Margaret McCarthy, nurse.

Margaret Elizabeth McCarthy was born in Cutchogue, NY, in February 1895 to farmer Charles F. McCarthy and his wife, Mary; she eventually had seven siblings. Training as a nurse, she served at the Central Islip [NY] State Hospital, Bellevue, and Fordham hospitals as well as the hospital on Governors Island. McCarthy enlisted in the Army Nurse Corps in April 1918. Interviewed before she sailed for France in June 1918, she stated, “[A]ny girl who would refuse to go help our boys who are fighting to keep us from slavery is not worthy of the name of nurse. I hope and pray to return safely and if I never return my parents have the consolation of knowing that I have done my duty as they and my church have taught me” (County Review [Riverhead, NY], 21 June 1918, 2).

She wrote her mother in September 1918:

I am on night duty and in an hour I’ll be busy right through perhaps until noon. ….

[O]ne day our officers were all called and we were left. How down-hearted everyone was for we didn’t want to be separated [—] we have been through so many big drives together and were used to each other. Later when they had the hospital in readiness we were sent for. Then the long ride in ambulances out past the beautiful hills, on to great stretches of green country reminding one of dear old L[ong]. I[sland].

We passed great convoys of trucks and ambulances resting on the roadside. The boys sleeping on the grass, for perhaps it[‘]s been hours since they have slept. Our boys are everywhere.

We also passed camps, aviation stations, great fields of horses and at one place a camp of negro soldiers. Then ambulances of Salvation Army girls and officers. They passed us lemonade which was thankfully received. Then at a place we waited for further orders was an army hospital train bearing those great letters U.S. and on top of each car a great red Cross.

Think of it. Our boys and we walked through each one of us never knowing what friend we would see. The boys, as always, smiling in the comfy beds, two rows high where they peek out at the passing hills and fields. Of course many of these boys will return home while others after resting at the big bases in Paris will return. The Red Cross is always going in each car with chocolate and cigarettes.