United States Navy Nurse Corps

  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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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.

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. The "Sacred Twenty", as shown in the photo above, were Mary H. Du Bose; Adah M. Pendleton; Elizabeth M. Hewitt; Della V. Knight; Josephine Beatrice Bowman, the third Superintendent of the Navy Nurse Corps, 1922-1935; Lenah H. Sutcliffe Higbee, the second Superintendent of the Navy Nurse Corps, 1911-1922; Esther Voorhees Hasson, the first Superintendent of the Navy Nurse Corps, 1908-1911 ; Martha E. Pringle; Elizabeth J. Wells; Clare L. De Ceu.; Elizabeth Leonhardt; Estelle Hine; Ethel R. Parsons; Florence T. Milburn; Boniface T. Small; Victoria White; Isabelle Rose Roy; Margaret D. Murray; Sara B. Myer; and Sara M. Cox. They would include three Nurse Corps Superintendents and twelve chief nurses. 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.

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.

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.

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.

Prisoners of War

Two groups of Navy nurses were held prisoner by the Japanese in World War II. Chief Nurse Marion Olds and nurses Leona Jackson, Lorraine Christiansen, Virginia Fogerty and Doris Yetter were taken prisoner on Guam shortly after Pearl Harbor and transported to Japan. They were repatriated in August of 1942, although the newspaper did not identify them as Navy nurses. Chief Nurse Laura Cobb and her nurses, Mary Chapman, Bertha Evans, Helen Gorzelanski, Mary Harrington, Margaret Nash, Goldie O'Haver, Eldene Paige, Susie Pitcher, Dorothy Still and C. Edwina Todd were taken in 1943 and were held in the Philippines until they were rescued by American forces in 1945.

Modern Nurse Corps

The Nurse Corps continues as a prominent part of the Navy medical establishment. As of 2006, the Director of the Navy Nurse Corps is Rear Admiral Christine Bruzek-Kohler, the 21st Director of the Navy Nurse Corps, and the Naval Medical Inspector General. 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, or by direct commission.

Superintendents and Directors

From its founding in 1908 until after World War II in 1947, the Navy Nurse Corps was led by a superintendent. Its nurses had no permanent commissioned rank. The Army-Navy Nurses Act took effect on 16 April 1947, establishing the Navy Nurse Corps as a staff corps, with officers holding permanent commissioned rank from ensign to commander. The corps was to be led by a director holding the rank of captain while in that position.

List of Superintendents of the Navy Nurse Corps

List of Directors of the Navy Nurse Corps

List of Navy Nurse Corps Directors

Prominent members

• Esther Voorhes Hasson, First Superintendent of the Navy Nurse Corps
• Captain Nellie Jane DeWitt, First Navy Nurse to become a 4-stripe Captain in the US Navy
• Rear Admiral Alene B. Duerk, First woman in the Navy to be promoted to flag rank.

Ships named after Navy Nurse Corps Officers

• USS Higbee (DD-806) (First U.S. Navy warship named in honor of a woman - 2nd Superintendent of Navy NursesLenah Higbee)
• USS Dorothea L. Dix (AP-67) (First Superintendent of Army Nurses Dorothea Dix)

Ships named after Nurses

• USS Florence Nightingale (AP-70)

See also

• Army Nurse Corps (United States)

Further reading

In and Out of Harm's Way: A history of the U.S. Navy Nurse Corps. by Doris M. Sterner

• Sterner, Doris M. (1997). In and Out of Harm's Way: A history of the U.S. Navy Nurse Corps. Seattle, WA: Peanut Butter Publishing. ISBN 0897167066. 
• Ebbert, Jean and Marie-Beth Hall (1999). Crossed Currents: Navy Women from WWI to Tailhook [Revised]. Washington, D.C.: Brassey's. ISBN 978-1574881936. 
• Godson, Susan H. (2001). Serving Proudly: A history of Women in the U.S. Navy. Annapolis, MD: Naval Institute Press. ISBN 1-55750-317-6.  Fact filled, extensively researched account of the evolution of the roles of women in the United States Navy, treating the parallel and entertwined paths of the Navy Nurse Corps and the WAVES. About one-third of the pages are devoted to notes and bibliography.
• Monahan, Evelyn M. and Rosemary Neidel-Greenlee (2000). All This Hell: U.S. Nurses Imprisoned by the Japanese. Kentucky: University Press of Kentucky. ISBN 0813121485. 
• Norman, Elizabeth M. (1999). We Band of Angels: The Untold Story of American Nurses Trapped on Bataan by the Japanese. Random House. ISBN 978-0375502453.