When we refer to casualties of war, we usually think about soldiers who are killed or wounded in battle. But sometimes people who die in a war zone serve their country by taking care of those soldiers. Helen Fairchild was one of those.
Fairchild, who was born in 1885, became a nurse when she graduated from Pennsylvania Hospital in 1913. When the United States entered World War I in 1917, she was one of 64 nurses who volunteered for the American Expeditionary Force. Fairchild was stationed in France, where she volunteered for front-line duty at a casualty clearing station.
What made Fairchild well-known were the letters she wrote to her family that described what life was like for combat nurses during the war.
In a letter to her mother, she wrote, “I am with an operating team about 100 miles from our own base hospital, closer to the fighting lines. I’ll sure have a lot to tell about this experience when I get home. I have been here three weeks and see no signs of going back yet, although when we came we only expected to be here a few days. Of course, I didn’t bring much with me. Had two white dresses and two aprons, and two combinations. Now can you imagine trying to keep decent with that much clothing in a place where it rains nearly every day.
“We all live in tents and wade through mud to and from the operating room where we stand in mud higher than our ankles. It was some task, but dear old Major Harte, who I am up here with, got a car and a man; to go down to our hospital and get us some things. He brought me six clean uniforms and aprons, beside heaps of notes from all the nurses, letters from home and all kinds of fruit and cake.
“We made the trip up to this place in an auto-ambulance 100 miles through France. Oh I shall have books to tell when I get home.”
Unfortunately, Fairchild never made it home to tell her stories. She was exposed to heavy shelling and mustard gas, which exacerbated abdominal pain that she had suffered during her life. The symptoms worsened and Fairchild was diagnosed with a gastric ulcer that obstructed her pylorus. She underwent surgery but soon took a turn for the worse and died on Jan. 18, 1918.
While it wasn’t determined whether Fairchild died as a result of mustard gas exposure or from complications from the use of chloroform during surgery, she died a hero.
Another combat nurse, Ida Downs, memorialized her in a letter saying, “Nurse Fairchild represented the truest type of womanhood and stood for the very best in the nursing profession.”
Fairchild is buried at Somme American Cemetery and Memorial in France.
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