Existing comment:
Navy Nurse Corps indoor uniform, about 1917
Sara Cox wore this uniform as one of twenty nurses admitted to the Navy Nurse Corps in 1908. Known as the Sacred Twenty, they were the first women to join the U.S. Navy. Cox served at the Naval Hospital in Washington, D.C., during the war. Born in Canada, she became an American citizen in 1920 through an act of Congress that expedited naturalization for aliens who served in the U.S. military during World War I.
Both U.S. Army and Navy nurses wore the scarlet-lined blue cape, adapted from use by Red Cross nurses. It became a symbol of American nursing at home and abroad. |