"That was our principle and we stuck by it," continued Burlingame. "And any one who deviated from it got bumped, and bumped hard."
You could trust the young military surgeon for that, just as his own superior officers could trust him to produce results, time and time again. For instance there was that week in July when the news came to him—through an entirely unofficial but highly authentic channel—that the First and Second Divisions of the United States Army were going to be used somewhere near Château-Thierry as shock troops against the continued German drive. For weeks past he had been carefully watching the big war map of France that hung upon the wall of his office, indicating upon it with tiny pin flags the steady oncoming of the enemy. And in all those weeks he had been making pretty steady and definite plans against the hour when he would be called upon to act, and to act quickly.
Already he had formed that habit of quick action. Once, it was the seventeenth of June, I think, he had had good opportunity to use it. The First and Second were already in action along the Marne, brigaded with the French, and Burlingame was driving along the rear of their positions. But he supposed that the Divisions were in reserve; he did not realize that it was in actual fighting, not at least until he espied a dust-covered and wounded American quartermaster sergeant staggering down the road. The Red Cross man stopped his car and put the wounded man into it.
"What are you doing here?" he demanded.
"I got hit—with a machine gun," stated the sergeant. "That is, I was with the machine gun. I'd never seen one of the d——d things before, but we were fighting. I got a squad around me and we tackled it. We were making the old bus hum when—well, they tickled me with a lot of shrapnel."
Burlingame waited for no further explanations. He headed his car around and at top speed raced back to Paris. As he rode he studied a pocket map that he always had with him. Montmirial! That was the place he had set out in his mental plans for this sort of emergency; in just this sort of an emergency.
The stop at Paris was short; just long enough to load some fifteen tons of hospital supplies in the swiftest trucks Major Osborne's Transportation Department could supply, to pick up the highly capable Miss Julia Stimson—then chief nurse of the American Red Cross—then off to the front once again. Beyond the fact that the emergency hospital would be somewhere in the neighborhood of Montmirial, the destination of the swift-moving caravan was quite uncertain. Burlingame and Miss Stimson were both route makers and pace makers. They led the way right up behind the front-line positions, to the chief surgeon of that portion of the French Army with which the First Division was then brigaded. An American colonel was talking to a Frenchman at the moment.
"We're here," reported Burlingame.
"Who's we?" asked the Yankee officer.
"The emergency hospital of the American Red Cross," was the instant reply.