FROM
UPTON TO THE MEUSE WITH THE 307th INFANTRY
by,
W. KERR RAINSFORD
1920
Sheets
and Bandages
SHEETS AND BANDAGES
As giving a fair picture of the more cheerful side of
hospital experience at this time, some extracts from
letters and a diary may here be of slight interest.
"It seemed a long way back. The first part, of
course, I walked, but I had swallowed a fair amount of
blood and when I added a lungful of gas, in a swampy
hollow into which I dropped to get rid of some overhead
H. E., it made me sick. As I passed the chalky hilltop of
the forward dressing-station four shells burst near the
mouth of the cave; so I went on. There is nothing there
but a dressing-station, and I don't see why they can't
leave it alone. At Les Pre's farm Lieutenant Sloane, one
of the most cheerful souls on God's earth, dressed the
wound, gave me an injection of A. T. S. (anti-tetanus
serum) and put me on the front seat of an ambulance for
the divisional station at Mareuil-en-Dole.
"Upon arriving at this station they looked over the
bandages, and gave me a lot of steaming hot coffee; then
on again through Fere-en-Tardenois and, seemingly for
hours, through a quiet moonlit country of woods and
meadows blanketed in cold mist, to a chateau and a vast
tent filled with loaded stretchers. One was a Boche,
wounded somewhere in the back, so that he lay on his face
and kept glancing over his shoulders as though expecting
to be bayoneted. There was an attractive girl there in a
red flannel waist, going round among the wounded-and it
seemed as though I hadn't seen one for years. I saw my
poor guide there, too, and his arm looked rather bad. He
had three bullets through it. I never shall forget seeing
him trying to bend it up in a ball and stuff it in his
pocket as he ran. He still seemed much more concerned
over me than himself.
"The surgeons were desperately busy, but yet seemed
to find time for gentleness and kindness and a hearty
cheerfulness which wasn't boisterous enough to jar. From
time to time an orderly or the girl would come by to ask
if I needed blankets or cigarettes or cocoa, or would
like to lie down on a stretcher till the ambulance came
to take me on.
"During the next ride I bad rather lost sense of
direction or time, but it was nearly dawn and bitterly
cold, when we reached the Evacuation Hospital at Couin. I
was told to undress in a windy tent and waited half an
hour, with a blanket round me and my valuables in a
little cotton bag at my side, for my turn on the table,
so I was shivering like a leaf when I got on. The
operating major, a thin, bruskly spoken little man,
glanced me over and up and down and then, looking
searchingly into my face, as though trying to master my
spirit, told me shortly not to be so nervous. It annoyed
me and I probably showed it, for next day be lent me his
dressing-gown and the use of his tent, with its
comfortable armchair, box of cigars, and set of Kipling.
We were ranged in cots along both sides of a long
ward-tent, and, except for the food and the flies, were
very well looked after.
"One doesn't like to complain, but the food was
really very poor and insufficient, and the constant swarm
of flies about my face-bandages rather exhausting. There
were only two fly-nets available for the ward, and they,
of course, were wanted for the men who couldn't move
their arms. It is the unnecessary hardships that one
feels the most, and only they of which one has right to
complain. And one is so sure that the people at home wish
us, who are in hospital, to be properly fed and, when we
need it, to be provided with a few yards of
mosquito-netting so that we could lie still. They have
sacrificed dearly for such things and much more-and yet
it seems that they can't reach us with their sacrifices.
"The 28th Division seemed to be having a bad time
around Fismes. All day long officers were coming in on
stretchers from the operating room. A Texas major, a
great whale of a man, was put in the cot beside me,
gloriously drunk with ether. I heard him muttering to
himself:
"'The best
looking bunch of Huns I ever seen-them were regular
fellows.' Then he lifted a red unshaven face from the
pillow to blink at me.
"'Say,' he whispered confidingly, 'them
per-tater-smashers is great. I seen three men trying to
get out of one window to get rid of one of them fellows.'
A pause, while he vomited over the side of the bed, then
with a chuckle, 'and they done it, too-I was one of 'em.'
"He dropped back on to the pillow and made faces at
the fly on his nose; then, having made up his mind to
brush it off, he stared at his hand for a moment and
resumed with sudden earnestness.
"'I want to tell you about George. George is a damn
good kid. One of 'em calls acrost the street, "Was
Kompanie ist das?" and George sort of sneezes at him
in Dutch while he pulls the string on a pertater-smasher.
So the Hun asks it again and George lobs the thing across
to him in the dark. Hell of a way to answer a civil
question! He must ha' had some friends though, and what
they done to us was too much-I wish some one 'ud find
George. He's a damn good kid.' Then he dropped off to
sleep.
"Some time in the night I heard them carrying in a
man to the cot opposite-raving his way out of ether-and I
recognized Major Jay's voice:
"'What's the matter? Oh, you're hurting my arm. . .
. All right, Dudley, I'll stay here a bit. Send again and
find out. You must find out. They can't all be gone.'
"It was terribly dramatic, lying there in the
darkness and piecing together the story of some dim
disaster to my regiment.
"The next day
a number of us were carried by ambulance to ChAteau
Thierry, for a barge trip down the Marne to Paris. As we
waited on the float I saw Sergeant Parkes of my company
carried on-four or five of his ribs crushed in by a
shell. He was very pale and in some pain, but I think not
severe, and be seemed very glad to see me, holding on to
my band while be spoke. One of the first things he asked
was whether he would be sent back to the company again
when he got well, and what be must do to make sure of it.
I was remembering him in the early days at Upton, when be
never seemed to get a uniform to fit him, and how for
weeks he drilled the recruits of the Annex Barracks in an
old blue serge suit and a campaign bat; and bow be came
into the orderly room one day with his earnest,
respectful manner and slight stammer, to apologize for
the fact that his civilian shoes no longer had soles on
them. Brave, faithful soul, be died that week in the
Paris hospital.
"For those of
us who could sit on deck it was a wonderful
journey-wrapped in our bandages and blankets in the
summer sunshine, watching the green and peaceful country
glide by-the sedgy banks where the water-hens paddled
about through the rushes, the high slopes of stubble and
poppies with their clutches of pheasants, lush meadows of
pasturing cattle, vistas of shiny-leaved sycamores, just
tinting into autumn, and endless lines of tall poplars.
It breathed of a security and quietude whose existence we
had forgotten, and it smelled delicious. In the little
villages through which we passed people thronged down to
the water's edge to watch us with an awed interest-for we
were the first to pass that way- and often one heard the
words: "Ceux sont les blesses Americains.' Old men,
fishing from flat-bottomed boats-and French rivers are
lined with old men fishing-stood up with un-covered beads
or at salute as we drifted by; and at the locks children
threw down flowers to us. One felt very proud of one's
place in that simple pageant, bearing witness through the
land of France that America had indeed taken her stand
beside France's thinning armies on the line. At night we
tied up to the bank beneath the beechwood of an old
chateau, and the Red Cross girls, who had been
circulating through the day with grapes and chocolate and
cigarettes, cooked our supper. Then on at sunrise,
winding and winding down to Charerton, and by ambulance
to Number 3 Hospital in Paris, which seemed to me the
most comfortable and desirable spot on earth -except
home."
Another story written at somewhat later date, after
bitter fighting in the Argonne Forest, tells of another
aspect of that same red journey back from the line of
battle:
"We had gone only a little way up the slope when I
noticed that something was wrong with my shoulder, but
not much apparently, as everything I had still seemed to
work. I never felt when the bullet bit me. A few minutes
later I was looking at my map with the battalion
commander when something happened again. There was a
sudden film of smoke before my eyes, a sledgehammer blow
across the knees, a confused sense of lifting, and then I
was down on my face among the leaves. I heard some one
calling out:
"The Captain!
The Captain! Don't leave him there. All right, sir, we'll
have you out in a moment.'
"Then I was being dragged along by the arms, with my
feet trailing useless behind, till we came to the
railroad track and a stretcher. My mind had cleared by
that time and I remember giving my legs a try, as I
couldn't see a great deal the matter with them; but they
seemed to be missing on about three cylinders, and I
concluded to call it a day. Four men carried the
stretcher, putting the poles on their shoulders, and an
officer told me afterward that I looked like some eastern
potentate starting on a journey. I seemed to meet every
one that I knew along the railroad track, which was
cheering, both from their greetings and because my
company's attack bad looked rather lonely at the time I
left. Everything seemed to be coming up, and I was sure
they would be needed. The battalion commander passed me,
limping along on his enormous stick toward the rear. He
said he thought that he could make the grade, and that
the Colonel of the 308th had taken over command for the
moment, but had sent back for Captain Grant to lead the
battalion. A little farther I passed Captain Grant dead
on the roadside, and his only lieutenant beside him,
dying. The shelling along the valley bottom was getting
rather bad, so, as the first aid post looked very busy,
we did not stop there. Then I passed my former company
drawn up in a side gulch, and Sergeant Watson, who was
then in command of it-as they had no officers left, and
the First Sergeant had been badly bruised by a shell
splinter-Sergeant Watson, as I say, came out and insisted
on looking me over before I went on. I remember joking
him about the way be never seemed to get hurt-be was so
splendid a soldier that one could afford to-and be
wrinkled his fore-head and answered, rather
apologetically, that he didn't know why it was; and then
afterward I heard that three days later he was killed.
"He and Durgin were the first sergeants that I had
made at Upton. He came to camp in an old brown sweater
and little gray cap, wearing his habitual rather worried
and cross expression, though in fact he was neither cross
nor worried, and I had picked him as a likely -looking
man to clean out the wash-house. The place had been
turned, in the first afternoon of use, to something like
a pigsty struck by lightning, and he bad turned it back
to the resemblance of a Pullman dining-car. I gave him
two men and told him to keep it so, and, as soon as I bad
heard him give them instructions, added eight more and
told him to clean out the barracks. He didn't know a
thing about military matters, being a steamfitter by
trade, but he was there to learn, and he was born to
command. In those early days one was apt to use one's
best material rather selfishly-one had to keep going-and
after keeping the inside of the barrack and wash-house
above criticism for a fortnight, while Durgin bossed a
gang digging the stumps and collecting and stacking loose
lumber in the company area-Watson came to me and said he
was afraid of getting behind in the drill. He needn't
have been, though.
"I remember one evening when I was lecturing the N.
C. O.'s, as one often did after supper, and was speaking
of taking direction from the stars. Very few of them
claimed to know the North Star by sight, so I was drawing
out the Big Dipper on the blackboard, and explaining why
two of its six stars were called the Pointers, when
Watson raised his band and respectfully suggested that I
was drawing it faced the wrong way. For the life of me I
didn't know whether I was or not, but told him I would
take his word for it. After that, of course, I had to say
something to reestablish my own reputation for learning,
so I touched briefly on the difference between mean-solar
and sidereal time, on the traveling of the vernal equinox
in right ascension, and on the migration of the isogonic
lines. I knew that it couldn't mean a thing to them, and
after a few sentences I came back to earth; but Watson
stayed after class was dismissed to find out all I knew.
"One saw another side of his thoroughness in
Lorraine, where he was Platoon Sergeant of the First
Platoon, and coming late one night along the line of
outposts I found him camped in one of them. He told me,
in open hearing of the men, that this outpost was always
complaining of being sniped at all night, so he was
spending the night with them to see what it amounted to;
he thought that they exaggerated. He told me next day
that they had exaggerated, but probably would not again,
and the relation between morale and exaggeration works as
cause and effect in both directions, so that it is
cumulative.
"Another instance was in the Forest of Charmes when
I noticed the First Platoon busily policing the
underbrush, while the rest of the Company lay on their
backs in the shade. I asked Watson what it was about, and
be told me that a deputation had represented to him that
the Platoon was doing more than its share of work, always
a popular fallacy with all organizations, and bad urged
that be speak to me about it. Instead of which he had
assembled the platoon, spoken briefly to them, and then,
deploying them in skirmish-line, had with them policed
the entire company area-with the result that the company
area was clean, that there was no hard feeling, nor any
further complaint from the First Platoon.
"Well, he is dead now, poor fellow. I have spoken of
him at such length first, to show what the best material
of the draft was like, and second, because I was fond of
him. But it is always the best who are killed, and I must
get back on my stretcher, for I left myself in a place
that was rather unhealthy to linger about in. We stopped
again at the Depot de Machines, where was the main
dressing station, but it was also an important crossroad,
and the shells were ranging in on it rather close. The
surgeon came out to me on the road, and I bad the
distraction of watching them while be bandaged my legs
and shoulder and face. I might mention that it was a
rifle-grenade that got me the second time, and it must
have landed nearly at my feet.
"We went on up the tracks in the gathering darkness,
and it was interesting to pick up the old familiar
landmarks that already seemed so remote. The German
blanket and tin of bully-beef that I had thrown away that
same day, against my better judgment, but because I had
to-they were still lying there, but shouldn't need them
now; the log hut where Gilbert had been so suddenly and
mysteriously gassed, and out of which battalion
headquarters bad been shelled; the little quarry in which
we had slept before the attack on the Depot; the cemetery
where we had eaten breakfast after that rather awful
night, when I knelt for an hour in the drenching darkness
by poor H-, with my finger on the pulse in his throat,
listening to his slow snuffling breath, and wait-ing for
breathing and pulse to cease. His brains were half out
over his cheek, and the open grave, with his comrade
already in it, was waiting at his feet; and I bad time in
plenty to think how much it would mean to some unknown
woman across the water when they did cease. After that
the way was unfamiliar and utterly dark.
"They must have carried me over three miles,
stumbling in the black night along the railroad ties of
the narrow-gauge line, heart-breaking work for tired and
hungry men; but always, when they set me down to rest, a
shell would come ranging in, and one or the other would
say: 'Well, what do you say? We've got to get the captain
out of this.' And so the weary march would be resumed.
Some machine-guns were firing from a dark hill-crest
beneath which we passed, and I wondered vaguely what they
were doing so far behind. Then we came to the near end of
the relay -posts and I bade my men good-by, wishing them
luck from my heart as they started back for the line. One
of the men at the relay-post started to tell me bow they
had been carrying there all day without food or relief;
but the other cut in with:
"'Don't tell that to the captain. He's not here to
help you out. You're here to help him.'
"And the first man laughed as he hitched the slings
over his shoulders, and said:
"'Well, I guess that's right enough. We'll do the
best we can, sir, and I guess every one's doing that
to-day. We don't have the worst of it here by a lot.'
"There were three relays of perhaps half a mile
each, but the shoulder-slings made it easier f or two to
carry me than it bad been for four of my own men without
them. Of course, as a piece of furniture I am rather
heavy. Then we came to a flat-car drawn by a horse, which
had a way of stopping short on the down grades; and, as I
overlapped the stretcher by a foot or so, I would take
the whole impetus of the car on my legs against the
horse's hindquarters. I tried to persuade the French
driver that it wasn't what I liked, but he assured me
that the horse was tired. It fell down twice, so I
imagine that was true; the war is being fought by such
desperately tired men and horses. Three times the car ran
off the tracks into the ditch. There were two other men
on it beside myself, but only one of us seemed to be
badly hurt and he had fainted.
"At last we came out into open country where some
ambulances were drawn up. I had almost forgotten that
there was anything but forest in the world. The drive
might have lasted anywhere from half an hour to a week;
it wasn't very rough, and they had covered us well with
blankets, but not being able to change one's position
came hard after a while. I suppose it was the same night
when I found myself in a great cathedral. It stretched
away in all directions into the darkness, paved with
endless stretchers, and the bases of its huge piers lit
with lanterns. Above was darkness, the vague forms of
Gothic capitals and interlacing arches, with here and
there a ragged gap of sky and the stars shining through.
I lay directly beneath the crossing, whose groined
vaulting seemed from that position to soar to impossible
heights. Here and there groups of faces came out into
strong light and black silhouette about the lanterns on
the tables; elsewhere dim figures moved to and fro among
the crowded stretchers. One had a feeling of being part
of some magazine illustration, but the cold was real
enough. It was cold as death, and the stone floor was wet
with the night fog. People kept coming and asking where I
was hurt, and dripping hot candle-grease on my chin as
they looked at me, though they meant to be helpful. At
last a Red Cross man came over with a cup of hot cocoa
and a doughnut, and that helped a lot; then a little
later he returned with another cup, a slab of chocolate,
and a packet of cigarettes, and that seemed to supply my
every earthly want. He told me I was at La Chalade Field
Hospital, and would go on soon to an Evacuation Hospital;
only the urgent cases got treatment here.
"So in due time on I went to a place where they
looked through me with an X-ray, and then gave me ether.
I have always loathed ether, but for some reason I didn't
mind it then; and I drifted from it, without ever waking,
into twelve hours of natural sleep. When I did wake it
was in a smooth white bed, looking out through an open
window at a vision of sunny foliage and golden evening
light, and oh, the blessed silence of the place; not a
machine-gun to be heard from horizon to horizon. Then I
found a sweet-looking nurse in spotless white smiling
down at me, and asking if I were ready to eat. I was very
ready. To sleep and eat, and sleep again, and to listen
to the silence; I asked nothing better of life than
that."