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
Miss Elizabeth Bliss was typical of these college girls. A long time
after Château-Thierry they were all working behind the lines in the
Argonne, Miss Bliss herself in charge of a sanitary train for the Red
Cross from the railhead back to the base hospital. It was part of her
job to work up to midnight and then be called at three o'clock in the
morning to see the four o'clock train start off with its wounded. On
one of those October mornings, when the weather was a little worse than
usual, if that could be possible, she exerted a perfectly human
privilege and decided not to get up.
But no sooner had this decision been made than the still, small voice
spoke to her.
"Can you afford to miss even one day?" it said to her.
"I'm all in. I just can't get up," she replied to the S. S. V.
"Can you afford to miss--even one day?" it repeated.
She got up and dressed and made her way down in the rain to the waiting
train. As she went into the long hospital car a wounded doughboy raised
himself on one elbow and shouted to all his fellows:
"Hi, fellows, I told you that a Red Cross girl would be here, and here
she is. I told you she'd come."
"Just think if I hadn't," says Miss Bliss in telling of this incident.
* * * * *
When life back of the front was not dangerous or dramatic, it was apt to
be plain dreary. There is not usually much drama just in hard work. Take
once again the case of Miss Mary Vail Andress, whom we found in charge
of the canteen at Toul. Miss Andress came to France on the twenty-fourth
of August, 1917, one of a group of seven Red Cross women, the first of
the American Red Cross women to be sent over. The other members of the
party were Mrs. Dickens, Mrs. Lawrence, Miss Frances Mitchell (who was
sent to the newly opened canteen at Épernay), Miss Rogers, Miss Andrews,
and Miss Frances Andrews, and were immediately dispatched to Châlons.
For a short time Miss Andress was the assistant of Henry Wise Miller,
who was then in charge of canteen work in France. She, however, enlisted
for canteen work and so asked Mr. Miller to be allowed to go into the
field and was sent to Épernay. From there she went back to Paris and on
to Chantilly, where she prepared a home for girls in canteen work. She
came to Toul in January, 1918, and, as you already know, was the first
woman worker to reach that important American Army headquarters.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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