Rico. In November 1917, the first military draft (conscription) lottery in Puerto Rico was held in the island's capital, San Juan. Eustaquio Correa was the first Puerto Rican to be drafted into the Armed Forces of the United States. On May 17, 1917, the Porto Rico Regiment of Infantry was deployed to guard the Panama Canal. One of the Puerto Ricans who distinguished himself during World War I was Lieutenant Frederick Lois Riefkohl of the US Navy, who on August 2, 1917, became the first known Puerto Rican to be awarded the Navy Cross. The Navy Cross was awarded to Lt. Riefkohl for his actions in an engagement with an enemy submarine. Lt. Riefkohl, who was also the first Puerto Rican to graduate from the United States Naval Academy, served as a rear admiral in World War II. Frederick L. Riefkohl's brother, Rudolph William Riefkohl also served. Riefkohl was commissioned a second lieutenant and assigned to the 63rd Heavy Artillery Regiment in France, where he participated in the Meuse-Argonne Offensive. According to the United States War Department, after the war he served as Captain of Coastal Artillery at the Letterman Army Medical Center in Presidio of San Francisco, in California (1918). He played an instrumental role in helping the people of Poland overcome the 1919 typhus epidemic. By 1918, the Army realized there was a shortage of physicians specializing in anesthesia, a low salary specialty, who were required in military operating rooms. To address the need, the Army began hiring women physicians as civilian contract employees. The first Puerto Rican woman doctor to serve in the Army under contract was Dr. Dolores Piñero from San Juan. She was assigned to the San Juan base hospital where she worked as an anesthesiologist during the mornings and in the laboratory during the afternoons. In New York, some Puerto Ricans joined the 369th Infantry Regiment, which was mostly composed of African-Americans. They were not allowed to fight alongside their white counterparts, but did serve as part of a French division. They fought on the Western Front in France, and their reputation earned them the nickname of "the Harlem Hell Fighters" by the Germans. Among them was Rafael Hernández Marín, considered by many as Puerto Rico's greatest composer. The 369th was awarded French Croix de guerre for battlefield gallantry by the French government. On January 6, 1914, First Lieutenant Bernard L. Smith established the