Anna Mae Hays

Abstract

US Army nurse and first female general in US Armed Forces. She was born in Buffalo, NY, USA, on Feb 16, 1920, and died following a heart attack in Washington, DC, USA, on Jan 7, 2018, aged 97 years. After the ceremony in June, 1970, at which the then Colonel Anna Mae Hays, Chief of the US Army Nurse Corps, was promoted to the rank of general, her first action was to have her driver drop her off at the army officers' club. “And this time”, she said, “at the front entrance”. Although already an officer, and so entitled to enter and use the club, the “understanding” among its male members was that female officers who did so would come in by the side entrance. This, Hays had decided, was over—and not just for her but for every other woman officer. The newly appointed, first ever female US general duly walked up the steps and through the main entrance. No-one stopped her. Nor did any other female officer from then on use the side door. The man who reports that anecdote is Joseph Garrera, Executive Director of the Lehigh Valley Heritage Museum in Allentown, PA, USA, where Hays lived and grew up from the age of 8 years. Garrera first met her 12 years ago when, while visiting the museum, she agreed to be the subject of an exhibit comprising photographs and mementos of her life. Speaking at her funeral, Garrera told the mourners that Hays could be as tough as steel. But as a nurse she was, in equal measure, supremely kind and compassionate. The daughter of Salvation Army officers, Hays trained at Allentown General Hospital's School of Nursing, and began working there in 1941. But not for long. “She was one of the most patriotic people you could meet”, says Garrera. So it was no surprise that after the bombing of Pearl Harbour she became an army nurse. January of 1943 found her in the Indian state of Assam. “The China–Burma–India theatre [of war] was no fun for anybody”, says Sanders Marble, a senior historian in the US Army Office of Medical History in Texas, TX, USA. “The living conditions were fairly primitive compared to the European theatre.” Malaria, lice, typhus, dysentery, gangrene, and frequent amputations filled the working day. The wards were mud-floored bamboo huts, as were the sleeping quarters. Contributing to an oral history project in the 1980s, Hays described the experience as rough living. “During the first few weeks everyone had diarrhoea and, of course, we didn't have toilets. We just had holes in the ground…one had to be careful of the leeches, particularly at night.” At the end of the hostilities, Hays decided to stay on in the Nurse Corps. Then, in 1950, came the war in Korea. Assigned to the 4th Field Hospital, she followed the US Marines on shore after the landing at Incheon Harbour on the west coast of Korea. “I think of Korea as even worse than the jungle in World War 2 because of the lack of supplies, and the lack of warmth”, Hays later recalled. After the war she began to acquire management, administration, and planning skills, and later graduated from the Catholic University of America with a masters in nursing. She nursed her most celebrated patient in 1956 when President Dwight Eisenhower was admitted to Walter Reed Army Medical Center. She became a personal friend of Eisenhower and his wife Mamie. When the USA entered the Vietnam War in 1965, Hays was sent there to assess the nursing situation. Following her promotion to colonel in 1967, Hays took over as Chief of the Nurse Corps and so, although no longer in the front line, assumed nursing responsibility for what was her third major war. Then came the key promotion to general. “She was in the right place at the right time”, says Marble. This is not to belittle Hays's achievement but to reflect that had attitudes to women in the military not already undergone some change, the chances of her rising as high as she did would have been virtually nil. “The army had recently taken a decision that women could be promoted to the rank of general, a break with all precedent”, Marble adds. “Society had changed, and the military changed with it.” Hays retired in 1971. “She was a person with very profound beliefs in perseverance, self-discipline, courage, and friendship”, says Garrera. “She took friendship very seriously. She had more friends than you could imagine…If you really got in trouble and you were in a difficult situation, you'd have wanted General Hays with you in the foxhole. She'd probably have saved your life.” Hays was predeceased by her husband, William, and is survived by her nephews and nieces.