the need of some activity or diversion. Each patient is treated as an
individual, an educational activity being selected for him which will
have the greatest curative effect and will at the same time present the
greatest interest and incentive because of the future usefulness which
it holds out to him. Simple crafts, light, desultory, and diverting,
gradually give place to more exacting, more purposeful studies and
occupations. For one man the series may be bead-work, mechanical
drafting, wood-shop, carpentry; for another, knitting, basketry,
penmanship, and accounting; for the illiterate it may be some textile
project followed by instruction in reading and writing. Since the work
began, 75,000 men have been enrolled in some form of educational work in
fifty hospitals. Many have regained control of palsied muscles, limbered
up stiffened joints, revived dulled mental sensibilities, steadied
shaken nerves, or obtained improved physical tone by the application
of these methods. To thousands the educational service has brought the
discovery that, in spite of the handicap of their disabilities, they
possess unsuspected ability in certain lines of useful and profitable
endeavor, thus substituting hope for despair and showing them the way to
a useful and contented future.
M—— was illiterate; in fact, he could not sign the pay-roll or read
the simplest orders; he was bedridden with wounds in his shoulder and
arm. He came from a remote mountain community, where the need of even
a rudimentary knowledge of the three R’s was not deemed necessary. For
thirty minutes a day for six weeks he studied reading, writing, and
arithmetic. When he was ready for discharge from hospital he was able to
write short letters, though he found spelling puzzling. In reading he
made unusual progress, though his oral inflection left something to be
desired. His greatest pleasure was to receive a letter from his brother,
who had had five years’ schooling but could not write as well as M——
himself, or to write to his mother instead of being compelled to ask the
other boys to write his letters for him.
Many of the soldiers are country boys and will go back to farming when
they leave the hospital. For them there are courses in farm accounting
and work in the gas-engine shop and with the hospital’s tractor. Clerks
who were unable to obtain promotion because they did not understand
stenography and typewriting are learning those branches, and some are
taking courses in the newest systems of cataloguing and bookkeeping. A
boy who had lost both legs above the knee became proficient in Spanish
in order that he might assist his brother in the management of a ranch
near the Mexican border. Others are taught woodworking, gardening,
the operation and repair of gas-engines, shoe repairing, oxyacetylene
welding, printing, electrical mechanics, lettering, and drawing. One
day there was brought into the reconstruction hospital at Colonia, New
Jersey, a boy whose hands had been taken off at the wrists. For five
weeks he had been fed and cared for by any one who happened to be near.
He was helpless and despondent. The able and energetic woman in charge of
the educational work in his ward suggested that if a spoon was fastened
to the stump of his right arm he would be able to feed himself. At first
he said that he couldn’t, but she insisted on his making the attempt. The
very next day he called to the sergeant who had told him that dinner was
ready: “I can wait on myself now.” Then he devised a way to light his
own cigarettes. Before long they had rigged up a device by which brushes
could be fastened to his arms and he was set to work painting toys and
boxes. And he did it remarkably well, everything considered. And, what
was much more important, he whistled as he worked.
I doubt if any branch of the army did more efficient work in its
respective line, and received less credit from the public, than the
Veterinary Corps. This lack of appreciation was due, in the first place,
to public ignorance of the duties of the corps and of the character of
its personnel. Most people associate a veterinarian with the old-time
country horse-doctor, of rough manners and still rougher speech, who
was known to every man and boy in the countryside as “Doc.” The army
veterinarian is a different genus altogether. He is usually as smart in
appearance and as well-set-up as any officer of the line; he is more
often than not a university graduate, and his methods of treatment are
as modern and scientific as those of a surgeon or a medical specialist.
The impression also seems to prevail that, as a result of the wholesale
motorization of artillery and transport and the enormous use of aircraft,
animals played but a small part in the Great War, and that consequently
the army veterinarian enjoyed something akin to a sinecure. As a matter
of fact, nothing could be further from the truth. Probably you were not
aware that when the war ended, the United States Army possessed close to
half a million horses and mules—the exact figure was, I believe, about
470,000—and was purchasing hundreds of more daily. Not only was the task
of inspecting and supervising the care of this great body of animals an
enormous one, but, as a result of the extreme scarcity of horse-flesh—for
buyers for the European armies had almost drained the markets of the
world before we entered the war—and because of the lack of tonnage, the
animals of the A. E. F. were, as a divisional commander expressed it in a
general order, “worth their weight in gold.”
Prior to 1916 there were only about 75 veterinarians in the entire army,
but with the passage during that year of the National Defense Act the
number of veterinarians at the call of the government was materially
increased by the creation of the Veterinary Reserve Corps. The Veterinary
Corps, like other branches of the service, kept pace with the expansion
of the army, and when the Armistice was signed it had on duty 2,200
officers and an enlisted force of more than 21,000 men.
When an animal is first led before a purchasing commission its relation
to the Veterinary Corps begins. Every horse and mule must be examined
by a veterinary officer for soundness and freedom from physical defects
before it can be purchased. As soon as the purchased animals have arrived
at the various remount depots they become the objects of unceasing
attention by the Veterinary Corps, whose duty it is to keep them free
from disease and in the highest state of efficiency. This work includes
the sanitary inspection of stables, picket-lines, forage and bedding,
methods of feeding, watering, grooming, and shoeing, the detection and
segregation of communicable diseases and the establishment of proper
quarantine regulations, the care and treatment of all sick animals, the
operation of veterinary hospitals, the investigation of the cause and
cure of equine diseases, and the keeping of records. Another important
duty of the corps in France was the prompt evacuation of all wounded
animals in order that they might not hinder the mobility of the troops or
engage the attention of the men. In order to facilitate the evacuation
of sick and wounded animals from the Zone of the Advance, 21 veterinary
hospital organizations—each consisting of 7 officers and 300 men, and
each having a capacity of 1,000 sick animals—were trained, organized, and
sent overseas. There were also sent to France 2 base veterinary hospitals
with a capacity of 500 animals each. Besides this, every cantonment in
the United States had its own veterinary hospital, varying in capacity
from 200 to 600 animals each. As a result of the scientific methods
of sanitation and treatment introduced by the Veterinary Corps, the
mortality among animals was enormously reduced (in the early days of the
war the British estimated that the average life of a horse in France was
only sixteen days), thousands of disabled horses which in former wars
would have been shot were evacuated, mended, and sent back to the front
for further service, and millions of dollars were saved to the American
taxpayer.
Even more important than its care of the animals of the army was the work
of the Veterinary Corps in protecting the men by guarding the purity
of their meat and dairy supplies. The activities of the Meat and Dairy
Inspection Service include the inspection of meats purchased for the use
of the army at the time of their receipt, while in storage, and upon
issue to troops; inspection of storehouses, refrigerators, and methods
of operation in handling food therein; inspection of slaughter-houses,
butcher-shops, and packing-houses; ante-mortem and post-mortem inspection
for soundness and suitability for human food of animals slaughtered;
inspection of cows and dairies providing milk, butter, and cheese for
the use of the troops. Some conception of the extent and importance of
the work of the Meat Inspection Service can be had by remembering that
when the war ended, the Packing-House Products Branch of the Office of
the Director of Purchase and Storage was purchasing for the use of the
army an average of from 15,000,000 to 19,000,000 pounds of meat products
weekly. And every carcass, if not every pound, had to be inspected and
passed by the Veterinary Corps before it reached the mess-tables of the
army. That, in spite of the incredible quantities of meat products which
had to be purchased for the use of our forces in the field, and the great
distances between the abattoirs and the zone of operations, there was no
repetition of the “embalmed-beef” scandal which sullied the history of
the war with Spain was due to the efficiency and unremitting vigilance of
the men who wore on their collars the insignia of the Veterinary Corps.
* * * * *
I am perfectly aware that the medical officers who do me the honor to
read this chapter will criticise me for the omissions I have made. And
such criticism is justified. I have dismissed such important phases of
the work of the Medical Corps as the Division of Surgery with a few
paragraphs; to the Dental Corps and the Nurse Corps I have been able to
devote but a few lines; the Sanitary Corps, the Ambulance Service, and a
score of other branches I have merely mentioned. Of the marvellous work
performed by our medical officers in plastic surgery, in bone grafting,
in the disinfection of wounds, in orthopedics, in the treatment of the
blind, the shell-shocked, and the insane, I have written nothing—the
subject is too great, the space at my disposal too limited to even
attempt it. The most that I can hope to do in the limits of a single
chapter is to give my readers the same fleeting, cursory view of the
achievements of the Medical Department that one obtains of a countryside
from an airplane.
* * * * *
If America’s losses in the greatest of wars were relatively slight—and
they _were_ slight when compared with the appalling casualties suffered
by most of the other warring nations—the reason is not to be found
in the superiority of American strategy, in the ability of American
commanders, or in the excellence of American weapons, but in the
efficiency, self-sacrifice, and devotion of the officers, nurses, and
men who wore the caduceus of the Army Medical Department. And I know
whereof I speak, for I have not only visited French, British, Belgian,
Italian, even German, hospitals all the way from La Panne to Montfalcone,
thus affording me standards of comparison, but I spent nearly three
months in an American hospital on the Marne, I came home on an American
hospital-ship, and for nearly three months more I was under the care of
army medical officers in the United States. In dressing-stations, field,
camp, base, debarkation, and general hospitals I have watched the Medical
Department at its work, and the first-hand knowledge thus gained gives
me the right to assert that it was the most efficient service of its
kind possessed by any army. To its officers and men, and to the devoted
women of the Army Nurse Corps, I lift my hat in gratitude and admiration.
The American Army and the American people owe them a debt which they can
never fully pay.