U.S. ARMY NURSE CORPS

The United States Army Nurse Corps was established by law in 1901. With no draft for nurses, this law directed the U.S. Surgeon General to maintain a reserve list of nurses qualified to serve in times of national emergency.

In 1940, the U.S. Army had less than one thousand regular army nurses on active duty. With the threat of global war, nurses on the reserve list were called up to serve a one-year tour of duty. They worked in evacuation hospitals, in places such as Sicily, where they handled an average of 100 new casualties a day.

AND IF I PERISH by Evelyn M. Monahan and Rosemary Neidel-Greenlee portrays the work of frontline army nurses during World War II. This book influenced my choice of background for protagonist Pepper Bibeau in the novel For Every Action.

Unlike the frontline nurses of WWII, however, Pepper is portrayed as a former army nurse who had served during the Vietnam Conflict. Pepper’s experiences are an amalgam of all nurses who served in times of war, and are meant to honor the nurses who served in U.S. wars from World War II through Desert Storm and beyond.