Ione Branch Bain: A North Carolina Nurse in WWI

By Matthew M. Peek, Military Collection Archivist, State Archives of North Carolina

Mary Ione Branch Bain (who went by “Ione” for most of her life) was born on January 24, 1897, in Halifax County, N.C., to Thaddeus Leroy and Mary Branch. Ione’s mother died by 1900, leaving her father to raise four children alone. Prior to World War I, Branch had trained as a nurse. After the United States entered World War I, Ione Branch decided to enlist in February 1918 while she was living in North Wilkesboro, N.C. She traveled to Greensboro, N.C., to consult with Dr. John Wesley Long, who was in the process of organizing a primarily North Carolina federal base hospital — U.S. Army Base Hospital No. 65. Branch received her orders on March 28, 1918, and she proceeded to report at U.S. Army General Hospital №18 in the town of Waynesville in Haywood County, N.C. She was appointed a Nurse R.A.

WWI 61.B1.F1.12: Group photograph of the nurses of Base Hospital №65, taken after the American flag dedication outside of a building in New York City where the nurses were first mobilized for the hospital in August 1918, before being sent to Europe during World War I (August 1918).

General Hospital No. 18 was erected at the White Sulphur Springs Hotel in Waynesville, which the U.S. government leased for its operations. Ione Branch arrived at the hospital on Easter Sunday morning, March 31, 1918. While at General Hospital No. 18, Branch was assigned the job of dietician, planning all of the menus and figuring out calories for the patients, and working with the mess hall to ensure all patients’ menus were able to be fulfilled. On July 28, 1918, Branch was ordered to report at New York City, New York, where she would mobilize for service in France with the newly-formed Base Hospital №65. On September 1, 1918, Ione Branch and Base Hospital No. 65 staff left for Europe aboard the troop transport ocean liner the RMS Baltic, one of the White Star Liner ships (the sister ship of the Lusitania).

WWI 61.B1.F2.7: Snapshot of U.S. Army female nurses with Base Hospital No. 65, pictured in their Army nurses overcoats standing in front of a small stone wall during World War I. The nurse kneeling on the ground (front row, second from right above “+” mark) was the roommate of Ione Branch [believed to be Myatt Herndon]; she was from North Carolina. The nurses in the photograph are the ones with whom Branch went on her 1919 trip to Italy while stationed in Europe. Caption on back reads: “These are the girls I went with on my trip. The one with the marker is my room mate from N.C.” (circa 1919).

When Base Hospital No. 65 was organized by Dr. John W. Long with the assistance of some others in the medical field under the direct authority of the Surgeon General of the U.S. Army. one of the requirements specified by the War Department was that the personnel be secured from North Carolina. The base hospital initially enlisted 32 medical officers, 203 enlisted men, and 100 nurses. 90% of the nurses in the unit were North Carolinians. The nurses were then sent in a body to France where they joined Base Hospital 65 at Kerhuon, France, near Brest — where it remained from early in September 1918 to August, 1919.

WWI 61.B1.F3.9: View of Base Hospital No. 65’s wards in France in 1918 during World War I (1918) [photograph is a reprint from an original photograph].

WWI 61.B1.F3.8: View of Base Hospital No. 65’s wards and additional medical service tents in France in 1918 during World War I. Seen in the foreground are several ambulances and male staff of the Base Hospital (1918) [photograph is a reprint from an original photograph].

The hospital center at Kerhuon, France, was situated four miles southeast of Brest, and about 1½ miles from the railroad station of Kerhuon. The center was planned to consist of eight base hospitals, with a total capacity of 8,000 beds, for embarkation purposes. However, only 4,000 beds had been provided when the armistice was signed on November 11, 1918, and further construction was abandoned. The construction of the center was to be completed by September 15, 1918. However, at that time only about 50 per cent of the buildings were under roof; few of them were entirely finished; the water and sewerage systems still were under construction; and there were no roads or walks of any kind.

Base Hospital No. 65 was the first unit to report at Kerhuon on September 16, 1918, and on September 20th the center was organized. Subsequently, the following additional arrived: Base Hospitals Nos. 105, 92, 120. Unlike the other hospital centers of a like capacity, the Kerhuon center always operated as one hospital, with at least 90 per cent of their activities devoted to receiving, preparing, and evacuating patients to the United States.

WWI 61.B1.F2.12b: Group snapshot of female nurses with Base Hospital No. 65, wearing their white U.S. Army nurses uniforms, standing in a line and laughing, while holding a wooden sign reading “Keep Off The Grass” during World War I (undated) [photograph is a reprint from an original photograph].

Base Hospital No. 65 handled over 40,000 patients during this period. The hospital eventually had a capacity of 4,000. 100 nurses and 200 enlisted men looked after a large number of sick and dying men. The hospital handled wounded men, cases of influenza, pneumonia, pleurisy, cerebro-spinal menengitis, and insanity. In October 1918, the Chief Surgeon of the American Expeditionary Forces called upon Base Hospital No. 65 for two operating teams to be sent to the front as traveling medical teams. This called for a highly trained operating room nurse for each team — two North Carolina women were chosen for these roles. They went with their teams as assigned and spent many weeks in active duty close to the front lines. Supplies, staffing, beds, and time were always short at Base Hospital No. 65.

WWI 61.Oversized.F1.1: Small panoramic group photograph of the nurses of Base Hospital №65 at Camp Kerhuon, France, on July 1919 (July 1919) [Photograph by: Thompson, Illustragraph Company, Petersburg, Virginia]

According to Ione Branch, having felt that her services were no longer urgently required, she resigned from the U.S. Army as a nurse in May 1919. After arriving in the United States at the Demobilization Station in New York City, Branch was honorably discharged from military service in World War I on June 19, 1919. After the war, Ione Branch married William P. Bain on July 23, 1920, in Wilson County, North Carolina. By 1930s, the Bain family was living in the city of Lexington in Davidson County, N.C., where Ione’s husband was working as a cashier in a bank. By 1940, the Bains had moved to Winston-Salem, N.C., where Ione worked as an office nurse at a doctor’s nurse and William was a real estate broker in a private office.

WWI 61.B2.F3.7: View of Ione B. Branch (right) and her granddaughter Carol Jean Nance (left) taken at the fence in front of the White House in Washington, D.C., in July 1958 (July 1958).

From 1922 to 1966, Ione B. Bain served as the nurses’ historian for the Veterans of Base Hospital No. 65. She also assisted in keeping current contact information for all members of the group, so group reunion notices could be received by all of the group’s members. As the years went on, Bain ended up documenting which members were passing away, including keeping newspaper clippings of obituaries of former Base Hospital No. 65 veterans. Bain would correspond with all of the members, discussing personal developments in each of their lives through the 1960s. On June 8, 1967, the remaining officers of the Veterans of Base Hospital No. 65 met at the Robert E. Lee Hotel in Winston-Salem, North Carolina, to discontinue further meetings of the organization, with all of the association’s records sent to the State Archives of North Carolina in Raleigh, N.C., for preservation of the group’s history.

Bain was the founder of the Davidson County Writers Guild. She worked late after the war as a public health nurse for the Davidson County Health Department. She would retire as an industrial nurse for Shuford Mills in Granite Falls, N.C. In her later years, Ione Bain returned to live in Lexington, North Carolina. Ione B. Branch died on November 10, 1991, in Lexington, and was buried in Lexington City Cemetery.

To learn more about her life and service, check out the Ione B. Bain Papers (WWI 61) in the WWI Papers of the Military Collection at the State Archives of North Carolina. You can also view a selection of photograph from her collection online through the State Archives’ Flickr page here: https://bit.ly/2Bbi6Wh.