The great need of this service in the French hospitals was shown in the extensions of the plan. In several instances where a United States Army hospital unit was stationed near a French one, the American patients were gradually evacuated to it, our Red Cross nurses being retained on duty as long as was necessary. There were, of course, many of these American hospitals—some of which you shall come to see before you are finished with the pages of this book. In all of these our Red Cross functioned, both in the furnishing of many of their supplies as well as in the giving of entertainment to their patients. Of all these things, more in good time. Consider now, if you please, the distinctive Red Cross hospitals themselves—some of which long preceded in France the coming of the larger regulation hospitals of the United Sates Army.
The first of these great institutions of our own Red Cross to be secured over there—it bore the distinctive serial title of Number One—was located in the Neuilly suburban district of Paris. It was a handsome modern structure of brick—a building which had been erected for use as a boarding school or college. It was barely completed at the time of the first outbreak of the Great War, and so was easily secured by a group of patriotic Americans in Paris and,—then designated as the American Ambulance Hospital,—placed at the service of the French, who then were in grievous need of such assistance. When we came into the war, this hospital, which contained between five and six hundred beds, was put under the United States Army and the American Red Cross and turned over to the Red Cross for actual operation.
American Red Cross Hospital Number Two—a private institution of the highest class—was formerly well known to the American colony in Paris as Dr. Blake's. Like the Number One, it was one of the chief means by which the Stars and Stripes was kept flying in Europe throughout the early years of the war. It not only contained three hundred beds, but a huge Red Cross research laboratory, where a corps of bacteriologists was quickly put to work under the general control of the Surgeon General's office of the army and making valuable investigations, records, and summaries for the American medical profession for many years to come.
Number Three, on the left bank of the Seine, was for a time known as the Reid Hospital. It was at one time a home or dormitory for girl art students in Paris. Later it was transformed into a hospital by Mrs. Whitelaw Reid of New York, who gave it, furnished and equipped, to the American Red Cross and arranged to pay practically all its running expenses. It was a comparatively small establishment of eighty beds, which were reserved almost entirely for officers, and personnel of our Red Cross.
From this most modest nucleus there was both steady and rapid growth until, at the time of the signing of the armistice, there were not three but eight of the American Red Cross Military Hospitals: the three of which you have just read; Number One in Neuilly; Number Two (Dr. Blake's) in Rue Piccini; Number Three (the Reid Hospital) in the Rue de Chevreuse; Number Five, the tent institution which sprang up on the famous Bois de Boulogne race course at Auteuil; Number Six at Bellevue; Number Seven at Juilly; Number Eight at Malabry (these last three in the suburbs of Paris), and Number Nine in the Boulevard des Batignoles, within the limits of the city itself.
The so-called American Red Cross hospitals were generally somewhat smaller. They were Number 100 at Beaucaillou, St. Julien in the Gironde, Number 101 at Neuilly, Number 102 at Neufchâteau, Number 103 also at Neuilly, Number 104 at Beauvais, with an annex at Chantilly, Number 105 at Juilly, Number 109 at Evreux, and Number 113, the Czecho-Slovak Hospital, at Cognac. In addition to these there was a further group of smaller hospitals, which were operated in the same way as the American Red Cross military hospitals. These included Number 107 at Jouy-sur-Morin, Number 110 at Villers-Daucourt, Number 111 at Château-Thierry, Number 112 in the Rue Boileau, Paris, Evacuation Hospital Number 114 at Fleury-sur-Aire in the Vosges, Base Hospital Number 41 at St. Denis, and Base Hospital No. 82 at Toul. While outside of all of these lists were three small institutions in Paris, operated in coöperation with the French, but far too unimportant to be listed here.
There were twenty-six of these American Red Cross hospitals of one form or another established in France through the war. Yet, impressive as this list might seem to be at a first glance, it, of course, falls far short of the great total of the regular base and evacuation hospitals set up by the Medical Corps of our army throughout France and the occupied districts of Germany. Yet even these, as we shall see presently, were constantly dependent upon the functioning of our Red Cross. And, after all, it was chiefly a question of the mere form of organization.
"Form?" said Colonel Burlingame to me that same evening as we sat together in Paris. "What do you mean by form? There is no such thing—not in war, at any event. When they used to come to me with their red tape tangles I would bring them up with a quick turn, saying: 'See here, the Red Cross is not engaged in winning the war for the Allies, or even for the good old U. S. A. We are here to help the United States win the war.'"
Not such a fine distinction as it might first seem to be.