With the A. E. F.: From a Surgeon's Journal, Iv
[HAVING been appointed Senior Consultant in Neurological Surgery to the A. E. F., Dr. Cushing on June 14, 1918, was detached from Base Hospital No. 5 and sent to the Medical Headquarters at Neufchâteau in the Vosges.— THE EDITORS]
July 4, 1918. PARIS
La Fête de l’Indépendance, and they were actually celebrating it in England! Here it has absorbed everything. Even Bastille Day has been fused with this our own national festival. An actual holiday for tout Paris — all the shops closed. The city began to be decked out yesterday with intertwined American and French flags, and Old Glory floats on the very tip of the Eiffel Tower. A beautiful day — everyone much cheered by the fighting qualities shown by our 2nd Division culminating in their recent attack at Vaux near Chateau-Thierry. Commanding generals, premiers, admirals, and presidents send telegrams of felicitation. In a note which is given wide publicity Secretary Baker lets out the actual number of troops that have come over — 1,019,115 in all — six months ahead of schedule.
De Martel had sent word to say that the meeting of the Société de Neurologie was called off, and would I go with him and Major Jarvis, the C. O. of the Astoria Hospital, to see the review? No possibility of seats, but he had secured three tickets for standing room reserved in a balcony. Remembering the uncertainties of sitting astride a wall just a year ago, I accepted with alacrity. We joined the holiday crowd bound for the place of ceremonies, climbed the back stairs of a building on the corner of the rue PierreCharon and the Avenue du Trocadéro, — after to-day to be the Avenue du President Wilson, — and found ourselves on a narrow fourth-story ledge looking down on the Place d’léna. The broad thoroughfare down which the troops were to come stretched directly in front of us — the equestrian statue of Washington and reviewing stands past which they were to march lay just at our feet.
Soon pundits began to arrive in shoals to fill the six large tribunes — diplomats, soldiers, sailors, ambassadors, politicians, in blue and khaki and black, with a dash of red here and there on British Staff Officers and on Joffre’s legs, for he still sticks to his old uniform; Poincaré, Lord Derby, Mr. Sharpe; Pau, with his empty sleeve; General Dubail, the Grand Chancellor of the Legion of Honor; General Guillaumat, the Military Governor of Paris; Lloyd George, who had just come from somewhere; Clemenceau (loud cheers for the idol of the people); the Diplomatic Corps, the Senate, the Deputies, the Municipal Council, Ministers of Commerce and of Affairs Interior and Exterior.
After some speeches (to us inaudible) by the President of the Senate, by the Minister of Foreign Affairs, by Mr. Sharpe and some others, the Garde Municipale moved aside, their band struck up the Chant du Départ, and the troops began to pour down the avenue toward us. First a few French dragoons, and then, after the bands of the 2nd and 4th Divisions, came samples of our American troops, perhaps 3000 of them, in service caps, very sturdy and marching superbly. They were followed by platoons from the various regiments that have been in the line — marines and others, wearing tin hats, rather straggly, tired, and disheveled. Next, after a contingent of American nurses, came more French dragoons, and then with gleaming bayonets waves of poilus — glorious in their horizon-bleu. For some reason they always make me tearful, but de Martel said he had never before appreciated how squatty they were, compared to the Americans. While all this was going on, three dare-devil airmen were swooping and cavorting and looping about, skimming over the housetops and roaring over the Place. Well — it was a great and stirring show! The procession continued down the Champs-Élysées and there were more speeches, I believe, before the Strasbourg monument in the Place de la Concorde. ‘Nous pouvons envisager Vavenir avec sûreté.’ . . .
Monday, the 22nd July. 9 A.M, SÉRY-MAGNEVAL
Times and dates are difficult to figure out. This must be about 5 P.M. Sunday afternoon of perhaps next week. It’s hot and quiet — the birds chirping — the hornets and flies troublesome. There’s a smell of hay about as I lie on the grass in front of a square U. S. Army tent which is to be shared with Greenwood — two others were evidently here during the night shift.
We’ve been operating all night behind the 2nd Division in this newly pitched Evacuation Hospital which had never seen a battle casualty till forty-eight hours ago and found itself equipped with hospital supplies dating from before the Spanish War — no X-ray — no Dakin’s fluid — no nurses, nor desire for any — not a prepared sterile dressing — no sterilizer suitable for field work — and little compressed bundles of ancient gauze and tabloid finger bandages with which to dress the stinking wounds of these poor lads.
But to go back to early yesterday A.M., in the remote past. Colonel Hutton intimated that Fred Murphy must be having his hands full— had not been able to get in touch with him for two days — this new unit sent up in a most chaotic state — completely raw, with new and untried operating teams. Would I go to a place called Crepy-enValois south of the Forêt de Compiègne, where I might possibly locate them and be of some service — probably a pretty hot place — an enemy thrust in the side of the salient toward Soissons.
My notes en route read: ‘Coulommiers, 7 A.M. — La Ferté-sous-Jouarre — Lizy-sur-Ourcq — up the east side of the Ourcq to Ocqucrre — Cruoy — Montigny — Mareuil-sur-Ourcq, loaded with French chasseurs and their supplies — the clouds breaking — across the Ourcq — along a well-camouflaged road to Auteuil about five kilometres from the recent line — poppies and wheat — wire and gun emplacements — flying men getting out despite the wind — blue patches of sky above, blue patches of chickory in the fields below, blue poilus beyond on a distant hillside — batches of Boche prisoners — Ivors — behind the Forêt Villers-Cotterets — “pour aller a Crepy tournez à droite près Vaumoise”— funny little camouflaged French tanks, all gun, chewing their way along the soft side of the country road — caches of ammunition — a British artillery brigade all freshly shaven and very smart — lorries and lorries till the mud becomes dust — more herds of Boche — at last Crépy, evidently severely bombed of late.’
The hastily manned hospital near the station at Crépy had been hard hit and was evidently impossible and untenable — obviously necessary to evacuate. For this purpose an ambulance train, No. 54 U. S. A., was drawn up alongside the badly smashed-up station — equipped to transport 360 lying cases, it was about to leave with 622 wounded of all kinds, mostly severe. Altogether 2000 casualties had been routed through Crépy with the aid of a few surgeons and dentists from Mobile No. 1. With them were Kerr and Trout, who had just reached France and been pitchforked into this mess to do strange operations under stranger circumstances — put into a car and fired up here not knowing what would be expected of them. They began to take in Thursday afternoon — had 604 last night alone, and they’re rather done in.
Meanwhile Proust, the Consultant of the French IVth Army, with Fred Murphy and a Captain Crafts, had been struggling to straighten things out. At the station wounded had been lying out all night in the storm untouched — waiting for the train. Bert Lee in desperation finally wrangled some empty lorries and sent a large number of wounded, thoroughly drenched, to this place, a matter of about five kilometres over narrow, torn-up country roads. F. M. said he never imagined anything so appalling — would I beat it to SeryMagneval and help an untried outfit get started — nothing to do but route all possible cases there — the situation bad and certainly going to get worse — several divisions very hard hit.
Well, I could tell much more both about Crépy and about this awful place — the utter confusion — the appalling number of rotting men for whom no possible relief was in sight; my effort to get some order out of the chaos while the C. O. — the poor man had a bad carbuncle on his neck — disappeared for some hours to get a needed rest; his fury at my having ventured in his absence to number the hastily pitched ward tents — a prompt reconciliation — visits later from Hall, from a very haggard Bert Lee, from Murphy, Allison, Salmon, Bevans, the Corps Surgeon, and many more. Persuaded a Red Cross official to get through by telephone to Paris for a lorry of sterile dressings in tins — more wounded and still more, many of them three days old. E. A. Poe’s brother (Nat, I believe) found in one of the crowded tents — Redmond Stewart, a judge advocate, there with him; operations all night in a Bessonneau tent we finally managed to get set up — amputations of the thigh — sucking chest wounds — mutilations — German wounded. I recall a young Seaforth Highlander subaltern and a Jock of the Gordons (the 15th Scottish has come down here to back us up) wounded by the air raiders who passed over near midnight — the only two wounds which I saw that were not stinking.
Well, it was all too awful. Sometime about dawn, while waiting for the next one, I stretched out on the operating table, went promptly to sleep, and fell off. Morning has now come and it all seems very far away. I’ve had coffee, a shave, and will take a nap — the flies permitting — before we go on again.
I suppose these people have done as well as could be expected — like learning to swim by being thrown in the water after hearing a lecture on how to do it. To add to his sleepless troubles, the poor C. O. has been ill enough to put him to bed any other time. Their equipment was of an ancient vintage, and they had never opened their boxes. Some of them contained bolo knives, saddles, and bridles, when one wanted sterile gauze! Laid over the supplies in one box, I was told, was a newspaper headlining that Cervera’s fleet was expected off New England — but this may have been someone’s imagination. . . .
Saturday, August 24th. BESANSON
Sent with Pearce Bailey (over here on a tour of inspection) to visit Gustave Roussy at Besangon and the Centre Neurologique, etc., la VIIème Région — a most instructive jaunt. Incidentally it took us into the delightful country of the Departement Doubs on the edge of the Jura.
In one of our uncertain Nationals, behind Holbrook, we got away from crowded Neufchateau at nine on a showery morning. Through Langres, the Dijon road as far as Longeau, then left into the Haute-Saonc, passing the Maryland people of the 79th at Champlitte, and on to Gray. There we lunched with a medley in a small French restaurant where tame magpies hopped about and regarded you curiously, doubtless wondering whether it was worth while to chance snatching a metal souvenir off your tunic.
Somewhere below Gray we crossed into the Département, doubtless named from the doubling river which winds through it. Then Besangon, the former capital of the Franche-Comté, a place of historic interest in most picturesque surroundings — a fortress of the first class with a citadel perched high on a tongue of land nearly surrounded by the river and with other detached Vauban fortresses scattered about, one of which we were to see.
We were lucky enough to find Roussy, who promptly gave to us the rest of his day. He showed us the general plan of organization and then took us to the Besançon Hospital, used as a neurological triage. After seeing some of the neurosurgical cases there we departed for Salins, some twenty-five kilometres to the south, where the psychoneuroses are sent to be treated. Despite the rain, a wonderful trip across country, with charming views, along deep valleys, of the winding Doubs and its tributaries. Salins itself — a healing salt spring, as its name indicates — is a most fascinating village stringing along, with what foothold it can get, in the crack between two towering heights, each of them surmounted by one of the subsidiary forts of the Besangon cluster. One of these was our objective, and Holbrook, who had already skidded badly in dodging an ambulance when leaving Besangon, looked at the road askance; but up we went, a most wonderful view unfolding before us.
We finally reached the top, where Fort Saint-André, now Station Neurologique No. 42, is one of the centres given over to the psychoneurotics — more particularly those with congealed hands (les mains figées) and clubbed feet. These, of course, represent the neuroses which are apt to arise in the case of men with trifling wounds — men whose psyche is not satisfied with the magnitude of their injuries and who fear they may get sent back into the line. Many of these acro-contractures and acro-paralysies, alas, are attributable to the surgeon — and more particularly to the orthopaedist, if he is not to be called a surgeon. An unnecessarily long period of fixation by dressings is bad enough, but a succeeding period of immobilization in apparatus of some kind for a supposed muscle or nerve injury will do the business. And here they were, men with all imaginable types of fixed deformities — the main d’accoucheur, main en béenitier, main en coup de poing — a most extraordinary collection. Many of the injuries were two or three years old, the men meanwhile having been nursing their extremities set in the favored posture for all this time, until finally they were drawn into this neurological net.
The whole situation, of course, lent itself admirably to successful therapeutics — just as Lourdes does or Sainte-Anne de Beaupré — a picturesque spot, the expectation of recovery (much as it was dreaded), a room littered and lined with the canes and crutches and braces for backs and arms and legs of those who have marched out presumably cured. Stress is laid, by those in control, on the fact that no neurological examination of any kind is made after admission to this place — only psychotherapy. The detailed physical examination, which necessarily implies to the patient uncertainty of diagnosis, is done elsewhere and by other people — in the sorting station at Besançon or wherever else. Here treatment alone and no questions asked. One can understand how much its success depends on personality by watching Captain Boisseau, Roussy’s collaborator, take these self-deformed people in hand and after a brief séance disabuse them of their paralyses — men that had come in that very day permanently crippled, to all appearances.
We climbed the embankment to the old fortress wall for the wonderful view of the valley and town, with the almost sheer hillside below us. Then back to Salins to see in the caserne an important last stage of the treatment — the training battalion — the discharged cases from Station No. 42 divided into three groups: those getting ready to go back to the line, those doubtful, and those probably permanently unfit. They were drawn up on parade, the first group fully equipped for service, under command of a crippled captain wearing an apparatus for a musculo-spiral paralysis. As they marched by us Roussy picked out one probable ré-cidive from among the A class. He will doubtless be sent back to Fort SaintAndré for three days’ solitary confinement followed by another strenuous therapeutic session — one mind struggling to get control of another that has good reason to resist.
Then back to Besançon in a downpour which flooded the valley, a late supper in Roussy’s comfortable billet, and to bed in the last room of the single hotel. . . .
Monday, September 2nd. NEUFCHATEAU
Again a perfect day — cool and cloudless. But Neufchâteau is torn up and dust-covered by the incessant passage of transport — everything from lines of camions borrowed from the French to processions of clucking motor cycles newly landed and straight from Saint-Nazaire.
The streets of this small place are really astonishing if one stops to squint through the dusty haze. This afternoon, on the road coming into town from our offices, Russians were piling crushed stone in preparation for the steam roller doing its work farther on. A column of French lorries driven by Annamites — very funny in their tin hats — were going west and another column of heavy U. S. A. cars full of troops were coming in, while motor cycles with or without side cars, decrepit Y. M. C. A. and Red Cross flivvers, pedestrians, and an occasional officer on a loaned horse dodged in and out as best they could.
The motor-transport people — our neighbors — were gathering for their supper, mess kit in hand, while a big Caproni bombing plane circled overhead. Farther on a squad of Boche prisoners in their green uniforms — content and well fed, be it said — were being herded to their cage by a single poilu. Loitering on the streets were occasional Italians belonging to an aviation squadron hereabouts, samples of our Negro troops, men of the English Flying Corps stationed just north of here, a smattering of blue poilus — a kaleidoscope seen through a cloud of dust.
Preferring cows and a narrow path beside the bad-smelling, swampy Meuse to all this, I cut cross-lots to our billet. The fields are spotted with purple colchicums sticking their blossoms out of the grass as much as to say, ‘ Don’t take me for a crocus and think this is spring.’ . . .
Sunday, September 8th. BENOITE VAUX
They are certainly provident people, the French. They are beginning to find out about this in our army — so it was not all British talk, after all. The 2nd Division, hustled into French motor trucks, was thrown into the line west of Châtcau-Thierry. The Marines stuck up their flag and refused to retreat — the Boche was checked and probably Paris saved. On the first of the month our government got a bill for 280,000 francs for the use of the trucks for which we had provided the essence — the bill was paid. Whether this is truth or fiction I can’t presume to say — rumors which often prove false circulate over here amazingly and facts get distorted in the process. After all, a tendency to drive a close bargain is also a Yankee characteristic, and this war is being fought in France, not New England.
It is Sunday afternoon in Salmon’s Field Neurological Hospital No. 1 on the road near Benoite Vaux, a road over which, particularly at night, there is an incessant traffic of lorries and artillery and tanks — predatory creatures which conceal themselves in the wood by day. Imagine a tar-paper hut of rustic French pattern — for this small hospital was once French — perched on the side of a hill at the edge of a beech forest looking down over the cluster of ten or twelve Adrian huts composing the hospital group alongside the road. This particular abode, with its two cots, measures about twelve by eight feet, and I am to share it with Dexter. Allison and Salmon are close by in another, and innumerable paths wind in and out of the foret rising up on the hill behind us.
While preparing each of us in his own line — for something soon to happen to the Saint-Mihiel salient, we meanwhile, on getting back here nights when possible, may be regarded as psychiatric patients — all colonels come more or less in that category, anyway. Salmon has pinned over Allison’s cot this medical card: —
DIAGNOSIS Shell shock (severe melancholia with paranoiac tendencies)
NAME N. Allison, K.B, RANK Lt. Col. ORG. M.C. No. ADM, 1
PROGNOSIS Bad TREATMENT Disciplinary
A real feeling of autumn in the air, with driving clouds, and before reaching here we passed through a heavy downpour. But the water soaks in fast and the rains help road making.
Yesterday the Allies continued to advance, the Boche showing little resistance. The British reached Beauvois, and the French crossed the Somme Canal. The captured Huns are said to be much depressed, and Hindenburg’s power wanes. But the 26th Division is much more interested in the fact that the Cubs beat the Sox in the second game of the series. ‘Boy Howde!’
Monday, September 9th
It’s interesting that eight out of the first ten patients admitted to this hospital have come in with widely dilated pupils and in an hallucinatory state, some of them actively excited. One of them this morning was clear-headed enough to recall that in addition to some blackberries he had eaten about five large round berries, big as cherries, which grew on a bush four or five feet high, and they left his mouth puckery. So Dexter and I struck off into the woods this afternoon on a botanizing expedition — and incidentally to find a short cut over the hill and through the forêt to his forward Gas Hospital at Rambluzin. An incomparable beech forest with only an occasional mountain ash and white oak, carpeted with delicate wood ivy and blue Canterbury bells in profusion. There were innumerable crisscrossing paths which were dry despite the downpour this morning, but which were also confusing, and, having no compass, we got well lost. Most of the woods hereabouts are jampacked with troops, but we saw not a human being — not even a lumberjack, though there were plenty of recently felled trees trimmed and ready to go to the mill at Benoite Vaux.
We finally brought up after about two hours on the top of a hill where the ground was badly torn up and the trees all dead within a circle of some one hundred yards across. The place was guarded by a single barbed-wire strand fastened to the trees, and within were eight huge perfectly formed craters about thirty feet across and thirty feet deep. We ventured under the wire and found the ground strewn with rusty Mill’s hand grenades, almost all of them exploded. I picked up from the rubble a perfectly formed fossil bivalve which had been blown up out of the chalk — also a fossilized mandible, ape-like in form. The trees above a six-foot level had been so completely riddled they had died — certainly a year or two ago. What is the explanation?
From this place we took another path, and, as luck would have it, soon came to a Chasseur Alpin sitting on a log. He pointed the way to Rambluzin and casually remarked that the branches with the big black berries we had in our hands were poison — belladonna, as every Frenchman knew. There was only one variety, he was sure. Our quest was satisfied, and not three hundred yards away we came to the edge of the woods and found ourselves looking down on the huts of Dexter’s Gas Hospital.
Wednesday, September 11th. 9 P.M.
Sam is as black as the ace of spades and says if he can only ‘get one foot on de aidge of the U-nited States he’ll sure quick find his way back to Columbia, South Ca’lina — jes’ one foot, yaas sah!’ He’s been sent in here as simple-minded (probably by some Yank M. O. in the 92nd Division), whereas he’s just nigger. You should hear Cannady, a Virginian, draw him out regarding his experiences in the trenches.
‘Sam, what did the regimental doctor ask you?’
‘Oh, he done ask me who’s de captain ob de U-nited States. ’
‘What did you say?’
‘Oh, I done said Washington, he’s de captain ob de U-nited States, an’ Paris, he’s de captain ob France, an’ Berlin he’s de captain ob Germany — yaas sah!’
‘Sam, who are we fighting against in this war?’
Sam, hesitatingly: ‘ Why, we’s fightin’ de Germans.’
‘Who else, Sam?’
‘We’s fightin’ de Australians, too — yaas sah.’
Sam is good at finding bits of wood and we again have a fire in Salmon’s leaky hut to-night, hoping to dry our things out, for the rain has kept up most all day.
Sunday afternoon, September 15th
So much has happened since Wednesday night, when, unaware of its imminence, we were fretting over the delay in the offensive, that I can hardly set it all down. The French generously give our troops the credit: ‘L’attaque ameri-caine dans la region de St.-Mihiel,‘ and so forth. Luck is certainly with us. We are like a pinch hitter sitting breathless on third at the end of the ninth inning, having cleared the bases with a three-bagger — the benches scream with joy.
Thursday opened raw, cold, and rainy. There had been distant gunfire during the night, but the strong westerly wind and storm had completely muffled it from us. Salmon unhappily had ventured to go down to Neufchateau, where ‘the offices’ had grabbed Sullivan and our pilfered Dodge car and we were legless in consequence. But during breakfast the good Lord sent out of the rain a flivver containing Cannon, Yates, and Middleton, who dropped Dexter at his PoisonGas Station and carried Allison and me over to Soilly. There, to our astonishment, Garcia, who is G 4 under Colonel Stark in this area, tells us the show has opened.
Dropping Allison at his splint dump, which grows apace, we went on to No. 1 Mobile at La Morlette. There, about 11 A.M., McCrae and his officers, unaware of what was going on, were found sitting at a practice conference while the first ambulance of wounded actually stood unannounced at the Admission Hut. Thence Cannon and I hustled to the F. H. 101 triage at Génicourt, expecting to find an overcrowded and busy place full of wounded, ‘shocked’ from cold, wet, and exposure. But no such thing. A mere handful were dribbling through, and Captain Taylor had them well in hand. Thence on to Rupt, the headquarters of the 26th, to see the Divisional Surgeon, but he was away and we learned that the attack had opened with a heavy barrage at 2 A.M. which kept up till five; that the boys had gone over at daybreak; that so far very few wounded had come through; that General Edwards’s billet was just around the corner.
Hyatt, at the headquarters, insisted on our going up to the Divisional P. C. on the side of the hill just east of the town, — the Bois des Trois Monts, I believe, — and there we should find the General in one of the dugouts. We did, and passed a most exhilarating hour — like listening to election returns when things are going one’s way. The place was full not only of the General, but of maps and telephones and aides and liaison officers and messengers coming and going—Peter Bowditch; Captain Simpson, the A. D. C.; Major Pendleton; Colonel Alfonti; Captain Malick, formerly Joffre’s A. D. C., and a lot more. The advance on the whole was going well, — St.-Remy and Dommartin-le-Montagne, — but somewhere the line was being held up by a machine-gun nest and C. E. was greatly exercised and characteristically profane.
In the midst of all this someone came in and said thousands of prisoners were coming in. The General looked skeptical, remarking that the number of prisoners always dwindled, or else about half of them got away. Still, we went out and stood on the slippery duckboards commanding a view along the valley where masses of prisoners were being herded down the road. Soon word came from somewhere that a whole battalion had been captured with its officers, a medical officer among them.
‘That means a job for you after lunch,’ said C. E. ‘Find out if Hindenburg is in Metz; where their artillery is; what divisions there are — anything you can.’ He held us to this, and after a brief lunch in his billet Cannon and I were left over our coffee to interrogate the young M. O. whom Captain Horsman, the Divisional G 2, soon showed in. We gave him food and pumped him in a language somewhat halting from disuse, and he gladly gave forth what he knew.
My impression of these last few days is that the enemy made an extraordinarily good getaway probably Tuesday and Wednesday nights, though they must have regretted giving up the quiet salient they had held since 1914 and in which they had thoroughly and comfortably dug themselves in. On its western side the 26th was flanked by the French, and though everything went smoothly enough there’s no telling what would have happened had they met serious opposition with heavy casualties. Our Medical Corps has yet to see over a large sector the effects of stubborn resistance by picked troops such as we grew all too familiar with in last autumn’s battles at Passchendaele. It will surely come — perhaps south of the Argonne, where we must next lay plans. Meanwhile we gain experience.
Tuesday, September 24th. 9 P.M. FLEUBY
We find ourselves in a little wooden barrack belonging to R. C. Hospital 114 — all our own with a cubicle apiece, a stove in the hallway, and actually sheets on the cots!
Wednesday, September 95th
After a cold night with incessant rumble of lorries down the Wally road just behind us, we had the usual A.M. mix-up about the disposition of our decrepit Dodge — Salmon, Finney, Allison, Dexter, and I all needing to go in different directions. Learn at Souilly that a message from Colonel Tuttle states Mobile No. G ordered to Deuxnouds — ‘Doughnuts,* in soldier parlance — without waiting for completion of equipment and organization. So we beat it there, leaving Captain Harvey to make an inventory of the things the French are to leave — none too soon, for they were packing up everything, even to the stationary engine. Untidy, but not an unpromising place — chief features a good market garden (already sold by the outgoing French to a native of the village, who will sell it back to us for 200 per cent profit); four good wards of thirty beds each; a pile of coal, with some wood; a hillside where Towne can pitch his Bessonneau tents; and lastly a cache of essence. Only serious drawback that water must be carted from the spring at the entrance to the grounds.
Back to Souilly, where Garcia takes me to see Mlle, de Beye, the ‘Angel of Verdun.’ She very cordial — may have anything in her stores. Salmon promises ten of his nurses, and Marshall Clinton will help arrange about teams. Our calculations for the eight divisions, with six in reserve, are 14,000 casualties—that is, 6 per cent of total engaged — if there is serious resistance, as there is almost certain to be; of these, 3000 dead and 11,000 wounded, of which we may expect 10 per cent to have head wounds.
September 2Gth. 9 P.M.
The initial barrage opened about midnight and continued till six. A cold, misty-clear morning. Finney and Allison to the divisional triages. Salmon and Dexter off in the Dodge. I, in a decrepit flivver wangled from Mobile No. 5, in chase of Towne’s outfit, which is lost somewhere and must be ready to ‘ take in ’ to-morrow. With a carpenter and sign painter borrowed at Fleury and a pot of stolen red paint, get some 36-by-8-inch signboards to nail up routing ambulances with head cases to Deuxnouds — over side roads not easy to find. . . .
September 28th. 10 P.M.
General Brewster, the Inspector General of the Army, has blown in and asked for a bed. He gets Salmon’s and remarks that he’s more afraid of that man than anyone in the army. He has been all over the front — the IIIrd Corps up to Brieulles-sur-Meuse; from there the line drops well back to Cierges, whence our troops have had to withdraw. On the left the conditions are better. There is a very stiff resistance — machine guns — the roads are impassable except on foot or horseback, and one of the mam roads is blocked by a mine hole and a stalled French tank. A lot of wounded can’t be got back. It’s set in to a steady downpour.
11 P.M. — Colonel Beuwkes in to see the General — dripping wet — just back from Bethincourt. The road from there to Esnes impassably blocked — was nearly ten hours in going as many kilometres; cars ditched everywhere — artillery, food, and ammunition trying to get up, empties and others with wounded trying to get down; some fools had double-banked; no lights permitted, even smoking prohibited — a hard regulation to live up to a night like this. . . .
[Dr. Cushing, crippled by a polyneuritis, had been persuaded by Major Schwab, on October 18, to lay up for a temporary rest in his quarters at Base Hospital No. 117, of which he was in charge. What history tells us about war concerns the mass movement of troops, and the victories, or otherwise, of this or that general in command. What meanwhile has happened to the individual foot soldier or his company officers rarely gets recorded. Such a tale follows.]
Wednesday, October 30. PRIEZ LA FAUCHE
Some days ago Schwab brought in a young officer to be interviewed. I have heard him stuttering around the hallway — stuttering both as to gait and as to voice. Here is his story. It has come out bit by bit in the course of several conversations — its fragments told in a most impersonal manner without a vestige of self-consciousness.
Captain B. of the 47th Infantry was admitted here September 11, 1918, with a sealed letter from B. H. No. 3 stating that from reports he was one of the best of the younger types of officers — brave and resourceful; also that he was blind when admitted to No. 3 and had very marked motor inhibition. Here for six weeks, with the diagnosis of ‘psychoneurosis in line of duty,’ he has improved steadily, but still stammers considerably and walks with a peculiar muscle-bound gait; has worked very hard to overcome this and is eager to get back to his regiment.
A clean-cut, fair-haired young fellow, twenty-four years of age, below medium height, and with the build of a football tackle. German parentage and exemplary habits — no tobacco or alcohol. Was very pro-German before the war, and in consequence has always felt that he had doubly to make good.
The Division sailed May 11, 1918, to Brest, and his regiment was billeted at Samer, some of the officers, three from each battalion, being sent to the British front for instruction. He saw a good deal of fighting during the retreat and for nine days was constantly under fire — a very confusing time, with the British morale low. Felt terribly green, but tried to keep his eyes open and learn what he could.
Rejoined his regiment and was put in charge of a group of officers who were apportioned to our 2nd Division for experience. Was with them from June 5 to July 9, in the 23rd Infantry — Colonel Malone’s outfit. Between June 6 and 10 came the taking of Bouresches and next the Belleau Wood affair by the Marines, supported by the 23rd. It was point-blank fighting, as hot as anything could be for a green man, and some places like Lucy were thick with dead. Still they got through, though the casualties were high; one battalion, for example, lost 75 per cent of its men when going through an exposed wheat field. Things were fairly quiet until July 1, when the 3rd Battalion of the 23rd and the 1st Battalion of the 9th took the village of Vaux — a very suecessful attack, but there were no reserves, and, had the enemy only known, they could have walked through.
Then a couple of quiet days, when the French on the right of the 9th Infantry went over, and, being a reserve liaison officer, he went with them — a fine advance, getting their objective, Hill 204, but they were driven back by a vigorous counter attack, in which mêlée everyone had to take a hand with machine guns and rifles, observers and all. The French had to retreat even behind their former positions, with heavy losses.
On the ninth of July they were relieved by the 102nd (26th Division) and B. rejoined his own unit, the 47th, in reserve near La Ferté-Milon, which the French were holding. It being supposedly a quiet sector, a lot of officers were loaned to the French for experience and observation. Here he learned what a real barrage might be, for between July 10 and 14 the enemy made a thrust at La Ferté, with heavy shelling. The French, about ready to quit, would only say, ‘Beaucoup de Bodies — beaucoup de Bodies’ They dropped behind the barrage, while the attached Americans — company commanders, platoon leaders, and so forth — went forward, got separated, and had heavy losses. Everyone was dumbfounded — some few French went forward with the Americans. In half an hour the French came back — pistol, rifle, and bayonet.
It was a brief episode, and after two days he again rejoined his regiment, which had moved up to La Ferté. The 4th Division (the 58th, 59th, 39th, and 47th Regiments) had been stationed in a reserve line along the Ourcq from Crouy to Marchiel, and on the morning of July 14 the 39th and 58th attacked at Chézy, B. going with them, the 58th on the right so badly hit that the 59th leapfrogged them — an unsuccessful affair in which the 47th took no part. The next day the Boche offensive opened. B. was recalled to La Ferte and the division had no part in Foch’s counter until the end of the first week. Meanwhile, being in charge of the wireless, he knew pretty much what was going on.
On July 25 or 26, he is not quite sure which, his regiment, being fresh and having had no part in the Chézy affair, was sent as shock troops — hustled in trucks through the other formations, first to bolster up the French at Grisolles and La Charme. From there they were rushed forward where the advance had met its chief stumblingblock — Seringes, Sergy, and Cierges. They were all night in going up, made their way through the Forêt de Fère, which was full of gas, and to the open fields beyond. Here the 42nd was holding the line, the Alabamans (167th) to the left and the Iowans (168th) to the right. The 47th was to go in between them toward Seringes and Sergy, but being then only a junior officer, — a lieutenant, — he knew nothing of the plan.
They were just too late in getting through the woods to follow the barrage which had been put up for the attack, and had to go it unprotected in double time to catch up to the 168th and 167th, who had already moved forward. No sooner had they emerged into the open than they met a heavy fire. The lieutenant colonel and one major were severely wounded, and soon the other major and B.’s captain were killed, leaving him senior officer of his battalion.
About this time a general appeared from somewhere and asked B. if he had received any orders, which he hadn’t, and with a wave of his arm the general said, ‘You’re to cross a river over there and take a town called Sergy.’ It was tough work — the men had marched all night — they formed combat groups and went through wheat waist-high under direct fire from the Boche artillery. They carried one day’s ration, one hundred rounds of rifle and one bag of chochant (automatic) ammunition. In some unaccountable way, Company L had received an order to withdraw, leaving what remained of three full companies, circa 700 men. The Ourcq, which proved to be a mere creek, they crossed with a run and jump, and, getting into Sergy, they fought their way through it by 10 A.M., finally being brought to a halt beyond the village at a sunken road which was filled with machine guns.
There was terrific shell fire, both our own and the enemy’s, which seemed to be concentrated on Sergy, and finally, after heavy casualties, they had to fall back as far as the Ourcq again. Here they established not only their battalion P. C., but a first-aid station in a battered mill (La Grange au Pont), and did what they could for such of their wounded as they could drag in. Later in the day, after heavy artillery firing, the enemy countered. The dwindling battalion met them in the village and drove them out as far as the road again. The Boche came back with reenforcements, and all night there was house-to-house fighting in the village — the boys standing it very well despite their fatigue and losses.
On the next day, with no artillery aid, they succeeded in getting the village again cleared back to the road and held the Boche there till dark. Then the Boche countered once more and drove them back to the mill, where they again held and spent the whole night in once more clearing the village, which they succeeded in doing by dawn. That day the Boche came back at noon and reached the mill — and so it went, back and forth, the place changing hands nine times between Friday the twenty-sixth and Tuesday the thirtieth, the twenty-eighth being their worst day. They finally held at the road on the thirtieth and were relieved on Wednesday the first.
Practically without sleep, with no medical officer, with only such food, after the first day, as they could get off the dead, with almost incessant shelling and many hours of actual combat every day, it was something of a strain. On Tuesday night B. got over to the 168th, and the colonel wanted an estimate of his strength in view of a possible widespread attack: ‘18 men and one officer fit for duty’ — out of 927 men and 23 officers, these alone were left.
B. admits that he was getting rather fed up. He was acting as gas officer, for many of the men were suffering from bad bums and all had been more or less gassed. Then as intelligence officer — in other words, as a runner, once or twice by day and two or three times by night, always in the open — a necessity, since lines that he got over to the 168th were soon blown to bits and there was no one at the 168th P. C. who could read flash messages; there was no communication at any time with the rear. Also as medical officer, directing the getting in of the wounded, always under fire, back to the mill; he did two leg amputations himself with a mess-kit knife and an old saw found in the mill. One night they had sent back 83 wounded men on improvised litters.
When sufficiently quiet, the nights had to be spent in searching their own and the enemy’s dead for food and ammunition. They once got down to as low as twenty rounds of cartridges, and much of the time they used Boche rifles and ammunition — also Boche ‘potato-masher’ hand grenades, which caused at first a good many casualties among the men, for they were timed at three or four seconds instead of four or five like ours. The Boche food was good when they could find it — sausages and bread and Argentine ‘bully.’
The least fatigued men had to be used to get in the wounded, for it was an exhausting process, since they often had to be dragged along a foot or two at a time, as occasion offered. Many men with three or four wounds continued in the fight — had to, in fact — and a sound man and a wounded man often fought together, the latter loading an extra gun even when he might not be able to stand. Their only protection was to get in shell holes.
During these days B. saw for the first time a case of ‘shell shock,’ though he did not know what was the matter with the man — thought he was yellow. Every time a shell would land near, he would race to shelter, shaking and trembling; but he always came back and got to work. He simply could n’t stand the shell explosions. They were all pretty shaky from the almost constant artillery fire — high explosive alternating with gas of one kind or another. Many of the men still fighting had mustard burns. But almost the worst was a ‘ rotten-pears’ gas which made them sneeze and often vomit in their masks, so they had to throw them away and take a chance. Everyone was more or less affected, and marksmanship was poor from lachrymation.
On Monday, B. was quite badly stunned by a high-explosive fragment which struck his helmet — like getting hit in the temple by a pitched baseball. Men often thought they were wounded — would feel a blow on the leg, perhaps, and see blood and a tear, but on slipping off their trousers would find only a bruise, the blood having come from a neighbor’s wound.
On Tuesday afternoon the Boche sent over a terrific barrage — a combination of artillery and machine-gun fire. They had learned by this time that after a barrage the only thing to do was ‘ to beat the Boche to it ’ — so he and Lieutenant K. with their eighteen men rushed them (there were some two hundred Boches) and succeeded, after a sharp engagement, in getting into their positions along the sunken road just north of the village. It was a case of ‘ Gott mit uns,’ for not one of the eighteen was killed. They captured some machine guns, and, getting them in favorable positions, held the enemy off.
Not long after, word came by runner from the 168th to hold on, for they were soon to be relieved. B. sent back word that they could n’t hold much longer, and fifty men were sent over from the 168th in support. At about 2 A.M., B. and two men with chochants and grenades crawled out and put out of commission an Austrian 88 which had been trained on them and from which they had suffered much. They captured the crew and officers. It was the last post holding the sector. The Boche had evidently begun to withdraw.
About this time Seringes was taken by the 1st Battalion of the 47th on their left. They had probably gone through similar experiences, but apparently Sergy had been the most difficult nut to crack. Cierges had not yet fallen.
Wednesday, a day of intermittent firing, was spent in collecting the wounded. They were relieved at sundown — two officers and eighteen men — and they marched all night to get back, all very much done in. Lieutenant K. had been hit through the heel — was cursing and swearing, and quite out of his head. The men all appeared low indeed — one chap, Madden by name, had had no sleep the whole time, for he had been acting as runner on the left, three or four times every day under observation and fire.
They went through the Foret de Fere and met the chow wagons about noon — found a new acting colonel who knew precisely what to do; gave the men good food and made them go to sleep. Not until they had arrived did B. notice that he was shy of his tunic, in the pocket of which was his artillery code — had left it under the head of one of the men who was badly hurt and forgot it when the time came for them to go out. Insisted on going back after having a rest — was afraid someone would find it. Was given a motor cycle and to his great relief found the coat where he had put it, but the man was dead.
On coming out he saw one of his own men who had been wounded and was overlooked near the mill at the far edge of the creek. He went down and tried to get him across the creek to the motor cycle, but the Boche opened up and they could not duck fast enough. B. felt a heavy blow on the top of his helmet, which mashed it in against the back of his head. He fell forward — had a sick feeling — found he was bleeding from the mouth and nose, and the back of his neck was bloody. Started to look for the man and found him all cut up with a huge hole in his side and a glassy stare, so he knew he was a goner and left him — reached the cycle and started off under heavy fire.
As soon as he got back they saw something was the matter and gave him a stiff drink of whiskey — he tried to sit down, but came down heavily with a jar, and began to shake and stammer. He was afraid to go to sleep, as he had an idea he would be unable to see when he woke up. They threw cold water on him, and he felt that his entire left side had given way and all vision was gone except a yellow fog in front of him. Through all this he still had a feeling that he was O. K. — merely exhausted and needed sleep. He was very sick, vomiting more or less all the rest of the day — ears humming — everything swimming.
They wanted him to go to a hospital, but he remembers fighting them much as a football player sometimes does when he is forced to leave the field after an injury; has strangely vivid memories of this occurrence and subsequent events — very patchy, though very acute memory pictures. Knew by the hum of the machine that it was a G. M. C. ambulance; could n’t see much except a yellow cloud before his eyes; was taken to a field hospital and a doctor asked him what was the matter. He said nothing, he merely wanted a little rest; was talking well enough at the time.
First in a horse-drawn wagon, then in a Ford ambulance, a very rough ride, to No. 7 at Coulommiers, a matter of a good many hours — does not know whether he was alone or not. Terrific headache all the time. His hearing was getting bad — a constant hum in his right ear; when the machine would hit branches of trees it sounded to him like the whish of a shell — the worst sounds he had ever heard. . . .
‘Of course if they had known we were so weak they could have come through at any time. You see, I am now Senior Company Commander and I want to get back because I can have the pick of the companies and can get into some really big push before it’s all over.
‘The chief trouble now is the dreams — not exactly dreams, either, but right in the middle of an ordinary conversation the face of a Boche that I have bayoneted, with its horrible gurgle and grimace, comes sharply into view, or I see the man whose head one of our boys took off by a blow on the back of his neck with a bolo knife and the blood spurted high in the air before the body fell. And the horrible smells! You know I can hardly see meat come on the table, and the butcher’s shop just under our window here is terribly distressing, but I’m trying every day to get more used to it. Yes, it was unpleasant amputating those men’s legs, and we had to sharpen a knife from a man’s kit for it, but what could one do otherwise? It was not quite so bad as dragging the wounded men in, hunching along foot by foot, both of us on our backs and under direct fire all the time — that was interminable. But the worst of all are the dying faces that come to me of the men of the command — the men I could not bear to see die — men whose letters I had censored, so I knew all about them and their homes and worries and dependents.’ . . .
Wednesday, November 6, 1918
It was a year ago to-day that the last attack was made for a few yards more on the Passchendaele ridge, leaving a British army discouraged and decimated after three months of desperate fighting, with gains so slight it was not even necessary to move the casualty hospitals forward. To-day what a different story! The British on one side of the Ardennes have gone through the Foret de Mormal and progressed along the Sambre toward Mauberge and Mons. On the other side, the Americans have finally broken through in the direction of Stenay on the Mézières-Metz line. Between these pincers the enemy may get trapped, and a second Sedan be the result, unless they can manage somehow to extricate themselves. It hardly seems possible that these are the same people who a short fourteen weeks ago were sweeping victoriously toward Paris and Amiens and the Channel Ports.
Monday, November 11th
The Great War ends at the eleventh hour on this eleventh day of the eleventh month of 1918. So the Kaiser awakes from his forty years’ dream of world dominion. It’s a piteous spectacle. All the king’s horses and all the king’s men could n’t put Humpty Dumpty together again. He came so very near to fulfilling his ambition — the Hohenzollern rule of a Prussianized world. Weltmacht oder Niedergang. He gambled and lost, so it is to be downfall.
The past few days have been comparable to the last few minutes of a decisive intercollegiate football game at the end of a season. On one side of the field, alive with color and excitement, an exultant crowd, — touched by the last rays of a November sun, — an unexpected victory within their grasp through an unlooked-for collapse of the visiting team. Across, on the other side of the darkening field, tense, colorless, shivering, and still, sit the defeated, watching their opponents roll up goal after goal as they smash through an ever-weakening line that shortly before seemed impregnable.
Just so, till the whistle blew, the Allies plunged ahead on the five-yard line of the Western Front. The Americans pushed over at Sedan — a mass play carried the French beyond the Mezieres-Hirson line — and the British Guards Division on the left centre went through to Mauberge and Mons, where early in the game they so desperately and hopelessly resisted an apparently unconquerable foe. Surely the Bowmen of Agincourt, the Angel of Mons, and Saint George himself must have appeared yesterday, even as they are said to have appeared in those tragic days of August 1914.
It’s a trivial comparison, — a world war and a football game, — but when something is so colossal as to transcend comprehension we must reduce it to the simple terms of familiar things. ‘The world has been made safe for democracy.’ Now we shall see what democracy can make of it — and there’s much making to be done.
(The End)