Clara Ayres (September 16, 1880 – May 17, 1917) was an American nurse who joined the United States Army during the First World War.
Ayres and Helen Burnett Wood were the first two women to be killed while serving in the United States military, following an explosion on USS Mongolia on May 17, 1917.
Clara Edith Work (later Ayres) was born on September 16, 1880, in Venice Township, Seneca County, Ohio.
On September 30, 1903, she married grocery store owner Wayland D. Ayres, who died three years later from tetanus from a workplace injury.
The medical staff being transferred watched from near one of the guns, when it exploded, killing Ayres and a fellow nurse Helen Burnett Wood.