Legacies: A History Journal for Dallas and North Central Texas, Volume 4, Number 1, Spring, 1992 Page: 30
48 p. ; 26 cm.View a full description of this periodical.
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Association of Women Physicians; and a frequent
public speaker on topics of health and child welfare.3
None of these prepared her for war.
Nurses had served with the United States
Army in the Spanish-American War of 1898, but
the Medical Reserve Corps barred women physicians.
To Dr. Hopkins, whose specialty was pediatrics,
an assignment to the Red Cross rather than
the military made sense, for she was interested in
working with refugee children.4 On July 27 she
reached Paris, where she spent the next two weeks
signing papers, filling out forms, and waiting for
approval by various American and French officials.5
Before she finished with the red tape-or the
red tape with her!-the Smith College Relief Unit
urgently requested a woman physician.
Four "Ivy League" women's colleges commissioned
special groups of alumnae for reconstruction
work in Europe, but the Radcliffe,
Wellesley, and Vassar units were broken up by Red
Cross administrators and assigned as individuals.
Only the Smith unit retained its independence and
integrity as an organization. Similarly, the National
American Woman Suffrage Association
joined the New York Infirmary for Women and
Children to send a mobile unit, the Women's Overseas
Hospital, staffed entirely by women physicians
and called the Women's Overseas Hospital.
Barred from the military, women searched for
other ways to serve their country. Dieticians, secretaries,
social workers, nurses, nurses' aides, and
physicians, plus women who could drive motor
vehicles and speak French-all found their skills
welcome, military discrimination notwithstanding,
once they reached Europe.6
Considering herself lucky to be assigned to
the Smith Unit, May Hopkins rode out of Paris on
August 12, 1918, at 3 p.m., with eleven other
women in three French military vehicles. Their
destination was the front lines.
World War I was fought from fixed positions.
For over three years, in battle after battle,
tens of thousands and sometimes hundreds of thousands
of men died on both sides as huge armies
hurled themselves against each other across open
fields chewed by artillery into a muddy, barren
moonscape, "no man's land." By 1918 the Allies'
only hope was American men; the Germans' last
chance, to win before the "doughboys" arrived.
Germany's best opportunity came during
30the first six months of 1918. With the Bolshevik
triumph in November 1917, the Russians withdrew
from hostilities and ordered their troops home.
Immediately, the Germans began to build their
forces for a major offensive in northern France.
With thousands of seasoned veterans now freed
from the eastern front, German leaders hoped to
defeat the French and British before the United
States could deploy significant numbers of men.
The German drive toward Paris began in March
1918.
During spring and into summer, the fighting
spread along a frontier nearly 200 miles in length.
In early May the Germans were only fifty miles
from Paris, at Chateau-Thierry. American troops
fought their first major engagement here, along the
banks of the Marne River, and in the following
weeks battles raged around the town. The Germans
captured Chateau-Thierry in mid-July only to lose
it again within a week.7 As she rode toward the
front that day in August, May Hopkins still expected
to tend refugees being evacuated from the
heavy fighting.
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Dallas County Heritage Society. Legacies: A History Journal for Dallas and North Central Texas, Volume 4, Number 1, Spring, 1992, periodical, 1992; (https://texashistory.unt.edu/ark:/67531/metapth35116/m1/32/: accessed May 4, 2024), University of North Texas Libraries, The Portal to Texas History, https://texashistory.unt.edu; crediting Dallas Historical Society.