The Base Hospital received their first official order
to provide army nurses for this service on July 14, 1917.  Before then, Medical Corps attached to the trains had
cared f or the wounded.  Helen was assigned to a
Hospital train along with two other army nurses: Edna Cooper and Grace O Donnell.  They were told to leave
the next day and board the train which would be
stationed at Port Boulet, France.  They arrived at Port
Boulet the next day, July 15, and met Captain Goodwin,
the commanding officer.  They were to remain on with
the train for five months.

     The train consisted of sixteen coaches: one infectious
car with eighteen beds, one staff car with eight beds,
one kitchen and sitting sick officers  car with three beds
and twenty sears, eight regular lying ward cars with
288 beds, one pharmacy car, one infectious case sitting
car with fifty-six seats and fourteen bunks, one kitchen
and mess car with beds for three cooks, one personnel
car with thirty beds, and one train crew and store car.
All in all the train had a capacity of 400 beds.  The three army nurses shared a coach with three compartments:
a dining room, two sleeping rooms and a lavatory.

     The train s first trip was to evacuate patients able
to move to a point of embarkation to the U.S. from
various hospitals.  This was the first trip made to move seriously wounded patients to hospitals near the point of embarkation and away from their previous positions
near the front.  Since these were also the first nurses,
Colonel Howard Clark, in charge of the train service,
made the first trip to the different hospitals.

     They began their trip on July 17, only two days after
their arrival.  They passed through many French regions stopping at different base hospitals and filling their
train with wounded men to be taken to another base
hospital in Savenay, France.  Helen worked with her
two companions both day and night on their patients.
As they worked they began to realize the difficulty in
bearing a wound, even without the jolting, noisy, and
dirty conditions of traveling on a train.  There were
patients with amputated legs or arms, and many other painful wounds requiring constant attention from doctors
or nurses, including two soldiers with broken backs.
The nurses had limited time with each of the patients,
but they did the best they could.  The patients remained
on the train with the  nurses for three days before being unloaded at their destination.

     Next, the train was sent to evacuate patients from
a mobile unit in Chateau-Thierry who had already
received first aid, though many had hardly reacted
from their anesthetic and were in a terrible state.
Around the station were soldiers with torn and muddy uniforms.  The train was loaded with about 400 patients.  Both nurses and patients were constantly bothered by
endless amounts of flies and a terrible odor from wounds
that had not been cared for.

     Helen and her fellow nurses made three trips to Chateau-Thierry.  The third was to a little town near
by.  They arrived after dark and they quickly began
to load patients that had been gassed.  In the middle
of their work, an alarm sounded, warning them of
enemy airplanes which meant they had to turn all
of the lights out and work in complete darkness.  They
loaded as many patients as they could manage to safety
on to the train, without keeping track of how many
could even walk.  When they had reached safety and
could turn the lights back on, Helen found that thee
train was packed with patients in the seats, on the
bunks, and crowded in the aisle.

     When they were going to a hospital in a mountainous
area, they had to divide the train so that it could be
pulled up the mountain with more ease.  The nurses
were given no instructions about the division of the
train and was lucky that not all the nurses ended up
in one half leaving 200 patients by themselves.  Helen
found herself in one half of the train with about 200
patients and the other half was headed up the hill with
the other two nurses.  However, while the other half
of the train was gone, Helen s train was accidentally
attached to another engine which began to quickly pull
them away.  She traveled for many hours in that train
with all 200 patients and without the supply and the
kitchen car for they had been pulled away with the
other half of the train.  Finally, after eight hours, they
were happily reunited with the rest of the train.

     The war ended in 1918, and in 1931, at the age of 39,
she married a 44 year old bachelor with whom she
began a family.  And though their first few years of
marriage were shadowed by the depression, they were
long and happy.  In 1987, at 95 years of age, Helen
Burrey died.