A St. Louis Hospital opened in France during World War I 

By Blythe Bernhard
St. Louis Post-Dispatch via the military.com web site

For nearly two years during World War I, a St. Louis hospital set up an outpost near the battlefields in France.

Dr. Fred Murphy, head of surgery at Washington University School of Medicine, realized the allies needed help when he volunteered at an American hospital in Paris in 1916 before the U.S. entered the war.

Base Hospital 21 patients were sometimes allowed to sit outside and get some sun. The hospital sponsored by Washington University School of Medicine was located outside of Rouen, France during World War I. Photo courtesy of Becker Medical Library.When he came back to St. Louis, Murphy recruited dozens of doctors, nurses, medical students and other personnel from the university and then-Barnes Hospital to form their own hospital to relieve British and French medical officers.

Soon after the U.S. declared war with Germany, the St. Louis medical team shipped out in May 1917, becoming some of the first Americans to reach the European war zone.

U.S. Army Base Hospital 21 was assigned to Rouen in the Normandy region of France as one of several hospitals formed by American medical schools to serve sick and injured soldiers and civilians.

The medical unit was segregated, with African-American doctors and nurses serving in separate clinics set up by the Army.

Some of the volunteers at the hospital were members of St. Louis' high society, including nurses Rachel Stix Michael, Mary Kennard Wallace and Julia Holmes Francis, daughter-in-law of David R. Francis, former St. Louis mayor, Missouri governor and U.S. ambassador to Russia.

Julia Stimson, then-chief nurse at Washington University, was promoted to head of nursing for the Red Cross after her service at Base Hospital 21.

Read the entire article on the Military.com web site.

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