African-American Medical Personnel in the US Army in the First World War.

In WWI, the United States was segregated by custom and law, and the Army obeyed the laws, reducing opportunities for Black medical professionals to serve their country in uniform. This article surveys African-American medical personnel serving in the US Army in World War I. It includes physicians, dentists, veterinarians, and other commissioned officers, as well as medical enlisted men. Overall, despite segregation and associated professional limitations, determined individuals still served with distinction in a variety of roles, opening doors for future advances.

[Contribution of the US Army Nurse Corps to the First World War]. / Contribution de l'US Army Nurse Corps à la Première Guerre mondiale.

A number of American nurses, on an individual basis, gave their assistance to European countries as soon as war was declared, in 1914. In 1917, when the United States entered the war, nurses from the American army arrived on the European continent before the troops. They made a major contribution to the conflict, as testified by the numerous medals they were awarded.

Forward surgery and combat hospitals: the origins of the MASH.

The U.S. Army adopted forward surgical hospitals (SHs) during World War I on the advice of the British and French armies. The purposes were not just to save lives, but to benefit the military by returning more patients to duty and reducing the size of the hospital system through fewer infections and shorter hospital stays. The Army examined the utility of the units at the end of the war and retained them for any future conflicts, but opposition also survived. The question was the utility for the Army: was it worth making a substantial investment, and reducing care for other wounded soldiers, for the most grievously wounded, perhaps 1 percent of the total? Devising an effective way to organize forward SHs was a problem in the interwar years and early in World War II (WWII). But from the late 1930s, the Army never reexamined whether it should provide forward surgery, only how to do so, including pushing surgeons even further forward on the battlefield. At the end of WWII, the Mobile Army Surgical Hospital (MASH) was created to perform the mission, although the MASH was only the latest format.

Origins of the physical profile.

This article examines how the U.S. Army came to adopt the physical profile. In 1945, the Army adopted the physical profile system that has, with some changes, survived to this day. Although the profile system does not always work smoothly, it replaced a system that was failing completely to deliver physically fit men to combat units. The World War II problems were the outgrowth of two World War I systems that had been adopted to speed mobilization by (1) accepting physically substandard men and (2) matching men to a noncombat job by their skills. By simply identifying a soldier as "General Service" or "Limited Service" it did not provide enough information about his limitations. In addition, the Army used an intelligence test to grade manpower, but because it lacked information on a man's physical abilities/limitations, that data were misused to allot manpower. These policies interacted with a societal disdain for the "handicapped" and "substandard" and made it hard to use Limited Service men. Adding detail to the information on physical abilities was the Army's solution.

"Separate, but almost equal": the Army's Negro medical field units in World War II.

Before World War II, the Army had no African American medical units and no plans on how to utilize African American personnel. A first plan to sideline blacks into menial support positions was implemented but then overruled in the middle of the war. Separate units were formed, which performed some support functions, but also focused on preventive medicine work--mainly, insect control. Other duties included cross-loading litter patients in the evacuation chain, a laborious but morale-boosting job for which some units received commendations. Several ambulance companies were organized, performing solidly. In the face of official disapprobation and disinterest in African Americans serving, the men of these units sought to contribute to the war effort and took pride in doing their best.

Brigadier General James Stevens Simmons (1890-1954), Medical Corps, United States Army: a career in preventive medicine.

James Simmons began his career in the US Army as a laboratory officer and his assignments progressed into tropical medicine research. His interests and work evolved into preventive medicine (PM, as the Army termed public health), and he took both a PhD and a Doctorate in Public Health. As the Army's leading PM officer he was appointed head of PM in 1940 and guided the Army's PM effort through World War II. His responsibility ran from gas masks through healthy nutrition and occupational health to an enormous variety of diseases; by the war's end, the breadth and importance of PM was reflected in the Preventive Medicine Division, having fully one-sixth of all military personnel at the Surgeon General's Office. Simmons used his strong professional credentials to tap into civilian medicine for expertise the Army lacked and he established organizations that survive to this day. After retirement, he sought to expand the field of public health and raise another generation of public health physicians.