While some nurses traveled to Europe on their own as volunteers before the United States entered the war, other nurses were part of the Army’s Corps of Volunteers. Despite great need, when around 1,800 African American women volunteered to nurse, their service was declined. Children, college students, and men and women at home grew home gardens, worked in factories, sold bonds, conserved food, gathered refugee supplies, knitted, sewed, helped farmers with crops, canned food, and gathered nuts used to make gas mask filters. Everyone had worries.