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
Can you imagine what such a report might mean to a man who had not heard
from home in over five months? There were many such. There were times
when men--American fighting men--"went over the top" with aching hearts
for some one who faced a particularly difficult problem of life back
here at home. Then it was that the Red Cross did not hesitate to use the
cable. It is hardly necessary to emphasize the relief which the
following exchange of messages must have meant to some one fighting man
in our khaki:
PARIS, August 6, 1918.
_To AMCROSS, Washington_:
Report concerning confinement, Mrs. Harold W----, Rural Free
Delivery Five, H----, Penn.
WASHINGTON, August 14, 1918.
_To AMCROSS, Paris_:
Answering Inquiry No. ----. Mother and baby son three months old
well and happy.
In this instance the worried fighter was an officer--a captain of
infantry. During the time which elapsed between the two cablegrams he
was wounded and the answer found him in a hospital, side by side with a
French _blessé_. A Red Cross searcher acted as interpreter for their
felicitations and in her official report of the incident included this
notation:
"Captain W---- was much improved as a result of the good news. He is
sitting up and eating roast chicken to-day. He says the American Red
Cross has cured him."
The Red Cross representatives here in America could not enter a home
unless they were welcome; neither could they force their way into the
hearts of men. They were compelled to wait until their help was sought.
The growing mental depression of a certain major of a fighting division
during those tense months of the midsummer of 1918 did not escape the
attention of the American Red Cross man attached to that division.
Suddenly the man, who had been marked because of his poise, became
taciturn--isolated himself. A reference to the Red Cross Home Service
which its division worker tactfully introduced into the table talk at
the mess at which both sat, however, did elicit some trivial rejoinder
from the man with the golden oakleaf upon his shoulder; while the
following day that same major wrote a letter to the Red Cross man--and
bared the reason for his most obvious melancholy.
It seemed that back here in the United States he had a little son, from
whom he had received no word whatsoever in more than six months. The
child was with the major's divorced wife, and his father was more than
anxious to know if he was regularly playing out of doors, if he was
receiving his father's allotment, and if he was buying the promised
Thrift Stamp each week. The army man already had his second golden
service stripe and greatly feared that his little son might be beginning
to forget him.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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