Over There: A Tribute to WWI Army Nurse Corps Volunteer Anna Marie McMullen

Allentown Hospital nurse Anna Marie McMullen answered her country’s call in April 1918, shipping off to France along with thousands of other nurses from the U.S. to care for wounded soldiers.

Six months later, suffering from pneumonia, she drew her last breath at an American Expeditionary Forces hospital in Mesves-sur-Loire in central France. It was Oct. 6, 1918. She was 30. A little more than a month later, on Nov. 11, 1918, Germany signed an armistice, ending the “war to end all wars."

McMullen would be one of over 22,000 American women who would eventually join the Army Nurse Corps after a call from American Expeditionary Forces Gen. John J. Pershing. The nurses held no rank and were paid half that of an Army private. Some 36 Allentown Hospital nurses enlisted for war duty in 1918.

This Memorial Day, the Lehigh Valley Health Network (LVHN) family highlights and honors her service. 

McMullen was orphaned at a young age and was raised by her aunt and foster mother, Sarah Ursprung, in Allentown. She attended city schools and graduated from Allentown High School.

McMullen entered Allentown Hospital Training School for Professional Nurses in 1912 and graduated three years later. Allentown Hospital, opened in 1899, was the original building block for what is now LVHN. The site is now Lehigh Valley Hospital–17th Street.

A tribute to McMullen by Allentown Mayor James L. Schaadt, published in the Jan. 6, 1921, edition of The Morning Call, says that after graduation McMullen completed a course in nervous diseases in Massachusetts, then worked in private nursing in locations including Allentown, Washington, D.C., and Easton. She also worked for two years at Illinois Central Hospital in Chicago.

“Out of the 36 nurses furnished by the hospital for service in the World War, she was the only one called to give her life to her country. She was also the only woman from Lehigh County who died in the service,” Schaadt wrote. “Possessed of a sunny and amiable disposition, of sound physical health and strength and of recognized ability as a nurse, she gave early and continually growing promise of distinction in her chosen profession, a promise which failed of fulfillment because of her early and lamented death.”

Having qualified as a Red Cross nurse, McMullen enlisted in the Army Nurse Corps on April 1, 1918, and was first sent to Camp Lewis in Tacoma, Wash. In August 1918, she sailed from Hoboken, N.J., as part of Group E. The passenger list has the words American Expeditionary Forces crossed out and handwritten in its place is “Exceptional Replacement Nurses.”

The U.S. World War I Centennial Commission page on WWI nurses paints a bleak picture of conditions that volunteers such as McMullen likely endured.

“Most had never traveled beyond their hometown. Few had ever visited a foreign land. More than 10,000 sailed from American ports amid blackouts through U-boat-infested waters,” it says. “They slept in hammocks, trudged through knee-deep mud, lived in wooden barracks and sometimes even washed their hair in their own helmets. Enduring rain and snow, disease and danger from bombardment, they nursed more than 320,000 American soldiers sick and wounded.”

The Centennial Commission says that nurses started out working 12-hour shifts, but by the end of the war were working around the clock. “Many suffered from exhaustion. Some fell ill themselves,” reports the commission. “Many died of pneumonia, ear infections, dreaded Spanish influenza and more. A few died in automobile accidents and air raids. None died of combat related injuries.” The principal cause of death for nurses was disease.

Originally interred in a military grave in France, McMullen’s remains were brought back to the U.S. An Aug. 8, 1920, article in The Morning Call notes McMullen’s adoptive mother, Sarah Ursprung, had been notified by the War Department that her daughter’s remains were on their way to the states. Her body arrived in Allentown on Jan. 8, 1921, escorted by two uniformed guards.

Julia Stimson, a nurse who earned the Distinguished Service Medal for her WWI service and ultimately became a colonel in the Army, described the perseverance of nurses like McMullen in the field: 

“They are working terribly hard, sleeping with helmets over their faces and enamel basins on their stomachs, washing in the water they had in their hot-water bags because water is so scarce, operating fourteen hours at a stretch, drinking quantities of tea because there is no coffee and nothing else to drink, wearing men’s ordnance socks under their stockings, trying to keep their feet warm in the frosty operating rooms at night, and both seeing and doing such surgical work as they never in their wildest days dreamed of, but all the time unafraid and unconcerned with the whistling, banging shells exploding around them. Oh, they are fine! One need never tell me that women can’t do as much, stand as much, and be as brave as men.”

On Jan. 11, 1921, McMullen’s funeral was held at the Church of St. Catharine of Siena, then a chapel that in later years would give way to the current Cathedral of St. Catharine of Siena, the seat of the Roman Catholic Diocese of Allentown.

The Morning Call noted that as the funeral procession made its way to the church, soldiers who were patients at the Allentown Hospital Annex paid tribute by displaying an American flag entwined with black bunting, which it said, “silently and eloquently told the sorrow and sympathy of the invalid soldiers for the brave young woman who had made the great sacrifice in the war which had brought them suffering and tribulations.”

The Morning Call noted the pretty church was “crowded to the doors” and numerous veterans groups attended the funeral Mass. McMullen is buried in Sacred Heart of Jesus Catholic Cemetery in Fullerton, known then as Holy Sepulchre Cemetery.

A plaque in McMullen’s honor hangs in the lobby of the former Allentown School of Nursing Building near Lehigh Valley Hospital–17th Street. On a monument outside Stevens Park at Sixth and Tilghman streets honoring those from Allentown’s 10th Ward who served in WWI, her name is listed along with two other nurses.

McMullen was honored in the Allentown Hospital Nursing School yearbook shortly after her passing. The Morning Call, in a story about McMullen in 1984, said the Allentown Hospital Nursing Alumnae Association also paid tribute to her in a resolution after her funeral.

The alumnae group cited her “unselfish response to the call of her country,” that she was called upon to give her life for “her country, for humanity, while in France.”

“Her faith taught her the performance of deeds of benevolence and charity, to which her kind, sympathetic and tender heart naturally inclined her,” the resolution noted. “Every call from the needy and sick met in her an immediate response, and her feet were ever swift upon errands of mercy. Although gone, her deed will live after, and thousands will continue to call her name blessed.”