In 1916 as the U.S. Army was restructuring to send troops to Mexico to stop Pancho Villa, Macrae again
felt a calling to serve his Country and he re-entered the Iowa National Guard as a surgeon and received a
commission as a Captain. He served in General John “Blackjack” Pershing’s punitive expedition
through Mexico, tending to wounded and dying soldiers. In March of 1917, Macrae, now a Major
returned to Council Bluffs and again resigned from the Iowa Army National Guard but this time it was so
that he could do more for his Country.
At Macrae’s request the Surgeon General of the Army granted him permission to create his own military
hospital unit to answer the Nation’s call-to-arms in the future. Macrae immediately began recruiting
volunteers, primarily from Jennie Edmundson Hospital. This unit consisted of twelve medical officers,
twenty-one nurses and fifty enlisted men. Of the 21 nurses, 15 were graduates of the Jennie
Edmundson School of Nursing. Each volunteer received thorough physical examinations and
inoculations prior to being mustered into service with the American Red Cross. Hospital Unit “K” was
established under the U.S. Army Reserves. Macrae held numerous fundraising drives in order to equip
the newly-formed unit. His wife sold her car, discharged her servants and went to the Council Bluffs
library every morning to roll bandages and to knit. She also founded the Unit “K” Club, comprised of
wives, mothers, sisters and other females related to the men in the unit which donated their time to
help prepare the unit with the supplies they needed for war. Officers were ordered to various Army
camps to receive further medical training in field-related trauma. Major Macrae was sent to the
University of Pennsylvania to attend a course on traumatic brain injury treatment. Two officers
remained at home to oversee the activities of the fifty enlisted men who were ordered to attend
training drills, draft meetings and Red Cross events. Citizens of Council Bluffs and the surrounding
communities gathered up the necessary hospital equipment needed to perform their mission. Manilla,
Iowa gave Unit “K” a fully equipped ambulance and townspeople from Oakland, Iowa managed to outfit
the entire unit with military uniforms from head-to-toe. Other towns donated money to the unit
which it desperately needed.
On June 18th, 1917 Unit “K” was activated into Federal service in the Army of the United States under
the newly formed National Army structure. Unit “K” was designated Mobile Field Hospital 1 and they
were the very first U.S. Mobile Field Hospital to serve in France.
Beginning in November the officers and enlisted men reported to Fort Porter, New York and then to
Hoboken, New Jersey prior to their embarkation to France aboard the steamship Carpathia. The
Nurses received their orders to depart Council Bluffs on Christmas Eve and they immediately headed for
Ellis Island to prepare for their embarkation. After brief stops in Scotland and England, Mobile Field
Hospital 1 arrived in LeHavre France. Upon its return voyage, the Carpathia was torpedoed by a
German U-boat and sank below the icy Atlantic waters. From LeHavre the unit was transported by rail
via unheated French boxcars in the dead of winter. Once on station the unit immediately prepared for
action. Mobile Field Hospital 1 consisted of 16 trauma-ward tents, rolling kitchens and laundries, x-ray,
sterilization equipment, enough electric lighting to power the entire hospital and a field laboratory
complete with guinea pigs for medicine testing. Their function was to provide trauma surgery and
battlefield care to the Allied Expeditionary Force. This unit’s mobile status enabled them to treat the
wounded almost immediately and evacuate and transport the seriously wounded from the battlefield
entirely within 24 to 48 hours after surgery. Mobile Field Hospital 1 soon became legendary, in as little
as a month the unit had performed 3,869 surgical operations on wounded British, French and American
soldiers.
During the Chateau-Thierry Campaign the men and women worked non-stop for 72 hours straight
surrounded by hundreds of wounded and dying men. Surgeons and doctors were reported to have
collapsed from exhaustion while working on the seemingly endless numbers of wounded. German
artillery shells routinely landed danger-close to the hospital, one of which landed only 50 yards from the
nurses’ quarters. Approximately 900 wounded were treated during this campaign of which all but 50
survived. Because of their dogged determination to render aid and Major Macrae’s insistence that the
unit remain close to the front lines, Mobile Field Hospital 1 ultimately spared the lives of thousands of
Allied soldiers by war’s end.
When Mobile Field Hospital 1 had to pick up and move, the Army rarely had trucks to assist them,
therefore the unit became quite good at improvising and acquiring what they needed to get the job
done. One doctor, a Lieutenant was especially inept at acquiring local civilian trucks or trucks from
other units or on occasion even from other Countries militaries. He was also quite good at gathering
up tents and other supplies as well from “undefined” sources.
Conditions during the Meuse-Argonne campaign were especially deplorable. Many patients had lain
unattended for days in the muck and mire with undressed wounds before arriving at the hospital,
especially those that had been wounded during the Battle of Belleau Wood. Ambulances often
delivered the dead because they died en-route. Ambulances could be stuck on the roads between 24
and 36 hours due to heavy road congestion. Macrae moved the hospital up to within 100 yards of the
front lines which was close enough to carry the wounded straight to the hospital from the battlefield.
Fifty or so German prisoners were used to carry the wounded from the field and to dig graves.
With the increasing number of casualties Mobile Field Hospital 1 had to increase its staff from 12
doctors to 47, the number of nurses increased from 21 to 46, and the number of enlisted orderlies
increased from 50 to 100. Macrae was promoted to the rank of Lieutenant Colonel. Mobile Field
Hospital 1 picked up and moved a total of 14 times from battlefield to battlefield and as lines changed
hands. From June 13th to the end of the war on November 11th, 1918 Mobile Field Hospital 1 was
within range of enemy artillery and shelled several times. Clear nights brought hostile planes on
bombing missions. Macrae’s unit was never more than six miles behind the front and usually less than
that. Through it all the unit’s only two fatalities were from pneumonia not bullets. Mobile Field
Hospital 1 set a record for treating more wounded soldiers than any other institution in the United
States Army, 26,000 men in only six weeks.
Mobile Field Hospital 1 was the first hospital to receive the French Croix de Guerre for outstanding
performance in the face of battle. By war’s end the unit had received two of them. Macrae received
a Distinguished Service Cross and a Distinguished Service Medal for his actions during the war and by
war’s end he was promoted to Colonel. Mobile Field Hospital 1 served in Coulommiers, Chateau
Thierry, St. Mihiel, Meuse-Argonne, Verdun and in the defensive sector following the end of the war.
Their motto was “Deliver the Goods.”
Colonel Macrae believed in what he was doing and he took a hard stance on doing it right. On one
occasion a General sent three cars and a Colonel to pick Macrae up from the front-line and to borrow
some of Macrae’s Nurses to accompany him and his staff to a dance while the unit was in the Argonne.
Macrae asked the Colonel that had been sent by the General where the Colonel’s men were. “In the
trenches” the Colonel replied. Macrae responded with “so are my Nurses, they’re on the line waiting
to take care of your men. My respects to your General and tell him to go to hell. Not a single Nurse
leaves the reservation this night sir.”
Mobile Field Hospital 1 had formed almost immediately following the declaration of war and was
composed totally of volunteers. They had been in combat continuously from June 15 th until the
Armistice was signed on November 11th, 1918. Shell holes were their home until Christmas Eve when
they were finally pulled out and placed on occupational duty in the defensive sector. They left France
in 1919 arriving back to the States on April 26th. Mobile Field Hospital 1 was split up and the original
members of Unit “K” were sent by train to Camp Dodge, Des Moines, Iowa on May 2 nd, arriving early in
the morning on May 5th. It was there that the enlisted men were mustered out of service before
returning back to Council Bluffs. Unit “K” returned to Council Bluffs just after midnight on May 6 th,
1919. Unbeknownst to them 25,000 people waited up for them to return and to give them a hero’s
welcome. People flooded the train station and poured into the streets. Decorations and banners
covered the city. Council Bluffs even hired professional decorators from abroad to decorate the store
fronts all along Broadway, Main and Pearl Streets with red, white and blue motifs. Trolley support
poles on Broadway up to the Methodist Church, Pearl and Main Streets all the way to the Rock Island
Station featured large red banners with “WELCOME K” spelled out on them in blue letters on a white
background. Unit “K” brought international attention to Council Bluffs after setting the standard for
battlefield care. Unit “K” was often referred to simply as the “Council Bluffs Unit.”
Colonel Macrae had a track record for caring for others and for the good of the community. While
serving as Mayor he raided two gambling saloons and had all the men arrested. When former
members of Unit “K” needed medical operations he never charged them and refused payment from
them, saying that they had already done so much for him in France that he could not profit off of them
at home. Macrae was a professor of anatomy in the medical department of the University of Nebraska
at Omaha for ten years and occupied the chair of clinical surgery there as well. He served as the
secretary of the Missouri Valley Medical Society, as the vice-president of the Iowa State Medical Society,
as the president of the Council Bluffs Medical Society, he belonged to the American Medical Association,
the Pottawattamie County Medical Society, the Western Surgical and Gynecological Association, the
Southwestern Iowa Medical Society, the Iowa Clinical Surgical Society and in 1901 while he was in the
Philippines he was made the first vice-president of the National Society. He was also a member of the
Masonic Order of the Knights Pythias and the Benevolent and Protective Order of the Elks. Macrae
also served on the school board and received the commendation of “the best people in the city.” His
military service ran deep and he was one of the first members of the Council Bluffs American Legion,
which was the first American Legion in Iowa and the second in the entire Country, the first being in the
Nation’s Capitol.
Official records show that approximately 205,690 American servicemen were wounded during the First
World War, many of which suffered permanent disabilities. Disabled combat veterans banded
together to help other disabled veterans whose now uncertain futures were forever changed by the
war. This brotherhood eventually formed the Disabled American Veterans (DAV) in 1920. Disabled
veterans in the Council Bluffs area established a Disabled American Veterans chapter in 1925 and
proposed naming it after the commanding officer of the very first unit in France to aide wounded
soldiers, thus the chapter was named Colonel Donald Macrae in honor of the man who spent his life
aiding those who were injured and disabled. The Council Bluffs Chapter of the Disabled American
Veterans lives on and to this day carries on with its proud mission to serve and assist fellow Disabled
Veterans.
COL Don Macrae History
Justin Winchell
Commander, DAV-IA, Chapter 5
29APR2012
Above:
The Nurses of Unit-K
Daily Nonpareil Obituary
Deaths
Donald Macrae, Jr. Council Bluffs, Iowa ; University of
Michigan Medical School, Ann Arbor, 1891 ; member of the
House of Delegates, 1922-1926, 1928, and 1930-1931, American
Medical Association, and member of the Judicial Council since
1927 ; professor of anatomy, Omaha Medical College, 1893-1898,
and professor of clinical surgery, University of Nebraska Col¬
lege of Medicine, Omaha, 1901-1912; past president and vice
president of the Iowa State Medical Society and past president
of the Medical Society of the Missouri Valley; member and
past president of the Western Surgical Association and member
of the American College of Surgeons; served during the
Spanish-American War and the World War when he was
decorated with the Croix de Guerre and Distinguished Service
Medal ; formerly mayor of Council Bluffs ; on the surgical staff
of the Jennie Edmundson Memorial Hospital ; president of the
Council Bluffs Clinic; aged 61; died, January 11, of pneumonia.