Beatrice Mary MacDonald

Beatrice Mary MacDonald was a Canadian-born American nurse who served in the United States Army Nurse Corps during the First World War. She was born on 27 September 1881 in the North Bedeque community on Prince Edward Island, moved to New York City to continue her education and graduated from the nursing school of New York City Hospital. In 1915 she volunteered for the American Ambulance Service at the American Hospital of Paris, and in 1917 she enlisted in the Army Nurse Corps and served in France at a British casualty clearing station. She was wounded in the face during a German air raid on 17 August 1917 and lost an eye, yet she returned to duty six weeks later and in 1918 became chief nurse of an evacuation hospital at the front. She received the Distinguished Service Cross, the French Croix de Guerre, the British Military Medal and Royal Red Cross and the Distinguished Service Medal, and in 1936 a Purple Heart that made her retroactively the first woman to receive it. She died on 4 September 1969.