Back from the Carnage

Interior of a Belgian hospital, 1915: nurse with wounded men, identities unknown.
(I know this photo is not precisely on point, but it's surprisingly hard to find a photo of a WWI Austrian hospital that doesn't have huge fees attached to its use.)
Image credit: Wikimedia Commons.

Anna Gruel returned to Ainsworth on October 3, 1916, a couple of months sooner than expected. German nurses had taken her place.

Her place had been in Vienna, Austria, in a 400-bed hospital serving sick and wounded soldiers. There she had worked a daily shift from 8 a.m. to 5 p.m. The wounded arrived at the hospital in units of 50 men at a time. Often they had been in transit for three days between the front and the hospital, having received little more than first aid. Anna must have seen some of the worst the war could do to a person without immediately killing him. No doubt the work was taxing, both physically and emotionally.

But now she had come home. Her position as superintendent of nurses at Washington Park Hospital in Chicago was being held open for her, but for the moment she just wanted to spend some time at the family farm, resting.

The trip over in June on the Ryndam had been hazardous — it wasn't battleships or mines that nearly did them in, but Mother Nature. At some point the Ryndam had gotten into a fog so blinding that its crew could not see a lighthouse in their path, and the ship struck the lighthouse rock. Though its hull was damaged, the Ryndam had been able to complete the journey.

Anna returned on the New Rotterdam. The only difficulty on the trip home came from zealous German authorities, who searched Anna's party no less than 16 times.

Emma Gruel was still in Germany. She and her sister had been stationed at different hospitals the entire time. Travel was restricted, so they never saw each other, but they had been able to stay in touch by mail.

That was not the case with Anna's family back home. She wrote to them often, but they did not receive a single one of her letters. And only a few letters reached her out of the many that her family and friends sent.

In spite of the stresses and difficulties of the journey and the hospital work, Anna said she did not regret having gone. "From the point of view of a nurse," the Gazette reported, "it has been a wonderful experience for her."


Sources:
♦ "Local Drifts." Hobart Gazette 6 Oct. 1916.
♦ "Miss Anna Gruel Returns From 4 Months' Trip to Austria." Hobart News 5 Oct. 1916.