At Beauvais, simultaneous with the establishment of the headquarters at Compiègne, the American Red Cross opened both military and civilian hospitals, together with a rest station of some three hundred beds for slightly wounded soldiers and for casuals; as men detached from their units are generally known. Over a bonfire in a small hut the workers cooked food and served it hot to the soldiers and the refugees. In fact this town had been made a clearing station for these last. Each incoming train brought more and more of these pitiful folk into the town, where they were halted for a time before being sent on other trains to the districts of France quite remote from any immediate possibility of invasion. In the few hours which refugees spent in Beauvais our Red Cross made some definite provision for their comfort. It secured a huge building, obtained several tons of hay, and after establishing a rough form of bus service with its motor cars, transported them from the station to its hastily transformed barracks for a night's rest, and then, on the following morning, back to the railway station and the outgoing trains to the south and west. And with the barracks and the hay cots went blankets and food, of course. It was crude comfort; but it was infinitely better than spending the night on the stone floor of a damp and unheated railroad station. At Niort, where a small store of Red Cross supplies had been sent to a designated delegate, the delegate on an hour's notice fed four hundred refugees, while at Clermont the American Red Cross supplied food to a nunnery that had opened its doors to refugees. So it went. The variety of services was indeed all but infinite; while through the entire nightmare of activity, the workers were thrust upon their own initiative--that precious American birthright,--time and time again. Their only orders were short ones; they were to help any one and every one in need of assistance. How the French viewed this aid and how they came to rely upon it, is best illustrated, perhaps, by the testimony of a hardware merchant of Soissons whose house had been shelled. Without hesitation he came direct to the Red Cross headquarters for help, saying: "I come to you first because it has become natural for us to go to the Americans first when we are in need." And from a refugee station near Péronne, a Red Cross worker reported: "They are all looking to me, as a representative of the American Red Cross, to act as a proper godfather."