BACCARAT
April 7th, 1918
The reports which have arrived of the death in hospital of Robert Allen, Walter Bigger and Lawrence Gavin of Company K gave us our first information concerning the whereabouts of soldiers whom we could not discover in our trip to the hospital. They died at the new Army Hospital at Bazoilles near Neufchateau. As Tom Johnson of the New York Sun was visiting us, he offered to take me back with him in his car to see them. They are in long, one-story hospital barracks and most of them are almost recovered although Amos Dow and Herbert Kelly are still very sick boys. With the assistance of the two First Sergeants of K and M, Tim Sullivan and James McGarvey, who are also patients, I paid them all off.
I also gave them a bit of news which was more gratefully received than the pay, and that is saying a great deal. One of the hospital authorities told me that a special order had arrived that men of the 165th who would be fit for duty by a certain date should be returned direct to the regiment without going through a casual camp. He told me also that the order was entirely an exceptional one, adding laughingly that he would be glad to get rid of them. He said they were the liveliest and most interesting lot of patients he ever had to deal with, but they made themselves infernal pests by agitating all the time to get back to their confounded old regiment. Howard Gregory came up with a side car to take me back and I had another chance to see our men in the other two hospitals and was glad to find that they are all on the road to recovery.