As we enter the great centenary of the World War I anniversaries one of the enduring memories is of epic carnage. The battlefield casualties on all sides of this conflict still stun the mind today. The image of the Daughter of Charity as a battle-field nurse whether in the Crimean War or the American Civil War is an enduring one. However, the greatest involvement of the Daughters of Charity in war nursing was undoubtedly the Great War. Throughout France, and throughout the combatant countries as casualties mounted military hospitals sprang up everywhere hastily thrown together in commandeered schools, orphanages, noble chateaus and other large institutional spaces. In France in particular the sisters who had only a decade before been expelled from French health care at the separation of Church and State were now welcomed back without hesitation. The attached is a 1916 postcard issued by the Societe Francaise de Secours aux Blesses Militaires (the French Red Cross). It had its headquarters at 21, rue Francois 1er (Paris VIII). This card is a scene from the Val de Grace Military Hospital in Paris and captures a haunting moment as a wounded soldier (to the right) is carried by stretcher into the ward, accompanied by the surgeon as the other patients, a lay nurse, and a Daughter of Charity stop for a moment as the scene is captured.

This postcard was recently purchased for the Vincentiana collection at Archives and Special Collections of DePaul University.