Four to the ambulance came the wounded into that haven of Neuilly. Many of them were terribly wounded indeed; and practically none of them had had more attention than hurriedly applied first-aid dressing. But the appalling factor was not alone the seriousness of the wounds, but the mere numbers of the wounded. They came in such numbers that at times during those four eventful July evenings the floors of all the rooms of the hospital—even the hallways and the garage—literally were covered with stretchers. No wonder that the regular personnel of the place, even though steadily increased for some months past, was unable to cope with the crisis. Without the help of Kellogg and eight or nine other emergency helpers from other ranks of the American Red Cross it is quite possible that it would have collapsed entirely.
Captain Kellogg's emergency task at Neuilly ended early in the morning of the twenty-second; but there was no rest or respite in sight for him. That very day a Red Cross captain stopped him at headquarters and asked him if he was free.
"I guess so," grinned Kellogg.
"Then come out to Crépy and help us out," said the other American Red Cross man. "We're in a good deal of a mess there."
"All right," was the reply. "I'm ready whenever you are."
He grinned again. He realized his own predicament. He had not yet been assigned to any definite department; in fact, although he had given up his precious American passport, he had not yet received the equally precious "Red Cross Worker's Card," which was issued to all the war workers in France and which was of infinite value to them in getting about that sentry-infested land. He had no more identification papers than a rabbit and realized that he might easily find himself in a deal of trouble. Yet within the half hour he had packed his small musette and grabbing up two blankets was on his way in an automobile toward the front. He reached Crépy at about six o'clock that evening and reported to Major Brown, of the Red Cross.
"He was called major," says Kellogg, as he describes the incident, "but he wore nothing to indicate his rank and I never did find out just what he was. He left for Paris the following day to get supplies, but he never returned, nor did I hear from him again. There was nothing for us to do that night and absolutely no provision for us. We obtained coffee from a French Army kitchen and slept in a wheat field in the rain, with our sole shelter a bit of canvas tied to the rear of our car."
There may be folk who imagine that war is all organization—certain historians seemingly have done their best to create such an illusion. But the men who have been upon the trench lines and in the fields of open battle know better. They know that even well-organized armies, to say nothing of the Red Cross and other equally well-organized and disciplined auxiliaries, cannot function at the fullness of their mechanical processes in the super-emergency of battle. There it is that individual effort regains its ancient prestige and men are men, rather than the mere human units of a colossal organization. Yet brilliant as individual effort becomes, all organization is rarely lost. And so Kellogg, in the deadening rain of that July night, found the situation at Crépy about as follows: Two American evacuation hospitals—Numbers Five and Thirteen—and a French one, located in the thick woods some four miles distant from the town, which in turn was used as an evacuating point for all of them—this meant that the patients were brought in ambulances from these outlying hospitals to Crépy and there placed on hospital trains, bound for Paris and other base-hospital centers. The theory of such operation is both obvious and good. But in the super-emergency of the third week of July, 1918, theory broke down under practice. The evacuation hospitals in the woods received newly wounded men in such numbers that they were obliged to clear those who had received their first aid dressings with an unprecedented rapidity. And this rapidity was quite too fast for the limited facilities of the hospital trains; which meant congestion and much trouble at the Crépy railhead—which was the precise place where Captain Kellogg of our American Red Cross found himself early in the morning of the twenty-third day of July.
"There was I," continues Kellogg, as he relates the narrative of his personal experiences, "with Brown gone to Paris and no instructions whatsoever left for me. But I didn't need any instructions—not after that first bunch of wounded fellows came up there to the railhead—at just a little before noon. There were perhaps three hundred of them, and while they were waiting for the hospital trains they lay there in the open—and it was raining—their stretchers in long rows, resting on the cinders alongside the railroad tracks. I had secured a supply of cigarettes, sweet chocolate, cookies, and bouillon cubes from a stock left by Brown. I made a soup for the men and, with the help of some of the litter bearers, distributed it and did what else I could for their comfort. When the train came in and it was time to move the wounded upon it, we found that we did not have nearly enough stretcher bearers. So I went into the town and recruited a number of volunteers among the soldiers—including several officers. That night I left my supplies in the office of the French Railway Transport officer in the station and, with a stretcher for a bed, found a place to sleep in what had been left of a bombed house."