THE RED CROSS IN THE HOSPITALS OF THE A. E. F.
At no time was it either the object or the ambition of the American Red
Cross to build or equip or operate all the hospitals of the United
States Army in France. For a more or less privately organized
institution to have taken upon its shoulders, no matter how broad they
might be, the entire hospitalization of an army of more than 2,000,000
men would have been suicidal. So our Red Cross in its wisdom did not
even make the attempt; it was quite content to build and equip hospitals
in the early days before the American Expeditionary Forces had completed
their organization and so were themselves unable to work out their
hospital problem as they were forced to do at a later time. The Red
Cross did more; it conducted hospitals during the entire period of
war--as you have just seen--and attempted to make these models,
experiment stations, if you please, from which the medical experts of
the army might derive inspiration and real assistance. But at no time
did it seek to usurp any of the functions of the Surgeon-General's
office of the army--on the contrary.
"When the army was ready to tackle the hospital problem in fine theory
we should have gotten out," Colonel Burlingame told me; "but we did not.
We were following out the first clause of our creed, which was to meet
emergency whenever or wherever it arose and no matter at what cost. And
at all times during the progress of the war the emergency compelled the
Red Cross to at least maintain its hospitals. And so it did, with a
total capacity up to the time of the signing of the armistice of some
14,000 beds. After that we dropped off pretty rapidly. Our pay-roll
lists of personnel show that. On November 11, 1918, these contained the
names of 1,771 men and women; by the first of the following March this
total had dropped to a mere 270."
* * * * *
So it was that upon the heels of the first established Red Cross
hospitals in France there came the huge hospitals of the United States
Army in great size and profusion. Sometimes these were gathered in
groups--as at Savenay or Allerey or Dijon or around about Brest or
Bordeaux--and at other times they stood alone and at comparatively
isolated points. Even these last were sizable institutions, huge even
according to the hospital standards of our largest metropolitan cities
in America; while, when you came to a point like Savenay--halfway
between Nantes and St. Nazaire--you beheld a group of seven individual
hospitals which, shortly after Armistice Day, attained a total capacity
of 11,000 beds and were planned, in fact, for some 9,000 more, with a
further capacity of another 10,000 feasible and remotely planned. Into
this great group of institutions there came between August, 1917, and
May, 1919, some 85,000 wounded American boys. Its maximum staff
consisted of 500 officers, 500 nurses, and a general staff of 4,000
enlisted men.
When I visited the place--at the end of April, 1919--it still had some
6,500 patients, the most of whom were well out of danger and were
enjoying the warm sunshine of a rarely perfect day in France. I found
the headquarters staff ensconced in a group of permanent stone buildings
which, in the days before the war, were part of a normal school standing
alongside the highroad to Nantes. This, itself, formed a hospital for
general cases. Some of those that were grouped with it in the open
fields around about specialized in serious bed surgical cases, in
contagious diseases, in tuberculosis, in mental cases. This last had
handled 7,500 cases in the progress of the war.
In each of these hospitals--as in each and every one of the United
States Army hospitals in France and the occupied areas of Germany--the
Red Cross functioned. At Savenay it had not only erected recreation huts
for the men of each of the individual hospitals, but a huge auditorium
or amusement hall, permanently fabricated of brick and steel and glass,
equipped with a complete theater stage, and capable of seating between
1,500 and 2,000 doughboys and their officers. This super-playhouse was
in use every night of the week--for cinema, for drama, sung or spoken,
for dances, and, from time to time, for meetings and for religious
services.
* * * * *
To this entertainment phase of the American Red Cross in the hospitals
we shall presently return. For the moment I shall ask you to consider
the part it played in the essential job of supplying hospital supplies.
It was not, of course, either practicable or possible for our Red Cross
to supply all of these--or even any tremendously large part of them. But
it could--and did--supply goodly quantities of all of them when they
were most needed, and so worth ten times their value and quantity at any
other time.
Time and time again it furnished materials, both for their regular and
for their emergency necessities. Sometimes the army itself did not
function properly--there were instances of red tape disgraceful and
some, too, of red tape inevitable. And yet there were other times when
all the tape cutters in the world could not have saved the situation,
but the American Red Cross, with its emergency warehouses and its
well-organized transportation system all the way across the face of
France, did save it. A truckload, two, three; perhaps even four or five
truckloads of beds or bedding--perhaps even a small camionette filled to
the brim with dressings and drugs or surgical instruments could, and
did, save precious lives--by the dozens and by the hundreds. Do you
remember, in the preceding chapter, the several instances where our Red
Cross played its part--and no small part at that--in the winning of the
big fight at Château-Thierry? Those were not unusual instances; they
were fairly typical.
There came one day when the commanding officers of the U. S. A. hospital
center at Allerey--one of the largest in all France--sent for Captain
James C. Ramage, the American Red Cross representative in the district.
He told the Red Cross man that a tremendous convoy of wounded soldiers
from the Soissons-Rheims district was expected within a few days and
asked his help in securing a real bulk of medical supplies. Those were
the days when the Surgeon General's department of the army was not
always able to furnish even drugs and dressings when they were most
needed.
Ramage lost no time in discussing the thing. He said that he would do
his best and caught the first train into Paris; spent several days there
in getting together the necessary supplies, personally supervised the
loading of them into a freight car, and then performed the unheard-of
feat of inducing the French railway authorities to attach the freight
car to a fast passenger train bound down to Dijon. Camions were rushed
from Allerey to Dijon, and two days later the necessary supplies were
all at the hospital center--and well in advance of the coming of the
wounded soldiers. On another night in that same summer of 1918, some
2,250 wounded Americans poured into that selfsame army hospital center
of Allerey. The hospital warehouses were exhausted. The Red Cross's were
not; do you remember what we said at the beginning--that the fullness of
its job lay in its being forever ready to meet any emergency which might
arise?
It was being ready that made it able that hot August night to turn into
the crowded hospital in a space of time to be measured in minutes rather
than in hours, 10,000 blankets, 10,000 sheets, 8,000 towels, 8,000 pairs
of pajamas, 2,000 yards of Dakin tubing, 1,000 operating gowns, 1,000
helmets, and two whole carloads of surgical dressings.
Emergency work! How it always does count!
The securing of these supplies in the beginning was, of itself, a master
problem. It involved not alone purchase but manufacturing--manufacturing
upon a really enormous scale. We saw at the beginnings of the Red Cross
work in France the various workrooms in Paris which devoted themselves
to the making of dressings--of one sort or another and in tremendous
quantities. Yet the actual beginnings of this work antedated even the
establishment of the Paris workrooms; immediately on the outbreak of the
European War, a special department was established at the National
Headquarters of the American Red Cross in Washington for giving advice
concerning hospital garments and supplies for European relief and
furnishing patterns and samples for the same. A New York City committee,
organized for the same purpose by Mrs. Mary Hatch Willard, began the
sending of old linens to French hospitals. This work grew into a unit
known as the Surgical Dressings Committee of the United States, for the
making of dressings by volunteers in this country, and finally led to
the establishment of the first of the Paris workrooms. By the time that
Pershing had first arrived in France this work in America had grown to a
point where it employed more than two thousand committees and
subcommittees. Its output increased so rapidly that in the week ending
August 27, 1917, ninety-two hospitals were supplied and 155,261
dressings were made in the Paris workroom alone. And that, of course,
was long before there were any American wounded. In the summer of 1917
the National Surgical Dressings Committee entered into coöperation with
the American Red Cross and from that date its efficient distribution
service in France became the Surgical Dressings Service Department of
the American Red Cross.
Then came the imminent necessity of standardizing these surgical
dressings--which was accomplished by a special board which Pershing
appointed at the end of August, 1917. Its standards were followed, but
its energies only dimmed at the time when it was actually seen that
they were quite exceeding the necessities of the situation. And the
volume of those selfsame energies is perhaps the better understood when
it is realized that from October, 1917, to January 22, 1919, 147,230,777
cases of surgical dressings alone, both donated and manufactured, were
received at the Red Cross warehouses in Paris.
Splints, of which an immense number were necessary even for the very
short period in which we were actually engaged in the conduct of the
war, formed a real Red Cross specialty. Our army hospitals were entirely
dependent upon the American Red Cross for these necessities--the total
orders for which in July and August of 1918, totaled some 15,000 to
20,000 weekly. For that entire year the output was 94,583 splints, the
factories often working from eighteen to twenty hours a day to keep pace
with the requisitions upon them. Our Red Cross also supplied all the
nitrous oxide used in American hospitals of every type in France. The
use of this ultra-modern anæsthetic, to the increasing exclusion of
ether and of chloroform, forms one of the fascinating chapters of the
medical conduct of the war. Although it had been employed as an
anæsthetic in the United States for a number of years before the
beginning of the war, its first use in Europe was when Colonel George W.
Crile--the distinguished surgeon from Cleveland, Ohio--introduced it
into operations in the then American Ambulance Hospital at
Neuilly--afterward the American Red Cross Military Hospital Number One.
That was in 1915. Nitrous oxide as an anæsthetic immediately attracted
the attention of a number of eminent British surgeons.
"It is good," said Colonel Crile, tersely.
And so it is--good. It is so good that Colonel Alexander Lambert, at
that time chief surgeon of our American Red Cross, immediately made it
the standard anæsthetic of its medical service. For, like so many other
American surgeons, he quickly concurred in the opinion that nitrous
acid, used in combination with oxygen, three parts to one, is the least
dangerous as well as the best adapted for use when operating upon cases
of chest surgery, abdomen wounds, or of shock. Under this anæsthetic the
percentage of recovery is seventy-two per cent, as compared with fifty
per cent for either chloroform or ether. Moreover, it has none of the
disagreeable after effects which come almost invariably with the use of
chloroform or ether. To quote Colonel Lambert:
"The use of nitrous-oxide anæsthetic to the exclusion of ether or
chloroform in case of at least the seriously wounded seems to me not
only advisable but beyond the advisability of discussion."
Its official use, therefore, was predicated. It was first supplied to
the casualty-clearing stations; American and British coöperating for the
sake of an exchange of ideas as to its best use. Our Red Cross supplied
an apparatus of special design that had gradually been evolved from
those already devised. This allowed the separate administration of the
nitrous oxide, of oxygen, or of ether--which at times was used in small
quantities--or of the three in various combinations. And all our
American nurses were trained as anæsthetists in its use.
* * * * *
The making of the nitrous-oxide gas itself was one of many similar tasks
assigned to the Manufacturing Department of our Red Cross, of which
Major Arthur W. Kelly was department chief. He ordered a huge gas-making
plant from America which, after some considerable delay, finally was set
up at Montreau, fifty miles distant from Paris. In the meantime the Red
Cross had discovered a man in the French Army who had had some
experience in the making of nitrous oxide. He was released from active
army service and at once started to work making an emergency supply, the
limited quantities carried to France by Colonel Crile having become
completely exhausted. This small plant had a daily capacity of about
4,000 gallons. But when the bigger machinery from America had finally
been set up--in the midsummer of 1918--this output was increased to
75,000 gallons a day. This could easily have been doubled, had it not
been for a single limiting factor--the extreme difficulty of securing
3,280 gallon cans in which the gas was transported. Finally the Red
Cross secured some hydrogen tanks that had been captured from the
Germans in their first July defeats. It was then and not until then that
the nitrous-oxide plant began running at anything like its real
capacity. And with the definite result that from September, 1917, to
October 23, 1918, our Red Cross was able to supply our army with 699,420
gallons of this precious anæsthetic, its own hospitals with 405,620
gallons, and some miscellaneous institutions with an additional 251,110
gallons, while it saw Great Britain formally acknowledge nitrous oxide
as an anæsthetic _par excellence_ and even conservative France making
the first steps toward its adoption.
* * * * *
A few of the medical and surgical requisitions of a typical American
Army Division--the Second--upon our Red Cross are before me as I write.
They are indicative of the overwhelming demands that were made upon it,
not only from every corner of the front, but from every corner of France
that was occupied by our fighting men--and what corner was not?
It was at the request of the chief surgeon of this Division that one of
its field hospitals--originally supplied direct from the army's own
sources of supply--was amplified by the American Red Cross, by the use
of Bessoneau tents and other equipment so as to become practically a
mobile unit, capable of handling far heavier cases. The supplying of the
equipment shown by these requisitions began while the division was still
in the vicinity of Montdidier and continued until after it had moved to
Meaux and was in active preparation for its great rôle at
Château-Thierry. In addition to the Bessoneau tents, the following were
the requisitions which were delivered to this single formation while it
was under heavy pressure:
_June 1_: 1 tortoise tent and 100 collapsible cots.
_June 3_: 12 antitoxin syringes for anti-tetanus serum, 200
packages of absorbent cotton, 30 feet of glass tubing, and 25
operating gowns and caps.
_June 4_: 250 single blankets, 100 litters, 5,000 anti-tetanus
serum, 2 autoclaves, 4 thermometers for autoclaves, 50 wash
cloths, 1,000 pairs of socks, 50 towels, and 200 comfort kits.
_June 6_: 50 clinical thermometers, 2,000 temperature charts, 1
gallon of green soap, 36 bottles of ammonia, 5,000 Greeley
units, 20 syringes, 15 liters of Lysol, 20 chart holders, 100
rubber sheets, 2 small instrument sterilizers, 500 nightshirts,
500 blankets, 1,000 sheets, 500 forks and spoons, 100 bedside
tables, 100 folding chairs, 50 hot-water bottles, 36 maps, 50
hand basins, 20 bolts of gauze, 10 bolts of muslin, 100 beds,
and 100 mattresses.
_June 7_: 200 litters, 250 blankets, 100 rolls of cotton, 200
rolls of gauze, 144 rubber gloves, 100 operating gowns and caps,
96 tubes of catgut, 500 Carrel pads, 100 gowns for nurses, 20
sterile water containers, 5,000 folded gauze compresses, and
5,000 small sponges.
I rather feel that this record of a single week of the demands of one
Division upon our Red Cross will show quite enough the burden which it
was forced to bear; and bore most joyously as a part of the opportunity
for service which was given unto it in France. In a single day and night
during that same great offensive of 1918, 128 different
requisitions--each comprising from one to fifty items--were started out
on the road from Paris; while on the twentieth of August of that same
summer--the day which marked the beginning of the St. Mihiel
drive--120,000 front-line emergency parcels and more than fifteen
carloads of surgical dressings were shipped to the scene of activity.
From the Paris headquarters of the Red Cross alone, supplies were
shipped that summer to sixty-six base hospitals, two naval-base
hospitals, fifty-four camp hospitals, twenty-one convalescent
hospitals, twenty army divisions, seven evacuation hospitals, nine field
hospitals, eight hospital centers, nine mobile hospitals, six medical
supply depots, and the central medical department laboratory--all of the
United States Army in France. This great record does not, of course,
include the supplies sent to the Red Cross's own hospitals or those sent
to the A. E. F. hospitals from the nine zone headquarters of the
American Red Cross; nor even emergency supplies sent to eighteen
detached American Army units, far away from their bases of supplies. In
a single month and from one warehouse, our Red Cross made the following
shipments to formations operated entirely by our army: 77,101 surgical
instruments, 2,820 beds and cots, 24,733,126 surgical dressings, and
15,300 pounds of drugs.
It also supplied specialties, and all for the comfort of our wounded
boys over there. Take ice--that simple product of our modern
civilization--so indispensable to the American. It is second nature with
us to-day and yet little used by the French. Ice is as much an essential
to our up-to-date hospitals as drugs or nurses or the beds themselves.
Properly packed, it cools the fever and so greatly eases the sufferings
of wounded men as they toss upon their cots. Its beverage use is too
universal to even need comment here.
"My, that's good!" more than one sick boy murmured, as the nurse held a
spoonful of it to his hot lips. "It's just like home."
Yet, while our government planned ice-making machinery for each of its
hospitals, large or small, they were not always ready as quickly as the
rest of the plant. There again our Red Cross stepped into the breach,
supplying small portable ice-making plants not only to the field
hospitals for which they were originally designed, but even for larger
installations. Each of these portable plants consisted of a gasoline
engine of fifteen horse power, water-cooled and attached to a
compressor, which in turn was connected to the water piping in the
brine tanks. The capacity of each of these was about two tons and a half
each twenty-four hours. And each was accompanied by two Ford
camionettes--builded with special ice boxes--to carry its product to the
wards roundabout.
Second only to ice in importance as a hospital auxiliary was light. In
the early years of the war, the surgeons of the allied nations worked
under great difficulties at night and undoubtedly many lives were
sacrificed because of the lack of proper lighting facilities. I have
heard of the doctors ripping off a wounded man's clothing by the light
of one star shell and waiting for the next to give them enough
brilliancy to examine his injuries.
For at least ten or a dozen years past our larger American circuses have
used portable electric-lighting plants on their various itinerant trips
across the land--with a fair degree of success. Those circuses gave our
Red Cross in France an inspiration. Lieutenant Harry C. Hand, a director
in its Central Department of Requirements, in studying the markets for
the proper sort of equipment, used them as models and so evolved, as a
plant most practical for Red Cross needs, a three-and-a-half kilowatt
outfit consisting of a gasoline engine, an electric generator, and a
switchboard. This outfit, mounted upon a stout camion, would light 135
incandescent lamps of twenty-five watts each. On its travels it carried
in its lockers the lamps, extension cords, sockets, and the like to make
them available for almost instant service. And the Red Cross in the
heart of the war emergency had five of these outfits at its service in
France.
* * * * *
One other allied factor in this hospital supply service deserves
attention before we finally turn away from it. I have referred from time
to time to the vast quantities of drugs which our Red Cross distributed
to both its own and other hospital centers. It was obvious that this
distribution had to be centralized, and because of the delicate and
extremely valuable nature of this particular form of supplies be kept
quite separate and distinct from the others. So "The Red Cross
Pharmacy," as it was generally called, came into existence, at a former
apartment building at No. 10 Rue de Tilsitt, Paris, and quickly came to
such importance that it was made the headquarters of the Section of
Hospital Supplies, which in turn was a division of the larger Bureau of
Hospital Administration.
Throughout all of the hard months of the war this section boasted that
each night found the requisitions for that day filled. There were no
left-overs; not even when a single day's work meant fifty-six huge
orders entirely completed, and little rest for a staff which averaged
forty-one men and women.
The pharmacy was well systematized. In its basement were the receiving,
the packing, and the shipping departments, while upon its broad main
floor the drugs and antiseptics were actually stored, the second floor
being given to dental supplies, surgical instruments, rubber goods,
sutures, serums, laboratory equipment, and the like. Each of these
various departments was in charge of a specialist, a man of many years'
experience in the line which he headed.
By June, 1918, the pharmacy in the Rue de Tilsitt had become of such
importance that it was re-created into a Section of Supplies, with Major
George L. Burroughs, of the Massachusetts College of Pharmacy in Boston,
as its sectional chief. Within a month he had found the demands upon his
department so much increased that he was forced in turn to increase its
facilities--by the addition of two warehouses. In another six weeks a
new burden was placed upon his shoulders--the distribution of all
alcohol, ether, oxygen, and nitrous acid issued by our Red Cross, which
meant, of course, more space needed--so the unused powder magazine at
Fort D'Ivry and the riding academy at No. 12 Rue Duphot--both loaned by
the French Government authorities--were added to the quarters of the
pharmacy.
Some idea of the amount of work undertaken and accomplished by this Red
Cross pharmacy may be gained when it is understood that in the six
months ending January, 1919, 75,016 pounds of drugs were issued from it.
There were in that time 3,954,178 tablets, 21,566 phials of serum, 271
surgical units, 15,108 pairs of rubber gloves, and 22,059 feet of
adhesive plaster, in addition to many hundreds of packets of other drug
supplies.
* * * * *
Seemingly we have drifted away from our American boys, sick or wounded
and in hospitals. In reality, of course, we have not. Every one of these
provisions, large or small, was aimed directly at their comfort, while
each deserved to be rated as a necessity rather than comfort--comfort,
at least, as the average luxury-loving American knows it. It was comfort
rather than luxury that I found our boys enjoying there at
Savenay--long, comfortable huts, builded hurriedly but furnished with
great care, great taste, and great attractiveness. Savenay, itself, was
a good deal of a mud-hole, a fearfully wretched place underfoot. The Red
Cross huts shone brilliantly in contrast. Here, as in the canteens all
over France, the boys might congregate--practically at all hours--and
amuse themselves as their fancies dictated; or, if fancy grew a bit
bored, it was part of the job of the directress--one of whose essential
qualifications was resourcefulness and another versatility--to find some
new form of amusement. It was not enough to hand out the cigarettes--one
or two packs a week--or the pipes and the playing cards and the tobacco,
pretty much as requested--there had to be shows. The American passion
for play-acting is something to be reckoned with.
Perhaps you do not quickly understand how versatile those very shows
might readily become. Let me quote from _Toot Sweet_--the little
fortnightly newspaper which our American Red Cross printed for the boys
convalescing there at Savenay. That is, the Red Cross furnished the
printing press, the type, and the rest of the paraphernalia for the
making of the publication; the boys, themselves, supplied the brains
that made it so very readable at all times.
[Illustration: BANDAGES BY THE TENS OF THOUSANDS
An atelier workshop of the A. R. C. in the Rue St. Didier, Paris, daily
turned out surgical dressings by the mile]
"'Stunt Night,' advertised in Base 69 Hut for March 13, brought a lot of
inquiries," says _Toot Sweet_, in its issue dated April 1, 1919.
"'Whadaye mean--stunts?' Probably the announcement of pies and doughnuts
for prizes was responsible for the crowd that appeared that evening when
a large part of the floor space was cleared and a couple of Red Cross
hut workers started the stunts. The first stunt--with a large slice of
apple pie as prizes--was to sit upon a piece of iron pipe, diameter six
inches, place the heel of one shoe on the toe of another, and while thus
insecurely balanced, light in one hand from a lighted candle in the
other a cigarette. Shrieks and howls from the delighted mob who began
betting on results encouraged a number of aspirants and the pie was
finally won. Stunt after stunt followed in quick succession, all sorts
of queer and absurd contortions varying from picking up folded newspaper
from the floor with your teeth while holding one foot in the air with
one hand to a 'puttee race,' when the contestants raced from one end of
the hall, took off their puttees, and then put them on again, then raced
back, with various obstacles in the way. Finally the boys began
challenging each other to their favorite stunts, so that Private
California might have been showing Private North Carolina a pet trick,
while Sergeant Oklahoma and Corporal Louisiana gravely discussed the
merits of their ideas on stunts. The winning team was presented with a
large, juicy apple pie, vamped from the mess sergeant by a Red Cross
girl.
"'Amateur night' was announced for the same hut two nights later by a
stunning poster done in colors by one of the 309th Engineers. A box of
homemade fudge was the prize for the best act. Seven of the best
vaudeville acts ever seen in the huts appeared. The sergeant major of
Base Hospital Number 69 was the master of ceremonies. A 'dummy' act, a
'wop mechanic' in song and monologue, a ballad singer, a 'song and
minstrel man,' a mandolin and guitar player, who gave remarkable
imitations of Hawaiian instruments, a 'tramp monologuist,' and a clog
dancer composed the bill. Harry Henly, the 'song and minstrel man,' won
the box of fudge which was displayed in all its glory and pink ribbons
during the contest."
Sometimes there was not quite so much fun in the situation. The girls
who ran the Red Cross hut in the tuberculosis hospital of the Savenay
group, almost directly across the highroad from Number 69, had a far
weightier problem upon their shoulders. To amuse there, was a vastly
more difficult task. For they knew--as most of its patients knew--that
the man who entered the portals of that particular hospital was
foredoomed. If he had a fighting chance of conquering the "T. B." he was
packed into the hospital ward of a transport and rushed home. If he did
not have that fighting chance--well, why waste precious transport space?
To Savenay with him. And to Savenay he went to spend his days--and end
them--in a cheery, camplike place where there were croquet and less
strenuous games and broad piazzas that looked down across the valley
toward the embouchure of the Loire, while Red Cross girls came and went
and did their womanly best to comfort and amuse a fellow--and make him
forget; forget the back door of the little hospital where, night after
night, four or five fellows went out--in pine boxes, never to return,
and the rows of wooden crosses down in the American cemetery at the foot
of the hill steadily grew.
* * * * *
Turn back with me, if you will, inland from Savenay to the curved
streets of Vichy--little Vichy situated in the very foothills of the
high Alps. It is January now, not April. We have turned backward in full
earnest, and are breathing the air of those hard weeks and months that
followed immediately upon the signing of the armistice.
Vichy, in its very compactness, with the flat yellows of its curious old
buildings and its equally curious modern hotels, with the
fifteenth-century tower in the background and the quiet River Allier
slipping by, has the fascinating unreality of a stage setting--one of
those marvelous effects with which the genius of a Belasco or a Joseph
Urban from time to time delights in dazzling us. In spring or in summer
we might find it prepared for carnival--with green-painted chairs and
tables underneath the still greener foliage of its small park. But this
is January and the park is deeply blanketed in snow. In such a serene
midwinter setting it seems far more ready for silent drama than for the
blare of carnival--the figures in olive drab are indeed quite the
figures of pantomime--brown against the whiteness of the snow. The only
touches of color in the picture--tiny splotches of green or blue or
purple or yellow--are supplied by the tiny cloth bags that the men carry
with them. They are preparing to entrain--the first step of many on the
way back to the homeland--and the vari-colored bags, each marked with a
crimson cross, are the comfort kits they genuinely cherish.
Before war was come upon France, Vichy was a resort to be reckoned with
in the comings and goings of her elect. It was a watering place--and
much more besides. There men and women ate as well as drank, bands
played, beauties intrigued, wheels, flat-set, spun merrily, and entire
fortunes were flicked away at the gaming tables; but war changed these
things--as many, many others. It took the viciousness out of Vichy and
brought back to it all of the gentleness which it must have possessed in
the beginning. The small city, where formerly the ill and the bored made
pilgrimages in search of health (health bubbling up to the lips in the
faint concealments of a glass of sparkling water), became a city of
wounded; all too often a city of death.
The French Army moved in; and, commandeering hotel after hotel,
transformed them into its hospitals. On its heels came the American
Army; it alone took more than eighty hotels for its own hospital
purposes. That was the signal that our Red Cross would be needed, and
without further urge it moved in. Wherefore the comfort bags in the
hands of the doughboys as they moved across the park toward their
waiting trains.
If memories were half as tangible things as war "souvenirs," those tiny
bags of the crimson cross would have held other things than soap and
razor blades and tooth paste and playing cards and tobacco and the like.
They would have held definite memories of Vichy and all that it had
meant to the wounded men of our army. Some of them would have carried
the pictures of lights shining out through opened doors into the
darkness of the night and litters coming in through those opened
doors--litters bearing American men, when they were not American
boys--men clad only in hospital robes, but whose first bandages were
drenched with blood and spattered with the mud of No Man's Land. There
would have been a multiplicity of pictures of this sort, for Vichy in
the days of actual fighting never was an idle place. There were times
there when, within a cycle of twenty-four hours, as many as six thousand
men would be sent away from it--to make room for an equal number of
incoming freshly wounded soldiers. In the early days of November that
many came to it direct from the dressing stations, and the problem of
our Red Cross there became a little bit more complex.
There might also have been pictures in those selfsame comfort bags of
the Red Cross girls on the stone platforms of the railroad
station--young women who in warm days served iced lemonade there and in
cold, hot chocolate, or, when it was requested, hot lemonade; for the
fact remains that lemonade was the only food or drink that many of the
gassed cases could endure. And it was ready for them there--at all hours
of the day or night, and at all days; even though to make that possible
the girl workers would sometimes stay on duty for thirty-six hours at a
stretch: without having the opportunity of divesting themselves of their
clothing and so gaining a little real rest.
A final picture of Vichy might have well been a mental photograph of the
"hut." This formerly had been the Elysée Palace--a gaming and amusement
center of none too savory a reputation; yet with its central location on
the main street, its ample lounging space, and its small theater,
self-contained, it was ideal for the purposes of our Red Cross and so
became a living heart of Vichy. It was the canteen or club in which some
five thousand doughboys were wont to congregate each day--to write
letters home, to play games, or the tireless piano, to read the
newspapers or the magazines, to visit, to gossip--in every way possible
to shorten days that passed none too quickly for any of them.
During the first months of its organization this Red Cross superhut did
not include the entire "Palace." Gradually it spread, however, until the
entire two floors of the place were busy with American Red Cross
activities. And the doughboy passing from the comfortable clubrooms on
the main floor--wherein, for the comfort of the convalescents, a
full-fledged army commissary had been set up--upstairs found a
"first-aid" room of a new sort. It was, in fact, an operating room,
where expert surgery might be applied to torn and ripped and otherwise
wounded uniforms. And the head surgeon was a woman--a smart, black-eyed
French seamstress who could perform wonders not alone with torn
buttonholes but who also possessed a facility with a hot sadiron that
made her tremendously popular upon the eve of certain festal occasions.
* * * * *
"How would a dish of Yankee ice cream taste to-day? You know, the same
sort that Blink & Smith serve down there in the Universal, at the corner
of Main and First streets?"
Imagine something like that coming out of the blue, and to a boy who has
been "fed up" on army cookery and who even has lost his taste for the
delicacy of French cookery. You may take it direct from me that the hut
there at Vichy held a kitchen and that it was a good kitchen. Can you
imagine any first-rate American club that ever would fail in such an
essential? And from that modest cuisine there in the pulsing heart of
the bubbly town came truly vast quantities of the trivial foodstuffs
that are forever dear to the stomach of the doughboy. Ice cream--of
course--and small meat pies, each in its own little coat of oiled
paper--and creamy custards--and, of course, once again--coffee and all
manner of sandwiches, imaginable and unimaginable. And, because there
were many of the doughboys who could not possibly make their way to the
hut, even on crutches or in wheel chairs, a camionette drove away from
its kitchen each day with seventeen gallons of ice cream tucked in
it--all for the benefit of bedridden American soldier boys.
Remember, if you will, that this once disreputable Elysée Palace--in the
glory of war aid becoming not only reputable but almost sanctified--held
a theater; small, but completely equipped. Our Red Cross workers did not
lose sight of that when they chose the place as a headquarters for their
endeavors. Four days a week this became a moving-picture house--just
like the Bijou or the Orpheum back home. On Wednesday French
wounded--for whom comfort provisions were never too ample--were guests
there of the American Red Cross, and each _poilu_ carried away a little
gift of American cigarettes--to any Frenchman the very greatest of all
treasures. Saturdays were set aside for "competitive vaudeville" or an
"amateur night"--very much as we saw it at Savenay. Gradually a stock
company--capable at least of one-act plays--was evolved from the
dramatic material immediately at hand--soldiers and Red Cross and
hospital men and women workers--with the result that by Thanksgiving
Day, 1918, a very creditable production entitled "The Battle of Vichy"
was produced there in the hut, after which the company moved on toward
the conquest of the neighboring "metropolitan" towns of Moulins and
Châtel-Guyon.
Some one is going to come along some day and write the analysis of the
innate desire of the American to dabble with play-acting. The plethora
of war-time musical shows that became epidemic among the divisions of
the A. E. F. and spread not merely to Paris--where one of these
entertainments followed upon the heels of another--but eventually to New
York and other cities of the country, affords interesting possibilities
for the psychologist. It was a huge by-product of the war and one not
entirely expected.
* * * * *
When the resources of the amateur Thespians of Vichy had become
well-nigh exhausted, a New York professional actress--Miss Ida
Phinney--who not only had real dramatic ability but considerable
experience in staging and producing, was enlisted in the Red Cross
service there. With her aid, the attractive little cinema theater--with
its blue upholstery, its tiny boxes, and its complete and up-to-date
stage equipment, even to the scenery--became a full-fledged playhouse.
Stage hands and property men were assigned from the army, and Vichy
began seriously to stage, costume, and produce and criticize plays.
Soldiers with a knack for design took keen delight in advising as to
"creations" for the wardrobes of the cast and themselves watched the
garments grow into reality from inexpensive stuffs in the sewing room. A
clever artist wrought a full set of stage jewelry--even to the heavy
bracelets and the inevitable snake rings of the Oriental dancers--from
stray scraps of shells and other metals that came to his hungry fingers,
while the Red Cross sent a full complement of musical instruments down
from Paris. And so the Vichy A. E. F.-A. R. C. Playhouse came into the
fullness of its existence--and night after night hung out the S. R. O.
sign.
After all, what _is_ the doughboy's idea of a good time? That is the
very question our Red Cross asked itself--again and again. And because
the correct answer could not be evolved in a moment, established not
only after it had arrived in France a Bureau of Recreation and Welfare
whose real job was, after plenty of practical experimentation, to
establish the correct solution of the problem. For a long time this
Bureau consisted of a small desk at the Paris headquarters, a Ford
camionette, and Major Harold Ober. The camionette and Ober went from
village to village along the lines from Bar-le-Duc to Gondrecourt with
books, magazines, tobacco, writing material, and a small moving-picture
show. These efforts many times furnished the only amusement to our early
troops, billeted in quiet villages, where the quaintness of French
pastoral life soon lost its novelty.
From that small beginning, Ober's work grew steadily. And because the
Red Cross specialized more and more in that phase of army life which was
its original purpose--hospitalization--Ober's task became in turn more
and more devoted to the hospital centers, large and small--until the
time came in practically every hospital ward in France--where the men
were not so desperately ill as to make even music an irritant--that the
"rag," and "jazz," or the latest musical comedy hit direct from Broadway
were constant and welcome visitors to long rows of bedridden boys. In
most cases these were phonographs, and because whenever I wish to be
really convincing in the pages of this book, I fall back upon figures,
permit me to mention that 1,243 phonographs, calling for 300,000 needles
and 29,000 records, helped relieve the tedium of the American
convalescents in the hospitals of France.
And, while we are still in figures, remember that there were
times--unbelievable as it may seem to some folk who were frequent
visitors to our hospital wards over there--that the doughboy tired of
music, canned or fresh, and turned gratefully to the printed page. To
anticipate his needs in that regard, American residents in Paris and in
London gave generously of their private libraries--a nucleus which soon
was greatly increased by purchase. The books were sent around in
portable boxes, a service which steadily grew until a library of from
1,000 to 10,000 books was maintained by the American Red Cross in each
hospital--a total of some 100,000 all told, and of which a goodly
proportion were histories, French grammars, dictionaries and technical
works.
The demand for periodical literature was tremendous. In the months of
December, 1918, alone, our Red Cross distributed nearly four million
magazines and newspapers among our doughboys. Prominent among these last
was the _Stars and Stripes_, the clever and ingenious publication of the
enlisted men themselves. A special "gift edition" of this remarkable
weekly was obtained from the publishers for distribution in hospitals
alone, and this ran into the hundreds of thousands each month--a high
limitation which was reached only when the stock of print paper began to
run low. The demand upon writing paper was hardly less than that upon
print. The doughboy was a regular and prolific correspondent, and before
January, 1919, our Red Cross had furnished him with seven million
illustrated post cards, seven and a half million envelopes, and fourteen
million sheets of writing paper.
* * * * *
But his eternal joy was in "shows." These might be two come-uppish lads,
with gloves, going it in a roped arena, a flickering lantern displaying
the well-known and untiring antics of Mr. Charles Chaplin or Mr. Douglas
Fairbanks, the exquisite artistes of one of the opera houses in Paris in
a composition that brought unforgetable joy to the ears and memories of
the many, many lovers of music in our khaki--or a homemade production of
the doughboy himself. Of these the "movie" was, of course, the simplest
to handle, and therefore by far the most universal. It began its A. E.
F. career in France as a true "barnstormer." As early as July, 1917, a
Red Cross man with a French motion-picture operator as an assistant had
hied himself out from Paris, riding in one of the universal Ford
camionettes, upon which had been mounted a generator and a projector.
Upon arriving at an army camp, the show would be "put on"--with little
fuss or delay. The smooth, whitewashed side of a stone building would
make a bully screen and there was never even doubts of an audience or of
its enthusiasms. For from wonderments at this additional strange
contraption from the _Etats Unis_, the peasants and the _poilus_, who
were its very first admirers, grew rapidly into Mary Pickford and
Charlie Chaplin and Billie Burke fans. This taste followed closely that
all-conquering admiration for our chewing gum which overcame the French
and left them quite helpless.
Eventually this "movie" institution of the Red Cross overseas grew to
sizable proportions, under the direction of Lawrence Arnold, of New
York. At least five and sometimes fourteen performances a week were
given at each of our American hospitals in France--and with a complete
change of program each week even to the Pathé weekly news, which was
purchased and sent overseas by the Westchester County (N. Y.) Chapter of
the American Red Cross as its own special contribution. But I think that
the most interesting feature of this entire work--and the most
human--was the ingenious scheme by which the projectors were so adapted
as to throw the pictures upon the ceilings of the wards and so give an
untold pleasure and diversion to the tedious hours of our boys who were
so completely bedridden as not to be able to even sit erect. And there
were many such.
* * * * *
We have drifted for the moment quite away from Vichy and the lovely blue
and white and gold theater of our Red Cross in the heart of that
ancient town. While it was headquarters, it was, after all, but part of
the American Red Cross show there; because while our Red Cross
recognized that the biggest part of its job was taking care of the
enlisted man it was by no means blind to the necessities of his
officers. Which led to the regeneration--moral and otherwise--of still
another well-known gambling place in the town--the smart casino in the
center of the park. This became, quite quickly and easily, an officers'
club for the A. E. F. One room was reserved ordinarily for the French,
while at least once a week the entire place was given over to a dance.
Dancing! Neither the enlisted man nor the officer ever seemed to tire of
it. Each week also the enlisted men piled up the tables and the chairs
in their hut and conducted a dance of their own, of which one of the
chief features was ice cream--not fox-trotting. As in the huts and
canteens elsewhere across France there were never nearly enough girls to
serve as partners for the men. But there were no "wallflowers." The
floor manager always carried a whistle. A number of times during the
progress of each number he blew it--as a signal that the men lined along
the walls were privileged to "cut in" on those already dancing. And on
the occasions when some restless, impetuous boy blew a whistle of his
own and seized the first partner available there was ever a delightful
confusion.
* * * * *
Yet with all these things it could not be said that life in the hospital
center was exactly an even round of social events; yet it rarely ever
ceased for long to be dramatic. Take that November evening when
twenty-seven hundred of our boys who had been prisoners of the _boche_
came slipping into Vichy. Their uniforms were filthy and ragged. Slung
from their shoulders were the Red Cross boxes such as had sustained them
not only during their incarceration in Germany but on their long journey
out of that miserable place.
The limited capacity of these Red Cross boxes for our imprisoned men had
precluded their containing much more than mere food necessities. And the
boys in the ragged uniforms were hungry, not only for food of the
"home-cooked" varieties, but for everyday human associations. They had
both; even though the hut and the casino each worked steadily and for
long hours six wonderful nights in succession. Nearly four thousand
miles away from home, every effort was made to make this home-coming
into Vichy from the neutral gateways of Switzerland a real one.
These prisoners, as well as the greater numbers of the wounded, arrived
with practically no personal possessions. The army promptly re-equipped
them with uniforms, but the job of the Home and Hospital Bureau of the
Army and Navy Department, which had this particular part of the big Red
Cross job as its very own province, was to anticipate and look after all
of their personal necessities. This thing it did, and its
representatives coöperated with the army officers in studying the most
urgent requirements and finding the very gifts which would provide the
greatest proportion of real comfort.
* * * * *
Come back, if you will, once again to statistics. I make no apologies
for introducing the flavor of the official report into this narrative
from time to time. Reports ofttimes are indeed dull things; but the
reports of almost any department of the Red Cross have a real human
interest--even when they seemingly deal with mere percentages and rows
of figures. Take a hospital which solemnly reports that 175,872 hospital
days have been given to the army in the short space of four months. That
fact can hardly be dismissed as a dull statement. It carries with it
pictures of white wards, of the capable hands of nurses, of the faces of
brave boys in long lines along the ways of an institution which modestly
confesses that it holds but a mere fifteen hundred beds.
Because the following excerpt from the report of a Red Cross captain at
Vichy carries with it a picture of the boys who straggled into the local
headquarters asking for everything from socks to chewing gum, it is set
down here:
"During the month of October (1918), 78,278 packages of tobacco, 7,480
tubes of tooth paste, 7,650 toothbrushes, 3,650 combs, 3,460 Red Cross
bags, 2,850 packages of gum, 1,650 cakes of soap, 1,250 pipes, 1,560
handkerchiefs, 1,245 cakes of chocolate, 1,200 packages of shaving soap,
950 pencils, 1,000 boxes of matches, 900 shaving brushes, 500 packages
of playing cards, 450 washcloths, 400 sweaters, 350 razors, 350 boxes of
talcum powder, and various smaller amounts of pens, ink, malted milk,
razor blades, checkers, thread, games, pipe cleaners, scissors, and
drinking cups were distributed free; chiefly, so far as we know, to
penniless boys. As this is written, this office is having a thousand
applicants a day and, while all their wants cannot be met, no one leaves
empty-handed...."
"No one leaves empty-handed...."
The boys who marched across the snow-blanketed park at Vichy that
January morning with their crimson-crossed bags in their hands, were,
after all, only typical of many thousands who had gone before. For three
days they had anticipated their evacuation by asking for writing paper,
for souvenir postals, for pocket song books, for gloves, sweaters, and
the rest of the usual output of the Red Cross--the variety of whose
resources would put a modern city department store to the blush. One
youngster came to the headquarters on the last day holding his trench
cap in his hand.
"It's too dirty for the trip home," he said. "Can't the Red Cross get me
a new one?"
No, the Red Cross could not duplicate the work of the army's
quartermasters, but it could, and would, help the boy out. So it gave
him a cake of soap and showed him how he could clean his greasy cap
quite thoroughly and then dry it on the office stove before starting on
the march across the park.
The difficulties of keeping up a full stock of Red Cross supplies of
every sort in a land and in times when shipping space of all kinds was
at a great premium should be obvious. Of necessity surgical supplies
took precedence over luxuries of every sort. Then it was that such
places as Vichy and Savenay and all the rest of them had to depend, not
alone upon their normal receipts, but upon the resourcefulness of
individual workers and the fruitfulness of the surrounding country. That
was the reason why in one instance when Red Cross bags could not be
shipped into Vichy, they were manufactured there by the thousands by
French needlewomen. Indeed no doughboy should leave "empty-handed." Near
by districts for a considerable number of miles roundabout were invaded
by automobiles seeking the bright-colored cretonnes, which make the bags
so very gay and, in turn, so much the more welcome.
On at least two other occasions the vicinage was similarly combed for
emergency supplies--for the American celebrations of both Thanksgiving
Day and Christmas, 1918. Much was made of both these glorious Yankee
holidays. The time was propitious for real celebration. Peace was not
only in the air, but at last actually accomplished. The hearts of men
were softened. One could sing of "peace on earth" and not choke as the
words came to his lips.
So it was that Christmas Day at Vichy was a particularly gay one--gay,
despite even the pain and suffering that remained in all the great
hospital wards there. For men--American men, if you please, could, and
did, hide for the nonce their fearful suffering. Pain begone! The carols
were in the air. The hundreds of gayly decorated electric-light bulbs
were flashing on at dusk. And you might go from ward to ward and there
count all of fifty Christmas trees--these, too, brilliantly decorated.
And the decorators in all these instances had been Red Cross women and
men--and wounded soldiers lying ill at ease in their hospital cots. They
made a great job of all of it--a merry job as well. And when the
supplies of such conventional raw materials as tinsel and popcorn fell
short they seemed to find something else that did quite as well.
For that hospital celebration among our wounded men at Vichy just 13,657
socks were filled, which bespeaks the exact number of doughboys that
participated in the celebration. If they could have spoken, each of
these humble articles of clothing might easily have told a double
story--the tale of its own origin and the romance that came to it after
that memorable Christmas Day; for they were American knit socks, and no
factory--no inanimate, impersonal place, peopled with machines rather
than with humans--had turned them forth. Each and every one of them were
hand-knitted. And some of them had come from my lady's parlor, situated
in an upper floor, perhaps, of a great and gaudy apartment house, and
some had come from the prairie ranch, and some had come from cabins upon
the steep and desolate mountainsides of the Alleghenies or the Rockies
or the Sierras. From East and West and North and South they had
come--but all had come from the United States; and I am perfectly
willing to predict that every blessed one returned forthwith to the land
of its birth.
The mate of each one of these 13,657 socks was rolled and placed in its
toe. Then followed other things--shaving soap, cigarettes, tobacco,
nuts, candy, handkerchiefs--by this time you ought to know the Red Cross
list as well as I. While, by connivance with the head nurse of each of
the wards, each blessed sock was individually tagged and addressed to
its recipient. There is nothing, you know, like personal quality in a
Christmas gift.
* * * * *
If, after the perusal of all these pages, you still insist upon being
one of those folk who regard the triumph of our Red Cross in France as
one of American organization, rather than of American individualism, and
American generosity, permit me to explain to you that in the paragraphs
of this chapter you have slipped from the work of the Bureau of
Hospital Administration to that of the Home and Hospital Bureau of the
Army and Navy Department. The distinctly medical and surgical phases of
the Red Cross work in the A. E. F. hospitals across France was a major
portion of the burden of Colonel Burlingame's job; the more purely
recreative and comfort-giving phases came under Majors J. B. A. Fosburgh
and Horace M. Swope, both of whom served as directors of the Army and
Navy Departments during the Gibson régime. But the distinction between
these two departments was almost entirely one of name. Each, after all,
was American Red Cross and as American Red Cross worked--to a common and
unselfish and entirely humanitarian end.
* * * * *
If I have lingered upon Vichy it has been because its story was so
nearly the story of the Red Cross work in other A. E. F. hospitals
across France. The narrative of each differs as a rule only in the most
minor details. Sometimes, of course, the unexpected happened, as at
Mesves, where our Red Cross under emergency served a double purpose.
During the October, 1918, drive, when the American Army was functioning
to its highest efficiency and in so functioning was, of necessity,
making a fearful sacrifice of its human units, this hut was taken over
by the Medical Corps of the army and fitted out as an emergency ward,
with ninety-five cots. For six weeks it so served as a direct hospital
function.
In the great Base Hospital No. 114 at Beau Deserte--just outside the
embarkation ports of Bordeaux and Bassens--our Red Cross not only served
from 1,200 to 1,500 cups of coffee a day in its huge hut, but actually
maintained an athletic field, in addition to the billiard tables which
were an almost universal feature of every Red Cross hut. And at another
base hospital in that same Bordeaux district, several companies of
evacuated men were being told off into groups of a hundred each--and
each in charge of a top sergeant--ready to sail on the following day.
Then, just as the men were about to march to the gangplank of the
waiting steamer, one of their number fell ill of the scarlet fever and
the entire group had to be quarantined. It was one of the many jobs of
the Red Cross force there to keep these restless and disappointed men
amused and as happy as possible, and in turn necessary to use a little
philosophy.
Philosophy?
One Red Cross girl down there at that particular time told me how she
had experimented with it in that trying instance. Her eyes sparkled as
she announced the results of the experiments.
"It worked, it really worked," she said. "I found a group of colored
men, and upon that group used all the scientific new thought that I
might possibly bring to my aid, and with real success. The men were
mollified and a bit contented, so that one of them--I think that back in
the Middle West he had been a Pullman porter--finally came to me and
said:
"'Missy, I's a-found our hoodoo. Sure what could we expect when we've
got a cross-eyed nigger preacher in our squad?'"