Who'll Take Their Places?
Mason City has seen 12 of its nurses go into military service in the past year and already plans are going forward for the organization of Nurse's Aide corps which will help provide substitute assistance for the nurses left on duty here.
The Red Cross volunteers corps will start its first class Monday at the Mercy hospital. Women who are interested in taking up this volunteer project may call the Red Cross for further information.
Of the nurses who have left Mason City on war duty, two are stationed in Ireland, Lieut. Pauline McGuire and Lieut. Aquinas Leehey; one in Australian, Lieut. Mary Kelsh; and two others are members of task forces, Lieut. Mabel Jorgenson and Lieut. Elizabeth Clark.
In this country, Lieut. Rosalie Linnehan, Lieut. Winifred Meade and Lieut. Flora Ross are stationed at Fort Riley, Kans., Lieut. Nan Kramer at Jefferson Barracks, Lieut. Della Zaugg at Kelly field, Lieut. Bernice Rappath at the Army and Navy hospital at Hot Springs and Lieut. Margaret Wagner at Camp Robinson, Little Rock.
Not only do nurses volunteer for army and navy duty, but the supply is also depleted by the nurses who retire from the profession to be married, or take up other work. It takes three years to train a nurse, and because the number of registered nurses cannot be kept up to average, volunteer Nurses Aide corps are being organized all over the United States, and Mason City's effort is a part of the nationwide movement.
Source: The Mason City Globe-Gazette, November 7, 1942 (photo included)
Second Lieutenant Margaret Wagner Now Army Nurse Corps Veteran of Three Years
Daughter of Greene Couple, Visiting Here This Week, Entered Service Year Before Pearl Harbor
Second Lieutenant Margaret Wagner of the United States army nurse corps who arrived in Greene Sunday for a three weeks visit with her parents from Atalanta, Georgia, is a comparative veteran of World War two.
Lieutenant Wagner was a member of the United states army even before "Pearl Harbor", December 7, 1941. She had been in the nurses corps a year before that eventful day.
She received her first army training at Little Rock, Arkansas, in the Camp Robinson station hospital, from January, 1941, to August 1941. She was then transferred to Davis Monthan field, Tuscon, Arizona, where she was stationed for 16 months, until December, 1942, when she was moved to New Jersey for embarkation. She and 18 other surgical nurse missed connections and the boat, which was to carry an entire surgical outfit overseas, by only three days.
Later she was transferred to the Lawson General hospital in Atlanta, where she has since been awaiting her orders to go overseas. She expects that they will come soon.
Lieutenant Wagner traveled by army transport from Atlanta to Ottumwa, and came to Waverly by bus, visiting her sister, Mrs. William Pape, from Friday until Sunday. She is going to Chicago, Illinois, Saturday and return from there to Atlanta by an army transport which will be "going her way." She reports having made the trip from Atlanta to Ottumwa in only six hours.
Source: The Greene Recorder, September 8, 1943 (photo included)
