Field ambulance

“ Each wagon was drawn by ten mules and driven by a Kaffir, and over the dusty hood of each the red cross flag waved in the shimmering heat. They came along slowly, rocking and groaning over the uneven veldt like staggering men, and each drew up at one or other of the little hospitals under the ridge. Every ambulance carried a certain number of wounded men who were well enough to sit up, and a smaller number who were lying on stretchers--the "sitting up" and "lying down" cases, as they were respectively called. ”

“ A small field ambulance with a large red cross on each of its gray canvas sides slips quickly down the curving cobblestone street of a quaint old French frontier town, and turns on to the road leading to [Pg 63] the postes de secours (dressing-stations) behind the trenches, which are about two kilometres distant. The driver is uniformed in khaki, and is in striking contrast to the hundreds of blue-gray-clad soldiers loitering on the streets. A group of little children cry out, "Américain," and, with beaming smiles, one of them executes a rigid though not very correct salute as the car goes by. ”

“ From the back of the ambulance a wounded man on his stretcher is slid into place as a bread pan is slid into an oven, the feet of the stretcher running on wooden rails. In starting out to collect the wounded an ambulance carries its full quota of stretchers. When a man is picked up from the field of battle one of these is taken out and he is carefully lifted on it; if he is already lying on a stretcher he is not changed but, in order to save unnecessary suffering, put into the ambulance with the one on which he is already resting,—an empty one being left behind in exchange. ”

“ The strength of a Field Ambulance is:
10 Officers, 120 stretcher bearers, 60 hospital staff, all belonging to the Royal Army Medical Corps (R.A.M.C.) , and 60 men and 90 horses provided by the A.S.C. for its transport, which consists of 10 four-horsed ambulance wagons, 3 water carts, and 9 other wagons for medical supplies, baggage, and stores. Its Bearer Division provides 18 squads of stretcher bearers, each squad being of 6 men; and its Tent Division can accommodate 150 patients. ”

“ The cars are moving much more quickly now. Lights are still burning in divisional headquarters, but the field ambulance headquarters are dark, save for the lamp burning before the gate. An ambulance may have two or three advanced dressing stations collecting from a divisional front. ”

“ So I dropped exhausted into the seat of a field ambulance beside its driver, the body of the car being crowded with more dangerously wounded men. At Orvilles I switched to another ambulance and was able again to sit with the driver. In this I was whisked to a field hospital located in the captured “Hohenzollern Redoubt,” now well behind our foremost lines. There the other pieces of shrapnel were removed from my shoulder, the wound thoroughly cleansed and professionally bandaged. ”

“ The non-coms were charged with locating wounded and directing litter squads to them, and also with doing most of the dressing. The wounded were to be gathered into groups located so that ambulances could reach and evacuate them to the triage which was established later in the day at Neuvilly, by Ambulance Company 138. The entire company, less cooks, took to the field and the cooks, by trading grub for transportation, managed to keep in touch with part of us part of the time. ”

“ The detachment at Larchey also had a mule which was supposed to pull the litter cart, but usually the men pulled it rather than bother fetching the mule. Theoretically the battalion aid stations of the infantry should be well up toward the front line trench so that the wounded can receive prompt attention. The litter bearers of the Ambulance Company are supposed to take the wounded after first aid has been given, and carry them back to the ambulance dressing station, where an ambulance takes them on back to a field hospital. ”

“ A word of cheer to be spoken to all. It is indeed in the field [181] ambulance where valuable service is rendered to men and staff in a hundred ways.
"To keep in touch with most of our men thus passing through the ambulances, each ambulance operating in a different centre, necessitates from four to six hours' duty each night.
"Besides the work of the hospitals there are pressing day duties to be performed. Burials must receive attention. Regiments must be visited. Many calls are received from anxious and troubled men. Even the firing line claims attention at times in the performance of duty. ”

“ For efficient, effective and courageous work in the open field with a detachment of mule drawn ambulances under heavy artillery and machine gun fire.
Sergeant 1st Class Charles G. Rowland, M. D., Ambulance Co. 139, September 29th near Charpentry. While his company was on the march from Charpentry to Varennes, Sergeant Rowland stopped to attend a truck driver who had been struck by a shell. Disregarding all personal danger, he passed through a curtain of artillery fire and dressed the wounded man. ”

“ During the early part of the war the wounded were often obliged to wait a long time before being removed, and it was generally in a slowly-moving horse-drawn vehicle. The advent of the Red Cross and the American Field Ambulance was the means of bringing about a wonderful change. The light cars of the sections could travel fast, and whenever haste was the chief and perhaps deciding factor between life and death the patients could be taken to the field hospitals in from ten to twenty minutes. These hospitals were situated about six or seven kilometers from the front. ”

“ It provided that no one but the proper medical officers or the officers, non-commissioned officers, and privates of the ambulance corps should conduct sick or wounded to the rear, either on the march or in battle, but as a matter of fact there were probably more wounded men helped off the field by soldiers not members of the ambulance corps than by members of that body. ”

“ I reported to the Ambulance Headquarters this morning and found that I had been assigned to duty in assisting Captain Kipling with the executive details of the organization of the new ambulance trains. In future every train is to be composed of five ambulances, one repair car, and one scout car, and is to be manned by an officer and thirteen men. Each such unit is to be complete in itself and is called a “squad.” As such it will be assigned to duty with the Paris Hospital, with field hospitals, or with the French, British, or Belgian armies. ”

“ The sufferer is raised carefully upon a stretcher or carried off in an ambulance waggon to a "dressing-station" somewhere in the rear. If there are not enough stretchers, or the wound is merely a slight one, the disabled soldier is borne away on a seat made of the joined hands of two bearers. A second row of ambulance waggons is loaded from the dressing-station—each waggon holds nine—and goes lumbering off to the field hospital. Here the men are laid on the ground with perhaps a waterproof sheet under them and a blanket over them. ”

“ From the foot of the hill to the hospital the carriage was by ambulance wagons and in some cases by bearers. All the stretchers had hoods. There was no doubt that the wounded suffered much on account of the tedious transport, but it was rendered as little distressing as possible.
The surgeons who went after the wounded on the top of the hill told us that the sight of the dead and injured was terrible in the extreme, the wounds having been mostly from shell and shrapnel; some men had been blown almost to pieces. ”

“ The truth was that nobody could teach our veteran Americans anything new in the management of a Field Hospital. They had all served their time during the four years of the American War, and under a system of military medical organisation which, as all authorities acknowledge, they had brought to perfection. This was the secret of the undoubtedly successful career of our Ambulance. And I must not omit to observe that it was they who introduced the anterior suspension splint for fractures and wounds of the joints, which we were the means of having adopted in many of the German Hospitals. ”

“ They carry five couchés or eight assis, and have two men to a car. The French Army ambulances are all gear-shift, and the gear-shift sections included in the American Field Service all originally belonged to the French Government. Before the American Government took over the Ambulance Corps, the American Field Service, in addition to sending out Ford sections as quickly as they were subscribed in America, had been gradually absorbing the French Ambulance System, relieving with its own men the French drivers who could then serve in the trenches, and including those sections among its own. ”

“ Still, after all, the stay in this area was very different from what those on furloughs found at Aix-les-Bains, who, upon returning, usually suffered an attack of the blues. Each company had work to do. The Field Hospitals occupied the buildings on the hill just above the town and were working day and night. The ambulance companies were evacuating the entire Division, and the efficiency with which both performed their duties was known throughout the Divisional area. ”

“ We rode on together for another couple of miles, when we came to an ambulance at work. It was the only ambulance that I ever saw in the field with the Turkish troops, and was a very simple affair, managed by four surgeons, who had brought tables, instruments, water, basins, and bandages with them. A number of wounded men were waiting to be treated, and a long stream of others were coming in from the direction of the fighting. Hassib Bey ordered me to assist the other surgeons working at the ambulance, and I took up my duties among the wounded forthwith. ”

“ A life of campaigning seems to bring out what moralists would perhaps term a diseased hankering after its uncertainties and adventures. But in the case of the Ambulance officer this not altogether human quality is liable to be merged in one more useful. He is in the field not to give wounds, but to heal them, and to assuage the suffering that makes war so detestable in one aspect, so heroic in another. ”

“ The ambulance work at Mittlach and Larchey was done partly by the mule ambulances of Ambulance Company 140 and partly by the Fords of the S. S. U. outfit. From the various advance aid stations, the patients were transported by ambulance to a relay station called Treh, situated about five kilos back of Larchey. Lt. Hancock, of Ambulance Company 137 was in charge at Treh, having two motor and two mule drawn ambulances ready to receive and transport the patients back to the various Field Hospitals, which were located at Kruth and neighboring towns, well out of range of the German guns. ”

“ The purpose of the New York Ambulance Red Cross Equipment Society is to assist the Red Cross during this war between America and Spain by providing ambulances and ambulance launches for moving sick or wounded soldiers to field hospitals or hospital ships. ”

“ In addition to the work of the ambulance corps and of volunteer soldiers who often venture out into a rain of death to bring in fallen officers and comrades in the western field, some five hundred ambulance dogs are being used by the Allies to locate the wounded.
When a man is injured in the trenches his companions take care of him until night, when it is possible to move him. ”

“ As I have explained before, there is a splendid ambulance organisation of the most complete kind managed by a joint committee of all the Zemstva (or county councils) of Russia and directed by Prince George Lvov. Apart from a wide system of hospitals right away to the rear and all over Russia, it includes ambulance and depôt trains which run almost up to the very front, and flying columns, giving first aid to the wounded. These last have attached to them large field transport trains, adapted to the local roads and working in close touch with the generals at the front and the military surgeons. ”

“ We were to have a Hospital in town, and, when required, were to take the field with the German Ambulance Corps. Our services were gladly accepted by the Surgeon-General, [162] and two large Hospitals were at once handed over to us; the first—a sick and fever Hospital—containing 150 men; the second, consisting of the railway terminus, with its waiting and refreshment rooms, stores and offices, in which lay 65 wounded; and there were beds to accommodate 150 more. We received, therewith, Hospital plant, and a staff of trained military infirmarians. ”

“ The American Ambulance Field Service was taken over by our army in France in October, 1917, and although many of its sections are still serving with the French forces it has lost its former identity. A few drivers remain, and several hundred have returned home ”

“ All who stood by could picture the ghostly kopje, and could almost share in his anguish when he yelled: "There they are on the hill! For God's sake, shoot! Why don't we shoot?"
XXII
THE BODY-SNATCHERS
Early in the campaign Colonel Gallwey, the P.M.O., organised a volunteer ambulance corps. Two thousand bearers were wanted, and in a few days two thousand were enrolled. Their duties were to carry the wounded off the field, to transport serious cases from the advanced hospitals or dressing stations to the stationary field hospital, and thence, if need be, to the railway. ”

“ We of the American Ambulance Field Service have no desire to pose as heroes. I went over, as did so many of the others, with the object of seeing war at first hand and of getting some excitement, as well as being of some service. But we do not care to be talked of as young heroes trying to save France, because that was not our idea in going, at any rate not at first. ”