American Red Cross

Since being established in 1898, the American Red Cross has been instrumental in aiding the U.S. military. During wartime, the American Red Cross filled a void by caring for the wounded, providing welfare services, facilitating contact between families and loved ones in the military, and helping veterans deal with government bureaucracies—tasks that overtaxed agencies of the federal government had neither the resources nor the time to address.

The Red Cross had its origins in 1864, when 16 European countries accepted the First Geneva Convention, which provided for the aid of all wounded in the time of war under provisions of neutrality and created the International Committee of the Red Cross (ICRC). The ICRC charter obligates the humanitarian organization to provide volunteer aid to the sick and wounded in the time of war and to carry out a peacetime program of national and international relief in the result of natural and man-made disasters. Clara Barton founded the American chapter on May 21, 1881. The United States ratified the Geneva Convention in 1882, which brought the American Red Cross into the fold of the ICRC.

Clara Barton and American Red Cross workers assembled on a dock in Cuba during the Spanish–American War. Barton is sixth from the left, in the front row. (© CORBIS)

The American Red Cross engaged in its first relief effort in Cuba in February 1898, when the organization supervised the distribution of relief supplies to the several hundred thousand Cubans suffering from the Spanish policy of holding peasants in concentration camps. When the United States declared war on Spain on April 25, 1898, the American Red Cross redirected its efforts to assist the [Page 39]volunteer Army regiments camped in the southern United States. The Red Cross provided the poorly supplied regiments with toothbrushes, sleeping apparel, cots, canned goods—even ambulances. When the Army launched its overseas expeditionary forces to the Philippines, Cuba, and Puerto Rico, the American Red Cross followed, providing nursing staff and supplies not issued by the Army, such as mosquito netting, bedding, blankets, and towels.

Clara Barton arrived in Cuba aboard the relief ship City of Texas, the first vessel to enter the Santiago harbor. She was often seen unloading supplies and helping care for the sick and wounded soldiers taken from the frontlines. When the Spanish–American War ended in August 1898, many soldiers returning to the United States were suffering from malaria. The Red Cross provided kitchens and emergency hospitals at the various debarkation points, including Jacksonville, Florida, and Montauk Point on Long Island, New York.

In 1900, the Red Cross secured a federal charter that increased government oversight of the charity; in 1905, the Red Cross reorganized, with the result of greater financial reliance on the government, particularly the War Department. During World War I, the American Red Cross was once again called upon to provide assistance, both on the home front and in France, mostly by providing medical services to support the American Expeditionary Forces. In America the Red Cross set up a Home Service to help solve personal and family problems of veterans and their families. The Red Cross also operated 58 domestic and overseas hospitals for the military, staffing them with doctors, nurses, administrative personnel, as well as providing ambulances and trucks. At the time of the Armistice in 1918, more than 8,000 American Red Cross workers were in Europe providing medical, recreational, and welfare services. General Pershing expressed his gratitude to the Red Cross when he said: “No organization since the world began has done such great constructive work with the efficiency, dispatch, sympathy, and understanding with which the Red Cross has accomplished its work” (American Red Cross, 15).

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