Enlist in a Proud Profession! is a 1943 U.S. Public Health Service poster for the U.S. Cadet Nurse Corps, signed Edmundson. A young woman in a grey cadet uniform looks upward, and a panel offers "A Lifetime Education—Free! If you can qualify" (NAID 514214).
What the poster prints
The archive describes a painted head-and-shoulders portrait of a young woman in the grey Cadet Nurse uniform with red shoulder tabs, her eyes lifted, set against a blue field. A shoulder patch reads "Cadet Nurse." A blue panel carries the offer, and the foot of the sheet tells the reader where to ask.
Enlist in a Proud Profession!
JOIN THE
U.S. CADET NURSE CORPS
A Lifetime Education-
FREE!
IF YOU CAN QUALIFY
FOR INFORMATION
GO TO YOUR LOCAL HOSPITAL
OR WRITE U.S. CADET NURSE CORPS, BOX 88, NEW YORK, N.Y.
[signature:] Edmundson
[imprint:] U. S. PUBLIC HEALTH SERVICE FEDERAL SECURITY AGENCY
Who issued it
The U.S. Public Health Service, then part of the Federal Security Agency, issued the sheet for the Cadet Nurse Corps. The artist signed as Edmundson; the record gives no first name. The archive holds a second version of the same poster with the cadet in profile, which is why this page names the portrait in its heading.
How to read it
The archive tags two methods. "A proud profession" is a glittering generality: a warm phrase that asks to be felt rather than tested. The uniform and badges are transfer, lending a nursing school the look of military service.
Under the gloss, the offer is concrete. A free education, conditional on qualifying, with a hospital or a post-office box to write to. That is a real exchange put before a free person, and the sheet does not hide the condition. It says "if you can qualify" in capitals. The word "enlist" borrows from the armed forces, but nothing on the sheet says a cadet was drafted or bound beyond what she signed.
The upward gaze is the one piece of pure sentiment here. It turns a recruit into an ideal. Readers can enjoy the painting and still read the small type, which is where the terms live. For other 1943 sheets recruiting women, see Enlist in the WAVES and The More Women at Work. A health sheet from the same agency is Keep Out Malaria Mosquitoes. The essay on the Roosevelt administration places recruiting sheets like this one inside the wider war government.
Sources
- FRAME object record, Enlist in a Proud Profession! Join the U.S. Cadet Nurse Corps, 1943. U.S. Public Health Service, Federal Security Agency (U.S. Cadet Nurse Corps); artist Edmundson.
- U.S. National Archives and Records Administration, Record Group 44, World War II Posters, NAID 514214, local id 44-PA-726A, catalog record, retrieved by the archive 4 October 2026. Rights as recorded: public domain (U.S. government work).
