Isabel Stambaugh

J. Isabel Stambaugh was a United States Army nurse in the First World War, born in Mifflintown, Pennsylvania, on 15 August 1879. She graduated from the Presbyterian Hospital Nursing School in Philadelphia in 1906 and served there for two years as head operating room nurse. In the war she served with Base Hospital No. 10 on a surgical team at a British casualty clearing station, and on 21 March 1918, during the German offensive in front of Amiens, she was seriously wounded by shell fire; Field Marshal Douglas Haig cited her for bravery. She was one of four women awarded the United States Distinguished Service Cross, which she received on 27 June 1919. She afterward returned to nursing at Presbyterian Hospital, worked as acting supervisor of nurses for almost two decades, retired around 1957, and died in Philadelphia on 11 May 1969.