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Typescript of a presumably unpublished memoir by Anne K. Williams, a nurse who served in France during World War I with United States Army Base Hospital No. 2, a unit largely made up of doctors and nurses from Presbyterian Hospital in New York City. In May 1918, Williams was detached to serve with Mobile Hospital No. 2 and remained with them on the Western Front and, after the Armistice, in Trier, Germany. She returned to New York in January 1919.
History and Biography
Anne Katherine Williams received her nursing diploma from the Presbyterian Hospital School of Nursing in 1915. She sailed in May 1917 with the first detachment of physicians and nurses of United States Army Base Hospital No. 2 which was based at Étretat on the Norman coast. She served there and with Mobile Hospital No. 2 throughout the war, returning to the US in early 1919. She died May 6, 1944.
Organization
Typescript of a presumably unpublished memoir by Anne K. Williams who served in France during World War I with United States Army Base Hospital No. 2, a unit largely made up of doctors and nurses from Presbyterian Hospital in New York City. Williams sailed in May 1917 with the Base Hospital’s first detachment which arrived in early June at Étretat on the Norman coast.
She served there until May 1918 when she was detached to the staff of Mobile Hospital No. 2. Mobile hospitals served near the front and her unit saw heavy action that summer at Vatry, Chateau-Thierry, and the Argonne. After the Armistice, Mobile Hospital No. 2 moved with the Army of Occupation to Trier, Germany. It rejoined Base Hospital No. 2 at Étretat on Christmas Day, 1918. The unit returned to New York in early January, 1919.
The memoir (129 pages) is a detailed account of the difficult and often dangerous work an army hospital nurse encountered during the war. The author generally does not give dates more specific than the month, the season, or a major holiday. Her memoir forms the basis of other accounts of Base Hospital No. 2 and Mobile Hospital No. 2, especially Eleanor Lee’s History of the School of Nursing of the Presbyterian Hospital New York, 1892-1942 (New York: G.P. Putnam’s Sons, 1942) and Albert R. Lamb’s The Presbyterian Hospital and the Columbia-Presbyterian Medical Center, 1868-1943: A History of a Great Medical Adventure (New York: Columbia University Press, 1955).
Since the memoir is dedicated to Anna Maxwell, founder and first Director of the Presbyterian Hospital School of Nursing (1892-1921), it must pre-date her death on January 2, 1929.
There are two copies of the manuscript each 129 pages in length and which appear to be identical.
Subject Headings and Related Records
Administrative Information
Gift of the Columbia University-Presbyterian Hospital School of Nursing Alumni Association, Inc., 1998 (accession #1998.07.30).