A Soldier's Story: Nurse Clara Maass
Nurse Clara Maass was born on June 28, 1876, in East Orange, New Jersey. She showed an early interest in caring for others, working first as a mother's helper before Nurse Clara Maass attended the newly created Christina Trefz Training School for Nurses. In 1895, she was one of its first graduates. By 1898, she was the head nurse at Newark German Hospital and seeking to expand her skills. She volunteered as a contract nurse for the U.S. Army. In October 1898, Nurse Clara Maass was assigned to the Seventh Army Corps and was assigned to field hospitals in Jacksonville, Florida, Savannah, Georgia, and Santiago, Cuba. Nurse Clara Maass then volunteered to serve with the Eighth U.S. Army Corps. She deployed to the Philippines until contracting dengue fever in Manilla forced her to return stateside to recover. Nurse Clara Maass had, by this point, spent much of her career treating the tropical infectious diseases (Typhoid, Malaria, Dengue, and Yellow Fever) of the Caribbean, so w...