Incidentally might be mentioned here, the work the Association is doing for officers. There are four large hostels in London for the accommodation of officers, and one for officer-cadets. The young officer is often not blessed with too much of this world's goods, and hotel life is expensive, and not always too comfortable. The success of these hostels has demonstrated the need. At Havre, Calais, St. Omer, Étaples, and many centres up the line, as well as in home camps, such as Ripon, we have the pleasure of doing something to serve the officer, and in many English camps we have opened huts for the exclusive use of officer-cadets. Gidea Park, Berkhampstead, and Denham were amongst the first and most successful of these centres. The interned officers in Switzerland and Holland are largely catered for by the Y.M.C.A.
It has been a pleasure to co-operate from time to time with the work of the R.A.M.C. and the Red Cross. In huts, in hospitals, and convalescent camps, in caring for the relatives of wounded, in work for the walking wounded, and in many other ways the Red Cross and the Red Triangle have worked closely together. An officer of the R.A.M.C. (T.), has written the following interesting description of the work of the Y.M.C.A. for the walking wounded:—'The O.C. the Divisional Walking Wounded Collecting Post was frankly worried as he sat in his tiny sandbagged hut with the D.A.D.M.S., and talked over all the problems which faced him in view of the "stunt" due to come off at dawn a few days later. "I've got plenty of dressings, and everything of that sort," he said, "and, of course, I can get plenty more brought up by returning ambulance cars. But there is the question of food—there's the rub. The numbers of wounded vary so greatly, and it's not so easy to lay in a huge reserve of grub as it is of dressings. Of course, I've done my best, but I'm rather worried." "If that is all your worry we'll soon put that right," answered the optimist of the staff. "We'll get the Y.M.C.A. chap on the job." "What can he do?" "What can he not do rather? You wait and see. Come along and we'll call on him now."
'In a little shed of corrugated iron by the side of a shell-swept road they found him. With his coat off and his sleeves rolled up, he was pushing across the counter steaming mugs of cocoa and piles of buns to the crowd of hungry and clamouring Tommies who besieged his premises. He was not a young man. Not the strongest-hearted of Medical Boards would have passed him for service. To put it briefly, he had no right in the world to be where he was, in one of the nastiest corners of that particularly nasty place, Flanders. But there he was, roughing it with the rest of them, and to judge from his smiling countenance, thoroughly enjoying every particle of his experience. "Hello, Major!" he called out cheerfully on seeing his two officer visitors. "Anything I can do for you to-day?" "Rather! A whole lot. Can we have a talk in your own place—away from the crowd?" The Y.M.C.A. man led the way to the six feet square hole in the ground which he called his billet, and there the medical staff officer explained his needs. "There's a stunt on in a few days," he said. "You may have guessed that. What can you do to help us? You know the pressure under which the R.A.M.C. will be working. It'll be a big job dressing all the casualties there are likely to be; but we'll manage that bit. What we want is a hand in the feeding of them. You understand?" The face of the secretary glowed with excitement. "I'll do any mortal thing I can," he answered eagerly. "There'll be nothing doing here once the show starts, so I'll shut down, and bring my whole stock over to your dressing station, and my staff too. We can feed several hundred if you'll let us." "What about the cost of the grub?" "Not a word about cost, sir! You're welcome to it free, gratis, and for nothing, with all the pleasure in the world." "Thanks awfully," said the D.A.D.M.S. "That's just what I wanted you to offer, and I thought you would; your folks have helped us so often before." "Jolly good job," mused the Y.M.C.A. man, "that I have kept hidden those extra cases of chocolates and sweet biscuits. I thought there might be something of this sort coming off."
'Ere the grey dawn of a certain morning brought the nerve-racking inferno of barrage and counter-barrage, the entire stock of the canteen was installed in the larger of the two huts which formed the collecting post. Boxes of biscuits, chocolates, and cigarettes with the lids knocked off, stood ranged along the wall, ready for the tired and hungry guests who would soon appear. Outside, in two huge cauldrons, gallons of strong cocoa were brewing merrily. Little was spoken by the men standing around, as they waited, nerves a trifle on edge, for the breaking of the storm. Suddenly from somewhere in the rear came the hollow boom of a "heavy," the artillery signal, and in an instant every battery in the area had hurled its first salvo of the barrage. The air was full of noise, the rolling roar of the guns at "drum fire," the hissing and screaming of flying shells, the echoes of far-away explosions. The ground trembled as if an earthquake had come. The battle had begun.
'The O.C. looked in at the door of the hut. "Everything ready?" he asked. "Ready and waiting," answered the Y.M.C.A. man, and very soon in twos and threes the wounded began to dribble in, and shortly a steady stream of battered humanity was straggling down the road, to halt at the welcome sight of the hut with the Red Cross flag by its door. How some of them limped over every weary step of the way was beyond understanding. With shattered limbs and mangled flesh they came, worn, hungry, thirsty, in agony, some stumbling alone, some helped along by less grievously injured comrades. In a pitiful throng they gathered around the dressing station.
'The quick eyes of the R.A.M.C. sergeant picked out the worst cases, and these were hurried into the hut where the medical officers plied their sorrowful trade. The others sat down and waited their turn with the stolid patience of the British soldier when he is wounded, and among them worked an Angel of Mercy, an elderly angel clad in a flannel shirt, and a pair of mud-stained khaki trousers. Amid the poor jetsam of the fight went the Y.M.C.A. man with his mugs of cocoa and his biscuits, his chocolate and his cigarettes, as much a minister of healing as was the surgeon with his dressings and anodynes. All the men were bitterly cold after their long night of waiting in the old front trench, or were dead beat with the nervous strain of the action and the pain of their wounds. All were hungry. A few no longer cared greatly what more might happen to them, for they had reached the limit of endurance, as surely as they had reached the limit of suffering. But even to those last the warm drink and the food and, perhaps more than anything else, the soothing nicotine, brought back life and hope in place of apathy and despair. 'God bless you, sir,' murmured a man here and there. But the greater part could find no words to speak the gratitude which their eyes told forth so clearly.'
This little story is not the tale of one actual incident. It is only the stereotype of scenes that have been acted and reacted often and often at the Front. Time and time again has the Red Triangle come to the aid of the Red Cross, placing its workers and its stores unreservedly at the disposal of the Royal Army Medical Corps. When the wounded have been pouring into the dressing stations in hundreds, the Y.M.C.A. workers have taken over the responsibility of feeding them, and have halved the cares of the overwrought R.A.M.C. This they have done not once but unnumbered times, and what gratitude they have earned from their guests! The wounded man can scarcely realise what he owes to the surgeon who tends his injuries; but he does appreciate his debt to the man who feeds him and gives him the 'fag' for which he has been craving. The cocoa and cigarettes of the Y.M.C.A. do not figure among the medicaments of the Pharmacop ia, yet many a 'walking wounded' will swear to you that they have saved his life—as perhaps they have.