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
You could trust the young military surgeon for that, just as his own
superior officers could trust him to produce results, time and time
again. For instance there was that week in July when the news came to
him--through an entirely unofficial but highly authentic channel--that
the First and Second Divisions of the United States Army were going to
be used somewhere near Château-Thierry as shock troops against the
continued German drive. For weeks past he had been carefully watching
the big war map of France that hung upon the wall of his office,
indicating upon it with tiny pin flags the steady oncoming of the enemy.
And in all those weeks he had been making pretty steady and definite
plans against the hour when he would be called upon to act, and to act
quickly.
Already he had formed that habit of quick action. Once, it was the
seventeenth of June, I think, he had had good opportunity to use it. The
First and Second were already in action along the Marne, brigaded with
the French, and Burlingame was driving along the rear of their
positions. But he supposed that the Divisions were in reserve; he did
not realize that it was in actual fighting, not at least until he espied
a dust-covered and wounded American quartermaster sergeant staggering
down the road. The Red Cross man stopped his car and put the wounded man
into it.
"What are you doing here?" he demanded.
"I got hit--with a machine gun," stated the sergeant. "That is, I was
with the machine gun. I'd never seen one of the d----d things before,
but we were fighting. I got a squad around me and we tackled it. We were
making the old bus hum when--well, they tickled me with a lot of
shrapnel."
Burlingame waited for no further explanations. He headed his car around
and at top speed raced back to Paris. As he rode he studied a pocket map
that he always had with him. Montmirial! That was the place he had set
out in his mental plans for this sort of emergency; in _just_ this sort
of an emergency.
The stop at Paris was short; just long enough to load some fifteen tons
of hospital supplies in the swiftest trucks Major Osborne's
Transportation Department could supply, to pick up the highly capable
Miss Julia Stimson--then chief nurse of the American Red Cross--then off
to the front once again. Beyond the fact that the emergency hospital
would be somewhere in the neighborhood of Montmirial, the destination of
the swift-moving caravan was quite uncertain. Burlingame and Miss
Stimson were both route makers and pace makers. They led the way right
up behind the front-line positions, to the chief surgeon of that portion
of the French Army with which the First Division was then brigaded. An
American colonel was talking to a Frenchman at the moment.
"We're here," reported Burlingame.
"Who's we?" asked the Yankee officer.
"The emergency hospital of the American Red Cross," was the instant
reply.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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