Part 33

Many of the soldiers are country boys and will go back to farming when they leave the hospital. For them there are courses in farm accounting and work in the gas-engine shop and with the hospital’s tractor. Clerks who were unable to obtain promotion because they did not understand stenography and typewriting are learning those branches, and some are taking courses in the newest systems of cataloguing and bookkeeping. A boy who had lost both legs above the knee became proficient in Spanish in order that he might assist his brother in the management of a ranch near the Mexican border. Others are taught woodworking, gardening, the operation and repair of gas-engines, shoe repairing, oxyacetylene welding, printing, electrical mechanics, lettering, and drawing. One day there was brought into the reconstruction hospital at Colonia, New Jersey, a boy whose hands had been taken off at the wrists. For five weeks he had been fed and cared for by any one who happened to be near. He was helpless and despondent. The able and energetic woman in charge of the educational work in his ward suggested that if a spoon was fastened to the stump of his right arm he would be able to feed himself. At first he said that he couldn’t, but she insisted on his making the attempt. The very next day he called to the sergeant who had told him that dinner was ready: “I can wait on myself now.” Then he devised a way to light his own cigarettes. Before long they had rigged up a device by which brushes could be fastened to his arms and he was set to work painting toys and boxes. And he did it remarkably well, everything considered. And, what was much more important, he whistled as he worked.

I doubt if any branch of the army did more efficient work in its respective line, and received less credit from the public, than the Veterinary Corps. This lack of appreciation was due, in the first place, to public ignorance of the duties of the corps and of the character of its personnel. Most people associate a veterinarian with the old-time country horse-doctor, of rough manners and still rougher speech, who was known to every man and boy in the countryside as “Doc.” The army veterinarian is a different genus altogether. He is usually as smart in appearance and as well-set-up as any officer of the line; he is more often than not a university graduate, and his methods of treatment are as modern and scientific as those of a surgeon or a medical specialist. The impression also seems to prevail that, as a result of the wholesale motorization of artillery and transport and the enormous use of aircraft, animals played but a small part in the Great War, and that consequently the army veterinarian enjoyed something akin to a sinecure. As a matter of fact, nothing could be further from the truth. Probably you were not aware that when the war ended, the United States Army possessed close to half a million horses and mules—the exact figure was, I believe, about 470,000—and was purchasing hundreds of more daily. Not only was the task of inspecting and supervising the care of this great body of animals an enormous one, but, as a result of the extreme scarcity of horse-flesh—for buyers for the European armies had almost drained the markets of the world before we entered the war—and because of the lack of tonnage, the animals of the A. E. F. were, as a divisional commander expressed it in a general order, “worth their weight in gold.”

Prior to 1916 there were only about 75 veterinarians in the entire army, but with the passage during that year of the National Defense Act the number of veterinarians at the call of the government was materially increased by the creation of the Veterinary Reserve Corps. The Veterinary Corps, like other branches of the service, kept pace with the expansion of the army, and when the Armistice was signed it had on duty 2,200 officers and an enlisted force of more than 21,000 men.

When an animal is first led before a purchasing commission its relation to the Veterinary Corps begins. Every horse and mule must be examined by a veterinary officer for soundness and freedom from physical defects before it can be purchased. As soon as the purchased animals have arrived at the various remount depots they become the objects of unceasing attention by the Veterinary Corps, whose duty it is to keep them free from disease and in the highest state of efficiency. This work includes the sanitary inspection of stables, picket-lines, forage and bedding, methods of feeding, watering, grooming, and shoeing, the detection and segregation of communicable diseases and the establishment of proper quarantine regulations, the care and treatment of all sick animals, the operation of veterinary hospitals, the investigation of the cause and cure of equine diseases, and the keeping of records. Another important duty of the corps in France was the prompt evacuation of all wounded animals in order that they might not hinder the mobility of the troops or engage the attention of the men. In order to facilitate the evacuation of sick and wounded animals from the Zone of the Advance, 21 veterinary hospital organizations—each consisting of 7 officers and 300 men, and each having a capacity of 1,000 sick animals—were trained, organized, and sent overseas. There were also sent to France 2 base veterinary hospitals with a capacity of 500 animals each. Besides this, every cantonment in the United States had its own veterinary hospital, varying in capacity from 200 to 600 animals each. As a result of the scientific methods of sanitation and treatment introduced by the Veterinary Corps, the mortality among animals was enormously reduced (in the early days of the war the British estimated that the average life of a horse in France was only sixteen days), thousands of disabled horses which in former wars would have been shot were evacuated, mended, and sent back to the front for further service, and millions of dollars were saved to the American taxpayer.

Even more important than its care of the animals of the army was the work of the Veterinary Corps in protecting the men by guarding the purity of their meat and dairy supplies. The activities of the Meat and Dairy Inspection Service include the inspection of meats purchased for the use of the army at the time of their receipt, while in storage, and upon issue to troops; inspection of storehouses, refrigerators, and methods of operation in handling food therein; inspection of slaughter-houses, butcher-shops, and packing-houses; ante-mortem and post-mortem inspection for soundness and suitability for human food of animals slaughtered; inspection of cows and dairies providing milk, butter, and cheese for the use of the troops. Some conception of the extent and importance of the work of the Meat Inspection Service can be had by remembering that when the war ended, the Packing-House Products Branch of the Office of the Director of Purchase and Storage was purchasing for the use of the army an average of from 15,000,000 to 19,000,000 pounds of meat products weekly. And every carcass, if not every pound, had to be inspected and passed by the Veterinary Corps before it reached the mess-tables of the army. That, in spite of the incredible quantities of meat products which had to be purchased for the use of our forces in the field, and the great distances between the abattoirs and the zone of operations, there was no repetition of the “embalmed-beef” scandal which sullied the history of the war with Spain was due to the efficiency and unremitting vigilance of the men who wore on their collars the insignia of the Veterinary Corps.

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I am perfectly aware that the medical officers who do me the honor to read this chapter will criticise me for the omissions I have made. And such criticism is justified. I have dismissed such important phases of the work of the Medical Corps as the Division of Surgery with a few paragraphs; to the Dental Corps and the Nurse Corps I have been able to devote but a few lines; the Sanitary Corps, the Ambulance Service, and a score of other branches I have merely mentioned. Of the marvellous work performed by our medical officers in plastic surgery, in bone grafting, in the disinfection of wounds, in orthopedics, in the treatment of the blind, the shell-shocked, and the insane, I have written nothing—the subject is too great, the space at my disposal too limited to even attempt it. The most that I can hope to do in the limits of a single chapter is to give my readers the same fleeting, cursory view of the achievements of the Medical Department that one obtains of a countryside from an airplane.

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If America’s losses in the greatest of wars were relatively slight—and they _were_ slight when compared with the appalling casualties suffered by most of the other warring nations—the reason is not to be found in the superiority of American strategy, in the ability of American commanders, or in the excellence of American weapons, but in the efficiency, self-sacrifice, and devotion of the officers, nurses, and men who wore the caduceus of the Army Medical Department. And I know whereof I speak, for I have not only visited French, British, Belgian, Italian, even German, hospitals all the way from La Panne to Montfalcone, thus affording me standards of comparison, but I spent nearly three months in an American hospital on the Marne, I came home on an American hospital-ship, and for nearly three months more I was under the care of army medical officers in the United States. In dressing-stations, field, camp, base, debarkation, and general hospitals I have watched the Medical Department at its work, and the first-hand knowledge thus gained gives me the right to assert that it was the most efficient service of its kind possessed by any army. To its officers and men, and to the devoted women of the Army Nurse Corps, I lift my hat in gratitude and admiration. The American Army and the American people owe them a debt which they can never fully pay.