Monthly Archives: August 2017

The Base Hospital No. 9 contingent sails

07 Monday Aug 2017

Posted by in Base Hospital No. 9, Governors Island

≈ Comments Off on The Base Hospital No. 9 contingent sails

The Finland took the doctors, nurses, and medical staff to France.

I’m sure many remember my posts of a few weeks back about about Dr. Robert D. Schrock and the physicians and staff of Base Hospital No. 9. The men drilled for several weeks time at Governors Island through a brutal heatwave in July-August 1917. As far as basic training goes, they got off easily; it could have been much longer. There was just no time to waste in getting this medical contingent to Europe however. They were that needed and time was of the essence. Plus military authorities figured that hospital staff could train aboard the transport ship, honing the skills they would need in the hospitals tending the wounded.

Today marks the 100th anniversary of the doctors, nurses and corpsmen setting off. The doctors left Governors Island at about 4:00 am on 7 August 1917. Their ferry crossed the harbor and picked up the nurses at Ellis Island before cruising into the North (Hudson) River. There, the Finland was docked at Pier 11. The New York and New Jersey docks were filled with spies, and authorities did all they could to keep the departure as secret as possible. There is no mention of it in either the New York Times or the Brooklyn Daily Eagle. It was an uneventful day but represented over a year’s worth of work on the part of New York Hospital, getting permission, raising the funds, and choosing who would go to Europe. The Finland sailed in the early afternoon, made quarantine, and was off in the Atlantic to face any potential u-boats on the way to France.

(images/Base Hospital No. 9, A.E.F.)

Three years and counting

01 Tuesday Aug 2017

Posted by in Great War centennial

≈ Comments Off on Three years and counting

Kaiser Wilhelm II and Emperor Franz Josef

August 1, 1917 marked the three-year anniversary of Germany’s declaration of war on Russia. Austria-Hungary had declared war on Serbia on July 28, but Kaiser Wilhelm II’s announcement of hostilities took things to a new level. Armies across Europe were now mobilizing with even greater urgency. For the most part Europeans and Americans were not reflecting too much in the early dog days of August 1917. The British and their allies were fully occupied against the Huns in Flanders. Austro-Hungarian troops were driving the Russians back on the Eastern Front in Galicia. Meanwhile the Wilson Administration was doing all it could getting up to speed, which was taking more time than anyone would have liked. One can imagine that the fighting in Ypres, especially for the Germans, had taken on a sense of urgency with the realization that the Americans were already trickling in. Pershing was in Paris for a full month by this time.

Still, people did pause and meditate on the events of the past thirty-six months. Much had happened and millions were already killed. Franz Josef had died in 1916 after sixty-eight years on the Austro-Hungarian throne. By August 1917 Nicholas II of Russia had been deposed; he and his family were in exile in Tsarskoye Selo, the royal palace in St. Petersburg, where the  Romanoffs were a tourist attraction for curious gawkers who came to watch them garden. The Germans seemed to be the most invested in the third anniversary. Kaiser Wilhelm II was out in public a fair amount. By this time he had a collection of 10,000 books on the Great War to go along with his trove of photographs. If contemporary accounts are to believed, Berlin’s Royal Library now held 50,000 books on the Great War published just since the war began. Despite everything, optimism in Germany was apparently holding. At the time of the third anniversary enthusiasts in Germany formed a society within the Hindenburg Museum in Posen for members to share photographs, monographs, and Great War-related memorabilia.

(image/New York Public Library)