Edith Ellen Greenwood

Lieutenant  Edith Ellen Greenwood  served with the United States Army Nurse Corps (ANC) during World War II. She was the first female recipient of the Soldier's Medal, an award she received for saving 15 patients.

Early life
Greenwood was born in 1920 in North Dartmouth, Massachusetts, to Ellen E. (Pearson) and Frederick James Greenwood. She attended St. Luke’s Hospital School of Nursing in New Bedford, Massachusetts and graduated in 1941.

Career
Greenwood began serving with the Army Nurse Corps on September 16, 1942. She was assigned to the 37th Station Hospital near Yuma, Arizona. This hospital was part of the Army’s Desert Training Center, California-Arizona Maneuver Area (CAMA), that had been recently established by General George S. Patton. The center and hospital was set up at the beginning of 1943 to provide military personnel with special desert training needed for the war in North Africa. Greenwood received nurse's training from this center and hospital that simulated combat operations.

On April 17, 1943, at a little after 6 in the morning a stove exploded in the hospital’s kitchen. The blaze spread to the nearby ward where Greenwood was taking care of 15 patients. She sounded the alarm and tried to put out the fire, but it spread quickly and the ward was totally ablaze within minutes. Greenwood removed all of her patients safely with the aid of Private James F. Ford, who did suffer some burn injuries. Greenwood gave first aid to Private Ford after the patients were removed from danger.

President Franklin Delano Roosevelt ordered that both Greenwood and Ford were to be awarded the Soldier’s Medal. The medal was given to a person in the armed forces for heroic conduct not involving conflict with the enemy. The medals were presented by Brig. General Joseph Burton Sweet on June 10 and the awards were officially declared to the world by the War Department on July 15, 1943. Greenwood was the first woman and nurse to receive the medal.