BACCARAT
April 2, 1918
At last we have located the gassed members of our 3rd Battalion in the hospitals at Vittel and Contrexéville; and today, as Lieutenant Knowles had the kindly thought of bringing their pay to them, Donovan, Mangan and myself took advantage of the opportunity to go and see them. The hospitals were formerly hotels in these summer resorts and serve excellently for their present purpose. Many of the men are still in bed, lying with wet cloths over their poor eyes, and many of them have been terribly burned about the body, especially those whose duties called upon them to make exertions which used perspiration. Among these is John McGuire of the Supply Company and many of the sanitary detachment, such as Sergeant Lokker, Ed. McSherry, James Butler, Michael Corbett and John J. Tierney, who have been recommended for the Croix de Guerre for courage and devotion in saving the wounded. Sergeant Russell, with Corporals Beall and Brochon of the Headquarters Company are also suffering for their zeal in maintaining liaison.
But it is Company K that had to bear the brunt of it. Of the officers, Lieutenant Crane is in the most critical condition, and it was a touching thing as I went through the ward to hear every single man in his platoon forget his own pain to inquire about the Lieutenant. Some of the men are still in very bad shape, Richard O’Gorman, George Sicklick, Val Prang, Sergeant Gleason, Bernard Leavy, Francis Meade, James Mullin and also Mortimer Lynch, Christopher Byrne, Daniel Dooley, Gerard Buckley, Harold Benham, Harold Broe, Kilner McLaughlin, and Buglers Nye and Rice. The cooks did not escape—Pat Boland, William Mulcahy, Moriarty, Thomas O’Donnell and Michael O’Rourke, who, by the way, is one of those Czecho-Slovaks who has chosen to fight under a martial name. The Wisconsins also have been hard hit, and two of their men here, Corporal John Sullivan and Leo Moquin, are painfully burned on account of their exertions in carrying others. I have turned the names of these two in with a recommendation for citation, with those of Staber, Farrell, Ross, Van Yorx, Montross, Beall, Brochon, McCabe and the medicos mentioned. Sergeant Leo Bonnard, in liaison with the French, has received his cross on their recommendation. Lieutenant Tom Martin and Dr. Patton also received the same decoration.
Apart from Lieutenant Crane, none of the officers is in serious condition, though more than half of the officers in the battalion are in the hospital, including Major Moynahan, Captains Hurley, Merle-Smith, and Meaney, Lieutenants Leslie, Stevens, and Rerat, with nearly all the lieutenants of Company K and M, and also Major Lawrence with Lieutenants Patton and Arthur Martin of the Sanitary Detachment, who deserve high praise for their handling of a difficult situation.
The Company M men were not so badly gassed, with the exception of Sergeant Emerson. A good many of them were walking about with eyes only slightly inflamed. I was immediately surrounded by Eustace, Flanigan, Jack Manson, Harry Messmer, Bill Lanigan, Mark White, Jock Cameron and a lot of others, all clamoring for news about the regiment. I made myself a candidate for being canonized as a saint by working at least a hundred first-class miracles when I announced that we had come with the pay. The news was received with a shout, “Gimme me pants, I’m all better now.”
There was one thing that disturbed us. We found most of our injured in these two towns, but there was still a considerable number whose pay we had that we could not find, and nobody was able to tell where they had been sent.