The ‘Angel of the Battlefield’ changed how wounded and missing troops are treated

Everyone wants to make a big deal of the fact that women now get to serve on the front line in combat units. But women participating in American wars goes all the way back to the beginning of the Civil War in 1861. As a matter of fact, women have been pitching in and helping fight for a lot longer than that.

One woman changed the way Americans handle our wounded and missing troops forever.

It was in the Civil War that Clarissa (Clara) Barton paved the way for nurses in the military and provided soldiers care, both behind and on the front lines of battle — for both the North and the South.

Clara was born in North Oxford on Dec. 21, 1821 and started studying to be a nurse at the young age of 11 while helping care for her sick brother. She decided at this young age that her calling was to help others, in any way that she could.

When she was 15, Clara continued to flourish in her humanitarianism by becoming a teacher and opened a free public school in New Jersey. Her passion for helping others extended far beyond herself. She was willing to risk her own life to help those in need of care.

In 1862, Clara provided aid in field hospitals during the Civil War, putting herself in harm's way on numerous occasions to care for injured soldiers and bring them supplies. Barton garnered the nickname "Angel of the Battlefield" because of her remarkable compassion for the soldiers she tended.

Extraordinarily, she recounted an instance where a bullet nearly took her life, stating that she "felt her sleeve move, [as] a bullet had gone through it and killed the man she was tending." Surprisingly, the near-death experience didn't shake her convictions or her need to help.

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Clara's work didn't end with the Civil War. In 1865, she was appointed by Abraham Lincoln to go out and search for missing soldiers on the battlefield. She called this initiative, "Friends of the Missing Men of the United States Army." She was able to identify a total of 22,000 soldiers that would have remained lost if not for her efforts.

Impressively, Clara also founded the American Red Cross at the age of 60 in 1881 after her trip to Europe, where she aided in the works of the International Red Cross. Clara's passion for helping those in disastrous situations made the American Red Cross what it is today. She spearheaded the organization for 23 years until she resigned as president at age 83 in 1904.

Today, Clara Barton's memory lives on within the good works of The American Red Cross, in not only disaster relief, but in providing our military personnel services overseas and at home, in war and peacetime.