Iowa Goldstar Military Museum Opens Exhibit on Military Nurses

The Iowa Gold Star Military Museum at Camp Dodge opens an exhibit this weekend chronicling military nurses from 1853 through the Korean War in 1953, featuring the work of nurses both at home and abroad.

Exhibit chronicles a century of military nursing history

The collection tracks the evolution of nursing service across multiple conflicts, beginning well before the formal establishment of official corps.

“In the capacity of Red Cross nurses from Iowa or Army Nurse Corps or Navy Nurse Corps personnel that have served in one capacity, even prior to the Army Nurse Corps, the Navy Nurse Corps. There were volunteer nurses from Iowa that participated in the Civil War treating casualties as volunteer civilian nurses,” Vogt said.

Civil War casualties proved the need for women nurses

The massive influx of wounded soldiers during the Civil War demonstrated an immediate demand for organized medical care. At the outset, male doctors held reservations about the physical and emotional stamina of women in combat environments.

“But by the end of the Civil War, their performance had so impressed army doctors and civilian contract surgeons that they preferred women nurses to men that were assigned as hospital orderlies,” Vogt said.

During the conflict, Iowan Annie Widmire emerged as a pioneer in military nutrition. She developed early diet kitchens, discovering that providing recovering soldiers with fresh fruits and vegetables accelerated healing and built bodily resilience.

World War Two deployment brought extreme danger

Military nursing personnel reached peak numbers during World War Two, counting 57,000 members in the Army Nurse Corps and several thousand more in the Navy Nurse Corps. Nurses served aboard floating hospital ships and directly on the front lines.

“Personnel with the 59th evacuation hospital, they landed on the coast of Italy, and they were on occasion shelled by German artillery,” Vogt said. Medical personnel adapted to the hostile conditions, pitching their tents over areas dug two or three feet below grade to secure baseline protection from incoming fire.

The museum exhibit maps these dangerous deployments alongside simultaneous breakthroughs in medical technology, highlighting the introduction of penicillin and the changing training standards of the era.

Iowa Gold Star Military Museum opens Saturday

Iowa played a direct role in housing returning casualties, hosting several military hospitals, including a specialized orthopedic and amputation facility at Fort Des Moines.

Saturday’s opening event features an honor guard of nurses dressed in period-appropriate historical uniforms. The program also includes a guest speaker presentation by an Air Force nurse who participated in individual evacuations during the withdrawal from Afghanistan.

The grand opening is scheduled for Saturday at 11:00 a.m. at the Iowa Gold Star Military Museum, located at Camp Dodge in Johnston.