The work of preparation was at its height when a doctor from the American hospital walked in. Upon the outbreak of the war, the American colony in Paris had organised their fine hospital in the Lycée at Neuilly and had established a fleet of ambulances. Their ambulances enabled them to carry hundreds of men from the fighting line in to Paris. Both French and British wounded were in terrible straits; for there was no organised motor transport service, and the Armies depended on the railways for the removal of the sick and injured. The long delays and the conditions under which the men lay whilst waiting for removal were fatal, and the American service was the means of saving numbers of lives.
When trains were available the wounded were packed into them and despatched to distant places in the interior. As they passed Paris, those who were so severely wounded that they were unlikely to survive a long journey were left at the stations on the Circle Railway round the city. There they would lie on straw or sacks, waiting for friendly ambulances to come out and bring them in.
In those first weeks there was no system of communication between the hospitals and the stations; the French ambulances were small and bad, and the British had none available for Paris. The matter depended largely upon individual effort, and the ambulances of the American and other voluntary hospitals played a devoted and humanitarian part.
The doctor from Neuilly was in charge of the ambulance service. The American hospital was already very full of French and British, but, in response to a message which he had received, he was sending out his cars that day, and he hoped that there might be beds ready for some of the cases at ‘Claridge’s.’
‘How many can you take?’ he asked.
‘We can take twenty-four this afternoon and another twenty-six to-night,’ replied Dr. Murray, well knowing that the baggage was still at the station, and conscious of the expression on the faces of those who heard her.
‘Good! Will you take officers?’ he said.
‘Yes. We have a ward for officers,’ she answered, remembering for the first time that officers get wounded as well as men, and that no special pyjamas or cambric handkerchiefs had been included in the equipment!
‘Well, I shall bring officers,’ he said; ‘British ladies are the right people to look after British officers.’ And remarking that he only brought in severe cases, and that they would all need immediate operations, he left the stall to face the inadequacy of their preparations from the officer’s point of view.
‘At any rate, they’ll have lovely beds, if nothing else,’ Orderly Campbell remarked, with a reassuring laugh.