Some time before the Prussians had closed in upon us it was ordered that the useless mouths (bouches inutiles) should leave the city. Of course thousands left. We who remained expected we should have to go into the ranks. I liked the excitement of the thing, and stayed through it all. Meanwhile, Dr. John Swinburne, who was formerly, I believe, a health officer of New York, had been invited to take charge of the American hospital at Paris. Dr. Evans's tents were pitched in the Avenue de l'Impératrice, in the place where the dog-show used to be. This was our headquarters all through the siege, though at last, as winter came on, the tents were not large or comfortable enough to hold the wounded, and so we built barracks there. George Kidder, Will Dreyer and I joined the corps together. My first service was to beg Bowles Brothers' American flag and hoist it over our tents. Then our duties consisted for a while in loafing about the grounds, driving tent pegs, greasing the wagons and drawing up rules for our own government, for there was no fighting just then. Those were the bright, sunny days of September. Montretout and Châtillon had been taken, the Zouaves had disgraced themselves, and we were utterly cut off from the world. We elected two captains. One was William B. Bowles, and the other Joseph K. Riggs of Washington. They were to serve on alternate days.
One morning we went down in our wagons, drawn by horses belonging to members of our corps, and reported to the "International Society for the Aid of the Wounded." We found them at the Palais d'Industrie. They did not think much of us, as we could not help perceiving, but they finally consented to let us go out at the first sortie—namely, that of Villejuif, when the French tried to take the villages of Thiais and L'Hay. We got upon the field just as the firing was over. The French had taken one village at the point of the bayonet, but at last they had retired so precipitately that they had left their wounded in the Prussian lines. There the poor fellows lay, in among the yellow wheat, with great well-fed Prussians prancing around them on horseback. It was a terrible scene, especially to me, being the first of the kind I had ever seen. But after a while I was so busy with the others, picking up the wounded and burying the dead, that somehow I lost my first overwhelming sense of the horror of the spectacle.
We smelt our first powder—that is, a few stray balls came among us—at Châtillon. Returning from this latter fight, we saw the burning of the palace of St. Cloud. It was a beautiful October sunset and evening, and the sight was indescribably grand.
You will, however, get a better idea of our share in a sortie if I tell you more particularly of the next one, that of Malmaison. It was there, in fact, that we began to make our reputation. This was the sortie fraught with most real danger to the Germans. They had not then had time to establish their lines, and if the attack had been followed up with more men, the French, it is thought, might have taken Versailles and cut the enemy's line of communication. As it was, the Prussians had everything packed and horses saddled, ready to leave Versailles at a moment's notice. Ur. Sarazin, chief surgeon of Ducrot's corps, had asked us to rendezvous at the Rond Point de Courbevoie, just behind Mont Valérien, where the French had a battery. On our way out there that beautiful October afternoon, as we were driving up the hill from Porte Maillot, the American flag and the colors of the International ambulance flying over our five wagons, we were met by the whole provisional government of France. Jules Ferry hailed us and asked a ride. They were going to see the fight. We took them all in: we had in our wagon Rochefort, Ferry and Favre; the others took seats as the wagons came up. We left them on a sort of platform which had been built for them upon the pedestal of the famous knee-breeches-and-cocked-hat statue of the First Napoleon, which was replaced by the Roman-togaed one upon the Column Venôdme. The first-mentioned statue had even then been toppled over and carted away. We went on to the top of the hill of Courbevoie, whence, however, we were promptly ordered back. From our station farther in the rear, lying down in our wagons, we watched the bombs and the smoke of the musketry rising over the hill. The French were beating the Prussians back with great slaughter, as we heard from couriers constantly sent in.
Suddenly, Dr. Sarazin rode into our midst and shouted, "Ambulance Américaine, en avant!" Putting spurs to his horse, he galloped down the road, we following at a brisk trot. Halfway to Rueil he drew up and said, "Pass that windmill, turn to the right, and you will be on the field." We plunged on through potato-patches and vineyards, our hearts in our mouths. As we drew past the windmill, which was on a knoll in the descent from Mont Valérien, we came upon the French reserves, massed by regiments behind the artillery and mitrailleuses which lined the crest of the hill we were on. Just behind them were Trochu and his staff. An aide-de-camp galloped toward us as we approached, and told us to take down our flags, shouting that we would draw fire. He had to tell us that only once: our flags came down like a shot. The fight was going on in the valley just beneath us. The sun was setting, the windows of Mont Valérien shimmered with its slanting rays, the green woods grew darker, and the blue smoke curled lazily over the combatants. Away in the distance the aqueduct of Marly ran in gray relief against the red of the evening sky. From this aqueduct, as we learned afterward, King William, the crown prince, Moltke and Bismarck were watching the struggle. Our little red-legged liners had pushed the Germans across the open space and were pressing them in the wood. We grew excited, and the boys began making for the crest of the hill among the artillery, when one of our party, a well-known American here in Paris, cried out, "Gentlemen, as a clergyman and father of a family, I forbid you to go any farther forward and risk your lives." Whereupon Mr. William Bowles, aroused, but in his usual manner in moments of excitement—namely, with his hands in his vest pockets and his eyes beaming through his gold spectacles—observed, "Gentlemen, oh that be d——d! As an American and your captain, I command you to follow me." And we followed him, singing at the tops of our voices, "While we were marching through Georgia."
What would have become of us, carried away as we were, no one knows, if we had not been marched back again by higher orders. We were straightway sent down to the right, toward Malmaison, to gather the wounded. We passed Trochu and staff, who saluted us, and we wound down the hill, with the infantry before us, and the cannon and mitrailleuses behind us bellowing over our heads. The French soldiery sent up cheer after cheer for "les Américains" as we made our way, still shouting, "While we were marching through Georgia." There were twenty or twenty-five of us, and we made some noise. In the streets of Rueil we found the dead and wounded very thick. We filled our wagons with the wounded, and started back for our hospital at Paris. In our wagon we had seven, so we had to walk along beside it. It was late in the night when we reached the city gate. There we were confronted by sentinels with glaring torches, challenged, asked the number of our wounded, and then allowed to rattle and creak over the draw-bridge. Just inside the walls we were met by a surging mass of anxious men, women and children.
"What regiment have you?" they would shout. "Has the Hundred-and-fifth been engaged? Have the Zouaves been in?"
"Yes," exclaimed one from our wagon, rising on his elbow, "they have been in, and many haven't come out again." Then snatching his fez from his head, he waved it in the glare of the torches, I and cried, "Vive la France! vive la République!"
That poor fellow was shot in the hip. We so far cured him at the hospital that I saw him hobbling into the fight upon a cane, his gun strapped across his back, at the last sortie of the besieged. I got very well acquainted with him, too, at the hospital, as I did with many another gallant fellow on both sides. He was an educated gentleman of Alsace: he had entered the Zouaves as a volunteer at the outbreak of the war, and had fought it all through in the ranks. He was sergeant when he was wounded. After the war and Commune were over I was touched on the shoulder by some one sitting upon the seat back of me at the Opéra Comique one night, and there was my brave friend the sergeant, safe and almost sound through all.
At the hospital, the night after the sortie I have just been telling you of, we worked with our wounded until nearly morning. Dr. Swinburne, I think, did not go to bed at all. And right here I ought to introduce you more particularly to the old doctor. Take the portrait of General Grant, run a good many streaks of gray through his hair and beard, a few more lines on his forehead and crows' feet around his eyes, and you have an idea of the doctor's looks. He is a man of great energy and few words—a surgical genius and a great lover of horses. He could or would explain nothing. At last we got to calling him "Old Compound Fracture," for he would say, when we were starting for a fight likely to be serious, "Boys, don't mind those slightly wounded fellows—let the Frenchmen pick them up: just bring me along the compound fractures." These latter were his hobby. He fairly doted on a man whom ordinary surgeons would have given up in despair; and I believe he was the happiest man in Paris when the first patient who had his leg shattered in a half dozen places began hobbling about the camp on crutches. The soldiers got to hear of him at last. More than one poor fellow lying on the field grievously wounded swore he would be taken to no place but to the American hospital.