This is a story of causes. And those causes produced certain effects. I hope you will be patient with the causes—which, like all causes, are more or less dull—and read on until you come to the effects. There I can promise you some excitement.

When, in the midst of the March offensive, so disastrous in its initial phase, General Foch took command of the various Allied armies in France with the intention of merging those several distinct and often conflicting units into a single compact whole, one and indivisable, which should be at least as supple and cohesive as that of the foe, nobody on the outside even dimly realized how fundamental, how far-reaching would be the changes involved. For after three years and a half of fighting as separate entities each nation had rutted deeply into its own peculiar manner of waging war. England held one sector; Belgium another; France another; and when American overseas soldiers landed in France they were assigned another portion of the line in Lorraine.

And of his own particular sector each nation was supreme lord, of both the front and the back areas, the advanced and the rear war zones. That was his terrain, his stronghold. Therein he could do as he pleased, make war as seemed to him best, without let or hindrance. Thus England built up one policy of war strategy, of transportation and hospitalization; France another; America a third. There were three autonomies, three great war chiefs, three grand headquarters. Each autonomy fought in a water-tight compartment, so to speak—water-tight so far as concerned the others; but unfortunately not water-tight to the boche.

So rigorously was this sense of independence held by each country, so distinctly did each nation cover its zone and its zone alone, that the fresh divisions held in reserve in back areas in case of a possible grand attack could not be stationed save in their own respective territories. French reserves could not be stationed in the British zone; British reserves could not be stationed in the French zone. Even if every sign pointed to a powerful massed action in one particular sector, all the neighboring sector could do was to hold mobile troops, together with trains and camions, in its own area ready to move. Naturally this caused great delay; precious time was lost in conveying troops.

For example, on March twenty-first, when the Fifth British Army fell back, fighting valiantly, before the furious onslaught of a Hun host of quadruple strength, and a temporary breach was made in the line which opened the road to Paris, the French generals, Pelle and Humbert, rushed up their reserves from Picardy and Champagne. These two generals had received special instructions from the French High Command to study the different hypotheses of attack on the British Front and to hold themselves responsible for all consequences. An agreement had been entered into by the British and the French commanders, fixing the sixth day of battle as the one when the French should intervene if necessary and come to the assistance of their British allies. But so fast and furious waxed the offensive, so urgent appeared the crisis to the onlooking French generals, that it was not six days but scarcely more than that number of hours when the blue casques of the French began to appear in the frightful mêlée and the German flood in full drive began to be stemmed.

But it was a narrow squeak. And a good part of its narrowness consisted in the fact that fresh troops could not be held in readiness behind the danger zone, but had to be transported by camion, without their organizations behind them, often without sufficient guns or ammunition, from a long distance, and then hurled without a minute’s rest into the very heart of the maelstrom. Had the French reserves been massed near at hand in the British back areas so that they could have gone immediately into action, there is no doubt that thousands of British soldiers, now German prisoners, hundreds of wounded in hospitals, not to speak of the loss of guns, supplies and evacuation hospitals along the entire front line of that sector, would have been saved to the Allied arms. It was a bitter, grim lesson, and its price was high. But not too high to pay for a unified command.

Now in the present engagements the Germans are meeting French, British, Americans and Italians, all within a few miles upon the same sector. They are intermingled and interwoven, as the need arises, regiment by regiment, company by company, and even man by man. The old partitions have been completely torn down.

One of the most distinctive features of the old régime was the hospitalization system. Here as elsewhere each nation carried on in its own fashion. The British evolved one type of organization; the French another; the Americans a third; so that there existed side by side three separate networks of systems, each elaborate, ramified, complete, which never touched each other. In the British sector, for example, the seriously wounded are evacuated as rapidly as possible back to England, where are located most of their big base hospitals. In the French system the evacuation hospitals are dotted all along the sector a few miles behind the firing line, with their large base and convalescent hospitals scattered throughout the interior, in the Midi or down on the Riviera, far from the rude northern winds. And when the Americans were assigned their sector in Lorraine they organized their system along similar lines.

First come the evacuation hospitals, as close up behind the Front as possible, in order to catch the wounded man within two, three or four hours of the time he falls on the field. Here he is operated on without delay, rendered fit for transportation, and then shipped to some big base farther back in the rear. As the hospital formation recedes from the advance zone of the army, and therefore from acute danger and unstable tenure arising from likelihood of capture, shelling and bombing raids, the bases grow in size and elaboration, until at some points they are vast beehives, community centers with a capacity of ten to twenty thousand beds. Between the two extremes of the formation, the evacuation hospitals just behind that invisible and most uncertain quantity called the front line and the big solid base situated some hundreds of kilometers away—between these two types there exists the greatest difference.

The base, as its name implies, is solid, immobile, permanent, steady as the Rock of Gibraltar or the skyscrapers of New York. The evacuation hospital, on the contrary, creeping up as close as possible behind the fighting forces is light, mobile, supple, easy to move, consisting largely of tents, stuff that can be loaded swiftly on trucks and motor lorries and carried away. If during a big push the line begins to sway perilously, to strain, to crack, with breaches showing here and there, and the order comes to retire, the evacuation hospital can fold up its tents like the Arab and silently steal away, not on camels but their modern substitutes, camions, with the orderlies on the rear truck, thumb to nose, wagging derisive fingers at the oncoming boche, who if he does break through will find—just nothing at all.

That is one difference between evacuation and base hospitals. And there are others. The bases do good straight honest and honorable surgical and medical work of the type that is known in America. They have a fine régime, and this régime is rarely overturned. They are, therefore, prosaic. But an evacuation hospital is dramatic, picturesque, full of potentialities and surprises, with tragedy, comedy and broad farce competing for first place every hour in the day.

Here during a big offensive, when Allied and enemy wounded are pouring in in a continuous stream, surgeons, nurses and personnel work like fiends under a tremendous pressure, twelve, twenty-four, even forty-eight hours at a stretch. Here are to be witnessed in the operating room running fights with death as tense and thrilling as anything upon the battlefield. Sometimes the wounded man is exactly upon the great divide, hovering between life and death, an extra hair’s weight capable of sending him to either side; shrapnel in his chest, his lungs full of blood, breathing like a trumpeter, suffering from shock, exhaustion, lack of food—and still able to smile up into the surgeon’s eyes and say faintly: “I’m all right, sir. Take that other poor guy. He’s worse off than me.”

In cases like these, three minutes more or less in the length of the operation spells all the difference between time and eternity. The surgical team works with the perfect union of a football eleven. In their white aprons, caps and masks they look like priests performing a rite. The sweat stands out on their foreheads. Their expert fingers move like lightning, yet precise, unhurried, sure.

In an operation of this kind, with life and death in the saddle and both riding hard, I have seen the assistant hold a watch on the operating team, as if it were a horse race, and call aloud the minutes, thus: “Three! Five! Seven! Ten!” Two minutes too long, and the patient may expire on the table, or die of pneumonia from the added strain of ether on the lungs. Here margins are short and time more precious than the weight of iron in rubies.

Here also is to be seen what is known as the new war surgery. The wounded men are X-rayed before entering the operating room, and the exact position of the foreign body indicated by an indelible cross on the patient’s skin. Consequently the surgeons need not go delving and exploring and guessing all over the landscape, but make a clean straight dive for the intruder. As the greatest danger in all these wounds is that of infection from the gas-gangrene germ, which infests the soil of France and therefore every particle of the soldier’s clothes, and as in addition the wounded are often forced to lie twelve, twenty-four or even thirty-six hours on the field on account of a violent enemy barrage, these wounds are often badly infected by this germ before ever they reach the evacuation hospital, near as that may be. In order, then, to prevent the further spread of the poison throughout the body the wound is laid wide open, the crushed and torn tissues shorn clean away, and a big clean wound created. This is thoroughly cleansed, packed with gauze soaked in Carrel solution, after which the entire area is wrapped in compresses, solidly bandaged, strapped or splinted—and the patient is ready to be shipped a hundred miles.

From this it will be seen that it is at the outset of the game, after the man is first wounded, that the time element is most precious. Upon the speed with which an ambulance can deliver a soldier to the nearest evacuation hospital, divest him of his dirty, infected clothes and lay him on the life-saving operating table depends largely the speed of his recovery and return to the lines. Delays there are bound to be—violent shelling of trenches, back areas or crossroads, which may block every form of transportation for hours. And it is to counteract these unavoidable delays that evacuation hospitals are creeping closer and closer up to the Front, risking bombardment and air raids in order to save a greater percentage of life and limb.

Behind these hospitals, then, stand the big solid bases, imposing, safe and sane. In front of them is still another formation. Briefly, it is something like this: A soldier is wounded on the field, in the trenches, in a wood. If alone, he applies his own first aid. If he has given it away to a comrade, he uses his belt for a tourniquet, his bootlaces—anything. If he cannot get at his wound or if he is knocked unconscious, he lies until he is picked up by friend or foe. If he is not picked up he “goes West,” joining the great host of immortal comrades, and all is well. That is the first step, where each individual attends to himself, is attended to by others or is lost.

The second step consists of getting him to a dressing station, usually in some abri, where he is bandaged, given a hot drink, an injection of anti-tetanus serum, and an iodine cross is marked on his forehead to indicate that he has received the same. If he is suffering acutely he is in addition given a morphia tablet. After this he is transported by ambulance to the divisional field hospital, where if he is in good condition he is not even unloaded but sent straight on to the evacuation hospital a few miles farther back. Thus he receives personal, regimental and divisional first aid before ever he strikes the evacuation hospital.

All of which, if he is lucky, he may get inside of two or three hours, and be safely tucked away in his cot coming out from under ether, raving not of home and mother but of going over the top, shouting in stentorian accents: “Shoot ’em to hell, boys! The dirty skunks! Shoot ’em to hell!” to the infinite delight of his comrades in the tent ward, who cheer him on: “That’s the stuff, buddy! Attaboy! Eat ’em alive!”

Finally, after much batting of wobbly eyelids, he opens his eyes feebly upon the white-capped nurse at the foot of the bed and murmurs in weak flat tones of pleasure: “Well, hello, chicken! How’d you ever git here? Gosh! That’s a foul taste in my mouth. Say, can a guy spit in this place?” And if he has come through thus far alive the chances are he will stick. He is the stuff that survives.

This sketches in the large the hospital formation that the American Army built to care for its wounded behind the Lorraine sector under the old régime. All of the units, the string of evacuation hospitals, base hospitals and transportation facilities were designed and constructed on the principle of America’s holding that particular sector.

And then, presto, General Foch took command.

That simple statement merits an entire paragraph all to itself, for it wiped out the old order and engendered a whole new realignment of policies and plans—in hospitalization especially. For manifestly if American troops were to be shifted here and there, up and down the Western Front as the need rose—as they must indeed be shifted if the Allied army was to be as swift and mobile as that of the foe—then a hospital formation away over east in the Lorraine country was not going to be a great advantage to American troops fighting up north round Montdidier and Château-Thierry. Nor could the American Army all at once, by the wave of a magic wand, conjure into being another system. And even if it could there would still remain the question of conflicting French and American traffic over already congested lines.

Yet something had to be done to cover this situation, and done at once, for our troops were already on the move. The French command, in collaboration with the American command, solved it in the only possible fashion. It was decreed that when American troops fought in a French sector the wounded should be evacuated along with the French through the French system; when they fought with the British their wounded should be evacuated with the British to England. And so the affair stood.

Americans went up to the British Front in Flanders. They went to the French Front in Picardy and Champagne. They stayed at home on their own Front in Lorraine. And the wounded began to be evacuated by all three systems. So far, so good. And yet, not altogether good. Good perhaps from a purely military point of view; not so good from a human point of view. For the Americans in the French hospitals were lonesome. There was no use blinking the fact. They did not do well. Hearing never a word of their own language, unable to make their wants known, unable also to comprehend the soft babble of words by which the gentle French sisters tried to express their sympathy, they sickened, not so much from their wounds as from pure nostalgia and longing for the familiar home tongue.

And one man died. But while he was ill in that strange hospital in a foreign land he kept a little journal which he called The Philosophy of Loneliness. From that little book of scribbled notes it appeared that this young soldier grieved and grieved for lack of someone to speak to him in his own tongue. And at last, when his isolation became intolerable, he decided to rise up and go in search of human companionship. But the tall woman in black, with the black veil, like one of the Fates, kept thrusting him back into bed. Her hands were gentle but strong. He told her, quite simply, that he only wanted somebody to talk to. She replied with a torrent of strange unintelligible sounds. And then he shouted aloud, in order to drown her babble and hear some good honest American speech.

It was no use; she could not comprehend; she held him down, gently but firmly, pouring out over his fainting soul the soft strange babble of sounds. He swooned under the torment. The next day he tried again. Again the tall black-veiled figure thrust him down with hands that were gentle but strong. Again the hated sounds. Again he swooned. The third day, very weak but resolute, he recorded in his journal his intention to try once more, and strove to rise. But over him, as ever, was that black unyielding figure, holding him down; and so she held him, gentle, ruthless, unknowing, babbling into his ears those strange sounds until he died.

In comment upon this incident Major Perkins, Chief Commissioner for Europe of the Red Cross, said: “When I read the few pitiful pages of that journal of one of our men who had gone to his end in utter loneliness of soul I decided that something must be done. Either Americans must have their own hospitals or else we must put American nurses into French hospitals.”

Accordingly American women, nurses, visitors and aids, were assigned to fifty-two French hospitals containing American men. One day it chanced in a certain French hospital that one of these aids, a bright, pretty girl, was working in a ward. And as she moved here and there, busy at her tasks, she sang softly under her breath the following cheerful ditty:

“I don’t want you to go anywhere from here!” came an abrupt voice from a bed behind her. Turning she beheld a wounded American, a pale newcomer, regarding her from inflamed, bloodshot eyes.

“Well,” she replied, laughing, “I don’t intend to go anywhere this very minute. What’s the matter with your eyes? Gassed?”

“Nothing,” he replied laconically. “I’ve not slept for seventy-two hours. They shelled us up there for three days. That’s where I got mine. I’ve been lying here watching you for an hour and trying to make up my mind which I wanted to do most—go to sleep or go on looking at you. And I decided I’d rather go on looking at you. I don’t know,” he added wistfully, “whether you consider that much of a compliment or not?”

“I consider it the finest compliment I ever had in my life, bar none—from a man who hasn’t slept for seventy-two hours.”

“Yes, but I haven’t seen an American girl for five months. And so I figured it would rest my eyes more to look at you than it would to go to sleep.”

This is not an extraordinary case. Nine men out of ten would have felt the same. Their eyes were starved for the sight of American girls. But one woman spread out among many men did not go far. It was like trying to spread a small pat of butter over an acre of bread. However, it was the best that could be done. French hospitals could not be crammed with American workers. There was no place to put them. Their plants were already swamped with overwork.

In the meantime the Army and the Red Cross were not idle. It was felt that something must be done not only for the morale of the lonely American soldiers but also to relieve the tremendous pressure on the French system, which was handling the wounded of three nations. Accordingly the Army went on a still hunt, not any the less urgent because it was still, for hospitals already equipped and in action that could be used for this new American sector. That sector, roughly described, extended from Amiens on the north down to Château-Thierry, and then eastward to Rheims, with Paris in a direct line to the rear. Paris, then, became the logical point for base hospitals. The American Army would depend, according to agreement, upon French evacuation hospitals immediately behind the lines, but as soon as possible it would convey its wounded back to Paris and thus relieve the congestion in the front zone.

But how to get hold of any hospital? Fortunately the Red Cross, the emergency department of the Army, had a nucleus of hospitals already to hand. This nucleus was composed of some half dozen plants—some large, some small, some militarized, some civilian, but all in excellent running condition. In addition to this group it had in its warehouses in complete readiness for just such a crisis whole hospital units, complete in every detail, from tents down to the final safety-pin, ready to put into the field at any point the Army should designate. Moreover, it had the camions for transportation and the surgical teams and nurses at hand for instant summons by telephone.

All this preparation had been done months before. Now this fine intensive long-sightedness began to yield its excellent fruit. For the Army gave orders to these hospitals to double, treble, quadruple their bed capacity and to hold themselves free for instant action. This was done. Just outside Paris another Red Cross tent hospital sprang into being. It sprang up almost overnight, with more than a thousand beds, its white tents dotting the field like mushrooms.

In Europe the Red Cross has achieved an almost fantastic reputation for efficiency and speed—those two most commonplace factors of every successful business concern in America—and in this particular crisis, grave beyond all other crises so far as the welfare of our own fighting forces was concerned, it was going to need every ounce it possessed of both of those qualities. It was going to have the opportunity of saving hundreds of American lives. It did not know it. The Army did not know it. Nobody knew it. But so it was to be. A catastrophe was impending.

You have not read thus far, I hope, without realizing the supreme, the vital importance of those evacuation hospitals crouching up there close behind the fighting lines. They are the life savers. Upon their nearness to the Front and the speed with which the wounded are delivered depend the success of the entire hospital system. They are the keystone of the arch. Let an army lose its string of evacuation hospitals and it loses not merely its physical property—a mere bagatelle—but also the power to save a large percentage of its wounded. For delay causes infection; infection causes amputation, and too often causes death.

To summarize briefly the elements of the situation: America, in common with the other Allies, had her own hospital system behind the Lorraine Sector, and when our troops moved up into the French sector it was agreed that the wounded should be evacuated through French hospitals; to relieve the tremendous pressure a nucleus of Red Cross hospitals in Paris was constituted to drain this area.

And now perhaps, with these cards in your hands, and in your head the general outlines of the May offensive, recalling especially the fact that the Germans made an advance in that very sector of more kilometers than I like to recall, you may have a glimmering of the nature of the blow that fell. Yes, the French lost a certain number of their front-line evacuation hospitals. They were in the area and they were captured. That was the catastrophe.

It is the catastrophe that always happens when a considerable slice of territory is lost. It is what happened in Italy. It is what happened to the British in March. It is what had often happened to the French. Now it was happening to the Americans. And that is why I am writing about it. What made the situation more acute was that the French were handling all of the wounded for that sector. Their remaining hospitals were rapidly being swamped. Each day the combat raged with increasing violence. What was to be done with our men? Transport them clear back to Paris? There was no other course. It was bitter hard, but inevitable. And the Army was mighty glad to have this port in the storm.

And now let us glance for a moment at Château-Thierry and see what was taking place up there. On May thirtieth, upon this portion of the line the French were retreating, and two American divisions were swung in to stem, momentarily, the tide. All the world knows now which those two divisions were, for their exploits received the congratulations of General Pershing and of the French High Command. On June first, in they came, the first lot, twenty-four trainloads—fresh, cool, gay, hard-headed youngsters. They came with no organization behind them; not an American Army hospital in the sector; not an ambulance; not even a field dressing station. They came with nothing but the packs on their backs and their rifles in their hands—and five hours later they were holding the line.

On their way up, as they were being rushed through, their trains stopped at a station which we shall designate as X——. Here lay several hundred British wounded waiting for a train to the rear. For it is one of the ugly necessities of war that, during an offensive, fresh guns and men take precedence over those who have been knocked out. And so these British wounded lay scattered about on litters in the station, on the platforms, on the grounds.

First aid they had received, but nothing more. Their condition was piteous. At the arrest of the trains the Americans clambered down briskly from their places and began relieving the immediate wants of these unfortunates.

“Maybe I’d best clear my poor chaps out of here,” said an anxious British medical officer to an American captain. “The sight of them may disturb your men.”

“On the contrary,” replied the American grimly, “it’s the best thing that could happen. It’ll put the iron into their soul.”

And it did. Even the Hun was amazed at the sternness of that American reception committee. For though the bombardment was heavier than that during the height of the Verdun offensive, the shells falling like iron hail less than five feet apart, with a low raking machine-gun fire that moved with automatic precision up and down the field, and the hurricane of high explosives and shrapnel and gas created an inferno compared to which Gettysburg was as calm as the Elysian Fields—yet those American troops did not falter.

Step by step they disputed every foot of advance, clinging close to the ground, fighting for hours against an enemy six times their superior. The Germans pushed, pushed again and kept on pushing. Assault succeeded assault, wave followed wave, each one more formidable as the Germans waxed wroth at the check. But the Americans held on; they dug in with their spades; they remanned their guns as their gunners fell, wiping out each successive enemy wave; they even reached out on either wing and retrieved nests of batteries in the woods, and from these fresh points of vantage they popped away at the astounded and bewildered Hun, who could not believe that two divisions alone, and only parts of these, were blocking his advance.

But as a matter of fact those two divisions were not alone. The whole United States of America stood solidly behind them, shoulder to shoulder, a vast shadowy host, warming their hearts and strengthening their blows.

Now these troops had been planted at that particular point in the line merely to plug for the moment the passage while the French took up new defensive positions in the rear. But these aggressive, mordant young allies did not conceive that merely to stem the boche tide was the whole of their duty. They dreamed better than that. So after surprising the enemy by their tenacity and cheek they proceeded to sail in on a lively counter-attack of their own and drive the intruder back. And drive him back they did, with a nerve, a grit, a kind of brisk keen joyousness, intrinsically western, that brought down the applause of the world. It was in fact a superb bit of fighting. And the best part of it all was that the men did not consider they had done anything fine or out of the way. That was on June first, second and third.

A wounded machine gunner, with a hole through his chest, gave me his explanation of their valor.

“It was like this,” he said: “In those training camps back in the States they taught us a lot of things about war. And when we came over on this side they taught us a whole lot more. Seems like we learned about everything there was to know. But one thing they didn’t teach us.”

He paused, matter-of-factly, to cough up some blood.

“What was it they didn’t teach you?” I asked.

“They didn’t teach us how to quit. And so we didn’t. We just kept on going!” He added reflectively: “It’s their artillery that counts. Get those Dutchmen up close and there’s nothing to them. We fought them off their feet.”

It was the veritable truth.

But it is not to be conceived that this was a bloodless victory. The first day of June a thin stream of crimson began to trickle to the rear from the wounded American Army. And those first days that thin crimson stream trickled all the way from Château-Thierry to Paris, a distance of fifty-one miles, without intervention or hospital care. One Red Cross hospital there was, indeed, but soon this was swamped. Men with nothing beyond first-aid bandages began pouring into the Paris hospitals. It was one of those inevitable conditions of war that are bound to occur when evacuation hospitals are lost.

Close up behind the Front the French evacuation hospitals, diminished in number, crippled in resources, were already glutted with British, French and American wounded and gassed. They lay on litters in the corridors, the doorways, the verandas, and overflowed into the yards and along the roadsides. Several American women canteeners came to help the French in this dire emergency. They found most of the personnel of one hospital already flown, the town being under direct shell fire. And for several days in that swamped hospital, together with a few brave French doctors and nurses, these American volunteers toiled like impassioned fiends day and night; ran the kitchen, cooked the meals, served out hot coffee, bathed the wounded, bandaged fresh amputations, held up dying heads, wrote letters, injected morphine, assisted at operations, and continued their labors tirelessly hour after hour, in an atmosphere of indescribable filth, impregnated with the odors of gas gangrene.

Twice, two nights in succession, the Red Cross representative in that sector tore at full speed down to Paris, returning with a camion load of surgical supplies, ether and bandages. And when they arrived such was the pressure of the hour that the surgeons themselves ran out from their operating tables, dived their hands down into the precious box, caught up an armload and ran back, shouting directions over their shoulders.

It was during this period of stress that a noble idea occurred to the Red Cross representative, which he proceeded to act upon at once.

A short distance away was an abandoned French hospital, empty, its beds scarce cold. He drove over and asked to rent it.

“What for?” demanded the French authorities.

“To use for our American wounded. To relieve the pressure. To take them off your hands.”

And he struck a bargain then and there. That accomplished, once more he scorched the road to Paris. This time he loaded up fifteen tons of stuff—one of those complete hospital units the Red Cross had stored in its warehouses against just such a crisis as this. That unit contained tents, beds, bandages, nitro-oxide plants, ether, instruments, and the entire equipment for three surgical teams. By telephone, surgeons and nurses were summoned to hurry out by automobile. The representative himself hastened back to the other end. But while he was still on the way, by one of those swift military changes the hospital he had rented became untenable by reason of a shift of the American troops into another army zone.

So now he had an outfit, but no plant. Nothing daunted, for in his automobile he was still a lap or so ahead of his slower convoy, he started to comb the countryside for another hospital. And so successful were his efforts that by the time his material caught up with him he was able to direct it to a new location. Then came the installation of the plant. A château had been taken over for headquarters, operating and X-ray rooms. Behind the house in a fair open field back by cool pine woods were ranged the hospital tents, each with a capacity of about fifty beds.

And now began a piece of spectacular teamwork. A detachment of soldiers began policing—cleaning up—the grounds; the nurses in the operating room commenced to boil their instruments; the sergeant began tacking up on the valuable tapestried walls lengths of white oilcloth; in the kitchen, the deep-seated heart of it all, the dietitian had already started the fire and marshaled her minions; the night teams of surgeons donned caps and aprons—and when a gray dust-covered army limousine raced up and the chief surgeon of that sector crisply demanded “How soon do you figure you can handle some wounded?” the commanding officer of the new evacuation hospital responded: “As soon as you like. Shoot ’em right along!”

And inside of an hour the army ambulances began to roll in and the stretcher bearers began to lift out the litters with the recumbent immobile figures, wrapped in blankets and many of them caked with mud and blood.

On June first the Americans began to attack. By June fourth this new Red Cross evacuation hospital had been installed behind Château-Thierry and was operating day and night on Americans only. And thus the thin stream of crimson, which for three days had trickled from the front lines practically without interruption clear back to Paris, was abruptly tourniqueted. It was a fine piece of emergency work and an excellent example of the complete collaboration between the Army and the Red Cross. The preparedness of this latter organization, its warehouses stacked to the roof with extra supplies so that it could multiply its entire hospital bed capacity by six without a strain; its camion service ready to transport these goods to any designated point in the advance zone; and these two facilities, materials and transportation put absolutely at the command of the Army in a vital and trying hour went far to avert what might have been a tragedy.

It was a brilliant sunshiny day when I arrived at this Red Cross evacuation hospital behind Château-Thierry. At the moment there was a lull on the Front. Twice during the month of June the Germans had sought by means of smoke barrages and pontoons to cross the Marne, that river of ill omen to Prussian hopes, and twice the Americans had held them. And so aggressively had these gay yet austere youngsters fought that it was a common jest along that sector that the Kaiser was seeking peace terms.

There were now other units there, and they divided the honors with the veteran poilus who flanked them on either side.

The hospital itself, situated in a splendid grove of pines and purple beeches, was by this time operating as smoothly as if it had been established months instead of days. The entire bed capacity of that plant I may not give, but an idea of its elasticity may be obtained from the fact that upon one night, after an evacuation, the patients numbered three, and upon a subsequent night, during a rush, the kitchen fed more than nine hundred persons and showed no signs of pegging out.

Upon the afternoon of my arrival patients were scattered throughout many of the wards, bringing up the total to quite a considerable figure. In company with the commanding officer. Major M——, I had gone the rounds of the tents. Suddenly in the midst of a remark he was called to the telephone.

It was long distance—that is to say, it was some headquarters up behind the lines. The major returned with a sober face.

“It’s an order,” said he, “to clean out everybody, make a clean sweep, get ready the beds. I suppose you can guess what that means.”

“An attack?”

“Well, I dare say the boche will try to pull off something. They’ve been massing up behind Château-Thierry now for days. But they’re not the only ones that have been massing, and don’t you forget it. Our men on this side the Marne are lying in wait, a cordial little reception party, and if some of their scoundrels do cross the river they’ll never live to tell the tale!” He laughed—the cheerful buoyant laugh of utter confidence which prevails upon the Front. “But this order means that we’ll evacuate this evening. It’s better for the men, even the serious cases, to be sent back to a quiet base where they can have constant attention; they must have it, and we can’t possibly give it to them here. In the midst of a big fight our hands are full with the fresh influx. Moreover, it stands to reason that the sooner we can get a patient in fit shape to travel out of this cyclone belt the better it is for all concerned. And yet it’s the hardest thing in the world to let some of these men go. Some are special cases where we’ve fought for their lives. We’d like to guard them through the critical stage. As for the nurses, they cry like babies when they have to surrender some of their pets. You’ll see to-night. Just watch my staff; see if they don’t try to hang on to some of the men.”

This was about five in the afternoon. He disappeared into the château to have a conference with his head nurse upon supplies. A few minutes later, Colonel X——, chief surgeon of all the American forces in that center, stepped down from his limousine, and the first words with which he greeted the major were these: “How many beds have you filled?”

The major gave the budget of the day.

“Well, clean them right out. If you’ve not sufficient ambulances, send down the line to X——. But get the men out of here to-night. Get your beds free. What about supplies—enough to stand a pretty big racket? How are you on ether?”

Major M—— gave the account of his plant. Everything was in perfect readiness for the storm.

“Fine!” pronounced the colonel. “Well, I’ve got to beat it. This is my busy day.”

“Just when and where do you think the Germans are going to attack?” I ventured to put in my oar.

The colonel looked me up and down with a whimsical smile. Women are rare phenomena in the landscape of the Front. When they do arrive so far from their natural habitat, the safe and sober rear, it is taken for granted they are there with just and sufficient cause, and they are treated with a deference, a consideration and a fine camaraderie that are good to experience.

“If I knew the exact reply to your very pertinent question,” laughed he, “I’d not be standing here; I’d be burning the road to G. H. Q.; and we’d put something over on the boche to remember us by. As it is, we can only say things seem mighty imminent. They’re massing guns and effectives. So are we. Just where the point of the thrust will come no man can say. Your guess is as good as mine. But we’ve got to be ready. And we are! Wait. I’ll show you something. But you mustn’t put it in the Post!”

Whereupon he sat himself down, hauled out his secret map and his secret notebook—a small black, leather-bound affair, in which were jotted cryptic figures representing positions and numbers of American forces which a German spy would have bartered his worthless soul to possess; and with these two, the map and the notebook, he outlined his plan of campaign in the event of a German drive. Here and there were troops, American troops. Here and there behind them were American hospitals, each one capable of caring for so many wounded each day. All together they represented an ample bed capacity. Those first unorganized days of June were well over; by now the Army had arranged a hospital system that effectively drained the sector. And not only that—alternative positions had been located in case the evacuation hospitals had to clear out and reinstall farther to the rear. Every emergency had been planned for. All was indicated on that secret map.

“By the way, major,” concluded the colonel, snapping to his little black notebook as he rose, “how soon could you up-stakes and move?”

The major stated the exact number of hours, and when I say that that number amounted to less than three hundred minutes you may realize how simple and supple are the component parts of such a plant. “I’ll have the sergeant get out the tent bags,” he added, “and stack them outside the tents.”

“May as well be ready,” agreed the colonel, stepping into his car. “Not that there’s the slightest chance in the world that the boche will break through, but it would be criminal not to be prepared.”

“We’ll be prepared, sir,” promised the major quietly.

“Good. They may start something about two in the morning. So long!”

“That’s two warnings,” said the major amusedly as the colonel’s car rolled away.

Later, at mess out in the château grounds in a tent, with the westering sun over behind the dark pine woods, a great globe of fire drowning the fields and the tents in a fine golden light, we received a third. This time it came in the form of a note from the French headquarters hard by. It was in French and it read:

“We have the honor to announce to you that an important German attack is hourly expected in our sector. It will be advisable for you to evacuate instantly as many patients as you possibly can, in order to have the greatest number of beds free for the emergency.”

“Looks as if the boche really meant business,” commented the major. “Do you care to watch the evacuation? If so I recommend the rear steps of the château as a good reviewing stand.”

I took my place as directed, well removed from the traffic. Upon the road beneath just in front of the hospital tents were lined up a long string of ambulances. A sergeant was in charge of the affair. Inside the tents, orderlies and nurses had their hands full preparing the men for transportation. Some of the patients were up, superintending their own moving; some, in vivid pink-striped Red Cross pajamas—the gift of some gay soul—were sitting on their cots, swinging bare legs and shouting for footgear; some, disdaining such effete trappings of civilization, had wrapped the drapery of their couches about them, squaw-wise, and were standing barefoot on the grass outside enjoying the festal scene. It was like a great gipsy encampment.

Still farther down the road one man had boldly snatched another’s sole garment of attire, a dressing robe, and the owner, reduced to his birthday suit, started a chase. Ensued a picturesque race. This, however, was but a brief kaleidoscopic film, which danced across the road for a minute like a Greek frieze, and was abruptly censored by the sergeant. A nurse appeared at the flap of the tent, an anxious look in her eye. She caught sight of the tall statuesque Indian who, with his blanket hunched well round his head and his pyjamas swelling gently in the evening breeze, stood rubbing one big bare foot luxuriously over the other big bare foot and discoursing to another young Indian buck thus:

“Yes, sir, I’m telling you, friend, I sure thought the end had come. There I was, sitting under a little short tree by the road writing home to my mother. I’d just finished writing ‘Well, mamma, I’ve come through lucky so far,’ and looked up. There was a whole wagonload of grenades passing, and at that minute a shell burst in the road right ahead. And I’m telling you, friend, suddenly it seemed like all the world rose up in the air but me——”

“You, Fred Murphy,” interrupted the nurse severely. “Where are those slippers I gave you? Don’t you know you can’t travel in bare feet? It isn’t done in France!”

“Miles too small for my trilbies,” explained Murphy succinctly. He turned his face toward her a brief instant and then, turning it back, continued without a halt: “——but me, and I went down. And when the lieutenant helped me to my feet he said that nobody but a damn fool or a Marine could sit under a little short tree like that writing letters while a whole wagonload of grenades exploded, and get away with it. And he showed me the tree top blowed clear down the valley and sitting up there like an open umbrella.”

A medical officer came hurrying over to the nurse.

“The orderly said you wanted me. What is it?”

“It’s that chest case. He can’t go. He’s on the list, but there must be some mistake. Oh, I think it’s terrible to send a man on the road like that!”

They passed into the deeper gloom of the tent. I followed. Near the door on a cot sat a doughboy, a shoulder case, garbed as per army regulation as far as his waist, and from thence upward his fine torso naked save for strappings and splints which held his arm in an immobile apparatus.

With his free hand he was pawing wildly among the effects of his kit, while he exclaimed in loud excited tones, “I can’t find it! I never got it. If I had it I’d remember it, wouldn’t I? Say, wouldn’t a guy remember a thing like that? I guess yes! You never gave it to me—see?”

The orderly—later killed when the hospital was bombed by boche planes—was down on his haunches lacing up the patient’s boots. He looked up with a grin.

“What’s biting you, buddy? The last thing I gave you was slum, and I notice you wolfed that down like one o’clock.”

“It’s my shrapnel. The piece the doctor took outa me. He promised before he put me to sleep on the operating table to pin it onto my shirt. Say, look in my pocket, will you?”

The orderly obliged. But the shrapnel was not there. Just then the doctor passed. “Say, captain, did you operate on this guy? He says you promised to save his shrapnel.”

The doctor squinted uncertainly through the gloom.

“Yes, sir, you did!” affirmed the private with confidence. “And you promised, sir, to pin the shrapnel onto my shirt.”

“That’s right. I remember now, old man.” A look passed between the young surgeon and the orderly. Was it a wink that caused the orderly’s left eyelid to droop so flat upon his cheek?

“Sir, shall I go get his shrapnel? I think I know where it’s at.”

“Good!” said the surgeon, laughter in his voice. “You’ll find it wrapped in a piece of gauze.”

“Yes, sir.”

The orderly departed. But just outside the tent he paused, dived down into his pocket, brought up several objects, examined them attentively, and then hurried back to the rear entrance, where by the light of an electric torch the nurse was making up her list.

“S-s-t! Gimme a gauze compress, sister!” said a husky voice in her ear. Absently she pointed to a parcel on the table. The orderly helped himself. The next moment he was back in the front tent.

“Here you are, buddy! That’ll hold you for a while!” And he deposited an object twisted up in a bit of gauze in the soldier’s eager palm. It was a copper bullet the size of a marble.

“Oh, boy!” ejaculated the private in deep ecstatic joy. “She’s a whale! A regular Big Bertha! No wonder she stopped me. Say, captain,” he hailed the surgeon who was passing, “can’t I go back to my outfit? I don’t want to lose that gang. And I feel fine.”

The orderly chuckled as he warped his man’s free arm into the flannel shirt. “Feel so darned nifty you’d like to go out and chop down a couple or three trees just for sport—hey?”

Outside, upon the road, the ambulances were loading rapidly and rumbling off into the gloom. The sergeant, the man of the hour, oversaw all.

“Gently there!” This to the brancardiers as they lifted a litter with a recumbent figure swathed in blankets and shot it into the ambulance. “You have three in there?”

“Yes, sir.”

“Well, beat it! Now how many more are there left?”

From the steps of the château Major M——, in white cap and operating apron, surveyed the scene. The procession passed briskly.

Ambulances rolled up, loaded and disappeared. Not a light showed. The men were mere dusky patches of gloom moving through denser gloom. Overhead the sky was equally dark, fitting the earth close, like the stopper of a bottle.

“I wonder how it feels,” I said, “to be lying in the little black interior of those ambulances and rumbling off to God knows where.”

“Sometimes very dramatic things happen in those same little black interiors,” observed the major grimly.

An orderly approached, saluted the major.

“Sir, there’s a light shining out of one of the upper windows. It makes quite a projection. One of the drivers marked it far down the road.”

“Go up and tell the nurse to close the shutter,” commanded the major tersely. “Tell her to go all over the house. We don’t want a bomb dropped in the midst of this party.”

“Have you ever had any disagreeable experiences with wounded German prisoners?” I inquired.

“We’ve not had many of their wounded, but one night we got in a Prussian lieutenant. I put him in a tent with a bunch of Germans, all in pretty bad shape. He shouted and swore like a trooper for being subjected to the hideous ignominy of having to breathe the same polluted air as his men. ’Twas an American atrocity! He said he was a Prussian officer, and he haughtily demanded to be changed to an officers’ ward.”

“And what did you do? Assign him to a private room with a special nurse and send up iced champagne?”

“Something like that! I ordered his cot changed, and I placed him between two poor German devils who were dying of gas gangrene. They smelled to heaven! I thought if our own nurses could tend to those fellows it might do his lord-highmightiness good to lie between ’em for a while! In contrast to his conduct I had a young American lieutenant out in one of the tents, Ward B, and it was not until he was evacuated that I learned he was an officer.

“‘Why, lieutenant,’ I said, ‘why didn’t you tell me? I’d have placed you in the officers’ ward.’

“‘Oh, that’s all right, sir,’ he laughed. ‘What’s good enough for my men is good enough for me.’ And that is the difference in a nutshell between autocracy and democracy.”

One of the medical staff approached hurriedly. “Sir, I’d like to keep some few of these cases. They’re in bad shape. I hate to start them on the road. It—it’s against my conscience.”

“All right. Use your own discretion. You heard the orders, though—to make a clean sweep. It may seem hard, but the men will receive better attention than we’ll be able to give them once the rush begins. But keep them if you feel you should.”

With a breath of relief the officer turned away to countermand his order.

“Sergeant!” called the major.

“Here, sir!” came a steady reliable voice from the dark.

“Put all the wounded that are left into one tent—Ward A. How many have you?”

“About twenty-five, sir.”

“Good. Tell your men to clean up all the rest of the wards and get them into condition. And, sergeant——”

“Yes, sir.”

“Where are those tent bags—the ones in which we pack the tents?”

“Upstairs in the storeroom, sir.”

“Get them down. Place one outside each tent and instruct your men in their use. Maybe you’d better assign a patrol on this road to-night.”

“Yes, sir. The officer of the day has already spoken to me about it, sir.”

“All right, sergeant. Then I guess we’re about ready for whatever may turn up. You’d better try to snatch some sleep.”

“I think I’d rather stay up, sir, if you don’t mind.”

The sergeant saluted. We went inside. Already the surgeons and the nurses had sought their respective quarters to summon what sleep they might before the storm broke. I said good night also, and was conveyed to my billet in the village, the major promising to have me roused if anything occurred. By now the sky was clear, a deep soft firmament of gleaming stars which blinked friendly reassurance to the troubled earth atom below.

“It’s all right!” they seemed mutely to say. “See, we’re still here! It’s all right!”

The wind was toward the Germans. Therefore, though already the big guns had waked to their nightly orchestra, and vivid lightninglike flashes from their flaming throats played constantly across the low horizon, yet not a single sound could be heard. All through the night, when at intervals I rose to watch, that leaping devil’s dance played noiselessly across the rosy sky. It was uncanny—lightning without thunder. Where was the sound? In the upper air reaches?

The next morning I woke to discover I had not been called. The drive, then, had not materialized. At the hospital I found that such was even the case. There was a smile in the air, and a whisper that the Americans, the previous night, had dumped twelve thousand gas shells down upon the Hun just as he was clambering over the top. The push for the moment was averted. Nevertheless a few wounded were trickling in, and upstairs in the officers’ ward I found two bedfast lieutenants. One, by his soft velvety drawl, was a Southerner. Later I learned his exact habitat was Memphis, Tennessee. The other young officer apparently had been recounting some knavery of the boche, for with my hand on the open door I heard the Tennesseean respond fervidly: “Yes, suh. They’re dirty snakes. You can’t have no commerce with them. Yuh just got to kill their souls!”

I drew back and listened, for the Tennesseean was beginning a tale.

“Yes, suh,” his cool, placid voice flowed on, “they was murderin’ us in that woods. They’d got us in a pocket and from nests of machine guns they was shellin’ us three ways. We’d had no meat for over two days. It was tough, I’m tellin’ yuh, suh. So that night I took my sergeant and went foraging in the village. It was deserted and the shells was falling right lively. Presently I shoved open the door of a barn, and there was a fine fat hawg rooting away inside.

“‘Sergeant,’ I says, ‘that hawg in there tried to bite me.’

“‘Well, suh,’ says the sergeant, ‘there ain’t no French hawg born that can bite my lieutenant and get away with it. We-all ain’t going to stand that from no hawg. No, suh!’ And so that night we had a fine mess of po’k chops. Yes, suh, those po’k chops certainly tasted grand.”

I slipped inside to have a look at the raconteur. He was a tall, lean, lank, freckled, solemn-looking young gentleman, with a broken ankle and a quizzical brown eye. Somehow he reminded me of Lincoln.

“Yes, suh,” he was remarking, “this sure is one damn funny man’s wah.” After I had established myself I demanded what led him to such a cynical conclusion. But he refused to be drawn, and asked instead the condition of a patient in the adjoining shock ward. I told him the man was dead.

“I’m sure sorry to heah that,” he said simply. “That man was in my outfit and a bettah boy never spit. He got his after I came in. I left a squad of five in a dugout on the side of a knoll and I told them not to stir until the shelling let up. Well, this boy says it got pretty hot and crowded inside and he stepped out a minute to breathe. And that very minute a shell dropped. He might have saved his life if he’d bandaged his leg right off; but no, suh, he told me he couldn’t think of nothing but hauling those poor fellows from that caved-in wreck—and him with one leg blowed off. That boy deserves a Croix de Guerre. I’m goin’ to write to his mothah.”

I was called away for a few minutes, and when I returned the lieutenant was embarked upon another tale:

“Yes, suh, I just couldn’t bear to see that boy’s body lyin’ out in the blisterin’ sun. By the clothes he was a Marine, and I expect he’d been hangin’ up against that bob-wire some time. I didn’t care if it was No Man’s Land. It wasn’t no fit land for an American’s body to be lyin’ out in the sun, and so I started out to fetch it in.

“‘Lemme go, lieutenant!’ one of my outfit says. I’ve got the finest outfit of boys, miss, you ever laid eyes on.”

“Maybe that’s because they’ve got such a fine lieutenant!” I said slyly.

“No, suh, that isn’t it at all!” he retorted earnestly. “Well, I says to him: ‘Man, I can’t ask for volunteers for this. It’s too danged dangerous.’ And that boy, he says to me: ‘Shucks, lieutenant! I’ll die for yuh any day with pleasure. But for God’s sake, don’t leave me lie out there like a dawg.’ So I promised, and he went out and fetched the Marine in. Two hours later that boy was shot straight between the eyes by a sniper’s bullet. I remembered what he’d said: ‘For God’s sake, lieutenant, don’t leave my body lie out like that’—and it kind of hurt my soul. So I sent him back to the rear. And we buried that boy with honahs. Yes, suh, this sure is one damn funny man’s wah!”

Downstairs the hospital seemed drowned in a drowsy Sabbath calm. Not a breath stirred. Roses drooped in the hot stillness. High overhead in a light azure sky Allied planes swam like gnats across a sun-lit stretch of water. To complete the note of peace two stray hounds dreamed on the steps or snapped languidly at blue-bottle flies. Who said there was a world war on hand? And yet, late the night before, still another warning had come over the wires, and the remaining twenty-five patients had been hurriedly transported to safer climes.

Down the road thousands of camions were passing, a steady sluggish stream. The level, poplar-bordered highway was alive with them as far as the eye could see. Camions filled with French troops; camions filled with artillery, guns, guns, guns; camions filled with horses, two to a vehicle. And after that stream of blue casques had flowed by, with scarcely a minute’s interval, came another stream—United States khaki, going up on the line. The heavy American lorries thundered by in a cloud of dust, their wheels tearing the gravel out of the roads. The men were covered with a coating of dust, thick as if they had come through a desert sandstorm. Their eye-lashes were powdered gray; their eyebrows were bleached white; their fresh skins were burned brick red; and their eyes, unprotected by that abominable visorless overseas cap, were inflamed with dust and fatigue and lack of sleep. And yet how they hurrahed, leaning far out to yell as they flashed by! They were going into hell, and they knew it.

They had no illusions about war. But the sight of those dirty, sweaty, confident men thrilled us.

At five, in front of the château, the chaplain read the burial service over the hero who had given his life to save his comrades in the dugout. Over the pine box lay the folds of the flag, a mantle of glory. Upon the rude casket some friend had placed a cross of crimson ramblers, the rich splendor of their hue and their fragrance symbolizing mutely the beauty of soul of him who lay underneath. Red roses for those who die in youth for their country! They seemed to burn in the quiet air. Their fragrance mounted like rare incense. The chaplain read the immortal words of hope: “I am the resurrection and the life: he that believeth in me, though he were dead, yet shall he live....” High overhead the faint reassuring drone of Allied planes mingled with the murmur of the detachment of soldiers, who with bared heads repeated softly “Our Father who art in Heaven ...” while off on the side lines stood a group of French children, awed, curious, respectful, with bunches of field daisies clutched tightly in their hands, with which, after the Americains had departed, they proposed to decorate the strange soldier’s grave.

Later, in search of consolation, I wandered back to the Tennesseean’s ward. I was not disappointed. That liquid drawl flowed on, soft as the Mississippi at twilight.

“Yes, suh, we called that outfit the Midnight Regiment. I reckon yuh-all heard of them; they was stationed a while at B——. They was officered with white folks, and a friend of mine was major. Well, suh, they put that regiment alongside some French niggers from Upper Africa. Yuh’d think those two sets would amalgamate, coming from the same family tree. But no, suh! There was just one perpetual uproar. They was a-hackin’ and a-choppin’ each up with knives from mawning until night! Yuh nevah heard such takin’s-on. And the officers couldn’t find what was the row nohow. So one night the major, he says to his sergeant, a big negro:

“‘Sergeant,’ says he, ‘I want yuh to go out and make a private investigation of just what’s the trouble between yuh Americans and those French niggers, and hand in a confidential report.’

“‘I don’t need to go out and make no ’vestigation, major,’ says that sergeant. ‘I can report to yuh whut-all’s the trouble right now. Yes, suh!’

“‘All right, sergeant. What is it?’

“‘Well, suh, it’s like this: Evah since this heah Midnight Regiment come over to France and been a-takin’ part in this man’s wah, us-all’s been hearin’ the white folks talkin’ French. All the white folks gettin’ to talkin’ French. Yes, suh. And now we come up alongside these strange nigger folks and find them gabblin’ French too! And when niggers goes to gittin’ stuck up like that and puttin’ on proud white folks’ airs they’s jest naturally boun’ to be trouble! Yes, suh, that’s whut it is!’”

The afternoon shaded gently into night; the night’s dark hours slipped by, silent as bats’ wings; morning came again, calm, sunshiny—and still no threat of attack. It was ominous, menacing. The hospital staff rested with taut nerves, like a football team ready at a given signal to spring into intense action. But the signal was withheld.

Then suddenly one July morning about two o’clock the storm burst. The atmosphere trembled and shook to the clamor of mighty guns. Even in Paris, fifty-one miles away, their deep-throated orchestra could be heard. Pluff! Pluff! Pluff-pluff! Distant, yet clear, unmistakable, sounded those soft and sinister volleys through the night. Not since the Battle of the Marne in 1914 had Parisians heard such a violent bombardment. Some flew to the telephone. Was it a Gotha raid? Was that the outer antiaircraft barrage? No. It was the long-delayed July offensive.