Base Hospital 19 records

Base Hospital 19 arose from a meeting between Major General William C. Gorgas, Surgeon General of the United States Army, and Dr. John M. Swan of Rochester, New York, during the American Public Health Association meeting in Rochester in September of 1915. Gorgas asked Swan if he would be interested in organizing a medical reserve unit in the form of a base hospital comprised of Rochester-area physicians and nurses who could be rapidly mobilized if the United States entered the First World War. Swan rapidly began the process of recruiting the unit, which found itself formalized as a Base Hospital in February 1916 as part of a Red Cross-led initiative to assemble 50 base hospitals across the United States. The unit was allowed to use the Third Regiment armory on Main Street for drill and training. With the entry of the United States into the war in 1917, the base hospitals became a major military asset, and the 153 men of Rochester's unit were mobilized as Base Hospital 19 in December of 1917. Following a formal training period in Rochester in the winter and spring of 1918, the unit was sent to Vichy, France in July of 1918. There, the unit joined the existing hospital center, establishing their own 1000 bed hospital which treated 11,000 patients by February of 1919. The unit left Vichy on February 18, 1919, to return to the United States and mustering out.