The green cloth-covered diary of U.S. Army nurse F. Jeannette Price (1883-1929) contains entries from 1 October 1918 through 26 April 1919. It is number 509.044 in our Collection of Personal Narratives, Manuscripts, and Ephemera about the 1918-1919 Influenza Pandemic (Manuscript Collection no. 509).
Nurse Price reports taking the oath of office 1 October 1918 and leaving for Camp Devens in Ayer, Massachusetts. On October 3rd she was assigned duty “on surgery, Flu ward” at the base hospital. She was assigned overseas duty and left Ayer on October 31 en route to the mobilization station at New York City and assigned to Unit 72 to join the American Expeditionary Force. Price left one page blank between October 31 and November 16, thus missing the opportunity to record her reaction to the Armistice on November 11.
She departed November 16 on the Olympic, arriving at Southampton, England on November 23. On November 17 she reports seeing former President Herbert Hoover aboard their ship, apparently beginning his appointment by President Wilson to head the European Relief and Rehabilitation Administration; she sat near him during a program to benefit sailors’ charities, and again in the grand salon when he came in “for a smoke”. She describes boarding a much smaller boat from South Hampton on November 25 to depart the next day in a convoy and arriving in La Havre, France on November 27, staying at the Grand Hotel and meeting American soldiers for a Thanksgiving dinner and dance. Seeing Paris for a day, she travels three hours by train followed by a truck ride the next day to Mesves (i.e., Mesves-sur-Loire), Department of Nievre, where she reports to Base Hospital no. 86, one of eight base hospitals in the Mesves Hospital Center.
Price begins overseas duty on 1 December, first with bed making. She describes her duties on December 3: “Here I find real opportunity for service among lads tied to their beds. They have had so little done for them that it almost caused shock. When I gave them sponge baths and doled out pajama suits at night, I again surprised the dear lads by rubbing backs; some had not known a personal touch in two months.”
The next day she reports feeling “as though I have ptomaine poisoning”, which may be influenza, after which she spends two weeks off duty. During this time Major Oliver C. Hargreaves, the chief of medical services, visits her twice.
Early Christmas day, “On the ward at 5 am hanging socks on 40 of my lads beds. Many of them snoring. At 530 about 14 nurses with the chaplain sang carols in the wards where bedpatients were. They seemed happy. Some smiled, while a few hid tear-filled eyes under the covers.” She describes music and dancing on New Year’s Eve, “But my sympathy was with the enlisted men, homesick and weary of waiting for marching orders, the while we made merry.”
As 1919 begins, Price describes routines, making fudge for the patients, rain, mud, visits to towns, and deaths of some patients brought in with TBC [tuberculosis?]. Her ward receives several dozen “TBC suspects all nice fellows. Bonzi an army cook is with us as a patient, looks after the office work, and fixes extras for the lads on the ward, even to omelets and flapjacks.” Two weeks later Hargreaves classifies “the walking suspects”, including Bonzi, for decampment stateside. Later in the month she has another bout of fever and illness, even being sent to Base Hospital no. 54 to rest “on a real bed”. She is discharged on February 3, “wobbly”, and returns to the B-8 ward in hospital 86.
Only three weeks later, Price makes final batches of fudge, fried eggs, and flapjacks for her soldiers before leaving Mesves forever on February 24. She spends several days in Paris before transferring to Base Hospital no. 99 in Hyeres, a convalescence hospital on the Riviera. She spends her time visiting the towns until March 13, when she reports receiving orders “for my procedure to Bordeaux. Am sorry to leave. Hyeres the most beautiful country I have ever been in. Fifteen days of real joy.”
On 14 March 1919, Price resumes her travel homeward, taking several trains filled with soldiers on leave, nurses, and other personnel awaiting embarkation orders, to arrive in Bordeaux. She describes several of the many people she meets, such as “Capt. Cox of Bordeaux-Evac-Camp. Quite a phrenologist - told our fortunes - and exhibited a rare collection of cameos collected in Italy.” March 19: “Tiresome business waiting orders, Oh, for real service somewhere, anywhere: I feel more than ever for my lads of ward B8 - How they ever existed for weeks sitting around the ward stove is beyond me: for three days are more than I want.” She enjoys trips to walk around the town of Bordeaux; however (March 20): “Beautiful things in shops, but too expensive. Have decided to hang onto francs, lest I am unable to work in the States.” On another walk (March 24): “Groups of German prisoners of war, with a gaurd [sic], at the head and rear. Some fine countenances among them. Would enjoy a vision of their mental state!”
On April 1, Price receives orders to change French money into dollars and prepare to board the “French liner Carillo” [i.e., USS Carrillo, a former passenger liner converted into a cargo ship in the Cruiser and Transport Service] the next day, departing April 3 [Price was on the fourth and final return trip of the Carrillo from France]. She is wistful about leaving France and all the nurses and soldiers she met, then seasick for days, almost until April 15: “We sight the beloved Statue of Liberty! We are taken in a red cross ambulance to the Polyclinic [called Embarkation Hospital 4 at the time] on W 50 St. to await our discharge or evacuation. Meanwhile, we promenade on Broadway.”
On 26 April 1919, Jeannette Price left New York for Fort Sheridan, Illinois, where she would serve at General Hospital 28 until 23 November 1920. She finishes her diary entries on April 26 by noting, “wonderful location.”
Jeannette Price was the subject of a brief chapter in Tenderly Lift Me: Nurses Honored, Celebrated, and Remembered, compiled by Jeanne Bryner (Kent, Ohio: Kent State University Press, 2004). A copy of the book accompanies her diary in our collection.