Over the heads of the two Red Cross men—the captain and the driver of the little camionette—an aftermath of the battle in the form of an air fight between boche planes and American was in progress; young Dave Putnam, one of the most brilliant of our aces, was making the supreme sacrifice for his country. To the north the Germans were dragging up a battery and preparing to shell the little town that they had just lost; but not for long. Batteries of American .155's were appearing from the other direction and were working effectively. And at dusk a report came into Division Headquarters that a company of one of the old Regular Army regiments had captured an entire German hospital—patients, nurses, doctors, and even two German Red Cross ambulances; while the tingling radio and the omnipresent telephone began to bring into Division Headquarters the story of one of the most remarkable American victories of the entire war. And our Red Cross began the first of a four days' stay in a damp dugout in the lee of a badly smashed barn.
Kimball's story is quite typical of many others. But before I begin upon them—what the motion-picture director would call the "close-ups" of what is perhaps the most picturesque form of all the many, many picturesque features of our Red Cross in action, consider for a moment how it first got into action upon the field of battle. I have referred several times already to the excessive strain which the great German offensives which began in March, 1918, placed upon its facilities, while they still were in a stage of development. When we read of the work of the Transportation Department and of the Bureau of Supplies, we saw how both of these great functions had suddenly been confronted with a task that demanded the brains and brawn of supermen and how gloriously and brave-heartedly they had arisen to the task. The field service of our Red Cross—its first contact with the men of our army in actual conflict—was second to neither of these.
Remember, if you will, that it was but a mere nine months after the American Red Cross Commission to Europe landed in France that its organization was put to its greatest test. The news of the long-expected and well-advertised German offensive reached Paris on the very evening of the day on which it started, March 21, 1918. Paris caught the news with a choking heart. The coup, which even her own military experts had frankly predicted as the turning point of the entire war, actually had come to pass. No wonder that the once gay capital of the French fairly held its breath in that unforgetable hour—that every other community of France, big or little, did the same—and fairly fought for news of the day's operations. Yet news gave little comfort. It was bad news, all of it; fearfully and unmistakably bad. Each succeeding courier seemed to bring enlarged statements of the enemy's immensity and seemingly irresistible force. It was indeed a real crisis.
In that hour of alarm and even of some real panic, our American Red Cross showed neither. It kept its cool and thinking head. Major James H. Perkins, then ranking as Red Cross Commissioner to Europe and a man whom you have met in earlier pages of this book, called a conference of his department heads on that very evening of the twenty-first of March. He told them quietly that they were to make known every resource at their command and to have each and every one of their workers—men or women—ready for call to any kind of service, night or day.
"Let every worker feel that on him or her individually may rest the fate of the allied cause," was the keynote of the simple orders that issued from this conference.
It was in the days that immediately followed that the flexibility and the emergency values of the American Red Cross organization—qualities that it had diligently set forth to attain within itself—came to their fullest test. The discipline and willingness of practically every worker was also under test, while for the very first time in all its history overseas it was given large opportunity to carry to the men of the allied lines a great material message.
How well was that material message carried?
Before I answer that point-blank question, let me carry you back a little time before that night of the spring equinox. Let me ask you to remember, if you will, that the super-structure of Red Cross effort in that critical hour had been laid many weeks before; in fact very soon after its original unit of eighteen men under command of Major Murphy had first arrived in France. It had experimented with the French, in definite and successful efforts to relieve the hard-pressed civilian population of that distressed country. It had worked, and worked hard, in the broad valleys of the Somme and the Oise, which had been devastated by the boche when he made his famous "strategic" retreat to the Hindenburg Line in March, 1917—just one year before.