RTL runs a small field pharmacy or can serve as another unit's aide station. We also appear as roving nurses, tending to the "sick and wounded" as we find them. Serving in the "war to end all wars" as nurses we address medical improvements since the American Civil War, as well as the founding and purpose of the International Red Cross.

For us it is the autumn of 1918. We address the political causes of the war, America's entry, the lethal influenza which the US inadvertantly exported to Europe creating a pandemic, and the hot news of April 1918: the death of the Red Baron.

Nota Bene: RTL recognizes the risk that some visitors to an event may mistake our encampment for the sites's first aide station. Fortunately, Ellen is a fully qualified Red Cross lay responder and instructor; Barbara is a nursing student. Visitors can receive care within the limits of our training while we contact EMS to take over if such is warranted by the person's condition.



So How Did Ellen Get Into This Mess?

For my 1918 nurse, I have inserted myself into my own family history, back three generations. I am playing Ellen Sheffield, the fictional daughter of George St. John Sheffield and Mary Stewart. My grandfather is the famous Joseph Earl Sheffield, founder of the Sheffield Science Building at Yale University. My home is in New Haven, Connecticut.

I have a few famous relatives. My aunt Ellen Maria Sheffield is the widow of Judge William Walter Phelps, a former Republican member of the U.S. House of Representatives and appointed by the late President Garfield to serve as the U.S.'s first minister to Germany. Uncle Walter was a close friend of Bismarck. So close were they that Uncle Walter married his only daughter to Bismarck's personal secretary, an older widower named Franz von Rottenberg. Cousin Marian had two children, Frances and Phelps von Rottenberg. The marriage did not last and in 1907 Marian returned to the U.S. and her maiden name. Hence I have a cousin with the peculiar distinction of being named Phelps Phelps.

My other famous relative is Mabel Thorpe Boardman, she who went head to head against Clara Barton for control of the American Red Cross. Cousin Mabel won the battle in 1904 and has been the head of the Red Cross ever since. Thus my dilemma: Mabel insists that "charity begins at home" and has convinced her various relatives to contribute or join. So here I am, a prominent socialite with a yen to party, dressed up like some sort of nun and cleaning bed pans, risking my life in a two front war -- the macro conflict in the trenches and the micro battle against the flu pandemic.

Having myself just recently survived the flu, I have been given easier duties and now run a field pharmacy. I am permitted to rest as needed and take whatever medication I deem necessary to get back my strength, but I am not a young woman so my recovery is going more slowly than anticipated.

Still, I am happy to greet visitors to the pharmacy, explain what we have and why we have it, and to encourage them to write a short postcard to our soldiers overseas. These cards will cross the span of decades and be shipped to those serving in the Middle East.