Women in 1917-1919 were heavily involved in the war effort. They served on the homefront sewing clothes, gathering supplies, and more, and some went overseas to help in Europe. Ada Adcock was one of several Illinois State Normal University women featured in ISNU’s World War I service records collection who experienced the horrors of war from the front lines.
Adcock was born in Stockton, California, but came to Illinois State Normal University to attend the laboratory high school, now known as University High School, and completed one term toward her teaching degree at ISNU before returning to California. She enlisted in the service in November 1917, seven months after the United States declared war on Germany in World War I. She first served at Camp Cody in Deming, New Mexico, as a reserve nurse in Army Nurse Corps. According to the Army Nurse Corps Association, you had to be a white woman, unmarried, between the ages of 25-35, and a graduate of a nursing school to join. They were not considered enlisted in the army, could not receive military rank, and were not trained as soldiers. They did have to endure a physical exam before joining, and they were only sent overseas if they wanted to go. By October 1917, there were 1,000 nurses serving overseas in nine base hospitals. After the armistice was signed, there were 21,480 nurses enrolled in the Army, and 10,000 had served overseas.
Adcock went to Brest, France, on August 14, 1918, with Base Hospital No. 51, and was sent to the Toul Sector. She and her unit were immediately sent to the Battle of St. Mihiel in September 1918 with little equipment. The unit, along with others known as the Justice Hospital Group, occupied a four-story building, two administration buildings, storehouses, and other buildings just behind the fighting. In an article from the Stockton Evening and Sunday Record dated October 28, 1918, Adcock described in a letter that the soldiers coming to the hospital arrived almost a day after they were hurt in the trenches. She wrote, “The horse ambulances bring them over the rough ground and big motor ambulances here.” She also talked about how the soldiers reacted during their treatment: “The boys treasure the shrapnel that is removed from them as though they were made of gold. They have them tied in gauze around their wrist or on their dog chains so they will not lose them.” While she was stationed in Toul, she noted that the German soldiers were treated just the same as the American soldiers. In the 1919 edition of The Index, she said that the German prisoners were the “only part of her work that was hard, in the sense of being distasteful to her.”
She stayed at the Justice Hospital Group through the final engagement in the war, the Meuse-Argonne Offensive. She arrived back in New York on March 6, 1919, and was discharged one month later. She stopped in Normal on her way back to California to visit friends and the ISNU campus. In an article titled “Not all wore helmets: Preserving the work of women in the ‘Great War’” by ISU archivist April Anderson-Zorn, those who spent time with Adcock “enjoyed the bits of experience which she has related and have a new appreciation of the service rendered overseas by our women.” The article also notes that there is little information about Adcock after the war, but if she was like most of the other women in the Army Nurse Corps, she continued her work in the medical field.
Visit the World War I Illinois State Normal University Service Records for more Illinois State Normal University student, faculty, and staff experience in World War I.
