With the Doughboy in France: A Few Chapters of an American EffortHungerford, Edward
History
With the Doughboy in France: A Few Chapters of an American Effort
Hungerford, Edward
American National Red Cross; World War, 1914-1918 -- United States
On that same morning--one cannot easily efface it from any picture of
any continued activity of the Great War--the Smith College Unit workers
had gone from their headquarters at Grecourt, both on foot and in their
four Ford cars, to their various tasks in the seventeen small villages
in the immediate vicinity. Two or three of these young women journeyed
to Pommiers, a little town in the area, whose school had been reopened
by them, and which also served the children of several surrounding
villages. And because so many of the children had to walk so far to
their lessons the Red Cross served them each day with a substantial
school lunch--of vermicelli, chocolate, and milk. A few others of the
college graduates went a little farther afield--to supervise planting
operations in near by towns--yet not one of these girls was one whit
above turning to and working on the task with her own hands, while some
helped the Red Cross workmen's gangs roofing houses and stables,
repairing shops and fitting outbuildings, in some crude form, for human
habitation.
Into the very heart of those varied activities that March morning
marched the red-faced British Town Major of Ham with the blunt and crisp
announcement to the Red Cross man that the town must be evacuated
without delay; the retreat already was well under way, the vast hegira
fairly begun.... The Red Cross force there at Ham did not hesitate. It
first sent word to all the workers in the villages roundabout; then,
having quickly mobilized in the town square its entire transportation
outfit--three trucks, a camionette, and a small battered touring
car--gave quiet, prompt attention to its own immediate problem of
evacuation work.
It functioned fast and it functioned extremely well. Back and forth
across the River Somme--over the rough bridges hurriedly builded by
Americans for the British Army--it transported hundreds and hundreds of
children and infirm refugees. All that day, all that night, and well
into the next morning it worked, driving again and again into the
bombarded towns in the region to bring out the last remaining families.
The Germans were already on the edge of the town when one Red Cross
driver made his last trip into Ham--on three flat tires and a broken
spring! Yet despite these physical disabilities succeeded in carrying
six wounded British soldiers out to safety.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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