More Nurses Are Needed! is a 1944 U.S. Army Nurse Corps poster signed Sgt. Henry McAlear. A tired nurse in a helmet works in a field setting, and the text tells women to ask at a Red Cross chapter or write the Surgeon General (NAID 513648).
What the poster prints
The nurse in this painting is not posed for glamour. She wears a helmet and field clothes and shades her eyes with one hand. An intravenous bottle and a rifle stand near her, and a patient's arm hangs into the foreground. The text is practical. It names two places to apply.
More nurses are needed!
ALL WOMEN CAN HELP - LEARN HOW YOU CAN AID IN ARMY HOSPITALS
U. S. ARMY NURSE CORPS
CALL AT YOUR LOCAL RED CROSS CHAPTER OR WRITE THE SURGEON GENERAL, U.S. ARMY, WASHINGTON 25, D.C.
[signature:] SGT. HENRY McALEAR
[imprint:] P-144-RPD-10-26-44-25M
Who issued it
The U.S. Army Nurse Corps is named on the sheet, and the artist signed with his rank, Sergeant Henry McAlear. The imprint code includes "10-26-44," which looks like a date in late October 1944. The archive does not decode the line, and this page does not treat any part of it as a print run.
How to read it
The archive calls the technique faint, and that is right. The emotional pull is the nurse's exhaustion. The rest is information: who is asking, where to go, and the line "All women can help," which widens the call past trained nurses to anyone who could aid in a hospital.
Enlistment in the Nurse Corps was voluntary. A recruiting poster that shows the work as hard rather than easy is, by the standards of its genre, an honest one. It does not promise adventure. It shows the cost and asks anyway. That is the kind of appeal a free country can make to free citizens without apology.
The record links this sheet to no particular battle. Other 1944 recruiting for women's service is on the Join the WAC Now! and To Make Men Free pages. The agencies behind wartime posters are on the Office of War Information hub. The Roosevelt administration essay covers the war government that issued these appeals, up to the exclusion order.
Sources
- FRAME object record, More nurses are needed! All women can help - learn how you can aid in army hospitals, 1944. U.S. Army Nurse Corps; artist Sgt. Henry McAlear. U.S. National Archives and Records Administration, Record Group 44, World War II Posters, NAID 513648, 44-PA-205, retrieved by the archive 4 October 2026. Rights as recorded: public domain (U.S. government work).
