"GOOD MORNING, NURSE"
Weakness from the loss of blood began to grow on me as Lieutenant
Hartzell and I made our way through the deepening shadows of the wooded
hillside in the rear of the field on which I had been shot. In an
upright position of walking the pains in my head seemed to increase. We
stopped for a minute and, neither of us having first aid kits with us, I
resurrected a somewhat soiled silk handkerchief with which Hartzell
bound up my head in a manner that applied supporting pressure over my
left eye and brought a degree of relief.
Hartzell told me later that I was staggering slightly when we reached a
small relief dugout about a mile back of the wood. There a medical corps
man removed the handkerchief and bound my head with a white gauze
bandage. I was anxious to have the wound cleaned but he told me there
was no water. He said they had been forced to turn it over to the men to
drink. This seemed to me to be as it should be because my thirst was
terrific, yet there was no water left.
We stumbled rearward another half mile and, in the darkness, came upon
the edge of another wooded area. A considerable number of our wounded
were lying on stretchers on the ground. The Germans were keeping up a
continual fire of shrapnel and high explosive shell in the woods,
apparently to prevent the mobilisation of reserves, but the doctors,
taking care of the wounded, proceeded with their work without notice to
the whine of the shells passing overhead or the bursting of those that
landed nearby. They went at their work just as though they were caring
for injured men on a football field.
Hartzell stretched me out on the ground and soon had a doctor bending
over me. The doctor removed the eye bandage, took one look at what was
beneath it and then replaced it. I remember this distinctly because at
the time I made the mental note that the doctor apparently considered my
head wound beyond anything he could repair. He next turned his attention
to my arm and shoulder. He inserted his scissors into my left sleeve at
the wrist and ripped it up to the shoulder. He followed this operation
by cutting through my heavy khaki tunic from the shoulder to the collar.
A few more snips of the nickel-plated blades and my shirt and undershirt
were cut away. He located the three bullet holes, two in the arm and one
across the top of the shoulder, and bound them up with bandages.
"We're awful shy on ambulances," he said; "you will have to lie here a
while."
"I feel that I can walk all right if there is no reason why I
shouldn't," I replied.
"You ought to be in an ambulance," said the doctor, "but if you feel
that you can make it, you might take a try at it."
Then turning to Lieutenant Hartzell, he said, "Keep right with him, and
if he begins to get groggy, make him lie down."
So Hartzell and I resumed our rearward plodding or staggering. He walked
at my right side and slightly in front of me, holding my right arm over
his right shoulder and thereby giving me considerable support. We had
not proceeded far before we heard the racing motor of an automobile
coming from behind us. An occasional shell was dropping along the road
we were now on.
A stick struck my legs from behind in the darkness. And then an
apologetic voice said:
"Beg your pardon, sir, just feeling along the road for shell holes.
Ambulance right behind me, sir. Would you mind stepping to one side?
Come on, Bill," to the driver of the ambulance, "it looks all clear
through here."
The automobile with the racing motor turned out to be a light ambulance
of a popular Detroit make. Its speeding engine was pure camouflage for
its slow progress. It bubbled and steamed at the radiator cap as it
pushed along at almost a snail's pace.
"All full?" Hartzell shouted into the darkness of the driver's seat.
"To the brim," responded the driver. "Are you wounded?"
"No, but I have a wounded man with me," said Hartzell. "He can sit
beside you on the seat if you have room."
"Get right in," said the driver, and Hartzell boosted me into the front
seat. We pushed along slowly, Hartzell walking beside the car and the
driver's assistant proceeding ahead of us, searching the dark road with
his cane for new shell craters.
Occasionally, when our wheels would strike in one of these, groans would
come from the ambulance proper.
"Take it easy," would come a voice through pain-pressed lips; "for
Christ's sake, do you think you are driving a truck?"
I heard the driver tell Hartzell that he had three men with bullet
splintered legs in the ambulance. Every jolt of the car caused their
broken bones to jolt and increased the pounding of their wearied nerves
to an extremity of agony. The fourth occupant of the ambulance, he
said, had been shot through the lungs.
Some distance along, there came a knock on the wooden partition behind
my back,--the partition that separates the driver's seat from the
ambulance proper. The car stopped and the driver and Hartzell went to
the rear door and opened it. The man with the shot through the lungs was
half sitting up on his stretcher. He had one hand to his mouth and his
lips, as revealed in the rays of the driver's flashlight, were red wet.
"Quick--get me--to a doctor," the man said between gulps and gurgles.
The driver considered. He knew we were ten miles from the closest doctor.
Then he addressed himself to the other three stretcher-cases--the men
with the torture-torn legs.
"If I go fast, you guys are going to suffer the agonies of hell," he
said, "and if I go slow this guy with the hemorrhage will croak before
we get there. How do you want me to drive?"
There was not a minute's silence. The three broken leg cases responded
almost in unison.
"Go as fast as you can," they said.
And we did. With Hartzell riding the running board beside me and the
crater finder clinging to the mud guards on the other side, we sped
through the darkness regardless of the ruts and shell holes. The jolting
was severe but never once did there come another complaint from the
occupants of the ambulance.
In this manner did we arrive in time at the first medical clearing
station. I learned later that the life of the man with the hemorrhage
was saved and he is alive to-day.
The clearing station was located in an old church on the outskirts of a
little village. Four times during this war the flow and ebb of battle
had passed about this old edifice. Hartzell half carried me off the
ambulance seat and into the church. As I felt my feet scrape on the
flagstoned flooring underneath the Gothic entrance arch, I opened my
right eye for a painful survey of the interior.
The walls, grey with age, appeared yellow in the light of the candles
and lanterns that were used for illumination. Blankets, and bits of
canvas and carpet had been tacked over the apertures where once stained
glass windows and huge oaken doors had been. These precautions were
necessary to prevent the lights from shining outside the building and
betraying our location to the hospital-loving eyes of German bombing
'planes whose motors we could hear even at that minute, humming in the
black sky above us.
Our American wounded were lying on stretchers all over the floor. Near
the door, where I entered, a number of pews had been pushed to one side
and on these our walking wounded were seated. They were smoking
cigarettes and talking and passing observations on every fresh case that
came through the door. They all seemed to be looking at me.
My appearance must have been sufficient to have shocked them. I was
hatless and my hair was matted with blood. The red-stained bandage
around my forehead and extending down over my left cheek did not hide
the rest of my face, which was unwashed, and consequently red with fresh
blood.
On my left side I was completely bare from the shoulder to the waist
with the exception of the strips of white-cloth about my arm and
shoulder. My chest was splashed with red from the two body wounds. Such
was my entrance. I must have looked somewhat grewsome because I
happened to catch an involuntary shudder as it passed over the face of
one of my observers among the walking wounded and I heard him remark to
the man next to him:
"My God, look what they're bringing in."
Hartzell placed me on a stretcher on the floor and went for water, which
I sorely needed. I heard some one stop beside my stretcher and bend over
me, while a kindly voice said:
"Would you like a cigarette, old man?"
"Yes," I replied. He lighted one in his own lips and placed it in my
mouth. I wanted to know my benefactor. I asked him for his name and
organisation.
"I am not a soldier," he said; "I am a non-combatant, the same as you.
My name is Slater and I'm from the Y. M. C. A."
That cigarette tasted mighty good. If you who read this are one of those
whose contributions to the Y. M. C. A. made that distribution possible,
I wish to herewith express to you my gratefulness and the gratefulness
of the other men who enjoyed your generosity that night.
In front of what had been the altar in the church, there had been
erected a rudely constructed operation table. The table was surrounded
with tall candelabrum of brass and gilded wood. These ornate accessories
had been removed from the altar for the purpose of providing better
light for the surgeons who busied themselves about the table in their
long gowns of white--stained with red.
I was placed on that table for an examination and I heard a peculiar
conversation going on about me. One doctor said, "We haven't any more of
it." Then another doctor said, "But I thought we had plenty." The first
voice replied, "Yes, but we didn't expect so many wounded. We have used
up all we had." Then the second voice said, "Well, we certainly need it
now. I don't know what we're going to do without it."
From their further conversation I learned that the subject under
discussion was anti-tetanus serum--the all-important inoculation that
prevents lockjaw and is also an antidote for the germs of gas gangrene.
You may be sure I became more than mildly interested in the absence of
this valuable boon, but there was nothing I could say that would help
the case, so I remained quiet. In several minutes my composure was
rewarded. I heard hurried footsteps across the flagstoned flooring and a
minute later felt a steel needle penetrating my abdomen. Then a cheery
voice said:
"It's all right, now, we've got plenty of it. We've got just piles of
it. The Red Cross just shot it out from Paris in limousines."
After the injection Hartzell informed me that the doctors could do
nothing for me at that place and that I was to be moved further to the
rear. He said ambulances were scarce but he had found a place for me in
a returning ammunition truck. I was carried out of the church and
somewhere in the outer darkness was lifted up into the body of the truck
and laid down on some straw in the bottom. There were some fifteen or
twenty other men lying there beside me.
The jolting in this springless vehicle was severe, but its severity was
relieved in some of our cases by the quieting injections we had
received. The effects of these narcotics had worn off in some of the men
and they suffered the worse for it. One of them continually called out
to the truck driver to go slower and make less jolting. To each request
the driver responded that he was going as slow as he could. As the
jolting continued the man with the complaining nerves finally yelled out
a new request. He said:
"Well, if you can't make it easier by going slow, then for God's sake
throw her into high and go as fast as you can. Let's get it over as
quick as we can."
Lying on my back in the truck with a raincoat as a pillow, I began to
wonder where we were bound for. I opened my eye once and looked up
toward the roof of the leafy tunnel which covered the road. Soon we
passed out from beneath the trees bordering the roadside and I could see
the sky above. The moon was out and there were lots of stars. They gave
one something to think about. After all, how insignificant was one
little life.
In this mood, something in the jolting of the camion brought to my mind
the metre and words of George Amicks' wistful verses, "The Camion
Caravan," and I repeat it from memory:
"Winding down through sleeping town
Pale stars of early dawn;
Like ancient knight with squire by side,
Driver and helper now we ride--
The camion caravan.
"In between the rows of trees
Glare of the mid-day sun;
Creeping along the highway wide,
Slowly in long defile, we ride--
The camion caravan.
"Homeward to _remorque_ and rest,
Pale stars of early night;
Through stillness of the eventide,
Back through the winding town we ride--
The camion caravan."
Sometime during the dark hours of the early morning we stopped in the
courtyard of a hospital and I was taken into another examination room
illuminated with painfully brilliant lights. I was placed on a table for
an examination, which seemed rather hurried, and then the table was
rolled away some distance down a corridor. I never understood that move
until some weeks later when a Lieutenant medical officer told me that it
was he who had examined me at that place.
"You're looking pretty fit, now," he said, "but that night when I saw
you I ticketed you for the dead pile. You didn't look like you could
live till morning."
His statement gave me some satisfaction. There is always joy in fooling
the doctor.
Hartzell, who still accompanied me, apparently rescued me from the "dead
pile" and we started on another motor trip, this time on a stretcher in
a large, easier-riding ambulance. In this I arrived shortly after dawn
at the United States Military Base Hospital at Neuilly-sur-Seine, on the
outskirts of Paris.
There were more hurried examinations and soon I was rolled down a
corridor on a wheeled table, into an elevator that started upward. Then
the wheeled table raced down another long corridor and I began to feel
that my journeyings were endless. We stopped finally in a room where I
distinctly caught the odour of ether. Some one began removing my boots
and clothes. As that some one worked he talked to me.
"I know you, Mr. Gibbons," he said. "I'm from Chicago also. I am
Sergeant Stephen Hayes. I used to go to Hyde Park High School. We're
going to fix you up right away."
I learned from Hayes that I was lying in a room adjoining the operating
chamber and was being prepared for the operating table. Some information
concerning the extent of my injuries and the purpose of the operation
would have been comforting and would have relieved the sensation of
utter helpless childishness that I was experiencing.
I knew I was about to go under the influence of the anesthetic and that
something was going to be done to me. I had every confidence that
whatever was done would be for the best but it was perfectly natural
that I should be curious about it. Was the operation to be a serious one
or a minor one? Would they have to remove my eye? Would they have to
operate on my skull? How about the arm? Would there be an amputation?
How about the other eye? Would I ever see again? It must be remembered
that in spite of all the examinations I had not been informed and
consequently had no knowledge concerning the extent of my injuries. The
only information I had received had been included in vague remarks
intended as soothing, such as "You're all right, old man." "You'll pull
through fine." "You're coming along nicely." But all of it had seemed
too professionally optimistic to satisfy me and my doubts still
remained.
They were relieved, however, by the pressure of a hand and the sound of
a voice. In the words spoken and in the pressure of the hand, there was
hardly anything different from similar hand pressures and similar spoken
phrases that had come to me during the night, yet there was everything
different. This voice and this hand carried supreme confidence. I could
believe in both of them. I felt the hand pressure on my right shoulder
and the mild kindly voice said:
"Son, I am going to operate on you. I have examined you and you are all
right. You are going to come through fine. Don't worry about anything."
"Thank you, very much," I said, "I like your voice. It sounds like my
father's. Will you tell me your name?"
"I am Major Powers," the kindly voice said. "Now just take it easy, and
I will talk to you again in a couple of hours when you feel better."
The speaker, as I learned later, was Major Charles Powers, of Denver,
Colorado, one of the best-known and best-loved surgeons in the West. A
man far advanced in his profession and well advanced in his years, a man
whose life has not been one of continual health, a man who, upon
America's entry of the war, sacrificed the safety of the beneficial air
rarity of his native Denver to answer the country's call, to go to
France at great personal risk to his health--a risk only appreciated by
those who know him well. It was Major Powers who operated upon the
compound fracture in my skull that morning.
My mental note-taking continued as the anesthetist worked over me with
the ether. As I began breathing the fumes I remember that my senses were
keenly making observations on every sensation I experienced. The thought
even went through my mind that it would be rather an unusual thing to
report completely the impressions of coma. This suggestion became a
determination and I became keyed up to everything going on about me.
The conversation of the young doctor who was administering the
anesthetic interested me unusually. He was very busy and business-like
and although I considered myself an important and most interested party
in the entire proceedings, his conversation ignored me entirely. He not
only did not talk to me, but he was not even talking about me. As he
continued to apply the ether, he kept up a running fire of entirely
extraneous remarks with some other person near the table. I did not
appreciate then, as I do now, that I was only one of very, very many
that he had anesthetised that morning and the night before, but at the
time his seeming lack of all interest in me as me, piqued me
considerably.
"Are you feeling my pulse?" I said. I could not feel his hand on either
of my wrists, but I asked the question principally to inject myself into
the conversation in some way or other, preferably in some way that would
call him to account, as I had by this time aroused within me a keen and
healthy dislike for this busy little worker whom I could not see but who
stood over me and carried on conversations with other people to my utter
and complete exclusion. And all the time he was engaged in feeding me
the fumes that I knew would soon steal away my senses.
"Now, never you mind about your pulse," he replied somewhat peevishly.
"I'm taking care of this." It seemed to me from the tone of his voice
that he implied I was talking about something that was none of my
business and I had the distinct conviction that if the proceedings were
anybody's business, they certainly were mine.
"You will pardon me for manifesting a mild interest in what you are
doing to me," I said, "but you see I know that something is going to be
done to my right eye and inasmuch as that is the only eye I've got on
that side, I can't help being concerned."
"Now, you just forget it and take deep breaths, and say, Charlie, did
you see that case over in Ward 62? That was a wonderful case. The bullet
hit the man in the head and they took the lead out of his stomach. He's
got the bullet on the table beside him now. Talk about bullet
eaters--believe me, those Marines sure are."
I hurled myself back into the conversation.
"I'll take deep breaths if you'll loosen the straps over my chest," I
said, getting madder each minute. "How can I take a full breath when
you've got my lungs strapped down?"
"Well, how's that?" responded the conversational anesthetist, as he
loosened one of the straps. "Now, take one breath of fresh air--one
deep, long breath, now."
I turned my head to one side to escape the fumes from the stifling towel
over my face and made a frenzied gulp for fresh air. As I did so, one
large drop of ether fell on the table right in front of my nose and the
deep long breath I got had very little air in it. I felt I had been
tricked.
"You're pretty cute, old timer, aren't you?" I remarked to the
anesthetist for the purpose of letting him know that I was on to his
game, but either he didn't hear me, or he was too interested in telling
Charlie about his hopes and ambitions to be sent to the front with a
medical unit that worked under range of the guns. He returned to a
consideration of me with the following remark:
"All right, he's under now; where's the next one?"
"The hell I am," I responded hastily, as visions of knives and saws and
gimlets and brain chisels went through my mind. I had no intention or
desire of being conscious when the carpenters and plumbers started to
work on me.
I was completely ignored and the table started moving. We rolled across
the floor and there commenced a clicking under the back of my head, not
unlike the sound made when the barber lowers or elevates the head-rest
on his chair. The table rolled seemingly a long distance down a long
corridor and then came to the top of a slanting runway.
As I started riding the table down the runway I began to see that I was
descending an inclined tube which seemed to be filled with yellow
vapour. Some distance down, the table slowed up and we came to a stop in
front of a circular bulkhead in the tunnel.
There was a door in the centre of the bulkhead and in the centre of the
door there was a small wicket window which opened and two grotesquely
smiling eyes peered out at me. Those eyes inspected me from head to foot
and then, apparently satisfied, they twinkled and the wicket closed with
a snap. Then the door opened and out stepped a quaint and curious figure
with gnarled limbs and arms and a peculiar misshapen head, completely
covered with a short growth of black hair.
I laughed outright, laughed hilariously. I recognised the man. The last
time I had seen him was when he stepped out of a gas tank on the 18th
floor of an office building in Chicago where I was reclining at the time
in a dentist chair. He was the little gas demon who walked with me
through the Elysian fields the last time I had a tooth pulled.
"Well you poor little son-of-a-gun," I said, by way of greeting. "What
are you doing way over here in France? I haven't seen you for almost
two years, since that day back in Chicago."
The gas demon rolled his head from one side to the other and smiled, but
I can't remember what he said. My mental note-taking concluded about
there because the next memory I have is of complete darkness, and lying
on my back in a cramped position while a horse trampled on my left arm.
"Back off of there," I shouted, but the animal's hoofs didn't move. The
only effect my shouting had was to bring a soft hand into my right one,
and a sweet voice close beside me.
"You're all right, now," said the sweet voice, "just try to take a
little nap and you'll feel better."
Then I knew it was all over, that is, the operation was over, or
something was over. Anyhow my mind was working and I was in a position
where I wanted to know things again. I recall now, with a smile, that
the first things that passed through my mind were the threadbare
bromides so often quoted "Where am I?" I recall feeling the urge to say
something at least original, so I enquired:
"What place is this, and will you please tell me what day and time it
is?"
"This is the Military Base Hospital at Neuilly-sur-Seine just on the
outskirts of Paris, and it is about eleven o'clock in the morning and
to-day is Friday, June the seventh."
Then I went back to sleep with an etherised taste in my mouth like a
motorman's glove.