p.150: In the summer of 1917, while the civilian program in France was requiring more and more nurse, 32 cantonments or 'soldier cities' sprang up like mushrooms throughout the U.S. Planned for an average of 48,000 soldiers each, they were indeed cities. Each one had a 1000-bed base hospital planned for expansion as needed. Hardly had young men from the cities, towns, and villages, from mountains, hills and plains, begun to pour into the camps, then those hospitals were needed. Patients were admitted almost as soon as the roofs were on the buildings, when they were only partially staffed and incompletely equipped. Nurses who arrived before quarters were ready for them boasted that they had known 'the base' at its crudest and muddiest. Prophylactic vaccines and serum protected the man from smallpox, typhoid, paratyphoid and diphtheria, but fatigue, exposure, and crowding made the draftees, especially those from rural areas susceptible to communicable diseases for which there were no protective measures. Meningitis, mumps, and measles filled many wards. After measles and influenza came pneumonia and, too often, empyema.....Many of the men were critically ill, but the needs of soldiers in the making made no such emotional appeal to nurses as the care of the wounded in battle. Many insisted, in the highly charged spirit of the times, that they were available for overseas service only.