"Across a 'Bridge of Sighs'—the opportunity to call it that is quite too good to be lost—to another building, one came upon stores of chairs, bucksaws, farm implements, boxes of window glass, bedside tables, wicker reclining chairs, iron beds, mattresses, pillows, bolsters, blankets, sheets, pillowcases, and comforters. Through a wide doorway whose lintel was a rough hand-hewn beam as thick as a man's body and a century old, were the dormitory and the messroom of the red-fezzed Algerians who, by the way, were under the command of two French officers. Next came the lofts, with their bins of crutches, surgical dressings, rubber sheeting, absorbent cotton, enamel ware, bright copper sterilizers, and boxes of rubber gloves for hospital use. Still another building housed the immense supplies of wool gloves and socks, pajamas, sweaters, and women's and children's underwear and high stacks of brown corduroy jackets and trousers, for the Red Cross sought to furnish to the peasant just the same sort of clothing that he and his father's grandfather were accustomed to wear; even to the beloved béret.
"Throughout the storage building one came across evidences of the manner in which every available bit of old wood was utilized for reconstruction in order to avoid further expenditure. Bins and racks were made of ancient doors and window frames and crates had been carefully fashioned into delivery counters. In fact small 'branch stores' for the distribution of goods in less than box or crate lots were established in every corner of the Rue Chemin du Vert warehouse, with clerks always in attendance upon them. In this way it was as easy to fit out an individual with what he or she needed as to fit out an entire community, and the reverse.
"On the right side of the main courtyard, running back from the administration offices, were the long, narrow shipping rooms where the bundles called for were made up from the stock which lined the walls and were tagged and addressed by a corps of young women; the crate lots being attended to by the men in the courtyard below. Still farther on was the department which received the packages of used clothing, of knitted goods, or the other things sent by humane persons in countless cities of America and France to the needy ones in the fighting lines, or back of them. Below and beyond this room were the coal bins, the carpenter's shop, in which tables and bedside stands constantly were being turned out from new lumber, and the 'calaboose,' for the benefit of an occasionally recalcitrant Algerian. And adjoining the main courtyard was still another room almost as large; and this last was the place of receipt of all supplies. Here they were inspected, counted, and assigned to their proper buildings and compartments. The entire place was a great hive, literally a hive of industry. And the people of the neighborhood never passed its arched entrance without first stopping to look in, it all was so amazing to them. They wondered if there ever could have been a time when a thousand horses were stabled there."
Upon the day of the signing of the armistice and for many months thereafter Warehouse No. 1 in the Rue Chemin du Vert remained a busy hive of industry. It still handled almost every conceivable sort of commodity, and perhaps the only difference in its appearance from the day that the graphic New Yorker saw it was that German prisoners—each with a doggedly complacent look upon his face and a large "P. G." upon his back,—had replaced the Algerians for the hard manual labor. It continued to employ fifteen men and women in its office and from thirty-five to forty Red Cross workers, American or French, while the value of the stock constantly kept on hand was roughly estimated at close to $2,000,000. From thirty-five to forty tons were daily being sent out. Yet how was a stock valuation of $2,000,000 really to be compared with one of $2,500,000 in warehouse No. 6 in the Rue Cambrai or $3,000,000 at No. 24 in the Rue Curial? And these were but three of eleven Red Cross warehouses in Paris at the time of the armistice. And a report issued very soon after showed twenty-nine other warehouses of the American Red Cross in France, eight of them in the city of Dijon, which, because of its strategic railroad location, was a store center of greatest importance for our army over there.
Perhaps you like facts with your picture.
Well, then, returning from the picture of the thing to the fact, we find at the time of the first definite general organization of our Red Cross in France—in September, 1917—a Bureau of Transportation and Supplies was formed under the direction of Mr. R. H. Sherman. A little later a slightly more comprehensive organization was charted, and a separate Bureau of Supplies created, with Mr. Joseph R. Swan as its immediate director. This was subdivided into four main sections: Paris Warehouses, Outside Warehouses, Receiving, and Shipping. This organization remained practically unchanged until the general reorganization plan of August, 1918, which we have already seen, when the bureau became the Section of Stores and, as such, a factor, and a mighty important factor, of the Division of Requirements.
From that time forward the problem was one of growth, great growth, rather than that of organization. It was a problem of finding warehouses to accommodate our supplies over there; of finding competent men to oversee and operate the warehouses, and then, in due order, of keeping the supplies moving through the warehouses and out to the men at the front. In due course we shall see how these supplies functioned. For the moment consider the fact that in an initiatory six weeks, from October 11 to November 30, 1917, Mr. Swan submitted a detailed account showing how he had invested nearly $8,000,000 in the purchase of general stores for our Red Cross. In the press of emergency work—there hardly was a month or a day from our arrival in France until after the signing of the armistice when the situation could not have been fairly described as emergency—it was possible to take but one general inventory. That was made, for accounting purposes, as of February 24, 1918, and showed the value of the American Red Cross stores then on hand in its warehouses in France to be 33,960,999.49 francs, well over $6,000,000. At the first of the following November—eleven days before the signing of the armistice—another inventory was taken. The stocks had grown. There were in the principal warehouses of the Red Cross alone and including its stock of coal upon the Quai de la Loire supplies valued at 46,452,018.80 francs, or close to $9,000,000. Figures are valuable when they mount to sizes such as these.
Yet figures cannot tell the way in which the warehousing organization of the American Red Cross met the constant emergencies which confronted it. Like the Transportation Department, it was forever and at all times on the job. For instance, from the beginning of that last German advance, in the Ides of March, 1918, until it was reaching its final fearful thrusts—late in June and early in July—there was on hand, night and day, a crew at the warehouse, which had been fashioned from a former taxicab stables in the Rue Chemin du Vert, a complete crew to load camions by the dozens, by the hundreds, if necessary. In such a super-emergency no six men housed in the plant would do; for there were nights on which twenty, thirty, and even forty of the big camions went rolling out through that great archway with their supplies for our boys at the front—the very boys who so soon were to play their great part in the supreme victories of the war. On those summer nights warehouse work was speeded up, to put it very mildly indeed. Men worked long hours without rest and with but a single thought—the accomplishment of real endeavor while there yet remained time to save Paris and all the rest of France. And in such spirit is victory born.
Do not, I pray you, conceive the idea that all the warehouse work was done in Paris. I have hinted at the importance of Dijon, the great army store center, as a Red Cross stores center, and have, myself, stood in the great American Red Cross warehouse upon the lining of the inner harbor of St. Nazaire and have with mine own eyes seen 8,000 cases stacked under their capacious roofs—foodstuffs and clothing and comforts and hospital supplies which came forever and in a steady stream from the transports docking at that important American receiving point, and have known of warehouses to be established in strange quarters, stranger sometimes than the abandoned stables of the horse-drawn taxicabs of Paris, here in an ancient exposition building upon the outskirts of a sizable French city, there in a convent, and again in a church or a school, or even again in a stable.