"And he made no mistake! The very next afternoon several American Army ambulances arrived with loads of English and French wounded. They had been hurried down from the advanced dressing stations and a large percentage of them were in bad shape. Although we made only a handful of people, we hustled about and got the hospital going again somehow and started in to take care of the wounded. There were no nurses about the place, none in the town, because the civilians had been ordered out, so the drivers of the Red Cross camions offered their services. Two or three of them had been ambulance men at the front and knew a little something about handling wounded, but there wasn't one who had ever been a nurse! And the stiff part of it was so many of the wounded soldiers brought in were in such a condition that operation without delay was vital.
"When everything was made ready the two American surgeons started operating. They began at 7:30 o'clock in the evening and kept at it steadily until 3 o'clock in the morning. We—I say 'we' because every one had to do his bit—performed seventeen major operations, and every last one was successful! There wasn't a hitch in spite of all the difficulties of the job. In the first place only one set of instruments had been left behind. These had to be sterilized by pouring alcohol over them after they had been used for one operation so they'd be ready for the next. There wasn't time to boil them. And the light by which the surgeons worked was furnished by six candles stuck with their own wax to a board. I held the board. As the surgeon worked I moved it around so he might have the most light on the probing or cutting or sewing, or whatever it was he had to do. Three of the operations were trephining the skull. Another of the soldiers had fifty-nine pieces of shell in him, and every one of these was located and taken out by candlelight. It was a busy night! One lucky part of the business was that at midnight another American Army surgeon arrived and relieved at the operating table. The worst part of it was that the other worked so steadily that he knocked out most of the drivers and they couldn't give any help at all after a while, so that at last there were only two of us left to bear a hand.
"In the morning we succeeded in evacuating the hospital, taking the wounded to C——, where there were ample facilities. And as soon as the wounded were carried from our trucks we were put to work getting out of the town the refugees who had accumulated there for several days. Then we turned to moving the Red Cross stores. C—— was under air raid every clear night, so we had to sleep in the cellar of its great château. The bombs bursting all about the place made sleep almost impossible.
"And when this little bit of work was ended, the last of the refugees and their baggage transported to a neighboring railroad station, word came the Germans had dropped a .240 on a train at R—— a few kilometers away. So we hustled two camions over there and found four men killed and five wounded. We packed them into the trucks and brought them out, delivering the wounded to the hospital at C——. For two or three days we were busy in that neighborhood taking care of refugees, because they were streaming toward the haven of Paris by the thousands. Now and then we would get a call to go to such and such a point because a shell had killed people, or because stores had to be moved to more secure places. On one of these trips we met two men of an English lancers regiment who had been badly wounded and had ridden twenty kilometers in search of a base hospital. We picked them up, as this was one of our many appointed tasks, and took them to C—— for treatment. They did not know what to do with their horses, and as there was no possibility of getting food for them every day, they debated whether to shoot them. They solved the problem by giving the two animals to me! And there isn't a doubt the creatures would have turned into elephants on my hands if I had not met a British battery on the road the next day. I offered the horses to the commander and he was overjoyed. 'I've lost eight horses already,' he explained, and hitched up my two and went rumbling off with his guns.
"In a little while the trucks were ordered to swing northward to S——. The French had been there, but had retreated to straighten their lines, and at once the Germans began to shell the place. This eventually drove out the entire civilian population. It then became such a hot corner that it was no longer a billeting area for troops, and army camions were not allowed to pass through the city. But there was a Red Cross staff on the job there, and as it had been decided that no civilian relief was possible, the only task was to get out the staff and all the supplies it would be possible to move from the Red Cross warehouse.
"We went up with three camions, and as we entered the city we saw three big German sausage observation balloons watching the place and directing the gunfire. The boche guns were after some of the Aisne bridges, the railway station, or a big supply depot in the city. Within a short time after we got in, the shells began falling all around us. The savages had seen us, there wasn't any doubt of it. There had been no shelling of this place since the battle of the Aisne in 1915, but the Germans were making up for that.
"The Red Cross warehouse was in the chapel of the big seminary in the city, and while we were at work getting things out and loaded, the shells from the .240's came screaming in. The first one banged its way through a house directly across the street, and made a puff of dust of it, but as we were in the courtyard of the seminary we were protected from flying pieces. After that, at three and a half minute intervals by the watch, the firing continued. The second shell went over our chapel and exploded in an orchard fifty yards back of us. It showered us with mud, and a small piece of shell scored one of our fellows on the cheek. The third one the Germans sent over landed directly in the seminary garden. This was almost a bull's-eye, so far as we were concerned, but we kept at it, making trip after trip, and when the last load left late in the afternoon, we had taken two hundred tons of precious supplies out of that warehouse and stored them several kilometers away.
"The last place on our list was hotter than any of the others, because the Germans were constantly changing their ranges and shelling everything in the back areas. We went to the little town of M—— to bring out a Red Cross unit there which was at work only two kilometers in the rear of the French lines. We had no difficulty in getting the unit out, but when it came to getting the supplies, that was a different matter. We went up there with three cars and tried our best, but the shelling was too severe and we were ordered to come away. Nothing could have lived in that town the day we tried to make it.
"That's the little story of a week, and it was a full one. While the German guns were hunting out the important towns the French batteries were thundering back at them. And it seemed that everywhere we went the French guns came up, planted themselves, and went into action. In one town two .155's were towed in by gigantic tractors, stopped beside our trucks, and as soon as pits could be dug, began firing. Each gun fired four shots as quickly as possible and then the battery limbered up to the tractors and went on its way. I asked the commander why he didn't stay, because it seemed to me that a little protection wouldn't have been a half bad thing for us. He replied that as there was no camouflage possible in that town the guns had to be got away before they were spotted. He added that he was going on to the next town to fire four more shots, and then to still another one for the same purpose. He promised to come back to our little town soon, but I thanked him and said, 'Never mind, we'll be gone by that time.'"
And experience such as this was typical; not in the least unusual. And this, please remember, was the narrative of but one convoy; there were four others in that same sector, and in the same week, that had similar experiences. When we come to consider the Red Cross in its field activities with our army we shall hear other stories such as this; for, of a truth, the work of the Transportation Department is eternally intermeshed and interwoven with that of American Red Cross relief service of every sort in France. Without transportation, little could ever have been done.