France is full of broken-down trucks, touring cars, and ambulances; of worn out engines and the rolling stock of her railways. From the English Channel to the Persian Gulf her battlefields are littered with brass and iron and wood and steel. Besides these there are the great piles of garments of wool and rubber and leather, and the wasting stores of army blankets and cots and surgical supplies.
Into the larger salvage piles will go the multitude of tents and temporary wooden barracks for the housing of the fighters from all nations, who for four dreadful years held that "far-flung battle line."
A part of this larger salvage pile will be the temporary hospitals. In less than a year America alone built and equipped hospitals which were capable of accommodating a million wounded.
Then from the battle-line to the Atlantic coast we must think of the vast supply stations and warehouses, the great engineering plants and repair shops. America not only built in France the greatest ice plant in the world but she made every preparation on a gigantic scale.
When she entered the war she went in to win, even if it would take ten million of her men to finish the job. Had she done less, the final chapter would not yet have been written, and a different story might needs have been told.
Hospital Barracks
Day by day I watched the magic growth of the wooden hospital barracks at Rimacourt with accommodations for fifteen thousand men, and was interested in the engineering feat by which an abundance of fresh water was pumped from drilled wells in an old chateau to a great reservoir on the mountain side, and piped from there to every building and ward.
I watched the same process at Bazoilles as, nestled in the wonderful Meuse valley, that great hospital grew from a single base (the Johns Hopkins Unit) until it included seven bases and was able to care for thirty-five thousand wounded.
I spent one night there ministering to the wounded as they were unloaded from the great American Red Cross train. I watched the process with pride and amazement. So well organized was the army Red Cross that when a train was announced the ambulances loaded with stretcher bearers were rushed to the unloading platform. In seven minutes three hundred helpless men were gently taken from their comfortable berths in the train and carried on stretchers to the platform from which the ambulances speedily bore them to the waiting wards.
During the night of which I speak five trainloads of gassed men from the Chateau-Thierry fight were thus unloaded at Bazoilles.