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"A Winding Sheet and a Wooden Box." Navy Medicine 77, no. 3 (May-June 1986): 18-19. 

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A Winding Sheet and a Wooden Box

This May [1986], Josie Mabel Brown celebrates her 100th birthday just as the Nurse Corps marks its 78th anniversary. Miss Brown was born on a farm in southwestern Missouri on 14 May 1886. When the harvest failed 12 years later, the family was forced to move by covered wagon back to her father's former home in Illinois. "I ran practically half way across the state of Missouri, I think, because the horses went too slow," she recalls. When her brothers left home to seek their fortunes, Josie helped with the farm work, driving the horses before the rake, harrow, and disk.

But a backbreaking farm life was not what Josie had in mind. She thought about medicine and becoming a doctor or nurse. In 1914 she began her nurse training and graduated 3 years later just a few months after the United States entered World War I. She remembers that new graduate registered nurses were then obligated to serve in the military. "I had to go. There was no choice about it. When my paper came back, it said, 'You are in the Navy now. Do not leave Saint Louis; do not change your address; do not change your telephone number.'"

Interviewed at her California home by her niece, Rachel Wedeking (mother of Carla Morrisey), Miss brown swells with pride when asked about her career as a Navy Nurse. Moreover, she can still vividly relate crisp memories of a period that is seldom discussed in the history texts.

Rachel Wedeking: How did you begin your Navy career?

Josie Brown: One day I was at the theater and suddenly the screen went blank. Then a message appeared across the screen "Would Josie M. Brown please report to the ticket office?" I went back and there was a Western Union boy with a telegram from the Bureau of Medicine and Surgery in Washington, DC. It said, "You are called to duty. Do you have enough money to travel" And when is the earliest date that you can travel?" And I wired back, "I have money. I can pay my way." About 45 minutes later a reply came back. Proceed to Great Lakes, Illinois. Keep strict account of your expenses. Do not pay over $1.50 for your meals or over 50¢ for tips. You will be reimbursed."

My train was an old pullman going to Chicago. I went right through our town and saw the light in the window that mother put there. I got to Chicago in the morning. When someone opened a paper in front of me I saw "6,000 in the hospital have Spanish Influenza in Great Lakes, Illinois." I said, "Oh, that's where I'm going. What is Spanish Influenza?"

I got to the gate and showed my Red Cross pin and my orders. They put me on a bus and sent me to the main hospital, then took me for my first meal in the service. It was cold pork, sweet potatoes, and apple sauce. Afterward, my supervisor took me to a ward that was supposedly caring for 42 patients. There was a man lying on the bed dying and one was lying on the floor. Another man was on a stretcher waiting for the fellow on the bed to die. We would wrap him in a winding sheet because he had stopped breathing. I don't know whether he was dead or not, but we wrapped him in a winding sheet and left nothing but the big toe on the left foot out with a shipping tag on it to tell the man's rank, his nearest of kin, and hometown. And the ambulance carried four litters. It would bring us four live ones and take out four dead ones.

Did they keep them in the morgue?

The morgues were packed almost to the ceiling with bodies stacked one on top of another. The morticians worked day and night. You could never turn around without seeing a big red truck being loaded with caskets for the train station so the bodies could be sent home.

Was there any treatment for these boys?

We didn't have time to treat them. We didn't take temperatures; we didn't even have time to take blood pressure.

What did you do for the temperature?

We would give them a little hot whiskey toddy; that's about all we had time to do. They would have terrific nosebleeds with it. Sometimes the blood would just shoot across the room. You had to get out of the way or someone's nose would bleed all over you.

What other symptoms did they have?

Some were delirious and some had their lungs punctured. Then their bodies would fill with air. You would feel somebody and he would be bubbles.

That must have been a terrible disease.

You would see them with bubbles all through their arms.

You mean air would get into their tissues?

Yes. Oh, it was a horrid thing. We had to wear operating masks and gowns all the time. We worked 8 hours on a ward sometimes. If nobody had a nurse on another ward, we would go back to our quarters for an hour and then work another 8 hours. It was 16 hours a day until the epidemic was over.

When was that?

The worst was over just a little before Christmas 1918. I was assigned to another ward by that time. One day a man came through and said the armistice was signed. The boys just about hit the ceiling they were so glad. During the epidemic, though, our Navy bought the whole city of Chicago out of sheets. There wasn't a sheet left in Chicago. All a boy got when he died was a winding sheet and a wooden box; we just couldn't get enough caskets.

I understand you also caught the flu.

It was March 1919 when I got sick. They didn't have a room for me so they curtained me off in a ward with other women. They didn't know what I had because I was never diagnosed. I ran a temperature of 104° or 105° for days; I just don't remember how many days. They put an ice cap on my head, an ice collar on my neck, and an ice pack over my heart. My heart pounded so hard that it rattled the ice; everything was rattling, including the chartboard and bedsprings.

Did you have any idea how many died altogether?

They died by the thousands. There were 173,000 men at Great Lakes at the time, and 6,000 were in the hospitals at the height of the epidemic. I suppose no one knows how many died. They just lost track of them.

Josie Brown was discharged from the Navy in September 1919 and took a job as a nurse in a military school.

[END]

Published: Tue Jun 21 14:47:31 EDT 2022