A soldier's mother in France

Somewhere in France the soldier son for whom I wear my service pin lies wounded. A few hours before I sat down to write these words I heard the news, and almost as soon as the first shock had passed I thought to myself how much worse I should feel did I not know what wonderful things were being done for him at that hour. I said, I must hurry, hurry, and tell all the women I can reach, other women whose sons have been wounded, some of the reasons why I can think about my soldier with a heart full of quiet confidence.

My Julian was one of the splendid regiments of young untried American soldiers who on May twenty-eighth stormed their way into the village of Cantigny, and who, in spite of repeated German counter-attacks, have held that part of the line like a stone wall ever since.

It was only a minor engagement, to be sure, but it was so gallantly fought that it gained the highest admiration of the French and British commanders. It showed the civilized world what was going to happen when the American army got over in full force. I am proud to have had a son in that glorious fight at Cantigny.

He went over the top with his comrades into the face of a murderous machine-gun fire. He must have been in the front ranks, for he was among the first to fall. “I tried to keep on going,” he told the New York World correspondent who saw him in the hospital, “but it was no use. I had to flop.”

Two hours he lay helpless in No Man’s Land, shells bursting near him, and with the prospect of being bayoneted if the Germans were allowed to regain that ground. I don’t let myself think about those two hours. I know, all too well, what they must have been like. I won’t think about the pain of the wounded leg, nor the burning sun, the tormenting thirst, the anxiety and impatience before the stretcher bearers came. The wounded, thank God, soon forget all these, and so must we at home.

I had not heard directly from my son since the beginning of this great second battle of the Somme. I was very near his division for a time, and was never much farther away than Paris until I sailed for home, but no letters came through. I was like hundreds of thousands of other women here in America in not knowing whether my soldier was in action or out of danger in the rear.

Now that I know I am glad, for I sympathized with his intense desire to have a first-hand share in this war of liberation. When we entered the war my son was too young for the draft, and in fact he would only this spring have been called upon to register. Knowing that he might have to wait a year and a half before going over, he enlisted in the old army and went to France in one of the earliest units. He had to take service in a working contingent, and like all those valuable but usually non-combatant soldiers he feared that he would never be given a chance to fight. I am very grateful that they gave him his chance, and so soon. I have seen something of the work of the unspeakable Hun. Since then I have never been sorry for our fighting men. The only men I am sorry for are those who live in these times and never have a chance to join the allied armies.

I am thankful that my son lived through his first battle, and I am especially relieved to hear that he went to an American hospital. I have visited many of those hospitals in France, and I am going to devote this chapter to telling other women who have wounded men over there how our soldiers are cared for when German gun-fire strikes them down. I can not think of anything else to-day, nor write of anything else.

The wounded are picked up as quickly as possible, the stretcher bearers and ambulance men working bravely under fire, and often in great danger. All musicians, military bandsmen, are stretcher bearers, and the same service is part of the work of the medical corps. They bring the wounded to what are called advance dressing stations or regimental aid posts, directly behind the lines. These stations indeed are in the trenches, and the doctors work to the noise of bursting shells and exploding shrapnel. In these trench dressing stations minor wounds are dressed, and first aid is given to the seriously injured.

One very important thing is done in the first aid posts. Every wounded man is inoculated against tetanus. Lockjaw—that most horrible of all wound complications—is now practically a thing of the past. Our hospitals will possibly never see a case, because our surgeons take immediate precautions against it.

In these advanced aid posts they also take precautions against wound shock, the mysterious cause of many deaths in this war. One of the first symptoms of wound shock is cold and the surgeons and dressers have hot, sweet tea on hand and many blankets. Patients are given cups of hot tea as soon as they come in, and if the weather is cold they are wrapped up like Eskimos before they are sent on.

About wounded men in general, I want to say that the great majority are only slightly injured. They are all conscientiously treated, even small scratches being dressed carefully, because every wound is an infected wound and if neglected might cause death. But most of the casualties are able to walk back to their next base, the field or evacuation hospital. Those who are seriously wounded are transported in ambulances.

The field hospital is located near the battle line, but out of range of the guns. They are near enough, however, to be vulnerable to the gentlemanly boches, who make a specialty of dropping aerial bombs on wounded soldiers and women nurses. We have had tendered us by the French government a number of fine buildings in various towns of northern France, in which we have established our field hospitals. In these operations are performed, and very sick men are kept for treatment.

Because of their nearness to the danger line many field hospitals have no women nurses at all. The work of caring for the wounded is done by enlisted men of the medical corps under the direction of ward masters, non-commissioned officers as a general rule. Army surgeons, of course, are in command, and the men receive good care.

Possibly because of the absence of women these field hospitals are apt to be rather bare and unattractive places. Men have complained to me that they had nothing to read. Some said they thought there ought to be a few posters or pictures on the wall. To lie all day staring at a blank expanse of whitewash gets on the nerves of the sensitive. This is, however, a temporary condition. The Library War Service of the American Library Association is now working in France, and every hospital will soon be well supplied with books.

After the evacuation hospital comes the base hospital. Only those cases which promise quick recovery are kept very long near the front. As the war continues those beds will be needed for the freshly wounded, and the chances are that our men wounded in this battle will soon be sent, in fine hospital trains, to the vicinity of Paris, or towns farther south.

I visited an emergency base hospital established and maintained by Johns Hopkins Hospital, and I should be very well satisfied to hear that my son was being cared for there. This hospital is situated in a pleasant wooded spot not many miles from the ancient town which is our general headquarters. It has a main building of brick, an old French country house, but most of the hospital wards are in temporary wooden buildings.

Johns Hopkins itself, with its millions of dollars invested in buildings, has no better equipment than this temporary base hospital in France. It has no better doctors or nurses, and as for its head nurse it has the best head nurse Johns Hopkins ever produced, Miss Bessie Baker.

I know other hospitals, one in a medieval town in central France, several in a pleasant suburb of Paris, and one, perhaps the most picturesque of all, in southern France a few miles from the large seaport which admits many of our ships weekly. This hospital is housed in an old French château that in its garden plan reminded me a little of the White House in Washington. The front garden is small and formal, with a wonderful hedge of white and red camellias. But back of the château the large garden slopes in a series of blossoming terraces down to a great river which flows into the sea a few miles beyond. I can not think of a lovelier or more restful place in which to spend a convalescence.

The quality of nursing in our hospitals overseas is so high that it has excited the admiration of the French and British soldiers. They beg to be sent to “the American hospital.” I have heard French officers say that they would be glad to have the entire hospital system in France turned over to the control of the Americans.

The fact is that we have worked out a far gentler system of caring for the wounded, for changing dressings and the like, than any other nation. The British are scientific but Spartan. The French have had few trained nurses until this war. Our nurses are the best in the world.

I shall not fret about my wounded soldier, and I hope other women will make up their minds to bear ordinary bad news from over there with calmness and courage. We can not possibly escape suffering and pain. It is in the world for us to bear, and until the war is won women all over the world must live in a sisterhood of sorrow and anxiety.

When the word comes, “He is wounded,” just remember that he is also being taken care of by the most tender and humane means any government in the world ever devised for its soldiers. Even if the dreadful message comes, “Wounded and missing,” do not despair. Even that is being looked after by a large department of the Red Cross. Every missing soldier is traced, and if he is found to be a prisoner his needs are provided for—medicine, food, clothing, letters—the Red Cross sees that he gets them promptly.

Besides all its work of relief for sick and wounded soldiers, the Red Cross has a department of medical research which has performed wonders in preventive medicine, and it is still at work, brilliantly and tirelessly, to find ways of fighting pain and death.