"From these little field hospitals, as soon as the men can be moved, they are taken to some general hospital in the nearest large city, where several thousands can be cared for. Such a hospital exists in this neighborhood in the building of a normal college, where every corner is used in housing wounded men.
"I made a quick trip through this building and the memory of it is one of the most heartrending pictures I have of the war. Room after room was filled with the victims of the conflict. Every man was seriously wounded. Some had suffered amputations and the heads of others were so bandaged that no feature could be seen, only a tube to the nose permitting breathing.
HORROR IN HOSPITAL SIGHTS
"In one room a surgeon had a soldier on the operating table and was pulling pieces of shell from a huge hole in the inner side of one of his legs. On a stretcher on the floor, waiting for his turn to come under the surgeon's care, was an officer. His face was covered with blood, he was waving his arms wildly and gasping for air. This scene left an impression of the utmost horror upon me.
"Slightly wounded soldiers, whom it is not necessary to leave for a while in the field hospitals, are sent directly to these larger hospitals and thence, after a short convalescence, are loaded into Red Cross trains and sent home for recovery. Later they return to take their places in the regiments. Such trains can be seen daily along any main line of railroad. In some cases freight cars with straw bedding are used.
"One of the finest examples of charity given during the war is a splendid Red Cross train entirely equipped as a modern hospital, even having a first class operating room. This was given to the German army by the citizens of Wilmersdorff, who also employed an excellent surgeon. Scores of lives will be saved through a small outlay of money.
GRAVEYARDS ON BATTLEFIELDS
"Near the large hospital I visited was a graveyard where there were scores of neatly marked fresh graves, each bearing a cross or tablet with the name of the soldier and his regiment, division and corps marked on it. In some cases comrades had added a word or two of scripture. The deaths are too numerous for an imposing ceremony at each burial, but for every one an army chaplain reads scripture and offers a short prayer, while a few comrades stand by with bared heads.
"The identity of each soldier is easily determined from the name plate which he wears in a little leather purse suspended from around the neck. After a battle these plates are gathered from the dead and from these the death lists are made out. [It was said that after the battle of the Marne no fewer than 68,000 of these name plates or tags were found collected in one place.—Ed.]
"After a battle where the deaths mount into the thousands some field will be shut off for a cemetery and there the bodies are buried, each grave receiving some kind of a cross wherever it is possible, but here no names can be attached. There will be many homes in which there will be vacant places and where it will not even be known where the absent ones are buried.