Training
108th General Hospital Unit, 1942, at the induction ceremony on Lake Shore Campus
Following the formal induction ceremony held on Loyola's football field at the Lake Shore Campus, the members of the 108th were sent to LaGarde General Hospital in New Orleans for military training. At LaGarde General Hospital, the nurses of the 108th were put on duty straight away. At the same time they received military training, learning such skills as transversing 90 yards under barbed wire while under machine gun fire. They also mastered more mundane tasks such as packing bed rolls. There was an emphasis on conservation of supplies in all departments. Trainees shadowed personnel in several departments to gain the necessary practical experience in military medical care.
Ethel Henderson of the 108th
On 15 July 1943, the 108th was notified that they would be going overseas. On 11 August 1943 they left for Camp Shanks in New York before transferring to Fort Devens near Boston. On 5 October 1943, they boarded a British passenger liner, the HMS Mauritania, for transport to England. Prior to shipping out they had to acquire new hospital equipment because another ship had sailed with their equipment the month before.
In a letter to Rev. Raymond C. Baumhart, S.J., president of Loyola University, dated 12 June 1985, Dr. Stanley Fahlstrom, Chief Medical Officer of the108th, recounted that they were "...furious, especially because we all lost our personal possessions permanently. We repented later when we learned that those eight ships never did get to the E.T.O. (European Theater of Operations), but went instead to Africa and later ended up in the fouled-up invasion of Italy."