Harvard Unit armband, May 1916.

Harvard Unit armband, May 1916.

Harvard Surgical Unit.

Great Britain. Army. No. 22 General Hospital (Camiers, France)

World War, 1914-1918--Medical care.

Wallace, M. Blanche (Mary Blanche), 1892-1979.

Armband worn by members of the Harvard Surgical Unit en route to France during World War I.

Mary Blanche Wallace (1892-1979) of Woburn served as a nurse with the third Harvard Surgical Unit, working at General Hospital No. 22 from June 11, 1916, to June 9, 1917. She then returned to France in April 1918 as a member of the American Red Cross Nursing Service, working in hospitals through the end of the war. Blanche Wallis documented her experiences in two scrapbooks filled with newsclippings, photographs, ephemera and memorabilia.

According to the newspaper coverage, “The only identifying insignia that the surgeons and nurses got at the start, at least, were tags for their hand-baggage, containing their names and the number of their staterooms on board the steamer Andania; and white arm-bands, with the Gothic letters in crimson, “H.U.,” which stands for Harvard University, as well as for Harvard Unit.”

Wallace, M. Blanche (Mary Blanche), 1892-1979. Scrapbooks, 1916-1924 (inclusive).

1916-05.

object

1 item.

physical object

H MS b63.1, v.2.

Gift of M. Blanche Wallace to the Archives of Harvard Medical School, 1971.