"The ——th Regiment has moved up beyond its baggage train. Can the Red Cross ship blankets and kits through to it?"
This was a typical emergency request—from an organization of three thousand men. It was answered in the typical fashion—with a full carload of blankets and other bedding. The kits followed in a truck.
"A field hospital is needed behind the new American lines," was another. It, too, was answered promptly; with several carloads of hospital equipment, surgical dressings, and drugs. These things sound simple, and were not. And the fact that they were many times multiplied added nothing to the simplicity of the situation. In fact there came a time when it was quite impossible to keep any exact account of the tonnage shipped, because the calls came so thick and fast and were so urgent that no one stopped for the usual requisitions but answered any reasonable demands. The requisition system could wait for a less critical time, and did.
One day a message came that a certain field hospital was out of ether—that its surgeons were actually performing painful operations upon conscious men—all because the army had run out of its stock of anæsthetics. The men at the American Red Cross supply headquarters sickened at the very thought; they moved heaven and earth to start a camion load of the precious ether through to the wounded men at the field hospital, and followed it up with twenty-five truckloads of other surgical supplies.
Under the reorganization of the American Red Cross in France which was effected under the Murnane plan, the entire work of purchase and warehousing was brought under a single Bureau of Supplies, which was ranked in turn as a Department of Supplies. This Bureau was promptly subdivided into two sections: that of Stores and that of Purchases. Taking them in the order set down in the official organization plan, we find that the headquarters section of Stores—situated in Paris—was charged with the operation of all central and port warehouses and their contents and was to be in a position to honor all properly approved requisitions from them, so far as was humanly possible. It was further charged to confer with the comptroller of our French American Red Cross organization and so to prepare a proper system and check upon these supplies. In each of the nine zones there were to be subsections of stores, answerable for operation to the Zone Manager and for policy to the Paris headquarters, but so organized as to keep not only sufficient supplies for all the ordinary needs of the zones, but in various well-situated warehouses, enough for occasions of large emergency—and all within comparatively short haul.
The Section of Purchases corresponded to the purchasing agent of a large corporation. Remember that the purchasing opportunities in France were extremely limited, so that by far the greater part of this work must be performed by the parent organization here in the United States, and sent—as were the circus tents—in response to requisitions, either by cable or by mail. Incidentally, however, remember that no small amount of purchasing for the benefit of our army and navy in France was done both in England and in Spain, which, in turn, was a relief to the overseas transport problem. For it must ever be remembered that the famous "bridge across the Atlantic" was at all times, until after the signing of the armistice at least, fearfully overcrowded. It was only the urgent necessities of the Red Cross and its supplies that made it successful in gaining the previous tonnage space east from New York, or Boston, or Newport News. And even then the tonnage was held to essentials; essentials whose absoluteness was almost a matter of affidavit.
Yet even the essentials ofttimes mounted high. Before me lies a copy of a cablegram sent from Paris to Washington early in January, 1919. It outlines in some detail the foodstuff needs of the American Red Cross in France for the next three months. Some of the larger items, in tons, follow:
| Sugar | 50 |
| Rice | 100 |
| Tapioca | 10 |
| Cheese | 50 |
| Coffee | 50 |
| Chocolate | 50 |
| Cocoa | 100 |
| Bacon | 50 |
| Salt Pork | 50 |
| Ham | 50 |
| Prunes | 50 |
| Soap | 100 |
| Apricots | 25 |
| Peaches | 25 |
And all of this in addition to the 10,000 cases of evaporated milk, 5,000 of condensed milk, 3,000 of canned corn beef, 2,000 of canned tomatoes, 1,000 each of canned corn and canned peas, and 1,000 gross of matches, while the quantities ordered even of such things as cloves and cinnamon and pepper and mustard ran to sizable amounts.