Lieutenant-Colonel Kincaid remembers a little something about Bobo and
“his Rough-necks” on a particular occasion.
“I merely want to say,” he remarked, “that in the middle of the
Hindenburg show Captain Bobo said ‘Presto!’ and ten ambulances appeared
from nowhere at a moment when, believe me, ambulances were needed.
“Colonel Montgomery, weeping for ambulances, thought of Captain Bobo.
He gave the Red Cross man the high sign, and Captain Bobo just brushed
aside a lot of flying metal and stepped close enough to Colonel
Montgomery to ask the Colonel what was on his system. ‘Ambulances,’
shouted the Colonel, ‘but I don’t know where to get ’em.’ ‘I do,’
answered Captain Bobo. ‘If you’ll give me a fast car I’ll flush a whole
covey of ambulances, sir.’
“Colonel Montgomery commandeered General O’Ryan’s racing car and
Captain Bobo climbed in. The Captain stepped on the accelerator and
exploded toward Paris, a trip of 158 miles. And toward the middle of
the next afternoon back came Bobo hellbent with ten ambulances in his
wake. We were too busy then to ask him where he had got them, but
when things had quieted down for a moment some days later we made
inquiries. And we got this Bobo person’s number. Let me tell you in
confidence—don’t repeat this to a soul, remember—this Bobo is an
ambulance stealer. He and his gang were out and out Red Cross crooks.
He had crashed into Paris, grabbed up every ambulance standing along a
curb, bamboozled the drivers into believing that they were to take his
orders, and had crashed out of Paris again at the head of his string of
sputtering booty; and made straight for the front again at a time when
I don’t know what we would have done if it hadn’t been for Captain Bobo
and his ambulances.”
O’Malley takes up the story again: “Bobo and his associates had had no
sleep for almost thirty-six hours.
“They were dirty, unshaven, haggard; nevertheless, they spent that
night and all the next day picking up the white-faced, shattered boys
who lay among the shell holes groaning with the thirst horrors which
only those who have lost pints of blood know. Back to the ‘battalion
aid post’ the lads were brought by Captain Bobo and his buddies, or
variously to ‘first stations,’ which sometimes were within 200 yards
of the front line trenches—to dressing stations, or to the main
dressing station back at ‘railhead.’ And there the sufferers received
attentions, which sometimes meant a merciful anesthetic and sometimes
the grimy but gentle fingers of Captain Bobo on cold, white eyelids as
he closed the staring eyes forever.”
Bobo and his daredevils became an institution with their division.
Where danger lay, so long as there were wounded there, Bobo’s squad
gloried.
“One day, the Captain and his Red Cross crew learned that if they
wanted to get their ambulances out to where the wounded lay they would
have to circle the toe of a wooded knoll over an open road on which
rained machine gun bullets every time anything alive showed itself to
the Huns concealed in the woods on the hill. But they wanted to get to
the wounded.
“They started their engines and ‘stepped on ’em’ so hard that the
little ambulances would bang out into the open and whiz around the
marked turn joyously, while the phut-phut-phut-phut of the Hun machine
guns whipped the atmosphere into ribbons and the splinters from the
racing ambulances flew high in air. Then they had to come back around
that open turn again, and they went out again and back, and out and
back, their ambulances looking a bit worm-eaten when the day was over
but the Captain and each of the other Red Cross drivers still ‘all in
one piece.’”