This plaque commemorates the 200-plus years that nurses have served in the military. During the Spanish American War (1898), the Daughters of the American Revolution recruited more than 1,500 women nurses, including Anna Maxwell, dubbed the “American Florence Nightingale.” By the Civil War, nurses were advocating for fresh air, clean environments, and ensuring that wounded and ill soldiers received compassionate care. Famous nurses from the Civil War-era included Dorothea Dix (social reformer for the mentally ill), Clara Barton (founder of the American Red Cross), Mary Todd Lincoln, and Louisa May Alcott (author of Little Women). More than 59,000 American nurses served in the Army Nurse Corps during World War II. Nurses worked closer to the front lines than they ever had before. Within the “chain of evacuation” established by the Army Medical Department during the war, nurses served under fire in field hospitals and evacuation hospitals, on hospital trains and hospital ships, and as flight nurses on medical transport planes. The skill and dedication of these nurses contributed to the extremely low post-injury mortality rate among American military forces in every theater of the war. Overall, fewer than four percent of the American soldiers who received medical care in the field or underwent evacuation died from wounds or disease during WWII. During the Civil War, one in five died, which was 2.5% of the total U.S. population. The vast majority – 90% – of women serving in Vietnam were nurses. Army nurses began arriving in 1956, and Navy nurses began arriving around 1963.