THE AMERICAN RED CROSS AS A DEPARTMENT STORE
From the Commissioner in Paris came this cablegram: "Get us six of the
biggest circus tents that you can."
From the Washington headquarters was flashed this reply:
"Tents are on their way."
For the Red Cross it was all a part of the day's work. When Colonel
Harvey D. Gibson, our Red Cross Commissioner in France in the latter
half of 1918, found that the absolute limit for storage supplies in and
around Paris had been reached and passed and that it would be several
weeks at least before more additional warehouses could be constructed,
his practical mind went at once to circus tents to meet the emergency.
They would be rain-proof, sun-proof, frost-proof as well. And so,
turning to the cable, he ordered the tents, as casually as he might have
asked for 10,000 sweaters or 100,000 surgical dressings, and received
them as he might have received the sweaters or the dressings, without an
hour of unnecessary delay.
When we first came to consider the work of the Transportation Department
of the American Red Cross in France, I spoke of the women who, with
patriotic zeal directing both their minds and their deft, quick fingers,
turned out the sweaters, the wristlets, the knitted helmets by not
merely the tens, but by the hundreds of thousands. Their capacity--the
united capacity of a land of some 20,000,000 adult women workers--was
vast. But the necessity was even more vast. And while the proportion of
these creature comforts which were handmade and individual grew to great
size, there also were vast quantities of these things and others which
were purchased from manufacturers and in quantities which not only
compelled these very manufacturers to turn over the entire output of
their plants for many months but also compelled them to add to their
factory capacity. And, of course, there were many things which the wives
and mothers and sisters and sweethearts of America, with all their
loving desires and keen capabilities, could not produce. Which meant
that our Red Cross in France must have purchasing and warehousing
functions--like big business of almost every other sort.
It would have been foolish and worse than foolish to have even attempted
the problem without organization. That was the difficulty of the
well-meaning American relief work which was launched upon French soil
before the coming of our Red Cross. In the early days of the war the
French ports were littered with boxes of relief supplies addressed "The
American Embassy," "American Chamber of Commerce," "French Army," and
just "France." People did so want to help, and so, in our impulsive
American way, sent along things without sending any notice whatsoever as
to whom they were to go. One of the big reasons for the foundation of
the American Relief Clearing House was to combat this very tendency. As
far back as October, 1914, it began by organizing French and American
committees, obtaining freedom of customs for relief goods, free sea and
rail freights, and finally, by organizing the War Relief Clearing House
in New York, as a complementary committee for systematic collection and
forwarding.
Eventually the Clearing House brought American donors to the point where
they would actually mark the contents of boxes, but there was always
great waste in not passing upon the serviceability of shipments until
they had reached Paris and great delay in having to pack and re-sort
them there. The secondhand material which came was of fair quality, but
not sufficient in quantity. And while people here in the United States
were always willing to contribute money generously they seemed
disinclined to have goods bought outside this country. The result was
that the American Relief Clearing House in Paris never had a sufficient
accumulation against emergency. At the time of the first great offensive
against Verdun, in the spring of 1916, it was compelled to send out all
of the supplies which it held and to appeal to the United States for
more clothes, food, and the like, which meant all of a six weeks' delay.
Such a state of things could not exist in our Red Cross work there. And
yet the problem in this very phase that confronted Major Murphy and his
party was tremendous. The Compagnie Générale Transatlantique had just
notified the Clearing House that it could no longer afford to supply
free space; and in view of the subsequent shipping situation, the heavy
torpedoing, and the army demand for tonnage, it is considered not
improbable that had the Clearing House continued it would have had to
give up handling anything except money. Yet in spite of obstacles, the
Red Cross would have to purchase and store supplies--not in the
quantities that the Clearing House had purchased and stored them, but in
far, far greater number.
Major Murphy met the problem squarely, as was his way. He cabled to
America, and seven men were sent to him late in September, 1917. They
were men taken from various corners of the country, but all of them
expert in the task allotted to them. At once they began the work of
coördinating the vast problem of American Red Cross purchase and supply.
There was large need for them; for, while at the very beginning of our
Red Cross work over there, while its problem, because of its vastness
and its novelty, was still quite largely a question of guesswork,
purchases were made for each department as it requisitioned material or
was stored for them individually. Such a method was quickly outgrown,
and was bound to be succeeded by a far better one, which, as we shall
see presently, finally did come to pass.
From the beginning the main warehouses, like the main garages, of the
American Red Cross in France have been located in the headquarters city
of Paris. Providing these facilities was one of the first tasks that
confronted Major Murphy. And to understand the promptitude with which he
met this task understand, if you will, that by the following September
he already had six warehouses in Paris, organized with a capacity to
handle 10,000 tons of supplies a month, which might quickly be increased
to 60,000 tons a month. As a matter of fact, before Armistice Day was
reached there were fourteen of these warehouses and they actually were
handling some 10,000,000 tons a month.
The nucleus of this warehouse organization was again the American Relief
Clearing House. It gave the first three of the store buildings. The next
three were obtained by Major Murphy's organization, with the typical
keenness of American business men who, having donated their services and
their abilities to our great adventure overseas, purposed to make those
services and abilities work to their highest possibilities.
Warehouses to be effective and efficient must have not only good
locations, but appropriate railroad connections and modern equipment for
handling their supplies; this is primary. The French, themselves, long
since have recognized it as such. And because the freight terminal
tracks at Paris are so abundant and so generally well planned there were
plenty of warehouses there, if one could but find them. To find them was
not so hard a task, even during the war, if one but had the time. There
was the rub. The Red Cross did not have the time; there was not a day,
not an hour, to be wasted. It needed storage space at once--ships with
hundreds and thousands of tons of Red Cross relief supplies already were
at the docks of French ports. More were on their way across the
Atlantic. Space to store these cargoes must be found--and found
immediately. By October 1, 1917, our Red Cross had twenty-one storage
centers in France, giving it 5,000,000 cubic feet of space as against
but 50,000 three months earlier. The largest unit was a sugar warehouse
in the wholesale center of Paris, a five-story stone structure with
twelve hoists, two railroad tracks on the outside, and two within.
These facilities cost money, of course. And that in some instances they
cost more money because time was a large factor in the question can
hardly be denied. Yet economy was practiced as well as speed. This is
record fact. Our Red Cross in France did not permit itself to become a
waster; even in emergencies which called for a saving of time--no matter
at what expense--it carefully watched the outgoing of dollars.
When, for instance, it sought to obtain one of the largest of its needed
Parisian warehouses--a really huge structure with 2,500,000 cubic feet
of storage space and served by two railroad tracks thrust into its very
heart--it tried to drive a good Yankee bargain. The place had been found
after a day of seemingly hopeless and heartless search. Its owner was
located and the rental cost discussed briefly. The owner wanted ninety
centimes (approximately seventeen cents) a square meter. The Red Cross
agents demurred. They counter-offered with eighty centimes. The owner
accepted.
"Shake!" said the chief of the party. They clasped hands.
"Never mind the formal papers now," laughed our Yankee Red Cross
bargainer, "we'll take each other's word. I haven't a minute to lose, as
we must have the place ready for supplies within forty-eight hours."
"Impossible!" cried the French landlord. He knew the real condition of
the place, which had been unused and unrepaired for months.
Yet within forty-eight hours the Red Cross supplies from overseas
actually were being moved in. Immediately upon closing the deal, the
Americans had sought labor. It was not to be found, they were told; all
the surplus labor of Paris being in the trenches or else engaged in some
work vital to the war's operations.
"Why not use _permissionnaires_?" some one suggested.
The hint was a good one. It so happened that the French Government
already had consented to the employment of this very sort of labor by
the American Red Cross. So down to the larger railroad stations of Paris
hurried our Red Cross agents. Soldiers back from the trenches were given
the opportunity to earn a few francs--and gladly accepted it. Within a
few hours a crew of more than a hundred men had been gathered and the
work of making the newly acquired property ready to receive supplies
begun. And under American supervision it was completed--within the
allotted two days.
This experience was repeated a few weeks later when the American Red
Cross took over the old stables of the Compagnie Générale des Petites
Voitures in the Rue Chemin du Vert as still another warehouse and had to
clean and make them fit for supplies--all within a mere ten days. The
Compagnie Générale des Petites Voitures was an ancient Parisian
institution. It operated--of all the vehicles perhaps the most
distinctive upon the streets of the great French capital--the little
victoria-like _fiacre_, drawn by a wise and ancient horse with a bell
about its neck. The war had drained the city of most of its horses--they
were in the French artillery--and for a long time before the coming of
our Red Cross the great stables in the Rue Chemin du Vert had been idle;
in fact for the first time in more than half a century.
In taking over the place the officers of the American Red Cross were not
blind to the fact that they were getting nothing more than a great,
rambling, two-story stable and its yards, which were just as they had
been left when a thousand horses had been led forth from their stalls.
The place was a fearful litter of confusion, while crowded together at
one end of the courtyard were the old _fiacres_--ancient,
weather-beaten, decrepit, abandoned. They made a pathetic picture.
Rumor told the neighborhood, and told it quickly, that the _Croix Rouge
Américaine_--as the French know our organization over there--had taken
over the old stables and were to use them for warehousing purposes, but
rumor was not smart enough to tell how the trick was to be done. It did
not know; the Red Cross workers did. They had found after making a
careful inventory of the place, that they had on their hands about 8,000
square yards of ground, covered for the greater part with more or less
dilapidated buildings a hundred years old or even older. More than that,
there were five hundred tons of manure in the structures which must be
completely removed and the premises thoroughly disinfected before there
could be even a thought of using them for goods storage. Cleaning the
Augean stables was something of the same sort of a job.
Various Parisian contractors who specialize in that sort of work were
asked what they would charge for the task of getting the big stables
clean once again. One said seven thousand francs. Another allowed that
it would cost five thousand. He was the lowest bidder. The Red Cross
turned from all of them and went to the market gardeners of the great
central Halles. Would they help? Of course they would--the name of the
_Croix Rouge Américaine_ has some real potency in France. In four days
the stables were cleaned--perfectly and at an entire cost of less than
two hundred francs!
Then, with the aid of a hundred workmen, the work of rehabilitating them
was begun. At that time in Paris carpenters were not to be had for love
or for money, so every available Red Cross man who knew how to saw a
piece of wood or who could drive a nail without hitting his thumb--and
at that, there were many thumbs jammed before the job was entirely
done--was pressed into service. From the famous Latin Quarter of Paris
came many volunteers, some of them American painters and sculptors more
familiar with working tools of other sorts, but all fired with a zeal
and a determination to help. Such a prodigious din of work the
neighborhood could not easily remember!
Lumber was scarce, almost unobtainable in fact. That did not discourage
our Red Cross. One of the lesser buildings in the compound was quickly
marked for destruction and actually was torn down in order to supply the
lumber needed for the repair of the others. Windows were put in and
glazed, doors were hung, wall derricks and hoistways rigged, roofs made
water-tight, and the ancient cobbles of the courtyard scrubbed until
they were almost blue in their faces. All the stables, the vehicle
rooms, and the office quarters were disinfected, electric lights were
installed in every corner, fire extinguishers hung throughout the
buildings, telephones placed in each department, racks and bins for
supplies constructed, lettered, and numbered, smooth cement walks laid
to connect each building with its fellows--and not until all of this was
done did the Red Cross men who had volunteered for the long hours of
hard manual labor really dare stop for a deep breath.
"Talk about Hercules," laughed one of them when it was all done. "He had
better look to his old laurels. He never did a job like this--in ten
days."
It took the folk of the neighborhood a long time to realize what had
happened in ten days.
Yet there it was--if so you were pleased to call it--one of the largest
"retail-wholesale" stores in all Paris, with some 15,000 tons of
supplies in place in the racks within a fortnight after the herculean
and record-breaking cleansing task had been finished; and fresh stuff
arriving daily to meet the needs of the hard-pressed peasantry and
soldiers of France. And in a little time to perform similar service for
the men of our own army and navy over there. Yet, unlike any other
general store in the world--wholesale or retail--this Red Cross one was
open for business every hour of the day or the night. Comfortable
quarters were prepared and furnished for six workers, who volunteered to
live in the warehouse and so be prepared at any hour of the night to
receive and execute an emergency call for supplies.
One huge task of this particular warehouse was the re-sorting of
volunteer or donated shipments. From a period in the early progress of
the war the Red Cross accepted only supplies shipped to its general
stores--in no case whatsoever to individual organizations--and ordered
that all goods should be sorted and re-packed in France for distribution
there. So one big room in the Rue Chemin du Vert was turned over to this
work. It never lacked variety. In one actual instance a big box sent
from some city in the Middle West burst open and the first thing that
met the gaze of the Red Cross warehouse workers was a white satin
high-heeled party slipper poking its head out for a look at "gay Paree."
And it was by no means the only tribute of this sort that thoughtless
America gave to starving France. There sometimes were real opportunities
for censorship in the re-sorting room.
* * * * *
A man who went to this great warehouse in the early days of its
existence brought back a vivid picture of its activities.
"As one entered the long, wide courtyard through the great arch from the
street--an arch, by the way, which reminded me wonderfully of the
Washington Arch at the foot of Fifth Avenue, New York," said he, "and
caught a glimpse of the flags of France and America--and the Red
Cross--floating over it, he became immediately impressed with the
militarylike activity of the entire place. This was heightened by the
presence of a number of French soldiers and some fifty Algerians in
their red fezzes, who were at work on crates and boxes. Three or four
big gray camions were waiting at the upper end of the yard while the
workmen loaded them. Opposite were what had once been the extensive
stable structures, now clean and only reminiscent of their former
tenants in the long line of chain halters hanging motionless against the
walls. Here the bulkier, non-perishable goods were stored.
"Halfway up the entrance yard began the series of rooms whose shelves,
fashioned ingeniously from packing cases, contained the great supplies
of condensed milk, tobacco, sugar, soap, pork, canned beef, and rice.
Overhead, on what was once the great hayloft of the stables, were the
cubicles where were stacked the paper-wrapped bundles of new clothing
for men, women, and children, every package marked with the size, and
the _sabots_ with thick wooden soles and the sturdy leathern
uppers--enough to outfit a whole townful of people.
"Across a 'Bridge of Sighs'--the opportunity to call it that is quite
too good to be lost--to another building, one came upon stores of
chairs, bucksaws, farm implements, boxes of window glass, bedside
tables, wicker reclining chairs, iron beds, mattresses, pillows,
bolsters, blankets, sheets, pillowcases, and comforters. Through a wide
doorway whose lintel was a rough hand-hewn beam as thick as a man's body
and a century old, were the dormitory and the messroom of the red-fezzed
Algerians who, by the way, were under the command of two French
officers. Next came the lofts, with their bins of crutches, surgical
dressings, rubber sheeting, absorbent cotton, enamel ware, bright copper
sterilizers, and boxes of rubber gloves for hospital use. Still another
building housed the immense supplies of wool gloves and socks, pajamas,
sweaters, and women's and children's underwear and high stacks of brown
corduroy jackets and trousers, for the Red Cross sought to furnish to
the peasant just the same sort of clothing that he and his father's
grandfather were accustomed to wear; even to the beloved _béret_.
"Throughout the storage building one came across evidences of the manner
in which every available bit of old wood was utilized for reconstruction
in order to avoid further expenditure. Bins and racks were made of
ancient doors and window frames and crates had been carefully fashioned
into delivery counters. In fact small 'branch stores' for the
distribution of goods in less than box or crate lots were established in
every corner of the Rue Chemin du Vert warehouse, with clerks always in
attendance upon them. In this way it was as easy to fit out an
individual with what he or she needed as to fit out an entire community,
and the reverse.
"On the right side of the main courtyard, running back from the
administration offices, were the long, narrow shipping rooms where the
bundles called for were made up from the stock which lined the walls and
were tagged and addressed by a corps of young women; the crate lots
being attended to by the men in the courtyard below. Still farther on
was the department which received the packages of used clothing, of
knitted goods, or the other things sent by humane persons in countless
cities of America and France to the needy ones in the fighting lines, or
back of them. Below and beyond this room were the coal bins, the
carpenter's shop, in which tables and bedside stands constantly were
being turned out from new lumber, and the 'calaboose,' for the benefit
of an occasionally recalcitrant Algerian. And adjoining the main
courtyard was still another room almost as large; and this last was the
place of receipt of all supplies. Here they were inspected, counted, and
assigned to their proper buildings and compartments. The entire place
was a great hive, literally a hive of industry. And the people of the
neighborhood never passed its arched entrance without first stopping to
look in, it all was so amazing to them. They wondered if there ever
could have been a time when a thousand horses were stabled there."
Upon the day of the signing of the armistice and for many months
thereafter Warehouse No. 1 in the Rue Chemin du Vert remained a busy
hive of industry. It still handled almost every conceivable sort of
commodity, and perhaps the only difference in its appearance from the
day that the graphic New Yorker saw it was that German prisoners--each
with a doggedly complacent look upon his face and a large "P. G." upon
his back,--had replaced the Algerians for the hard manual labor. It
continued to employ fifteen men and women in its office and from
thirty-five to forty Red Cross workers, American or French, while the
value of the stock constantly kept on hand was roughly estimated at
close to $2,000,000. From thirty-five to forty tons were daily being
sent out. Yet how was a stock valuation of $2,000,000 really to be
compared with one of $2,500,000 in warehouse No. 6 in the Rue Cambrai or
$3,000,000 at No. 24 in the Rue Curial? And these were but three of
eleven Red Cross warehouses in Paris at the time of the armistice. And a
report issued very soon after showed twenty-nine other warehouses of the
American Red Cross in France, eight of them in the city of Dijon, which,
because of its strategic railroad location, was a store center of
greatest importance for our army over there.
Perhaps you like facts with your picture.
Well, then, returning from the picture of the thing to the fact, we find
at the time of the first definite general organization of our Red Cross
in France--in September, 1917--a Bureau of Transportation and Supplies
was formed under the direction of Mr. R. H. Sherman. A little later a
slightly more comprehensive organization was charted, and a separate
Bureau of Supplies created, with Mr. Joseph R. Swan as its immediate
director. This was subdivided into four main sections: Paris Warehouses,
Outside Warehouses, Receiving, and Shipping. This organization remained
practically unchanged until the general reorganization plan of August,
1918, which we have already seen, when the bureau became the Section of
Stores and, as such, a factor, and a mighty important factor, of the
Division of Requirements.
From that time forward the problem was one of growth, great growth,
rather than that of organization. It was a problem of finding
warehouses to accommodate our supplies over there; of finding competent
men to oversee and operate the warehouses, and then, in due order, of
keeping the supplies moving through the warehouses and out to the men at
the front. In due course we shall see how these supplies functioned. For
the moment consider the fact that in an initiatory six weeks, from
October 11 to November 30, 1917, Mr. Swan submitted a detailed account
showing how he had invested nearly $8,000,000 in the purchase of general
stores for our Red Cross. In the press of emergency work--there hardly
was a month or a day from our arrival in France until after the signing
of the armistice when the situation could not have been fairly described
as emergency--it was possible to take but one general inventory. That
was made, for accounting purposes, as of February 24, 1918, and showed
the value of the American Red Cross stores then on hand in its
warehouses in France to be 33,960,999.49 francs, well over $6,000,000.
At the first of the following November--eleven days before the signing
of the armistice--another inventory was taken. The stocks had grown.
There were in the principal warehouses of the Red Cross alone and
including its stock of coal upon the Quai de la Loire supplies valued at
46,452,018.80 francs, or close to $9,000,000. Figures are valuable when
they mount to sizes such as these.
Yet figures cannot tell the way in which the warehousing organization of
the American Red Cross met the constant emergencies which confronted it.
Like the Transportation Department, it was forever and at all times on
the job. For instance, from the beginning of that last German advance,
in the Ides of March, 1918, until it was reaching its final fearful
thrusts--late in June and early in July--there was on hand, night and
day, a crew at the warehouse, which had been fashioned from a former
taxicab stables in the Rue Chemin du Vert, a complete crew to load
camions by the dozens, by the hundreds, if necessary. In such a
super-emergency no six men housed in the plant would do; for there were
nights on which twenty, thirty, and even forty of the big camions went
rolling out through that great archway with their supplies for our boys
at the front--the very boys who so soon were to play their great part in
the supreme victories of the war. On those summer nights warehouse work
was speeded up, to put it very mildly indeed. Men worked long hours
without rest and with but a single thought--the accomplishment of real
endeavor while there yet remained time to save Paris and all the rest of
France. And in such spirit is victory born.
* * * * *
Do not, I pray you, conceive the idea that all the warehouse work was
done in Paris. I have hinted at the importance of Dijon, the great army
store center, as a Red Cross stores center, and have, myself, stood in
the great American Red Cross warehouse upon the lining of the inner
harbor of St. Nazaire and have with mine own eyes seen 8,000 cases
stacked under their capacious roofs--foodstuffs and clothing and
comforts and hospital supplies which came forever and in a steady stream
from the transports docking at that important American receiving point,
and have known of warehouses to be established in strange quarters,
stranger sometimes than the abandoned stables of the horse-drawn
taxicabs of Paris, here in an ancient exposition building upon the
outskirts of a sizable French city, there in a convent, and again in a
church or a school, or even again in a stable.
Here was a little town, not many miles back from the northern front. The
Red Cross determined to set up a warehouse there, both for military and
civilian relief supplies. An agent from the Paris headquarters went up
there to confer with the local representative in regard to the proper
location for the plant. The local man favored one building, the Paris
representative another which was nearer to the railroad station. While
they argued as to the merits of the two buildings German airmen flew
over the town and destroyed one of them. And before they could
compromise on the other, the French Government requisitioned it as a
barracks.
Now was a time for deep thought rather than compromise. And deep thought
won--it always does. Deep thought moved the American Red Cross warehouse
into the ancient seminary there, even though that sturdy structure had
been pretty well peppered by the _boche_. When the Red Cross moved in,
you still could count fifty-one distinct shell holes in it; another and
a final one came while it still was in the process of adaptation to
warehouse uses. In this badly battered structure lived the Red Cross
warehouse man and his three assistants--all of them camion
chauffeurs--after they had put forty-five panes of glass in with their
own hands. Then the supply of glass ran out. In the former chapel of the
seminary fourteen great window frames had to be covered with muslin,
which served, after a fashion, to keep out the stress of weather.
Twenty-seven of the precious panes of glass went into the office--where
daylight was of the greatest necessity. The rest were used, in
alternation with the muslin, for the living quarters, where the Red
Cross men cooked their own meals, in the intervals between dealing out
warehouse supplies. It was hard work, but the chauffeurs did not
complain. Indeed it so happened that their chief did most of the
complaining.
"What is the use?" he sputtered one afternoon while the war still was a
day-by-day uncertainty. "Those boys will put in a big day's work, every
one of them, come home and not know enough to go to bed. Like as not
they will take a couple of hours and climb up some round knoll to watch
the artillery fire. When the town was in the actual line of fire--not
more than a fortnight ago--one of them turned up missing. He had been
with us only a moment before, so we began hunting through the warehouse
for him. Where do you suppose we found him? Let me tell you: he was up
in the belfry, the biggest and the best target in the town. Said he
wanted to see where the shells were striking. I told him to come down,
the Red Cross wasn't paying him for damn foolishness. But you couldn't
help liking the nerve of the boy, could you?"
* * * * *
Courage!
How it did run hand in hand with endeavor all through the progress of
this war. And it was not limited to the men of the actual fighting
forces. The Red Cross had more than its even share of it. The great,
appealing roll of honor in the Hotel Regina headquarters--the list of
the American Red Cross men and women who gave their lives in the service
of their country--was mute evidence of this. Courage in full measure,
and yet never with false heroics. Full of the sturdy everyday courage,
the courage of the casual things, exemplified, for instance, in this
letter from the files of the Stores Section, written by the agent in
charge of another of its warehouses in northern France:
"A shipment of four rolls of oiled cloth arrived most opportunely a few
days ago and one roll is being employed locally to repair the many panes
of window glass destroyed in last night's air raid. In connection with
this raid it may be added that one of our chauffeurs nearly figured as a
victim of this raid, the window in his lodging being blown in and a
large hole knocked in the roof of his house.
"I presume that it is violating no military secret to add that another
raid from the _boches_ is looked for to-night and in case it does come
the other rolls of window cloth may come into play...."
* * * * *
It was in these very days of the great spring offensive of 1918, that
the Supplies Department, like the Transportation Department of our Red
Cross overseas, began to have its hardest tests. For in addition to the
regular routine of its great warehousing function, there came, with the
rapidly increasing number of troops, hospitals and refugees, rapidly
increasing special duties for it to perform; greatly increased
quantities of goods to be shipped. And I think it but fair to state
that without the vision of one man, Major Field, there might not have
been many supplies to ship. Immediately after his appointment as Chief
of the Bureau of Supplies, Major Field began to purchase goods, in great
quantities and an almost inconceivable variety. He bought in the French
market, in the English market, in the Spanish market, from the
commissary stores of the United States Army--in fact from every
conceivable corner and source of supply; as well as from some which
apparently were so remote as hardly to be even conceivable. He stored
away beds, tents, sheets, clothing, toilet articles, and cases of
groceries by the thousands, and still continued to buy. The Red Cross
gasped. The A. E. F. protested. The vast warehouses were filled almost
to the bursting point. Major Field listened to the protestations, then
smiled, and went out, buying still more supplies. His smile was cryptic,
and yet was not; it was the smile of confidence, the smile of serenity.
And both confidence and serenity were justified. For the days of the
drive showed--and showed conclusively--that if our American Red Cross
had not been so well stocked in supplies it would have failed in the
great mission overseas to which we had intrusted it.
"The ----th Regiment has moved up beyond its baggage train. Can the Red
Cross ship blankets and kits through to it?"
This was a typical emergency request--from an organization of three
thousand men. It was answered in the typical fashion--with a full
carload of blankets and other bedding. The kits followed in a truck.
"A field hospital is needed behind the new American lines," was another.
It, too, was answered promptly; with several carloads of hospital
equipment, surgical dressings, and drugs. These things sound simple, and
were not. And the fact that they were many times multiplied added
nothing to the simplicity of the situation. In fact there came a time
when it was quite impossible to keep any exact account of the tonnage
shipped, because the calls came so thick and fast and were so urgent
that no one stopped for the usual requisitions but answered any
reasonable demands. The requisition system could wait for a less
critical time, and did.
One day a message came that a certain field hospital was out of
ether--that its surgeons were actually performing painful operations
upon conscious men--all because the army had run out of its stock of
anæsthetics. The men at the American Red Cross supply headquarters
sickened at the very thought; they moved heaven and earth to start a
camion load of the precious ether through to the wounded men at the
field hospital, and followed it up with twenty-five truckloads of other
surgical supplies.
* * * * *
Under the reorganization of the American Red Cross in France which was
effected under the Murnane plan, the entire work of purchase and
warehousing was brought under a single Bureau of Supplies, which was
ranked in turn as a Department of Supplies. This Bureau was promptly
subdivided into two sections: that of Stores and that of Purchases.
Taking them in the order set down in the official organization plan, we
find that the headquarters section of Stores--situated in Paris--was
charged with the operation of all central and port warehouses and their
contents and was to be in a position to honor all properly approved
requisitions from them, so far as was humanly possible. It was further
charged to confer with the comptroller of our French American Red Cross
organization and so to prepare a proper system and check upon these
supplies. In each of the nine zones there were to be subsections of
stores, answerable for operation to the Zone Manager and for policy to
the Paris headquarters, but so organized as to keep not only sufficient
supplies for all the ordinary needs of the zones, but in various
well-situated warehouses, enough for occasions of large emergency--and
all within comparatively short haul.
The Section of Purchases corresponded to the purchasing agent of a large
corporation. Remember that the purchasing opportunities in France were
extremely limited, so that by far the greater part of this work must be
performed by the parent organization here in the United States, and
sent--as were the circus tents--in response to requisitions, either by
cable or by mail. Incidentally, however, remember that no small amount
of purchasing for the benefit of our army and navy in France was done
both in England and in Spain, which, in turn, was a relief to the
overseas transport problem. For it must ever be remembered that the
famous "bridge across the Atlantic" was at all times, until after the
signing of the armistice at least, fearfully overcrowded. It was only
the urgent necessities of the Red Cross and its supplies that made it
successful in gaining the previous tonnage space east from New York, or
Boston, or Newport News. And even then the tonnage was held to
essentials; essentials whose absoluteness was almost a matter of
affidavit.
Yet even the essentials ofttimes mounted high. Before me lies a copy of
a cablegram sent from Paris to Washington early in January, 1919. It
outlines in some detail the foodstuff needs of the American Red Cross in
France for the next three months. Some of the larger items, in _tons_,
follow:
Sugar 50
Rice 100
Tapioca 10
Cheese 50
Coffee 50
Chocolate 50
Cocoa 100
Bacon 50
Salt Pork 50
Ham 50
Prunes 50
Soap 100
Apricots 25
Peaches 25
And all of this in addition to the 10,000 cases of evaporated milk,
5,000 of condensed milk, 3,000 of canned corn beef, 2,000 of canned
tomatoes, 1,000 each of canned corn and canned peas, and 1,000 gross of
matches, while the quantities ordered even of such things as cloves and
cinnamon and pepper and mustard ran to sizable amounts.
I have no desire to bore you with long columns or tables of figures--for
this is the story of our Red Cross with our army in France and not a
report. Yet, after all, some figures are impressive. And these given
here are enough to show that of all the cogs and corners of the big
machine, the Purchase and Stores sections of the organization in France
had its full part to do.