Two North Carolina Nurses Who Served In The Korean War

Fifty years ago, on June 27, 1950, the United States entered a war on the Korean Peninsula to fight aggression by the communist government of North Korea. Before the armistice was declared in 1953, 540 nurses served in Korea and another 1,000 or so served in the theater of war on board hospital ships, on MEDEVAC aircraft, and in hospitals in Japan. Several of these nurses were from North Carolina, including Julia Baxter and Mattie Hicks, in Korea. After graduating from Grady Hospital School of Nursing in Atlanta, she joined the ANC on July 2, 1945. Hicks served only a few weeks before World War II ended. Realizing she enjoyed Army nursing she re-enlisted and stayed in the ANC for 21 years.