To Germany

Earlier I described the daughters of John and Louise Gruel as uncommonly driven, and now I have to amend that description to add "… and downright heroic."

As early as 1909, the oldest Gruel daughter, Anna, had begun working as a nurse at Washington Park Hospital in Chicago. By the autumn of 1915, at the age of 33, she had become the hospital's Superintendent of Nurses. Her sister Bertha nursed there as well until her death in 1914. By 1912, 19-year-old Emma Gruel had also joined the Washington Park staff as a student nurse.

In the spring of 1916, Emma applied to serve six months in German hospitals, nursing the sick and wounded of the Austro-German armies. (It isn't clear which organization she was working with: one source says the Red Cross, another the German-Austro-Hungarian Relief Society.) Chosen from among 60 applicants for the position, Emma left Chicago on May 29, 1916, with a group of five other nurses and eight doctors. Among all of them, only Emma could speak German, so no doubt her services as an interpreter would often be called upon.

The eastbound Nickel Plate train they rode passed through Hobart, and many friends were waiting on the platform to tell her goodbye. The group traveled to Hoboken, New Jersey; from there they set sail on May 31 aboard the Scandinavian ship Frederik VIII.

At the same time, Anna was making similar plans. Once her application was accepted and the date of her departure fixed, she came down to Ainsworth for a couple days' visit with her family, then returned to Chicago to join the group she would be traveling with — three other nurses and six doctors, this time all of them German speakers. They left Chicago for New York on June 15. From there they expected to set sail for Germany on the Holland-American liner Ryndam.

By this time, Anna had received word of Emma's safe arrival in Sweden several days earlier, after 13 days on the water. No doubt the news came as a great relief. Both women were surely aware of the dangers of sailing into the waters around war-torn Europe; they knew about the sinking of the passenger liner Lusitania in May 1915, torpedoed by a German U-boat; and while Berlin had since issued orders forbidding U-boats to torpedo passenger liners on sight, those orders might be revoked or disobeyed at any time; and then there were mines, which indifferently blew up everything that touched them — not to mention the forces of nature.

As she prepared to sail from New York on June 17, Anna must have prayed that her journey might be a safe as her sister's.


Sources:
♦ 1900 Census.
♦ 1910 Census.
♦ 1920 Census.
♦ "Local Drifts." Hobart Gazette 22 Oct. 1909; 12 July 1912.
♦ Meyer, G.J. A World Undone: The Story of the Great War 1914 to 1918. New York: Bantam Dell, 2007.
♦ "Miss Anna Gruel Leaves for Germany." Hobart News 15 June 1916.
♦ "Miss Emma Gruel Leaves for Germany as Red Cross Nurse." Hobart News 1 June 1916.
♦ "More Nurses and Doctors Go to Europe." Hobart Gazette 16 June 1916.
♦ "Nurses and Doctors to the Front." Hobart Gazette 2 June 1916.
♦ "Personal and Local Mention." Hobart News 17 Oct. 1915.