Our Part in the Great War. Gleason Arthur
you have carried 500 wounded men, you have gone into the ditch, stuck in the mud, and scurried under shell-fire, shrapnel has torn the cover, and there is the mark of a rifle-bullet on the wheel-spoke. You have slept at the wheel and in the chassis, after hours of work. You have eaten luncheons for two months on the front seat. The reader must not get very far away from the ambulance-car in making his mental picture of the experience of the boys in North France, and he must not object if all through this chapter he gets the smell of grease and petrol, and if the explosions are tires as often as shells. Because that is the way it is at the front. These boys never take their eyes from the road and the car. So why should we who read of them?
There is a certain Detroit manufacturer who has a large and legitimate advertisement coming to him. If he will collect the hundred fervid and humorous comments written into the records of the field service he will have a publicity pamphlet which will outlive "A Message to Garcia." For this job of the jitneys is more than carrying orders; it is bringing wounded men over impossible routes, where four wheels and a motor were never supposed to go. Mr. Ford with his ship accomplished nothing, but Mr. Ford with his cars has done much in getting the boys out of the trenches. They would have lain there wounded for an hour, two hours, in the Alsace district for twelve hours longer, if his nimble jitneys had not chugged up to the boyau and dressing station.
"We expected to be kept rolling all night." To "keep rolling" is their phrase for driving the car.
"The next sixty hours were not divided into days for us. We ran steadily, not stopping for meals or sleep except during the brief pauses in the stream of wounded. Except for one memorable and enormous breakfast at the end of the first 24 hours, I ate while driving, steering with one hand, holding bread and cheese in the other. The first lull I slept an hour and a half, the second night there was no lull and I drove until I went to sleep several times at the wheel. Then I took three hours' rest and went on. Gasoline, oil and carbide ran low; we used all our spare tires. One of our men ran into a ditch with three seriously wounded soldiers, and upset. Another man broke his rear axle. During the two and one-half days of the attack, over 250 wounded were moved by our 15 cars a distance of 40 kilometers."
Ambulance work depends on the supply of gasoline, oil, carbide and spare parts, solid rations and sleep. Success rests in patching tires, scraping carbon and changing springs. Any idea of ambulance work is off the mark that thinks it a succession of San Juan charges. It is hard, unpicturesque work, with an occasional fifteen minutes of tension.
"A stretcher makes a serviceable bed, and, warmly wrapped in blankets, one can sleep very comfortably in an ambulance."
"A climb of 800 meters in less than 10 kilometers involves mechanical stress."
"The unique spring suspension and light body construction make our cars the most comfortable for the wounded of all the types in service."
A mechanical detail – but it is in these bits of ingenious mechanical adaptation to human needs that the American contribution has been made. It isn't half enough in a machine-made war to be dashing and picturesque. You must fight destructive machinery with still cleverer engines of relief. The inventive brain must operate as well as the kind heart and the spirit of fearlessness. It is in the combination of courage and mechanical versatility that the best of the American quality has been revealed.
Flashes of the soldier life are given by the boys. Canned beef is called by the poilu "singe," or monkey meat.
"All that is impossible is explained by a simple 'c'est la guerre.' Why else blindly scrape one's way past a creaking truck of shells, testing 20 horses, two abreast, steaming in their own cloud of sweaty vapor? Why else descend slopes with every brake afire, with three human bodies as cargo, where a broken drive shaft leaves but one instantaneous twist of the wheel for salvation, a thrust straight into the bank, smashing the car but saving its load? 'C'est la guerre.'"
"'Chasseurs Alpines': a short, dark-blue jacket, gray trousers, spiral puttees, and the jaunty soft hat 'bérets.' These are the famous 'blue devils.'"
"I, who came for four months and have been working eight, can assure any one who is considering joining the American Ambulance that he will go home with a feeling of great satisfaction at having been able to help out a little a nation that appreciates it, and that is bearing the brunt of the fighting on the Western Front."
"Among the wounded that our cars carried, was the General of the Division – General Serret" – brought down from the height he had held to be amputated and to die.
Another section of twenty-four cars started in at Esternay at the time of the spring freshets, when life was chilly and wet. Eleven received individually the Croix de Guerre. This section served two divisions of the second French Army and had a battle front of from seven to ten miles – the St. Mihiel sector, a region subject to artillery fire. It has been commanded by Oliver Hazard Perry, a descendant of Commodore Perry.
They had 1,800 wounded a week, and a mileage of 5,000 kilometers.
"Sudbury broke his arm cranking, this morning."
The service was brisk. Shroder with two wounded was rounding a corner when a shell hit so close as to jump his car up. One car came in from service in July with 23 shrapnel holes. On July 8, within 24 hours, the boys of this section carried 997 wounded.
"During the bombardment the trenches were so smashed by continuous fire as to cease to be trenches: the men lay in holes in the ground. They would come down when relieved, dazed and sometimes weeping, yet they held their ground." Long waits and frantic activity: dullness and horror alternating. Nine members of the ambulances were in the house against which a shell exploded. A soldier was killed and one mortally wounded. The Americans were thrown in a heap on the floor. "Now, the section occupies a large house just outside the town. There is a large hole in the garden where a shell alighted soon after this became our new quarters; but the good fortune of the Ambulance is with it still."
"To Clos Bois. Sharp shrapnel fire. Small branches and leaves showered down in the wood. It was necessary for two of our men, whose ambulances stood in the open to expose themselves in putting stretchers in the cars. Great courage was displayed by McConnell, who was active in this work even when not required to be so, and who was hit in the back by a fragment of shell, sustaining, however, no further injury than a bad bruise. Mention should be made of Martin, who drove away with his car full of wounded while the firing was still going on, a bullet mark in his steering-gear, and a spare tire on the roof punctured."
The order of the day, July 22, cited the American section, "Composed of volunteers, friends of our country."
Here are a half dozen impressions that come to the men in the course of their work.
"I counted one evening fifteen balls, within a space of a dozen yards of the doorway where I was sheltering."
"The dark houses, deserted streets, the dim shape of a sentry, the night scents of the fields" – these are what the evening run reveals.
"On the one hand are the trenches where men live in conditions which must resemble those of the cave men: dug into the earth, and with danger of death as a daily habit; on the other, within half an hour's walk, most of the comforts of civilization. We come down from the work of carrying hundreds of mangled men, and in the evening sit eating strawberries and cake in a pretty drawing-room."
"The wounded had a curiously unconcerned appearance, as though having been hit already they are immune."
"Our young heroes – " Yes, they are all of that, fearless, and swift to act. But they are practical heroes – good mechanicians, ready to lend a hand on any lowly job of washing a stretcher or shifting furniture. I like the rough-neck way of the American Ambulance. There has been a snobbish attempt made to describe these young workers as belonging to our "best families," representing the "elite" of America. That is to miss the point of the work. It is democratic service. Work hard and you are a popular member of the community. This Lorraine section went to Verdun, and Robert Toms of Marion, Iowa, wrote me:
"Everybody has the right spirit, and we are all working together. We are living the real army life – sleeping out of doors and eating in a barn."
One of the Verdun sections was sent to Bar-le-Duc recently where a bombardment by fourteen German aeroplanes was under way.