Thousands of World War I wounded were treated at “Little Nebraska” in France

A century ago, there was large military hospital dubbed “Little Nebraska” in France. Nebraska volunteers started and staffed Base Hospital 49 during World War I.

The United States entered World War I in 1917 with a lot of passion and patriotism. But not much of a plan.

“We're basically lacking in weapons, equipment, organization, ships to transport guys. We have no airplanes, we have no tanks,” historian Sandra Reddish said. She is the western Nebraska-based historic sites coordinator for the Nebraska State Historical Society. “Yeah, we're really behind the eight ball.”

That included a lack of medical care for wounded soldiers. The U.S. Army had a plan that included a handful of hospitals.

“The kind of attitude, I think, of the military is, ‘well, when we have something to deal with, then we'll call people up and it will be okay and we have plans in place.’ historian Marilyn Holt said. “Well, they did have a plan in place. It just didn't accommodate what was actually happening on the front in Europe.”

Holt wrote about a very Nebraska part of the solution in an article called “Nebraska’s Base Hospital No. 49 in World War I,” which is published in the winter 2017 edition of the Nebraska State Historical Society publication “Nebraska History.”

In 1917 doctors from what’s now the University of Nebraska’s Medical Center recognized the problem and started plans to become one of 50 field hospitals privately organized with Red Cross assistance, War Department authority and “privately funded” with a hefty price tag of at least $100,000.

“That's really a lot of money to ask your home state to raise. And it all had to be raised out of private donations and somehow they did it,” Holt said. “It is all coming out of individuals pockets, private business, small business, big companies or for example they have the campus day at the University of Nebraska to raise money.”

Hospital 49 was up and running in August of 1918. It was part of a large complex of several hospitals in the small French village of Allerey, about 180 miles west of the frontlines.

“The whole complex will have its own chapel, their mess halls, the motor pool. Everything that you would expect at a military installation,” Holt said. “There are railroad tracks that come through the center which are important because the railroads tracks are going to be bringing the trainloads of wounded and sick into the hospital. The buildings themselves, of course, aren't meant to be permanent so they look very temporary. They're thrown up, wooden barracks. Many times you see lines and lines of tents because a lot of times that's where the medical personnel actually lived were in the tents, not in the barracks. The barrack-like buildings are for the hospital patients.”

The 400 doctors, nurses and other Hospital 49 staff sometimes slogged through mud, because the facility had many bare earth floors.

“When you see photographs you do see pictures of nurses with mud up to their knees, doctors with mud all over them.”

“It just, it looks awful,” Holt added, laughing. “You have to really admire people that put themselves in that kind of situation especially when they did not have a very good idea of what to expect. They really didn't.”

These civilian doctors and nurses became military personnel, assigned to units, when they joined the hospital.

“So they're under military command which gets kind of confusing for people because one minute you're a doctor, a civilian doctor and as soon as you say yes you're going to volunteer to be part of this what is really a private hospital, you become a member of the military,” she said.

Each of these hospitals had specializations. Nebraska’s Hospital 49 had several. One was called “grave surgical cases,” injuries to body parts that might even lead to amputation. Another was what Holt called medicine’s discovery of a new disease of the mind. Today we’d call it PTSD. Then it was “shell shock.”

“That is the first time that psychiatrists, doctors actually began to talk about the reaction that soldiers have to this horrendous conflict you know the bombing, the trench warfare, just on and on and on day after day,” Holt said. “Hospital 49 actually had brought over a psychiatric doctor who was teaching and had practiced in Nebraska and he was the resident psychiatrist and occasionally another psychiatrist would come in and work with him.”

Holt says they’d first try to treat these “shell shock” victims near the frontlines so soldiers might be able to return to combat.

“However, if that treatment didn't work then the person was moved back to the secondary tier which would be Hospital 49,” she said, "where you got more intense treatment and they used a variety of drugs, they used talk treatment, talk therapy, quiet time, just trying to take all of the stimulus out of an environment so the person didn't keep reacting.

“The treatment plan is much more progressive than we would anticipate however the public response to someone who has shell shock was usually not very sympathetic because people did not understand it,” Holt said.

Hospital 49 had a short life. It ceased operations in January of 1919, a couple months after the war ended, and the doctors, nurses and staff headed mostly back to Nebraska. In five months they treated 5,000 patients. Addison Sheldon, Nebraska State Historical Society director at the time, visited the hospital when it was up and running. Holt said he found a place comforted by camaraderie.

“These are Nebraskans with Nebraskans,” Holt said. “And, this sense of we're here together. It's kind of a comfort. We know about each other.”

A bond that likely helped this bunch of patriotic volunteers during their brief time together at “Little Nebraska” in France.