THE SIBERIAN UNIT

In September 1918, plans were made to send Base hospital No. 93 to Siberia for duty with the American Expeditionary Forces there. One hundred nurses and one dietitian were designated for duty with the hospital and were sent to New York City, to be equipped for this service. Base Hospital No. 93 was to have sailed on October 5, 1918, from San Francisco, Calif., and consequently the members of the unit proceeded to San Francisco on the 28th of September. However, on October 1, 1918, before their arrival, a recommendation was received by the War Department from headquarters, American Expeditionary Forces, Siberia, to the effect that 1 chief nurse with a staff of 25 nurses and 1 dietitian be sent there instead of the base hospital unit originally scheduled for Siberia. As a result, the 27 women who were selected to proceed sailed from San Francisco as part of Evacuation Hospital No. 17, and arrived in Vladivostok on November 4, 1918.

For a few months after their arrival in Siberia the nurses were pleased with the duty there. For quarters they were assigned to Russian barracks, which were fixed over into apartments. The chief nurse in her reports to the superintendent of the Army Nurse Corps was enthusiastic about the way the nurses were adjusting themselves and about the interest they all showed in their work. However, by the spring of 1919, the morale of the group of nurses was considerably lowered, and many were requesting either discharge or transfer to the United States. This condition had been foreseen by the chief surgeon, A. E. F., Siberia, because in March of that year he had requested the Surgeon General to change the conventional two years of foreign duty in this instance to one year, the second year to be served in the Philippine Department. This request was approved by the Surgeon General in a communication which stated that nurses who had served one year in Siberia might be transferred to the Hawaiian or the Philippine Department for duty, provided vacancies existed at the time in those places. The last group of Army nurses left Siberia on April 1, 1920, and reported at Manila, P. I., for duty in the Philippine Department.