early in the conflict, after the germans had been pushed back from their rush on paris, the french were in a bad way for many of the necessities of a country at war. among the necessities that france lacked was sufficient hospital accommodation for the sick and wounded of her armies, and for the first year of the war this shortage was partially supplied by voluntary ambulances—the word ambulance in french being employed for a field hospital. many rich americans gave valuable service at this time to their sister republic, the american ambulances at neuilly and juilly being among the most noted of the war hospitals.
it was not at all difficult to get staffs for these hospitals, for thousands of young americans with red blood in their veins and the love of romance in their hearts were only awaiting the opportunity to do something useful anywhere between paris and the firing line. between the people of the united states and the french there has always been a deep sympathy, possibly engendered up to half a century ago by their common antipathy to england, a sentiment forever removed by mutual sufferings and common interests and ideals in this war. a witty writer one time said that "good americans, when they die, go to —— paris"; jokingly showing the love which the people of the southern half of this continent have for the french. but, no matter what the reasons, the greatest republic in the world was early in responding to the call, and so placed her sister republic, france, under deep obligations for assistance of surgeons, nurses, and hospitals long before mr. wilson led the united states to join with the other civilized peoples in their fight against barbarism.
the british were very early up and doing in the same manner, and not many months after kitchener's contemptibles—a name now revered in britain—had made their heroic retreat from mons, many well-equipped hospitals manned by britons were doing excellent work behind the french lines.
it was my good fortune to serve at the beginning of 1915 in one of these, the chateau de rimberlieu, just three miles from the point at which the german lines came nearest to paris, and seven miles north of compiègne where a little over one hundred years ago napoleon for the first time met marie louise of austria when she came to replace the unhappy josephine.
i obtained the position after much searching for an opportunity to be of service. going across from new york to london i had been refused a position by the british unless i could enlist, which personal reasons prevented at the time. then, after two days interviewing, taxicabbing, viséing, pleading, and explaining, i obtained a permit to go to france. at boulogne the authorities of the british red cross and st. johns ambulance association told me they were oversupplied with surgeons and i decided to go to amiens, where i had a surgical friend.
i could not get away till the following morning, so i spent the afternoon wandering about. the streets were filled with a cosmopolitan throng of soldiers of all shades of color—white, black, and brown—and of various nationalities, british and canadian tommies in their khaki, french poilus in their blue-gray uniforms, ghurkas from india in their picturesque dress, and french soudanese with strange accouterments. the better hotels were all occupied by the military authorities as headquarters, and the harbor was filled with hospital ships and transports. walking about the streets one had to look sharp to avoid being run down by hurrying red cross ambulances or lumbering motor lorries.
i strolled to the beach, where on the sands tommies were lounging, gazing longingly across at the shores of england, dimly visible in the distance. one of the soldiers turned to me with a smile and said:
"i was just taking a last look at the old 'ome, sir. of course, i 'opes to see it again sometime if i don't 'appen to stop somethink." and it was all said most cheerfully. i added my wishes for his luck to his own.
on the slow train from boulogne to amiens we passed many military camps with their white tents in orderly rows. here and there oxen were being used by old men and women on their farms, and in one little brook some boys were fishing. i could hardly believe that forty miles or less away two armies of millions of men were contending for the mastery, with civilization depending on the outcome. when, later, i was much nearer to the front i was struck again and again by the matter-of-fact manner in which the french peasant accepts his or her military surroundings. he works coolly in fields into which at times enemy shells are dropping, or over which long range guns are firing into some semi-ruined town of northern france. something which is always a cause of wonder and admiration to the observer is that, despite the fact that all the young and able frenchmen are in the trenches, the women, old men and children who remain succeed in cultivating the farmlands of france right up to the lines.
at amiens my surgeon friend, who had over twelve hundred war operations to his credit in the past six months, much regretted that i could not be used at the moment,—much regretted; but still regretted. i began to feel that the gods of ill luck were camping on my trail. i went on to paris. here my letters of introduction were looked at with anxiety and i with suspicion, for in the early months of the war some foreign surgeons were found to be giving information to the enemy. at any rate, though courtesies and promises were showered upon me, i remained a useless guest at my hotel in the rue de rivoli until i reached an almost desperate stage, realizing that, though surgeons were urgently needed, i could not be of service.
sickly visions of returning home after a futile attempt to be of use came to me, when suddenly luck changed. the director of the ambulance anglo-fran?aise in the chateau de rimberlieu came to paris in search of assistance. being an englishman, he looked in at the british red cross in the avenue d'ièna where they told him of this forlorn canadian who had been haunting their offices, but of whom they had lost track. by a bit of luck their commanding officer met me that afternoon on the place de l'opéra, and gave me the director's address at the hotel de crillon. i hurried at once to call upon him, and offered to take any position from chauffeur to surgeon. there is a biblical quotation that the meek are blessed, for they shall inherit the earth. i inherited the surgeoncy—not a lucrative inheritance, it must be admitted, for it carried no salary, no railway fares, no uniform, all of which must be supplied by the inheritor.
after obtaining a sauf conduit from the military authorities to take me as far as creille, i left on the train that afternoon for compiègne, sixty miles to the north, accompanied by an affable young red cross orderly, of english parents and paris birth, who in civil life was a drygoods salesman. at creille, which was the beginning of the war zone, our troubles began. i was in civilian dress, my uniform not yet being completed. the french military officers here were almost adamant. my passport, director's letter, red cross authority, all proved of no avail to get me further. rather strangely, the letter which obtained the desired permission to proceed was an ordinary letter of introduction from a prominent french canadian parliamentarian which i had in my pocket.
presto! the officer knew his name, and by i went.
we arrived at compiègne about midnight, and for the first time we heard the sound of the guns ten miles away. as we were now only seven miles from the chateau, we thought our troubles were over. but we had reckoned without the sous-prefet de police, who said in the morning when we called that we could go no further without a special permit.
"that chap's a bit of an awss," remarked my young friend, expressing my sentiments to a nicety.
however, about 10 a.m. the director whirled into town in his 60-horsepower rolls-royce, and learning of our troubles, he smilingly said that he thought he could get around that difficulty. he pulled from beneath the rear seat a military overcoat and cap which i put on; and out of the town we whirled, past sentries at crossroads and railway crossings, to whom the director yelled the password—it was "clairemont" that day. the password changes daily at a certain hour, and anyone without the new word when required is hailed before the authorities. the director ran some slight risk in thus smuggling me through the lines, but nothing ever came of it; and i gave a sigh of relief when we at last swung into the spacious grounds of the chateau.
the house was a large stone building, used in peace times as the summer home for the family of the count de bethune, one of the oldest titled families in france. his two daughters, the countess de ponge and the marquise de chabannes, lived in a small corner of the building, and gave their time to help us in our nursing work. they did everything in their power, and it was much, to make life pleasant for the patients and for the staff.
the building was ideal for a hospital with room for a couple of hundred patients. the reception hall was used as a general reception room for patients, as well as a lounging room for us in our spare time. its immense, exquisitely carved mahogany mantel was one of the artistic ornaments that had not been removed to avoid injury. the drawing and reception rooms and the dining hall had been transformed into wards, called the joffre, french, and castelnau wards, as were also the larger of the bedrooms on the next floor. the surgeons, nurses, and staff occupied the servants' quarters on the top floor. the oak-paneled library and smoking room had become the operating theater and the x-ray studio. our dining-room was the original servants' dining-room in the basement. the french officers and men who were cared for here received, as they deserved to receive, the best we had to give, the staff gladly taking second place in all things. and at that our life was so much easier than that of the boys in the trenches that we often felt a bit ashamed of the difference.
the chateau was surrounded by some two or three hundred acres of well-laid-out gardens, artificial lakes, fountains, and woods. these grounds had been cut up to a certain extent by trenches, wire entanglements, dugouts, funk-holes, and gun emplacements, all in order and ready for use if the enemy should drive the french back in this direction. the fighting trenches were only three or four miles to the north of us, this chateau being said to be the nearest hospital to the lines in the whole theater of war. we worked, slept, ate, and killed time to the sound of the guns and shells, the latter often bursting well within a mile of us.
the really interesting part of the hospital was the personnel of the staff. there were four surgeons, a french military medical officer, villechaise; allwood, a jamaican, an old college friend of mine whom i had neither seen nor heard of for twelve years until the day i arrived at the chateau, when he came forward to give an anesthetic for me to a case which general berthier had ordered me to operate upon; king, a scotsman; and myself. and we four were practically the only members of the staff who were not paying for the privilege of being allowed to serve. the rest of the staff were well-to-do society people who not only financed the institution but also did the nursing and orderly work, gave their automobiles as ambulances, and their personal servants and chauffeurs to act as servants in the hospital.
besides the comtesse and the marquise, we had as nurses a niece of an ex-president of france; a grand-niece of lord beaconsfield; and another was a sister-in-law to lord something-or-other in scotland. the latter nurse had as a pal miss c——, who had stumped her father's constituency for him during the last general elections in england. she was a clever girl of twenty-three, an exceptionally good nurse, but oh, what a tory. she had all the assurance of her age, and mrs. pankhurst in her palmiest moments could not put lloyd george "where he belonged" as could this charming girl of twenty-three. the son of a prominent paris lawyer, a young, black-eyed chap of seventeen who was doing his bit there till he became old enough to join the army, was one of her great admirers; and when he was not scrubbing floors or performing some other necessary work, he sometimes wrote poetry to her. the last four lines of one of his rhymes i remember:
may your years of joy be many,
your hours of sorrow few;
here's success in all ambitions
to the man who marries you.
a mr. and mrs. g——, of cambridge, originally of belfast, were two of the most pleasant, kindly, and useful people the hospital possessed. their automobile was now an ambulance which their chauffeur handled at their expense; they paid two hundred dollars per month in cash; they were continually buying luxuries for the patients and necessities for the hospital. mrs. g—— acted as nurse in a most capable manner; and her husband as an orderly. a mr. and mrs. r—— from cairo, egypt, were also with us. in cairo he was a professor in the university; here he acted as chauffeur on his own automobile ambulance, and his wife looked after the checking and arranging of the laundry for the whole hospital. one afternoon i went into compiègne with him in his car, and he delighted some french african troops by chatting to them in arabic, after which they followed him around like little boys. mr. r—— also paid a goodly sum toward the upkeep of the hospital.
the director of whom i have already spoken, and the directress, both were heavy donors to the hospital, as well as giving automobiles and servants as assistants. a godly clergyman from york acted in the triple capacity of chaplain, chauffeur on his own auto-ambulance, which his parishioners had given him when he left, and general chore boy. one of my finest recollections of him is on a sunday evening when he held service, while outside the guns roared and shells from the enemy burst a mile or so to the north of us in plain view from the windows of the room in which the clergyman was interpreting the word of god. it was a most impressive ceremony. my last recollection of him, and it's just as fine, he had thrown aside his tunic and was working with pick and shovel digging a dump for the refuse of the hospital, the sweat rolling down his honest face.
the above people are only among the most interesting of the staff. there were also a sheep farmer from the north of england, a journalist of london, a student from oxford, and many other ladies and gentlemen who gave of their best, all of them, giving the french soldier scientific, sympathetic, and kindly attention. those names mentioned will illustrate the personnel of hospitals such as this, for there were many of them on the western front in the early months of the war. ours was a part of general castelnau's army, and while nominally under the red cross we were under the discipline of the french army. general berthier, who had charge at that time of the medical arrangements of that sector of the line, visited us daily, inspecting the whole institution, ordering this, advising that, and perhaps insisting upon something else. more ether and hydrogen peroxide were used by the french military surgeons in wounds than appealed to my ideas; but one little trick they had of sterilizing basins by rinsing them out with alcohol and touching a match to it—"flammer," they called it—was both rapid and thorough where steam sterilizers were not too common.
sometimes we were also inspected by civilian surgeons on behalf of the military authorities. dr. tuffier, a famous paris surgeon, who is as well known on this continent as in europe, came to make one of these periodical inspections. i had first met him at a surgical congress in chicago before the war; then in paris i had called upon him.
"ho, ho!" he said with a smile, "i have meet you one time in chicago; then i have meet you in paris; now i meet you here. perhaps the nex' time it may be at the nort' pole that we meet"; and with a friendly slap on the shoulder he passed on. he had been very courteous to me in paris, but had not given me the position that i desired so much. in fact i had found myself sometimes wishing that the french authorities had given me less politeness, but more opportunity to be of service.
in our spare hours of the day we watched the shells bursting in our neighborhood. by night we often sat and smoked in the dark while we watched the flashing of shells and guns and the flares sent up in the lines to prevent surprise attacks. we often saw aeroplanes being bombarded as they sailed to and fro along the lines directing the fire of the artillery. one soon got to recognize by ear the puff, puff, puff of the anti-aircraft shells bursting about the planes. why the enemy did not shell our institution i know not, for we were well within range.
in passing, it may be mentioned that no red cross flag flew from our roof, and when i inquired the reason i was told that it would only serve as a target for german shells.
our work alternated, as it always does on the battle front, between days of strenuous labor and days of ease. when the work was heavy all went to it with a will. in the hours of leisure the ladies, who in civil life knew nothing of danger and strife, begged and sometimes vainly insisted on being permitted to go with the ambulances as far as the trenches. we were all civilians and knew little of discipline and our lack of it at times was troublesome to the french military authorities, and some irritation arose because of it. for example,—lights were ordered not to be shown in the windows after dark till all the shutters were closed and curtains drawn. this rule was occasionally so carelessly obeyed that the military would at times sneeringly call our hospital "the lighthouse."
one afternoon there drove up to our entrance a cream-colored limousine, and out stepped an english society girl, saying that she had come to nurse. some of those who were already there were friends of hers, but the authorities decreed that we had enough assistance and that she must return to paris the following morning. in the morning she started in the limousine, ostensibly to return to paris, taking the sister-in-law of lord something-or-other as company for a short run.
when outside the grounds she told the chauffeur to turn toward the lines instead of toward paris. with the military pass which she had obtained through influence in paris, they passed sentry after sentry till they were only a few hundred yards from the trenches. here they were overtaken by a pursuing military motor cyclist who ordered them put under arrest, and they were taken before a high-up officer who told them he was forced to confiscate their automobile and send the ladies under arrest to the rear.
but beauty in distress—and one of them was a real beauty—made him relent. they were allowed to proceed rearward after a severe reprimand and a considerable fright. a few weeks later i met the lady of the automobile in a train near paris and she told me that she had just sent up a big box of real cigarettes—not french ones—to the officer who should have confiscated her car, but didn't. i did not inquire how she had obtained his address!
there was another occasion when a plot was hatched to duck a disagreeable officer in the artificial lake at the lower end of the grounds. fortunately the saner heads prevailed and averted any further complications. and "it would have served the creature bally well right, for what right had he anyhow to insist so strongly on his old rules," as one of the hotheads expressed it.
it was a trifle irritating at times to have a nurse, in reply to your order to give such and such a patient massage, say that she would do it presently, as she was just going for a short tramp in the grounds. mais, que voulez vous? as the french say with that delightful shrug. were they not paying to be there, and should not that fact have given them some rights over those horrid rules of discipline? and we men were the same on occasions, for discipline cannot be had outside of the trained army.
but the breaches of discipline were small in comparison to the really excellent work that the hospital was carrying on, so they were overlooked, and, as they occurred only at wide intervals, they but served to give a touch of humor to the life which was monotonous enough at times. the french realized full well the sacrifices that were made daily by these aristocrats who had given up their luxurious homes, their autos, their servants and their money, to live in the servants' quarters of this old chateau, and to wait hand and foot upon wounded poilus, with at any moment of the day or night the chance of a shell coming through the roof and stirring things up. no praise is too high for the self-sacrificing work of these men and women, all voluntary workers and untrained in this type of labor. the women were members of the v.a.d., voluntary aid detachment, which has been the target at times of coarse jibes and criticisms, spoken by those who do not know whereof they speak. i have worked with members of this corps of women workers in hospitals in england and france, and i know that, taking it all in all, their work is beyond praise, and their nobility of character beyond estimate. this is vouched for by many a lonely, hard-hit common soldier, sick in a strange land, far from his home and his loved ones.
a field telephone line ran from the chateau up to the rear trenches. the cases were brought out of the trenches to a sheltered spot and one of our ambulances was telephoned for. one of us medical men accompanied the ambulances on these journeys, and they were often very interesting. on one of the trips on which i accompanied the ambulance we came to a ruined village, gury by name, from which the civilian population had been sent away. it was occupied by french soldiers not in the front line. this village had just been shelled rather heavily by the huns, one hundred and fifty shells having been dropped into it. after the first shell, which hit one of the houses but injured no one, the soldiers took shelter in the cellars and when the smoke had cleared away, just before our arrival, it was found that the only damage done was the killing of a cow and a pigeon! the soldiers were hilariously laughing at this waste of shells. an officer showed us the remains of a brass bed in a wrecked house, saying that he had been sleeping in that when the shelling began.
we were then taken to see a battery of the famous .75's—soixante quinze—perhaps the finest field gun on the western front, with which they said they were going to pay back the germans for their audacity. they were like so many boys at play! the guns were set up in a cavity in the ground, a roof built over them on which sod had been placed in such a manner that from enemy planes it appeared like the surrounding fields. dugouts led down from the gun position so that the artillerymen could come up from their disturbed slumbers at a moment's notice and send across a few rounds of their death-dealing shells. round about were laid out flower beds with the flowers forming in french the words:
gloire aux allies—glory to the allies.
honneur aux soixante quinze—honor to the .75's.
wherever man lives he must have something to care for and to love, and these flowers gave the poilus an outlet for their affection.
every few miles away from us in all directions except the north were other hospitals of the same type as our own. one very good example, ten miles away at fayel, was under the direction of countess h—— g——, a cousin of king george. she came sometimes to visit some acquaintances in our institution, and i spent a very pleasant afternoon on her first visit showing her our grounds, trenches, gun positions, wire entanglements, and other things of interest. she was as kindly mannered and democratic as anyone could desire, though she was king george's cousin and wore a number of ribbons for previous service in south africa. since that time she has served with the italians in italy and has been decorated by king victor emmanuel.
in compiègne was another very interesting hospital presided over by that wonderful frenchman, alexis carrel, of the rockefeller institute of new york. here he has done research work that has made his name familiar in every scientific circle the world over. and here in compiègne, in this newer field, his researches have brought forth new methods of treating wounds which have been adopted in hospitals throughout the war zone. his hospital was a government institution, not one of the voluntary ambulances of which our chateau was an example.
at the time of writing, two years from my period of service at the chateau de rimberlieu, it is still doing good service as a hospital, though now it is entirely directed by the french military authorities. but a number of the original people are still there, performing the same generous deeds which they performed in my time, though they are performing them many miles from the scene of fighting, for early in 1917 at this point the french happily pushed back the invaders for many miles.
