SIDE LINES OF THE RED TRIANGLE
The Y.M.C.A. has fashioned a girdle of mercy and
loving-kindness round the world which will stand
to their credit as long as the memory of this war
exists.--LORD CURZON OF KEDLESTON.
[Illustration: A SHAKEDOWN IN A LONDON HUT]
[Illustration: RELATIVES OF THE DANGEROUSLY WOUNDED ARE LOOKED AFTER BY
THE Y.M.C.A. IN FRANCE]
THERE are numerous side-lines to this work, that are important enough in
themselves, the significance of which is scarcely realised by the
general public, or even by those who are supporting the movement. Take,
for example, the 'Snapshots from Home' movement, which represented the
combined voluntary work of the photographers of the United Kingdom,
organised under the Red Triangle. Upwards of 650,000 snapshots were sent
out to soldiers and sailors on active service, each one bearing a
message of love and a reminder of home. Sir Evelyn Wood, V.C., was one
of the first to recognise the significance of the letter-writing that is
done on such a large scale in the Y.M.C.A. tents. The veteran
Field-Marshal pointed out that the benefit was two-fold: first, it
occupied the time of the men; and, secondly, it kept them in touch with
their homes, both matters of first importance. 'That's what my Dad
always puts on his letters to Mummy,' said a little girl, pointing to
the Red Triangle on the notepaper, when on a visit to the Crystal
Palace. Fifteen to twenty million pieces of stationery are distributed
free of charge to the troops monthly by the Y.M.C.A., and in four years
the total issued amounted to upwards of nine hundred million pieces.
Workers are often called upon to write letters for the men, and the
latter make all sorts of mistakes with their correspondence. Sometimes
they stamp their letters but forget to address them, often they
address them but forget the stamps. One lad was greatly excited and
wanted the secretary in charge of the post-office to rescue two letters
he had posted earlier in the afternoon. When asked why he wanted them
back he blushed like a schoolgirl and stammered out, 'I've written two
letters--one to my mother and the other to my sweetheart--and I've put
them in the wrong envelopes!' The letters were not rescued, for more
than five thousand had been posted before he discovered his mistake, and
one wonders what happened!
[Illustration: Y.M.C.A. NIGHT MOTOR TRANSPORT]
* * * * *
In Paris the Association has established a central inquiry bureau under
the Hôtel Édouard VII. off the Grand Boulevard. Two daily excursions are
arranged around Paris, and two each week to Versailles. Representatives
of the Red Triangle meet all the principal trains, day and night. The
Hôtel Florida is now run under the Association for British troops,
whilst the American Y.M.C.A. has its Headquarters for France in the
city, and has taken over several large hotels and other buildings.
There is not the romance about the work of the Red Triangle in the
munition areas, that there is in what it is doing for our fighting men,
but there can be no doubt as to its importance. The munition workers as
a class are as patriotic as any other class, but their work is drab,
monotonous, and strenuous. Little has been done officially to bring home
to the man who makes the shell the relationship of his work to the man
who fires it; or of the woman who works on the aeroplane to the man who
is to fly in it, and yet the one can do nothing without the other.
Things have changed for the better, but earlier in the war the output of
munitions was positively hindered by the inadequacy of the canteen
facilities available to the munition workers. The Y.M.C.A. was the first
organisation to attempt to meet this need on anything like a large
scale, and eventually the work grew to considerable dimensions. Our work
in the munition areas has been essentially a ladies' movement, and has
largely consisted of canteen work. Other features are being increasingly
added, music and singing have been organised successfully, lectures have
been greatly appreciated, and several big athletic features introduced.
Sporting events, also cricket and football leagues for munition workers,
have been well supported. It is intensely interesting to see these
people at work, and no other proof of British organising power and
ability are necessary than a visit to some of the great works, many of
which were not built for the purpose of manufacturing munitions of war,
and others improvised since the commencement of hostilities. At one
place in which a canteen was formally opened by Princess Helena
Victoria--who has taken the keenest interest in the development of our
munitions department--from ordinary shipbuilding before the war great
changes had taken place: a Super-Dreadnought was approaching completion;
several T.B.D.'s were on the stocks, and some of the latest type of
submarines were being built; aeroplanes were being turned out at an
incredible rate; shells made by the thousand; rigid air-ships were under
construction; and, perhaps as wonderful as anything, artificial feet
were being made in the same workshops.
* * * * *
Incidentally might be mentioned here, the work the Association is doing
for officers. There are four large hostels in London for the
accommodation of officers, and one for officer-cadets. The young
officer is often not blessed with too much of this world's goods, and
hotel life is expensive, and not always too comfortable. The success of
these hostels has demonstrated the need. At Havre, Calais, St. Omer,
Étaples, and many centres up the line, as well as in home camps, such as
Ripon, we have the pleasure of doing something to serve the officer, and
in many English camps we have opened huts for the exclusive use of
officer-cadets. Gidea Park, Berkhampstead, and Denham were amongst the
first and most successful of these centres. The interned officers in
Switzerland and Holland are largely catered for by the Y.M.C.A.
* * * * *
It has been a pleasure to co-operate from time to time with the work of
the R.A.M.C. and the Red Cross. In huts, in hospitals, and convalescent
camps, in caring for the relatives of wounded, in work for the walking
wounded, and in many other ways the Red Cross and the Red Triangle have
worked closely together. An officer of the R.A.M.C. (T.), has written
the following interesting description of the work of the Y.M.C.A. for
the walking wounded:--'The O.C. the Divisional Walking Wounded
Collecting Post was frankly worried as he sat in his tiny sandbagged hut
with the D.A.D.M.S., and talked over all the problems which faced him in
view of the "stunt" due to come off at dawn a few days later. "I've got
plenty of dressings, and everything of that sort," he said, "and, of
course, I can get plenty more brought up by returning ambulance cars.
But there is the question of food--there's the rub. The numbers of
wounded vary so greatly, and it's not so easy to lay in a huge reserve
of grub as it is of dressings. Of course, I've done my best, but I'm
rather worried." "If that is all your worry we'll soon put that right,"
answered the optimist of the staff. "We'll get the Y.M.C.A. chap on the
job." "What can he do?" "What can he not do rather? You wait and see.
Come along and we'll call on him now."
'In a little shed of corrugated iron by the side of a shell-swept road
they found him. With his coat off and his sleeves rolled up, he was
pushing across the counter steaming mugs of cocoa and piles of buns to
the crowd of hungry and clamouring Tommies who besieged his premises. He
was not a young man. Not the strongest-hearted of Medical Boards would
have passed him for service. To put it briefly, he had no right in the
world to be where he was, in one of the nastiest corners of that
particularly nasty place, Flanders. But there he was, roughing it with
the rest of them, and to judge from his smiling countenance, thoroughly
enjoying every particle of his experience. "Hello, Major!" he called
out cheerfully on seeing his two officer visitors. "Anything I can do
for you to-day?" "Rather! A whole lot. Can we have a talk in your own
place--away from the crowd?" The Y.M.C.A. man led the way to the six
feet square hole in the ground which he called his billet, and there the
medical staff officer explained his needs. "There's a stunt on in a few
days," he said. "You may have guessed that. What can you do to help us?
You know the pressure under which the R.A.M.C. will be working. It'll be
a big job dressing all the casualties there are likely to be; but we'll
manage that bit. What we want is a hand in the feeding of them. You
understand?" The face of the secretary glowed with excitement. "I'll do
any mortal thing I can," he answered eagerly. "There'll be nothing doing
here once the show starts, so I'll shut down, and bring my whole stock
over to your dressing station, and my staff too. We can feed several
hundred if you'll let us." "What about the cost of the grub?" "Not a
word about cost, sir! You're welcome to it free, gratis, and for
nothing, with all the pleasure in the world." "Thanks awfully," said the
D.A.D.M.S. "That's just what I wanted you to offer, and I thought you
would; your folks have helped us so often before." "Jolly good job,"
mused the Y.M.C.A. man, "that I have kept hidden those extra cases of
chocolates and sweet biscuits. I thought there might be something of
this sort coming off."
'Ere the grey dawn of a certain morning brought the nerve-racking
inferno of barrage and counter-barrage, the entire stock of the canteen
was installed in the larger of the two huts which formed the collecting
post. Boxes of biscuits, chocolates, and cigarettes with the lids
knocked off, stood ranged along the wall, ready for the tired and hungry
guests who would soon appear. Outside, in two huge cauldrons, gallons of
strong cocoa were brewing merrily. Little was spoken by the men standing
around, as they waited, nerves a trifle on edge, for the breaking of the
storm. Suddenly from somewhere in the rear came the hollow boom of a
"heavy," the artillery signal, and in an instant every battery in the
area had hurled its first salvo of the barrage. The air was full of
noise, the rolling roar of the guns at "drum fire," the hissing and
screaming of flying shells, the echoes of far-away explosions. The
ground trembled as if an earthquake had come. The battle had begun.
'The O.C. looked in at the door of the hut. "Everything ready?" he
asked. "Ready and waiting," answered the Y.M.C.A. man, and very soon in
twos and threes the wounded began to dribble in, and shortly a steady
stream of battered humanity was straggling down the road, to halt at the
welcome sight of the hut with the Red Cross flag by its door. How some
of them limped over every weary step of the way was beyond
understanding. With shattered limbs and mangled flesh they came, worn,
hungry, thirsty, in agony, some stumbling alone, some helped along by
less grievously injured comrades. In a pitiful throng they gathered
around the dressing station.
'The quick eyes of the R.A.M.C. sergeant picked out the worst cases, and
these were hurried into the hut where the medical officers plied their
sorrowful trade. The others sat down and waited their turn with the
stolid patience of the British soldier when he is wounded, and among
them worked an Angel of Mercy, an elderly angel clad in a flannel
shirt, and a pair of mud-stained khaki trousers. Amid the poor jetsam of
the fight went the Y.M.C.A. man with his mugs of cocoa and his biscuits,
his chocolate and his cigarettes, as much a minister of healing as was
the surgeon with his dressings and anodynes. All the men were bitterly
cold after their long night of waiting in the old front trench, or were
dead beat with the nervous strain of the action and the pain of their
wounds. All were hungry. A few no longer cared greatly what more might
happen to them, for they had reached the limit of endurance, as surely
as they had reached the limit of suffering. But even to those last the
warm drink and the food and, perhaps more than anything else, the
soothing nicotine, brought back life and hope in place of apathy and
despair. 'God bless you, sir,' murmured a man here and there. But the
greater part could find no words to speak the gratitude which their
eyes told forth so clearly.'
This little story is not the tale of one actual incident. It is only the
stereotype of scenes that have been acted and reacted often and often at
the Front. Time and time again has the Red Triangle come to the aid of
the Red Cross, placing its workers and its stores unreservedly at the
disposal of the Royal Army Medical Corps. When the wounded have been
pouring into the dressing stations in hundreds, the Y.M.C.A. workers
have taken over the responsibility of feeding them, and have halved the
cares of the overwrought R.A.M.C. This they have done not once but
unnumbered times, and what gratitude they have earned from their guests!
The wounded man can scarcely realise what he owes to the surgeon who
tends his injuries; but he does appreciate his debt to the man who feeds
him and gives him the 'fag' for which he has been craving. The cocoa
and cigarettes of the Y.M.C.A. do not figure among the medicaments of
the Pharmacopoeia, yet many a 'walking wounded' will swear to you that
they have saved his life--as perhaps they have.