But just the same the doughboy was proud to see the 310th Engineers cited as a unit by General Ironside who called the 310th Engineers the best unit, bar none, that he had ever seen soldier in any land. He knows that without the sturdy and resourceful engineer boys with him in North Russia the defense against the Bolshevik army would have been impossible.
XXVI
“COME GET YOUR PILLS”
Medical Units Do Fine Work—Volunteers Of Old Detroit Red Cross Number Eight Appear In North Russia As 337th Ambulance—Some Unforgettable Stories That Make Our Teeth Grit—Wonderful Work Of 337th Field Hospital Unit—Death Of Powers—Medical Men Do Heroic Duty.
Owing to the nature of the country in which the campaign was fought, the 337th Ambulance Company was not able to function as an ambulance company proper. It was split up into fifteen detachments serving in various parts of the area under conditions exactly as difficult as those described for the medical and hospital units. In fact, the three companies of men—medical, hospital, and ambulance—who ministered to the needs of the wounded and sick were very soon hopelessly mixed up on the various fronts.
At first among the officers there were some heart-burnings as to the apparent incongruity of a hospital man doing field duty and an ambulance man doing hospital duty and so forth, but their American sense of humor and of humanity soon had each doing his level best wherever he might be found, whether under American or British senior officers or none. The writer remembers many a medical—or was he hospital or ambulance—man that did effective and sympathetic field service to wounded comrades with no medical officer to guide the work.
The 337th Ambulance Company was originally a volunteer outfit known as No. 8 Red Cross Ambulance Company of Detroit. Early in the history of the 85th Division it came to Camp Custer and was trained for duty overseas. After a month in the Archangel field several national army men were transferred to fill up again its depleted ranks.
It was the commanding officer of this Ambulance Company, Captain Rosenfeld, who, though too strict to be popular with his outfit, was held in very high esteem by the doughboys for his vigilant attention to them. It was a sight to see him with his dope bottle of cough syrup going from post to post dosing the men who needed it. He will not be forgotten by the man who was stricken with acute appendicitis at a post where no medical detachment was stationed. He commandeered an engine and box car and ran out to the place and took the man into the field hospital himself and operated inside an hour, saving the man’s life. For his gallantry in going to treat wounded men at posts which were under fire, the French commander remembered him with a citation. He is the officer whom the Bolshevik artillery tried to snipe with three-inch shells, as he passed from post to post during a quiet time at Verst 445.
At Yemetskoe in February, one night just after the terrible retreat from Shenkursk, forty wounded American, British, and Russian soldiers lay on stretchers on the floor in British field hospital. They were just in from the evacuation from Shenkursk front, cold and faint from hunger. There was no American medical personnel at that village. They were all at the front. Mess Sgt. Vincent of “F” Company went in to see how the wounded soldiers were getting along. He was just in time to see the British medical sergeant come in with a pitcher of tea, tin cups, hard tack, and margarine and jam. He put it on the floor and said; “Here is your supper; go to it.”
Sgt. Vincent protested to the English sergeant that the supper was not fit for wounded men and that they should be helped to take their food. The British sergeant swore at him, kicked him out of the hospital and reported him to the British medical officer who attempted, vainly, to put the outraged American sergeant under arrest.
Sergeant Vincent then reported the matter to Captain Ramsay of “F” Company, who ordered him to use “F” Company funds to buy foods at the British N. A. C. B. canteen. This, with what the Y. M. C. A. gave the sergeant, enabled him to feed the American and Russian wounded the day that they rested there. This deed was done repeatedly by Mess Sgt. Vincent during those dreadful days. In all, he took care of over three hundred sick and wounded Americans and Russians that passed back from the fighting lines through Yemetskoe.