“It's the one red rose the soldier knows,

It's the work of the Master's hand;

Mid the War's great curse, Stands the Red Cross Nurse,

She's the rose of "No Man's Land". 

By Jack Caddigan and James Brennan

Lucille was born in Rochelle in 1892 and attended school in the three-story brick school at Fifth Avenue and Sixth Street. The school housed all grades from elementary through high school. It was 1910 when Lucille was a featured soloist at the school’s Thanksgiving Festival and graduated from Rochelle High School. For Lucille this was only the beginning of her education. 

By 1913 she was enrolled at Augustana Training School for Nurses. During her time at Augustana she was struck with Typhoid Fever, which slowed her down, but could not stop her from graduating with honors. Her first position was at the Sangatuck Health Resort in Michigan. After a short time at Sangatuck, Lucille returned home to Rochelle and joined Dr. Chandler’s staff at Lincoln Hospital on Woolf Court. Rochelle was once again home for Lucille, but world events would soon change her life.

World War I had been going on since 1914. It was in 1917 the United States entered the battle. It was 1917 when 25-year-old Lucille May Cratty decided that she too needed to join the fight. She would not fight the Germans but a formidable foe, death itself. As a surgically-trained nurse her skills were greatly needed so Lucille enlisted as an American Red Cross nurse. Initial training included a short service in a military hospital stateside to familiarize the nurses with the types of injuries they would see on a daily basis including shrapnel wounds, burns, amputations, gun-shot injuries, Mustard, Phosgene, and Chlorine gas. Each injury presented its own unique way to take the life of another soldier. After only two months Lucille was deemed ready to go overseas, to France, and begin her battle to save lives of “her splendid men in uniform.”

Nursing had changed from the Civil War to WWI, but not as much as one would have hoped. The use of anesthesia made surgeries much easier. Aseptic (sterile) procedures reduced infection. Sadly the improvements in medicine were met with advances in weaponry. Artillery was more accurate, rifles had three to 10 cartridge magazines, and the use of machine guns was common. The newest advance in warfare was the use of toxic gasses.   

Let’s try to walk with Lucille on a normal day behind the front lines. Each day the nurses would walk through the medical tent checking on patients from the day before. Wounds were inspected, bandages changed, and medications were given. Some days Lucille would be the receiving nurse. Alerts sound announcing the arrival of wounded and the trucks and ambulances would start to arrive. Maybe the driver was Ernest Hemmingway or Walt Disney, whom were two of the many Red Cross ambulance drivers during WWI.  As the patients were unloaded the first task for the nurse was to triage the wounded. At the age of 25 Lucille would have to decide if the young soldier before her would survive with minimal or no care, was immediate care needed for survival, or was the young man unlikely to live. The first group waited, the second was rushed to further care, and the last group was made as comfortable as possible and left to await death. Who lived and who did not was only the beginning for Lucille.

The second step in patient care was debridement, the cleaning of the wound. This involved more than simply pouring water on the wound. The nurse must remove any dirt (and there was a lot of dirt) or foreign material from the wound. Next, any tissue that could not be saved had to be cut away at which time the nurse would enter the wound and clean it with Sodium Hypochlorite. Now the patient was ready for surgery.  When the nurse finished with one patient they began on the next, one after another, until all wounded were treated. On other days Lucille would have been the surgical nurse. Her duty was to assist the surgeon as they operated on the wounded. Nurses aided the surgeons as they dug out shrapnel and bullets, amputated limbs, and fought to save each injured warrior that entered their care. 

Lucille stayed in France into 1919, for 18 months she shared the pain and suffering of the soldiers fighting in the trenches. In a letter home she said, “Having done all in our power for our splendid men in uniform, we were, all of us, happy when the summons came for us to embark home.” Lucille returned to the United States and took a brief break from nursing before enlisting with the Marines as a nurse and began working with returning soldiers at the San Francisco Marine Hospital. 

Sadly, Lucille’s health began to fail, and she found herself on the receiving end of the care she used to give. It was November 14, 1920 when Lucille May Cratty passed at the age of 28. It was almost as if her mission on earth ended with the war. She had been put on this earth to ease the pain and suffering of her “splendid men in uniform.” Once that was done, she could find peace.

Tom McDermott is a Flagg Township Museum historian and Rochelle city councilman.