred during the peacetime decades, but its duties were extended to include regular service on board Navy hospital ships. Educational opportunities for Navy Nurses were improved, part of a steady rise in their professional status within the service. Though generally treated like officers socially and professionally, and wearing uniform stripes similar to those for the officer ranks of Ensign through Lieutenant Commander, formal recognition as Commissioned officers, achieved by U.S. Army nurses in 1920, did not come until World War II. Preparation for that conflict again saw the Nurse Corps grow, with nearly eight hundred members serving on active duty by November 1941, plus over nine hundred inactive reserves.
[edit] Modern Nurse Corps
The Nurse Corps continues as a prominent part of the Navy medical establishment. As of 2005, the Director of the Navy Nurse Corps is Rear Admiral Nancy J. Lescavage. Currently, it consists of officers of the rank of Ensign and higher. The Nurse Corps has a distinctive insignia of a single Oak Leaf, on one collar point, or in place of a line officer's star on shoulder boards. Nurse officers are commissioned through Navy ROTC, and Officer Indoctrination School.
[edit] Prominent members
- Esther Voorhes Hasson, First Superintendent of the Navy Nurse Corps
- Rear Admiral Alene B. Duerk, First woman in the Navy to be promoted to flag rank.
[edit] Ships named after Navy Nurse Corps Officers
- USS Higbee (DD-806) (First U.S. Navy warship named in honor of a woman)
[edit] Ships named after Nurses
[edit] See also
[edit] External link
- Navy Nurse Corps history and uniforms in color — WWII US women's service organizations (WAC, WAVES, ANC, NNC (Navy Nurse Corps), USMCWR, PHS, SPARS, ARC and WASP)
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This article includes information collected from the Naval Historical Center, which, as a US government publication, is in the public domain. |
