Photograph of members of the University of Virginia School of Nursing. 1911.

In July 1918, the men and women of the University of Virginia's Base Hospital #41 established their unit at L'Ecole de la Legion d'Honneur at St. Denis, France. A week later the unit had 700 wounded soldiers in the wards. Though the staff itself was devastated by the Spanish influenza epidemic, by Armistice Day they had treated 3,000 men. Ella Katherine Fife of the University of Virginia Nursing School, Class of 1912, was one of the nurses.

On October 28, 1918, she wrote home about the flood of patients.

On October 28, 1918, she wrote home about the flood of patients. "The convoys still roll in...at present I have conval[escent] patients entirely helping the doctors do surgical dressings--it leaves the nurses free to bathe and help make the patients comfortable...the majority of the wounds are dressed every day...there are two nurses besides myself in our section of tents, giving 46 patients to the care of each one of us, most of them stretcher cases...many of our boys come directly from the front and get their first operation here, while others are sent from evacuation hospitals."

ELLA KATHERINE FIFE

Three days after Armistice Day, she described the celebrations: "The big Cathedral bell began to ring fast and furious...that old bell seemed to be sounding down thru the ages all the wars and troubles these poor French people have had for generations...the streets were full of them--mobs of them, and all weeping like babies from sheer joy--Flags went up everywhere in a jiffy and Paris was simply wild."