Rob Neufield Writes of General Hospital No. 19 in Oteen

The Charles George VAMC Then & Now - "General Hospital No. 19 in Oteen Was the Site of a Forgotten Epic" By Rob Neufeld, local history writer and book reviewer for the Asheville Citizen-Times. The other day, I walked up Hemorrhage Hill in Oteen. World War I soldiers, afflicted with tuberculosis, had trod that path to the ambulatory wards of General Hospital No. 19 between 1918 and 1920. According to legend, if they made it to the top without giving the place name any credence, they were cured. The ambulatory wards were located above the infirmaries. The buildings, all wood, provided 1,500 beds. Very little evidence of them remains on the southern slopes of Bull Mountain. The stucco buildings that currently occupy the Riceville Road sites on the flat land just to the east had been the creation of the Veteran’s Administration, which had assumed management of the hospital in 1921. Much of the original 400-acre tract now belongs to the National Park Service. “In area covered, if not in capacity, this was the largest temporary general hospital constructed during the war,” Lieut. Col. Frank Weed wrote in his 1923 history of the Army Medical Department. The incidence of tuberculosis in soldiers had increased alarmingly by 1918 because of the inflammatory effects of influenza and battleground gassing. Our country took care of its incidentally wounded. “The main army hospitals for the treatment of tuberculosis at present are at Denver and Oteen,” the New York Times reported on June 27, 1920. The newspaper went on to give a vivid picture of the environment. “No. 19…is a town in itself, consisting of more than 100 buildings…The grounds at night are lighted by electricity, and are intersected by cement and macadamized roads.” Unlike Karl Von Ruck’s Winyah Sanitarium in Asheville, the Army did not use serums and vaccines. Rest, fresh air, frequent linen changes, and ample food were the cure. The need for good food motivated the camp specialist, Col. William Leyster, to get the daily per capita food ration increased from the standard 64 cents to one dollar. The Veterans attended movies, learned occupational skills, and chatted with volunteers from Asheville, who brought candy and cheer. One might imagine that volunteers and nurses struck up friendships with the young men, and perhaps romances, but we are in the dark about personal details. Just when it seems that the stories of illness and hope at No. 19 would subside into oblivion, a remarkable discovery emerges. In 2008, Ernestine Massie Tabor donated to UNCA’s Special Collections an album of 375 photographs of the army hospital in the late teens. Her mother, Mrs. Walter L. Massie, had been friends with Jessie Morris, a nurse there. In the photos, men and women lean together as if vacationing at the Grove Park Inn. A man sits on the front bumper of his car, indentified as “The Busy Undertaker.” A man rests on a rooftop—behind him, hospital buildings and mountain ranges. Marshall Crump of Matthews, N.C. was one of the WWI veterans who recuperated at the army hospital in Oteen. Photos courtesy the Ramsey Library, Special Collections, UNCA (I found the previous text on Facebook post dated Oct. 12, 2016. It included a video with some nice old photos. If you are looking for a photo of a relative who was a patient there or who worked there, you might want to go to facebook and search for the listing. Or try https://www.facebook.com/watch/?v=1110607515654913)