I escaped by the skin of my teeth before the Japanese army captured everything,” Gertrude Green wrote to her mother in 1941. This harrowing experience at Yencheng Hospital would be one of many during her medical missionary service in China.

In 1936, Gertrude was serving as the senior charge nurse at the New England Sanitarium and Hospital in Stoneham, Massachusetts, when a visitor arrived who would change the trajectory of her life. Dr. Harry Miller, founder of numerous Adventist hospitals and clinics in China, invited her to serve as director of nursing at Shanghai Sanitarium. She arrived that December to take up her responsibilities.

In January 1937, Gertrude traveled to a language school in Nanking (Nanjing), planning to study Chinese for a year with other new missionaries. By June, the summer heat and mosquitoes in the plains became unbearable, and she, with several others, continued her studies in the cool, breezy hills of Guling. The peace she felt there would soon be shattered.

On August 13, the Japanese attacked Shanghai. As they advanced inland, they prepared to bomb Nanking and the railroad to Guling. The missionaries fled immediately, finding temporary shelter in Kiunkiang (Jiujiang), some 15 miles south of Guling. There, Gertrude was shocked to see Dr. Miller, who had stopped on his way from Shanghai to ask her to work with him at his new clinic in Hankou (Wuhan). He also needed her assistance at a new sanitarium and hospital in Wuchang, a few miles from Hankou.

During her time at these new facilities, Gertrude worked incessantly, caring for ever-increasing numbers of wounded soldiers and refugees.

Due to the continuing Japanese advance, the United States advised evacuation. Gertrude was among the missionaries who fled to Hong Kong on a special evacuation train on December 25, 1937. By the end of January 1938, the fighting had subsided in Shanghai, and the missionaries returned there to work.

In July 1939, Gertrude was assigned the role of director of nursing at Yencheng Sanitarium in Henan province. She would assist Dr. Winston Nethery, the medical director at the denomination’s largest hospital in China. However, it was not until nine months later that circumstances stabilized sufficiently at the remote location for her to make the transition.

Gertrude set off in March 1940, accompanied by a Chinese national nurse named Miss Ma and missionaries Dr. Nethery, Thelma Smith, and Thelma’s 12-year-old son, Herbert. Following a day-long train trip, the group embarked on a 12-day, 250-mile bicycle journey to Yencheng. Laborers transported 16 large hand carts filled with medical and food supplies, while Miss Ma followed behind in a rickshaw.

Six months after Gertrude arrived at Yencheng, Dr. Nethery was called to Shanghai to replenish supplies. Wartime circumstances prevented his return, leaving Gertrude responsible for administering the hospital, nursing school, and nursing service.

Japanese aircraft bombed the hospital compound on the morning of January 28, 1941, based on incorrect intelligence that nationalist army officers were holding a council there. Gertrude’s apartment—where she had been sitting at her kitchen table—was seriously damaged. There were no casualties, but the hospital buildings were rendered uninhabitable. The wards were evacuated, and for three weeks, Gertrude and other staff members took refuge in a student’s home—a one-room hut with a dirt floor.

Taking what belongings she still possessed, Gertrude made her way by Chinese wheelbarrow, 40 miles through the backroads to Xuchang (Hsuchang), then through the Japanese frontlines to a railhead at Wangtien, and finally by train to Shanghai. From there, she was repatriated to the United States and granted an open-ended furlough until it was safe to return. During the remainder of the war, Gertrude furthered her education and accepted several short-term nursing assignments.

In February 1947, Gertrude returned to Yencheng Sanitarium to serve as director of nursing and chair of the hospital board. This time, she worked with medical director Dr. Paul Hwang, a national physician. Her priorities were repairing buildings, reestablishing the nursing school, and reassembling as many former students as possible. By August, the nursing school was functioning.

In early December, the communist army advanced from the north. Because their attitude toward foreigners was harsh, the church ordered the non-natives to evacuate. Gertrude hastily packed the remaining drug supplies and medical equipment and shipped them to the hospital in Wuchang. In mid-December, communist forces destroyed the railway bridges north of Yencheng and raided surrounding villages. Gertrude and mission president Merritt Warren led a group of staff and nursing students on a harrowing mid-winter escape on foot and by freight train to Suiping. There, fighting raged around them, temporarily halting their progress. The invading forces destroyed the Yencheng hospital.

After three perilous weeks of furtive travel, the group reached the safety of Hankou, where 14 students enrolled in the nursing school at the Wuchang Sanitarium. Gertrude and others proceeded to Shanghai for meetings at the division headquarters.

In March 1948, Gertrude returned to Wuhan to help teach her nursing students, eight of whom completed their course that summer. In August, she was called back to Shanghai, where she served for 12 months as director of nursing and director of the school of nursing. Six of her students, whose education had been interrupted by war, followed her to Shanghai and graduated with the senior class in the summer of 1949.

When communists raided Shanghai in August 1949, expatriate church officials withdrew to Hong Kong. Initially, it was believed that medical personnel could remain, and Gertrude, among others, volunteered to stay. As conditions deteriorated, however, it became clear that the presence of foreign staff hindered national administration and put them at risk. Gertrude was the last American Adventist nurse to withdraw from war-torn Shanghai, departing for Hong Kong with the final group of foreign medical staff on September 20, 1949. By October, she was settling into a new administrative role at Youngberg Hospital in Singapore.

Gertrude returned to Rochester, New York, in 1950 to care for her ailing mother. Then, in March 1951, she accepted a call to direct the nursing school at the new Adventist Hospital in Bangkok, Thailand. She arrived five days before it opened.

The shortage of adequate clinical midwifery experience for nursing students soon jeopardized the program’s government accreditation. To address the issue, the hospital board approved the construction of an on-site midwifery building. Gertrude was tasked with planning its design, overseeing its outfitting, and developing a new curriculum.

The two-story, 30-bed facility, which provided accommodation for 12 midwifery students, classrooms, and mission offices, opened on January 1, 1955. It was inaugurated by Madame La-aid Pibul-Songgram, the wife of Thailand’s prime minister. To ensure program sustainability, Gertrude arranged for national staff to receive the same midwifery training she had in New York.

In March 1956, Thailand’s Ministry of Public Health recognized that the midwifery training program not only met requirements but should also serve as a model program for other institutions.

Gertrude’s expertise, experience, and deep compassion earned her the respect of staff and students. She became friends with the Thai royal family, attended royal birthday celebrations, and was occasionally visited in her hospital apartment by the queen of Thailand’s sixth king, who contributed to her midwifery program.

Gertrude led the midwifery program for 37 years, navigating many challenges and political upheavals.

In 1979, she formally retired, but the hospital board appointed her to the same position as a volunteer. She and the grateful administrators recognized the value of freeing up a salaried position for the hospital. She continued serving as full-time midwifery program director for another 11 years.

In the early 1990s, friends persuaded Gertrude to return to the United States. Some of them traveled to Thailand to help her prepare for the move. She settled in Hendersonville, North Carolina, but still traveled yearly to Thailand to visit long-time friends or assist with special projects. In 1997, the midwifery clinic building was named the Gertrude Green building in her honor. Gertrude died on March 12, 2002, at the age of 94.

Gertrude Mary Green dedicated decades of her life to nursing, teaching, and administration in China and the Far East. Her commitment to nursing education and Adventist health care during wartime and political upheaval exposed her to danger, loss, and repeated displacement. She served as a model of sacrificial service and commitment to the highest standards of her profession.