Volunteer "agents" provide a touch of home for soldiers stationed at Camp Hobson in Georgia in 1898. "The Boys in Blue" wait in a dining tent attached to the Red Cross kitchen to be served home-cooked food prepared from donated supplies. Clara Barton lamented that conditions for the men, including the wounded, had changed little since the Civil War. The soldiers fought the war in heavy winter uniforms under a broiling summer sun. Many fell ill to yellow fever, typhoid fever, and dysentery. Medical officers reported that their operation would have broken down completely without the help of the Red Cross.

The first war-related mission of the American Red Cross occurred in 1898 when the tiny organization responded to the country's need for assistance for the men who went off to fight the Spanish in Cuba and the Philippines. Receiving its mandate under the Geneva Convention of 1864, which the U.S. government had signed in 1882, Clara Barton began recruiting nurses to serve with the troops, despite the initial reluctance of the army surgeon general to allow women to nurse the wounded. Barton soon overcame the obstacles. Secretary of War R.A. Alger sent her a letter on June 6, 1898, telling her that the "tender of services of the American National Red Cross . . . for medical and hospital work as auxiliary to the hospital service of the Army of the United States, is accepted" and adding that her workers would be "subject to orders according to the rules and discipline of war, as provided by the 63 Articles of War." By 1899, Barton had recruited some 700 nurses. Other Red Cross relief workers joined them in Puerto Rico, Cuba, and the Philippines, as well as in the South and on the East and West Coasts where mobilization camps were located. This was the first time that the American Red Cross provided services to the U.S. military in combat, a service tradition that continues to this day.

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