“They have a regular “tooth-brush” drill every morning…It was true and sure a great sight to see 150 men in line with cup, tooth-brush, and paste or powder in hands ‘cleaning up’ in a way that had been entirely unknown to most of them a few months ago, for by a question I asked all patients last year, I found at least 50 per cent. never used a tooth-brush with any degree of regularity.”
– Hollister, CJ, Dental Service at Camp Hancock in The Dental Digest, v.23, 1917
On March 3, 1911, the Dental Corps was officially authorized in the formal organizational structure and staffing of the Army’s Medical Department, which resulted in John S. Marshall and Robert Oliver becoming the first and second commissioned Dental Corps Officers respectively. Shortly after in 1912, the Navy would also establish a Dental Corp, with Emory A Bryant and William Cogan, becoming the first and second commissioned officers respectively.
The U.S. joined the global conflict on April 6, 1917, and at that time there were 86 Dental Officers on Active Duty. By November, that number significantly increased to 4,620 as enlistment procedures were drastically altered to account for the growing number of soldiers needed in the war. With the influx of dentists being trained by the U.S. Military, they not only provided essential care on the front lines, like Livius Lankford and B Lucien Brun, who opened the first dental clinic for American Expeditionary Forces in France, but also implemented preventive education within the different training camps. Although the dental requirements for enlistment were actually reduced for the war, the continued oral hygiene of the soldiers once enlisted finally became a priority.
Dental students played a pivotal role in the makeup of the dental corps during the war. Due to age requirements and the limitations that still existed for rank levels of entering officers, the majority of graduated and privately practicing dentists in the U.S. were not entering the war, leaving students and recently graduated dentists to fill the ranks.
As a result, different educational programs and initiatives were established to speed up the educational process in order to provide competent and skilled dentists to the war effort, and William HP Logan, the first chief of the Dental Section, Personnel Division, Office of The Surgeon General, lead the effort in having congress pass bill S Rept 131 on September 20, 1917, which provided that:
“…hereafter the Dental Corps of the Army shall consist of commissioned officers of the same grades and proportionally distributed among such grades as are now or may be hereafter provided by law for the Medical Corps.”
Following the passing of the bill, dentists in the U.S. military, and dentistry in general, were officially recognized as equal to their medical counterparts. As more students entered the war, and maxillofacial injuries were incredibly prevalent due to trench warfare, a school, the Army Sanitary School at Langres, France was established to further train all medical professionals entering the European arena in what skills and treatments were most needed, especially to stabilize jaw injuries for evacuation from the front lines. Seibert D Boak, who was one of the original contract dental surgeons in 1901 and initial members of the dental corps in 1911, would be placed as the director of the dental section of the Army Sanitary School, developing and implementing the dental curriculum. His efforts during World War I would lead to his appointment as the first director of the Army Dental School that would be established in 1922.
Two of the three dentists who have received the Medal of Honor, the U.S. highest award for military valor in action, Weedon E. Osborne and Alexander Gordon Lyle, both Navy dental officers, and received it for their actions during World War I. 1,684 Dental Corps Officers were stationed in Europe during the war, proving integral to the overall health and treatment of the U.S. Military, providing screenings, examinations, fillings, and extractions as well as more serious maxillofacial treatments and triage services.
