There is in general such a lack of adequate service for the wounded that to work with the Ambulance Corps and thus contribute one’s mite of helpfulness is almost a duty for any American who can spare even a few weeks of time. When one has seen thousands of wounded, as I saw them at the Battle of the Marne, lying for three and four days in the rain without food, drink, or any medical aid, one is irresistibly driven to do something to diminish such terrible suffering. Many young Americans are feeling the same impulse and volunteers for ambulance service are numerous. Appeals for additional ambulance cars, moreover, have received generous response from America. It is estimated that an ambulance costing $1500 will, before it wears out, carry two thousand wounded to hospitals and help the surgeons to save four hundred lives which otherwise must die from lack of prompt attention.
Sunday, November 1st. The last four days have been spent in accomplishing as many as possible of the necessary preliminaries incidental to joining the American Ambulance. They include being vaccinated, certifying whether one has had typhoid, getting measured and fitted for a uniform, being presented to the various officers, going through a lot of formalities leading to the possession of a French chauffeur’s license, filling out parentage and enlistment blanks, and getting proper written introductions and identifications. All these steps have entailed a good deal of rather necessary “red tape,” for in war time it is essential to prove every step in order to avoid “mistakes.”
The equipment of the members of the corps consists of a khaki uniform of very heavy woolen cloth, a khaki overcoat, a fatigue cap, heavy flannel shirts, a khaki necktie, tan puttees, tan shoes, and a tan slicker. The members of the Ambulance obtain this outfit for the surprisingly small sum of forty-seven dollars, each paying for his own equipment.
At odd moments I have been put through stretcher-drill and given rudimentary first-aid instruction. This afternoon and evening I was sent as an orderly on an ambulance running to the suburban station of Aubervilliers at which trains of wounded make a brief stop on their way from the front to the home hospitals in the south of France. It is from this station that the American Hospital receives its patients, invariably cases whose condition is so grave that they are thought to be incapable of enduring further travel without fatal results.
Upon entering the service of the Ambulance all volunteers, no matter what their ultimate position is to be, are required to attain a certain efficiency and practical knowledge in the actual handling of wounded. I am now taking my turn at this service. One train of ambulances is always stationed in Paris and carries wounded from the Aubervilliers station to the various city hospitals. This train is manned by the latest recruits, who there undergo training, being meanwhile carefully observed by the staff officers. The majority of them prove to be good material, and in from two to six weeks are sent to the front, while those who are not judged to be reliable are replaced by new volunteers. Candidates are not required to agree to any definite length of enlistment but are at liberty to leave whenever they so elect. On the other hand, the chiefs of the Ambulance Corps make no promises to send any volunteer to the front but reserve the right to select only those men who have first proved themselves fit for such great responsibility.
Field ambulances are virtually all alike and as a rule hold four stretchers in two tiers. In front are seats for the driver and his orderly, and behind is a boxlike body eight feet long with wooden roof and floor and canvas sides. From the back of the ambulance a wounded man on his stretcher is slid into place as a bread pan is slid into an oven, the feet of the stretcher running on wooden rails. In starting out to collect the wounded an ambulance carries its full quota of stretchers. When a man is picked up from the field of battle one of these is taken out and he is carefully lifted on it; if he is already lying on a stretcher he is not changed but, in order to save unnecessary suffering, put into the ambulance with the one on which he is already resting,—an empty one being left behind in exchange. In order that this process may always be feasible it is necessary that all stretchers should be interchangeable; the Minister of War has, therefore, decreed that a standard stretcher called “Branquard réglementaire,” and no other, must be used throughout the French armies.
As the number of casualties has been overwhelmingly and unexpectedly large, the French have not up to date been able to give proper care to their wounded. It is not uncommon for wounded men en route from the front to be on trains for three and four days, virtually uncared for, and usually without anything to eat. Such trains finally arrive in Paris freighted with death and madness, with gangrene and lockjaw. I today saw two men who had been wounded a month ago and were still in the clothes in which they had fought.