Valor Friday

Navy Cross

Once again Mason has outdone himself, reminding us Heroes don’t get to pick the fight, but do their all wherever and whenever they are called.

Mason

Continuing my exploration of unusual recipients of valor awards, today we’ll be exploring the four women who have received our country’s second highest award from the Navy, the Navy Cross. Today’s article is especially appropriate as we find ourselves under attack from the same virus these women fought 102 years ago.

Only four women have ever received the Navy Cross, of those three were posthumous awards. All four were awarded for services rendered during World War I and all of these women were a part of the Navy Nurse Corps.

The Navy, up until World War II, did not require combat participation for valor medals, including the Navy Cross and Medal of Honor. Thus these awards discussed today did not involve combat action, but did involve bravery.

Prior to World War I, women generally only served in the military during times of war and only then as nurses. In 1908 the Navy, by act of Congress, created the first peacetime program for women in the Navy, the Navy Nurse Corps. This mirrored the Army’s 1901 admission of women into their nursing corps. The Navy Nurse Corps would remain female only until 1965. After enacting the law, 20 women were inducted into service. They would come to be known as the “Sacred Twenty”.

Lenah Higbee

Among the Sacred Twenty was Lenah Higbee. Higbee was married to US Marine Lieutenant Colonel John Henley Higbee, 36 years her senior, who passed away in April, 1908 and is buried in Arlington National Cemetery. Perhaps inspired by his service, (he’d retired in 1889 after 28 years of service, having started in 1861 during the Civil War), she joined the Navy Nurse Corps in October, 1908. She remained in the Navy until 1922, and for her final 11 years she was Superintendent of the Navy Nurse Corps. This placed her in command of all Navy nursing before, during, and after the Great War as well as the Spanish Flu pandemic.The Spanish Flu struck hard, and it struck fast, starting in 1918 and making a couple trips around the world by 1920. Unlike other flu strains before and since that tended to see high mortality in the elderly or infirm, the Spanish Flu affected predominantly young, otherwise healthy victims and had a high mortality rate.

Wartime censorship of the media on both sides of the World War kept reports of the disease out of the papers. It was feared that knowledge of the virus would undermine morale, both at home and abroad. Spain, being neutral, was under no such restrictions and their papers published the news. Being that the Spaniards were the only ones sharing word of the virus, it received its name from Spain.

Lenah Higbee led a Nurse Corps that numbered only 160 women at the start of American participation in the war and swelled during the war exponentially. By war’s end, 1,550 women had served in the Nurse Corps. For her steadfast and effective leadership during the war and subsequent health crisis, Chief Nurse Higbee was awarded the Navy Cross.

Marie Louise Hidell was 39 in 1918. She’d been in the service since enlisting with the Army Nurse Corps some years before. She’d served in the Panama Canal Zone and so was accustomed to treating yellow fever and malaria. In April of 1918 she was assigned to the Philadelphia Naval Hospital. She arrived there very early in the global Spanish Flu pandemic. A more virulent strain of the Spanish Flu appeared in August simultaneously around the world, including in Philadelphia. The disease by this time had earned the horrific nickname “the purple death” from the color of the faces of the victims as they struggled to breathe.

The World War still raging in Europe probably worsened the spread of the disease. Military camps were set up all over the world training troops for the war. Many of these camps were hastily constructed and were hotbeds for more pedestrian diseases like dysentery due to sanitation issues.

Philadelphia is also a major port for the US Navy. As such, the hospital there became critical in providing care to the military members afflicted with the flu. Nurse Hidell in one night admitted 188 Marines who had come down with the flu. This was an astonishing achievement it was said no other could perform.

Marie Hidell worked day and night to provide care to the men and women in her charge. Her tireless efforts ultimately cost her her life when she came down with the disease herself. She died on September 28 (or 29th by some accounts), 1918. She was awarded the Navy Cross posthumously. An obituary notes that Hidell was “the first nurse to die in the service.” This would tend to indicate she died on the 28th as noted on her Navy Cross citation, because one of her contemporaries died soon after her.

28 September, 1918 was not just the day Philadelphia lost a brave young nurse, but also saw the city (against the advice of medical experts) hold the largest war bond parade the city had ever seen. It is believed that this was why the city was so hard hit in the next few weeks by the Spanish Flu. Eventually thousands would die from it in Philadelphia alone.

Edna Place, who had only graduated nursing school in 1917, had also responded to the crisis as it hit Philadelphia. She’d enlisted as a reserve nurse with the Navy and was put on active duty at the Philadelphia hospital in June of 1918.

Exhibiting the same devotion to duty, Nurse Place contracted the virus as well. She died on September 29, 1918 (according to her death certificate while her Navy Cross citation lists Sept 25).

Our final Navy Cross nurse is Lillian Murphy. Born in Canada, Nurse Murphy was posted at Hampton Roads, Virginia at a Navy operating base there, not far from Philadelphia. By early October, the Spanish Flu was decimating the Norfolk area around the base. Reported cases numbered nearly 9,000 in the area and 3,500 of those were on base.

Nurse Murphy fell ill on October 2nd, 1918 from the disease. She was only a few days past her 31st birthday. She perished from pneumonia (likely related to, or brought on by, the Spanish Flu) on October 10th.

All four women were honored with their Navy Crosses on November 11, 1920, one of the first Armistice Day commemorations (later to become Veteran’s Day here in the US). Only Chief Nurse Higbee was able to personally receive her award.

Thanks once again, Mason.
Hand Salute. Ready, Two!

Category: Guest Post, Valor