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THE CHICAGO CHRONICLE, THURSDAY MORNING. SEPTEMBER 29, 1898. NURSE IN FROM CUBA Miss Amy E. Wingreen Returns to Chicago from Siboney. Only National Emergency Association Representative There. Forty Men of This City Cared For by Her at Front. Will Tell of Her Experiences at a Military Reunion Tomorrow. Miss Amy Eleanor Wingreen , nurse of the National Emergency association, has returned from Cuba. Miss Wingreen, the association's only representative in Cuba, was stationed at Siboney in the fever hospital, where she had entire charge of from twenty to seventy fever stricken soldiers. She left Chicago July 15, and from the time she landed in Cuba until she reached Chicago again she was on duty from sixteen to eighteen hours each day. The extra time she spent in writing to mothers whose sons had died, many of them from despair of ever reaching home and friends again. Hours were spent in listening to the last prayer of fever wasted lads and in giving a last kindly word to sufferers who begged protection from imagined harms. All these left little time in which the nurse might rest. Notwithstanding the hardships, the meager fare of hard-tack and coffee and the danger from the fevers, Miss Wingreen has come home with a record of not a single sick minute. She used every precaution to avoid illness. She had her hair cut close to her head, adopted the short cotton skirt and lived as nearly as possible according to the customs of the tropics. The emergency uniform of gray and blue woolen cloth was left in Atlanta, and nothing but necessaries were made a part of the small bundle which she was allowed to take with her to Cuba. Miss Wingreen was transferred to Port Rico when the hospital at Siboney was abandoned, but when she reached Montauk she decided that she was in need of rest and obtained her discharge from service. Forty Chicago boys were under her care in Siboney and of those who reached home she has a complete list and is now busily visiting them. She has planned to give a reception for them soon at the home of her sister, Mrs. J. N. Anderson, 238 Lincoln Park boulevard, and, although some of them are again sick and at the city hospital, she hopes to greet nearly thirty at her home. In the meantime the La Salle Avenue Baptist church is to give a military reunion, at which Miss Wingreen will related her impressions of the war. The affair will be held tomorrow evening, from 8 until 11 o'clock.
THE CHICAGO TRIBUNE: THURSDAY, SEPTEMBER 29, 1898. NURSE WINGREEN RETURNS. Chicago Woman Tells of the Suffering of Soldiers in Siboney and Camp Wikoff. Miss Amy Eleanor Wingreen, the only woman nurse from Chicago in the yellow fever camp at Sibney during the heights of the epidemic, returned to this city on Tuesday, and is stopping with her parents, 238 Lincoln Park boulevard. "The newspapers cannot begin to tell of the terrible suffering that was endured by the poor soldiers in Cuba," said Miss Wingreen last night. "There were ten women nurses on the Resolute, the boat by which I reached Santiago. Two of them remained in Santiago and the other eight were sent to the yellow fever camp at Siboney. When we reached there we found 3,000 sick soldiers, and we were the only women nurses there. As soon as the sick soldiers recovered they turned in and helped us nurse their comrades." Miss Wingreen was at Sibney thirty-three days. She then returned to Camp Wikoff and of the conditions there she made this significant statement: "When the returning soldiers on the Berkshire were released from quarantine, President McKinley witnessed the debarkation. At the sight of the emaciated soldiers he wept."
A. E. WELCOME W.
Florence Earle Coates in The Outlook. Come home! The Land that sent you forth From East and West, from South and North, Looks wistfully beyond her gates, Extends her arms and waits - and waits!
At duty's call she stilled her woe; She smiled, through tears, and bade you go To face the death you would not shun. Brave hearts, return! Your task is done. Not as you journeyed come you back; A glory is about your track Of deeds that vanquished tyranny And set a tortured people free:
Deeds, sprung of manhood's finest grace, That envious Time will not efface; Deeds that proclaim a Nation's worth, And crown the Land that gave them birth.
America but waits to greet And bless you, kneeling at her feet, Your standards fair in honor furled, The proudest mother in the world!
Come home! The Land that sent you forth From East and West, from South and North, Looks wistfully beyond her gates, Extends her arms and waits!
Siboney, Cuba Aug. 1898