June 1: 1 tortoise tent and 100 collapsible cots.
June 3: 12 antitoxin syringes for anti-tetanus serum, 200 packages of absorbent cotton, 30 feet of glass tubing, and 25 operating gowns and caps.
June 4: 250 single blankets, 100 litters, 5,000 anti-tetanus serum, 2 autoclaves, 4 thermometers for autoclaves, 50 wash cloths, 1,000 pairs of socks, 50 towels, and 200 comfort kits.
June 6: 50 clinical thermometers, 2,000 temperature charts, 1 gallon of green soap, 36 bottles of ammonia, 5,000 Greeley units, 20 syringes, 15 liters of Lysol, 20 chart holders, 100 rubber sheets, 2 small instrument sterilizers, 500 nightshirts, 500 blankets, 1,000 sheets, 500 forks and spoons, 100 bedside tables, 100 folding chairs, 50 hot-water bottles, 36 maps, 50 hand basins, 20 bolts of gauze, 10 bolts of muslin, 100 beds, and 100 mattresses.
June 7: 200 litters, 250 blankets, 100 rolls of cotton, 200 rolls of gauze, 144 rubber gloves, 100 operating gowns and caps, 96 tubes of catgut, 500 Carrel pads, 100 gowns for nurses, 20 sterile water containers, 5,000 folded gauze compresses, and 5,000 small sponges.
I rather feel that this record of a single week of the demands of one Division upon our Red Cross will show quite enough the burden which it was forced to bear; and bore most joyously as a part of the opportunity for service which was given unto it in France. In a single day and night during that same great offensive of 1918, 128 different requisitions—each comprising from one to fifty items—were started out on the road from Paris; while on the twentieth of August of that same summer—the day which marked the beginning of the St. Mihiel drive—120,000 front-line emergency parcels and more than fifteen carloads of surgical dressings were shipped to the scene of activity. From the Paris headquarters of the Red Cross alone, supplies were shipped that summer to sixty-six base hospitals, two naval-base hospitals, fifty-four camp hospitals, twenty-one convalescent hospitals, twenty army divisions, seven evacuation hospitals, nine field hospitals, eight hospital centers, nine mobile hospitals, six medical supply depots, and the central medical department laboratory—all of the United States Army in France. This great record does not, of course, include the supplies sent to the Red Cross's own hospitals or those sent to the A. E. F. hospitals from the nine zone headquarters of the American Red Cross; nor even emergency supplies sent to eighteen detached American Army units, far away from their bases of supplies. In a single month and from one warehouse, our Red Cross made the following shipments to formations operated entirely by our army: 77,101 surgical instruments, 2,820 beds and cots, 24,733,126 surgical dressings, and 15,300 pounds of drugs.
It also supplied specialties, and all for the comfort of our wounded boys over there. Take ice—that simple product of our modern civilization—so indispensable to the American. It is second nature with us to-day and yet little used by the French. Ice is as much an essential to our up-to-date hospitals as drugs or nurses or the beds themselves. Properly packed, it cools the fever and so greatly eases the sufferings of wounded men as they toss upon their cots. Its beverage use is too universal to even need comment here.
"My, that's good!" more than one sick boy murmured, as the nurse held a spoonful of it to his hot lips. "It's just like home."
Yet, while our government planned ice-making machinery for each of its hospitals, large or small, they were not always ready as quickly as the rest of the plant. There again our Red Cross stepped into the breach, supplying small portable ice-making plants not only to the field hospitals for which they were originally designed, but even for larger installations. Each of these portable plants consisted of a gasoline engine of fifteen horse power, water-cooled and attached to a compressor, which in turn was connected to the water piping in the brine tanks. The capacity of each of these was about two tons and a half each twenty-four hours. And each was accompanied by two Ford camionettes—builded with special ice boxes—to carry its product to the wards roundabout.
Second only to ice in importance as a hospital auxiliary was light. In the early years of the war, the surgeons of the allied nations worked under great difficulties at night and undoubtedly many lives were sacrificed because of the lack of proper lighting facilities. I have heard of the doctors ripping off a wounded man's clothing by the light of one star shell and waiting for the next to give them enough brilliancy to examine his injuries.