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Unit:
Army Nurse Corps, 3rd Army Expeditionary Forces
Date of Birth:
May 24, 1893
Hometown:
Chicago, Illinois
Date of Death:
May 22, 1987
Ethel Gladstone was born in England in 1893. Gladstone and her family moved to the Chicago area around 1900. Her father, Lemach, passed away in 1908 and her mother, Toba, died in 1912 leaving Gladstone and her five siblings to fend for themselves.
Gladstone took nursing classes at West Side Hospital in Chicago becoming a registered nurse in 1916. In March 1918, with the United States at war with Germany and the Central Powers, Gladstone joined the U.S. Army Nurse Corps and served with the 3rd Army Expeditionary Forces. With very little training, Gladstone was sent to France arriving in early summer 1918.
Gladstone was immediately sent to Evacuation Hospital Number 7 in eastern France. Evacuation hospitals were mobile, temporary hospitals where doctors and nurses tended to wounded soldiers. At Evacuation Hospital Number 7, Gladstone and her fellow nurses dealt with the overwhelming number of American casualties resulting from the Battle of St. Mihiel in September 1918.
The operating teams at this temporary hospital faced 170 surgeries per day, while the facility was designed to perform approximately 144 surgeries per day. Gladstone and her fellow nurses received commendations from Major General Charles P. Summerall for bravery and devotion to duty during the Battle of St. Mihiel.
After the war, Gladstone remained in Europe serving as a nurse in the occupied areas of Germany. She and some of her fellow nurses took the opportunity to travel to Paris in February 1919. In April 1919, Gladstone received orders to report to La Baule on the coast of France to prepare for departure back to the United States.
Gladstone set sail on May 15, 1919 from Brest, France on the SS Imperator arriving in Hoboken, New Jersey on May 22.
Upon her return to the United States, Gladstone moved to Sacramento, California where she served as a sanitarium nurse. Gladstone married Charles J. Huber in 1922 and they had a child, Robert, in 1926. Charles Huber died in 1940. Gladstone later married Jacob Shapiro and settled in Fairfax, Virginia.
Ethel Gladstone Shapiro died of pneumonia on May 22, 1987 and is buried at Quantico National Cemetery in Triangle, Virginia.
American Red Cross. Five Thousand by June: Graduate Nurses Your Country Needs You. Poster. 1918. National Library of Medicine (C01402). Image.
Annex: Evacuation Hospital #6 and Evacuation Hospital #7; Records of the American Expeditionary Forces — World War I, Record Group 120 (Box 715); National Archives at College Park, College Park, MD.
Bain News Service. Army School of Nursing, Camp Wadsworth…. Photograph. September 24 1918. National Archives and Records Administration (165-WW-257A-019). Image.
California. Sacramento County. 1920 U.S. Census. Digital Images. https://ancestry.com.
California. Sacramento County. 1930 U.S. Census. Digital Images. https://ancestry.com.
Camp Hospitals #91 and #92; Records of the American Expeditionary Forces — World War I, Record Group 120 (Box 680); National Archives at College Park, College Park, MD.
Duff, Lieutenant Adrian. View of the tents, canteen, kitchen…. Photograph. October 14, 1918. National Archives and Records Administration (111-SC-30554). Image.
Eddy, Private First Class C. L. Nurses at Base Hospital No. 44... Photograph. January 20, 1919. National Archives and Records Administration (111-SC-46425). Image.
“Ethel Gladstone.” Jewish Virtual Library. Accessed December 3, 2018. https://www.jewishvirtuallibrary.org/ethel-gladstone.
“Ethel Gladstone.” Jewish Women’s Archive. Accessed December 3, 2018. https://jwa.org/people/gladstone-ethel.
Ethel Gladstone, R-File, National Archives and Records Administration — St. Louis.
Ethel Gladstone. U.S. Army Transport Service, Passenger Lists, 1910–1939. Digital Images. https://ancestry.com.
Ethel Gladstone. U.S. Department of Veterans Affairs, BIRLS Death File, 1850–2010. Digital Images. https://ancestry.com.
Ethel Gladstone. Virginia Death Records, 1912-2014. Digital Images. https://ancestry.com.
Evacuation Hospital #7; Records of the American Expeditionary Forces — World War I, Record Group 120 (Box 716); National Archives at College Park, College Park, MD.
Evacuation Hospital #29; Records of the American Expeditionary Forces — World War I, Record Group 120 (Box 773); National Archives at College Park, College Park, MD.
Illinois. Cook County. 1910 U.S. Census. Digital Images https://ancestry.com.
Lynch, Charles, Ford, Joseph, and Weed, Frank. The Medical Department of the United States Army in the World War: Volume VIII Field Operations. Washington, D.C.: U.S. Army Medical Department, 1926. https://history.amedd.army.mil/booksdocs/wwi/fieldoperations/default.htm.
National Museum of American Jewish History. Women in the Military: A Jewish Perspective. Washington, D.C.: National Museum of American Jewish Military History, 1999. https://play.google.com/books/reader?id=1OMTBAAAQBAJ&hl=en&pg=GBS.PP1.
Returns of the Army Nurse Corps at Evacuation Hospitals, 1918–1919; Records of the American Expeditionary Forces — World War I, Record Group 120 (Box 1); National Archives at College Park, College Park, MD.
The American Battle Monuments Commission operates and maintains 26 cemeteries and 31 federal memorials, monuments and commemorative plaques in 17 countries throughout the world, including the United States.
Since March 4, 1923, the ABMC’s sacred mission remains to honor the service, achievements, and sacrifice of more than 200,000 U.S. service members buried and memorialized at our sites.
