Susan Ruhama Salt, RN – 1918-1919 Army Nurse Corps

My grandaunt Susan was a nurse.  I have written a brief summary of her life previously and want to focus here on her year as a nurse for the Army at the end of the Great War.   Having graduated from nursing school in Kentucky in 1914, I think Susan worked as a nurse at Speers Memorial Hospital, the hospital where she had trained.  In 1918 she joined the American Red Cross as a Reserve Nurse and in October, 1918 she received a letter activating her for service in the Army Nurse Corps.

Her orders were to execute the required oath and then to use a transportation letter to get Pullman train tickets for Camp Jackson, Columbia, South Carolina.  She did so and arrived at the Base Hospital at Camp Jackson to report for duty on the 21 of October 1918.   This was, of course, just before the Armistice was signed and went into effect on November 11. These two pictures of Camp Jackson were part of a group taken in July 1918 (perhaps by the C.O. of the camp) and can be found at the NARA website.  

Camp Jackson had been opened to be a combat training camp for the Army.  According to one source¹ there were 38000 men in camp that September and influenza had reached the Camp by about the 18th of September.  This was the pandemic of 1918-1919 that swept the country and the world.  In the United States as everywhere influenza followed the wartime transportation routes across the country.  At Camp Jackson more than 10000 were sickened by the disease and at least 400 died, including 5 nurses.

So far I have little real information about what Susan’s working days and nights were like, or what her living conditions were (except the picture that shows the Nurses Home).  There is a typed military form that shows her being paid, and a few other details.  Soon after Susan reported for duty she was noted to have reported sick in hospital from 10/29/1918 to 11/5/1918 when she was again present for duty.  In December 1918 she applied for War Risk Insurance naming her mother as the beneficiary.  She was again reported as sick in hospital from 12/24/1918 to 1/9/1919.  Eleven days before that she had been immunized for typhoid and for smallpox, and just before her release from hospital she was again immunized for smallpox – apparently both smallpox vaccinations were not successful but I’m not sure exactly what this means or how it was known .  In May 1919 she was absent with leave (with pay and allowance) for 15 days, returning to duty on 6/4/1919.  I wonder what she did with that time off, and if she traveled anywhere.

From June to Nov 19,1919 she was on duty, and then was relieved from active service and sent back home to Kentucky.  With accrued leave not taken she was not officially separated from active service until 12/9/1919 but she was no longer required to be at Camp Jackson.  A letter from the Head Nurse at the Base Hospital, Emmeline Cleeland,  included some information about transferring her membership in the newly created American Legion posts from the one near Camp Jackson to one close to her home.  I don’t know if she did, or which Post it would have been.  Also in December 1919  she was issued a bronze Victory button in Cincinnati Ohio  which represented honorable discharge for those who had served.