The scrapbook documents the wartime service of Martha M. Garrett with photographs, postcards, magazine and newspaper clippings, and ephemera. The photographs depict medical facilities and patients, as well as the surrounding country and its inhabitants. Photographs include the grounds and buildings of Fort Devens as well as several shots of nurses working in the wards. Prior to leaving for England July 12th on the U.S.S. Olympic, Garrett stopped in New York City where she snapped images of Wall Street, the 5th Avenue bus, and sailors drilling in Battery Park. There are also a couple of images of women being trained with life preservers prior to sailing, as well as images nurses and soldiers from Base Hospital #29 parading in New York City on the Fourth of July. From Garrett's time at United States Base Hospital No. 29, there are images of the hospital grounds including parked ambulances outside the receiving ward, group shots of nurses and soldiers and one page is filled with 15 signed passport photos of nurses. She provided internal views of doctor's offices, labs, operating rooms, surgical wards and other medical rooms. We also see the pneumonia and flu wards, men healing from fractures, the nurses' dining room and the men's mess hall. At least one photo shows a surgery being performed and two depict recovering men in beds engaged in rehabilitative embroidery and basket weaving. From Garrett's time at Base Hospital no. 69 at Savenay, France, there are images from around the base including buildings, camouflaged ambulances, nurses relaxing and in the mess hall, and men drilling. Other photos around Savenay include transport ships, hospital trains, destroyed buildings, trenches, dugouts, piles of shells, and wrecked airplanes. There's a multi-shot series of Decoration Day in 1919 at the American Cemetery in St. Nazaire as well as images in and around Verdun. Five photographs capture a military funeral. The scrapbook also includes two large images related to Jane Delano, one showing soldiers standing around her elaborately decorated coffin, the other her funeral procession. Delano is a founded American Red Cross Nursing Service by uniting the work of the American Nurses Association, the Army Nurse Corps, and the American Red Cross. She died in Savenay while on a Red Cross mission and was awarded the Distinguished Service Medal for her efforts in World War I. An earlier page in the album is also devoted to her with a real photo postcard and a small broadside of her biography.
Martha Garrett (1872-1948), of Webster, Iowa, served in the United States Army Nurse Corps during World War I. When the United States first entered the war, Garrett was ineligible for the Army Nurse Corps due to her age. That changed in January, 1918 when the age limit was increased to 45. Garrett was first stationed at Camp Devens, Massachusetts from 22nd March to 28th May, 1918. On July 12th she sailed to England on the U.S.S. Olympic and was assigned to the United States Base Hospital No. 29, in Tottenham on St. Anne's Road. Garrett was later assigned to the Base Hospital no. 69 at Savenay, France, and then to a camp hospital near St. Nazaire, France.
