100 Years Ago: Unit Holds First Training Meeting

Young Men's Christian Association
UW Libraries, Special Collections Curtis 13423.

As soon as the men were enlisted and funding for the unit's equipment secured, plans were made to ready the new recruits for active service. On January 2, 1918, the nascent Base Hospital 50 unit met for the first time in the auditorium of Seattle's central YMCA, located at 909 4th Avenue, which still stands today. A schedule of meetings was mapped out to be held in the State Armory. M.D. Sergeant gave the men setting-up exercises and litter drill.

Belle McKay Fraser, superintendent of the children's orthopedic hospital, and afterward chief nurse of the unit, gave lectures on nursing, care of the sick, bed making, and surgical dressings. At these meetings, the men were vaccinated and given their anti-typhoid inoculations. Major Eagleson spent the first three days of each week in January, February, and March studying base hospital organization at Camp Lewis under the direction of Lieutenant Colonel Northington.

Lieutenant Vanderboget gave lectures on first aid based on Mason's Handbook, copies of which were loaned for use of the unit by Major Betts, of Fort Lawton.¹

Carlton Lakey Vanderboget was the only child of Richard and Adeline Lakey Vanderboget. Born in Palmyra, New York in 1883, Vanderboget graduated from the University of Buffalo in 1910. A physician, he completed his internship at Seattle General Hospital and later practiced at the Cobb Building alongside many of Seattle's medical practitioners until 1916. As a member of the Washington National Guard (later Army Reserve), Vanderboget first served with General John Pershing along the Mexican border from 1916-1917. He was later called to active service in the regular army and ordered to act as the recruiting officer for Base Hospital 50 on December 3, 1917.²

Vanderboget -- by then a Colonel -- later served in World War II, in the Pacific Theater, where he was captured by the Japanese after the Battle of Corregidor, in the Philippines. He held as a prisoner of war from May, 1942, until Bilibid, the prison where he was being held outside Manila, was liberated in March, 1945.³ At the time of his capture, Vanderboget was the chief medical officer of a laboratory facility for Army General Hospital #2 near Cabcaban, Bataan.

Two years later, in 1947, he would retire from the military to a small farm near Edmonds, Washington. He died in Edmonds on March 7, 1970. Among his honors, Vanderboget received the Legion of Merit, Purple Heart, and Mexican Service Award. He is buried at Arlington National Cemetery in Arlington, Virginia.

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References:

1. Roster Organized by the Primary POW Camp in Bilibid Prison.
2. "Army Orders." Seattle Daily Times. December 3, 1917, pg. 8.
3. Mason, Charles Field. A Complete Handbook for the Hospital Corps of the U. S. Army and Navy and State Military Forces. New York : William Wood and Company, 1906.