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
"The troops went into the lines at Epinonville before daybreak on the
morning of the fourth of October. Lieutenant McGinnis of the Red Cross
and I arrived there about noon. Never shall I forget it. The battle
lines lay just a little way ahead of us. Machine guns still occupied the
town which then was under violent bombardment. In fact during the entire
three weeks that we made our headquarters at Epinonville there was not a
single day or night that the town was not subjected to shell fire.
"Our boys had made a first attack early in the morning of the fourth.
All that morning the wounded had been returning--in large numbers. Some
of them were brought to regimental dressing stations of the 128th
Infantry, but the majority were handled at that of the 127th. It was
here that we did most of our work during the next few days. The station
was in a sort of dugout, made of boards and builded into a sidehill. In
the ditch beside it a sizable salvage pile had materialized already,
clothing and bandages--both blood-soaked, rifles, shoes, helmets, mess
kits, here and there a hand or a foot. On the ground, lying on
stretchers, were a number of wounded men waiting for the ambulances that
would take them to the field hospitals. All about were soldiers;
slightly wounded, gassed, shell-shocked, or just plain sick or
exhausted. Down the road could be seen a bunch of prisoners just
captured that morning. On its opposite side lay the bodies of several of
our fellows who had just died, while across the fields beyond stretched
slow-moving, irregular processions of litter bearers, bringing in their
burdens of wounded men.
"Such were the scenes and conditions that greeted us in Epinonville.
There was work a-plenty awaiting us, and we lost no time in taking
possession of a shack for our outpost of the American Red Cross. We
quickly unpacked our supplies and moved into it. McGinnis had a rather
formidable job of making some twenty gallons of cocoa, while I, equipped
with cookies, cigarettes, and canteens filled with water, did what I
could for the wounded in and around the dressing station.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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