PRISONERS OF WAR
I want to be a doctor, that's why when the war came I turned to the Hospital Corps. I had heard of the advantages you derive from the instruction and the experience you get in that branch of service, and, besides, I liked the crowd of men going in for it. One high school had its whole football team in the corps. I figured if it was good enough for a star quarter-back it was good enough for yours truly.
I went in as an apprentice, of course, but I soon got onto the fact that I needn't stay one for the rest of my life if I really wanted to get ahead. Naturally it meant work and lots of it, but why stay in the "pick-and-shovel" class if you don't have to?
You see, advancement entailed certain responsibility. To be a pharmacist's mate third class, you are supposed to be of immediate value to the medical officer in the sick bay of a ship. Once you are a pharmacist's mate second class, you are supposed to take charge of a Hospital Corps man's work on board ship, and in case the medical officer is away for the time being. But to be a pharmacist mate first class, it may be up to you to take charge of the medical department of a ship to which no medical officer is attached.
I went to it. I don't suppose I ever worked so hard in my entire life. But I didn't see the use of being in a corps and staying down in the coal hole when there was plenty of room on top.
Our duties could be summed up briefly: we nursed the sick, and administered first aid to accident cases. Some of us were to accompany expeditionary forces to the front and give first aid to the wounded, beside assisting at surgical operations. That was about all we had to do, except to look after the medical stores and property, and know all there was to know about compounding medicine.
But one of the things I liked best about it was a certain fact that was brought out strongly—we were in the service to save lives. Get that into your head! It was drummed into ours. We began to think we were privileged people because, while we were in the war, it just happened to be our job to save life instead of taking it.
I don't mean by that that we wouldn't relish a chance to get a crack at Fritz, the killer of women and babes, but our official task happened to be helping poor chaps back who had been laid low by a piece of Hun steel.
Once I had got my rating, I was told to report for duty on a destroyer. That just about suited me. I had been scared to death that they'd hold me at a base hospital, with no chance to cross the briny deep, and I went in search of my chum to say good-bye.