CHAPTER IX

THE RED CROSS AND THE Y.M.C.A.

What is the Red Cross?

It is the world's international ideal of mercy. It knows no bounds of racial, religious or political separation. Wherever and whenever war, pestilence, storm, flood or disaster has wrought suffering, want or distress, there it has gone and brought relief, with the ready hands of unselfish aid.

Who first organised relief for those wounded, sick, or neglected on the field of battle? The Knights Hospitallers first had the idea, which had its birth in the Hospital of St. John at Jerusalem. Although driven out of the Holy Land by the Moslems, this institution re-established itself at Malta and is still in existence.

What nation first organised such relief? Great Britain, during the Crimean war, sent Florence Nightingale in 1854 to the hospitals of Scutari. When Miss Nightingale with thirty-eight other nurses reached Scutari she found pest houses, rather than hospitals, with open sewers beneath the buildings. Contagious cases were taken in by the thousands. So successful was Miss Nightingale in bringing order out of chaos that she is recognised to-day as one of the greatest individual organisers of war relief.

Who first conceived such service on an international basis?

Henri Dunant, a Swiss physician on the battlefield of Solferino, Italy, in 1859 organised a group of volunteers to help administer to the wounded. At that time great confusion and consequent inefficiency prevailed because of the multiplicity of relief flags. As a result of these experiences and under the inspiration of the work of Florence Nightingale, Doctor Dunant formulated the first proposals for an international organisation to care for the sick and wounded in time of war. He suggested two years later to the Geneva Society of Public Utilities a single and uniform hospital flag for all nations. In 1864 an international conference of 14 nations was held in Geneva, Switzerland. The outcome of this was the treaty of Geneva, known as the Red Cross Treaty.

What in brief does the Red Cross Treaty provide?

That hospital formations and their personnel should be treated as neutrals. That each nation signing the treaty should have an association of volunteers to assist and supplement the medical services of its army. But the emblem of service coming to all nations should be a cross of red on a field of white. This emblem, which is the Swiss flag with the colours reversed, was adopted in recognition of the fact that Dr. Dunant was Swiss and that the Red Cross was founded at Geneva.

What is the Red Cross doing in France for the soldiers?

There are two distinct phases of Red Cross relief work for soldiers on duty. The operating of rolling canteens and the maintaining of stationary canteens back of the fighting line is one. It is a most daring yet essential work, this of operating rolling canteens. Often a soldier leaves the trench utterly exhausted. The rolling canteen goes right down to the communicating trenches, where the soldiers passing in and out receive their quarts of steaming bouillon or coffee in winter, and cold drinks in summer.

At junction points on the French railroads troops going on leave from the battle front often have to spend hours waiting for trains. Since there are probably not more than half a dozen important junctions and an average of 20,000 men pass each one per day, only a small fraction of them could be accommodated. Formerly thousands had to sleep in the open, often in the rain. These men come from the fighting zone tired, hungry and infected. It is for such emergency that the stationary canteen is conducted. At the canteen the men can obtain at cost price substantial hot meals that have been prepared by the ladies. They can have hot baths and get their clothes cleaned and sterilised, so that they take the train refreshed in body and spirit. As the number of soldiers in France grows, the canteen will necessarily become a greater factor and will be most potent in maintaining the morale of our army.

If you can't go to war, you can pay to alleviate the sufferings of those who are fighting. I want you to take an imaginary journey over the battle front with me.

We are now in the midst of the most fierce fighting of this great war. Think of the worst earthquakes and floods that would shock you at home, multiply the horror of your impressions a hundredfold, and you will come near to the horrors of the Marne. Multiply this a thousandfold and you have the ferocity of the battles of the Ancre and Somme. At the present time we are in the midst of the great big battle of the war.

Think of the devastation by fire in France, where villages and woods and pasture lands are completely wiped out of existence. Not a house, church or tree is left standing where once there were thousands of families living in a condition as prosperous and happy as anywhere in the world. Think of the ruins by floods and shell fire in Flanders, and think of the stench of thousands of carcases, human and animal, poisoning the atmosphere for miles around for those who must stay in the trenches. Then turn your mind to some great engagement and try to realise long trenches of men, writhing in torture from poisonous gas or liquid fire, of soldiers smashed and disfigured by shell wounds, their lacerations as indescribable as their heroism is undaunted. If you think of these things, you will not refuse to pay your contributions to the Red Cross. For the Red Cross relieves this suffering.

Now leave the trenches, and retire behind the firing line with me. Here we are on roads that are lined with men on stretchers--some dead, scores mortally wounded, hundreds and hundreds of casualties in all states of collapse. The middle of the roadway is filled with dozens of ambulances after every action. There is perhaps a mile's length of hospital trains waiting in the siding to convey the wounded to base hospitals.

And all this purgatory of pain is dependent for relief upon the skill of our doctors, the tenderness of our nurses, the efficiency of our equipment; all of which means is dependent upon the generosity of the public.

May I not take it for granted that, just as the fighting manhood of the United States is soon to be with us in the trenches, so you of the Red Cross who have done so much for us in the past are now eager to be mobilised in the Allied Army of Mercy. I assume that your organisation is coming with us in increased numbers, and with increased equipment, if necessary to the mountains above and around Salonika, to the Plains of Egypt, to East Africa, to the waterless waste of Mesopotamia, to France, Flanders, and Italy.

I have left untouched all the work of caring for the homeless and starving population now being daily released from the bondage of over three years' servitude. It is, of course, for your great hearted public to decide whether and when and how they can best intervene in this area of human desolation. I can, however, specify in detail a few of the objects in which your money can usefully be spent. We have base hospitals running into hundreds in France and England, advance base hospitals and special hospitals for convalescents, for cripples, or the blind, for face cases and homes for the permanently disabled. We have hospital ships on the English Channel, in the Mediterranean, on the Adriatic and on the Tigris. We have hospital trains in England, France and Egypt; hundreds of motor ambulances in all our theatres of war, with repair cars and other necessary equipment. There are thousands of doctors, nurses, orderlies, etc., to be clothed and fed. There are canteens of Red Cross men, rest homes for nurses, worn out by hard work and ceaseless activity. We provide, of course, hospital clothing, drugs, dressings all in enormous quantities for equipment and reserve. These reserves are for ever being replenished at an ever rising price and cost.

When a man is wounded the Red Cross is immediately with him.

The stretcher bearer takes him from the front line trenches to the regimental aid post, where the battalion or medical officer is stationed. The next step leads to the advanced dressing station. Sometimes during a battle this may be the Y.M.C.A. hut. At the advanced dressing station he passes out of the hands of his regiment into the care of the R.A.M.C. (Royal Army Medical Corps). Here he may stay in a farm house, barn or a bomb-proof structure.

From here he will be taken by an ambulance a few miles away to a field ambulance station. This station may be in huts or tents, and is probably receiving wounded from four or five dressing stations. After that the wounded man goes to the casualty clearing station and finally, if the case is bad enough, to the base hospital. When he is fit to move again, he will be placed on board ship and brought over to a hospital in England. As he slowly recovers he is taken out for pleasant drives, and everything is done to make his time in the hospital pass quickly. The attention given by the Red Cross nurses is simply splendid and it is no wonder that the boys often sing the song, "I don't want to get well."

A kind old lady was visiting one of the hospitals in England. She was shown through a ward, where a number of wounded soldiers were lying in bed. Being of an inquisitive turn of mind, she asked one of the soldiers how he felt. His reply to her was, "I am not so bad, Lydy." She then asked him if he had accounted for many Germans, and his reply was: "I dunno, I did my best."

She then went to the next cot and asked the soldier in it the same questions. His reply to her first question was: "I feel damn rotten." This did not appear to shock the old lady, as she had previously heard of some of this kind of soldierly language. However, she was not deterred, and asked him how many Germans that he had accounted for. His reply was very startling. "When I was in my first attack, I was very savage, and all at once my pal, Bill, shouts out, 'Shike your bynet (bayonet), Tom! Shike your bynet, Tom! You have got five of the Bleeders on.'"

The old lady left the hospital highly delighted with the prowess of the cockney soldier.

The Y.M.C.A. is doing wonderful work for the boys at the front. It not only looks after the spiritual, moral and physical welfare of the boys, but it also provides amusements and sports, moving pictures and good concerts in which the fair sex are represented by a few of the boys dressed up in very attractive and lady-like costumes. The reason boys are substituted for the part of girls is due to the fact that no ladies are allowed to come within the danger zone. However, we try to fool ourselves into believing that these imitations are the real thing, and at a distance they certainly look it. But your illusion is quickly dispelled on a closer examination of their hands and feet, which are too large and muscular for pretty young girls.

The Y.M.C.A. officials give good advice to the "boys" at all times. Here they are supplied with pen, ink and note paper to write home. In one particular Y.M.C.A. that I visited I noticed an inscription which read as follows: "Write home to Mother to-day. She is anxiously awaiting your letter."

The officials of the Y.M.C.A. have not always what we call a "bomb-proof job"; that is to say, one that is immune from shell fire. In the town of Bully-Grenay, a distance of four and one half miles from Lens, the Y.M. C.A. officials occupy a house in which they have a club for officers. A short distance from it they have two large camouflaged tents for the boys. The Boche very often shells this town, and the inhabitants who still persist in remaining there, together with the Y.M.C.A. staff, are in constant danger. One day a shell exploded in the garden of the Y.M.C.A. Officers' Club. It broke every window in the building near by, and a large piece of the shell is hung over their counter as a memento of the occasion.

It was in this town Captain Campbell, our quartermaster, and his batman were killed by a German H.E. shell (high explosive). Captain Campbell was quietly eating his dinner in a room of his billet, quite close to the Y.M.C.A.

There is a town called Lievin about two miles from Lens, which, previous to the war, had a population of over twenty-two thousand inhabitants. It was taken by the Germans who held it until the month of April, 1917. We recaptured it from them at that time. Nothing remains of Lievin at the present time but a few bare walls here and there to show that a town existed at one time. In the middle of one of the streets we had a support trench. In the basement of a large building, close to a corner which we called "Whizz Bang Corner," on account of the number of shells that the Huns fired in this locality, was the entrance to the Y.M.C.A. hut.

This particular Y.M.C.A. had been used as a regimental aid post for the wounded. We had several batteries of our artillery in Lievin, so it is needless to say that strafing was going on continually between them and the enemy.

Under the circumstances you will see that it is unjust to think that the Y.M.C.A. secretaries hold down "bomb-proof jobs."