THE RED BADGE OF MERCY
Immediately on the declaration of war by the Powers the vast machinery
of mercy was put in the field. The mobilisation of the Red Cross army
began--that great army which is of no nation, but of all nations, of
no creed but of all faiths, of one flag for all the world and that
flag the banner of the Crusaders.
The Red Cross is the wounded soldier's last defence. Worn as a
brassard on the left arm of its volunteers, it conveys a higher
message than the Victoria Cross of England, the Iron Cross of Germany,
or the Cross of the Legion of Honour of France. It is greater than
cannon, greater than hate, greater than blood-lust, greater than
vengeance. It triumphs over wrath as good triumphs over evil. Direct
descendant of the cross of the Christian faith, it carries on to every
battlefield the words of the Man of Peace: "Blessed are the merciful,
for they shall obtain mercy."
* * * * *
The care of the wounded in war has been the problem of the ages.
Richard the Lion-Hearted took a hospital ship to the coast of
Palestine. The German people of the Middle Ages had their wounded in
battle treated by their wives, who followed the army for that purpose.
It remained for Frederick the First of Prussia to establish a military
service in connection with a standing army.
With the invention of firearms battlefield surgery faced new problems,
notably hemorrhage, and took a step forward to meet these altered
conditions. It was a French surgeon who solved the problem of
hemorrhage by tying the torn blood vessels above the injury. To
England goes the credit for the prevention of sepsis, as far as it may
be prevented on a battlefield.
As far as it may be prevented on a battlefield! For that is the
question that confronts the machinery of mercy to-day. Transportation
to the hospitals has been solved, to a large extent, by motor
ambulances, by hospital trains, by converted channel steamers
connecting the Continent with England. Hospitals in the western field
of war are now plentiful and some are well equipped. The days of
bedding wounded men down on straw are largely in the past, but how to
prevent the ravages of dirt, the so-called "dirt diseases" of gaseous
gangrene, blood poisoning, tetanus, is the problem.
I did not see the first exchange of hopelessly wounded prisoners that
took place at Flushing, while I was on the Continent. It must have
been a tragic sight. They lined up in two parties at the railroad
station, German surgeons and nurses with British prisoners, British
surgeons and nurses with German prisoners.
Then they were counted off, I am told. Ten Germans came forward, ten
British, in wheeled chairs, on crutches, the sightless ones led. The
exchange was made. Then ten more, and so on. What a sight! What a
horror! No man there would ever be whole again. There were men without
legs, without arms, blind men, men twisted by fearful body wounds. Two
hundred and sixteen British officers and men, and as many Germans,
were exchanged that day.
"They were, however, in the best of spirits," said the London Times of
the next day!
At Folkestone a crowd was waiting on the quay, and one may be sure
that heads were uncovered as the men limped, or were led or wheeled,
down the gang-plank. Kindly English women gave them nosegays of
snowdrops and violets.
And then they went on--to what? For a few weeks, or months, they will
be the objects of much kindly sympathy. In the little towns where they
live visitors will be taken to see them. The neighbourhood will exert
itself in kindness. But after a time interest will die away, and
besides, there will be many to divide sympathy. The blind man, or the
man without a leg or an arm, will cease to be the neighbourhood's
responsibility and will become its burden.
What then? For that is the problem that is facing each nation at
war--to make a whole life out of a fragment, to teach that the spirit
may be greater than the body, to turn to usefulness these sad and
hopeless by-products of battlefields.
The ravages of war--to the lay mind--consist mainly of wounds. As a
matter of fact, they divide themselves into several classes, all
different, all requiring different care, handling and treatment, and
all, in their several ways, dependent for help on the machinery of
mercy. In addition to injuries on the battlefield there are illnesses
contracted on the field, septic conditions following even slight
abrasions or minor wounds, and nervous conditions--sometimes
approximating a temporary insanity--due to prolonged strain, to
incessant firing close at hand, to depression following continual lack
of success, to the sordid and hideous conditions of unburied dead,
rotting in full view for weeks and even months.
During the winter frozen feet, sometimes requiring amputation, and
even in mild cases entailing great suffering, took thousands of men
out of the trenches. The trouble resulted from standing for hours and
even days in various depths of cold water, and was sometimes given the
name "waterbite." Soldiers were instructed to rub their boots inside
and out with whale oil, and to grease their feet and legs. Unluckily,
only fortunately situated men could be so supplied, and the suffering
was terrible. Surgeons who have observed many cases of both frost and
water bite say that, curiously enough, the left foot is more
frequently and seriously affected than the right. The reason given is
that right-handed men automatically use the right foot more than the
left, make more movements with it. The order to remove boots twice a
day, for a few moments while in the trenches, had a beneficial effect
among certain battalions.
The British soldier who wraps tightly a khaki puttee round his leg and
thus hampers circulation has been a particular sufferer from frostbite
in spite of the precaution he takes to grease his feet and legs before
going into the trenches.
The presence of septic conditions has been appalling.
This is a dirty war. Men are taken back to the hospitals in incredible
states of filth. Their stiffened clothing must frequently be cut off
to reveal, beneath, vermin-covered bodies. When the problem of
transportation is a serious one, as after a great battle, men must lie
in sheds or railway stations, waiting their turn. Wounds turn green
and hideous. Their first-aid dressing, originally surgically clean,
becomes infected. Lucky the man who has had a small vial of iodine to
pour over the gaping surface of his wound. For the time, at least, he
is well off.
The very soil of Flanders seems polluted. British surgeons are sighing
for the clean dust of the Boer war of South Africa, although they
cursed it at the time. That it is not the army occupation which is
causing the grave infections of Flanders and France is shown by the
fact that the trouble dates from the beginning of the war. It is not
that living in a trench undermines the vitality of the men and lays
them open to infection. On the contrary, with the exception of frost
bite, there is a curious absence of such troubles as would ordinarily
result from exposure, cold and constant wetting.
The open-air life has apparently built up the men. Again and again the
extraordinary power of resistance shown has astonished the surgeons.
It is as if, in forcing men to face overwhelming hardships, a watchful
Providence had granted them overwhelming vitality.
Perhaps the infection of the soil, the typhoid-carrying waters that
seep through and into the trenches, the tetanus and gangrene that may
infect the simplest wounds, are due to the long intensive cultivation
of that fertile country, to the fertilisation by organic matter of its
fields. Doubtless the vermin that cover many of the troops form the
connecting link between the soil and the infected men. In many places
gasoline is being delivered to the troopers to kill these pests, and
it is a German army joke that before a charge on a Russian trench it
is necessary to send ahead men to scatter insect powder! So serious is
the problem in the east indeed that an official order from Berlin now
requires all cars returning from Russia to be placarded "_Aus
Russland_! Before using again thoroughly sterilise and unlouse!" And
no upholstered cars are allowed to be used.
Generally speaking, a soldier is injured either in his trench or in
front of it in the waste land between the confronting armies. In the
latter case, if the lines are close together the situation is still
further complicated. It may be and often is impossible to reach him at
all. He must lie there for hours or even for days of suffering, until
merciful death overtakes him. When he can be rescued he is, and many
of the bravest deeds of this war have been acts of such salvage. In
addition to the work of the ambulance corps and of volunteer soldiers
who often venture out into a rain of death to bring in fallen officers
and comrades in the western field, some five hundred ambulance dogs
are being used by the Allies to locate the wounded.
When a man is injured in the trenches his companions take care of him
until night, when it is possible to move him. His first-aid packet is
opened, a sterilised bandage produced, and the dressing applied to the
wound. Frequently he has a small bottle of iodine and the wound is
first painted with that. In cases where iodine is used at once,
chances of infection are greatly lessened. But often he must lie in
the trench until night, when the ambulances come up. His comrades make
him as comfortable as they can. He lies on their overcoats, his head
frequently on his own pack.
Fighting goes on about him, above him. Other comrades fall in the
trench and are carried and laid near him. In the intervals of
fighting, men bring the injured men water. For that is the first
cry--a great and insistent need--water. When they cannot get water
from the canteens they drink what is in the bottom of the trench.
At last night falls. The evening artillery duel, except when a charge
is anticipated, is greatly lessened at night, and infantry fire is
only that of "snipers." But over the trench and over the line of
communication behind the trench hang always the enemy's "starlights."
The ambulances come up. They cannot come as far as the trenches, but
stretchers are brought and the wounded men are lifted out as tenderly
as possible.
Many soldiers have tried to tell of the horrors of a night journey in
an ambulance or transport; careful driving is out of the question.
Near the front the ambulance can have no lights, and the roads
everywhere have been torn up by shells.
Men die in transit, and, dying, hark back to early days. They call for
their mothers, for their wives. They dictate messages that no one can
take down. Unloaded at railway stations, the dead are separated from
the living and piled in tiers on trucks. The wounded lie about on
stretchers on the station floor. Sometimes they are operated on there,
by the light of a candle, it may be, or of a smoking lamp. When it is
a well-equipped station there is the mercy of chloroform, the blessed
release of morphia, but more times than I care to think of at night,
there has been no chloroform and no morphia.
France has sixty hospital trains, England twelve, Belgium not so many.
I have seen trains drawing in with their burden of wounded men. They
travel slowly, come to a gradual stop, without jolting or jarring; but
instead of the rush of passengers to alight, which usually follows the
arrival of a train, there is silence, infinite quiet. Then, somewhere,
a door is unhurriedly opened. Maybe a priest alights and looks about
him. Perhaps it is a nurse who steps down and takes a comprehensive
survey of conditions. There is no talking, no uproar. A few men may
come up to assist in lifting out the stretchers, an ambulance driver
who salutes and indicates with a gesture where his car is stationed.
There are no onlookers. This is business, the grim business of war.
The line of stretchers on the station platform grows. The men lie on
them, impassive. They have waited so long. They have lain on the
battlefield, in the trench, behind the line at the dressing shed,
waiting, always waiting. What is a little time more or less, now?
The patience of the injured! I have been in many hospitals. I have
seen pneumonia and typhoid patients lying in the fearful apathy of
disease. They are very sad to see, very tragic, but their patience is
the lethargy of half consciousness. Their fixed eyes see visions. The
patience of the wounded is the resignation of alert faculties.
Once I saw a boy dying. He was a dark-haired, brown-eyed lad of
eighteen. He had had a leg shattered the day before, and he had lain
for hours unattended on the battlefield. The leg had been amputated,
and he was dying of loss of blood.
He lay alone, in a small room of what had once been a girls' school.
He had asked to be propped up with pillows, so that he could breathe.
His face was grey, and only his eyes were alive. They burned like
coals. He was alone. The hospital was crowded, and there were others
who could be saved. So he lay there, propped high, alone, and as
conscious as I am now, and waited. The nurse came back at last, and
his eyes greeted her.
There seemed to be nothing that I could do. Before his conscious eyes
I was an intruder, gazing at him in his extremity. I went away. And
now and then, when I hear this talk of national honour, and am carried
away with a hot flame of resentment so that I, too, would cry for war,
I seem to see that dying boy's eyes, looking through the mists that
are vengeance and hatred and affronted pride, to war as it is--the end
of hope, the gate of despair and agony and death.
After my return I received these letters. The woman who wrote them
will, I know, forgive me for publishing extracts from them. She is a
Belgian, married to an American. More clearly than any words of mine,
they show where falls the burden of war:
"I have just learned that my youngest brother has been killed in
action in Flanders. King Albert decorated him for conspicuous bravery
on April 22d, and my poor boy went to his reward on April 26th. In my
leaden heart, through my whirling brain, your words keep repeating
themselves: 'For King and Country!' Yes, he died for them, and died a
hero! I know only that his regiment, the Grenadiers, was decimated. My
poor little boy! God pity us all, and save martyred Belgium!"
In a second letter:
"I enclose my dear little boy's obituary notice. He died at the head
of his company and five hundred and seventy-four of his Grenadiers
went down with him. Their regiment effectively checked the German
advance, and in recognition General Joffre pinned the Cross of the
Legion of Honour to his regimental colours. But we are left to
mourn--though I do no begrudge my share of sorrow. The pain is awful,
and I pray that by the grace of God you may never know what it means."
For King and Country!
The only leaven in this black picture of war as have seen it, as it
has touched me, has been the scarlet of the Red Cross. To a faith that
the terrible scene at the front had almost destroyed, came every now
and then again the flash of the emblem of mercy Hope, then, was not
dead. There were hands to soothe and labour, as well as hands to kill.
There was still brotherly love in the world. There was a courage that
was not of hate. There was a patience that was not a lying in wait.
There was a flag that was not of one nation, but of all the world; a
flag that needed no recruiting station, for the ranks it led were
always full to overflowing; a flag that stood between the wounded
soldier and death; that knew no defeat but surrender to the will of
the God of Battles.
And that flag I followed. To the front, to the field hospitals behind
the trenches, to railway stations, to hospital trains and ships, to
great base hospitals. I watched its ambulances on shelled roads. I
followed its brassards as their wearers, walking gently, carried
stretchers with their groaning burdens. And, whatever may have failed
in this war--treaties, ammunition, elaborate strategies, even some of
the humanities--the Red Cross as a symbol of service has never failed.
I was a critical observer. I am a graduate of a hospital
training-school, and more or less for years I have been in touch with
hospitals. I myself was enrolled under the Red Cross banner. I was
prepared for efficiency. What I was not prepared for was the absolute
self-sacrifice, the indifference to cost in effort, in very life
itself, of a great army of men and women. I saw English aristocrats
scrubbing floors; I found American surgeons working day and night
under the very roar and rattle of guns. I found cultured women of
every nation performing the most menial tasks. I found an army where
all are equal--priests, surgeons, scholars, chauffeurs, poets, women
of the stage, young girls who until now have been shielded from the
very name of death--all enrolled under the red badge of mercy.