A Surgeon in Arms

by R. J. Manion

The British were very early up and doing in the same manner, and not many months after Kitchener's Contemptibles—a name now revered in Britain—had made their heroic retreat from Mons, many well-equipped hospitals manned by Britons were doing excellent work behind the French lines.

It was my good fortune to serve at the beginning of 1915 in one of these, the Château de Rimberlieu, just three miles from the point at which the German lines came nearest to Paris, and seven miles north of Compiègne where a little over one hundred years ago Napoleon for the first time met Marie Louise of Austria when she came to replace the unhappy Josephine.

I obtained the position after much searching for an opportunity to be of service. Going across from New York to London I had been refused a position by the British unless I could enlist, which personal reasons prevented at the time. Then, after two days interviewing, taxicabbing, viséing, pleading, and explaining, I obtained a permit to go to France. At Boulogne the authorities of the British Red Cross and St. Johns Ambulance Association told me they were oversupplied with surgeons and I decided to go to Amiens, where I had a surgical friend.

I could not get away till the following morning, so I spent the afternoon wandering about. The streets were filled with a cosmopolitan throng of soldiers of all shades of color—white, black, and brown—and of various nationalities, British and Canadian Tommies in their khaki, French poilus in their blue-gray uniforms, Ghurkas from India in their picturesque dress, and French Soudanese with strange accouterments. The better hotels were all occupied by the military authorities as headquarters, and the harbor was filled with hospital ships and transports. Walking about the streets one had to look sharp to avoid being run down by hurrying Red Cross ambulances or lumbering motor lorries.

I strolled to the beach, where on the sands Tommies were lounging, gazing longingly across at the shores of England, dimly visible in the distance. One of the soldiers turned to me with a smile and said:

"I was just taking a last look at the old 'ome, sir. Of course, I 'opes to see it again sometime if I don't 'appen to stop somethink." And it was all said most cheerfully. I added my wishes for his luck to his own.

On the slow train from Boulogne to Amiens we passed many military camps with their white tents in orderly rows. Here and there oxen were being used by old men and women on their farms, and in one little brook some boys were fishing. I could hardly believe that forty miles or less away two armies of millions of men were contending for the mastery, with civilization depending on the outcome. When, later, I was much nearer to the front I was struck again and again by the matter-of-fact manner in which the French peasant accepts his or her military surroundings. He works coolly in fields into which at times enemy shells are dropping, or over which long range guns are firing into some semi-ruined town of Northern France. Something which is always a cause of wonder and admiration to the observer is that, despite the fact that all the young and able Frenchmen are in the trenches, the women, old men and children who remain succeed in cultivating the farmlands of France right up to the lines.

At Amiens my surgeon friend, who had over twelve hundred war operations to his credit in the past six months, much regretted that I could not be used at the moment,—much regretted; but still regretted. I began to feel that the gods of ill luck were camping on my trail. I went on to Paris. Here my letters of introduction were looked at with anxiety and I with suspicion, for in the early months of the war some foreign surgeons were found to be giving information to the enemy. At any rate, though courtesies and promises were showered upon me, I remained a useless guest at my hotel in the Rue de Rivoli until I reached an almost desperate stage, realizing that, though surgeons were urgently needed, I could not be of service.

Sickly visions of returning home after a futile attempt to be of use came to me, when suddenly luck changed. The director of the Ambulance Anglo-Française in the Château de Rimberlieu came to Paris in search of assistance. Being an Englishman, he looked in at the British Red Cross in the Avenue d'Ièna where they told him of this forlorn Canadian who had been haunting their offices, but of whom they had lost track. By a bit of luck their commanding officer met me that afternoon on the Place de l'Opéra, and gave me the director's address at the Hotel de Crillon. I hurried at once to call upon him, and offered to take any position from chauffeur to surgeon. There is a biblical quotation that the meek are blessed, for they shall inherit the earth. I inherited the surgeoncy—not a lucrative inheritance, it must be admitted, for it carried no salary, no railway fares, no uniform, all of which must be supplied by the inheritor.

After obtaining a sauf conduit from the military authorities to take me as far as Creille, I left on the train that afternoon for Compiègne, sixty miles to the north, accompanied by an affable young Red Cross orderly, of English parents and Paris birth, who in civil life was a drygoods salesman. At Creille, which was the beginning of the war zone, our troubles began. I was in civilian dress, my uniform not yet being completed. The French military officers here were almost adamant. My passport, director's letter, Red Cross authority, all proved of no avail to get me further. Rather strangely, the letter which obtained the desired permission to proceed was an ordinary letter of introduction from a prominent French Canadian parliamentarian which I had in my pocket.