Home at Last!

Early in June 1917, John and Louise Gruel got the good news: their daughter Emma was finally coming home from Germany. She had finished out her second six-months' service in the hospital in Graudenz.

After a few weeks of suspense, the Gruels received a letter in Emma's own hand — probably only the second since her departure — announcing that she had landed safely in New York on June 25, after 13 days on the water. She planned to spend a couple days in the city, sight-seeing with the other nurses.

At last, on June 28, Emma arrived home at the Gruel farm east of Ainsworth, safe and well.

If she had ever felt in danger, she did not say so. Conditions in Germany were not too bad, she reported; though all the best food was sent to the soldiers at the front, she had never actually gone hungry. Her only complaint was that soap and starch were very scarce. I imagine that would have meant a good deal to a nurse, who understood the importance of cleanliness and who expected to wear a well starched uniform.

Concerning what she had seen of the war's brutality, apparently she maintained a tactful silence.

On the evening of July 17, relatives and friends came to the farm for a welcome-home party. The Gruels served ice cream, watermelon and other fruit — delicacies that Emma had long gone without. No doubt the guests begged Emma to tell them all about her time in Germany, and she probably obliged them.

I wonder how Emma felt as she sat there in unaccustomed leisure, plenty and security, surrounded by family and friends instead of sick and wounded and dying men. She seems to have been a strong-minded and practical person, so perhaps she spent little time in philosophical musings about the co-existence of this happy and peaceful home with the bloodshed and devastation across the ocean. No, I expect Emma's thoughts were turning to the down-to-earth question of how next to make herself useful.


Sources:
♦ "Additional Local." Hobart News 5 July 1917.
♦ "Local Drifts." Hobart Gazette 8 June 1917; 20 July 1917.
♦ "Miss Emma Gruel at Home." Hobart Gazette 29 June 1917.
♦ Untitled social column. Hobart News 28 June 1917.