Colonel Carty of the U. S. Signal Corp receiving the insignia from
General Berdoullat.]
“If there be degrees of chivalry the highest award should be accorded
to the medical profession,” was said in the London _Times_ in 1916.
People didn’t know whether that was meant quite seriously. Soon they
found out. Medical men were figuring heavily in the casualty lists,
and more and more stories were coming over of exceptional courage and
devotion to duty among the doctors, nurses, and ambulance drivers.
Usually, also, no one but the wounded on the fields of battle knew how
to appreciate the deeds of the non-combatants. There was in general
no thrill attached to the records. They were simply records of steady
self-sacrifice in the face of the greatest danger.
The Times instanced a number of heroic doctors. Captain Chavasse was
one of them. Utterly regardless of heavy firing he would time and
again rush across the open to dress the wounded. He kept this up all
through the engagement and then he himself was wounded in the side by a
shell splinter. This injury he sustained while carrying an urgent case
into safety, the journey being over 500 yards of shell-swept ground.
Afterwards at night he took up a party of twenty volunteers, rescued
three wounded men from a shell hole only twenty-five yards from the
enemy trench, buried the bodies of two officers, and collected many
identity discs—and these things he did although he was fired on by
machine guns and bombs.
[Illustration: