Margaret Catherine Stout O’Donnell served in the U.S. Army Nurse Corps from 1943 to 1945. After completing her nursing education in West Virginia, she entered the Army and was commissioned as a second lieutenant. Her wartime service took her from Northern Ireland and England to field hospitals in France, Luxembourg, Germany, and Austria.
As a nurse with the 30th Field Hospital, Margaret cared for wounded and critically ill patients while the mobile hospital followed General George S. Patton’s Third Army across Europe. During the Battle of the Bulge, she served with a hospital unit in Luxembourg. After Germany’s surrender, her unit helped care for survivors of the Ebensee concentration camp in Austria.
Margaret continued her nursing career after returning home, working in several states and in the Panama Canal Zone before coming to the Illinois Valley. She later served patients at Peoples Hospital in Peru and St. Margaret’s Hospital in Spring Valley, retiring in 1985. Even after retirement, she remained active as a Red Cross nurse and hospice volunteer into her eighties.
This introduction draws upon a more extensive account of Margaret’s life and wartime service prepared by her son-in-law, Kenneth V. Peterson, for the 100th anniversary of her birth. His full story, based on Margaret’s recollections, correspondence, family accounts, and histories of the military hospitals with which she served, can be read here: [Read Margaret Stout O’Donnell’s full story]
Margaret O’Donnell passed away on 10 February 2008, at age 87 and was laid to rest in Saint Joseph Cemetery in Spring Valley. (Findagrave Memorial)
Source: Kenneth V. Peterson, “Margaret Catherine Stout: U.S. Army Nurse Corps, 1943–1945,” prepared for family members in 2020. Used as the principal source for this summary with the author’s permission.
