Michael W.R. Davis Forsaken Angels: The Personnel of the Chicago / Northwestern University Unit, U.S. Army Base 12, World War I - Online indir

When the United States declared war on Germany on April 9, 1917, there were only 403 U.S. Army nurses on active duty. Northwestern University’s U. S. Army Base Hospital 12 was among the first major U.S. Army units sent overseas in the First World War. To staff the hospital unit, Dr. Frederic A. Besley of Northwestern University Medical School relied on professional colleagues from the school, nurses and other personnel from Cooke County and Evanston hospitals, and young enlisted men principally recruited from the Chicago area’s college campuses or from the ranks of recent graduates. The Northwestern unit departed from Chicago on May 17, 1917, and was overseas longer than any other unit of any kind. They suffered the first casualties and treated more patients in France — over 60,000 — than any other American hospital, with the possible exception of its neighboring Harvard Unit. FORSAKEN ANGELS was compiled and edited over nine years, and is told though a chronological progression documents from several private sources as well as the National Archives, the historical records of Northwestern University, the Chicago Historical Society, and the American Red Cross. Letters home and memoirs written after the war describe middle America’s first adventure to the land of their forefathers, and opens an unexpected window to the distinctly modern Chicago personnel of the Northwestern Unit’s ready adaptation to Old World cultural differences.