There were not enough medical officers, hospital corps men, or nurses; but they made up for their lack of numbers under the most appealing of calls by giving the limit of their strength, no less than the soldiers. The honors to the womanhood which served in France go to our trained nurses in the army service. They did not report to a Paris headquarters when they arrived from home, but were hurried to their destinations on army travel orders; they knew none of the diversions of working in canteens or of automobile rides about the front. For weeks on end they were restricted to hospital areas; they were soldiers under army discipline, in every sense of the word. They had not only kindness in their hearts, but they knew how to be kind; they not only wanted to do, but knew how to do.
How their competency shone beside the frittering superficiality of volunteers who had not even been taught by their mothers to sew, or cook, or look misery in any form in the face, but who felt that they must reach France in some way in order to help, or rather to be helped! It was the difference between the sturdy workhorse drawing a load upgrade, and a rosette of ribbons on the bridle; between the cloth that keeps out the cold, and the flounce on the skirt; between knowing how to bathe a sick man, put a fresh bandage on his wound, move him gently, and what to say to cheer him; and knowing how to take a chocolate out of a box daintily. There was no time for ribbons or flounces during our greatest battle. We rarely had candy from the commissary, which fact however did require self-abnegation on the part of a few of the least serviceable of auxiliary workers, which might lead them to think that they were doing their bit.
Hollow-eyed nurses, driving into bodies aching with fatigue no less energy of will than the exhausted battalions in their charges, kept the faith with smiles, which were their camouflage for cheeks pale from want of sleep. They often worked double the time that they would in hospitals at home, where they had their home comforts and diversions. When a soldier, with drawn, ashen face from loss of blood, reeking still with the grime of the battlefield, came into a ward, an American woman, who knew his ways and his tongue, was waiting to attend upon such cases as his. When he was bathed and shaved and his wound dressed, and he lay back glowing in cleanliness on his cot, his gratitude gave the nurse renewed strength.
After I had returned home, I heard one day on an elevated train a young woman telling, in radiant importance, of her "wonderful experience" as an auxiliary worker of the type to which I have referred, and of all the officers she had met. Seated near her were two nurses in uniform, furtively watching her between glances at each other. There were lines in their faces, though not in hers—lines left by their service. What she was saying went very well with her friends, but not with us who know something of who won the war in France. Many of these nurses—working double shifts in a calling which is short-lived for those who pursue it for any length of time—will not recover from the strain on mind and body of the generous giving of the only capital that most of them had. If you were not in France—in case you were and were wounded, you need no reminder—when you meet a woman who was in France, ask if she were an army nurse. If she says that she was, then you may have met a person who deserves to outrank some gentlemen I know who have stars on their shoulders.
Then there were the chaplains. General Pershing had his own ideas on the subject. The chaplain was simply to be the man of God, the ministrant of religion, the moral companion without regard to theological faith, who might show, under fire, his greater faith in the souls of men fighting for a cause.
Bishop Brent, the chief chaplain, was not a militant churchman, but a man of the gospel militant; and so was Father Doherty, on his right hand, and all the other chiefs. You ceased to ask whether a man was Catholic or Protestant, Baptist or Methodist, Christian or Jewish. Clergymen at home might wonder about this, but they would not after they had served for a while as our chaplains served, close to the blood-stained gas-saturated earth, with the eternal mystery of the sky overhead. The chief chaplains were hard disciplinarians. The punishment which they meted out to one chaplain who strayed from the straight and narrow path was not comprised in army regulations. "Wasn't he a chaplain?" the chaplains argued. Hardest of all on him were the men of his own church. He had disgraced his church as well as his fellows.
Yet despite the chaplains the men developed the habit of swearing; soldiers always have. War requires emphatic expressions. It destroys flexibility of expression—and "damn" and "hell" do seem the fittest description of a soldier's occupation.
"It's an innocent kind of swearing, though," said a chaplain. "It does not really blaspheme. It may help them in fighting the battle of the Lord against the German."
In the assignment of chaplains, of course, the plan was to place a Catholic with a regiment which was preponderantly Catholic; a Protestant with a regiment that was preponderantly Protestant; a rabbi with a regiment that had many Jews. When it was reported that the majority of the men of a certain regiment were not of the same church as their chaplain, a transfer was recommended. The colonel wanted to keep his chaplain, and suggested that he put the question to a vote, which he did: with the result that all the men of the regiment declared themselves of the same faith as their chaplain. This chaplain's religion, as it worked out in the daily association of the drudgery of drill and the savage ruck of battle, was quite good enough for them, without regard to the theological label he bore. He had faith, simply faith, and he gave them faith through his own work.
Division commanders who were not religious men, but hard-hitting fighters, thinking only of battle efficiency, used always to be asking for more chaplains. I recollect during the Meuse-Argonne battle a division commander exclaiming: "Why don't we get more chaplain replacements? I'm right up against it in my division. I've had one killed and one wounded in the last two days. I'm going to recommend both for the Cross, but there's nobody come to take their places. You stir them up on this question at Headquarters."