“I wanted to go so I went!" Many people are worth remembering and one particular veteran who lived and walked among us for a time at Seward Post 5 was Edna Wier. She was active in many community organizations, especially our post, and was quite outspoken. Most who knew her will always cherish her memory. But many in Seward today never knew the woman. She was one of many of her generation who responded to service during what was then called The Great War – now known as World War I (1914-1918). None of these veterans are alive – the last one died a few years ago. A U.S. Army nurse during that war, she moved to Seward when she was in her late fifties in 1951. She soon met longshoreman Ted Weir, and the next year they were married at Circle Hot Springs. Her marriage to Ted was would be her fifth and last. Her active participation and leadership in the local American Legion and St. Peter’s Episcopal Church – as well as her presence in every Fourth of July parade – kept alive the memory of a war that today has passed into memory. Until she was confined to a bed at the Wesleyan Nursing Home in later years, she was often seen walking around town even in winter – using a cane, umbrella or ski pole and wearing heavy wool socks on over her shoes to keep from slipping on the ice. Some recall her at the American Legion in a wheelchair with her little dog in a bedpan wrapped in a fluffy blanket. We knew her as Edna – Edna Weir – but she had been born Edna Mary Becker. Throughout her life before she met Ted, she would also be known as Edna Coughlin, Edna Quinsler, Edna Diez and Edna Fountain. Many women served in the Army Nurse Corps during World War I – the actual number is 21,480. About half of them, over 10,000, served in France as part of the American Expeditionary Force (A.E.F.). Four of those 10,000 nurses earned an award second only to the Medal of Honor. They were given the Distinguished Service Cross. Three of those four were seriously wounded. They were Miss Jane Jeffery, Beatrice MacDonald, Helen Grace McClelland, and Isabelle Stambaugh. (As was Edna, these women were all considered Reserve Nurses in the Army Nurse Corps. They were actually Red Cross nurses assigned to the Army Reserve with officer status but with no rank or benefits. Edna Coughlin and other reserve nurses later fought for actual military status as authentic Army veterans after the war.) Only 24 nurses received the Distinguished Service Medal, in merit right under the Distinguished Service Cross. Edna was one of those. The fact that she was not wounded herself was due to mere chance, for – after working several months at Base Hospital No. 22 outside of Bordeaux, France, in an area called the Beau Desert – she volunteered to serve for nearly a month on the front lines as part of a small evacuation medical unit under constant fire during the war’s last major offensive – the Meuse-Argonne. As her Presidential citation notes: “As a member of an emergency medical team during an extended period of active operations, Reserve Nurse Coughlin served the non-transferable wounded of six divisions during the advances at Glorieux, Fromerville, Bethincourt, Septsarges, Bantheville, and Dun-sur-Meuse. She courageously administered to the gravely wounded in the advanced area under fire of shells and aerial bombs, rendering a service of particular value to the American Expeditionary Forces.” What does it mean when it says she served the “non-transferable” and “gravely wounded” in an “advanced area”? Typically each division had two evacuation hospitals, but the army never met that standard. Of the 42 divisions, 29 of which were in combat, there were only 37 evacuation hospitals – and 22 of those were in combat. Because of the award she was given, it’s most likely that Edna was part of a combat evacuation unit. She worked as far forward in the fighting as nurses were allowed. Searching for information about Edna’s early life and war years – before she came to Seward – has been a fascinating experience fraught with frustration and rewarded with some success. For now – this is her story – as far as our historian Doug Capra has been able to uncover it. Edna Mary Becker was born in Chicago on Sept. 23, 1893, the daughter of Joseph and Emma Groethman Becker. The 1900 U.S. Census lists her with four sisters and three brothers. Her age is recorded as one year old. She attended grammar school and high school in Chicago. The Cook County, Illinois Marriage Index (1871-1920) records her marriage to Michael P. Coughlin, age twenty-two, on July 8, 1909. Edna’s age is listed as twenty. (Notice the discrepancy with dates. In 1900, Edna would have been seven years old. Her brother Albert is listed as seven, and she as one. Census records are not famous for their accuracy. My guess is that the census taker confused the two siblings. At her marriage in 1909, Edna would have been sixteen, not twenty as noted in the record. If this were a sudden marriage between two young people, it wouldn’t be uncommon for one or both to lie about their ages. I’m still working to authenticate these documents, but my educated guess is that they belong to the correct Edna Mary Coughlin.) In 1911, a son was born in Chicago – Joseph D. Coughlin. In interviews, Edna said she was suddenly widowed. This would be somewhere around 1911 or 1912. (I have been unable to find records of a divorce from or the death of her husband.) From an obituary in the January 1, 1971, Arizona Republic, we do learn of the death of Edna’s son on Dec. 31, 1969 in Phoenix. Joseph had served in the Navy during World War II. After the war he returned Chicago and worked as a sales manager for the Alco-Flex Co., retiring about 1969 and moving to Phoenix. His survivors included his wife, Suzanne; a son, Daniel; and a daughter, Patricia. Edna Weir from Seward, Alaska, is listed as his surviving mother. (Edna probably has descendants who may still be living in Phoenix and Chicago, and I’m trying to track them down for more information.) As a single mother with a young child, Edna found herself needing to support herself. Her grandmother lived in Kenosha, Wisconsin, so Edna decided to move there in 1913 with her son Joseph and enter the Kenosha Training School for Nurses. Her grandmother most likely helped take care of her great-grandchild. In August 1914, while Edna was in school, war broke out in Europe. American newspapers headlined war news, but our leadership had no intention of involving the nation in a foreign conflict. Most citizens agreed. Edna graduated nursing school in 1915 – probably in the spring. Right about that time, on May 7, the Lusitania was torpedoed and sunk by a German U-boat, causing the deaths of 1,198 passengers and crew. As German submarine warfare became more aggressive, and the appalling slaughter in Europe increased, many in this country became concerned that we might be forced to enter the war with a military that wasn’t prepared. Since 1910, beginning with the Mexican Revolution, U.S. troops had been stationed along our southern border. The conflict reached a crisis in 1916 when Pancho Villa crossed the border and attacked Columbus, New Mexico. In response, General John J. Pershing invaded northern Mexico to capture Villa. At the time, the U.S. was not a world power and did not have a large fighting force. In military terms, a division is the smallest unit containing all arms and necessary services. A country may have several armies, each made up of two or more divisions. At the time, a U.S. Army division constituted of about 28,000 men. Divisions are made up of brigades with two or more regiments each. The regiments contain battalions, each containing two or more companies. Companies contain platoons and those are made up of squads. When the U.S. declared war on Germany in April 1917, we didn’t even have one complete division. Many soldiers had never even seen an entire regiment in one place. Among the most experienced of our soldiers were those in National Guard units fighting along the Mexican border. In comparison, Germany had over forty divisions contained in seven armies. Within nineteen months of the U.S. declaration of war, we had raised a military force of over four million soldiers, and about half had been sent overseas. Edna Mary Coughlin would be one of the early nurses to be stationed in France. When the Great War broke out, few predicted how modern weaponry combined with out-of-date tactics would change the whole nature of war. It would be like jumping off a cliff in the dark, some suggested. Few realized how quickly the grim statistics would reveal the reality. A few hundred years earlier, entire wars often ended in one battle. It was like a bare-knuckle boxing match ending in the first round with one strategic punch. Most armies in the past couldn’t survive many rounds. The situation was different for modern nation states with advanced technologies. And as we would learn on the battlefield, medical advances had not kept up with the kind of horror modern weapons could inflict upon fragile bodies. A hundred years earlier, Napoleon bragged that he could lose thirty thousand men in a month and his army would still be strong. During the early months of World War I, armies were losing more than thirty thousand men a day. In 1916, the Battle of Verdun resulted in an estimated 700,000 casualties. That same year, the Battle of the Somme saw more than a million casualties. During the Somme, more than 71,000 soldiers simply “disappeared” – their bodies disintegrating as a result of massive artillery assaults. It was during this war that we began the tradition of monuments for the Unknown Soldier. During 1915-16, while American newspapers headlined war news, Edna worked as a private nurse for a time before studying public health nursing in Milwaukee. She was there in July 1916 when the Milwaukee Red Cross chapter was authorized to equip a base hospital with private funds for service overseas. Forward-thinking citizens saw the writing on the wall and realized that we had better prepare for war. As Edna told it, a friend suggested she sign up for hospital duty in France. “I’ll take care of your kid,” the friend offered. “I wanted to go, so I went,” Edna said. “Ten thousand nurses were outfitted in New York – three units, going over there in three boats.” Her unit would be Base Hospital No. 22 from Milwaukee, Wisconsin – one of the early ones to deploy. For a detailed story of Edna's life see the Seward Journal series.
