Every soldier has sewn under a corner of his coat a strip of rubber cloth. Under this strip is a piece of antiseptic gauze, a strip of bandage and plaster and cloth for the outer bandage. This cloth bears in simple pictures directions for dressing every sort of wound.
When a soldier is wounded either he or some comrade rips open this package and applies at once the life saving dressing, which will last at any rate until the soldier is brought to a station, where the first scientific attention is given.
Through this simple and inexpensive device thousands upon thousands of German soldiers, who have been slightly wounded in battle, have returned to their comrades within a few days completely well and have taken their places in the ranks once more. Without this care a large percentage of the wounds would become inflamed, as has been the case with hundreds of wounded French prisoners captured by the Germans.
The ordinary procedure of caring for the wounded in the German army is for the sanitary corps, which is well provided with stretchers and bandages, to gather up the wounded on or near the firing lines and bring them to a gathering point a little way behind the lines.
Here the army surgeons are ready to begin work at once upon the most urgent cases. They are assisted by members of the corps, who remove the temporary bandages, and put on dressings which will last until the soldier reaches a hospital. Then from this first gathering point the wounded soldiers are put on stretchers in Red Cross wagons and carried to the field hospitals a few miles farther back, where doctors and nurses are at work.
HOSPITALS IN VILLAGE CHURCHES
These hospitals are usually established in village churches or town halls. One room is cleared and arranged for an operating room, where bullets and pieces of shell are removed and amputations are made if necessary.
"I have just visited such a field hospital," said a correspondent with the right wing of the German army in France, writing on September 28. "It was in a little whitewashed village church heated by a stove. Everywhere were white beds made of straw and covered with sheets. Perhaps twenty wounded were here, including two captured Irishmen. They lay quite still when the army doctor ushered us in, for they were too seriously wounded to pay much attention to anything.
"Near this hospital was another in a town hall. While we were there a consulting surgeon arrived to investigate the condition of a seriously wounded lieutenant, whose leg might need amputation. Two orderlies put the patient on a stretcher, and he was taken into the next room for examination. Later in the day the amputation was performed.
MOVED TO HOSPITALS IN CITIES