Gravesite of Harriet Lelia Arrington (1888-1982)

A graduate of the nursing program at St. Vincent DePaul Hospital in Norfolk, Virginia, Harriet Lelia Arrington served as a nurse with the United States Nurse Corps and the Army Nurse Corps (ANC) during World War One. First stationed in Anniston, Alabama, Arrington spent four months working at the Base Hospital at Camp McClellan before she was transferred for overseas service in Europe. After arriving in France in July 1918, she spent six months treating patients directly received from western front lines as well as those ill with influenza. Upon her return to the United States in March 1919, Arrington was assigned to Debarkation Hospital No. 2, later redesignated as General Hospital No. 41, on Staten Island, New York City. She was relived from active duty on 19 January 1920 per her own request.

Born in Granville County, North Carolina, on 28 March 1888, Harriet Lelia Arrington was the eldest child of Edward Dubarry Arrington and Elizabeth M. Eakes. Arrington spent much of her childhood on her family’s farm near Oxford, North Carolina, and was likely named after her paternal grandmother, Paulina Harriet Buntin. 

Around her early twenties, Arrington started coursework at St. Vincent DePaul Hospital in Norfolk, Virginia, to become a trained nurse. Like many of her fellow classmates, she stayed in the nurses’ dormitory near the hospital during her studies. After she graduated from St. Vincent’s on 21 March 1913, Arrington practiced private nursing for several years in Durham, North Carolina. 

In March 1918, Arrington 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 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. This policy continued well into the 1940s during which Arrington’s younger sister, Patsy Ethel Arrington, also served with the ANC. 

First stationed in Anniston, Alabama, Arrington spent four months working in the surgical ward and operating room of the Base Hospital at Camp McClellan before she was transferred for overseas service in Europe. After setting sail for France in July 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. Base Hospital No. 41 ceased to function on 28 January 1919 and Arrington returned to the United States two months later. Next, she was assigned to Debarkation Hospital No. 2, later redesignated as General Hospital No. 4, on Staten Island, New York City. She was relived from active duty on 19 January 1920 per her own request. Arrington’s Statement of Service card, created by the United States War Department for use by the North Carolina Adjutant General’s office, does not elaborate on the circumstances surrounding this request; neither does Arrington’s service questionnaire for the Virginia War Commission completed by her own hand in 1921. 

After her service with the Corps, Arrington returned to her childhood family home in Granville County and accepted a nursing position with the local school district in Oxford. Later, she worked as a nurse for the Philadelphia Hospital for Contagious Diseases in Philadelphia, Pennsylvania, and for tubercular sanatoriums in Crown Point, Indiana, and Black Mountain, North Carolina, before eventually returning to practice private nursing in Durham. 

On 11 December 1982, Arrington passed away at the Adams and Kinton Nursing Home in Lillington, North Carolina, and is buried in Maplewood Cemetery in Durham alongside her parents and two of her younger siblings. Her gravestone is adorned with the words, “Army Nurse Corps, World War I.”

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