The Kossuth County
Genealogical Society is hosting an exhibit entitled “WWI-Kossuth County Answers
the Call” through November 19th at the Algona Public
Library. As a part of that salute to the
100th anniversary of the entry of the United States into the war, we
are sharing stories of a few of the brave men and women who served. Here is Part II of a two part installment.
As
you will recall from Part I, Nellie Mae Stahl had just completed a tour of duty
as a nurse working in France for the British government. Without hesitation she enlisted in the U.S.
Army Nurse Corps when the U.S. declared war on Germany. July of 1917 found her once again on her way
to France. The passage this time was
conducted even more cautiously than before.
The entire ship was painted the color of the water including windows to
prevent light from shining out. Boat
drill was conducted each day so that everyone knew what to do in an
emergency.
 |
| Nellie's 1917 passport photo |
Just
before arrival they had close encounters with two submarines. The alarm sounded for the passengers to go to
the life boats. As they complied, they
discovered it was not a drill but that there was the imminent possibility of
attack. Nellie wrote, “They sighted a submarine not over 200 feet
from our ship when it started to come up and they fired at it and think they
sank it, at least we hope so. During all
the excitement someone sighted our convoy coming – it was only a speck, but it
was by us in ten minutes, you may know we were pretty glad to see her just at
that moment, and before she got to us another sub appeared between us so
neither could fire before she went down and never showed up again, but our
little convoy, a torpedo destroyer zigzagged around us all night. Is it any wonder that we never went to sleep?”
Upon
reaching their destination Nellie Mae wrote home to let her parents know that
the nurses had been made Lieutenants which raised her stipend to $108 a
month. She was now assigned to a large
hospital with 2,000 beds which were normally full to the limit. Nellie seemed unfazed by the hard work
involved, but spoke of a yearning for home.
“Yesterday we walked down to the
sea. It was a beautiful day. We sat and talked and tried to imagine how
far across the deep was home, but it seems impossible, so we decided that we
will not attempt to cross it again until ‘Fritz’ comes to the top or until we
get him out entirely. Everybody here
seems to think the war will end this year.”
This
time around the nurses were living in tents rather than the canvas huts. Nellie wrote in October that the wind was
much harder on those and the women were hoping that they would actually have
huts before winter set in. It had been
an unusually cool summer and Nellie spoke of wearing sweaters every day and
most of the time a raincoat, hat and boots besides. The hospital itself consisted of numerous huts,
tents and simple wooden structures – no brick and mortar buildings of any kind. They housed 2,000 patients in the hospital to
which Nellie was assigned.
She
went on to describe how much help the Red Cross provided especially with the
making of all of the surgical supplies for their operating room, stating, “The nurses don’t have to make any dressings
at all any more. Of course we should
hardly have time, when we average 25 to 30 operations per day.” Nellie wrote, “I want help from home for my Christmas for the boys. Send me some American cigars, playing cards,
chocolate bars, and anything else you can think of that we can use for
gifts. I have fifty boys now, and
remember that by Christmas we shall have American boys.”
Mail
and package delivery was very intermittent.
Nellie’s letters often expressed her disappointment in having gone
several weeks with no letters at all.
The next would speak of having received “heaps” of mail. Many, many packages of items “for the boys”
were sent to her from this area thanks to the publication of her letters.
Work
at the hospital ebbed and flowed but was never dull. In the fall of 1917 they were the subject of
an air raid causing injuries. At a later
date a wind storm caused havoc. “When we wakened yesterday morning the wind
was blowing a perfect gale, and half of our tents were half down. Can you imagine the sight! Patients on all sorts of frame cots unable to
help themselves, and the tents just being torn to shreds about them. Of course a few tents were new, and they were
standing up under the gale all right. We
had to carry boys, beds and all from the other tents and crowd them into other
wards. We have a few hut wards, and
moved our worst cases into them. I
landed in one of the huts with 38 chest cases, and all very sick. Believe me, we worked! Everybody thinks of this war as taking off
arms and legs, but the men who suffer worst and are the most uncomfortable all
through are those shot in the chest or abdomen.
We have two of the dearest boys, each about 19 years old, with bad chest
wounds, and they have to sit up straight all the time. We have sent for their mothers.”
As
summer approached, Nellie wrote: “Our
British hospital is gradually becoming Americanized. We now have more than 100 American
patients. As I have told you before, we
get all the American wounded who are brought into this district. As yet we have not lost a single
American. Most of them have been really
‘sick’ cases, though there have been a few wounded. We have one boy from Seattle with both legs
broken and a broken jaw. We try hard not
to show any partiality as between our boys and the Tommies, but it is very hard
not to.”
From
a letter dated December 17, 1917: “Today is the first day it has begun to look
like winter. About three inches of snow
fell last night and has been slush and slip all day today, but the wind is so
cold. I know we feel it much more than
we did at home. It certainly did look
pretty this morning, all the tents and hills covered with a white blanket, and
you may know it is hard to keep warm in tents.
We have more coal now than we had a while ago, so we can have four fires
in the tents and be fairly comfortable, and we can have 5 lbs. per person every
day for our room, so being two in a room, we get 10 pounds and we can keep nice
and warm for the few hours we are off duty and not in bed.” She closes that same letter with these
words: “Well, my 5 lbs. of coal is about gone and my hands are cold and stiff
so guess I better go to bed. Heaps of
love and do write soon and often.”
It
was not all work however. The staff was
allowed seven days leave every four months.
In February of 1918, Nellie went to Paris. “I just
returned from seven days’ leave in Paris, seven whole days without even
thinking about patients or work. It
certainly was quite a change from camp life and did seem good to see the life
of a real city again, though we don’t see Paris now as it is in peace time—so
many places of interest are closed or covered with sand bags. Never-the-less, we had a good time.”
Rationing
of sugar and dairy products had been a constant during the war, but by early
1918, there was little left to ration.
Nellie wrote, “I have told you
before that we had three sweetless days per week, but now they are all
sweetless. In Paris, the girls say,
everybody has to carry his own sugar to the table or go without. Milk cannot be had, and there is no butter,
cheese, or cakes in any of the French cities any more. Of course the nurses still get their rations
from the government, and I do not think our supply will be entirely shut off.
“We
tried to buy some eggs for our mess last week, however, but the French said no,
they could not sell them, except to soldiers in the hospitals, so I suppose we
shan’t have many eggs to eat from now on, at least for a time. We have had our last issue of coal too, and
are therefore hoping it will soon warm up.”
The
war began to ramp up as the weather warmed.
On April 9, 1918, Nellie shared the following: “I am
on night duty and as you know there is a big Hun push on, we have plenty to do,
and all of our convoys and evacuations come at night. I am making coffee for our American boys
carrying stretchers, and you never did see a more appreciative bunch of boys in
your life. Some nights they are up all
night and for two and three nights at a time, but seldom hear them complain,
and they are so careful with the boys, always ready to help them (or rather
help us) undress them and bathe them, and believe me, they sure need a
bath. They bring down half of Belgium
with them. One told me last night he
hadn’t had his boots off for fourteen days and his face washed for longer than
that and I could believe him. There is a
little cemetery about two miles from us.
It is the only military cemetery of the district and one day last week
was the record for the war. They had
seventy-two burials in one day.”
The
loss of American life was inevitable. “We lost our first American boy in our ward
this morning, as the result of nephritis.
He was an awful nice boy, only 22 years old. He was from Maine. We had a funeral for him, and all the
American patients who were able went to it, as well as a few of the Tommies,
the medical officers, and all the nurses who could get away. It wasn’t much to do, but it was a little
more than poor Tommy gets when there are 50 to 60 burials per day.”
A
close call came in late spring while Nellie was writing a letter home. “I had
to stop when I had written the last preceding paragraph, for we had a
‘visitor.’ A ‘dud’ dropped only about
ten feet from our back door, and buried itself in about four feet of
earth. The hole is being guarded. I don’t know whether or not there is any danger
of it going off, but they seem to think it might. Our visitor is gone. He didn’t hurt us; neither did we hurt him.”
Again
in May of 1918, their hospital was the target of an air raid. “We had
many visitors who came about 10:30 p.m., and didn’t leave till 1 a.m. And believe me we were glad when they
left! The Fourth of July had nothing on
us that night for fireworks and noise.
In fact, we really thought our time had come. There were about a thousand casualties in
this district, including five Canadian nurses.
“Our boys succeeded in bringing down one
Boche plane. The pilot was killed, but
there were two other men in it, and they were only wounded. They said they had been ordered to bomb this
district for three consecutive nights.
However, no planes came over the next night.
“The third night we had another visit
and everybody took to the hills. High
places seem to be the safest spots in an aerial bombardment; but for my part I
should rather be in bed and cover up my head, where I could not see it.
“Since then trenches have been dug
around our huts, and henceforth we shall be expected to go into them as soon as
we get an alarm, and remain until ‘all clear’ is sounded.”
The
news of the armistice reached the hospital early in the day on November 11th,
but many refused to believe it.
Recalling the day in a letter to her parents, Nellie wrote: You
must have enjoyed the demonstration of Nov. 11.
We had noise enough here but I imagine much different from that at home. We got the news early in the morning but
couldn’t make the Tommies believe it was true.
At 6 P.M. the bells began to ring and whistles to blow. And the Yanks and Australians yelled and
pounded every tin pan they could find until we could hardly hear ourselves
think. The poor Tommy who had been here
four years never made a sound, but said:
‘Sister, it’s too good to be true, and to think I have been here four
years and this is my first time in the hospital just as it’s all over.’ He has one leg gone and the other badly
wounded.”
In
one of her final letters home, Nellie told of a recent furlough during which
she went to Paris and also visited interesting points along the old battle
line. “We did not see a living thing, not even a tree more than six feet
high. Where big villages had been there
remained nothing but piles of brick. The
fields were full of shell holes, and there was scarcely a foot of level
ground. The thing we appreciated most of
all was to see large parties of German prisoners helping to clean up the mess
they and their comrades had made. I
can’t begin to describe the desolation the Huns left.”
Nellie
sailed home upon the Prince Frederick Wilhelm, a vessel confiscated from the
Germans. Upon arrival in New York City,
the nurses were held for a few days so they could participate in the Victory
Loan parade held in May of 1919. The
parade route was about 8 miles in length and was filled with grateful Americans
cheering their service.
Her
arrival in her hometown on May 7, 1919, was just as memorable. Nearly the whole town of Burt met her as her train
pulled into the station, celebrating her patriotic service.
In
1927, Nellie Mae Stahl married Dr. Sidney V. Barteau, a dentist from Chicago
that she had first met while in France.
They became the parents of a daughter, Celia, who carried on the family
military tradition by enlisting in the Navy Waves. Nellie died at the age of 62 after a short
illness. At her request, her cremated
ashes were buried in Arlington National Cemetery on August 26, 1952.
Be sure to visit the exhibit “WWI – Kossuth County Answers the Call” which is on display through November 19th at the Algona Public Library during
regular library hours and on Sundays from 1-4 p.m.
Until next time,
Kossuth County History Buff
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