For more than two centuries, military nurses served America – on the water, in the air and on land—in conflicts stateside and abroad. Some of these nurses were wives, slaves, college graduates, volunteers, or nuns. It wasn’t until the establishment of the Army, Navy and Air Force Nurse Corps that military nurses were trained, paid and recognized as a necessary part of the U.S. fighting force.

Army Nurse Corps

During the Spanish-American War in 1898, the Army hired more than 1,500 female civilian nurses to care for the wounded. However, early Nurse Corps commissions weren’t considered part of the regular Army. Nurses were given equivalent rank in the Nurse Corps. In 1899, the Dodge Commission published a report detailing the contributions, value and need for female nurses and in 1901, the Army Nurse Corps was established under the Army Reorganization Act.

After the U.S. entered World War I, the Army Nurse Corps grew to more than 20,000 between 1917 and 1918. The Army School of Nursing opened in 1918 and helped raise standards in training and care. Army Nurse Corps numbers diminished to 1,500 as World I ended, but with the start of World War II, the numbers increased again.

“Fixed wing air evacuations moved the wounded to definitive care more quickly, and flight nursing was born,” cited the Army Medical History Office. The first class of Army flight nurses graduated in February 1943. In 1944, Congress passed a bill granting Army and Navy nurses genuine military rank, for the duration of the war and six months after. In that same year, the Army commissioned its first African-American nurse Della Raney Jackson. By 1945, the Army Nurse Corps totaled 57,000. During the war, 215 Army nurses died while serving. Known as both the ‘Angels of Bataan’ and ‘Battling Belles of Bataan,’ 77 nurses who were stationed in the Philippines were held as prisoners of war in and around Manila for 37 months; 66 were Army nurses and 11 Navy nurses.

With the first U.S. ground action of the Korean War in July 1950, 57 nurses arrived with combat forces. A total of 540 Army nurses served in Korea. More than 6,000 nurses served in Vietnam. Between 1990 and 1991, approximately 2,200 Army nurses served in Operation Desert Shield/Desert Storm. In 2007, Capt. Maria Ines Ortiz became the first Army nurse killed since the Vietnam War. She was killed by a mortar attack during Operation Iraqi Freedom.

In 2011, Lt. Gen. Patricia Horoho was appointed the Army surgeon general and assumed command of the Army Medical Command, the first Army nurse to do so. She has held every level of leadership in Army Medicine including deputy surgeon general as well as chief of the Army Nurse Corps.

Navy Nurse Corps

Women had been working unofficially as nurses aboard Navy ships and in Navy hospitals for nearly 100 years when Surgeon General of the Navy Presley M. Rixey requested approval for female nurses on hospital ships and naval hospitals in 1907. The Navy Nurse Corps was established the following year. The first group of 20 nurses had to rent a house and cook their own meals since the Navy did not provide quarters for them.

Legislation granted Navy nurses full military rank in 1944 and by 1945 the Navy Nurse Corps totaled 10,968. That same year, Phyllis Daley became the first African-American commissioned in the Navy Nurse Corps. In 1947, the Army-Navy Nurses Act created an official staff corps. Members became permanent officers, and were paid accordingly.

In 1983, Capt. Mary Hall became the first nurse to serve as the Commanding Officer of a Navy medical facility. She was later promoted to rear admiral.

Air Force Nurse Corps

Before World War II, nurses were deemed unnecessary to the Air Corps, according to Philip A. Kalisch and Beatrice J. Kalisch in their book “American Nursing, A History.” The policy was reversed after the war began and in 1949, more than a thousand Army nurses were transferred to form the new Air Force Nurse Corps. 

Of this group, 389 became “joint staff” in Army general hospitals, where they provided care for the Air Force. In 1951, joint staffing in military hospitals ended. All Air Force nurses were assigned to duty at Air Force installations. At the peak of the Korean War, 2,991 Air Force nurses were on active duty.

In 1999, Air Force Col. Linda McHale became the first Air Force nurse to be selected as a command surgeon when she became the command surgeon of the Air Force Reserve Personnel Center.

Part III: Male Military Nurses

The Army and Navy Nurse Corps were limited to women until after the Korean War. The law that created the two Nurse Corps barred men. The third and final part of this series will examine the roots, roles and future of male nurses in military nursing.