During the fourth week in November a dispatch to national headquarters announced that the last band of Red Cross nurses, known as the "Macclenny Nurses," had finished their work at Enterprise, and would come into Camp Perry to wait their ten days' quarantine and go home to New Orleans for Thanksgiving. That would mean that seventy-nine days ago their little company of eighteen, mainly women, steaming on to Jacksonville, under guidance of their old-time trusted leader, Southmayd, of New Orleans, listened to his announcement that the town of Macclenny, thirty-eight miles from Jacksonville, Fla., and through which they would soon pass, was in a fearful state of distress; a comparatively new town, of a few thousand, largely Northern and Western people, suddenly-stricken down in scores; poor, helpless, physicians all ill, and no nurses; quarantined on all sides, no food, medicine, nor comforts for sick or well. "Nurses, shall I leave a part of you there; the train can not stop in, nor near the town, but if I can manage to get it slowed up somewhere, will you jump?" "We will do anything you say, colonel; we are here in God's name and service to help His people; for Him, for you, and for the Red Cross, we will do our best and our all." "Conductor, you had a hot box a few miles back; don't you think it should be looked to after passing Macclenny?" "I will slow up and have it seen to, colonel, although it may cost me my official head." And it did. One mile beyond town, the rain pouring in torrents, the ground soaked, slippery, and caving, out into pitchy darkness, leaped three men and seven women from a puffing, unsteady train, no physician with them, and no instructions save the charge of their leader as the last leap was made, and the train pushed on: "Nurses, you know what to do; go and do your best, and God help you." Hand to hand, that none go astray in the darkness, they hobbled back over a mile of slippery cross-ties to the stricken town. Shelter was found, the wet clothes dried, and at midnight the sick had been parceled out, each nurse had his or her quota of patients, and were in for the issue, be it life or death. Those past all help must be seen through, and lost, all that could be must be saved. The next day a dispatch from Southmayd went back to New Orleans for Dr. Gill to come and take charge of the sick and the nurses at Macclenny. It was done, and under his wise direction they found again a leader. Their labors and successes are matters for later and more extended record.