Part 1

OLD GLORY AND VERDUN

[Illustration:

_Photograph passed by the Committee on Public Information._ _Copyright, 1918, by Underwood & Underwood, New York City._ _Reproduced from The Saturday Evening Post of Philadelphia._

WHAT REMAINED OF A FRENCH FIELD HOSPITAL AFTER A GERMAN INCENDIARY SHELL HIT IT.]

OLD GLORY AND VERDUN

And Other Stories

BY

ELIZABETH FRAZER

[Illustration: Decorative Image]

NEW YORK

DUFFIELD & COMPANY

1918

Copyright, 1918, Curtis Publishing Company Copyright, 1918, Duffield & Company

CONTENTS

PAGE

WARD EIGHTY-THREE 3

WITH THE FRENCH WOUNDED 39

MISS GREENHORN GOES A-NURSING 77

THE CHILDREN OF THE WAR ZONE 107

A CANTEENER IN FRANCE 143

OLD GLORY AND VERDUN 186

BEHIND CHÂTEAU-THIERRY 223

THE SPITE ATTACK 269

LIST OF ILLUSTRATIONS

What Remained of a French Field Hospital After a German Incendiary Shell Hit It _Frontispiece_

FACING PAGE

Refugees from the Gassed Districts 110

The Commanding Officer of the Citadel of Verdun 188

Tent-Ward Showing Damage by German Bombs 270

OLD GLORY AND VERDUN

WARD EIGHTY-THREE

It was my first morning at the hospital. The clock in the _vestiaire_ stood at five minutes to eight. At eight I was to begin work. “Report for duty” was the way the formal summons ran. I was to report to Ward Eighty-three, the biggest, the heaviest and the most interesting ward in the hospital. Mrs. Monroe, who had charge of the untrained and unpaid volunteer nurses--or _auxiliaires_, as they are termed--had told me to await her in the _vestiaire_. Accordingly I waited, feeling awkward and strange and timid, like a Freshman on his first day at college.

To say that I was nervous would be considerably understating the case. Ever since entering the stone portal of the big American war hospital that morning, I had been smitten with a deadly ague of fear--fear lest in my abysmal ignorance I should do the wrong thing at the wrong time, or fail to do the right thing at the right time, and a man should die as the consequence--a man; a real, live, breathing man--one of those gay, muscular, bright-eyed little boy soldiers of France, with cigarettes perched rakishly behind their ears, that I had seen crowding the streets of Paris on their brief _permissions_ from the Front!

Suddenly it came to me that fastening a handkerchief round the eyes of a blinking but obliging friend was a vastly different affair from fastening a firm, nonslippable bandage across the sockets of a man whose eyes have been torn out by a ball. And how did one stop a hemorrhage? You tied something somewhere. That was the extent of my knowledge on that point. In the confusion of my mind, I had even forgotten how to rescue a drowning man, a formula which has always fascinated me and which I have memorized at intervals ever since the age of ten, thinking that some day in such a fashion I might rescue my future husband. In short, all the carefully acquired artificial knowledge I had been able to absorb in a three-months’ First Aid Course in New York, all the data, the neat lists of questions and answers, had faded clean out of me, like a cheap dye, now that I was faced up with the immediate and grim reality.

That course, and the light-heartedness with which I had pursued it, seemed all at once to me very remote, irrelevant to the present situation, and somehow like a joke in bad taste. I perceived, or I believed I perceived, that I was in a false situation. I had no business in that _vestiaire_, in that white uniform and coif. If at that moment there had been a train waiting outside the _vestiaire_ door bound for the Grand Central Station, I should have taken it without a second’s hesitation. There being none, I consoled myself with the reflection that, after all, I had not asked to come; that, on the contrary, I had been sent for and urged to begin without delay, as the hospital was undermanned at this summer-vacation season, and the wounded were pouring in, a great steady stream, from the base hospitals.

Moreover, I should not be alone, like a sentinel on his post. Over me, the _auxiliaire_, was the trained nurse; over the trained nurse was the head nurse; over the head nurse was the doctor of the ward; over the doctor was the assistant surgeon; over the assistant surgeon was the chief surgeon, or _médicin chef_; and over all of us, interlocking us together, was the French military system and the invisible but potent Papa Joffre. So that if I, alone, could not stop a hemorrhage, I could call my trained nurse; if she could not stop it, she could call the head nurse; if the two of them could not stop it, they could call the ward doctor; and if he could not stop it--but at this point I felt myself on safe ground. The affair was out of my hands!

“Have you ever had to stop a hemorrhage?” I voiced my secret fear to a young Englishwoman beside me, who was rapidly changing from her civilian costume into the crisp white linen _infirmière’s_ blouse of the wards.

“_Mon Dieu_, no!” She laughed as she pinned on her coif. “Not a chance, with so many nurses round. You’ll have plenty of chance, though, to wash their feet--those that still have feet,” she added soberly. “Is this your first day?”

I nodded.

“And did you have any training--I mean any real training--before you entered?” I asked.

“No,” she said. “I took an examination in London; but the examiner was so weary by the time he got to me that he merely said, ‘Have you had the usual course?’ And when I replied ‘Yes,’ he simply passed me through. But it doesn’t matter. You soon pick things up. What’s your ward?”

“Eighty-three.”

She raised her brows at that and glanced at my feet.

“I hope you have comfortable shoes! That ward is the hardest in the hospital--nothing but big primary cases; every single _blessé_ in bed. You’ll have no chance to go to sleep at the switch,” she added with a smile. “If your feet hurt to-night, rub them with cold cream, then alcohol; and lie with them up on the footboard of your bed. It takes the swelling out. Have you read the rules?” She waved her hand toward a printed sheet tacked upon the wall, nodded and hurried off.

I faced round, feeling more than ever like a Freshman on his first day, and read the following:

“AMERICAN AMBULANCE

“CONDITIONS FOR AUXILIARY SERVICE

“The _auxiliaires_ work under the trained nurses. They do not, as a rule, attend at operations; nor do they do the dressings, although they might be called upon to do a minor dressing, should the nurse consider them sufficiently experienced. The hours are from eight A. M. to six P. M. daily, with one whole day free one week, and one afternoon free the following week. _Auxiliaires_ are asked to stay three months at least; six months if possible. The service is entirely voluntary, and _auxiliaires_ must meet all their own expenses. Luncheon is provided at the Ambulance at a cost of 1.50 francs a meal----”

At this juncture the _vestiaire_ door opened again. I wheeled--I had been wheeling every time it opened for the last ten minutes!--and Mrs. Monroe’s brisk voice said:

“‘Ah, there you are! Sorry to have kept you waiting. I’ll just take you to Miss Brooks, the head nurse of Salle Eighty-three, and she’ll tell you where to begin.’”

Five minutes later introductions had been effected. Miss Brooks, who, together with the doctor, two other nurses and an orderly, was bending over a bed from which proceeded loud screams of “_Oh, là là! Oh, là là!! Oh, là là!!! Bon Dieu! Doucement! Oh, là là!_” turned to the nurse beside her and said briefly:

“Here’s your auxiliary, Miss Ransome. Is there anything she can start on?”

Miss Ransome did not even glance up. She was holding, firmly grasped in both hands, a man’s leg, stiffly extended, while the doctor lifted pieces of gauze from what appeared to be a deep bloody and suppurating crater in the thigh.

“One moment, please,” she murmured.

The dressing of the wound continued. The man renewed his high agonized cries: “_Oh, là là! Oh, Nom d’un Nom! Doucement!_--Gently there!”

I stood aside and drew a deep breath. The quality of anguish in those tones had already turned me pale. Later I was to learn to discriminate between sounds of pain. There is the loud outcry of the man who is not in extreme pain, but whose nerves have been so battered by shock, exposure and continued strain that he is no longer master of himself. Second, there is the scream of the man, also suffering from shock and abnormally sensitive, who howls at the mere approach of the doctor.

And finally, there is the cry of the plucky soul, strong to endure, but whose agony has passed the limit of human endurance. Such a cry, bursting out across the ward, simply stampedes the nerves; heard suddenly in the middle of the night it would fetch one out of bed in a single leap, panic-stricken with horror; and even in a big hospital, where innumerable sounds of pain blunt the ear, it still takes the right of way, momentarily stilling the air. As the days went on I was to learn these fine discriminations; but at present all screams were alike to me. I gave each one full value, one hundred per cent of anguish.

While the dressing proceeded I looked about me. Salle Eighty-three was a spacious airy room, lofty-ceiled, with tessellated stone floors, and long French windows on two sides. One set of windows gave upon the rear of the building, and the other side opened on a charming French garden round which the huge structure is built, one room deep, in the shape of a hollow square. Inside the salle the beds were ranged round the four sides and came halfway down the center, forming thus two passages that were none too wide for the busy morning traffic.

Everyone, I perceived, was already working under a full head of steam. Two doctors were in the ward, one on each side, and the dressings were progressing steadily from bed to bed. A nurse preceded the doctors, cutting down the bandages. The air was thick with cries and groans, the cry of “_Doucement!_ Easy there!” prevailing high above all others like a monotonous refrain. French military orderlies were hurrying about, their arms piled high with stained linen; two blowzy-cheeked little _femmes de chambre_ were down on their knees scrubbing the stone floor, their tongues and their _sabots_ clattering together. Ahead of them a bent old woman, with a great red hooked nose and a wide toothless smile, hideous as one of Shakespere’s witches, was passing from bed to bed, gathering up the cigarette butts, chaffing the men and exchanging with them jests as broad as they were good-natured.

It was evident she was a prime favorite, for it was “_Grand’mère!_” “_Grand’mère!_” straight down the line, and chuckles followed in the wake of her sallies like bubbles on a stream. Here and there patients able to sit up in bed had removed their _chemises_ and were soaping their chests with gusto. These _Grand’mère_ favored with take-offs on their manly beauty. Bursts of laughter punctuated her hits.

“Here are your men,” said Miss Ransome, joining me--“these twelve. You’re not responsible for the others. Suppose you begin with Claudius there. Wash him. Rub his back with alcohol. Then make his bed. Watch out for his broken leg!” she cautioned.

And she nodded toward that unfortunate member, which, swathed as stiff as that of a mummy and dotted with numerous little rubber tubes that sprouted up through the bandages like unnatural flowers, was swung out upon an extension and held taut by a jungle of pulleys and bags and weights.

“He’s had a hard time,” she continued in a lowered voice. “What with losing his eye and getting his leg infected--you see, he lay wounded four days and four nights on the battlefield, without water, before he was finally rescued--he’s had a tough pull. For weeks we thought he would die. But he fooled us all--didn’t you, Claudius?”

As she spoke English, the boy did not understand. He lay regarding her with a bright dark eye, all the brighter for the black patch which covered its companion; and finally he asked in tones of weary politeness:

“You said, mees?”

“Change all his linen,” she pursued unheeding. “He can raise himself an inch or two. When he’s finished, go straight down the line and do the same to the others. I can’t help you much this morning.”

And she hurried away, leaving me with my first task--to wash the back and change the entire bed linen of a man who could not stir more than an inch or two without exquisite pain!

“_Bonjour_,” I said by way of commencement. “_Comment ça va?_--How goes it?”

“Bad. Very bad. That imbecile pig of a leg! Not a moment’s rest did it give me last night. Cramp, cramp, cramp!” He clenched and unclenched his fist with nervous irritability to indicate the nature of the pain, while the flare of crimson in his thin cheeks testified to a heightened temperature. “I wish you’d cut it off to-night,” he growled, “and stand it over in the corner.”

“I will--with my scissors,” I promised. “And to-morrow, if it’s been good, we’ll fasten it back on with safety pins.”

“You needn’t bother,” he grinned.

With many gaspings and painful grimaces he got hold of an overhead hand grip, dug his head deep into the pillow and managed to raise himself until his back described a parabola perhaps two inches above the bed. “Quick! Quick!” he commanded breathlessly. I washed him as best I could. Afterward I glanced up at the chart hanging behind his bed and read there: “Simondon, Claudius. Age, 21. Wounded May 25, 1916. Admitted June 7, 1916.” Claudius, aged twenty-one, had already white hairs in his head, and his slight figure was shrunken and yellow and dry, like that of a little old man. At the same time there was about him something unquenchably boyish and debonair, which made one wish to weep.

“Have you ever been in a charge?” I asked, to divert his attention.

“Yes; ten of them. Not interesting! Not interesting at all! You stand there in a trench, water up to your knees, holding your gun and waiting for the order. You are cold, and still you perspire. You tremble with agitation. Maybe you stand thus for hours. Or you climb over the parapet and run. If the Boches retreat, yes, then it is interesting. If they come on, no, not interesting. Not interesting at all!” And he looked up at me with his sardonic grin. “War,” he added, “is the stupidest game that a fellow with wits can play at.”

A minute later he confided to me that he was to receive a decoration. He was to receive the Croix de Guerre.

“But that is fine!” I exclaimed.

“Ah, you think so?” jeered Claudius. “It’s very fine, without doubt; but as for me, I’d rather have my eye than that pretty little medal hung on my chest. Can I see the world with that little medal? _Zut!_ I prefer my eye--thanks.”

For the moment his nonchalance completely deceived me. It was not until several days later when I came upon him unobserved, poring over the official notice of his decoration, and caught the look of pride, of emotion in the young face, that I really got the matter straight. Twenty-one is twenty-one the world over, and always hides its loves.

After washing Claudius and rubbing his back with alcohol, I made his bed. In France the bed is a sacred institution and the making of one is not a proper subject for jest. But I am not jesting when I say that the ordinary, casually made American bed, with its opportunities for ventilation and its light loose covers which one may kick joyously down to the foot in the morning, would fill the average Frenchwoman with amazement and scorn.

A French bed is something in the nature of a cocoon, with a hole in the upper right-hand corner, into which one artfully insinuates oneself at night, and from which one artfully disengages oneself in the morning. All apertures, save the small one at the top, are hermetically sealed--so tightly are the sheets drawn under the mattress, so smoothly are the covers laid on, so exquisitely are the corners mitered. One is all but sewed into bed.

To make such a bed is to produce a work of art, a creation. Thus, Jean and Marie made my bed every morning at the hotel, folding on each layer as close as the successive skins of an onion, while I watched them with respectful admiration. Once, feeling too warm in the middle of the night, I tried to remove a blanket. I struggled until four o’clock the next morning. Next time I am going to send for professional wreckers.

But the making of such a bed is, after all, a comparatively simple affair--for I am not in it! Let us denominate it Class C in order of difficulty. Class B is the making of such a bed with an occupant, but an occupant who can help himself--stir about. Class A is the making of such a bed with an immovable man in it; a man, moreover, attached to a network of apparatus--cords, pulleys, overhead weights and drains, all in such delicate adjustment that to jar any of them will wrench a cry of torture from the occupant.

To this last class belonged the bed of Claudius. When, after three-quarters of an hour’s labor, punctuated by many exclamations of “_Doucement! Doucement!_” I straightened myself, Claudius was rather white and I was perspiring freely. Still, that bed was made--it really should be written Made!--and I surveyed it proudly. The lower sheet in particular had been difficult to dispose properly. To me it appeared at least twice too long for the mattress, and in the end I had simply wadded up the extra yards of length and tucked them under the pillows.

It was during this latter operation when Justin, the orderly, came upon me. Justin is a squat, grotesque little old man, with the head of a gargoyle set on powerful Atlas-like shoulders. Being an orderly is his _métier_. He has been one in a French military hospital for twenty years, which is to say that Justin is a very wise man. I believe he could give points to Solomon, for Solomon was not a Frenchman. He regarded my bungling efforts for a moment in silence, and then said in tones of grave reproach:

“Ah, mademoiselle, it is not thus we make a bed in France! Permit me.”

Saying which, he stripped the bed bare to the mattress and made it afresh, with the subtle perfection of Jean and Marie. My crumpled undersheet was drawn taut as a drumhead. Followed in swift succession the drawsheet, the top sheet and the blankets, smooth as rose petals and as firmly fixed.

Where, meantime, was Claudius, with his weak back, his smashed leg and his jungle of apparatus? Not a single cry had escaped him. A glance showed his thin dark face alight with amusement as he watched old Justin teach the strange “mees” how to make a bed with a live Frenchman in it.

“_V’là!_” said Justin, straightening himself. “That’s the way we make a bed in France!” And he padded noiselessly off in his battered blue list slippers; it had taken him exactly six minutes by the ward clock.

The next bed, when I turned down the covers, revealed a patient whose linen was saturated and stiff with blood. Another undersheet to manipulate!

“Don’t touch me! Don’t touch me!” came a faint moan from the pillows.

“Where are you wounded?” I inquired, for this is the first fact a maker of beds must determine.

“Both legs broken below the knees,” was the feeble reply.

“Don’t stop to do him now,” said Miss Ransome, approaching the bed. “He’s just been brought in and is going up for operation. You can make his bed while he is away. Look at those feet!” she exclaimed, pointing.

I looked. Beneath the caked and dried blood from his wounds the mud of the Somme was ground into his skin until it was blackened as if from powder.

“Some of them are worse than that!” said she. “Last week there came in to us a little _poilu_, straight from the first-line trenches of Verdun. How long he had been without a wash even he himself did not know. The doctor gave one long-range sniff and said hastily: ‘Send him to the baths!’ It seemed, however, that he was not acquainted with baths--at least not in the ‘all-together’ and in an American bathtub; for the attendants said that he fought like a wild cat--and when he came back he was crying! He had faced the cannon at Verdun; he had been smashed to pieces by a shell, and had his leg cut off up to his thigh with only a local anæsthetic without flinching; but he wept with fear at sight of an American bath and demanded to be sent back to the trenches!”

The bedmaking went on, somewhat raggedly to be sure, for on those first days I was obsessed by an absurd and fantastic fear that sometime when I pulled away the drawsheet I should pull away also a mangled leg upon it. There was one bed, however, which I grew to enjoy making, and that was the bed of Grandpère--fat, dirty, profane, cross-grained, whimsical old Grandpère. He was notorious in the ward as a grouch. Claudius declared that he had been jilted in love and had had the “black butterflies” ever since. He was what is known as an endless-chain smoker. He lighted one cigarette from the end of another and kept going the entire day through, with the result that his _chemise_ front was always full of little burnt holes and powdered thick with ashes.

Nor was his bed much better. One swept out of it each morning aluminum filings, chunks of bread, apple parings, handkerchiefs, books, nutshells, letters, as well as innumerable little pillows and pads with which Grandpère combated the hated “currents of air” from the open windows. The fact was, he got no peace day or night from a badly infected leg, and sometimes he was hard driven for diversion.

Between him and a certain substitute nurse in the ward there existed a violent and mutual antipathy. She was an excellent nurse professionally, but hard, brusque in manner, and without a single word of French to build a bridge of sympathy between herself and her patients, among whom she was known as the old _mitrailleuse_. Between her and Grandpère was waged a fierce battle each morning over the making of his bed. She lectured him roundly in English for his untidiness, and Grandpère retorted volubly in French, with a vocabulary that would have enchanted a cow-puncher. She was displeased with the state of his _chemises_, and Grandpère was highly displeased with her displeasure.

“What is she saying, the old _mitrailleuse_?” he would whisper to me, his little gray eyes gleaming with mischievous humor. “Why has she always the great anger?”

“She says you smoke too much--that your bed is full of trash.”

“But, _mon Dieu_, that is my sole distraction! And what else?”

“She says you burn holes in your _chemise_ and that it is always covered with ashes.”