American doctors and American nurses, both by their skill and care and tenderness, nursed that little fellow back to complete recovery, made him remember everything and shortly afterward, well and cured, he started back, safe and sound, to his home in Tennessee.
Nothing I can ever say will overstate my estimation of the credit that is deserved by our American doctors and nurses for the great work they are doing. I am not alone in knowing this. I call to witness any Canadian, Englishman or Frenchman, that, if he is wounded, when in the ambulance, he usually voices one request, "Take me to an American hospital."
I knew of one man who entered that United States Military Base Hospital near Paris, with one bullet through the shoulder, another through an arm, an eye shot out and a compound fracture of the skull, and those American doctors and nurses by their attention and skilfulness made it possible for him to step back into boots and breeches and walk out of the hospital in ten days.
It so happens that I am somewhat familiar with the details in that case because I am the man.
CHAPTER XIX
"JULY 18TH"—THE TURN OF THE TIDE
Through the steady growth of Marshal Foch's reserves, by the speedy arrival of American forces, the fourth German offensive of 1918, the personally directed effort launched by the Crown Prince on May 27th, had been brought to a standstill.
The German thrust toward Paris had been stopped by the Americans at Château-Thierry and in the Bois de Belleau. It would be an injustice not to record the great part played in that fighting by the French Army attacked, but it would be equally unjust not to specify as the French have gallantly done, that it was the timely arrival of American strength that swung the balance against the enemy. For the remainder of that month of June and up to the middle of July, the fighting was considered local in its character.
The German offensive had succeeded in pushing forward the enemy front until it formed a loop extending southward from the Aisne to the Valley of the Marne. This salient was called the Château-Thierry pocket. The line ran southward from a point east of Soissons to Château-Thierry, where it touched the Marne, thence eastward along both sides of the river to the vicinity of Oeuilly where it recrossed the Marne and extended northward to points beyond Rheims.