Mary Elizabeth Downs, St. Vincent de Paul Hospital (1902-1958)

Born in Buchanan, Virginia, on 14 August 1874, Mary Elizabeth Downs was the eldest daughter of Hezekiah Jordan Downs and Virginia Hudson. Her father worked as a Blacksmith while her mother kept house and looked after Downs and the couple’s three other children, Thomas Madison, Sallie, and Emma Virginia. Downs was likely named after her maternal grandmother, Mary Young. 

In her early twenties, Downs found work as a sewing machine operator in Lynchburg, Virginia. By 1910, she started coursework at St. Vincent DePaul Hospital in Norfolk, Virginia to become a trained nurse. Like many of her fellow classmates, Downs stayed in the nurses’ dormitory near the hospital during her studies. 

In July 1917, Downs enrolled to serve with the United States Nurse Corps, later redesignated as the Army Nurse Corps (ANC) by the Army Reorganization Act of 1918. Formally established in 1901, the Nurse Corps consisted of qualified nurses who were willing to serve in national emergencies for a three-year term overseen by the United States Army Medical Department (AMEDD). To qualify, an applicant needed to be a U.S. citizen, white, female, unmarried, between twenty-five and thirty-five years of age, and a graduate of a program that offered theoretical and practical nursing. Once accepted, applicants were officially appointed to the AMEDD by the Surgeon General of the United States Army. As a direct result of this process, women who served in the Nurse Corps, and later the ANC, were expressly denied military rank prior to and during World War One as they were not considered by the Army to be either enlisted or commissioned personnel. 

As she was forty-two years old at the time of her application, Downs likely concealed her true age from the Corps. Based on information provided in her post-war service questionnaire for the Virginia War Commission in 1919, she may have applied with her birth year listed as 1880. As this date would have still placed her outside of the suitable age range at thirty-seven years old, it is possible that some requirements may have been slightly relaxed during the war or even overlooked on a case-by-case basis. However, this may also be the reason why Downs ultimately did not serve a full three-year term with the Corps. 

First stationed in Anniston, Alabama, Downs spent three months at Camp McClellan (15 March 1918 to 21 June 1918) before she was transferred for overseas service in Europe. After arriving in France on 7 August 1918, she was assigned to Base Hospital No. 41 in the Saint-Denis neighborhood of Paris. The first convoy of patients arrived on 16 August 1918 and over the next six months, she treated patients directly received from western front lines as well as those ill with influenza. Downs herself became a patient during the second wave of the 1918 Influenza Pandemic and was unable to perform her duties for a full two weeks in late November. Base Hospital No. 41 ceased to function on 28 January 1919 and Downs returned to the United States two months later. She was officially discharged from her service with the Corps on 25 April 1919. 

After the war, Downs returned to Norfolk and practiced nursing as a private citizen well into the 1940s. She passed away from congestive heart failure on 5 December 1974 at the Ghent Arms Retirement Residence on Redgate Avenue and is buried in Rosewood Memorial Park in Virginia Beach, Virginia. Her gravestone is adorned with the words, “Nurse US Army.”

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