fe; •:t thi; PASSIN ONS GEORGCi J« (HANAN UH 535 F469p 1920 14310600R NLfl D51DD7bM 1 NATIONAL LIBRARY OF MEDICINE v / ^f/W SURGEON GENERAL'S OFFICE LIBRARY. /c Section.^—+- No. 113; / W. D.S.G.O. No. •^^^^ 3^ 3—513 Kmsssa PROPERTY OF THE NATIONAL LIBRARY OF MEDICINE NLM051007649 THE PASSING LEGIONS THE MACMILLAN COMPANY NEW YORK • BOSTON • CHICAGO • DALLAS ATLANTA • SAN FRANCISCO MACMILLAN & CO., Limited LONDON • BOMBAY • CALCUTTA MELBOURNE THE MACMILLAN CO. OF CANADA, Ltd. TORONTO THE PASSING LEGIONS HOW THE AMERICAN RED CROSS MET THE AMERICAN ARMY IN GREAT BRITAIN THE GATEWAY TO FRANCE BY GEORGE BUCHANAN FIFE .»» jfteto gorfe THE MACMILLAN COMPANY 1920 All rights reserved VDTlO COPYRIGHT, 1920, Bt THE MACMILLAN COMPANY Set up and electrotyped. Published, October, 1920 PREFACE The exhilaration and incentive which came of service at the front, of contact with actual warfare and the sharing of adventures and dangers with fighting troops were denied to the American Red Cross staff in Great Britain. But, for all that, its work never once lacked a superb inspiration nor was it devoid of moments of sheer drama. Its service lay back of the lines, among those either " on the way up"—for a million American soldiers passed through England on their long journey to the battle zones — or on leave or returning, wounded and worn, from the firing line. To these men it ministered in many ways which are past forgetfulness. In a war extending over so vast a theatre and for so long a time, the activities of the several American Red Cross Commissions abroad must often have been identical in both intent and execution. The aim of the writer, therefore, has been rather to avoid such coincidental details of history and helpfulness and to narrate those achievements which distinguished the work in Great Britain, those which, in the swift emergency preceding them, in their setting and their drama are without counterpart in the chronicle of any other Red Cross effort in Europe. It has not been possible, in recounting these narratives, to present the names of all those who had a part in the work, but this can take nothing from the heart and high pride with which their service was given nor from their share in a great achievement. The writer wishes to make grateful acknowledgment to many members of the staff for aid in the compilation of this volume, for access to archives and to other written records whose artistry inspired him not a little. G. B. F. 40, Grosvenor Gardens, London,, June, 1919. CONTENTS CHAPTER PAGE Preface ............. v I A Call Through the Storm.......1 II The Lesson of the Tuscania......25 III When the Commission was Born.....47 IV The Word that Came in March.....74 V Along the L. O. C..........90 VI Where a Million Men Went By.....113 VII The Incoming Legions at Liverpool .... 119 VIII A Drama in Finance.........139 IX The " Shepherd " at Liverpool......167 X Crowned Heads and Merry Men at Dartford . 179 XI The Miracle of Romsey and Sarisbury Court . 194 XII The Water-Gate to France — Southampton . 219 XIII " The Flying Squadron " and Some of Its Flights............230 XIV A Royal "Berth-Deck".......249 XV The Clubmen of Morn Hill......265 XVI Here and There in Britain.......280 XVII The Bluejackets of Cardiff and Plymouth . . 294 XVIII With the Army to Archangel......303 XIX The Unbreakable Link with "Home" . . . 322 XX A Soldier's Joke — And What Came of It ! . . 338 XXI The Picture's the Thing!.......357 XXII Valedictory............364 ILLUSTRATIONS A Red Cross " Tank" on Canteen Service in Lon- don .............Frontispiece FACING PAGE Romsey, the Red Cross Hospital which was Entirely Built by Passing Detachments of American Soldiers ... 30 " The Great Hall" of the Royal Law Courts of England turned into a Lodging House for American Sailors . 81 The Red Cross " Bulletin " on the Wall of the Pilgrim Fa- thers' Church at Immingham........Ill A New Use for a Building in Southampton Nine Hundred Years Old..............161 American Soldiers from German Prison Camps Received by President Wilson at Buckingham Palace.....210 Convalescent American Soldiers Attending a Red Cross Concert at Tottenham Palace........261 The American Red Cross Bringing the News of the Armis- tice to Dartford Hospital.........311 THE PASSING LEGIONS CHAPTER I A CALL THROUGH THE STOEM A BRITISH destroyer raced into the Harbor of Belfast one Sunday night. There had been no word of her coming nor why she came. Save for a single flash of her code number when she raised the headlands of the guarded Lough, she showed no lights. She swept in toward the upper roadstead as if she wore her somberness for a token. The Coastwatcher on the headland, wondering why she had sent no wireless and what had brought her off patrol, conned her with his glass as she sped by. But with the dis- tance and the swirling mist it yielded him little. His brief report to the Naval Base told all he knew: " His Majesty's Torpedo-boat Destroyer Mounsey pass- ing in at full speed. No signals." The perplexed officers at Belfast headquarters read the message again and again. The Mounsey? Why was she running in, and without so much as a spark of warning? " No signals " meant, of course, that her wireless was dead. " At full speed " was reassuring, but — And there every- thing save conjecture stopped short. In those days — it was early in October, 1918 — they knew that any one of countless things could have happened. So the base emergency detail was hastily turned out to await the destroyer's coming. As the Mounsey swung slowly toward the guiding lan- terns on the dock-end, her searchlight suddenly flooded the 2 THE PASSING LEGIONS entrance way and a voice from her bridge hailed through a megaphone. The wind caught the words and flung them landward in ragged sentences: "Ashore there! This is the Mounsey — Lieutenant Craven — we've got a lot of American soldiers — off the Otranto — wrecked at the head of the North Channel this morning — Can we come in there ? " In response to the answer that flew back to her, the Moun- sey thrust her high thin bows abreast of the dock and, as she glided into her berth, the voice called again, cutting sharply through the rising undertone of noise and mooring orders: " I'm sorry, but the men are in bad shape from exposure and some are injured. We'll need stretchers to take them overside. They can't walk." In the light of the flares, as the destroyer drew past them, those on the pier could see the huddle of men upon her narrow decks, and their drawn, blank faces. " How many have you aboard ? " the Medical Officer called up, his hands cupped about his mouth. " Between five and six hundred, I think, Sir," was the amazing reply. " About half of them are Americans. The rest are part of the crew of the Otranto and some French sailors. We'll need all the help you can give us." Before the first of the destroyer's mooring lines had been made fast, the senior officer in the little group upon the dock turned like a flash to one of his Lieutenants and gave swift, concise instructions: " Go to the telephone and call through to the American Consul and tell him about these soldiers. Then get the American Bed Cross. Say that we are sending the sick men to the hospitals in the city and the others to Victoria Barracks — all those who are able to go. Ask the Red Cross to bring clothing and blankets to the barracks as soon as possible." The task of getting those six hundred half-frozen men ashore was a long and far from easy one. While a major- A CALL THROUGH THE STORM 3 ity of them could hobble and stumble down, many had to be carried. There were broken legs and arms among them and more than two score were already ablaze with fever. Some, so benumbed they could not move, had to be cut away from the ropes with which they had lashed them- selves to the destroyer's deck-gear to prevent being washed overboard. Few of the men were more than half clad, others were even without shoes and all had been drenched to the skin for a dozen hours in an icy gale. Thus it was that the Mounsey brought in the first news of the disaster and its token in the wretched men crowded upon her decks. And only a few leagues away to the North, their own great ship, the troop-transport Otranto, with nearly five hundred of their comrades left helpless aboard her, had been beaten to pieces on a reef of the Scottish Coast. They had last seen her that morning with a great hole in her side, hopelessly unmanageable, lurching away in the roar and smother of a storm. They had seen, too, those hundreds, clinging along the rail, staring after them as the destroyer turned and made off through the welter. What, after that, had become of the ship and those upon her they knew nothing. They scarcely knew how they themselves had won through it all. There had been the collision of the transports in the storm, a flash of dismay throughout the ship and as swift a realization of what that death-blow meant. Then the instant of tense hope- fulness when the destroyer appeared through the mist and hailed them. After that had come their uncertain leap to her deck as she swung for a daring instant alongside — so many had leaped and failed to make it — the clutching scramble for whatever offered a hand-hold against the heave and fling of that desperately cluttered space, and last of all, the struggling away in the roaring gale with the seas breaking over, hour after hour, and almost wrenching them out of their lashings. It had been impossible for the Mounsey to send news 4 THE PASSING LEGIONS either of her coming or of the collision which had wrecked the Otranto as her wireless had been carried away by some of the overhanging, swaying top-hamper of the troopship in a hazardous brush against her side. Yet the American Red Cross in Belfast, deprived as it was of all chance for immediate preparation to meet such an emergency and to care for those men in their peculiar distress, was not only ready but made a response as swift and efficient as if this disaster and its very hour had been foreseen. The hastily sent news of the Mounsey's arrival reached the Red Cross while the first of the shipwrecked men were limping down the gangplank, and within five minutes there- after three big motor cars, held in readiness night and day for any service, had been summoned and were speeding to its warehouse for supplies. It had asked only one ques- tion : " How many men are there to be cared for ? " This much of its work afoot, the Red Cross at once turned its attention to the stricken Otranto in effort to learn what had happened to her. Naval headquarters knew only the fact that, with hundreds still aboard her, she had driven off into the storm, out of control and probably foundering. The Mounsey, courageous as she was, had accounted for only six hundred of her company; it had numbered more than a thousand when she left the States. One after another the Red Cross called its four emer- gency stations along the northern coast of Ireland, but there was no word of the Otranto. They had not even heard of the disaster. Not so much as a grating had come ashore. The storm was still raging from the west. Perhaps some- thing might be known on the Scottish shore. But this alike was a futile questing. Communication by wire was possible with only a few ports and these had no news. It seemed almost a certainty that the Otranto had gone down. Mr. Hunter Sharp, the American Consul in Belfast, im- mediately after the naval authorities had telephoned him A CALL THROUGH THE STORM 5 of the disaster and the Mounsey's rescue, called the Bed Cross, and, learning that the work of relief was already under way, hastened to the barracks. He found the American soldiers gathered in the large military gymnasium, a bedraggled, woe-begone lot. They were rigged out in whatever odds and ends of clothing the men of the destroyer and the barracks troops had been able to furnish them Some were half naked and wrapped in blankets while others were shivering in their still wet uni- forms. Miserable as they were, their faces brightened as they thronged up to shake hands with Mr. Sharp when he told them who he was. " And I've also come to tell you," he added, " that the American Red Cross is here in Belfast and will be at the barracks in a very few minutes to do everything for you and bring you whatever you need." The men who crowded about him were frankly incred- ulous. It wasn't so strange to find the American Consul, because there had to be one everywhere, but the American Red Cross in this out of the way place —! " Sure it's the American Red Cross ? " Yes, Mr. Sharp was quite sure. " Wait and you'll see," he suggested to them. " Say, fellers, three cheers for the Consul and the Amer- ican Red Cross! " It was a lanky soldier from Georgia, muffled to his chin in a brown blanket, who cried it and the earnest reply was such a hoarse, uncanny sound that it brought even some stolid British soldiers to the door in wonderment. That the summons to care for these men had come to the Red Cross after nine o'clock on a Sunday night, the time one associates with rest from activities of every kind, caused neither consternation nor delay. It had been forearmed, equipped against any day, any hour of service and, indeed, for service of this very kind. Its warehouse was already stocked with every necessity; there remained only the de- tail of transportation and this, too, had been pre-arranged. 6 THE PASSING LEGIONS As a matter of fact, it was while Mr. Sharp was assuring the amazed men that the Red Cross was on its way to them that the three cars, loaded with food, clothing and blankets, rolled into the cobbled driveway of the barracks. And this within an hour after the destroyer had set the first men on shore! The incredulousness of the Americans grew rather than diminished as they watched the Red Cross men bring in the packages of emergency stores. It held them for just an instant and then they surged forward, tired as they were, to help with the bundles and boxes. A squad of Royal Army Medical Corps non-coms and orderlies who had been told off to attend to the survivors, aided in distributing the supplies, first passing out thick underwear, socks, shirts and soft slippers to every man. As the soldiers in their eagerness pressed about the orderlies there were smiles upon faces which had not known them for hours and, now and then, even the unbelievable sound of laughter. In a twinkling the shivering soldiers were stripping off their sodden things and hurrying into the dry and comfort- able clothing. Many of them did not even try to make their way out of the crowd. They undressed and dressed again just where they stood. Then came the biscuits, the chocolate, and the cigarettes. It was the cigarettes prob- ably more than anything else, than even the Red Cross emblems on the bales of supplies, which gave the finishing touch to conviction. " Well, I'm damned if these ain't American cigs! " is a faithful composite of the welcome they received. One of the men, eating chocolate between puffs and taking obvious comfort in his warm greatcoat, said, as his eye ranged over the gymnasium, that " it looked to him as if the Red Cross had been sitting up just waiting for 'em." He made the comment to Mr. J. Fred Cleaver, the Ameri- can Red Cross representative in Belfast who was at the A CALL THROUGH THE STORM 1 head of the emergency relief service and had brought the supplies to the barracks. " Did you know we were coming ?" the soldier added, with a twist of a smile. " No, we didn't, and we're sorry it was you," Mr. Cleaver replied, " but we felt that, perhaps, something of this kind might happen some day through storms or submarines, or mines, so we made ready for it, that's all." " It's mighty lucky then that we got into Belfast, isn't it ? " the soldier went on with another wry smile. " Yes, it is, but there are Red Cross emergency stations in every danger zone along the coast. They are just as well equipped, just as capable as this one. They've been ready to answer any call for the last six months. You'd have been cared for every bit as promptly if you'd come ashore at any one of them." " Gee, the little ol' Red Cross! " This was all the soldier could say in answer, and it came after a long and thoughtful pause, but there was a whole heart in it. The equipment of the men with the many things they so much needed required more than two hours and several trips of the motors to the Red Cross storehouse for the additional supplies. While the distribution was going on, Mr. Cleaver and his aides, who were doing all they could to hearten up the men and to help the stiff and bruised ones into their clothing, discovered that a number of them, through exposure or injury in their crashing leap to the Mounsey's deck, were in need of medical care. These were quickly singled out and removed by the orderlies to the barracks infirmary. And before one o'clock came around the last weary man in the big gymnasium had rolled him- self in his warm blanket and was fast asleep. As for the other men, fifty-five of them in all, who had been taken to the city hospitals, a visit disclosed that they 8 THE PASSING LEGIONS were in no immediate need of Red Cross supplies but that these might be provided later. Thus came to an end an eventful night in Belfast. From the fragmentary stories the soldiers had related and from information gained from the men of the de- stroyer, it was now possible to construct a clear narrative of what had befallen the troopship, at least up to the time the soldiers were taken off her. The Otranto, a converted British auxiliary cruiser, doing duty as transport, was the flagship of a convoy bringing American troops to England. On this voyage she carried a detachment of 694 officers and men, most of them from the training camp at Fort Scriven, near Savannah, Georgia; a crew of approximately 400 and also thirty sailors picked up from the boats of a French bark she had cut down in mid-ocean. The destination of the convoy was Liverpool, and to reach it by what was considered the least dangerous path, once the vessels were in English waters, the course lay through the North Channel, a narrow, well patrolled pas- sage between Scotland and Ireland. But it was fated the Otranto should never make it. When at 9 o'clock on the morning of October 9, the squad- ron of troopships was almost at the Channel entrance and fairly in sight of the northern Irish Coast, a ninety-mile gale came racing out of the west and overwhelmed it. Under the terrific impact of the wind and the sea, the vessels staggered toward the opening, striving with every ounce of steam to gain it and the calmer waters which lay beyond. And all would have passed through in safety if a great wave had not disabled the steering gear of the Kashmir, one of the convoy. In an instant she was out of control, and a little later the sea lifted her and flung her, bow on, into the Otranto's side. The ponderous blow, delivered directly amidships cut a wide gash in the cruiser from port rail to waterline and A CALL THROUGH THE STORM 9 drove her down, with the Kashmir grinding into the wound, until she was at the point of overturning. But the sea at last wrenched the Kashmir away and the Otranto slowly righted herself, only to lurch deeply into the turmoil as she filled. Although the firerooms of his ship were flooded, her engines useless and she now utterly unmanageable, Captain Ernest G. W. Davidson, the Otranto's commander, at once ordered the Kashmir, which had suffered little injury, to make all speed to the nearest port. For nearly an hour the Otranto raced with the gale, her filling holds listing her until her port rail was almost awash. Every hope of rescue had long been given up by the stoutest heart when suddenly the Mounsey came rolling, plunging, driving toward them through the smother. She had caught a wireless call for help and sped to answer it. Unmindful of every risk, her commander, Lieutenant F. W. Craven, swung his little craft in a wide arc and ran down under the Otranto's lee. Captain Davidson realized at once that he meant to come alongside and attempt a rescue so, with a first brave word of thanks, he signaled to him not to try it and endanger his own vessel but to stand clear as the transport was sinking. But Lieutenant Craven paid no heed to the message. Fighting a way through the hurricane and the towering seas he brought the Mounsey abeam of the Otranto and not more than fifty yards from her. " Lower away your port boats empty," the destroyer signaled. " Make fast so they float alongside. I'm com- ing in." With the first words of the message Captain Davidson understood. It meant a chance for some of the men — a few, perhaps — so a signal fluttered in answer, the orders were given and the boats, swaying, leaping, twisting like new-caught fish upon a line, came down the transport's side. Then the Mounsey crept in. Between her and the 10 THE PASSING LEGIONS Otranto now lay a protective device, frail to be sure, but still a safe-guard — the boats which made a string of fenders along the menacing steel sides of the lurching troopship. For, with all their wild plungings as the seas caught them, they would serve to lessen the blows when the two vessels should drive together, as they must, with terrific force, once the destroyer ventured alongside. To the men on the Otranto it seemed to take the Mounsey an age to cross that narrow span of water. But she made it at last and as she crashed into the line of lifeboats, Lieu- tenant Craven waved to the men along the troopship'* rail to jump down. Now it was " every man for himself," and they began to leap the instant a wave lifted the destroyer toward them. There were those whom Fate permitted to time it aright, there were others who fell and were crushed with the splintering boats; and still others, who, in their eagerness, sprang into a churning gap of water when the two vessels swung apart. But during those heroic moments that the Mounsey clung to her perilous task, demanding the utmost of skill and coolness to prevent her own destruction, more than six hundred leaped into safety to her decks. Others had climbed on the Otranto's swaying rail and were ready to follow, but a wave caught the destroyer's bow and flung her out of all possible reach, so she had to sheer away to save herself. Although weighted to the danger point by the number of men he had already rescued, Lieutenant Craven swung his craft about and started once more to come up with the troopship. But the boats along her side had been crushed into uselessness or were gone entirely, and there was nothing left to fend the vessels apart. Another attempt would risk even those who had been taken off. So the Mounsey was reluctantly put about and headed away out of the tempest. And the last signal she caught from the Otranto's tilted bridge was: " Thanks; good luck! " A CALL THROUGH THE STORM 11 The men at the Belfast barracks were scarcely awake next morning when the Red Cross people arrived, bringing additional woolen clothing, tunics and greatcoats, an abun- dant supply of " comfort bags " containing razors, soap, towels, toothbrushes and other toilet things, and a cheering quantity of American cigarettes and tobacco. As the sol- diers had left the Otranto with nothing save the clothing in which they stood — and little enough of that in so many cases — the " comfort bags " made almost as much of a sensation as the cigarettes of the night before. No amount of explanation could overcome the wonderment of the men at the readiness with which their wants had been antici- pated. They drew the things out of the bags and turned them over and over in their hands as if not quite certain of their reality. " It sure beats me how you did it all," said one of the men. " We knew the Red Cross was over in France look- ing after the fellers, but"— he glanced up with a slow smile from the safety razor he was putting together —" I didn't think you could run across it in a place like this — any more than I expected to land here myself! " After a generous breakfast with a limitless amount of hot coffee which the British military authorities served to them in the gymnasium, the Americans were " ready for another day " and by noon were sufficiently equipped and rested to go about outdoors. In the meantime, the women of the Red Cross branch had set out at an early hour to visit again the sick and injured Americans who had been taken to the several city hospitals. A few of these had hurt themselves severely in leaping to the destroyer and all were suffering the effects of the chill- ing exposure they had undergone and to which, in spite of every care, twelve of them succumbed within the next few days, and were buried on October 11th with military honors. The women distributed " comfort bags," chocolate and 12 THE PASSING LEGIONS fruit to those whose condition permitted it and afterward spent a busy forenoon writing letters for the ones who could not do it for themselves. These letters, for the censor's good reasons, had to be guarded in expression, but they sufficed to carry the word overseas that somebody's boy had " landed safely and was getting on fine, don't worry." With the coming of another day, the Red Cross renewed its search for tidings of the Otranto. Reports from the coast stations suggested that, with the set of the gale, what remained of the troopship and her men would be driven toward the rocky islands fringing the Scottish coast. But as the storm had destroyed many lines of telegraphic com- munication, nothing definite could be learned from Scot- land. News, however, came at last from a Red Cross outpost on the northern rim of Ireland. The Otranto had not gone down but had been driven upon a reef off the west coast of the Island of Islay and was, in all likelihood, a total wreck. Should there be any survivors, which was reported as scarcely probable in such a storm, they would be in need of immediate aid. This information, incomplete as it was, determined the Red Cross to dispatch at once a relief expedition to Islay, for there was a possibility, after all, that among those hundred some had gained the shore. The sole prompt means of reaching the island lay in a venturesome passage of the North Channel through the gale which was still sweeping it. By reason of the hazard this involved, Mr. Cleaver called for volunteers to go with him. When these had enthusiastically responded an appeal was made to the commander of the Belfast Naval Base for a destroyer to take the Red Cross party and its supplies to Scotland and for a detail of Medical Corps orderlies to assist in the work ashore. It was thought best by the naval men that Buncrana, a Red Cross post 120 miles north- west of Belfast, should be the point of debarkation as the A CALL THROUGH THE STORM 13 run could be made with the gale instead of across it and give more hope for success. Efforts to telegraph to Buncrana proving fruitless, the storm having now thrown down almost all northern wires, it was arranged that the party, with its supplies, should never- theless set out by motor without delay. Assurances were given that a destroyer, fully instructed, would be in readi- ness to take the relief party aboard when it should reach the northern port. At half past seven o'clock that night the Red 'Cross expe- dition left Belfast, its six motor cars loaded with food, medical supplies and comfort necessities. After six hours of hard going over the stormy roads, a brief halt was made at the Red Cross emergency station in Londonderry where a motor lorry filled with warm clothing was added to the column. Buncrana was reached shortly after dawn. Here it was learned that the naval post commander had already dispatched two trawlers for Islay with American Red Cross stores so, in all haste, the expedition, its supplies and a detail of hospital orderlies were put aboard a British torpedo boat for that hopeful voyage. Wireless reports said that the weather had " somewhat moderated." The " somewhat" contributed a certain elasticity to the term. For when, at noon, the vessel reached Port Charlotte, eight miles across the island from the supposed location of the wreck, she found the two trawlers from Buncrana anchored well out and still unable to put ashore any of the Red Cross stores they had brought. However, at one o'clock, as the wind held up a bit, those on the torpedo boat decided to risk a landing. But when the pinnace, bearing five of the party and an emer- gency outfit, drew near the narrow beach, it was found impossible to take her in. The wind and sea were high and " blowing right on " and the approach to the beach, save in one place, perilous with rocks. Still determined, 14 THE PASSING LEGIONS the party got aboard a fishing boat moored about a quar- ter of a mile off-shore in the hope that she could be used in landing, but this, too, was out of the question. By this time a number of the inhabitants, who had gathered to watch the fortunes of the party, began waving signals and soon a plucky small boat put off from the beach and by making several exciting trips succeeded eventually in landing every one wet and safe in Port Charlotte. The first inquiry there revealed the appalling tragedy of the Otranto. Of the hundreds she had carried away into the storm only twenty-one — seventeen of them American soldiers — had come ashore alive. The bodies of the others were still being flung into the deep, rocky gullies along the shore where the searchers were finding them under the wreckage. The Otranto had struck on a jagged ledge in Machrie Bay about a mile and a half off Kilchoman, at 10:45 o'clock on Sunday morning — the captain's dented watch was found to have stopped at 11:05. For a few hours she had withstood the tremendous battering of the sea and then, in the early afternoon, had broken in two and gone to pieces on the reef. The survivors, several of them badly injured, and one, a sailor of the Otranto, so hurt that he died a few minutes after rescue, had been dashed upon the rocks beneath Kilchoman, a tiny cliff hamlet on the wildest part of Islay's western coast. There the neighboring shepherds and the farmer-folk, clustered on the headland to watch the transport's slow destruction, had gone bravely into the crashing surf and dragged the men to safety. As it was necessary to seek out these castaways at once and provide whatever they might need, a motor car was readily borrowed and the medical staff of the Red Cross expedition sent to Kilchoman with medicines and emer- gency supplies. The remainder of the party and the stores were then landed from the torpedo boat, a tedious A CALL THROUGH THE STORM 15 and difficult task in the gale, and a base of Red Cross operations established at Port Charlotte. The physicians drove at top speed to Kilchoman and there found six American soldiers. They had come ashore more dead than alive. Only one of these, whose arm was broken, had been able, eventually, to walk; the men and women of the hamlet had carried the others on their backs up the long, steep paths from the water's edge. Although Kilchoman's resources were few — the entire settlement consisted of a church, three "dwellings and a school-house — everything possible in that remote and primitive region Irad been done for the survivors. They had been attended by the British medical officer of the island, two were in the manse of the Reverend Donald Grant, the Padre of Islay, and four in cottages close beside his weather-beaten church. Slender of means as they were, the people of this small community had made unhesitating sacrifice, not only in taking in and nursing the sick but providing as many of the survivors as they could with clothing which it demanded not a little unself- ishness to spare. Yet self-denial had gone even further than that. The members in one family in Kilchoman actually slept in a barn so that the comfortable quarters in their two-roomed house might be given to the Americans they were har- boring. It is quite impossible to say too much of the humanity of all these peasant people, of their readiness to accept any hardship in the name of mercy, of the gentle, steadfast nursing they gave the soldiers, virtually bringing them back to life. The intention of the Red Cross was to embark for Ire- land all of the survivors who were able to make the journey, but it was found that those at Kilchoman were in no con- dition to be moved. So, after distributing clothing, medicaments and other immediately needed supplies, and having a cheering talk with each of the men, the two 16 THE PASSING LEGIONS physicians hastened a few miles southward along the coast to another cliff village whither eight of the rescued, six Americans, a British naval lieutenant and one of the Otranto's engineers had been taken for shelter. These men, although much knocked about, were in fairly good shape and the Red Cross conveyed them to Port Charlotte late that afternoon where they were fitted out with clothing from the newly established base. In the evening, accompanied by a Red Cross physician, they were put aboard the torpedo boat, which conveyed them to Ireland. So far, twelve of the Americans had been accounted for. The remaining five were reported to be at a village thirteen miles away over the worst roads in the United Kingdom. And there the Red Cross found them, with a lucky stoker of the troopship in the party and all meas- urably cheerful and uninjured.. Beyond providing them" with suitable clothing and comforts and leaving a stock for future use, there was little for the Red Cross to do for these men as an American Army officer had arrived to take charge of them. In their talks with the Red Cross men the survivors on Islay were able to take up the drama of the Otranto where those who leaped in safety to the Mounsey's deck had left it. Few had clear recollection or understanding of how they got ashore, except that "they had paddled to keep their heads up" and had been buffeted in with the wreckage swirling about them. After the Mounsey, unable to take any more men aboard, had steamed away from the transport that Sunday morn- ing, those who watched her go resigned themselves to chance. It was all that was left for them. The remain- ing lifeboats could not be launched and the men preferred to stay by the ship rather than risk that chance and face almost certain death by going over her side. So the Otranto reeled ahead in the grasp of the hurricane. Land came in sight at last and as she neared it Captain David- A CALL THROUGH THE STORM 17 son shouted from the bridge, " Boys, we've got to swim for it after all!" A moment afterward the troopship struck the reef. Had she drifted only a few hundred yards further to the north she would have passed the rocks and driven on a sandy beach and all hands might have been saved. But the reef caught and held her there and the sea broke her up. The men aboard could see the groups of islanders gath- ered on the headlands of Islay and for a time they hope- fully watched the efforts of the coastguard to get a rocket line to them. But after many trials this had to be aban- doned as the wind was too high and the distance seaward too great for the carry. Later, as the waves were furiously sweeping the decks, some of the men sprang over in their cork jackets, but most of them still clung to the ship. During the early afternoon she was torn in two, one part of the hull turning sidewise and emptying all hands into the sea. The other part was quickly beaten to pieces, and in this churn of wreckage the living and the dead were flung ashore together. The force of the sea which destroyed the Otranto was almost unbelievable. Although she struck more than a mile and a half from land, huge portions of her engines were wrenched out of her and driven across even that distance into the rocky gullies of Islay. It was little to be wondered at that far more men were killed by the wreckage than were drowned, as the examination of the Red Cross surgeons disclosed. They had never had a ghost of a chance to swim for it through the driving masses of broken timber and cargo. Along the coast for nearly a mile the bodies were washed in. Owing to the way in which the storm had wedged the wreckage into the deep, narrow crevices, the recovery of the dead was most difficult, great piles of heavy timbers having to be taken apart to search for them. As few of the island men could be spared from harvest, the task was necessarily slow, but the bodies were gathered in twos and 18 THE PASSING LEGIONS threes and borne on improvised stretchers and farm carts to Kilchoman. They were first laid in the churchyard and a careful record made of the identification discs which were found on most of the American soldiers. Note was also made of the contents of pockets and of clothing marks in the cases of those whose tags were missing. This work, as well as that of collecting the dead, was performed undeT the direction of Lieut. Col. C. Heaton-Ellis, the ranking British military officer on Islay, who spoke afterward in highest terms of the aid the Red Cross had been to him. At the end of the third day, having given the survivors all assistance in its power and provided for them a stock of supplies at two towns, the Red Cross party left for Ireland on a* British trawler. But this was not all that the Red Cross was to do for the Otranto's men. A second hurrying expedition had already been dispatched to distant Islay. Word of the disaster, brief and bare of detail at first but supplemented later by telegrams from Belfast, reached London headquarters the morning after the Otranto struck. A party headed by Lieutenant James Jeffers, commander of the ever-re*ady " Flying Squadron " of the Emergency Relief Department, was immediately organized and started north with the American Army officers who had been or- dered to the scene of the wreck. When this party debarked at Dublin on Tuesday morning it encountered, by good fortune, the first band of American survivors, 202 men and four officers arriving from Belfast. As they went aboard the little steam packet which was to take them to England, the Red Cross men, one of whom had been with them all the way, distributed a plentiful supply of cigarettes and chocolates, enough to last them to their journey's end. The train bearing the second detachment, numbering forty-five men and two officers, bound southward by way A CALL THROUGH THE STORM 19 of London, was not stopped at Dublin for some reason, but sent through to Kingstown. So the Red Cross has- tened into action. The young women of the Dublin branch, who had been expecting the train and had prepared for it, were not to be denied. They bundled their sandwiches and cakes into a swift motor and ran down to Kingstown where they gave the men a surprise party by serving them in their coaches at the railway station. Chocolate and cigarettes were also given to them out of the Red Cross magician's bag. At no time, from the hour of their dramatic arrival in Belfast Harbor until they reached their destination in the south of England, were these officers and men out of Red Cross hands. The first band, which went directly to a rest camp near Winchester, was met again by the Red Cross at the railway station and provided with whatever the men most needed. Additional clothing was given to them later at the camp and to several of the officers the Red Cross lent sufficient funds with which to replace their ruined uniforms. The second band was met in London at half past five o'clock in the morning by a Red Cross emergency detail which provided the men with supper and afterward took them in motor cars to comfortable sleeping quarters. In good and proper time the Red Cross entertained them at breakfast next day and, as a last service, motored them to the station whence they entrained for the south. So prompt and sincere was the appreciation of all these men that reference to it is irresistible. It is, perhaps, best summed up in what one of the officers said: " How the Red Cross did it I can only imagine, but this I know: many of the survivors of the Otranto owe their lives to the Red Cross. Its representatives were with us as soon as we landed from the British destroyer and con- tinued to serve us constantly until we reached our camp in southern England. " The preparations made by the Red Cross before the 20 THE PASSING LEGIONS disaster were amazing in their foresight, because it had everything ready for us when we landed in Belfast. Many of our men, beyond any doubt, would have fallen victims to the effects of shock and exposure save for the warm clothing, the food and the medicaments which the Red Cross so promptly supplied. " There is not a man in my detachment who does not feel the keenest gratitude to the men and women of the Red Cross who met us all along the way. What they did for us in Belfast, that is, for those of us who landed in fairly good shape, was only a small part of their work. It was, naturally, centered upon the fifty or more men who had to be taken to hospital immediately upon arrival and to whom so much kind care was given." There was much that the second Red Cross party found to do, once it reached Kilchoman. The stock of provisions available in that bleak, remote region was all but ex- hausted. Following their hospitable " gillie " custom, the people of the hamlet had fed most of the scores of islanders who had come from even the remotest villages to help gather the Otranto's dead, until little remained for the half dozen injured survivors, or even for themselves. So the Red Cross sent a foraging squad into the farm lands of the back-country which returned in a borrowed motor car loaded with milk, eggs, butter, bread and meat to refill the empty larders. Five days having passed since the wreck of the troop- ship, it became necessary to bury the bodies which had been collected in Padre Grant's church. There were so many of them — they were coming in every day — that they not only filled the pews and most of the floor space, but were even laid upon the altar platform. Only three coffins were to be found upon the island and as the scarcity of wood prevented further manufacture, it was decided by the British authorities to place the dead in shallow trenches A CALL THROUGH THE STORM 21 and cover them with green sod until they might be per- manently interred. So the first burial ceremony was set for Friday, October the eleventh. Early in the afternoon of that day, the funeral proces- sion formed in the rugged little churchyard of Kilchoman and went its slow way across the windy downs. It was led by the two pipers of the Laird of Islay, in kilt and bonnet, playing a Highland dirge. After them came a rough farm cart with the three coffins, bearing the bodies of the captain of the Otranto and two American officers who had perished with him, escorted by a guard of honor from the Home Defense Force and the constabulary, the clergy of Islay, representatives of the American Army, of the Brit- ish Army and Navy, the Red Cross party, and last, a great crowd of the islanders, many of whom had, in like fashion, followed the Tuscania's dead only eight months before. The burial ground given by the Laird of Islay, Mr. Hugh Morrison, was on a plateau a few hundred yards from the church, sheltered beneath a high parapet of cliffs but overlooking the distant scene of the wreck. In the trenches there, the bodies of 186 of the victims— 120 of them American soldiers — had already been placed, with flowers about them, even in that bleak country; wreaths and clusters from His Majesty's Army and Navy, from the American Army and Navy, the County Constabulary, the Coastguard, and from many of the residents of the island. The ceremony over these men was impressive beyond forgetfulness. Padre Grant read the burial service and the other members of the clergy added their short prayers, after which, as the American flag and the Union Jack were dipped, the guard fired six volleys in reverberating salute. Then there was a pause, but before the echoes died the assemblage, with one voice, broke into " God Save the King!" This, in accordance with every custom, would have closed 22 THE PASSING LEGIONS the ritual, but no sooner was the anthem ended than the crowd, with the same ringing fervor, took up " The Star- Spangled Banner " and sent it, too, flying from rock to rock. It was a graceful, delicate courtesy which the officers of the American Army and the Red Cross were quick to appreciate. There were many other burials later in that same ground because, in time, the sea and the wreckage gave up the bodies of 315 American soldiers and at intervals they were laid in the trenches beside their fellows. It was possible to identify only 263 of these men, so fifty- two were buried nameless. But the resting place of each has been carefully marked with a cross and, in the ar- rangement of the graves, a place left for the emplacement of a monument which will further designate the spot and tell something of the tragic story of the men who lie beside it. For when the Otranto was wrecked, 365 American soldiers perished with her. The day after the first burial ceremony, two military detachments arrived on Islay to complete the tasks at which the islanders had so tirelessly worked. One was composed of twenty-five American soldiers sent to make coffins and bringing a motor truck and a shipload of lumber with them from Liverpool. The other was a detail of thirty men of a British labor battalion from Scotland to relieve the exhausted volunteers who, day and night, were searching the shore for the dead. This work had become more and more difficult as the sodden cargo of the Otranto continued to pile up in the gullies and inlets of the coast. Quarters for the Americans were obtained in an old distillery and two cabinet makers on the island employed to teach them the fashioning of the caskets. To each of these contingents the Red Cross rendered valuable aid, providing Englishmen and Americans alike with such necessities as bread, tea and tobacco, blankets, heavy underclothing and sweaters and such minor com- A CALL THROUGH THE STORM 23 forts as razors and toilet accessories. Also it gave them an abundant supply of peat with which to heat their draughty billets. Fresh provisions were conveyed to them in a Red Cross motor which made four trips every day half way across the island to the nearest place at which stores could be purchased. For the injured soldiers at Kilchoman a daily supply of milk, butter and eggs was furnished by the Red Cross and everything possible done to lighten the humane labors that the people of the hamlet had so heroically assumed. It had been an almost superhuman undertaking to bring five of these men back to life after they were snatched out of the sea, but it never relinquished for an instant. How- ever, little by little, one of them failed, despite all the care that was given to him, and nine days later he died and was buried with his mates. He was a boy from Augusta, Georgia; Mrs. Grant, the Padre's wife, who had so faith- fully nursed him, and one of the Red Cross officers were at his bedside when he went. This brings almost to a close the story of the Otranto and what the American Red Cross did for her survivors and her dead. Within a short time the remaining soldiers were able to leave Kilchoman and journey to Ireland and thence to their camp in southern England. And with their going the work of the Red Cross on Islay came to an end. In after years the ships that go buffeting through the windy gateway of the North Channel will pick up, high on a headland of Islay, a towering landmark, sharp against the northern sky. They will come to look for it and to know it as they know the beacons of that rugged coast. For, on the Mull of Oa, the island's south-most point, the American Red Cross is building a great stone tower in memory of those American soldiers who were lost when disaster overtook the troopships Tuscania. and Otranto in the waters just beyond. 24 THE PASSING LEGIONS And to the ships of all the seas this shaft will rise as a symbol of heroism and sacrifice, of a call through the storm — and an answer. CHAPTER II THE LESSON OF THE TUSCANIA THE selection of the Otranto disaster with which to begin this narrative of American Red Cross service in Great Britain has been a deliberate one. Instead of following the unyielding method of historical progression it seemed far better to shorten the prospective abruptly and show at once what, through preparation and resource, the Red Cross was able to accomplish in an emergency so swift, so tragic. Nor are other reasons lacking. The destruction of the Otranto was not only the heaviest misfortune to befall the American troops in their hazardous voyaging oversea, but was one of the great catastrophes of the war, occurring at a time when American effort was at its utmost in the task of landing an army in France. As the censors in England withheld transmission of the story for five days it had only an ephemeral appearance in the press of America and many of the details in the foregoing nar- rative are here published for the first time. As an illustration of organized efficiency, the work of the Red Cross for the men of the Otranto, both the living and the dead, is not surpassed in the entire chronicle of the Commission for Great Britain. For the first call to aid came, not upon the headquarters staff in London, with its numerous, capable personnel and its well adjusted mechanism of relief, but upon an outpost, hundreds of miles away in Ireland. Yet, when the call sounded the outpost was ready and it responded with an equipment of supplies and enthusiasm which would have carried it through any undertaking. It was, unfortunately, though not so strangely, another, an earlier, sea tragedy, that of the torpedoed transport 25 26 THE PASSING LEGIONS Tuscania, which made such alert efficiency possible. The Tuscania served the Red Cross as a lesson, grim, but in- valuable, and set it to fortifying itself against whatever Fate, abroad in British waters, might later contrive with submarine or mine or storm along the Kingdom's rocky shores. This recital having already, and with intent, set chron- ology at naught, must venture to do so again in turning now to the Tuscania because, in Red Cross annals, the Tuscania and the Otranto are inseparably linked through this very lesson and what came of it. The sinking of the Tuscania created a sensation in Eng- land as well as in the United States and the newspapers in both countries rang with it. This was the first time that a vessel filled with American troops on their way to the theater of war had gone to the bottom. Had it not been for the intrepidity of the convoying British destroyers and a measurable factor of pure Chance, most of the 2,500 men aboard her must have perished. But, through these fortuitous things, all but 182 of her company were saved. With so many survivors stripped of practically every- thing, and flung upon its hands for aid in half a dozen distant places, there is little wonder that the Red Cross learned a lesson from this unfortunate ship and was ready for the Otranto's fateful hour almost to the point of foresight. That one may more clearly understand the plight of those hundreds of rescued men and how much they stood in need of help the Red Cross brought to them, one must go, as it were, aboard the Tuscania on her last night, Tues- day, the 5th of February, 1918. The convoy of troopships, black shapes upon a black sea, had swung into the entrance of the North Channel and was turning southward. The morning would find them all safe at Liverpool. On the Tuscania fifteen lookouts were watching the waters about their ship for there was peril on every side of her; the Hun boats had been very busy THE LESSON OF THE TUSCANIA 27 of late. But there were destroyers riding on the flanks of the convoy and no one gave serious thought of the pos- sibilities of danger. The voyage was almost at an end. Several hundred lumberjacks from the woods of Wis- consin and Michigan, forestry engineers, and aero-squadron men were at supper. Hundreds of others were impatiently awaiting their turn at mess. In the midst of it all, without even the warning of a foaming wake, came a shattering explosion on the Tus- cania's starboard side. There was never one instant's doubt of what it meant and the call to quarters shrilled on every deck. Although the 2,500 men she was carrying had had the briefest of military training and discipline, they formed on deck and then went to their appointed stations with the utmost courage and coolness. Not a man hurried. As the torpedo had blown an enormous hole in the Tus- cania, she sank deeply and at once upon her injured side. While this made it comparatively easy to lower away her starboard lifeboats, those along her now high port rail were rendered practically useless. But so steadfastly did every man hold himself in hand that the ones who had been thus deprived of their allotted boats made no effort to seek place in others; they merely stood about, out of the way, and hopefully waited or else looked to the fastenings of their cork jackets and deliberately leaped overboard. The absence of even a suggestion of panic would have been remarkable enough at such a time and with so slightly trained troops, but it has been stated upon the word of a well-known American writer, who chanced to be a passenger on one of the vessels of the convoy, that when the heavily laden lifeboats pushed off from the Tuscania's side, some dauntless soul began singing the refrain of: " Where do we go from here, boys; where do we go from here ? " In an instant the men in the other boats had caught it up and with this music-hall ballad ringing out in unanswer- able inquiry, they rowed away into the darkness. 28 THE PASSING LEGIONS Rescue, however, reached the Tuscania far more quickly than it came to the wallowing Otranto, for, the instant she was struck, the Tuscania signaled and flashed on all her lights. The convoy knew at once what had happened to her and knew also that a German submarine had pierced the cordon of guard ships to deliver the blow. But, heed- less of danger, two British destroyers darted in to the Tuscania's aid, running alongside, so that her men could jump or slide down ropes to their decks. Favored by a comparatively smooth sea, the North Channel patrols and boats from the escorting ships also engaged in the task of picking up the many soldiers who were floating about or clinging to rafts in the freezing water. As it was in the dead of winter the condition of a number of these men was such that they died while the rescue boats were mak- ing for land. And many, too, were already lifeless when they were taken from the water. Although the Tuscania remained afloat for about two hours and every effort was made to pick up all the living and the dead, the darkness and the set of the tide and the wind made this impossible. However, of one unfortunate American soldier who drifted away that night there is a record in the files of the British Admiralty. It is penned in a deep-sea skipper's rough and unaccustomed hand, written in the cabin of a steam trawler and saving of words. It says: Bellona. When patrolling on Square 37 at 12 a. m. Monday, the 18th (of February, 1918), I observed the dead body of a man with a lifebelt on floating in the water. I stopped the ship at once and picked him up. I found him to be a man about 5 ft. 5 in. in height, of stout build with brown hair, clean shaven, dressed in the uniform of a marine with a pair of brown service boots. It was necessary to bury him at sea. After sewing the body up in canvas I read the funeral service and then quietly lowered him to his grave. John Mair, Skipper. The destroyers and patrol boats landed their rescued THE LESSON OF THE TUSCANIA 29 men at Londonderry, one of the naval bases, and at Larne and other lesser ports on the North Irish coast, the first of them reaching land shortly after 4 o'clock in the morning. At Londonderry, to which the destroyers brought 1,350 men, eighty had to be sent to hospitals immediately. Many of these were soldiers, already ill, who had been brought on deck from the transport's sick-bay when it was known that she was sinking, and others were suffering from in- juries or exposure. News of the torpedoing having reached the mainland before the arrival of the castaways, some sort of prepara- tion was possible. As a matter of fact, the people of Larne sat up all night awaiting the boats. Every kindness and care were given to the wet and shivering survivors even at the resource-taxing hour at which they came ashore. They were provided with hot food and drink and from all available sources sufficient clothing was gathered to outfit temporarily a considerable number. The service of every physician in the Larne dis- trict was requisitioned and the women of the community largely volunteered for the nursing. Of the 550 landed at Larne, thirty were in need of prompt medical aid and these were taken to the city infirmary. The remainder were quartered wherever room could be found for them. The proprietor of one of the largest hotels gratuitously con- verted his dining room into a dormitory and provided mattresses and blankets more than a hundred. In order that discipline should be maintained in the community all the twenty-four public houses in the city closed their doors, not by order but by agreement, from the morning of the soldiers' arrival until they left three days later. The American Red Cross in London learned of the catastrophe at about the time the survivors were being brought into the northern Irish ports. Instantly the ma- chinery of relief was set in motion. The first impulse given to it was the dispatching of telegrams to the Ameri- 30 THE PASSING LEGIONS can Consul at Belfast, placing funds and supplies in his hands for immediate use. Next, arrangements were made with the British Red Cross in London whereby it put all its resources in Ireland at the disposal of the American or- ganization. And, lastly, two American Red Cross repre- sentatives, Captain R. Stuart Smith, afterwards Lieut- Colonel and Commissioner for Great Britain, and Captain Edgar H. Wells, Deputy Commissioner and, at that time, assistant Military Attache of the American Embassy, took the night boat train for Larne, well supplied with money to meet whatever demands the extraordinary situation might make. When they arrived in Ireland early the following morn- ing they found that the officers and men of the Tuscania most in need of aid were quartered at Larne and in British military camps at Randalstown and Carrickfergus. At these points a hasty but thorough inspection of the soldiers was made and Captain Smith and Captain Wells signed receipts for all the equipment of clothing and mess kits the men required, these being provided from the stores of the British Army. Also large quantities of comfort supplies and tobacco were purchased in Belfast and dis- tributed wherever survivors could be found. Arrange- ments were made with the railway transportation officers of the British Army for the feeding of the men on their journey from the several camps across Ireland and Eng- land to their ultimate destination at Winchester. Every camp was visited by the Red Cross officers, the needs of the Americans ascertained and these at once supplied. Sums of money were lent to many of the offi- cers, both for their own needs and those of their men and they were informed that the Red Cross would take steps to assist in completely re-equipping them as soon as they should reach England. Money was not given to the en- listed men as they had practically no use for it, the gener- ous townspeople everywhere refusing to accept payment for purchases. THE LESSON OF THE TUSCANIA 31 The men in the hospitals were also visited and every- thing done to insure their comfort. And at the several British camps, the Red Cross representatives made cash contributions to the regimental funds to replenish the stores which had been so largely drawn upon for the Tuscania's men. By reason of the great amount of work to be accom- plished the Red Cross party of two had to work about twenty hours a day to make sure that no man and no need should be overlooked. Captain Smith and Captain Wells organized a very efficient assistance in Belfast where there were a number of resident Americans already interested in the work of the American Red Cross. They gladly volunteered their services for any work that was to be done, for it was known that a considerable time must elapse before many of the sick men would be in condition to resume the journey to England. As speedily as possible these were concentrated in the vicinity of Belfast where they could be attended most conveniently and efficiently by the Red Cross. It was not until nearly two weeks after the disaster that the last of the soldier patients was able to leave for southern England. But during all that time, with the cooperation and assistance of the Consul, the Belfast Americans, mostly women, were constant in their attention to the sick men, providing them with what- ever they were allowed to receive and cheering them not a little by their very presence. The soldier survivors in Ireland, aside from the hospital cases, were moved to England in five detachments, a Red Cross representative accompanying each party to its port of embarkation and supplying tobacco and other comforts to outlast the journey. Of all the business days in the week, the most incon- venient, by common consent, is Saturday. At best it is only half a day, for after the noon hour has struck it might as well be Sunday so far as things commercial are concerned. However, perversity decreed that news of 32 THE PASSING LEGIONS the decision to take the Tuscania survivors from Ireland to Winchester reached Red Cross headquarters in London on Saturday morning. Furthermore, it was learned that approximately nineteen hundred of these men would reach the big rest camp on Sunday night or early Monday morning. As none of the men had yet been completely re-outfitted, it was the desire of the Red Cross Commission to have everything needful at Winchester Rest Camp and avail- able for distribution the moment they should arrive in their new quarters. Aside from the fact that the Com- mission for Great Britain was still in its early days and without sufficient supplies to provide for so great a num- ber of men, Saturday presented its problem. All business in London commercial houses, where any purchases to meet such a demand would have to be made, ceases promptly at noon on that day. But the British Red Cross came at once to the rescue. It threw wide the doors of its London warehouses and offered to supply the Ameri- can organization with whatever was needed. This left to the American Red Cross the simple task of providing transportation. So, during the afternoon of Saturday, nineteen hundred packets were made up, each containing towels, soap, razors, cigarettes, stationery, handkerchiefs, gloves, combs and other comforts and, before evening, the whole lot had been loaded into a fleet of American Red Cross lorries and had started on their four-hour run to Winchester. The soldiers arrived at the rest camp on Monday morn- ing and immediately afterward the Red Cross parcels were distributed to them. Later in the morning they were drawn up for inspection in their nondescript clothing and complete new issues of the necessary uniforms were made. At the same time, the officers, 110 in number, were assem- bled and the Red Cross representative offered to provide them with whatever funds should be necessary to purchase uniforms and equipment to replace the gear they had THE LESSON OF THE TUSCANIA 33 lost at sea. About 75 of the officers availed themselves of this offer and to them the Red Cross advanced amounts ranging from $50 to $210, the total sum reaching more than $16,000. In some cases, the Red Cross cashed for them drafts on their banks at home, but in nearly all instances the officers expressed their desire to make reim- bursement for the advances from their monthly pay. The Red Cross arranged to have first class army outfitters go to Winchester, take measurements, and receive orders. Forty of the officers, however, desired to come to London to make their selections and purchases and during their visit the Red Cross acted as guide and host, placing its headquarters building at their disposal and inviting them to select such articles as sweaters, blankets, underclothing, sleeping bags and other things, without charge, from its warehouse supply. During their stay in London they were the guests at the American Officers' Inn in Cavendish Square. Only one large party of the Tuscania survivors passed through London on the way to Winchester. This was composed of fifteen officers and 115 men. News of their coming was telegraphed to Red Cross headquarters in London and instead of providing for them the usual sta- tion canteen service, these men were entertained by the Red Cross at a dinner in the Euston Station Hotel, where the entire dining room was reserved for them. As time went on and the men in the hospitals in Ireland recovered, news of their departure for Winchester was telegraphed to London headquarters and arrangements were made to meet them on the way and give them what- ever care they needed. But all of the Tuscania's company were not so fortunate as to land in Ireland. There were hundreds of her men in the ship's boats which rowed away as she sank. These had the wind and the swift set of the North Channel current to contend with and these drove them eastward 34 THE PASSING LEGIONS upon the jagged shores of Islay. And it was here that so many were killed or drowned when their boats crashed upon the rocks. The people of the island did all that was humanly possible to rescue them when the lifeboats and rafts came plunging in during the early morning at several points along the rough coast. While they did save hundreds who might otherwise have been lost, 182 of the Tuscania soldiers were flung ashore lifeless. Of these only 170 could be identified. As the victims had come in at rather widely separated places, they were buried as near as possible to these places in four cemeteries over- looking the sea. Many of the survivors on the island were in serious condition owing to exposure. To their aid the Red Cross sent a detachment of American nurses from the Red Cross Hospital at Mossley Hill, Liverpool. They made almost a record run to Islay and were soon in charge of the sick men whom they attended until all were able to travel and eventually they accompanied the squads of men as they left for their station in southern England. The British Government was prompt to reward two of the men of Islay for what they did in heroic aid of the Tuscania's company. They were Robert Morrison, of Upper Killeyan, and Duncan Campbell, of Stremnish, both coastwatchers. Morrison saved the lives of three American soldiers. First he waded into the surf up to his neck and threw a rope to two exhausted men clinging to a rock, being able thus to haul them ashore. Then he scaled a cliff 250 feet high and rescued another American soldier who had climbed part way up the cliff and was in a perilous posi- tion, being too weak to hang there much longer. Morrison carried this man to safety on his back. Also he pro- vided accommodations for ninety men in his small house of three rooms. One man died there from exhaustion while another, ill with pneumonia, was cared for by Mor- rison's mother and sister until he, too, died. Morrison not THE LESSON OF THE TUSCANIA 35 only used his entire supply of food in taking care of his unexpected guests, but gave away all of his extra clothing. He stoutly refused to accept any payment for his services. The American Red Cross officer in charge of the work on this occasion reported: " In my opinion he is one of the greatest heroes I have ever heard of." Campbell saved the life of a soldier who had been thrown up on the side of an almost inaccessible cliff, and was lying there helpless and worn out. Campbell climbed to him with the greatest difficulty and carried him down. He accommodated fourteen survivors in his small farm house, providing them with clothing as well as food. And he too declined to consider acceptance of payment for what he had done. Now we come to the lesson which the Tuscania disaster taught the Red Cross. That there was a lesson in it be- came apparent to the Red Cross representatives as soon as they were confronted by the survivors at Larne. And at once the plans for the future were laid, even while the wants of those shipwrecked men were being attended. The first resolution taken by the Red Cross men was that the organization should be immediately and adequately pre- pared to deal with tragic events of this kind and not be de- pendent upon either the British Red Cross or the hospi- tality of British camps or of the people of the towns in which shipwrecked men might chance to land. This was at a time in which the submarine menace off the north coast of Ireland was very grave and American troopships were in constant passage along it. Any day news might come that another had been sent to the bottom. It was resolved, therefore, to establish five emergency stations along the northern coast of Ireland with a well stocked warehouse in each and to arrange for motor trans- port, for the billeting of men in outlying points at which there were no British camps, and for a hospital visiting service. The plight of the Tuscania's men made clear the 36 THE PASSING LEGIONS various kinds of supplies required not only at the moment that survivors should land but subsequently, as the distribu- tion of equipment at Winchester had demonstrated. The result of this was that within two weeks after the sinking of the Tuscania the American Red Cross had estab- lished a central warehouse for an emergency station at Belfast, with similar stations and warehouses at Larne, Ballycastle, Londonderry, and Buncrana, five points spread fan-wise along the northeastern coast of Ireland from the lower part of the North Channel to a point which was far oceanward. It was at these points on the mainland to which the men of torpedoed vessels would be most likely to come. As an equipment of these warehouses the Red Cross pur- chased sufficient supplies of woolen underclothing, toilet articles, overcoats, tunics and caps, blankets, light canvas shoes, etc., to outfit completely six thousand men. Re- membering the Island of Islay, this remote place, but one which might again figure in the hazard of adjacent waters, the Red Cross covered it in two ways, by a reserve stock of supplies sent to Liverpool and by getting assurances from the British Admiralty that in case any ships or survivors should go ashore there it would furnish a destroyer or trawlers to take Red Cross representatives and supplies thither immediately. Motor transport was organized in Belfast by obtaining the use of a dozen private cars which had hitherto been out of service by reason of the impossibility of obtaining gaso- line during the war. These were held in reserve under telephone call in readiness to respond at a moment's notice for the conveyance of supplies and personnel to any des- ignated point. The owners of the cars themselves volun- teered as drivers. As Belfast was the base of operations a branch of the London Chapter of the American Red Cross was founded there similar to the ones previously established at Liverpool and Southampton. Billeting arrangements were completed at Larne and Ballycastle, hotels and pub- THE LESSON OF THE TUSCANIA 37 lie halls in these places being placed at the service of the Red Cross whenever an emergency should require their use. As it was considered that there was danger of ships be- ing torpedoed off the southwestern coast of Ireland and at the entrance of the waterway between it and England, the Red Cross arranged with the United States Navy for the establishment of equipment warehouses at Queenstown and at Berehaven, in Bantry Bay. A large quantity of sup- plies was sent to each of these points in charge of navy paymasters. As the location and equipment of these several stations fortified the Red Cross against being dismayed or taken un- aware by sudden off-coast disaster, the Commission im- mediately undertook a thoroughly comprehensive extension of this plan of preparedness. It created the Bureau of Emergency Service and relegated to it the problem of coordinating the work of the relief and supply departments and of making all necessary arrangements in advance for anything which might happen. It was the function of the Bureau to forsee every possible contingency and provide the working arrangements to meet it. This required a very careful study of the transport map of Great Britain and the establishment of central depots at numerous points around the coasts of the British Isles, these locations being so selected that any point on the coasts might be reached with the least possible delay. More than thirty of these emergency stations were established. The plan adopted had as its base the three central warehouses of the Red Cross, located in London, Liverpool and Win- chester. Then there were five sub-central warehouse sta- tions : Southampton, Plymouth, Cardiff, Belfast and Glas- gow. Southampton covered the south of England and the Channel ports; Plymouth covered the southwestern coast of England and the Bristol Channel; Cardiff covered the Welsh coast; Belfast that of Ireland, and Glasgow the Scottish coast. 38 THE PASSING LEGIONS Beyond the sub-central warehouses were the smaller emergency supply depots. Two of these were in the South- ampton district, four in that of Plymouth, four in the Cardiff territory, six in Ireland and five in Scotland. Under the direct supervision of London Headquarters were two supply depots covering the Thames estuary and the southeastern coast, one at Brighton and the other at Dover. From these thirty-odd well chosen points it was possible to reach any place on the coast within three or hour hours either by train or motor transport. In the matter of sup- plies, each of the small emergency supply stations was equipped to take care of from 100 to 500 men. If a dis- aster proved too great for such a station, additional ma- terial to any amount could be transported thither in a few hours from the nearest central warehouse. At each depot arrangements were made for motor transports to serve in such a contingency as well as for the delivery of supplies at the actual scene of disaster. Distances by road and train were carefully worked out in advance, not only in mileage but in the number of hours by both routes between points. Whenever the emergency call should come, the Red Cross man, map and distance table in hand, could bring the well-adjusted machinery into instant action. As Fate decreed it, a call did come only a few months later which tested to the utmost the capabilities of the American Red Cross. The task of answering it fell, not to the stations created in the elaborated plan of relief, but to the first to be established after the sinking of the troop- ship Tuscania, those along the rough northern, rim of the coast of Ireland. The call came from the wrecked Otranto, and it found the Red Cross prepared almost to the point of foresight of that very catastrophe. There was no doubt of the value of the lesson of the Tuscania. Unfortunately, there was a third American troopship disaster in 1918, which resulted in the loss of fifty-five THE LESSON OF THE TUSCANIA 39 American soldiers. The Moldavia, a British auxiliary cruiser, was sunk in the English Channel by torpedo fire at 2 :30 o'clock on the morning of May 23rd. The ship was strongly convoyed and the German submarine had to pen- etrate the cordon of destroyers, as in the case of the Tus- cania, to hurl her torpedo. But almost immediately after- ward the destroyers closed in and blew up the submarine with depth bombs. Aboard the Moldavia were two companies of American soldiers, A and B of the 58th Infantry. One man of A Company and fifty-three of B Company were lost on the ship and one man of the latter company died of his in- juries before reaching land. Most of the men lost were in the fore part of the vessel and were either killed by the explosion of the torpedo or cut off from all chance of escape by the blocking of the gangways. The American Red Cross received notice of the torpedo- ing from American Army Headquarters within a few hours after its occurrence and instantly two Red Cross repre- sentatives hastened to Dover with army officers detailed from the London base. The survivors had already been landed and conveyed to a British Rest Camp at Dover. Thither the Red Cross representatives carried a large sum of money and considerable quantities of supplies. An officer of the Home Communication Service was present and took charge of much of the relief work, in addition to the exacting tasks of his own particular department. Inspection of the survivors disclosed their immediate needs and the supplies, including sixty complete kit bags, were soon distributed. The army paymaster had ar- ranged to give to all the survivors, both officers and men, a certain advance on their pay and where this was found to be insufficient for pressing needs, the Red Cross was pre- pared to supplement it upon the recommendation of the military officials in charge. Each officer of the two detach- ments was informed that the Red Cross would be glad to assist in the replacement of his lost outfit, and this offer 40 THE PASSING LEGIONS was at once accepted. When these officers had made state- ments of their losses and the amounts required to refurnish them with kits, the Red Gross lent them the necessary money and arranged to have them sent to London to pur- chase their new equipment there. Medical supplies for the survivors were placed at the disposal of the army hospital authorities and the repre- sentative of the Home Communication Service visited the hospital in which three injured men were being cared for and made arrangements to supply them with everything needful which was not obtainable from the hospital store- room. He also visited the hospital ship Liberty, on board which one of the American soldiers had died. The Home Communication Service succeeded in compil- ing a complete list of the victims and the names and ad- dresses of their next of kin in America, and this list, authenticated and official, reached Washington Headquar- ters by cable in less than five days after the date of the dis- aster, which is probably a record for an official list on an occasion of that kind. The rapid work of the Home Com- munication Service in this instance was largely due to the efficient cooperation of the non-commissioned officers in charge of the company records. At great risk to their lives, these officers had succeeded in saving the rosters and other papers of their detachments while the Moldavia was literally sinking under them. The survivors of the Moldavia remained in Dover for about a week and were then transferred to the American Army Rest Camp at Winchester, whence they were sent on to France. In the official announcement of the sinking issued a few days afterward by the British Admiralty it was stated that: "His Majesty's armed mercantile cruiser Moldavia, Captain ?" §my ' was torPedoed and sunk on the morning of the 23rd. _ There were no casualties among the crew, but of the American troops on board 56 are up to the present unaccounted for and it is feared that they were killed in one compartment by the explosion." THE LESSON OF THE TUSCANIA 41 The establishment of the four cemeteries for the lost men of the Tuscania made the bleak and remote Island of Islay a very important point on the American Red Cross map of the British Isles. The creation, later in the year, of the cemetery at Kilchoman for the victims of the Otranto re- grettably emphasized the importance of this little-known region in the rocky western part of Scotland. Soon after the sinking of the Tuscania the suggestion was made at Red Cross Headquarters in London that the installation of a suitable monument on Islay should be con- sidered as a means of paying tribute to the memory of the American soldiers who had lost their lives there. The matter of designating thus only one particular group of Americans and erecting a monument to them and not to others was, of course, duly considered, but it was decided that such a question did not fairly arise. The reasons were: first, tbat the Tuscania's dead represented, in a way, the first American casualties in the war; second, that their graves were remote from the general theater of war and were likely to be neglected unless some especial action of this sort were taken, and third, that the sinking of the Tuscania was, as one might say, a special occasion, like a particular battle. Therefore it was decided that such a monument should be erected. Several designs were prepared and tentative approval was given to one specifying the erection of a simple obelisk or shaft of granite on the Mull of Oa, the high-flung promontory on the southernmost tip of the Island of Islay, close beside two of the Tuscania ceme- teries and overlooking the channel in which she was torpedoed. With the occurrence of the Otranto disaster, the plans for the monument were so modified that it should serve as a memorial to the dead of both troopships and a new de- sign for it was adopted. A plain granite shaft was held to be unsuited to the rough, rocky surroundings and not in keeping with the usual type of monument set up in this 42 THE PASSING LEGIONS part of Scotland. Islay folks were accustomed to mark their important graves or sites with cairns, or towers, built of rough-hewn native stone. In view of this, the American Red Cross adopted the design of a watch-tower sixty feet in height and twenty feet in diameter at the base, to be constructed of stone gathered in the neighboring fields or from the cliffs. After this plan had been approved, Presi- dent Wilson volunteered to give a bronze wreath to be placed upon the monument which, from its rocky head- land five hundred feet above the sea, also overlooks the spot at which the Otranto was struck by the Kashmir. On one face of this monument will appear the following inscription: Sacred to the Immortal Memory of those American Soldiers and Sailors Who gave their lives for Their Country in the Wrecks of the Transports Tuscania and Otranto February 5th 1918 October 6th 1918 This Monument was Erected by The American National Red Cross Near the Spot where so many of the Victims of the Disasters Sleep in Everlasting Peace " On Fame's eternal camping ground Their silent tents are spread While Glory keeps, with solemn round, The bivouac of the Dead." In addition to this inscription, the Islay monument will bear on its sides large bronze tablets setting forth the names of all the victims of the two transport disasters, with their rank and regimental distinctions. THE LESSON OF THE TUSCANIA 43 The ground about the monument, four acres in extent, looking out straight across the blue Atlantic, was given to the American Red Cross by the owner, Captain Ian Ramsay, who donated also the land for three of the Tus- cania cemeteries, those at Killeyan, Kinibus, and Kil- naughton. The title to these four pieces of property was taken over by the American National Red Cross in ac- cordance with the wish of Captain Ramsay. Title has similarly been taken from Mr. Hugh Morrison, the Laird of Islay, for the Otranto cemetery at Kilchoman and for the fourth Tuscania cemetery at Port Charlotte. Thus, all five of the Islay cemeteries in which American soldiers are buried, as well as the site of the monument, are now the property of the American Red Cross. The American burial places on Islay and the number of graves in each are as follows: Killeyan, Mull of Oa.......... 10 Tuscania graves Kinibus, Mull of Oa.......... 36 Tuscania graves Kilnaughton, Port Ellen ...... 87 Tuscania graves Port Charlotte ................50 Tuscania graves Kilchoman ....................315 Otranto graves The Killeyan and Kinibus cemeteries lie along the cliffs, just below the Islay monument, and Kilnaughton cemetery is about four miles to the northeast. Port Charlotte and Kilchoman are to the northwest and, approximately, nine and twelve miles respectively from the headland of the Mull of Oa. During the year, Red Cross officers paid several visits to these cemeteries which have been carefully fenced in and are being well cared for in every way. Provision for their permanent maintenance was made through the gift of a fund of five hundred pounds sterling in perpetual trust to the Glasgow Islay Association, which has taken a keen interest in the preservation and up-keep of these reserva- tions. Local agencies on the island have given the ceme- teries a great deal of attention and never, from the very 44 THE PASSING LEGIONS first, have the graves been bare of flowers or evergreens and American flags. With the coming of Memorial Day, 1919, the Red Cross made services in the Islay Cemeteries an especial feature of a day which was celebrated in every corner of Europe in which Americans were gathered. For the bodies of many American soldiers lie in France; there are graves in the United Kingdom; and many others scattered through- out Europe. Wide indeed has become the significance of Memorial Day. The opening ceremony of that day in behalf of those who had lost their lives on sinking vessels was the scattering of flowers on the water at Liverpool and Kingstown and also off the western shores of Islay so that the tide might sweep the blossoms out to the scenes of destruction and tragedy. On distant Islay, the shepherds and fisherfolk gathered with the same reverential enthusiasm for the memorial services that they had shown when the dead of the troop- ships were buried on their island. At Kilchoman, where three hundred and fifteen American soldiers and seventy- two British sailors of the Otranto lie side by side, the is- landers met in a body at 11 o'clock on the morning of May 30th a short distance from the cemetery. They had come even from comparatively remote parts of their rugged re- gion, two young girls in the party having walked eleven rough miles in order to be present. Led by two pipers play- ing " The Scottish Lament," the procession marched slowly to the graves, bearing the flags of the United States, Great Britain and the Red Cross close behind the pipers. The service was conducted by Padre Grant, who had read the burial ritual there only seven months before. All the graves were decorated with American flags and in addition to the prayer, the singing of psalms and an address by Mr. Grant, a chorus of children's voices sang " The Star-Spangled Banner " and " God Save the King." After this the clus- ters of hardy flowers, which the good folk had gathered in their dooryards, were placed upon the graves and the little party went its slow way back across the downs. THE LESSON OF THE TUSCANIA 45 More than five hundred persons attended the services which were conducted in Kilnaughton Cemetery, by the Rev. James Mackinnon, rector of Kilnaughton Parish Church, assisted by three other ministers. A small organ, which had been borne many miles, was set up in the center of the cemetery and a body of 150 school children led the singing of hymns and the two national anthems. Each of these children carried a small bouquet of flowers and at the close of the service they marched in single file to the large American flag which flew in one corner of the ceme- tery, opposite an equally large British " Union Jack," and there placed their blossoms which, later, were laid upon the graves. It was not possible to hold services at the three ceme- teries of Port Charlotte, Killeyan and Kinibus, but repre- sentatives of the Red Cross and a committee of women of Islay visited each and decorated the graves of the Ameri- cans with flags and flowers. In paying this tribute to the men buried on Islay the Red Cross did not overlook the solitary grave of an American soldier, on the neighboring Island of Muck. This is an al- most out-of-the-world place, but it holds the grave of Tom Davis, who was on the Otranto. A long time after the disaster his body was washed up on the island and its five inhabitants made a coffin for it from the bits of wreckage which came ashore. It was the only material they could obtain for the purpose, and when they had buried Tom Davis in a silence which they meant to serve as a ritual, word of him and his resting place was sent to the Red Cross in England. That this lonely grave might be reached in time to dec- orate it with the others, a Red Cross party set out from London more than a week before May 30th, and got to their remote destination by hiring a fishing smack in Argyle- shire. So Tom Davis, although he was all alone, was re- membered with all the others and a flag and a wreath were laid upon his grave. 46 THE PASSING LEGIONS The American Red Cross took part in services at fifty different places in the British Isles on Memorial Day, 1919. The more extended services were held at Brookwood, near London, where there are 129 American graves, and at Win- chester, with its 553 graves; at Liverpool, 702 graves, and at Glasgow where 113 Americans are buried. And in tribute to one whose name is known to the armies of the world, a deputation of American Red Cross nurses placed wreaths and flowers on the grave of Florence Nightingale at South Wellow, near Romsey. In Brookwood Cemetery a great concourse of people gathered for the memorial service. The Prince of Wales, who sent a wreath of laurels, orchids and gardenias, was represented by Captain the Hon. Piers Legh, and the Arch- bishop of Canterbury and the Bishop of London by their chaplains. As Mr. Davis, the American Ambassador, had been called to France his place was taken by Consul Gen- eral Skinner. General Biddle, commanding the Ameri- can forces in Great Britain, was present as were Admiral Knapp, the successor of Admiral Sims; Brigadier General Kenyon, late of the American War Mission; Lieutenant Colonel Bullock, of the Canadian Expeditionary Force; Viscountess Harcourt, clad in the uniform of a Lady of St. John; and the Earl of Meath. The band of the 1st Bat- talion of the Duke of Cornwall's Light Infantry provided the music incidental to the service. After the prayers, Chaplain Roger B. Anderson delivered an eloquent ad- dress. In closing he said: " Who would have dreamed five years ago that a crowd of Americans would be stand- ing here in England today at the graves of American dead?" CHAPTER III WHEN THE COMMISSION WAS BOKN THE invaluable and far-reaching work which the Amer- ican Red Cross was to perform in the British Isles was foreshadowed by so slight a thing as the chance remark of an American Army officer. Specifically, this chance re- mark was the preface to the establishment of the first hospi- tal to be constructed in England for American troops. One day in London, in the latter part of October, 1917, Colonel William Lassiter, Military Attache of the Ameri- can Embassy, said to Major William Endicott, then rep- resentative in England of the Red Cross Paris staff: " I have an inkling that American troops will very soon begin to trickle through Great Britain on their way to France. This, mind you, is only gossip that I have heard, but it may prove to be true. In that case Liverpool is the most probable port of debarkation and I think that the American Red Cross should do something there." At that time there were no American soldiers in England save one or two small detachments of air-service mechanics, " ground men " sent across for finishing instruction and to release much-needed British mechanics to duty with their own flying corps. Major Endicott's work, as he himself characterized it, was mainly that of " purchasing agent" for the Commission in France. Experience had shown that many supplies urgently required for the use of the Red Cross in Continental Europe could be bought in England when they could not be obtained for love or money in either France or Switzerland. So, to Major Endicott was en- trusted the diplomatic task of making these purchases when emergency rendered it out of the question to await ship- ments from the United States. Incidentally, no one save a 47 48 THE PASSING LEGIONS diplomat could ever have negotiated these purchases, so many were the difficulties surrounding the acquisition of commodities employed in war. A London Chapter of the American Red Cross was in existence at this time, with headquarters at No. 40 Grosvenor Gardens, and there Major Endicott established his office on September 10, 1917, in a room the Chapter lent him. No sooner had he hung up his cap than the orders from the Commission in France began pouring in upon him. Sometimes as many as fifty came in a single day. The goods they specified ranged from medicines to stoves, from tents to motor cars, calling upon the resources of practically every industry engaged in war production. It was never an easy thing to make these purchases. Permits were in- variably necessary to obtain products involving the use of metal or of wood as these two staples were under control of the British authorities, whose demands, naturally enough, were constant and almost exhaustive. But, through happy negotiations with the War Office and the British Red Cross, which was unfailing in its kind aid, Major Endicott succeeded in maintaining an uninterrupted flow of supplies across the channel. As he said afterward, " I am sure that I bought a whole department store in England and shipped it over to France! " Thus, for a period of several weeks, Major Endicott was engaged in a service which, although fundamentally im- portant to the success of the Red Cross in Continental Europe, gave no promise whatever of a broader activity in England. Practically every Red Cross thought was cen- tered upon the sore needs of France, Belgium and Italy and of the other countries in which actual warfare was raging. England offered no problems save those incidental to the purchase of goods in a difficult market. It had been announced that the coming American troops, as an army, were to be convoyed directly to France, that they were to occupy the sectors on the right flank of the battle WHEN THE COMMISSION WAS BORN 49 line — in the neighborhood of Toul — and that extensive hospital accommodations for all the wounded would be pro- vided in the south of France. In fine, England was quite out of it all — on the side lines, as it were. But, with Colonel Lassiter's chance remark, the situa- tion, the outlook, everything was changed in an instant. And a few days later, when he informed Major Endicott of his receipt of an official cablegram announcing definitely that American troops were to come to England on their way to France and the front, the vital role which the American Red Cross was destined ultimately to play in Great Britain became a definite thing. " The men are coming to Liverpool," Colonel Lassiter added, " but in small units only and not on army trans- ports, but in the available passenger space on commercial steamships. Will not the Red Cross establish a small hos- pital at Liverpool for those who arrive sick? I have no force with which to do this sort of thing and all of the hospitals there, both military and civilian, are already overcrowded with the British!" " How large a hospital do you want? " Major Endicott asked, by way of affirmative. " Just a small one," was the reply. " About one hun- dred beds, I should say. That will give us ample accom- modation for our men who may be in bad shape when they land." The Major's reply was immediate. " You shall have that hospital just as soon as human hands can provide it," he said. In this way came to Major Endicott the first indication that his task in England was to be something more than that of purchasing goods for the Commission in France, of which, by the way, he was still a member. Now, although only " small units " of men were on the horizon, a hospital was also there and this meant but one thing, an expansion of the work until it should come into actual contact with the Army. 50 THE PASSING LEGIONS As if Colonel Lassiter's news had been a trumpet call there was a sudden and hitherto unexpected American ac- tivity in London. The War Department at Washington established an Army Base in England, officially designated as Base Section 3, with headquarters in London and Major General George T. Bartlett in command, and the Ameri- can Red Cross created a Commission for Great Britain with Major Endicott, promoted to Lieutenant Colonel, at its head. The Deputy Commissioner was Captain Edgar H. Wells, who had been sent from America the week before Colonel Endicott's arrival to aid the London Chapter in the conduct of its growing affairs. Almost over night these important events occurred and while they set many heads to wondering they threw a light far into the future. Although by this time Colonel Endicott's staff had been augmented, through the arrival of clerks and accountants from Paris, until its personnel numbered five, it included nothing which even remotely resembled a construction bureau, and this was the one thing now imperatively im- portant. So, in order that there should be no delay in pro- viding the promised hospital at Liverpool, Colonel Endi- cott asked the British War Office for the services of an en- gineer for aid in an undertaking which, as he explained, would relieve English hospitals of the task of caring for arriving American soldiers. In response to this request the War Office assigned a captain of the Royal Engineers, an officer of long experi- ence in the conversion of buildings for British hospital needs, to assist the Red Cross in every way. Colonel Endicott went at once to Liverpool, where that officer was stationed, and with him made an inspection, last- ing many days, of all the buildings in and about the port which could be rearranged expeditiously and adequately for the purposes of a hospital. The result of this search was the selection of an estate known as Mossley Hill, which possessed many natural ad- WHEN THE COMMISSION WAS BORN 51 vantages and was within fifteen minutes by motor run from the Liverpool docks. Its extensive park included a manor house of many rooms, a stable and garage, greenhouses, a gardener's cottage and the usual appurtenances of an Eng- lish country estate. It was the property of Mr. Edmund K. Muspratt, a former Lord Mayor of Liverpool. Upon the advice of the British engineer, negotiations for its rental were at once undertaken, but, at the outset, Colonel Endicott and Mr. Muspratt could reach no agree- ment as to terms. In the end, however, Mr. Muspratt's son, who was then Lord Mayor of Liverpool, effected a lease of the entire property to the Red Cross for the nominal sum of twenty pounds, about one hundred dollars, a year, and on November 19, 1917, the lease was signed — laying the " corner stone " of the first hospital to be opened for American troops in England. The work of converting the manor house of Mossley Hill was characterized by a celerity quite in keeping with that which had marked its acquisition. Although British labor was practically at a premium and building materials ob- tainable only by the most diligent search, the efforts of the Red Cross and Major U. J. Wile, of the American Army, detailed as medical inspector, resulted in the opening of the hospital for its first patients on January 8, 1918 — within six weeks after work was begun! In that incredibly short time the house had been equipped with a new system of plumbing, several of the twenty-eight rooms enlarged or subdivided and accommo- dations provided for forty patients. This much ac- complished to meet emergencies, the Red Cross at once be- gan the construction of two sixty-bed isolation wards for contagious cases. And both of these wards were completed and occupied early in the spring of 1918. As the number of American officers and men arriving at Liverpool and other northern British ports was constantly increasing, Brigadier General A. E. Bradley, Chief Sur- geon at the Headquarters of the American Expeditionary 52 THE PASSING LEGIONS Forces in France, recommended at the beginning of Febru- ary, 1918, that Mossley Hill Hospital be enlarged to a capacity of 500 beds, with such auxiliary buildings as a laboratory and a steam disinfecting plant and quarters for a medical staff and a detail of enlisted men. Undeterred by any obstacles which might arise in an already stony path, the Red Cross instantly agreed to under- take the work and requested the engineer officer to draw up the necessary plans. The result of this was noteworthy. In the construction which followed, the American Red Cross laid down the pattern afterward adopted for all hos- pitals for the American Army in Great Britain. The de- sign, in brief, was for wards of forty-foot width, permitting four rows of cots instead of two, as heretofore, and two main walls instead of four and all under one pitch of roof. The new plans provided for the erection of six one-story ward buildings, each approximately 100 by 40 feet, in a large paddock belonging to the estate. And building opera- tions were begun upon a large scale, the very month that the recommendations came from Army Headquarters. Delays in construction were inevitable, but the buildings rose one by one and as rapidly as each was completed and equipped it was delivered to the Army Medical Corps for the reception of patients. When the Germans, in their drive for Paris in June, 1918, penetrated to Chateau-Thierry and the American troops were flung against them, notably in Belleau Wood, the army dispatched a hurried request to the Red Cross that it set up at once a tent hospital for 500 patients in a field adjoining the Mossley Hill reservation. The response to this was the immediate shipment of a sufficient number of tents and paraphernalia to shelter 300, while the market was being ransacked for the remaining two hundred. But, fortunately, these tents never had to be used for wounded men. They did serve, however, for storage and similar purposes until October, 1918, when they were brought into requisition in the " flu " epidemic, WHEN THE COMMISSION WAS BORN 53 which taxed every resource of both the army and the Red Cross. So, from the very beginning, Mossley Hill was a Red Cross enterprise, the entire expense of its construction and equipment and operation being borne by the Red Cross up to the time when, as a 500-bed institution, it was taken over by the Medical Corps of the American Army. With the arrival of American troops in England, in num- bers far in excess of all earlier expectations, a rapid in- crease of Red Cross activities was now assured. But for a clear knowledge of the foundations upon which they were to be erected, it is necessary to go back, even beyond the Lon- don Chapter; in fact, to the days which antedated the entry of America in the Great War. In September, 1914, which was only a few weeks after the beginning of hostilities in Europe, a number of Ameri- can women living in England, a majority of whom had married British subjects, organized the American Women's War Relief Fund. Its object was the care of wounded officers and men of the British Army, and its maintenance was derived from voluntary contributions of money and supplies from England and the United States. Among the American women associated in this undertaking were Lady Paget, Viscountess Harcourt, the Duchess of Marl- borough, Lady Randolph Churchill, Mrs. Walter H. Page, wife of the then American Ambassador; Mrs. Whitelaw Reid, Lady Lowther, Mrs. John Astor, Lady Henry, Mrs. Walter S. M. Burns, Mrs. Michael Foster, Mrs. Irwin Laughlin, wife of the Counselor of the American Embassy, and Mrs. H. B. Chapin. The treasurer of the organiza- tion was Mr. Walter S. M. Burns. In wholehearted aid of this undertaking, Mr. Paris Singer, of New York, placed at the disposal of the Fund his thirty-acre estate " Oldway," at Paignton, three miles from Torquay, in South Devonshire. This estate, in the most beautiful part of the " English Riviera," had been selected fifty years before by Isaac M. Singer, the inventor 54 THE PASSING LEGIONS of the sewing-machine shuttle, as the site for his English home. Upon it had been built a great residence, " Oldway House," designed by French architects in the style of the Louis periods, which was a shining landmark on the coast. The place was in every way advantageous for a hospital, especially for convalescents, not only by reason of the com- fortable and commodious mansion, which contained, ap- proximately, sixty rooms, but because extremes of heat or cold or excessive rainfall are unknown at Paignton. With such an estate at its disposal, the Fund at once be- gan the conversion of the great house to its new uses. It established two hundred and fifty beds, converting an im- mense Louis XYI gilded ballroom into a ward, and pro- vided a distinguished staff of American physicians and surgeons to care for the British non-commissioned officers and privates, in whose behalf the institution had been founded. " Oldway House " is one of the most sumptuous private residences in England, with a grand stairway modeled after that of the Palace of Versailles, and dominated, in a panel over the wide landing, by David's historic painting, " The Coronation of the Empress Josephine," which the artist was fourteen years in completing. This prized canvas was hung on steel cables by which it could be lowered into a protecting tank in the cellar in case of fire. At the outbreak of the war Mr. Singer had it removed for safety to his New York residence. Surrounded by the regal elaborateness and the comforts which " Oldway House " and its vast park afforded, it is little to be wondered at that one of the American soldiers who was later under treatment there should have said to a fellow patient: " I've just written the folks at home that I'm living in a place that would make Riverside Drive look like a row of sheds along a railroad track." And, by way of adding still another distinction to it, the soldier was told by a nurse to inform his people in the next WHEN THE COMMISSION WAS BORN 55 letter home that " Oldway House " was the first American hospital in England to receive a visit from the Queen. The success which marked the administration of " Old- way House," where hundreds of the British soldiery were brought back to health and helpfulness, led the Fund to open in March, 1917, a forty-eight-bed hospital for British officers at Nos. 98 and 99 Lancaster Gate, Hyde Park, London. This, in turn, was an eminently successful undertaking, due, in the main, to the tireless zeal of Vis- countess Harcourt, who devoted herself not only to the gen- eral conduct of the hospital, but gave daily personal super- vision of the work. About a month after Lancaster Gate Hospital was in- augurated, the United States entered the Great War and, close upon the heels of this, came the founding of the Lon- don Chapter of the American Red Cross on May 24, 1917, with a distinguished directorate. Its Honorary President ■vqas Mr. Walter H. Page, at that time American Am- bassador, with Mrs. Page and Mrs. Robert P. Skinner, wife of the American Consul General, as Honorary Vice-Presi- dents; Mrs. Whitelaw Reid, as Chairman; Mrs. Irwin Laughlin, Vice-Chairman; Boylston A. Beal, Honorary Secretary; Robert Grant, Jr., Honorary Treasurer, and W. H. Buckler, Administrative Director. Early in the summer of 1917, several detachments of surgeons, nurses and orderlies — about 2,000 in all and forming six hospital units — arrived in England from America on their way to France, to care for the British wounded. These units, with a seventh from Harvard, which had preceded them, had been organized by the Ameri- can National Red Cross and turned over to the Surgeon General's office of the United States Army. They were sent in response to the request made by the Balfour Mission when it visited the United States in May, 1917, that imme- diate medical aid be furnished to the British Army, as it was then losing several thousand doctors, nurses and allied personnel every month. 56 THE PASSING LEGIONS So enthusiastically prompt were the American units in answering this call that the one from Cleveland — the Lakeside Unit of Dr. George W. Crile, and the first to fol- low the Harvard organization — sailed from New York three days after receiving its first notice to start for the front. The next unit was that of the Peter Bent Brigham Hospital, of Boston, headed by Dr. Cushing, and swiftly thereafter came the Pennsylvania Hospital Unit, of Phila- delphia, and the others from Chicago, St. Louis and New York. Owing to the extreme haste in which these pioneer con- tingents were dispatched, many of the nurses arrived in England without adequate equipment against the rigors of winter back of the lines. So the London Chapter of the Red Cross undertook, as its first work of magnitude, the provision of warm outer and underclothing, sleeping bags, rubber coats, oil stoves, gloves, etc., for those who stood in need of such things. Mrs. Whitelaw Reid, much inter- ested in this work, contributed heavily to the purchase of these outfits, making her donations, however, entirely through the Red Cross. Two results, quite aside from the important one of pre- serving the health of the workers, came of this initial enter- prise. One was the receipt of authorization from Red Cross Headquarters at Washington for the purchase of whatever supplies were required for the American nurses already in service in France. The other was the proper equipment, subsequently, of all the nurse units before their departure from the States for the big hospitals in Europe. In direct relation to this activity was the establishment in June, 1917, of the American Nurses' Club (London ia emphatically a city of clubs) at No. 42 Grosvenor Place, in the very heart of the metropolis, under the chairmanship of Viscountess Harcourt, to provide accommodation and diversion for nurses on leave from, or on their way to, duty in French and British hospitals. Such was its deserved popularity that before very long WHEN THE COMMISSION WAS BORN 57 the Chapter had to furnish an annex to it. This was made possible through the generosity of the Countess of Granard, who gave an entire floor of her home, Forbes House in Halkin Street, for the purpose. And when, in time, even these two places afforded insufficient quarters in which to house the visitors, Mrs. Cavendish Bentinck contributed an extensive suite of rooms in her home, No. 4 Richmond Terrace. Nor, indeed, was this the end of it. Later still, it became necessary to lease another building, No. 45 Grosvenor Place, to provide shelter for the nurses during their short but well-earned holidays in London. The club was patronized by hundreds during its long and growing existence and many of the nurses were frank in avowing that " they didn't know what they'd have done had it not been for the club and the chance for real rest that it gave them." When the superintendent was asked what the nurses most appreciated in the club, her answer came with- out an instant's hesitation: " Hot baths and breakfast in bed! " From this time onward the work of the London Chapter grew apace. One valuable activity came ready-made, as it were, into its hands. This was the American Receiving and Distributing Service. Begun as a branch of the Bel- gravia Workrooms, a British organization supplying surgi- cal dressings and appliances, bandages and clothing to British hospitals in France and England, it had grown, through the interest it aroused in America and among Americans in Great Britain, into a quite individual enter- prise. Upon America's declaration of war it established itself as a separate undertaking in behalf of the American forces, with headquarters at No. 16 Grosvenor Crescent, a house lent for the purpose. At this time the energies of the Service were mainly directed toward distributing equip- ment and supplies to the hospitals at Paignton and Lan- caster Gate, to the seven base hospital units which the American Government had sent to France, and among cer- 58 THE PASSING LEGIONS tain British hospitals in accordance with such requests as were periodically received from the British Director-Gen- eral of Voluntary Organizations — known as " the D.G.V.O.," since almost everything connected with this war was, in conversation, however polite, reduced to its initials for either brevity or euphony. In June, 1917, the Service, under the able direction of Mrs. Henry B. Chapin, was taken over by the London Chapter of the Red Cross and, shortly afterward, removed to permanent quarters in a spacious building at No. 15 George Street, the use of which had been gratuitously proffered by Sir Charles Allom. The big house, overlooking famous Hanover Square, was one of those dignified, early Victorian residences of which London possesses countless rows. It had, for neighbor over the way, the historic church of St. George's, where Theodore Roosevelt was married. When the Service occupied the building it had just ceased to be the principal show place of a great firm of London decorators and much of its furnishings was stock- in-trade. The chairman's office, with its walls of faded crimson brocatelle, its florid gilt mirrors, its marble con- soles and elaborately carved furniture, might have found its replica in the Quirinal. It was a charming setting for the women of the Service and yet, no sooner had they be- come attached to their surroundings than these began to disappear before their very eyes. The decorators were selling and removing their cherished wares. The wide, comfortable chairs, the couches and the inlaid tables were spirited away one by one. Other pieces of furniture had to be sought in adjoining apartments until the rooms became, first, a hodge-podge of periods and then mere offices, with angular roll-top desks and hard, four-square chairs. There was one room in the house which permitted the visitor to visualize in a limited space the widespread work of the Service. It was a large square room, its walls lined WHEN THE COMMISSION WAS BORN 59 to the high ceiling with shelves filled with surgical requi- sites and, around its four sides, deep bins which were being constantly emptied and replenished with supplies coming from America for distribution in England and France. Great cases of these came sliding down a steep chute from the street level, while, from the floor above, smaller packages and bundles came down a smaller chute. In the room was a silent, busy corps of workers clad in clean, rustling blue and white uniforms, their heads bound with the becoming white wimple with the Red Cross on the front fold. They bent over their tables, unpacking, sorting, repack- ing the things they were handling, the bandages, gauze, op- erating jackets, hospital garments, surgical appliances and supplies of all kinds, seeming to bring the battle front and this room in London very close together. The visitor could sense the urgent need for these things in the field stations and hospitals in distant France, as well as in close-at-hand England. Work was so systematized in the George Street establish- ment that an order for a given article in any amount could be, in most instances, filled immediately without necessitat- ing the task of unpacking the original bales or packages. The contents of cases and bales were always indicated there- on so that one of the chief details of filling an order was the employment of a van to take the goods to a railway freight station. Material for the Service came from a very large number of organizations and private benefactors. However, a majority of the consignments from America were sent through such institutions as the National Surgical Dress- ings Committee in New York, the New England Surgical Dressings Committee, the Philadelphia Emergency Aid Committee, the Red Cross Supply Service of Boston, the War Relief Association of Virginia and other enterprises included in the British-American War Relief group. 60 THE PASSING LEGIONS Many organizations in Allied countries also contributed, for nowhere was the Entente more closely related than in the Red Cross, Queen Mary's Needlework having furnished 3,600 packets of bandages as one offering. Only one day before the Tuscania disaster, a donation of 700 wool jerseys was received at George Street. At the call for relief for the survivors of the troopship, the jerseys were dispatched to them immediately, the packages not even having been opened. Mention of the Tuscania recalls the receipt one day by the Service of a case of black Llama wool socks. A note accompanying the shipment explained that the case had been washed ashore from the Tuscania and picked up by a fisherman on Islay, who forwarded the socks with his respects and good wishes. Among a long list of interesting donations to the Service was a consignment of 350 cases of groceries sent by " The English Servants of Philadelphia " and purchased with the proceeds of a ball. An anonymous individual in the Middle West sent the Service 100 cases of chewing gum. The patriotic support the Service received and the effec- tiveness of its management enabled it to distribute more than 3,800,000 separate articles to various hospitals, campa and individuals. And at no time in its existence did the American Receiving and Distributing Service forfeit its valued individuality. When it came, as it eventually did, under the Red Cross Commission for Great Britain, it merely inserted " Red Cross " after the word " American " in its title and widened its field to cover an increasing activity of helpfulness. The Service was obviously intended to answer emergency calls, such, for example, as one made on a Saturday after- noon for 50,000 surgical dressings for France. This order was filled from its admirably stocked shelves and shipped off, compactly boxed, on the following Monday morning! But this was by no means an unusual demand at a time when hostilities were at their reddest. The Service re- ceived many such "hurry calls," some by written order, WHEN THE COMMISSION WAS BORN 61 some by telephone and some by word of mouth, and often the workers were at their toil long after hours in order to dispatch the needed supplies and, at the same time, main- tain the watchword of the Service, that it never failed. However, it was a young British officer who tested the resources of the Service, and he did it all unwittingly. Go- ing along George Street, he saw a Red Cross flag flying be- side the Stars and Stripes over the entrance to No. 15. He made for the place as fast as he could and went in, asking the first person he met if some one would not be so kind as to tie up his leg! While this was no part of the work of the establishment, which, clearly, he had mistaken for a Red Cross hospital, it happened that there were two U. S. Army nurses assisting in one of the workrooms. They took the officer in hand, obtained antiseptics and bandages from the storerooms and skillfully dressed the injury. And the unexpected patient never was permitted to learn that he had not walked into a Red Cross hospital. He apologized for giving so much bother, explaining that he had received a bayonet thrust the night before in an attack and that he had decided not to report the wound to his own surgeons at the front for fear they would cancel his few days' leave which had begun that morning. " Better to bring the old thing over here and ask you to tie it up, what ? " he asked, and then, as he cast a humorous eye at the disorderly strips of bandage the nurses had re- moved, " I didn't seem to get the hang of those beastly things, did I ? But I got to Blighty, so cheery-o! And thanks so much." Toward the end of June, 1917, the capabilities of the London Chapter were greatly augmented by acceptance of the offer of Mrs. William Salomon, of New York, of her London home, St. Katharine's Lodge, with its four acres of grounds in Regent's Park, for use as a hospital. The history of this edifice is closely linked with that of the last of the Brunswick sovereigns. King George IV se- 62 THE PASSING LEGIONS questered the park land and therein built the lodge, a large rambling, two-story structure of beautiful archi- tectural proportion and design. Mrs. Salomon agreed to equip and maintain it, stipulat- ing only that the Chapter provide and pay a staff of surgeons and nurses and assistants and that it be conducted for the orthopedic cases of British officers until such time as it should be needed for American officers. For disci- plinary and administrative purposes, no less than best to comply with Mrs. Salomon's wishes, it was decided to make St. Katharine's an official auxiliary of the British Mili- tary Orthopedic Hospital at Shepherd's Bush, one of England's greatest orthopedic centers. And in the management of its new venture, the London Chapter co- operated with the British War Office and the British Red Cross. Thirty beds were installed as quickly as possible and the first patients were received on August 1, 1917, Mr. Page, the American Ambassador, formally opening the hospital. There is little doubt that the situation of St. Kath- arine's Lodge had much to do with its record of success. It was surrounded by such spacious lawns and gardens that, close as it was to the teeming streets of the British capital, it lay in a quiet as profound as that of the Surrey countryside. Birds sang in the woods and squirrels, tame as kittens^ played about the house, even scampering into the wards in search of dainties from the patients' trays. Orthopedically, St. Katharine's made a name for it- self, such was the skill of its surgeons. After the first American Red Cross drive in the summer of 1917, the American Women's War Relief Fund suffered a marked diminution in contributions from the United States. Thereupon it applied to the London Chapter with a request that the latter should take over the two hospitals, Paignton and Lancaster Gate, the moneys of the Fund still remaining and also its incurred obligations. This the Chapter consented to do, with the proviso that the hospitals WHEN THE COMMISSION WAS BORN 63 should be used for Americans when such necessity arose. As the officials of the Fund were in hearty accord with this, as was Mr. Singer, in so far as his property was concerned, the Chapter assumed the work on January 1, 1918, the original committee of the Fund remaining, by request, to manage the affairs of the hospitals as before. Early in the existence of the London Chapter, indeed, one of its first acts was the creation, in May, 1917, of a Care Committee, whose members would visit camps and hospitals and do all that lay within their power to " mother " the Americans who had adventured so far from home to go to war. What this work entailed can be real- ized when it is known that more than one million Ameri- cans passed through Great Britain on their way to the battle-fronts of France and that a majority of these came, at one time or another, under the benevolent eye of some member of this committee. " It is just a bit difficult for me to realize," said Mrs. R. P. Skinner, the chairman of this extensive activity, " that the Care Committee, whose original personnel numbered fourteen and whose first real labors were limited to visiting 180 Americans serving in the Canadian forces about two years ago "— she was speaking at the close of the year 1918 —" should have become the large Red Cross organization of today with its six hundred visiting com- mittee members in all parts of the United Kingdom. " Although we began on a very small scale, we were immediately recognized by the British War Office as the official American visiting organization. This gave us the greatest aid in our helpful task as our work was done at that time in British camps and hospitals. " After our work among the Canadian contingents had been in regular progress for some time and given us the ex- perience we needed for the task, our own army began to ar- rive on its way to the continent and we established twenty branch organizations throughout Great Britain. Our first actual contact with the soldiers of the American Army was 64 THE PASSING LEGIONS at Chisledon, where we found about 150 men lacking in both clothing and funds. The British commanding officer applied to us for assistance and we at once distrib- uted the necessary relief. Later, thousands of our own men, brigaded with English or French troops, came back to England wounded. We visited every one of these, saw to it that they had comforts in the hospitals and recupera- tion centers — things the hospitals could not be expected to provide — and were, I hope, of the most cheering aid to them. " Whenever an American soldier, sick or wounded, whether belonging to the American Army or to the British or Canadian forces, arrived in any hospital or camp, the Care Committee was immediately notified and a visitor sent to see him and find out what he most needed. At the time the Committee's work was at the maximum of its ef- fectiveness, we were visiting more than 5,000 soldiers monthly." As American forces came into the war more numerously, the work of the Committee increased in volume and variety. It not only visited the men but furnished to the Home Communication Service detailed reports of all cases, these being forwarded to headquarters at Washington. There is probably nothing which so appeals to the American soldier on a foreign shore as a chance to talk to an Ameri- can woman. Whatever he has of shyness then drops away from him like an uncomfortable garment and he responds to efforts to cheer him as he would respond to no one else. Up has under such circumstances, also, a far keener ap- preciation of whatever the visitor has brought to him, whether it be fruit, candy, soap, writing paper, woolen articles or what not. He takes, too, what courage is re- quired to ask for the things he really wants. This was what the visitors always did their utmost to learn, and it resulted in the granting of not a few singular requests. In one week a member of the Committee was asked by the men she visited to provide a pair of orthopedic WHEN THE COMMISSION WAS BORN 65 boots, a copy of " Vanity Fair," a Jewish prayer book and a lemon pie! When one of the visitors was asked what her duties were, she replied: " Well, I darn the men's socks, write their letters home — love letters, too, sometimes, when a hand is missing — do such shopping as they wish, read to them and very often just sit and listen while they talk. It isn't hard, it's a great happiness save when you feel, from the first, that the boy to whom you are striving with all your might to bring the sunshine is going to close his eyes on it all in just a little while, and that you'll come back one day to find another boy in his cot. And then you'll begin all over again, just as if the poor, thin, gone boy hadn't left a weight on your heart. " Oh, but lots of them get well and strong and go away, too, but so differently, and then you say to yourself that per- haps you helped him to get back into the sunny world — and that's your reward, that and the smile and the firm hand-clasp when you look into his eyes for perhaps the last time. Isn't it silly that I've fallen in love with at least half a dozen of these boys in the last month? And I've written that to the mother of every one of them! " As hospital visitors to American soldiers in England, the palm belongs unquestionably to Colonel and Mrs. Albert W. Swalm, he the American Consul at Southampton, a Civil War veteran and a native of Iowa. Both were members of the Care Committee and began work long before America entered the war, when the only Americans they could find for their ministrations were in British or Canadian uni- forms. From 1914 until the last American soldier had left Eng- land, their hospital visits reached a total close upon twenty- six thousand! During 1918 alone their visits numbered more than twenty-four thousand! They distributed com- forts of all kinds in nineteen camps and hospitals and were tireless in devotion to the men, undeterred even when seri- ous epidemics were sweeping through the camps. 66 THE PASSING LEGIONS Not contented alone with visiting the wounded, the Com- mittee inspected thirty-nine aviation camps in England and provided emergency hospitals and complete supplies for thirty-one. And as a valuable aid to the task of the visi- tors, the Chapter established a Library Department in rooms in Pall Mall placed at its disposal by Mr. John Wanamaker. By this means it was possible to provide sick or wounded Americans with about 10,000 books, 10,000 American magazines and 10,000 American newspapers. It was upon these foundation stones, set so firmly by the American Women's War Relief Fund and the London Chapter, that the American Red Cross Commission for Great Britain reared the structure which was to grow to such magnitude and prove of so great help in the many correlated tasks of a gigantic war. The expansion of its labors was achieved with all the haste that judgment, foresight, and expediency made possible. In good season, for obvious reasons of admin- istration and effectiveness of effort — not in any way by usurpation — the Commission took over the various activi- ties of its two forerunners, at the same time retaining their personnel and encouraging all their traditions of service. To be exact, it was not so much a " taking over " as an assumption by the Commission of financial responsibility for these already successful organizations and supervision of their extension to meet utterly unanticipated demands. Above all, it centralized management and permitted con- solidation of branches of endeavor which the Commission had already established. By January 1, 1918, the last of the activities of the two bodies had been transferred and thereafter the entire American service was conducted in the name of the American Red Cross Commission for Great Britain. As a preface to the narration of certain graphic incidents in the work of the Commission, it seems best, just at this point, to cast a glance ahead, to visualize its wide hospital WHEN THE COMMISSION WAS BORN 67 field, for instance. In its work in Great Britain the Red Cross became actively connected with twenty-three hospitals of what may be called principal importance. Thirteen of these were hospitals of its own, four were army base hos- pitals, two were army camp hospitals and three were naval base hospitals. In addition there were a number of small Red Cross camp hospitals or infirmaries, usually of the tent or hutment type, in nearly fifty of the minor American camps throughout Great Britain. These, as a rule, had a capacity of six to twelve beds and were under the direction of the local officers of the Army Medical Corps. Also, many American soldiers were treated in British hospitals, the list of institutions engaged in this service including more than 200 British Army and British Red Cross hospitals. All of the American hospitals were directly in charge of army or navy medical authorities, the assistance of the Red Cross being called for in cases where the supply de- partments of either of these services found themselves un- able, for any of a variety of reasons, to meet the require- ments of an occasion or in time of sudden emergency. The function of the Red Cross, so far as hospitals were con- cerned, became, therefore, largely that of a supply and equipment organization, and this function was exercised through its personnel acting in conjunction with and under the direction of the army and navy medical officers. The general plan of hospital construction adopted by the army in the early summer of 1918 provided for a total of about 25,000 beds before the end of the following winter. Of this number, ten American Red Cross hospitals for sol- diers (excluding the two naval hospitals and a nurses' con- valescent home) would have furnished about 5,500 beds, that is, if the plans had not been terminated by the Armis- tice. This total would have been distributed generally as follows: A. R. C. Military Hospital at Mossley Hill ... 600 A. R. C. Military Hospital at Paignton......1,000 68 THE PASSING LEGIONS Base Hospital at Sarisbury Court ............ 3,000 Camp Hospital at Romsey.................... 240 Six small special hospitals.................... 660 Total 5,500 At the time of the signing of the Armistice the total num- ber of beds actually available in Great Britain was about 9,770, of which about 2,700 were in the ten American Red Cross hospitals. The largest number of Americans cared for at any one time in American hospitals in Great Britain was 9,310 on November 12, 1918. The number of Americans cared for in British hospitals varied greatly, but on October 30, 1918, there were 5,584 under treatment for wounds or illness in these institutions. As late as the end of September, the supply of hospital beds in Great Britain generally exceeded the demand, but during the months of October and November this was far from true, owing mainly to the influenza epidemic which flamed through the entire world, and large numbers of " flu " cases had to be sent to British hospitals from camps and incoming American transports. At other times a cer- tain number of cases continuously found their way to British institutions, not owing to lack of American beds, but to the fact that as American troops were brigaded with the British at the front, it was sometimes impossible to sort them out in transporting them back to England. Also, in cases of illness originating in the smaller American camps in England, it was frequently advisable to place these in convenient British hospitals rather than subject them to long journeys to American institutions. During the year 1918 the total number of Americans treated in British hospitals was 12,628, these being dis- tributed, as has been said, in more than 200 of them. The care of these men naturally offered to the Red Cross a variety of problems, not only from the point of view of the Hospital Department, but also from that of the Supply De- WHEN THE COMMISSION WAS BORN 69 partment and that of Home Communication as well as other branches of work. However, almost without excep- tion these scattered Americans were found, visited, their needs supplied and news of their condition sent to their people at home. The descent of the influenza marked a separate epoch in the hospital problem in Great Britain. More than half the deaths among the American forces in the Kingdom were directly due to this disease. It was in September that the scourge of "flu" manifested itself, reaching its most alarming state within about three weeks and then decreas- ing in intensity through a troubled period of three long months. In September there were 2,330 American cases. The total number of such patients from the week ending September 9 to that ending December 30 was 7,512, of which 5,158 were treated in American hospitals and 2,344 in British institutions. During the same period the num- ber of deaths from pneumonia was 1,717, of which 1,404 occurred in four weeks. The total number of American soldiers who were patients in hospitals in Great Britain during 1918 was 47,862. One-eighth of this number were treated in purely Red Cross hospitals, two-eighths, or one-quarter, in British hospitals and the remaining five-eighths in hospitals under direct control of the American Army's medical authorities. The latter figures, however, include patients in the Sarisbury Court base hospital and in the camp hospital at Romsey, both of which were built and equipped throughout by the Red Cross. In considering the figures relative to patients received in individual hospitals, it must be borne in mind that some of these hospitals had been in operation only a short time dur- ing the year while others, open for a long period, had only reached a large capacity during the last few months of the year. The figures for the Red Cross hospitals were: Mossley Hill Paignton 3,531 1,952 70 THE PASSING LEGIONS Lingfield.................................... 283 Romsey .................................... 1,870 Sarisbury Court ............................ 1,263 The U. S. Army Base Hospitals had the following totals: Tottenham ..................................3,827 Portsmouth ................................ 3,660 Dartford....................................4,273 Hursley Park ..............................3,761 and the camp hospitals: Winchester ................................5,403 Southampton .............................. 1,510 Liverpool ..................................3,866 October, with its visitation of the influenza, yielded the high record of the year, as in that month there were 12,806 Americans admitted to hospital, with a decrease to 7,401 in November. With the evacuation of American troops from England after the signing of the Armistice there were, in December, only 1,455 in hospital. About one-quarter of the cases in Great Britain were of wounded or injured men, 6,219 of these coming from France and 5,009 from various parts of Britain, a total of 11,228. The cases of illness from France totaled 7,206, those from England 15,017 and from the arriving trans- ports 7,147, a total of 29,370. In the hospitals, the work of the Red Cross and the Army Medical Corps was so closely connected that it would not be either possible or desirable to separate them for purposes of comparison. In the Red Cross hospitals the Army Medical manned them and they were, to all intents and purposes, an integral part of the army machine. In the army hospitals, the Red Cross provided a vast amount of equipment of varied character and was always on hand to help in time of need or trouble. Splints and splint material of all kinds were supplied by the Red Cross through arrangement with WHEN THE COMMISSION WAS BORN 71 the " Surgical Requisitions Association," of London, for the manufacture of these appliances. To the American soldier and sailor the Red Cross was a " Fairy Godmother," providing him with everything he needed and as there were more than a million of these Americans in Britain or passing through on the way to France, it will be understood that an almost incalculable number of things was distributed. In one month the Red Cross purchased for the American forces in Great Britain 30,000 sweaters, 50,000 pairs of socks, 30,000 tooth brushes, 300,000 boxes of matches, 32,000 pounds of soap, 800 baseball outfits, 500 harmonicas, 144,000 packages of chewing gum and 5,000,000 cigarettes. In order to handle its great stock of supplies, the Red Cross had nine ware- houses or depots in England, six in Ireland, two in Scotland and one in Wales. The largest of these ware- houses, the one in London, had 50,000 square feet of floor space and not an inch unoccupied. Its Receiving and Dis- tributing Service and its workrooms, where hundreds of thousands of bandages and dressings were made, helped magnificently to make the superb record of the American Red Cross in Great Britain. That the American Army appreciated its aid was well attested in an address delivered by Major General John Biddle, Commanding the American Forces in Great Britain, to give him his full title, at the annual meeting of the London Chapter in October, 1918, in which he said: " I really do not know what the American Army would have done in England without the Red Cross. Everywhere the Red Cross is giving the best that can be given or asked for. " Our men are being cared for as well as they can be, and are being helped by the Red Cross in every way, both large and small. The hospitals in London and at Paignton and at Sarisbury and Mossley Hill are some of the largest of its gifts. " The Red Cross has given us the material for a large 72 THE PASSING LEGIONS hospital at Romsey and has started a very big hospital near Southampton. At all our camps throughout the British Isles it has given us many things which we either could not get from the Government or could not get without much delay. This work has been done so well that nowadays every one applies first to the Red Cross whenever anything is wanted very particularly or very quickly. " In one camp which I visited the other day, I found that the Red Cross had furnished a fine club. In another I found at the end of our hospital wards an attractive little room fitted out with comfortable chairs, writing desks, and reading tables — and again it was the Red Cross. " It seems to me that every time I leave London to go anywhere I see something new that the Red Cross has been doing. " In the Otranto disaster, the first thing we did was to go to the Red Cross for materials and supplies of various kinds, and when we sent a boat to look after the survivors on the bleak Island of Islay, many provisions for the ex- pedition came from the Red Cross. " When we sent a large number of men to northern Russia, a short time ago, the Red Cross sent I don't know how many hundred tons of supplies. " We in the army all feel a gratitude to the Red Cross which it is hard for me to express in words. Without the Red Cross it would have been impossible to have given camps the comforts and conveniences and happiness which they have received in England. You have our hearty thanks for all you have done and are doing and intend to continue to do so long as the American soldier is in England." The navy also well knew the service the Red Cross rendered to its men, and in token of that understanding, here is what Admiral Sims, Commander of the American Naval Forces in British waters said when he, in turn ad- dressed the London Chapter that day: " I have often heard people say, ' Why is it necessary WHEN THE COMMISSION WAS BORN 73 to care for sick and wounded soldiers and sailors through an organization like the Red Cross ? Why doesn't the Gov- ernment take charge of it ?' " The fact of the matter is that the Government is not capable of doing it the way the Red Cross does. " All Government activity, particularly this work, is governed by rules and regulations and an auditor. All these rules and regulations are made with a view to what is likely to happen, but all needs cannot be foreseen. When an emergency turns up, we sometimes have not the facilities, sometimes not the legal authority to do all that we ought to do. " The Red Cross man is like a combination of the Presi- dent of the United States and the Cabinet and both of the Houses. He can make a law as quickly as you can write a check. But we of the Government service cannot do it at all. " The emblem of the Red Cross is two small pieces of red tape, laid neatly across each other. But, so far as I know, this is the only bit of tape they've got. They can do things unhampered by rules and regulations. " When our men are sick or wounded we need quick ac- tion unhampered and free. Disasters like the Otranto show how valuable is its work — all that has been taken care of by the Red Cross. " Some months ago the Red Cross came to me and asked if they could establish emergency depots on the north coast of Ireland with a view to the possibility of some such dis- aster as this. The Government could not do it and it seemed pretty evident that it ought to be done. I told them to go ahead and these depots were of the greatest value in the Otranto disaster. " The Red Cross is ever present to help in time of trouble. All our people in America are doing everything they possibly can to forward its work. We have had many crosses to bear during this war, but the Red Cross has been the finest and best of them." CHAPTER IV THE WORD THAT CAME IN MARCH IT is not possible adequately to convey the breadth and character of American Red Cross work in Great Britain without explaining in brief the part which the British Isles played in the constantly expanding scheme of American military and naval operations. Great Britain, so far as the American Army was con- cerned, was not a battle area. But it was a great supply center and became also a gigantic " way-station " for troops en route to France. Early in the war thousands of Amer- ican air-men and mechanics had come to England and been dispersed to three score or more training camps in different parts of the islands, construction units had been stationed at several other points and a tank schooling station established in the south. But the original plan of the American Gov- ernment, it was understood, did not contemplate the trans- portation of an army through Great Britain; instead, it was to be landed directly in France. It was the submarine peril and the congestion of ports in France that made a change in plan imperative. And before very long, the first of the million men who eventually passed through Britain began to arrive. Soon, indeed, great convoys of them were landed week after week. They had to be carried across England as railroad transport permitted and also be cared for during the unavoidable delays. Owing to the shifting nature of the submarine menace in British waters, the troopships varied their landing places and frequently it was not known until the last minute whether a.convoy would put in at Plymouth, London, Liver- pool, Glasgow or some lesser port. THE WORD THAT CAME IN MARCH 75 For effectiveness under these conditions, an almost in- fallible transport organization was required, one capable of dealing with a sudden influx of thousands of men at any one of half a dozen points on the coast. Also, rest camps in which these men might be housed for perhaps four or five days before they resumed the journey toward the battle zones, had to be created and equipped with facilities for whole brigades. Troops newly arrived from America, quite naturally pic- tured to themselves in England the comfortable quarters and pleasant surroundings of the home cantonments from which they had been so recently mobilized. But at the outset they not infrequently discovered their " barracks " to mean tents and they themselves to be face to face with discomforts, if not real hardships, in the matter of unaccus- tomed food, clothing and climate. Upon many of the men the change in climate reacted seriously. The cold, penetrating dampness of England rendered them easily susceptible to sickness and they felt the need of heavy underwear, of heat-giving food, and of warm living quarters. Of course, as time went on, there was a steady improvement in all of these, but, to the last, there remained many things to which the men had to adapt themselves however short their sojourn in England. In the case of the training camps, many of them in out-of-the-way places all over the Kingdom and some with a personnel of not more than 200, the haste of their establishment precluded com- forts and conveniences which a longer preparation would have assured. For the American Navy, Great Britain was the center of operations. The headquarters for all activities in European waters were in a group of buildings adjoining the chief administration offices of the American Red Cross Commission in Grosvenor Gardens. All around the coast of Britain were naval centers of activity of one kind or an- other. There was the Grand Fleet base at Scapa Flow in the Orkneys, off the northern tip of Scotland; there were 76 THE PASSING LEGIONS destroyer bases at Queenstown and Berehaven (one also at distant Gibraltar) ; mine-laying stations on the east coast, a battle cruiser port at Inverness, a coal base at Cardiff, a scout cruiser station at Plymouth and submarine bases on the west coast, with naval aviation stations scattered throughout the Isles. And even this list does not enum- erate them all. Thus it came about that in a country remote from the actual theater of war, the American Red Cross found a great work to be done for the American Army and Navy, one which required a large and active organization constantly adaptable both to rapidly shifting demands and to frequent emergencies in widely separated regions of the Kingdom, because there was no American military or naval station in all Great Britain to which the Red Cross was not called to minister at some time in some way. Its service to many was maintained throughout their existence. For the watchword of this work, of the entire effort of the Red Cross in Great Britain, was " SERVICE." And the organization carried its activities into every field, into every place where there was service to be performed for the men of the American Army and Navy. Whatever the need, the hour, or the distance, nothing dismayed or de- terred it. And more than one man to whom it ministered was frankly amazed to discover how far from home his own people had come and with what resources just to help him. Primarily, the service was for the sick and wounded of the military and naval forces and this effort was two-fold in direction: toward hospitalization and toward the care of men in hospital, including not only those in the larger in- stitutions, but the ones ill of minor complaints in the smaller American camp hospitals or, for one reason or an- other, patients in remote British hospitals. Thus the work of the Commission for Great Britain was by no means confined to American hospitals. Before the American wounded were brought from the Western Front THE WORD THAT CAME IN MARCH 77 to England for treatment, many officers and men of the Ex- peditionary Force, on duty along the lines of communica- tion in England or at American rest camps or, again, sta- tioned at Royal Flying Corps posts throughout the country, had, of necessity, been sent to the nearest British Army or British Red Cross hospitals for such medical care as they required. Also, during the influenza epidemic of the autumn of 1918, thousands of Americans were received in these two hundred or more institutions, the number reach- ing a maximum of 5,584 at the end of October. In fact, during the entire year, the total of American patients so cared for was in excess of 12,500. At every one of these places, no less than at its own hos- pitals and those of the United States Army, the American Red Cross maintained its service, visiting the sick, provid- ing for them in accordance with their regimen or their needs and communicating in such way as they desired with their families or friends. Many of the smaller British hospitals, which, from time to time, admitted American patients, applied to the Red Cross for assistance, and this was never once withheld. Sometimes the aid thus given consisted of equipment which had not been possible of pro- vision from the institution's slender funds. Also, large quantities of surgical dressings and hospital garments, made by Red Cross Chapters in the United States, were furnished. In certain instances contributions of money were made toward the maintenance of hospitals. The secondary duty of the Red Cross was to the Ameri- can soldiers on the lines of communication — all England was essentially a part of those lines — and to the sailors of the navy, wherever orders or the vicissitudes of war might take them. At the opening of the year 1918 the only hospital beds available for the use of American soldiers were in two or three American Red Cross hospitals which were then being conducted for British troops. The great Army from the States, which was eventually to come to England, pause for 78 THE PASSING LEGIONS breath and transport facilities, and then go hastening across to the Continent, was just beginning to arrive. In this newly created order of things, the Medical Corps of the Army and the Red Cross, as a supplemental organization, promptly joined in the endeavor to provide proper accom- modation for the inevitable percentage of hospital cases. Early in the year it had not been thought that there would be need for hospitalization in England beyond that of establishing a sufficient number of beds to care for the sick among a comparatively small American force stationed there and for the steadily increasing numbers of troops in transit to France. As there was always the possibility of an epidemic of some kind among men crowded in troop- ships, and also an expectation of numerous cases of pneu- monia during the first cold of autumn, these contingencies were well weighed in the Army Medical-Red Cross councils, but practically no plans for a greater extension of this pro- gram were either contemplated or thought necessary. It was generally understood that American troops in France were to be stationed somewhere along the extreme right wing of the battle line and that, for the care of the wounded, extensive hospital accommodations would be provided in the south of France itself. But in the latter part of March the ominous German offensive brought about many sudden changes, many seri- ous problems, created a stupendous task. Swiftly came the decision to brigade American troops with the British, to bring American sick and wounded from the front to England. These last must be cared for to the fullest ex- tent of modern medical and hospital practice, with no neglect of those already under treatment. The obligation laid upon the American Red Cross was no less weighty than that which the Army Medical Corps must bear. Now was the time for the making of Red Cross history! Mossley Hill Hospital had already been provided by the Red Cross, work on it having commenced in the late autumn of 1917, as soon, in fact, as it was learned that THE WORD THAT CAME IN MARCH 79 large bodies of American troops were to be convoyed to Great Britain. The construction of six additional one- story buildings, with an aggregate of 340 beds, had brought its total capacity to 500 patients. This establishment was, from the outset, a Red Cross enterprise. The example which had been set by Mrs. Salomon in offering her London residence, St. Katharine's Lodge, as a hospital, was followed early in January, 1918, by Mr. and Mrs. Chester Beatty, he an American mining engineer, who had witnessed the success of the institution in Regent's Park. They offered for similar use their London home, Baroda House, which stood in a quiet street off Kensington Gardens, that Kingdom of Children, the playground of im- mortal " Peter Pan." The house had a distinction aside from that of overlooking " The Big Penny," " The Round Pond " and " The Paths That Made Themselves." Like St. Katharine's Lodge, it had a royal founder, an Indian prince, the Gaekwar of Baroda, and its interior bore many traces of his oriental taste in decoration, but it had been extensively rearranged and equipped in accordance with modern occidental ideas. If the Red Cross had been permitted a choice of any of London's houses for a hospital, it could not have found one better suited to such employment. It had gardens with shaded walks and wide lawns and its lofty rooms with sunny windows made ideal wards. In releasing their house to the Commission, Mr. and Mrs. Beatty volunteered to equip it and contribute the funds for its maintenance, the Red Cross providing doctors, nurses, orderlies, and all necessary hospital supplies. Welcoming this arrangement, the Commission installed forty beds and opened the wards for patients on March 20, 1918, the first cases received be- ing those of British officers. Baroda House Hospital was originally intended for the care of convalescents, but it was soon required for surgical and medical cases exclusively. Both British and American officers were treated during the early part of the year, the 80 THE PASSING LEGIONS understanding being that, for the time, about one-third of the beds should be set aside for American Army patients, the entire institution to be available for their use when such need should arise. As it never did arise, and as the Red Cross expressed a wish to close the place on February 1, 1919, the Royal Army Medical Corps at once took it over for the British Government, thus relieving the Red Cross of further management or control. Thus it will be seen that at the time of the ominous events at the front in March, 1918, which demanded a com- plete change in already matured plans, the American Red Cross had five available hospitals, each then occupied in car- ing for a considerable number of patients. These five, in the order of their establishment, were: " Oldway," or, as it was more familiarly known, Paignton; Lancaster Gate, St. Katharine's Lodge, Mossley Hill and Baroda House. The army, in the emergency it faced — the expected ar- rival of large convoys of wounded before it could prepare adequately for their reception — turned immediately to the British authorities, explained its inability to build great hospitals in so short a time and asked for the use of what- ever already established English institutions might be spared. After a careful survey of conditions, the British considerately allotted the hospitals at Hursley Park, Ports- mouth, Dartford, and Tottenham. Hitherto, the first of these had served as a military hospital, the other three as insane asylums or fever hospitals or for medical work not directly connected with the war. Having these institutions at its disposal, the army im- mediately sought the aid of the Red Cross in refitting them for their new purposes and in providing comforts and similar benefits for their patients while it went on with the task of added construction. Hursley Park Hospital, five miles southwest of Win- chester, was, before American occupation, used by the British in connection with an aviation rest camp situated on X THE WORD THAT CAME IN MARCH 81 the neighboring slopes. As it was comparatively small, the American authorities promptly undertook its enlargement to a capacity of 3,000 beds, this being the standard size adopted for base hospitals in England. Such a program naturally called for extensive participation by the Red Cross which, in addition to repairing and renovating it throughout, supplied a complete X-ray installation, op- erating room equipment, sterilizing apparatus, dental serv- ice, a medical library, ward furniture, and quantities of drugs and hospital necessaries generally. It also equipped and furnished the nurses' and officers' quarters and fitted out a recreation room for the enlisted personnel, providing them not only with a piano but with complete paraphernalia for a " jazz band." The period of the influenza epidemic of 1918 was a try- ing time at Hursley, which had not at that time reached great size, and it was necessary to improvise a number of wards from the old barracks on the hill above the main hos- pital. To these the Red Cross supplied thousands of articles of equipment. As an index of the emergency: on August 30th there were only 225 patients in the hospital, but in the next few days the number rose suddenly to more than 650, many of these being serious pneumonia cases. In November the number of patients rose again to nearly a thousand, including a large convoy of " gassed " men from the Western Front. The Red Cross dental service at Hursley was much ap- preciated. It was not only for the patients in the base hos- pitals, but also for the men in adjacent American camps, and the number of cases treated in a single day frequently reached seventy-five. Entertainment of patients was a feature of Red Cross work at the hospital. There were numerous band concerts and theatrical performances and the Red Cross supplied talking machines and popular records to every ward, to which also a small portable moving picture machine, the 82 THE PASSING LEGIONS gift of the Red Cross, was carried for the diversion of those too ill to attend the entertainments in the building assigned for the purpose. Another highly successful ministration was the distribu- tion of reading matter to the patients. There is nothing which the American appreciated so much as his " home newspaper," and while it was not always possible for the Red Cross to furnish each man with a paper from his own town, it was generally arranged to give him one from some near-by city, containing much local and sectional news of in- terest to him. American magazines and novels were like- wise supplied and in many cases special books were pro- vided upon request. In fact, every legitimate need of the men was attended to, to the best of Red Cross ability. Checks were cashed, missing barrack bags traced or re- placed, watches repaired, shoes mended — there was not a wish it slighted. Special foods for convalescents, includ- ing fresh oysters, a great luxury in England, were supplied and the medical officers declared more than once that the oys- ters " marked the turning point in the patient's appetite." In one day at Hursley the Red Cross dealt with seven hundred separate appeals for various needed articles. These requests came not only from the base hospital but also from the American construction company stationed near there and from the men at Standon, a quarantine camp for " contacts," that is, men who had been exposed to com- municable disease. The usual camp service work was ex- tended to Standon from the Hursley offices of the Red Cross, recreation rooms being provided and supplied with musical instruments, newspapers and books. An officers' mess and camp offices were fitted up and bathing arrange- ments made for the officers. Upon two occasions the Red Cross authorized the construction of shower baths for the enlisted men, but after the work had been begun the army authorities thought best to postpone it until a definite de- cision had been reached as to the permanency of the camp. The work at Standon consumed many Red Cross sup- THE WORD THAT CAME IN MARCH 83 plies, for large numbers of the men there were " casuals," arriving under emergency conditions and with a great variety of needs which the Red Cross was well equipped to supply on the spot. During the five months of this camp's full occupation, more than 35,000 men passed through it on their way to France. The institution at Portsmouth, a group of stone and brick asylum buildings, the second to be taken over by the army, was opened as an American base hospital of 500 beds. The provision of further space went forward rapidly and — to look ahead — had reached about 1,900 beds just be- fore the Armistice. In all, more than 3,500 patients were admitted to it. Here the Red Cross maintained a large office close to the hospital, the headquarters building, Stratford Lodge on the Parade overlooking the Sound, including reception, writing and recreation rooms, all of which were cheerfully placed at the disposal of convalescents and as cheerfully used by them every day. The work of the Red Cross staff was not confined strictly to the base hospital, but extended to American soldiers in neighboring British institutions, not- ably the Alexandria Military Hospital, at Cosham; the Fifth Southern General Hospital and the Milton infirmary. One of its staff was assigned exclusively to entertainment and recreation and, by him, dances and theatrical entertain- ments were arranged. Tennis courts, croquet lawns and baseball diamonds were also provided and the equipment for all these pastimes purchased by the Red Cross. Portsmouth Hospital had the finest baseball diamond in all Europe and the soldier patients never failed to boast of it to visiting teams from other American hospitals when they came down to engage the crack Portsmouth team. When games of this kind occurred, the Red Cross was gen- erally called upon to pay the traveling expenses of the visiting nine. Incidentally, the uniforms for all of the baseball players, throughout England, were made in the Red Cross workrooms at 36 Grosvenor Gardens and dec- 84 THE PASSING LEGIONS orated with distinguishing insignia. The teams in the " Big Leagues " were not better equipped ! On four evenings a week, the big concert hall of the hos- pital was transformed from its every-day use as a mess room to that of a cinema theater, with apparatus and films fur- nished by the Red Cross. At the time of the signing of the Armistice — to look ahead again — a " Red Cross Hall " to seat 1,400 persons, with other rooms for rest and recrea- tion, had been partly constructed. Other services rendered by the Red Cross at Portsmouth were the provision of a motor stage to take the patients for recuperative excursions over the countryside, and the con- duct of a hospital " Exchange " where men could purchase modest " luxuries " and exchange their English, French, or American money for the currency they needed. The appreciation which such Red Cross work at Ports- mouth won from the men and from their relatives at home, is indicated by a letter received at Stratford Lodge from a woman in New York City who wrote that she had decided to put all the money she had, aside from her actual home- running expenses, into the work of the Red Cross, as an expression of her gratefulness for the services rendered by its Portsmouth staff to her young brother, who was for a time a patient in the hospital. Dartford was the largest of the American Base Hospitals in England, reaching a capacity of more than 2,000 beds. It was about fifteen miles out of London, located in a grove on a hilltop in the midst of a rolling country, and had been used by the Metropolitan Asylums Board for the treatment of fever convalescents. In addition to a large administra- tion building, it comprised twenty ward structures, each accommodating 100 patients; homes for staff and nurses, laboratories, warehouses, and allied out-buildings — all in all, a well planned institution. In the valley just below was a large overflow hospital which the British retained for the care of wounded German prisoners of whom there were about twelve hundred. THE WORD THAT CAME IN MARCH 85 The army medical unit stationed at Dartford consisted of about fifty surgeons, 100 nurses and 200 enlisted men. Most of the staff came from King's County Hospital, in Brooklyn, N. Y. The Red Cross was called in as soon as the army took over the place and established its representa- tives there, including an officer in charge of activities gen- erally, a Home Communication officer, two women canteen workers and a score of Care Committee visitors. In the matter of equipment and supplies, the Red Cross provided furniture, surgical instruments, operating-room fixtures, laboratory apparatus, large quantities of drugs and dressings, musical instruments, comforts and clothing — everything necessary for the happiness and well-being of the patients. Dartford was the first American Base Hos- pital to be visited by the King and Queen of England, and if the reader will turn to the chapter which relates that royal visit, he will learn more of what the Red Cross did there — indeed, he will have the pleasure of accompanying King George on his tour of inspection of Red Cross activi- ties at the hospital and of meeting some of the men who helped to break the Hindenburg Line! During the time Dartford was open (it was closed, prac- tically, at the end of 1918) 4,437 American soldiers passed through it. Among them were forty deaths, chiefly due to pneumonia. The largest single convoy of patients it re- ceived consisted of 202 men, followed immediately by the second largest, 160 men. The latter were all influenza cases from an incoming transport, and in this group there were twenty-five deaths. The largest outgoing convoy of discharged patients totaled 962 men, who sailed on the Saxonia for America on December 16, and were met and ministered to on the steamship pier by the Red Cross. Tottenham, which, likewise, was made into a base hospi- tal, was on the outskirts of London, only six miles from American Red Cross Headquarters. By reason of this proximity it was possible to keep in unusually close touch with the institution. Although its needs could be fulfilled 86 THE PASSING LEGIONS by the headquarters staff, the Red Cross had an officer sta- tioned permanently at the hospital, with such assistance as was required for the work of the Home Communication and Canteen Services. The women visitors of the Care Committee assigned there were of great help in the distri- bution of supplies. The articles given away by the Red Cross at Tottenham were infinite in their number and their variety, ranging from things of personal use to oranges, from chocolate bars to winter underclothing. Requests which came from the army for this hospital were similar to those made in behalf of other institutions, all of which were met with the usual dispatch. For the purposes of a recreation hut, the rector of the neighboring parish church of St. Ann's gave to the Red Cross the use of the Parish Hall, which was well equipped for such service when it came into Red Cross hands, hav- ing a large chamber for entertainments, a library and writ- ing and billiard rooms. At the time of the signing of the Armistice the Red Cross had drawn up plans for improve- ments and additions to this center of diversion for the men. The army built many hut wards at Tottenham to increase its initial capacity of 500 beds and these were furnished by the Red Cross in conformity with the wishes of the medi- cal authorities. When hostilities ceased there were 1,500 beds at Tottenham Hospital. Such is, briefly, the account of what the Red Cross did to help the army in one of its hours of grave emergency. And throughout it all, the work of the Red Cross and that of the Army Medical Corps was most cordially correlated and inter-dependent. One matter to which the hospital department of the Com- mission early turned its attention was the provision of suit- able convalescent hospitals and camps. The casual camp of the army at Winchester was so used to a limited extent, but the Red Cross was requested to provide something in THE WORD THAT CAME IN MARCH -87 the nature of a convalescent hospital for officers. If the war had gone on through another winter there would have been great need for this kind of institution, because Eng- land was the natural place to which to send men recovering from long terms in hospital. It was happily out of range of Germany's guns, if not her bombing planes, and here was a country of proverbially, historically beautiful regions, a deep inland quiet to be found in the shortest of journeys, a kindred people speaking the same language and few marks of battle such as scarred northern France. It was an ideal spot for recuperation. Straightway the Red Cross went to work and very soon the first of the American convalescent hospitals for officers was opened at Lingfield, in sunny Surrey, about thirty-five miles out of London on the country estate of Colonel and Mrs. H. Spender Clay. The house furnished room for more than 100 beds, but it was more of a home than a hos- pital, owing to the presence of Mrs. Spender Clay, who remained as " hostess," taking charge of all the household arrangements and assisting the medical staff in countless ways. At the time the Armistice came the house was nearly filled to capacity, and for some while afterward it continued to receive large numbers of officers who were sent there for a few days of rest and recuperation before the journey to America. Not long after the Christmas holidays the hospital was closed. Nearer to London, in Wimbledon, the Red Cross estab- lished another convalescent hospital for officers, but this was only a few weeks before the signing of the Armistice. It was at the home of Mr. Percy Chubb, of New York. His residence, known as " Cannizaro," had previously been used as a recuperation place for British officers and the Red Cross agreed that it should continue to receive them until it be needed by the American forces. Occasional Ameri- can officers were guests there but it was mainly used by the British and was open for some time after the beginning of 88 THE PASSING LEGIONS 1919. It was within half an hour of central London and was probably the only hospital in all Europe which could boast its own golf course. For American naval men in the neighborhood of London the Red Cross opened a hospital at Aldford Plouse in the capital's fashionable Park Lane. The use of this spacious mansion was given for the purpose by the Hon. Mrs. Fred- erick Guest. It occupied an entire block and one of its fea- tures, very rare in a London house, was that it had only two stories, so none of the wards was more than a single flight of steps from the ground floor. As it had been previ- ously used and partly equipped as a hospital for British patients, only a portion of its fittings had to be furnished by the Red Cross and it was, therefore, opened a very short time after the naval authorities made their request for such an institution. It had at the beginning a capacity of fifty beds and was at once placed under command of a navy surgeon and staff. In a little while after its inception the navy took it over and had it still in operation in the spring of 1919. With so great a corps of nurses, numbering tens of thousands, in service with the American Army in France and also in Great Britain, the Red Cross provided them with a cheerful home in which to spend their convalescence from illness or breakdown and for this purpose leased Colebrook Lodge, the residential estate of Mr. John T. Ryan, of Detroit and Toronto. It was on West Hill, Putney, a suburb of London. The house was a roomy, three-story structure built upon the 300-year-old founda- tions of Putney Manor House. There were three acres of lawns and gardens and close at hand were the healthful downs of Putney Heath and Wimbledon Common. In the beginning there were accommodations for about thirty nurses and the house was well filled from the date of its opening. During the influenza epidemic it was crowded to its utmost capacity. Nurses needing special hospital THE WORD THAT CAME IN MARCH 89 treatment were not received but were cared for in special wards of the army base hospital. In the early summer the Red Cross nurses were well or- ganized and did excellent work, first at Mossley Hill, Paign- ton, and at Lancaster Gate, St. Katharine's Lodge and Baroda House and later at Aldford House and the Red Cross naval hospital at Cardiff. Meanwhile many hospi- tals were being opened in Great Britain which the Red Cross had to staff temporarily, that is, until they were taken over by the regular army personnel, after which they were generally transferred to the Army Nurse Corps Reserve and added to the units sent by the War Department from the United States to the new hospitals. During the latter half of the year the Chief Red Cross Nurse was able to furnish nurses from her staff to meet several emergencies, as when troopships arrived with a staggering number of " flu" cases, too many to be handled by the staffs of hospitals near the ports. Also they were provided in the cases of soldiers or sailors who were ill at some point too far from a hospital to risk moving them. On August 1, 1918, there were on duty in Great Britain fifty-two American Red Cross nurses (not of the Army Nursing Corps) and these were attached to six hospitals. After that date the demand for Red Cross nurses gradually decreased until, on December 1, there were only thirteen on duty and these in two hospitals. CHAPTER V ALONG THE !L. O. C. IMPERATIVE as was the demand for hospital accom- modation in Great Britain, and promptly and effi- ciently as the Red Cross provided it and undertook the welfare of the sick and wounded men of the American forces, its service on the " Lines of Communication " was too important, too extensive to be thought of as quite sec- ondary. In one sense it was the ranking service, for it was the first to minister to the American soldier, first to give him tangible evidence that the American Red Cross was there in Great Britain, just as it was at home, to help him, to cheer him up, to take care of him. It greeted him upon the instant of his arrival at a British port, wherever that port might be, standing on the threshold of a new world to give him welcome. He saw its banner or its painted symbol long before his transport drew into its berth and he knew it meant something he had never expected to find in that distant land: " his own kind of people," friends in a country of strangers — home. Nor, from that moment, did he ever find these lacking. No matter where he went, the Red Cross had gone on ahead, to camp, to hospital, to the troopship which, in turn, would take him to France, ready always to serve him to the limit of its great resources, with the unlimited energy of its workers. Also it was on the pier to meet him when he re- turned, sick or wounded, from the front; it sat beside his cot; it helped him idle away the tedious hours of his con- valescence — or it wrote the letter which would tell some one in far-off America why he was never coming home again. As it was first to meet him, so it was last to speed him 90 ALONG THE L. 0. C. 91 when the time came for his returning and he sailed away with eager eyes set toward " God's own country." Even then it sent a man on the transport with him in order that its attentions, to which he had become so accustomed, might be maintained to the end. " Camp Service " was the broad, official term employed to designate this watchfulness over the men of the Ameri- can army and navy, but it can be readily seen to what ramifications it led, particularly as it included canteen service, which was dotted about Great Britain wherever the troops passed. And it was as active about the hospitals as about the camps. Perhaps a better way in which to con- vey the intent of the Red Cross in thus serving the men, is to say that it strove both materially and spiritually — the spirit of a smile and a hand-clasp and a happy word — to make up to them the home things, the home helpfulness and interest they had left so far behind. How ably the Red Cross succeeded — well, ask any man who went across. As canteen service was the first manifestation of the Red Cross to the troops arriving in Great Britain, figures — usually dull, drab things in any narrative — will per- haps most usefully serve to indicate its magnitude. Can- teen activity was largely centered in Liverpool, London, Southampton, and Glasgow, although six other ports were used for the landing of troops to a limited extent at various times, and the following figures, showing the number of men debarked at each port during the war, will tell their own story of the Red Cross task, for every one of these men was served, many of them several times over during their stay in Great Britain: Liverpool ........................792,139 London .......................... 84,147 Southampton .................... 41,763 Glasgow .......................... 41,530 Manchester ...................... 6,289 Avonmouth ...................... 5,030 92 THE PASSING LEGIONS Cardiff .......................... 2,089 Swansea .......................... 1,694 Newport .......................... 1,334 Barry Docks ...................... 1,331 Total ............................977,346 The totals by months prove that in July the greatest number was brought to the British Isles, with August and September closely second in America's stupendous mili- tary movement which amazed the world: Prior to January 1, 1918 .......... 86,765 January.......................... 15,077 February ........................ 5,070 March ............................ 26,286 April ............................ 27,364 May ............................ 101,266 June ............................ 122,825 July .............................. 167,512 August .......................... 154,192 September ........................ 141,870 October .......................... 94,536 November ........................ 34,583 Total ............................977,346 For the purpose of most effectively serving the needs of this vast inflow of troops, not only at the debarkation points but also later in the rest camps and smaller training, aviation, and construction posts, the American Red Cross divided Great Britian into eleven districts, in each of which a central office was maintained with a Red Cross officer in charge of the work and such assistants as the needs of his particular neighborhood required. These districts were: Group I Group II Group III London Cambridge Plymouth Winchester Oxford Cardiff Liverpool Lincoln Scotland Southampton Ireland ALONG THE L. 0. C. 93 The area comprised in Group I included the great Amer- ican rest camps, the principal ports of debarkation and embarkation, the base section headquarters in London, and a number of small aviation, tank, and construction camps. Group II included mainly aviation camp areas. Group III took in regions in which the activities of the Red Cross were scattered and of great variety, naval as well as military. From London headquarters, the military relief work of the Red Cross included service to American troops ar- riving in oversea transports at the Royal Albert and Til- bury Docks, to the wounded debarked at Dover, to returned prisoners of war coming in by way of Dover or Ripon, and the maintenance of canteens in London for the staff and other personnel of army headquarters and for transient or casual troops passing through the capital or on leave there, to the number, usually, of two or three thousand. The service to troops in hospitals included, in the London area, the large base hospitals at Tottenham and Dart- ford, the Red Cross hospitals at Lancaster Gate, Regent's Park, Kensington Palace Gardens, Park Lane, and the con- valescent hospitals at Lingfield and Wimbledon. There were also a large number of British hospitals in this area which, from time to time, accommodated numbers of American soldiers. Red Cross camp infirmaries were es- tablished at four camps in the London district: Ching- ford, Eastbourne, London Colney, and New Romney. In the small American aviation camps and construction posts the work of the Red Cross officers was very similar in all the various areas of their activities. In the London area there were at various times from fifteen to twenty such camps, the Red Cross inspectors visiting them all and filling their needs as these were announced by their com- manding officers. These supplies included alarm clocks, bathtubs, hair-clippers, pictures, griddles, shoe-repair out- fits, cough lozenges, cook uniforms, goggles, washboards, pie pans, field-hospital tents, shoe brushes, flags, portable 94 THE PASSING LEGIONS huts, brooms, and stoves, in addition to the usual provision of sweaters, socks, helmets, slippers, shoes and toilet requisites. In several instances complete field-hospitals were provided and thoroughly equipped. At the time of the signing of the Armistice, there were but sixteen of these small camps in the area and when arrangements had been made between the American Air Service and the British Air Force for their evacuation, this was accomplished within twenty days. One of the tremendous undertakings of the American Army in Great Britain was the construction of huge day- and-night-bombing camps in the south of England, at and in the vicinity of Ford Junction. Here an army build- ing plan of vast importance was under way throughout 1918, aiming at the destructive bombing of Germany in 1919. In these camps the Red Cross not only attended to the wants of the construction battalions, but was plan- ning for the still larger work when the camps should be completed and American aviation squadrons installed in their quarters. Plans were made for adequate infirmaries and Red Cross warehouses in every one of these camps and work was well advanced when the Armistice called a halt. In every case the necessary Red Cross buildings would have been ready before the opening of the camp. At its maximum of efficiency, the .Red Cross canteen service — one of its most valuable endeavors — comprised a dozen units and a personnel somewhat above 400 workers. The expedition with which American troops were conveyed out of Great Britain after the Armistice caused a propor- tionate curtailment of this work, but by the time it was concluded it 'had served more than a million and a half meals to the men of the army and navy; it had given away hundreds of millions of cigarettes, packages of tobacco, and bars of chocolate and hundreds of thousands of gal- lons of coffee. It had performed its tasks at every hour known to the clock, was never late for any service, and ALONG THE L. 0. C. 95 surmounted obstacles with the certainty if not the speed of a crack 220 hurdler. The army headquarters canteen for officers was estab- lished in response to requests from American officers sta- tioned in London, who asked if the Red Cross could do anything to help in providing meals for the constantly in- creasing staffs working at both army and navy headquart- ers in Grosvenor Gardens. Restaurant facilities in that section of the city were so overtaxed at the time and so many new difficulties were constantly arising, owing to the scarcity and rationing of foods, that it was decided to act immediately. Most of the ground floor and basement of the main headquarters building of the army, the Belgrave Mansions Hotel, was allotted for the purpose and in a short time four large dining rooms and the necessary kitchens, all the equipment for which the Red Cross supplied, were opened. The average number of meals served was at first 650 luncheons and 225 dinners weekly, but later the figures rose to about 1,500 luncheons and 500 dinners. These were furnished at a uniform price of two shillings and sixpence for luncheon and three shillings sixpence for dinner. The menus were simple but many purely Ameri- can dishes were introduced and the restaurant became very popular. A special room was reserved for the com- manding general and his immediate staff where they could gather each day at luncheon for a conference, and where officers who were detained past the regular hour could obtain what they wished. From the beginning this restaurant paid all its own expenses, for, from its opening on June 5 until headquarters were abandoned, more than 28,000 meals were served. As soon as this enterprise was running smoothly, a similar one for women workers at headquarters was installed with a capacity of 125 seats. This achieved a weekly average of 730 patrons and also was self-supporting from the outset. It is safe to say that scarcely one Londoner in ten thou- 96 THE PASSING LEGIONS sand realized at the time how extensively the Port of London was used during the late summer and early autumn of 1918 as a gateway for American soldiers arriving in Europe. The city itself saw practically nothing of them, for the British capital is a place of tremendous areas and distances and the Royal Albert and Tilbury Docks, where the troopships debarked their men, are in districts far remote from those of ordinary town traffic and occupa- tion. There was no delaying there by which to call at- tention to them; within a short time of their arrival the American soldiers were almost invariably put into trains which were already awaiting them at the docks and hastened to Winchester by routes with which a large ma- jority of Londoners never came in touch. If marches across the city were necessary they were made at night, because troop movements in the neighborhood of London were guardedly conducted. As a matter of fact, the Port of London was the second in importance in the British Isles in point of numbers of American soldiers debarked from the trans-Atlantic troopships. It welcomed no such thousands as Liverpool, it is true, but more than twice as many as either South- hampton or Glasgow, its nearest rivals. The first troops came in May, 1918. The numbers of officers and men arriv- ing at the London docks during that month and those suc- ceeding, when the stream of incoming Americans taxed every port facility of France as well as England, were as follows: Month Officers Men Total May .............. 104 June.............. 751 July ..............529 August ..........464 September ........428 October .......... 52 Totals 2,328 81,819 84,147 4,746 4,850 22,605 23,356 17,260 17,789 18,105 18,569 17,101 17,529 2,002 2,054 Thus, from May to November, the Red Cross work for ALONG THE L. O. C. 97 so large a military force was of much importance. Although the army and navy authorities strove to keep secret the time of troopship arrivals until the vessels them- selves were practically in sight of the docks, the Red Cross, thanks mainly to the good friends and the " underground wireless " apparatus of the resourceful " Flying Squad- ron," managed to get news of them and was always on hand to see that no man landed without a cup of coffee, or a bite to eat and a welcoming word. In the early days of transport arrival the Red Cross served the troops from rolling canteens —" tanks," they were called — supplies being carried from the London warehouses. Sometimes local organizations volunteered assistance and lent suitable places for the preparation of refreshments. But very soon, in order that the wants of the newcomers might be better and more conveniently satisfied, the Red Cross established stations at both tfie docks. The canteen at Royal Albert was set up in a pier building lent by the Blue Funnel Line of steamships and that at Tilbury in the Thames Church Mission, the use of which was graciously proffered by St. John's Church, the Red Cross renovating and furnishing the building to serve its new purpose. The last time the canteen at Tilbury was in service will be remembered for many a day. It was in mid-December, when the Saxonia sailed for New York with 1,400 Ameri- can wounded from the hospitals in Great Britain. There had been joyous anticipation among those told off for the voyage, because it meant that they were to be at home for Christmas. Although they had to spend many hours in their hospital trains — from the hospitals in the south to Waterloo station in London, thence through the city and across the Thames and down to the far-away docks — they cheered themselves with the knowledge that they were actually " going home." In one of the trains were 170 men, all leg cases, the larger number of them on crutches from bad wounds or amputations, some hobbling with the 98 THE PASSING LEGIONS aid of stout canes. These were the most cheerful of all the disabled men; even the very sick ones in their cots, and these prepondered m the Convoy, seemed to envy them, empty trousers-legs and all. And so they came to Tilbury and to the big steam- ship that had been made ready for them. The Red Cross, too, had prepared, not alone by assembling supplies for distribution, but by detailing representatives to accompany the trains from the hospitals to the docks. Once there, the canteen service for the walking cases was simple enough; these could gather about the tables in the mission and do much toward helping themselves. With the cot cases it was very different. These were carried from the trains by British stretcher bearers and placed in rows in pier sheds for checking before being swung aboard ship. While they were thus waiting, the Red Cross canteen women went among them with coffee, sandwiches, oranges, choco- late and cigarettes and all the cheerfulness they could muster. Many of the men were too weak to rise to drink or were prevented by their wounds from making the effort, so the workers lifted their heads and held the coffee cups wherever it was possible* Others drank with the aid of glass tubes and all received their share of the good things. Oranges, cigarettes, and chocolate were tucked under the cot coverings for another day, and when time came to hoist the men aboard in the derrick slings, several went gayly up in the air with cups of coffee in their hands and small- boy grins on their thin faces. As the cot cases were justly deemed the most serious in the convoy and as first attention was given to placing them on the ship, the leg cases, those 170 men from Dart- ford, were, after they filed from the canteen, left rather to themselves to await their turn to embark. As no par- ticular provision for this period had been made in their behalf, there was nothing for them to do save " stand around " on the pier. A large number of these men had never before been on crutches and were suffering great ALONG THE L. 0. C. 99 discomfort from their wounds and also from the new and tiring method of locomotion imposed upon them. So, one by one, they backed against a shed and rested there, striv- ing their utmost to forget their troubles because in a little while they would go aboard and then everything would be all right. But they stood there for a long, long time, would probably have remained in their discomfort till the end if a Red Cross woman, on her way from the line of cots, had not sensed their plight. They needed some- thing to sit on, that was what was the matter, and not an- other soul had thought of it! With a single word of ap- peal, the Red Cross women and those of the Voluntary Aid Detachment of St. John's Ambulance Brigade (they were known as the V. A. D., a series of letters as familiar in England as A. R. C. or G. H. Q. or W. A. A. C. or any of the countless others which war-talk used instead of the full title) who were helping with the cot cases, gathered planks and boxes and barrels from the pier and within ten minutes had fashioned seats for all who wanted them. Until late in the afternoon the cots were swung up to the decks and when the last of them had been accounted for, then came a moment of unparalleled disappointment for those patient men on crutches who had waited so long. They were told that they could not be taken aboard the Saxonia; that their wounds and disabilities were such that they could not get into upper berths and no lower ones were available; that they must return to Dartford until a later time when provision for their transport could be arranged. The look of dismay, of bitter broken-heartedness that swept into the faces of those men is indescribable. It was a hard moment even for the Red Cross women to bear. The one, the foremost thing toward which each man had turned his eyes, Christmas at home, was, with a single order, struck from his vision. It is not strange that tears came to many of them, for they were already weak and tired out. The Red Cross women did what they could, but it was vain, just at first, to beguile their acute, wretched 100 THE PASSING LEGIONS disappointment. The men themselves, the ones stouter of heart, were those who did most to trick their fellows out of their unhappiness. They accomplished it with the best of all devices at such -a 4ime, a jest. How they managed to laugh is inconceivable, but they did it. Men who had not written to say they would be home for Christmas were the ones to start it, and they made heroic use of their negligence. One youngster on two crutches cried, " See, you guys, it doesn't pay to write home sometimes, no matter what they tell you. A lot of you fellows have gone and told your folks or your best girls that you'd be with them this Christmas. Now see where that's got you! If you'd been lazy like me you wouldn't have said a word, and then you'd be the only one disappointed, and you're old enough and ugly enough to stand that, I guess. Take it from me, keep off that letter stuff! " And just as he finished, one of the men whose leg was gone at the hip, turned to a Red Cross woman and whis- pered behind his hand, " That boy's just kidding. I saw him writing to his mother all about Christmas less than a month ago. He even told me what he'd asked her to have for dinner. He's some kidder! " Another stalwart soul bent the joke backward upon him- self. The little crowd was standing, swaying uncertainly when he piped up. " Well, boys," he cried, " I've seen the London docks-, and that's something, 'cause I never expected to see them. They're not much to look at and they don't get any better by looking at them any longer, so let's go, there's the train! " It was a silent, miserable line that stumped off to the waiting cars, the same that had brought them to Tilbury several hours before. Some had been too outspoken in their resignation to be convincing, others were still past hiding the tears in their eyes. They clambered awkwardly up fhe step and either strangely or naturally, as you will, crowded to the windows which looked across to the trans- port which would leave them behind. Although it was ALONG THE L. O. C. 101 winter, the windows were opened and just as the train drew away a voice sang out, " Now, all together, three cheers for the fellows going home! " Perhaps the roaring answer reached the Saxonia, per- haps not, but let's hope it did, for there was not a man in the train who failed to respond. Car after car took up the cry of farewell until the ship had passed from sight. A Red Cross woman went back to Dartford on this train in an effort to keep the sparks of cheerfulness alive, but these were cold and dead when the party reached the hospital at nine o'clock that night. Fortunately these un- happy men had only a little while to wait as within two weeks they were put aboard the Mauretania which reached America just a few days behind the slower Saxonia. And the Saxonia herself, expected to arrive in New York on December 24th, did not reach port until two days later. But the Red Cross had prepared for a possible delay, the Canteen Service placing aboard the ship a large Christmas tree with a boxful of the usual trinkets for its decoration and provided for each of the men a Christmas stocking con- taining a package of cigarettes, a pair of socks, two hand- kerchiefs, a box of candy and a bag of nuts. These had been made ready by the Receiving and Distributing Serv- ice in George Street and represented only a small part of the 15,000 stockings which it filled and sent out in less than two weeks. There were many other sorts of canteen work organized in London in response to the emergencies constantly arising at this great center. Scarcely a week passed that did not bring its quota of men, wounded and others, passing through the city, for whom such provision was necessary. Numbers of these men could be and were met at the rail- way stations as their trains came in, the " Flying Squad- ron " always being ready with its " rolling canteens" to make a light-artillery dash into action at any hour day or night. But for the service of casual parties of soldiers or sailors the Red Cross established a fully equipped can- 102 THE PASSING LEGIONS teen in the Military Relief headquarters building at No. 52 Grosvenor Gardens, the home, too, of the " Flying Squadron." There a large reception room was set aside for the purpose and its patrons were both numerous and various. One day there would be parties of men on leave, or wounded men from the London hospitals or from Tot- tenham or Dartford, while on other occasions the guests might be returning prisoners of war or baseball teams of sailors or soldiers on their way back from matches in not distant camps. The wounded men, as well as the others who " just dropped in," always had a happy time at No. 52. There was a piano for them to bang on and invite the inevitable song; furthermore, they could fill themselves with coffee, doughnuts, and chocolate and smoke all they wished of the cigarettes they most preferred. It was an eye-opener, this warm, comfortable canteen in the heart of London. When one party belonging to the 27th and 30th American divi- sions which had been brigaded with the British, came to No. 52, a soldier insisted upon sitting off in a corner by himself. He stared about him with all-devouring eyes. A canteen worker, fearing that bashfulness might have caused him to be overlooked, asked if he wished a cup of coffee, a bun, or something else. He looked up slowly and replied, " Please don't ask me anything. Don't say a word to me, sister! I'm in Paradise I " His glance again swept round the room. " Heat, electric lights, American women talking — Good Lord, Miss, you don't know what all this means to me. I've been eight months over there at the front — eight months! " Sightseeing trips about London in comfortable con- veyances were always arranged by the Red Cross for all the parties that came to 52. Visits were made to St. Paul's, the Abbey, Whitehall, the Parliament Buildings, Buckingham Palace, the Tower, 10 Downing Street, and many other places in a long and interesting itinerary. This journey consumed about five hours, after which the ALONG THE L. 0. C. 103 wounded would be taken back to their hospitals or trains and the others started on their way to the camps from which they had come. Usually they went away with their pockets bulging with oranges, chocolate, cigarettes and bis- cuits. Returning war prisoners were always met at the rail- way stations and conveyed in chartered busses to the haven of 52. Twenty of them came in at Waterloo station one day. They had been prisoners at Stargard for nearly six months and the wounded among them were in a much de- pressed state through lack of care of their injuries. These, they said, had been dressed carelessly with paper bandages by the German surgeons, and none too often; medicines had been lacking for them in the prison camp; and but for British medical officers in the camp they would have fared much worse. When they reached 52 they were treated to the luxury of a warm bath and plied with food until they could hold no more, after which they went for the trip about the city. As they had arrived in England in a conglomeration of French, Belgian and British uniforms, with Scarcely a remnant of their own remaining, the Red Cross provided them with an American outfit. While they were at 52, any cablegrams they wished sent home were forwarded at once, gratis, by the Red Cross and when din- ner time came round they were taken to the soldiers' mess at army headquarters across the way. By this time they had " bucked up " remarkably well, so much so, indeed, that when one of the Red Cross women offered to help a wounded man with his food, he replied, " Oh, no, Miss, you've done a lot for me already and you must be tired. Please go sit down, my pal here will help me all I need." Special canteens for these weary returning men were established at Dover, Ripon, Hull, and Leith, and it was by way of Hull that the first American war prisoners reached England. They arrived at the end of November and there were only eight in this distinguished party: Corporals Lee H. Whitehead, of Jeffrey, Ky.; Jack Bath- 104 THE PASSING LEGIONS gate, of New Haven, Conn.; Leroy E. Congleton, of Phil- adelphia, Pa.; and Thomas Barry, of New Haven, Conn., and Privates James Pitochelli, of Providence, R. I.; Wil- liam B. O'Sullivan, of Bristol, Conn.; Frank Butler, of New Haven, and William Lilly, of Southington, Conn. When they arrived they were met by Lieut. Alexander Hol- land, of the Red Cross, who took them first to the repatria- tion camp at Ripon and then brought them to London and, of course, to 52, where they were entertained before going on to Winchester. Most of them were in British uniforms, so the Red Cross refitted them completely. The entire party was in excellent health and spirits. " We owe it chiefly to the food packages and good under- clothing the Red Cross sent us from Switzerland," said Bathgate, exhibiting a piece of German, black bread about two inches square as evidence of their prison camp rations. " This and a bowl of soup which was more like muddy water, were about all we got from the Germans for our every-day meals. If it had not been for the Red Cross food we. wouldn't be looking so well — we mightn't be here at all." The eight were taken prisoners with 180 other Ameri- cans at Siecheprey, where the Germans made a surprise at- tack in overwhelming numbers on a small American de- tachment. They became separated from the other prison- ers and found themselves first at a Darmstadt camp, then at Limburg and finally at Apladem in the Rhine district, where they were assigned to a working party shifting freight cars. They were at Apladem when the Armistice was signed and two or three days later were placed in a train for Holland, sailing, with a large party of British prisoners, from Rotterdam. " We got an intimation about an armistice on November 8th," said Barry, " but it turned out to be a. false alarm. Later on, in the afternoon of Monday, November 11th, there was a curious unrest among the guards about the camp, and pretty soon a party of German marines ap- ALONG THE L. 0. C. 105 peared and began smashing things up. A German private told us the war was over, but we didn't know whether to believe him or not. There was a lot of noise in the town of Apladem and the next thing we knew, a gang of these marines came round again, tearing rank badges off the German officers and snapping fingers in their faces. When the officers didn't show any sign of fight we knew the war must be over sure enough. We didn't want to let them see us jubilating just then, but after a while, when the guards got to running about the camp and not paying any attention at all to us, we let every one know just how glad we were over it." Ripon, a British camp, was the most important clear- ing station in England for American war prisoners. All who came by way of either Copenhagen or Rotterdam and landed at Hull, Newcastle, or Leith, save hospital cases, were taken there at once, so it was made a Red Cross out- post canteen. Lieutenant Holland, in charge of it, had quarters in an old camp guardhouse in which he also kept a generous store of underclothing and comfort necessities and, later, a stock of uniforms, because the Americans were usually clad in British tunics and not infrequently in Ger- man prison dress of black with broad yellow stripes on back and trousers and black and yellow cap. Prisoners gen- erally arrived between 4 o'clock in the afternoon and 4 o'clock in the morning, but no matter what the hour might be, all, Americans and British alike, were first interrogated by a Royal Commission of attorneys as to their personal knowledge of atrocities committed by the Germans. In case their statements warranted it, they were requested to make affidavits, duly drawn and signed. After that the Americans were released into Lieutenant Holland's hands. He, too, had a routine for them, and one of inestimable value. He went over with every man the entire " List of the Missing " prepared at army headquarters, to learn if he knew anything of the fate of any man therein. In this way he was enabled to discover something definite in 106 THE PASSING LEGIONS the cases of 150 American soldiers whose records had, up to that time, ended with the ominous word " missing." Some of the war prisoners had been beside " missing " men when they were killed, or had seen them buried by exploding shells; some were even positive that " missing " men had been taken prisoners and were too badly wounded to have given an account of themselves. Every one of the Americans had his story to tell of hardship, and, while these differed in several ways, there was one point of com- mon agreement: that they would have starved in the Ger- man prison camps without the packages the American Red Cross sent in from Berne, and not a few added that they never received a Red Cross box from which something had not been stolen before it reached them. One man told Lieutenant Holland that he had been captured in No- vember, 1917, and taken to Berlin where, with others, he was paraded through the streets under a heavy guard which, however, did not prevent the German women from spitting on the American soldiers as they passed. This man drove a motor lorry in Berlin for the German Gov- ernment until the signing of the Armistice. A few of the Americans, the prisoners said, had to work in ammunition dumps just back of the German lines and under shell fire of their own guns. There were -also frequent complaints of the treatment they had received in German hospitals, and one prisoner, whose leg had been broken by shrapnel, said that the German doctors gave him little or no care. About once a week, he explained, a doctor would unwrap the dirty bandages about his leg, look at the wound, throw the bandages back upon his leg in a mass and walk out of the ward. In addition to providing these men with clothing and such things, Lieutenant Holland gave them ten shillings apiece as a loan from the Red Cross, the receipts being sent to the regimental paymaster. For those who wished it, cablegrams telling their people of their safe deliver- ance from German hands were sent by the Red Cross. At ALONG THE L. 0. C. 107 9 o'clock in the morning after their arrival at Ripon, they left for London, to go to No. 52 and see the welcome sights of the city under Red Cross auspices until it was time for them to be on their way to Winchester. The Ripon service was maintained from November until the close of the first week of February, and in that time 280 soldiers and 14 officers passed through Lieutenant Hol- land's office and were aided in more than one way. The army knew how well the Red Cross would care for these homing prisoners for, in one instance, a squad of eight of them arrived at Winchester with no papers, no idea where to go beyond following the verbal instructions they had received to " report to the American Red Cross." So it found rooms for the night for them at a local hotel and next morning, after a hot bath and a good breakfast, they were transferred to the military authorities at the Morn Hill Rest Camp. Red Cross work at Dover dated from October, 1918, at which time wounded were beginning to come through the port in large numbers from the divisions brigaded with the British on the Flanders front. Hitherto, these wounded had mainly come through Southampton, where a canteen service was also in operation. An office was established on the Admiralty Pier and arrangements made with the Brit- ish naval authorities for one American Red Cross woman worker to go on the pier as Assistant Reception Officer. This worker was constantly on hand as the stretchers were brought from the hospital transports and the Americans separated from the British wounded. She talked with the Americans, distributed comforts of various kinds and assisted the medical debarkation officer in the task of as- signing them to various American or British hospitals under advices from the office of the Chief Surgeon of the Army in London. The wounded were always anxious to learn to what hospital they were to go and asked all sorts of questions concerning the men already there and the identity of the medical unit in charge. There was every 108 THE PASSING LEGIONS token of the appreciation that these men felt at being met by the Red Cross, particularly by a woman. " This is the best medicine yet," was a frequent comment from the men who had, perhaps, not seen an American woman for months. " From the point of view of morale, this work is very important," wrote an American officer of the army whose duties brought him constantly into contact with the work of debarkation at Dover, and he added, " It is pleasant to see the work of our American Red Cross beginning right here at the pier as soon as our wounded reach England, and continued all the way through their hospital career. The mental stimulus of this work at the docks is always notice- able." Frequently as many as eight hospital transports would come to Dover in a single day and the American Red Cross was on hand to meet them all, not only to attend to its own men but also to lend such aid as it could to the men of its ally.. It also cared for the Americans at two near-by fly- ing camps and there was occasional hospital visiting to be done. The Emergency Bureau had a station there with supplies, as Dover was an important " listening post" for news of torpedoings or other marine disasters. After the signing of the Armistice this port became the gateway for many returning American prisoners who had been in Ger- man camps for months and were more than verbally ap- preciative of the care and attention they received when their ships came in. There was always a great amount of work for the Red Cross in the Winchester area, for it was the chief American military zone in Great Britain. Large offices were main- tained in the city itself with branches at Portsmouth, Ames- bury, Morn Hill, Romsey, and Hursley, in each of which were large hospitals and great numbers of troops in transit. The canteen service had stations at Romsey, Codford, and Portsmouth, with an " Exchange " also at the base hospital at the latter place. Camp service was active at about ALONG THE L. 0. C. 109 fifteen different points, including the great American tank camps at Wareham, the American construction camps at Chattis Hill and Lopcombe Corner, and aviation camps at Andover, Boscombe Down, Flowerdown, Lake Down, Netherhaven, Old Sarum, Stonehenge, Upavon, Yatesbury, and Worthy Down. There were large rest camps at Morn Hill, Romsey, Codford, and Standon. The Emergency Relief Bureau had stations at Winchester, Weymouth and Portsmouth. Hospital service was active at Winchester, Hursley, Romsey, Portsmouth, Codford, Chattis Hill, Highcliffe and Chichester. Red Cross camp infirmaries were established at Boscombe Down, Old Sarum, Yates- bury, Lake Down and Emsworth. Work in behalf of American nurses was maintained at Winchester, Ports- mouth, Romsey and Hursley. The foregoing is cited as sufficient proof, certainly, of the magnitude of what the Red Cross had to do in one area alone. Its scope of service was all-embracing, unlimited, ranging from helping a casual soldier to get married to building and equipping an entire hospital. " The Ameri- can Red Cross has been the Fairy Godmother of the army," is what an officer wrote from one of the Winchester camps. Red Cross work was begun at Winchester in February, 1918, its first offices, which it soon outgrew, being in an ancient dwelling designed by Sir Christopher Wren for King James II. During the course of the year 1918, the staff dealt with many emergencies in which quick thinking and rapid action were necessary. During the first stages of the influenza epidemic, when patients were being brought daily into all the available hospitals, accommodations were soon swamped and the Red Cross shared with the medical authorities of the army the task of providing extra beds, pneumonia jackets and equipment of all kinds for the sick men. At one period the Supply Department of the Red Cross at Winchester was called upon to furnish 14,500 fresh eggs weekly over a term of several weeks and in the face of 110 THE PASSING LEGIONS a long-standing shortage in the markets, was able to find them and put them in the hospitals where there was such great need for them. Early in September, when the troopship Persic was tor- pedoed off the southwest coast of England, the Winchester office was notified at noon of that day that 1,900 men from the ship would arrive early in the evening in destitute con- dition. It did not daunt the Red Cross for an instant; it was emergencies like this that proved it, so a large quantity of clothing and personal comforts were drawn from the well-filled storehouses and so arranged for distribution that the castaways were fitted out as soon as they reached camp. The Winchester office was constantly called upon to assist soldiers financially, because, owing to the system used by the army pay department, a soldier who had become sepa- rated from his- organization might find himself unable to draw any pay whatsoever until he should rejoin his par- ticular unit. Under some conditions the army could make partial payment, not, however, exceeding $7.50. But in all such cases the Red Cross was ready and willing, both at Winchester and at every other Red Cross post through- out the British Isles, to " come to the front" on request, usually, of the personnel officer at Army Headquarters, whose approval was a sufficient voucher for the genuineness of the need. All such advances were purely loans, and in each case the soldier signed an agreement to refund the amount as soon as he got his pay. On some occasions, when funds were needed in American camps for special purposes not provided for in army appropriations, the Red Cross was able to lend a hand. On Memorial Day it dec- orated the graves of all who had been interred in the Ameri- can cemetery at Morn Hill, more than 500 in all. And the camp celebrations of the Fourth of July would not have been quite complete had not the Red Cross helped out with prizes for the winners of the sports events and furnished transportation for convalescent soldiers to the scenes of the celebrations. On Thanksgiving Day it was the Red Cross The Red Cross " Bulletin" on the Wall of the Pilgrim Fathers' Church at Imminpliam ALONG THE L. 0. C. Ill which furnished the turkeys for every hospital in the Win- chester area. Five Red Cross dental officers were assigned to this zone and did a great deal of appreciated work. And, of course, there was a canteen service which met every train and be- tween whiles visited the hospitals throughout the district to distribute comforts and cheerfulness. The smaller American camps in the Winchester area, oc- cupied by training and repair squadrons of the air force, were in the open country of Salisbury Plain and here the first work of the Red Cross was the establishment and equipment of camp dispensaries and infirmaries to obviate the necessity of sending sick or injured men miles away in British motor lorries to the nearest hospitals, which, by the way, were British. So these institutions were set up in marquee tents, two to a post, to be replaced by portable wooden huts each twenty-five by fifty feet in size for win- ter use, but these had been installed in only two camps when the Armistice brought further effort to an end. As long hours of manual labor in isolated places, with the ex- citement of warfare lacking, seemed likely to bring about discontent and consequent inefficiency, the Red Cross de- voted much attention to supplying recreation and amuse- ment to the squadrons. In every camp, tents or barrack huts were erected and fitted with pianos, gramophones, games, newspapers and magazines; orchestras were organ- ized, with instruments given by the Red Cross; dances were given in the nearest towns and interest in baseball was stimulated by the provision of uniforms and equipment and the arrangement of inter-camp matches. For the comfort of the men, the Red Cross had eighty-one different articles, from sweaters to razor-blades, in its storehouses and these were distributed by the thousand at the posts. " You have filled our coffers with all the needed articles for comfort and health," wrote the commanding officer of the Yatesbury Camp. " You have given us an American flag to float over our camp and a bugle to awaken our boys 112 THE PASSING LEGIONS to the chilly blasts of Yatesbury. Please accept our thanks for these many favors and rest assured that it is our inten- tion to call upon you freely for anything we need, knowing that we will not be denied." Flowerdown Camp was taken over by the American Army as an aero-squadron rest camp in May, 1918, and the initial request made of the Red Cross here was the pro- vision of bathing facilities for the men. A large building was completed in about a month, serving both enlisted men and officers and nothing in the camp was more appreciated. While the construction of the bath house was under way, the Red Cross also transformed a dilapidated barracks into a clean and attractive recreation center and mess for the officers. Similar rooms were equipped for the men and there was not a happier camp on the Plain. A band was provided with instruments and concerts were given every night, whether a man liked music or not, and after four months' occupation Flowerdown was evacuated, but men from there have given the assurance that the band had noth- ing to do with it. Red Cross work among the other camps of the zone was of like character and was constant from the beginning of their occupancy until the last man was out and on his way home. In that time not less than 600,000 American soldiers passed through the Winchester area. The supplies, medi- cal, personal, and foodstuffs, furnished them by the Red Cross were measurable in thousands of tons. Among the comfort articles distributed may be noted (for those who like figures) 20,000 towels, 30,000 tubes of tooth paste, 10,000 shaving brushes, 9,000 pairs of socks, 9,000 " com- fort bags," 9,000 handkerchiefs, 8,500 sweaters, 7,500 razors, 8,000 cakes of soap, 95,000 packages of chocolate, 2,500,000 cigarettes, 40,000 packages of tobacco, and 6,000 pipes. CHAPTER VI WHEEE A MILLION MEN WENT BY IT was in the south of England that American military activity was concentrated as nowhere else in Great Britain. It was practically centered there. When mili- tary exigence necessitated the passage of a gigantic Ameri- can Army through England it was in the south that it estab- lished most of its camps and the largest of them, eighteen in all. There, too, was undertaken its most extensive hos- pitalization. Although the American troopships poured their legions into Liverpool and Glasgow in the north, as well as into London, Plymouth and Southampton, it was in the south that they were massed — a million men were encamped there at various times during 1918 — and from the south that they flowed out again toward France and the battle front. From Southampton alone, more than 913,000 American soldiers embarked for the voyage across the Channel. Thus it was expedient, for reasons of concentration and transport, that the south should be selected by the Ameri- can military authorities for the mobilization of their forces. The less rigorous climate of that section was, also, best suited for base hospital purposes. And, as an added ad- vantage there were wide camp spaces in that part of Eng- land which had already been used by the British and were available for American occupation. This zone of chief activity naturally included Southamp- ton and, embracing the regions lying all about it, comprised practically all the territories of the counties of Berkshire, Wiltshire, Hampshire, Somerset, Devon and Dorset, even to far Cornwall. It took in historic Salisbury Plain on which " Kitchener's Army " was gathered and trained in 113 114 THE PASSING LEGIONS the early years of the war and where, in time, were located not less than ten supplemental American camps for aero schooling and repair squadrons. In this great area lay the first camp to be taken over from the British by the American Army. It was on the broad rolling elevation of Morn Hill — Winnal Downs, the British called it — about two miles from the famed cathe- dral city of Winchester. It passed into American control in November, 1917, and from that moment became the most important camp on the United States Army map of Great Britain. Three quarters of the total number of American soldiers who were landed in England passed through Morn Hill. And Winchester, only two miles away in this his- toric instance, became the center for the American Expedi- tionary Forces on their way to France. There was a singular fitness in the chance that made Winchester a focal point. From the earliest days of re- corded history it had possessed military importance. It was the seat of government for the Britons, the Celts, the Romans, the Saxons, the Danes and the Normans. For centuries it was the capital city of Britain and even after London became the capital in the thirteenth century, it was still a popular place of residence of many of the English Kings. Charles the Second and his dissolute court held revels there, the dwelling place of Nell Gwynne, con- veniently located for her royal patron, being still in exist- ence. The cathedral of Winchester, dating back to the year 640, is held to be one of the finest in the British Isles and there are laid the remains of King Alfred and many other Saxon Kings and also of humbler Izaak Walton. At the opening of the war it was a garrison city and the camps the British built about it in 1914 were on land which had been leased for ten years by Lord Kitchener. These were the convenient and already laid-out areas which the British authorities gave over to the American Army. The buildings at Morn Hill, and in the other camps similarly acquired, were mostly of steel framework covered WHERE A MILLION MEN WENT BY 115 with corrugated iron. To supplement them, hutments of wood and large encampments of tents were constructed and hospitals, banks, telegraph offices, bath houses, garages and repair shops were gradually installed by the American forces, which also set aside ample reservations for baseball, football and tennis. Normally the capacity of the camp was 7,500, but during the months in which American over- sea transportation reached its astounding maximum, it ac- commodated at times, not less than 12,000, so incessantly did the special trains arrive from the debarkation ports. To aid the American military authorities in their for- midable and ever-growing task, the Red Cross had estab- lished bases at Southampton and Winchester, because the importance of this southern area to the Red Cross was as great as to the army. As soon as Morn Hill passed into American hands and Winchester became the headquarters of the Southern Army Command, an appeal was made to the Red Cross for its needed and welcomed assistance, with the result that every phase of Red Cross activity was under- taken, from fundamental hospital service to the work of numerous administration bureaus. Hospital service dealt with the men sent to the two sec- tions of Morn Hill Hospital which had a normal capacity of 600 patients although in cases of emergency this could be increased to about 800. The number of occupants, how- ever, varied with the general health of the camp, being as low sometimes as 100 and, at others, rising above 600 as during the influenza epidemic of the autumn of 1918 when 670 beds were required. During the year a total of 5,424 patients were attended, which exceeds the number of ad- mittances to any other American hospital in Great Britain. This hospital was repaired throughout by the Red Cross, the floors were covered with Red Cross linoleum and large quantities of hospital equipment came from the Red Cross warehouse, or were purchased by the Red Cross on request of the Commanding Officer. Both sections of the hospital were visited daily by the 116 THE PASSING LEGIONS Red Cross supply officers and Home Communication officers and there was no hospital in Great Britain where the Red Cross was so accessible or so well equipped to respond to every appeal. The men's quarters of the hospital unit, the enlisted men's recreation rooms and the patients' dining room, were all either partly or wholly furnished and dec- orated by the Red Cross. A substantial brick building was erected and equipped for the use of the officers as club quarters, the rooms including a lounge large enough for en- tertainments and moving picture shows, three dining halls and various writing and recreation rooms. This building was always used on semi-public occasions when it was essential that a suitable place be found for the reception and entertainment of special guests. Recreation quarters were also furnished for the enlisted men and non-commissioned officers and several bands were outfitted for the entertain- ment of the troops. A large canteen station was completed towards the end of the year, but unfortunately, too late to be of great service to the troops. One of the Red Cross huts at Morn Hill became gen- erally known as " Bissell Hut " and the origin of the name is an interesting side-light on how closely the Red Cross worked with and for the army. Early in the year a casual detachment of American troops under a Lieutenant Bissell came into the camp. Lieutenant Bissell had seen the Red Cross at work in the cantonments in America and took a great interest in the work at Morn Hill. Largely through his initiative the Red Cross took over one of the army hut- ments and fitted it up as a club-room, installing easy chairs, pictures, writing tables, flags, a piano, gramophone and various other musical instruments. As soon as the hut was ready it was turned over to the men and treated as their property, the Red Cross exercising no further supervision except to replace needed articles of furniture and to see that any necessary supplies were provided. In this way, the men acquired a sense of ownership and looked upon it as their club, manifesting their possession by christening it, WHERE A MILLION MEN WENT BY 117 with all formalities, the " Bissell Club," and the number of men who enjoyed its hospitality and knew it only under this name, runs into many thousands. A short time later, a similar club was installed on the other side of the Morn Hill camp, and still later a third self-governing institution was fitted out for the men of the Motor Transport Company, a fourth for the hospital per- sonnel, and a fifth for the Headquarters Staff orderlies. Through these huts the Red Cross came to represent " Home " to thousands of men, not only those merely pass- ing through Winchester but also those of the permanent staff stationed there. There was a great deal of day-to-day work in a camp like Morn Hill, where thousands of new soldiers were constantly arriving and thousands of others being dispatched almost daily to France. Whether the troops were incoming or out- going, there were many things which they needed and the Red Cross supply office was always open and ready to re- spond to any request endorsed by the commanding officer of a detachment. In a single afternoon, for instance, more than 1,500 articles were distributed on requests of this kind, the articles varying from comfort kits to sweaters and woolen helmets. But the troops arriving at Winchester were not merely men fresh from America, Many of them were " casuals," either on detached service or just discharged from British hospitals and sent there convalescent for a few days' rest until they could rejoin their units. In many cases the needs of these were manifold, and the Red Cross was fre- quently called upon to re-outfit them, almost from head to foot. The system adopted in supplying these soldiers was to have the non-commissioned officer in charge of each hut make out a list stating the requirements of the men under his care. This list was then sent to the Red Cross supply hut, the articles drawn and distributed, making it possible thus to avoid not only the issue of unnecessary articles, but 118 THE PASSING LEGIONS to care thoroughly for the actual needs of the men. The medical hut for the " casual camp " was adjacent to the Red Cross supply hut, and it made constant requests for articles which could not be readily supplied from the quartermaster's stores, such as canes for crippled men, special bandages, special braces and slings and a number of things which the Red Cross could either obtain locally at Winchester, or secure promptly on telegraphic request from London. At one time, when the Casual Camp was crowded, there was a very heavy demand for sweaters. Unfortunately, the supply was very meager at the time and remained so for a long period, therefore a special formula was adopted for the issue of these garments. All men who requested them were lined up at the supply hut; then the Red Cross officer in charge would explain the situation,— that the supply was limited owing to the shortage of wool, and it was desired that, so far as possible, sweaters should be sup- plied only to convalescent men, or to those whose need was very great; if any man in the line thought he could do without a sweater he would be leaving it for a man fresh from hospital. It was most gratifying to see the number of men who would drop out of the line with a good-natured smile and a good-humored exclamation, " Well, I need it but not so badly as that; let the other fellow have it! " On April 1,1919, the U. S. Army formally evacuated this great camp which was returned to the service of British troops — all British, that is, save " The Clubmen of Morn Hill." CHAPTER VII THE INCOMING LEGIONS AT LIVERPOOL THE story of the American Red Cross at Liverpool and in the regions of immediate war-relationship, is the story of practically every activity which engaged this great organization in behalf of the American soldier in Great Britain. Here it constructed the first hospital to be built in the Kingdom for American troops — Mossley Hill. Here, the chief debarkation port in Britain, it met and ministered, in one way or another, to more than three- quarters of a million soldiers coming from the United States, as many as 20,000 in a single convoy. Here it fed them as they landed and bore the sick to hospital. Here it distributed thousands of tons of supplies — one of its warehouses alone held 3,000 tons of foodstuffs and in a second was stored an equal amount of other distributable commodities, including nearly 100 portable huts for hospi- tal emergency needs. Here, in one working day, it gave Red Cross cheer to more than forty thousand American troops on their way to the south of England. Here it rendered its service in hospital, camp and post, in club and recreation center and this to its widest capacity, extend- ing it even to Birmingham, Leicester and Derby for troops on their way to the south of England. Here it gathered the new-wed wives of the homing soldiers and sailors, shepherded them, even provided them with funds for the voyage to their new country. And here, too, it greeted and cared for the thousands of sick and wounded west-bound on the hospital ships. It may truthfully be said that the Red Cross never knew an idle hour in the Liverpool area. Its day often be- gan at 5 o'clock in the morning and lasted until two or three 119 120 THE PASSING LEGIONS hours after midnight and required the services of more than fifty workers. So tremendous and persistent was the inflow of American troops at Liverpool that, naturally, one of the most im- portant stations of the Red Cross was in the vicinity of the debarkation docks. But the business of meeting and can- teening a convoy was complicated by landing conditions at the port. The tides always play a large part in the dock- ing of ships at Liverpool, for there is a difference of twenty- three feet between high and low tide in the Mersey. Ships can cross the bar and come to berth only at certain hours and certain points. The various ships of an American con- voy, carrying from 8,000 to 20,000 troops, might land at any one of ten docks over a stretch of five miles, and there were three main railway stations at which they were en- trained for the south. Moreover, it was always necessary to be prepared for every sort of sudden alteration in train schedule. The 9 :30 train, for instance, might be trans- ferred without notice from the Central Station to the Ex- change Station; then, the canteen service assigned to that train, with its load of coffee, biscuits, chocolate and cigarettes, must be as abruptly shifted. Or, perhaps a message would come: " We are putting on an extra train at the Central," when seventy gallons of extra coffee and all its accompaniments must be dispatched thither at this instant notice. The canteen service had also to be prepared for delays in train schedules, for advances in departure times, for even the complete abandonment of all schedules. It was impossible to know what the next minute might bring forth. Then, too, there was always something of emergency re- lief to be provided, for the transports never came in with- out bringing some kind of an " emergency " with them. But the Red Cross was able to take time by the forelock in such instances. Before a transport was permitted to dock it was required to pass inspection by the army medical or quarantine officers. The Red Cross arranged to have a car THE INCOMING LEGIONS AT LIVERPOOL 121 at the service of the British medical officer charged with this duty and he was always accompanied aboard ship by one or more American Red Cross representatives who con- ferred at once with the commanding and medical officers of the ship to learn what kind of special aid was needed. In this way the Red Cross was frequently able to supply emer- gency relief for incoming transports without the slightest loss of time, to have it under way, in fact, within a moment after the Red Cross people came ashore, which was well in advance of the military debarkation. There was, fortunately, no such secrecy about arriving ships at Liver- pool as at Royal Albert and Tilbury Docks below London, so the Red Cross had time to make preparations. Troop convoys rarely exceeded 20,000 men, but the Red Cross was equipped to handle as many as 30,000. At five o'clock in the morning the Red Cross " coffee factory " and kitchen at Bootle, a suburb of Liverpool, was opened and the steaming beverage was ready to be loaded into the can- teen lorries at the rate of 360 gallons an hour. This would provide for 3,600 men in that space of time, the Eng- lish gallon, which is twenty-five per cent larger than the American measure, being used and 100 gallons being reckoned as sufficient for 1,000 soldiers. It was necessary to have the coffee not only hot — the insulated containers attended to that — but it must be, above all things, on time, for troops headed toward the battlefields of France were moved on a time-table which gave few spare moments, and very often the canteen service had to be wedged in between the entraining of the men and the departure of their trains. Sometimes this interval did not exceed five minutes, some- times it extended over nearly half an hour, but never more than that, so the number of men served depended, in part, upon the manual dexterity of the Red Cross workers and in part upon the time a soldier required to gulp a cup of piping coffee and consume a big, fat bun or a thick sandwich. The canteen equipment provided for the serving of coffee consisted of large, wheeled " tanks," each of which carried 122 THE PASSING LEGIONS eighty gallons of the brew and also a large supply of cups, buns, sandwiches, chocolate and the like. To serve a troop- train of nineteen or twenty coaches providing a seating capacity of 760 men — five compartments to a coach with eight men in a compartment — required a force of not less than fifteen Red Cross workers. For a long period during the middle and latter part of the year 1918, the number of incoming ships averaged more than two a day and the num- ber of men thus served was about 4,000 a day. When a large convoy arrived, the entire staff of the Liverpool office was diverted directly to the work of the canteen depart- ment. For the distribution of food to men at the docks them- selves, the Red Cross had a large " Riverside Station " where more than 2,000 gallons of coffee a day could be pre- pared and thousands of buns and sandwiches made ready for the hungry. The station got its name from the fact that its rear wall was the brick side of the Riverside Station of the London and Northwestern Railway, the remainder of it being a wooden structure, well lighted and decorated and dignified with a tall pole bearing the American flag to catch the eye of every soldier on an incoming troopship. The personnel of the Liverpool canteen service was unique, consisting of young and old, men and women, Eng- lish, French, Scotch, Irish as well as American, all work- ing together in perfect happiness and forming friendships which will outlive the war. Because England had been in the conflict for a long time and almost every man and woman in the country had many kinds of war work to do, the volunteers at the canteen were not the same every day; they could give only a day or two a week to this task. But they worked with a will and tirelessly while they were at it. And nobody save a canteen worker who has been on duty at the Liverpool docks realizes how much coffee and " grub " a shipload of American soldiers can stow away when it is served on dry land after they have been at sea so many days, when it is served by the first American THE INCOMING LEGIONS AT LIVERPOOL 123 woman they've seen for a fortnight, when it comes as a sort of " touch of home " in the midst of surroundings which are all strange and foreign. During the influenza epidemic the service was extended to include hot soups for all the arriving troops. Fre- quently the workers heated pans of " Mulligan stew " for baggage details and stretcher bearers, and it was not at all unusual to receive an emergency call at almost any hour, day or night, for supplies for 200 or 300 men at work in some remote corner of the vast docks. The canteening of homeward-bound convoys was a work requiring especial at- tention, for these men were served not only with coffee and food but with various garments, blankets, comfort kits, medicines and any other needful supplies. For first-aid use at the docks the Red Cross established a small hospital hut with cots, chairs and a trained nurse in attendance. The front of this hut was fitted with long shelves which were used by the incoming troops as desks on which to write post cards, these being immediately mailed home by the Red Cross. Though the latter was not officially designated to handle soldiers' mail, the canteen workers never failed to collect great numbers of letters and post cards from every arriving detachment. The post cards, for which there was a constant demand, were supplied by the Red Cross. One of the most popular of these had its message already printed so that the soldier had merely to sign his name and write the address on the reverse side. These were sent off by thousands and read: Somewhere in England Well, here I am, safe and sound and feeling mighty fine. Hope this finds all of you the same. Will write a real letter the first chance I get. Best regards and lots of love to all. In haste Numbers of the men sent cablegrams home and these too the Red Cross transmitted. The worker who supervised 124 THE PASSING LEGIONS this happy job said that there was one message which would always remain in his memory. It was: Arrived safe. Cannot live without you. Will you marry me? Home for Christmas. " It was in September that the boy sent that," he ex- plained, " and I've often wondered whether the fellow really got home for Christmas, and whether the wedding occurred. Let's hope so. The girl knows, at any rate." One of the first steps toward making the newcomers feel at home, however short their stay in England, was the pres- entation to each of a copy of the " King's Message of Wel- come," distributed by British soldiers who worked side by side with the American Red Cross men. At the same time the latter placed in each train compartment a copy of the Red Cross Daily Bulletin, with its budget of home news, and a quantity of magazines and daily papers contributed for the purpose by the British Red Cross, the Liverpool Civic League, and the newspaper publishers of the city. The Liverpool canteen did not limit its service to Ameri- can troops, although they naturally came first, but fre- quently put itself at the disposal of Allied soldiers of many nationalities who, for some reason or other, were debarked or embarked at Liverpool. One emergency call shortly be- fore the Armistice was signed involved serving 2,000 Can- adians and 500 Australians. Now and then great hospital ships sailed away from the port for the States with hundreds of sick and wounded aboard, and these were well and carefully served by the Red Cross. And many times these days yielded their dramatic fragments. Here is one in the words of a canteen worker, Miss Willetta Hayden, of California, who did valiant service at Liverpool. " We have seen no less than six ships slip into the Mersey with boys of ours who have paid war a bitter price. And we have had the pleasure of extending our hospitality to the Canadians and the Australians, war-weary men who THE INCOMING LEGIONS AT LIVERPOOL 125 showed by their tired faces how much longer they had served than we. But of all the ships there is one that stands out, the Leviathan, that greatest of the Kaiser's ships, which sailed on December 3rd, her ballroom shelter- ing the shattered bodies of the men who helped to win the war against him. It was a real Liverpool day; gray skies and cold winds and the rain always drip-drip-dripping from the roof of the warehouse where we waited. Each canteen woman had about her a circle of those delightful fellows in blue known by such an ill-sounding name — ' gobs.' After an endless wait the ambulances came. Immediately every worker was at her post. Never before have I heard such stillness. Even the birds that had been chattering all the afternoon over the grain-bags stopped their noises at the approach of the first stretcher. And those ' gobs'! An American woman feels terribly helpless when she sees the tenderness with which an American sailor can give a cup of coffee to an American soldier on a stretcher. And dur- ing that afternoon we had one of those world-old dramas of brother meeting brother; the sailor, still a strong, young chap and feeling something like a slacker as he bent over the stretcher of the soldier brother, whose blanket lay so pitifully flat below the line of the knee. Not one word from the soldier, only a glad smile, and from the sailor: ' You wrote us all the time that you were safe doing cleri- cal work in southern France.' " On the outskirts of Liverpool was the great American rest camp, Knotty Ash, with accommodations for 15,000 troops and an attached personnel of 1,800. Through this the soldiers were constantly flowing; they remained a few days after coming ashore then hastened away to Winchester and Southampton and so to France. Here were two huge Red Cross warehouses in the very center of the camp, ready to supply any need. There was a camp hospital here, too, for the casual cases of sickness and accident which de- veloped among the constantly changing inhabitants of the reservation. At first this hospital was composed entirely 126 THE PASSING LEGIONS of tents, but early in the summer the army began the con- struction of huts and at the time of the influenza epidemic the majority of the patients was comfortably housed under wooden roofs. The capacity of the institution grew from 250 beds to 500 and during the latter months of the year was seldom without at least 400 patients. The Red Cross began work at the rest camp almost simultaneously with the army and among the articles it furnished were laboratory supplies, surgical instruments, drugs, refrigerators and musical instruments. Most of the motor transport for the hospital also came from the Red Cross, its donations being sixteen ambulances, three convertible trucks, four motor vans, a touring car and a side-car motorcycle, with sev- eral cases of motor parts for all the machines. The nurses' home at Knotty Ash and the medical officers' quarters were also equipped, as was the recreation hut. And not very far from this hospital was Mossley Hill, the institution which the Red Cross had so amazingly built when the army made its first appeal for hospitalization. So much has always been said and written about the amounts of things which the Red Cross has disbursed to hospitals, to soldiers and sailors oversea, that an occasional turn aside to the spirit of the work is frankly irresistible. And the writer, in all his talks with workers, in all the archives to which he has had access, has come upon nothing finer than this bit of reminiscence, disguised as a " canteen worker's report," by the same Miss Willetta Hayden, who served on the Liverpool docks, which relates the spirit of service, first at Knotty Ash and then at Mossley Hill: " All day and every day we served the never-ending line through the window of the canteen. In the afternoon coffee and some kind of biscuit or sandwich or cake were served and this was our social hour. Every one came and was ' treated ' free of charge and, in the ease of a big arm chair, every one loitered over his coffee and discussed the Peace Conference and the great battles and the relative values of marines and ' gobs ' and ' doughboys,' and every THE INCOMING LEGIONS AT LIVERPOOL 127 one wondered about sailings and if his name would be on the next list. " I wonder if any woman knows how far her home reaches into the world. I wonder if any mother can ap- preciate how well we know her by the glimpses of her life through the boy we met every day in the canteen, and how we enjoyed the letters that told of the new records for the gramophone, or the latest saying of her grandson, or how fine the old car looked in its new coat of paint that Dad so patiently and painfully put on it' after hours ' 'and Sun- days. " In the evenings were the movies. Boys still nursing lame arms and sensitive shoulders sought the easy chairs near the fire; boys unable to walk were brought by their ' buddies ' in wheel-chairs. Perched high on apple barrel or chocolate case, over their smoke-wreathed heads, we watched with them the favorite film stars. Often the butcher came in cap and apron and in the shadows at the edge of the screen delighted himself and his audience at the piano. It was unstudied to the last degree. I still hold a memory of one of America's favorites doing a mad gypsy dance to the dignified national air of France! " How the little glimpses into the home-land cheered us! A train pulling over the Rockies; an ocean liner with the New York sky-line or the Goddess as a background — either was sufficient to call forth the wildest cheers. Such sport it was to * kid' the pictures! Screen heroes with whiskers never escaped being ' ba-a-a-ed' no matter what their dignity; the arrival of any animal on the screen was always greeted with loud and various interpretations of its peculiar vocal utterances. If the operator delayed too long or not long enough, vigorous boyish voices called forth merry criticism until he mended his ways. " Then one day the long awaited list came. Practically every name was on it, many of the boys to go home, some to go disappointedly to France and a few to stay in England in another hospital. For a few days there was a great buzzing 128 THE PASSING LEGIONS of boys getting ready to sail. Judging from the shoe- strings and shoe polish we gave out, I should say it was a well-shod group of young Americans who left this side of the Atlantic. Next came the day. Ambulances with the stretcher cases, trucks fairly alive with waving arms, trucks piled high with blanket rolls dropped one after another over the green hill and disappeared along the highway. Very glad and happy they were, those boys, and very happy we to see them start on the long-desired journey, but feel- ing just a little forlorn with it all as though some of our own family had slipped away. And then we too, with what remained of our stores, were packed into gray American trucks and taken to another American hospital. " It was rather staggering to try and evolve a system of work for a world where two days were never the same and where nothing ever happened a second time. The plan was to find out on one day the things needed and to get them from the warehouse and deliver them to the boys the next day, at the same time finding out what was still needed. But when a boy feels that he can get into a wheel chair to- day for the first time in months, no human being could say to him, ' I have no dressing gown and slippers for you to- day, but I'll get them for you to-morrow.' I throw system to the winds and run madly for the dressing gown and slippers. Or, when a boy comes in breathless for a pair of socks because he's ' going to be inspected in a few minutes ' — well, the socks appear without another word. " It takes an infinite amount of time to go from bed to bed, get the boy's name and an idea of what he needs, listening to his story of just how he ' got his,' listening with unfeigned interest to the tales of the Front and of his plans for the future, persuading the proud or timid boy that he is not a charity patient but is getting only what he himself or his father or mother put into our hands to deliver to him when he needed it, persuading the greedy boy that the fact of his aunt having given a Plymouth Rock hen to be raffled at the Red Cross bazaar at Bingville doesn't en- THE INCOMING LEGIONS AT LIVERPOOL 129 title him to ten safety razors, three all-wool sweaters and a bathrobe that will become his peculiar style and coloring, trying to understand the Italian-American who cannot order anything but soap without an interpreter, but who always smiles and salutes with such dignity that I feel like a generalissimo, smiling over the foot of beds where blankets flatten out from the knee line downward or rise painfully high over plaster casts, getting orders from every- where and taking the list to the warehouse over half a mile of roadway that is never dry and seeing that the supplies are delivered by trucks that are always overworked. " Then, piling baskets high with clothing or fruit or cigarettes and taking them to the huts or carrying them miles along the corridors, delivering the things, or try- ing to find the boy who asked for this or that, but who has been transferred to another ward. It is so endless! But it is such a fine thing for a nation to do. It's a fine privi- lege for a woman to have, to put into the hands of a man who has given as much as he could give, the things that will make him comfortable while he is in hospital. It's a fine spirit of humanity, a true brotherly love that considers no nationality but gives to all alike the comforts they need. " Days just before sailing are such wonderful days! There are so many things that must be done, so many that cannot be done until the very last minute, such mountains of baggage to be sorted and tagged and transferred by the orderlies from the wards to the ambulances, such endless lines of stretchers, so many crutches and canes, and always the gay little cretonne comfort bags against the drab of the khaki. " Always there is the feeling of fine pride in our hearts that our Nation so considers her sick and wounded soldiers; always there is a little anxious feeling that things may not be just as the boys left them in homes from which they have not heard for months; and always the little feeling of regret that we shall see them no more, as when some friend has gone away. For we grow very close together here in this 130 THE PASSING LEGIONS life of ours. There is an honest pain in my heart when I am writing down a long list of things that Brown wants for his trip across the Atlantic and I look into his eyes and know what he has not yet even suspected — that Brown is going on a much greater adventure than crossing the Atlan- tic, an adventure into a Far Country for which he is fully equipped. And one morning, when I find a German hel- met and an old violin on Brown's empty bed, and the nurse tells me with a sad little smile that it's going to be an awful task but she's promised Brown that his mother shall have all his treasures and that she's going to see it through, some- how or other, it isn't Brown who's gone out of my life — it's one of my friends- " But only a few have slipped away and left me sad. Such pure fun as I get from most of these boys! I never hope to be better entertained than I was by a slender youth with a great glass button which really came out of a birth- day cake but which he had just convinced a too credulous nurse was on a bodice of Queen Elizabeth's. The button held firmly in his eye and a fire poker for a swagger-stick, he gave an illustration of a Yank soldier he saw in the Strand worrying a ' Bobbie ' by talking British English to him. I never hope to be more fascinated than I have been by the tales of adventure Rufus told me. For Rufus had been a simply, carefully reared boy working in the cotton mills of a Southern State and living the round of life of the average country-town boy. Then he wanted to be a soldier and in no time he was one, with a machine gun on the Hin- denburg Line, living a thousand years in a few weeks, knowing nothing of time, caring nothing for life, seeing death in its most terrible aspects, having impressions burned into a very young and utterly inexperienced mind. Of course he left me a bragging, boasting Yank, but in the first days, when days were very long for a broken body and a mind that could think only of the terrors of war, when a heart was sick for home, then I found the simple recital THE INCOMING LEGIONS AT LIVERPOOL 131 of war stories in a soft, Southern voice to give me the most fascinating hours of a busy day. " On the afternoons of our dance nights there is the mak- ing of sandwiches, tons of sandwiches; going into steaming kitchens and finding a most accommodating mess sergeant to furnish us bread and margarine and a K.P. who will cut loaf after loaf for us, spreading ' margie' and cheese and salmon for hours in storerooms that are almost at freezing point; then serving those sandwiches at night with cocoa to a crowd of dancers that are never all served and never could be all served. " It was a wise Solomon who discovered the root of all evil. Money matters are the most maddening. I always have my pockets filled with the money of some boy who is afraid to keep his own and my pocketbook is usually occu- pied by an I.O.U. from a soldier ' out of luck,' in spite of my protests that his word suffices. Always I am receiv- ing queer little notes with a few shillings inclosed from some boy who has left camp and failed to find me before he had to go." The Red Cross gave camp service also to the British hos- pitals in Manchester, Chester, Birmingham and Wallasey, where American soldiers were under treatment. Red Cross infirmaries were instituted in the American camps at Hooton Park, Shotwick and Shawbury. And such was the renown of the " Flying Squadron" attached to London headquarters that a duplicate of it was organized for the Liverpool area. The Red Cross also supplied fine clubs for nurses at Mossley Hill and Knotty Ash and to supple- ment them, rooms were rented in Liverpool and furnished as a city club for nurses either attached to the hospitals or passing through the city to other posts. In the same way, a rest room was furnished for the women employed in the army quartermaster's department and one for the military transport service. 132 THE PASSING LEGIONS The Naval Department of the Liverpool office was charged with caring for the crews of American destroyers which put into the port from time to time or made their headquarters there and thus considerable quantities of sur- gical instruments and appliances, blankets and comforts of various kinds were furnished to the navy. Thanksgiving Day was one to be remembered in the Liverpool district. The Red Cross bought 14,000 pounds of turkey and 14,000 oranges with a sufficient amount of peas, potatoes, cauliflower, mince pie, white bread, butter and candy to make a feast for every American in every hos- pital, camp and post in the zone. The dinner, however, was only a part of the celebration of that day. A few hours thereafter Lord Ritchie and Lady Ritchie, the Mayor of Liverpool and his wife, gave a " dancing tea " in the town hall for the Americans. It was the first time that the edifice had been used for a social event since August, 1914, and the only man present in civilian dress was the Lord Mayor himself. Dale Street, the headquarters of the Red Cross, was the focal point for all the American soldiers who were in any kind of trouble. One Saturday afternoon two of them wandered in. They were scarcely more than boys and were not at all at ease when they entered. Captain Kirkover, a Buffalo banker, was the Red Cross man at the head of things in Liverpool and one of the youngsters, speaking for both, said to him, rather hesitatingly, " We've both been wounded and were discharged a little while ago from a hos- pital in the south of England. We're waiting our turn to go back to America — but we're flat broke. Both of us put our bank accounts at home in the names of our wives and — this is all we've got." The boy drew from his wallet a ten-dollar check of his wife's and handed it to Captain Kirkover. He looked it over and asked, " How much do you want ? " " What will you give me on the check ? " THE INCOMING LEGIONS AT LIVERPOOL 133 " Nothing," was the quick reply. " The Red Cross is going to lend you the money." On Monday at 7:15 o'clock in the morning when Captain Kirkover came downstairs into the office of his hotel he found the two boys at the news stand awaiting him. The older one came up at once and said, " You started good luck for us. We got our pay through and another check for twenty-five from home," and immediately he repaid the money the Red Cross had advanced. One of the men from the London headquarters met Cap- tain Kirkover in the street in Liverpool and handed him a twenty-franc note. " What's this for ? " he asked. " What am I to do with it?" " I'll tell you where I got it," was the reply. " A woman handed it to me. She said that she had met an American enlisted man, a private, who was going home to die. He said to her, ' Before I go I want to give this to you and ask that you give it to the first American Red Cross man you meet, because his people have done so much for me.' " On another day an Englishwoman, the wife of an Ameri- can husband who was a petty officer aboard ship, came to the Dale Street headquarters to say that her allotments did not reach her. She was in a pitiable condition. A little while before she had given birth to a baby which had died from lack of nourishment and she had had no money with which to bury it. She had borrowed four pounds from a money-lender in Liverpool who had paid her only three pounds ten shillings, taking, in the first instance, a discount of ten shillings and, as she learned later, tricking her into signing a note for seven pounds. This sum was to be re- paid at the rate of eight shillings a week out of wages of twelve shillings weekly which she received for doing clean- ing work on one of the ships. In this case the attorneys of the Red Cross at once in- stituted proceedings against the money-lender, paid the 134 THE PASSING LEGIONS woman's debt, arranged the remittance of her allotment so that it reached her promptly and got her out of all her troubles so quickly that she wept for amazement if for no other reason. Just after Christmas, when the repatriated civilian prisoners began to land in England, seventy-five of the Americans were sent on to Liverpool for passage home and it devolved upon the Red Cross to outfit them with new suits of clothing, rain-coats and shoes, because they came out of Germany in nondescript shreds. In their eagerness to get home, three of them stowed away on a White Star Liner, but were discovered as the ship was leaving the Mersey and turned over to the civil authorities, who do not look with kindly eye upon travelers of that kind. Of course, these men immediately appealed to the Red Cross and a representative went to court the morning of the ex- amination to see what could be done. It was too late to at- tempt an effort to halt the case; the only hope lay in reach- ing the sympathies of the court, and this the Red Cross man did so effectively that the prisoners were released, thua adding three more to the hundreds of thousands who will never forget the Red Cross as long as they live. At Leicester, one of Liverpool's close war-relations, owing to the numbers of American troops which passed through on their way to or from the port, the Red Cross often had its hands full to overflowing. The first six trains that the Leicester canteen crew served were crowded with negro troops. It was at midnight that the first train came in and as due notice of its coming had been given, the Red Cross was on the platform when it arrived. Almost every man on the train was fast asleep and as no word had been sent as to the name or service of the detachment, a Red Cross worker with a basket of sandwiches on her arm and a " tank," steaming with coffee, trundling behind her down the walkway, called up to a coach: " Who's in there ? " In one leap a man was at the window. " We's fightin' THE INCOMING LEGIONS AT LIVERPOOL 135 black devils f'm New York City, an' who you, Miss ?" " I'm the American Red Cross! " Even in the dark it was possible to see the wide, high and deep grin that opened that face. " Lawzee, Miss — hyah, wake up, you niggers, wake up, the angels is come! " As there was an allowance of only twenty minutes for canteen work, the detachment needed no great urging to swarm out of the coaches and line up for coffee and sand- wiches, chocolate and cigarettes and the chance for relaxa- tion which the stop permitted. There was always a great deal of merriment among the colored troops, much joking, not lacking in the spice of a real and native humor, and, of course, singing, for any four negroes in the world can fashion themselves into a " barber-shop " quartet. " The Long, Long Trail " and " Katie " rang out with rare melody many times in the reverberating spaces of the Leicester station. And here the Red Cross women came upon a soldier who monumentally sacrificed himself on the altar of his devotion. He was the negro color-bearer of the regimental flag. When he got out of his coach he brought the flag with him, carefully enclosed in its shiny black water-proof scabbard atop the staff, but when it came time to take a mug of coffee, a sandwich, a bar of chocolate and a package of cigarettes, to say nothing of a sugary bun which had been urged upon him, he found that he did not have hands enough to go round. One had to be detailed to the colors, that was cer- tain, and as only one remained it could hold only one thing at a time and while he was deciding the order came to board the train and be off. If a canteen worker had not slipped a bar of chocolate in his pocket as he ran he would have had nothing. One of the officers who had been watch- ing the man told a Red Cross worker that there was not a man in the entire regiment who could get that flag away from the color-bearer for one sixteenth of an instant, either by pretext or force. The Leicester office of the Red Cross received a tele- 136 THE PASSING LEGIONS phone call at 10:30 o'clock one night from London head- quarters that the first American aviation unit to be returned to the States after the Armistice would pass through Nune- aton, twenty-six miles from Leicester, at midnight and that there would be 250 men in the detachment. This, by the simplest kind of arithmetic, allowed the canteen one hour and a half to make coffee, gather supplies and scamper two score miles across the countryside — a " man-size job." But the force went at it tooth and nail, which is the proverbial way, isn't it ? piled its things into a motor and sped away, getting to Nuneaton just as the train pulled in — with 500 Americans aboard! Nor was this the worst of it; the men had had no food since break- fast! In keeping with the nursery jingle, if the provision of edibles and drinkables had been stronger this tale would have been longer, but it requires only a short time to dis- pense to 500 men the rations intended for 250. At any rate each of the 500 received a fair share by " going halvers " on everything. The two officers alone took noth- ing, saying that they much preferred relinquishing their portion to the men. Soon after the Armistice, the navy aviation camp units began coming through Leicester on their way to Knotty Ash for subsequent embarkation at Liverpool. Six hun- dred sailors came in a train which arrived at 2:30 o'clock one morning. Naval units never traveled with mess kits and as the Red Cross had only 100 cups for its service, the soldiers always providing their own, the problem in this instance was complicated by an additional washing service in order that each man should have a clean drinking re- ceptacle. And when the canteen unit was just ready to turn in, tired out with all this extra work, another train with 600 more bluejackets aboard rolled in an hour later. But with all the speed with which the trains were hurry- ing the Americans southward, the canteen people had little time for rest on any night, nor many intervals of even THE INCOMING LEGIONS AT LIVERPOOL 137 seeming release from their task and several units have on record, periods of continuous labor for more than fifty-six hours, their members taking turns at " forty winks " on the un-upholstered counters of railway lunch rooms. Nevertheless the canteen work in the busy Midlands was loyally and enthusiastically carried out for many months. At Birmingham the trains came through either at 3 o'clock in the morning or at 4 o'clock in the afternoon and by means of blueprint plans of the station which the Red Cross fur- nished to the commanding officer of each detachment, it was possible to form the soldiers in lines and proceed with an orderly distribution of coffee and food, eight or ten minutes sufficing to serve as many as 500 men. The numbers served weekly were as high as 10,000 at Birmingham, 5,000 at Leicester and 4,000 at Derby. Even during the greatest rush period the canteen women made opportunities to talk with the men, to wish them all sorts of good luck if they were " going up " and to con- gratulate them if their faces were set the other and the happier way. And when these tireless canteen workers were not serving coffee and buns at all hours of the night they were giving their days to visiting the wounded Amer- icans in the neighboring hospitals. A strange coincidence came of this double duty. When one of the troop-trains from Liverpool, loaded with American soldiers bound for France, pulled up in the Midland Railway station in Bir- mingham and the men scurried out for canteen service, one of the youngsters said to a Red Cross worker that he had a brother who was brigaded with a British division at the front and had been sent back, badly wounded, to a hos- pital somewhere near Birmingham. He wanted to know, even if it was sort of foolish to ask such a thing, whether anybody there in the canteen knew anything about this brother of his, how he was getting along, and whether any word could be sent to him that his brother had passed through Birmingham on the way to the line. The young woman of whom he inquired knew that one 138 THE PASSING LEGIONS of her co-workers had been visiting Americans that day and called her over. Did she know anything about a Ser- geant X-----? Surely she did, she had seen him, talked with him, he was getting well so rapidly that he'd be out of hospital in about a week. And she was going to see him again to-morrow and she'd take him any message his brother wished to send. " Gee, Sister, but wasn't it lucky to have asked ? " CHAPTER VIII A DRAMA IN FINANCE* THE enthusiastic commander of an American military station in England said one day: " The Red Cross over here is nothing less than the Genie of Aladdin's Lamp. We simply rub the Lamp and the Red Cross instantly ap- pears from somewhere with what we need! " But the Genie who served even Aladdin's extravagant bidding had a political sinecure compared with the Red Cross Genie's job! Aladdin had only one lamp; the Genie to whom the officer so artfully referred was the Spirit of twice ten thousand lamps! They were scattered the length and breadth of Great Britain, in every head- quarters, in every camp, hospital and rest station, ship and base-port; there was one in the kit of every American soldier who set foot in the British Isles — an army of Aladdins — and only one Genie! Why, comparing mileage alone, it makes the Arabian spook appear as if he had never left home! As the needs of a great body of men under arms are many and peculiar, multiplying with inevitable illness and the hazards of battle, never a day passed that some one was not rubbing a bright spot on his Lamp. The re- quests ranged from a pack of cigarettes to a complete hos- pital equipment — including the hospital itself! The Red Cross Genie often had to think quickly and act at once because with one delay his reputation was lost. Countless times during his service in Great Britain his superhuman powers were tried, but, perhaps, never more notably than through the rub given to the Lamp which had been allotted to the office of Colonel H, F. Rethers, the Chief Quartermaster, at American Army Headquarters in London. It was Colonel Rethers himself who adminis- 139 140 THE PASSING LEGIONS tered the rub and it happened on the morning of the 19th of November, 1918, eight days after the signing of the Armistice. As a mere rub it differed not at all from innumerable others and no man living could have dreamed what was to come of it. But in that moment was begun a drama as fantastic as an Arabian Night's tale of treasure chests and as grotesquely human as rough hilarity and mute wretch- edness, shoulder to shoulder on the stage, could make it. There was no time for rehearsal; with one rub the curtain rose and the play was on, with its vast stage and its legion of players. It involved the richest financial institutions of England in a search for long hidden treasure. It hur- ried trusted messengers to ransack bank vaults and started a veritable procession of taxicabs through the streets of London to transport the wealth they yielded. It sent lone women on midnight journeys from city to city with tens of thousands of dollars concealed in their simple hand- bags. It brought more than a quarter of a million dol- lars in an iron-bound, piratical looking chest from far America. Its scenes were set in divers places and covered many days from dawn till almost dawn again. It conjured a grinning joke to the lips of a regiment of men as they took their cues and came from the wings, and, with swift tears, dimmed the eyes of many who had their allotted parts to play. This, in brief, was the drama, of an instant's creation, which came of the simple rub. What was the reason for it ? It lay in the twisted wad of English bills in an Ameri- can soldier's pocket, in the guarded shillings, warm in their cotton bag around the neck of a helpless American soldier on his cot, in a bounden duty to an army of Ameri- cans who awaited the troopships which were to bear them home again. So much for the argument; now for the Genie's entrance and the play: A DRAMA IN FINANCE 141 When Colonel Rethers gave the rub the Genie responded, fortunately accompanied by Major Foster Rockwell — a famous Yale quarter-back in 1902, by the way — who was Director of the Red Cross Department of Military Re- lief. What Colonel Rethers had to say was this: "A large number of our troops is to be sent home as soon as possible. Orders have come that they are to be paid in American currency before they leave. This office has no American money; it has had to pay the men in English pounds, shillings and pence. It isn't quite fair to them that they should have to take this home for ex- change. Will not the Red Cross undertake, through its organization in the field, its conversion into American money for every man who is under orders to return to the States?" It was a " facer," to say the least of it, particularly as the Chief Quartermaster announced that on the very next day his department would pay off about three thou- sand men at Knotty Ash Camp, near Liverpool, before their embarkation. " I shall issue orders," he added, as if to lighten the task, " that not more than two pounds are to be exchanged for any individual, and none for officers." Prompted by a nudge from the Genie, Major Rockwell said, without the quiver of an eyelash, that the Red Cross could and would undertake the conversion and be on the job at once. He knew the Genie. While the affair was clearly one of Camp Service and in his jurisdiction Major Rockwell had to invoke the aid of the Red Cross Financial Department, that well-spring of benefits deserved. So he hurried across Grosvenor Gardens and laid his problem on the desk of Captain Howard L. Bridges, its Director. Captain Bridges, who speaks almost as quietly as he listens, reached for his telephone and called up a great London bank. " How much do you think we'll need ? " Rockwell in- quired as they awaited the response. 142 THE PASSING LEGIONS " All we can get," Bridges replied, slowly. " This business is going to last for months." " When do you intend to start it ? " " To-morrow morning." Then came the answering ring and Bridges had the manager on the wire. " This is the American Red Cross. Please send us at once all the American money, small bills — ones, twos and fives and all the silver coin, that you can spare. We'll take all you can give us, at the current rate, from 4.76 to 4.78. . . . What? ... All right, but send it up in a taxi, and hurry it along, please." A second bank, a third, a fourth were called in the same way and each was urged to hasten its delivery by cab. " The procession ought to begin pretty soon," Bridges said quietly as he hung up the receiver on the last call. The first of the cabs did arrive within twenty-five minutes after the appeal was flashed out and before the end of banking hours that day more than thirty-two thou- sand dollars in American bills and silver had been laid upon Captain Bridge's desk. And such a collection of paper and coin it was! Many of the bills were of issues unfamiliar and long superseded and the silver included the half-dime pieces of a bygone day and even the diminutive three-cent coins of silver and of nickel which are treasured in cases of collectors. Late in the afternoon when Rock- well telephoned to inquire what success he had had Bridges replied: " Oh, about enough to open a country bank, but most of it looks as if it had come out of the Ark! And I've just had word from a broker here that he has located fifteen thousand for us in Liverpool. That'll probably be in shin plasters. Anyhow, we've scraped up more than thirty thousand dollars already. We can start on that, I guess." While the taxicabs were arriving Bridges busied him- self figuring out the rate at which the money should be ex- A DRAMA IN FINANCE 143 changed. Many soldiers, he knew, had unwisely accepted $4.75 on the pound sterling. The London banks were offering from $4.76 to $4.78, but the fact that there were no American pennies to be found in England made either of the bank rates impossible for the Red Cross. So, in order to obviate any criticism, any suggestion of money making by the transaction, Bridges decided upon a fixed rate of $4.80. It entailed a slight loss, of course, but one which obviously did not fall upon the men. This question settled, he had his staff of assistants work out and tabulate the American equivalent for every sum from a penny to a hundred pounds. Then it occurred to him that doubtless many of the men who had been at the front would still have French money in their pockets and wish this also converted. So a set of tables was prepared as to centimes and francs. These, with the bundles of money constituted the necessary paraphernalia; the ques- tion now was to get it to Liverpool. Fortunately, there was a sleeper train from London, due to reach the port at 6 o'clock in the morning. The bills and coin were stowed in two leather attache boxes, which are not unlike the cases a far-traveling country doctor takes with him on his rounds, and given to Lieutenant James V. Malcolm, the Red Cross Comptroller, and Mrs. Sybil de G. Elsee, the cashier, with no more than the broad instruction that they were to " go to Liverpool and change the money for the soldiers." All the details of the task were left to their own devices. " Get whatever help you can. I'll rush the American money down to you as fast as it comes in," Bridges said by way of good-by. That no sleeping accommodations were obtainable on this always crowded midnight train made no difference; Malcolm and Mrs. Elsee, with their precious boxes, squeezed into a day compartment — and sat up all night in sleepless vigil. Now to leave them in their discomfort and return to 144 THE PASSING LEGIONS Captain Bridges for a moment. Early next morning he took the telephone book in his lap and began calling up all the remaining banks, the express companies and every exchange broker in London with an insatiable demand for American money. And again the taxicab procession started, this time bringing in nearly forty thousand dol- lars. On the following day, and for many days thereafter, the delivery went on, the great financial houses of London practically stripping their vaults of American currency. As soon as a sufficiently large sum was collected each day at Captain Bridges' office, it was packed into attache cases and hurried to Liverpool by the night express. Now and then instead of the actual money, a note would come from some bank to say that it was expediting matters by sending its own messenger to a Liverpool branch with fifty or sixty thousand American dollars. So successful was Captain Bridges' quest that in seven days it yielded nearly two hundred thousand dollars in London alone. In addition to this he was notified that large sums had been collected by Liverpool banks, some of the money coming even from Glasgow, and been placed at the disposal of the Red Cross. At the same time, the busy Chief Quartermaster's office informed him of its in- tent to pay other bodies of men who, likewise, " would appreciate the exchange." This was convincingly corroborative of the magnitude that the conversion enterprise was to attain and as Bridges knew he must soon exhaust the British supply of American currency, he cabled headquarters in Washington to dis- patch three hundred thousand dollars in bills by the first available steamer. It arrived by the Ceramic on the 9th of December in a formidable wooden chest weighing (some people dote on figures!) four hundred pounds. It was well that it came when it did — thanks again to the Genie — for so constant was the demand that by the first of the year at Liverpool alone, a half a million dollars had been paid out to the returning soldiers in exchange for their A DRAMA IN FINANCE 145 equivalent in English and French moneys. Some of the men even proffered Dutch and Belgian money and this, too, to their surprise, was converted for them. From Liverpool, the activity was swift in extending to Southampton, Portsmouth and Winchester, to Dartford, Paignton and Tottenham, Sarisbury Court and Mossley Hill, to every hospital and rest camp in England at which American soldiers were waiting on the eve of their em- barkation for home. How active it really was is clearly conveyed in the fact that as much as forty thousand dol- lars were exchanged in a single day at one camp. The work required eventually the services of every as- sistant Captain Bridges could spare from his department, most of them young women, and of many Red Cross men already on duty at the camps and hospitals. It neces- sitated alertness, patience and kindliness unlimited and, in its beginnings, no small share of hardship. It was far from pleasant to work from early morning until long past dinner time with only a bite of biscuit and a cup of luke- warm tea for luncheon, nor was there one ounce of bodily comfort in sitting up all night in a lonesome hotel room to guard a leather case heavy with money. Yet the young women from the Comptroller's office did this many times and afterwards laughed when they told of it. One of them became so utterly worn out with her long vigils that one night she took her case, with its three thousand dol- lars' worth of English and American currency, to bed with her —" and was kept awake all night long by the beastly thing!" They were a plucky lot, these young women upon whom great responsibilities and the necessity for something closely akin to real courage were suddenly thrust. Alone, without even another woman to bear them company, pro- tected only by their Red Cross uniforms, they carried large sums of money — sixty-two thousand dollars was the nerve racking bundle entrusted to one of them on an all night railway journey! — from London to distant American 146 THE PASSING LEGIONS camps. But they " carried on " through it all — through the watchfulness and weariness the work exacted, the lone- someness and apprehension of traveling, and the dragging weight of their money cases which, though it sometimes reached forty pounds could not be relinquished either to railway porters or to courteous fellow travelers but must be borne to the journey's end. Nor were they without ad- ventures of a milder sort. A motor car bringing two of them back to London from Dartford with twenty thou- sand dollars' worth of English notes and silver they had received in exchange came to a dead stop at night on Black- heath. The knowledge each possessed that here was where the worthies of Dick Turpin's ilk used to make the occu- pants of passing coaches " stand and deliver " did not add to their cheerfulness when the chauffeur started on a mile walk for the nearest gasoline. But they rolled their precious packet in a robe, put their feet on it and talked about the weather until he returned. It was hours after midnight when they reached London and as there was nothing else to do with the money they took it home and sat up with it until the bank opened. This deserved tribute to the several self-reliant young women of Captain Bridges' staff must be extended also to the men of the Red Cross who worked beside them. For they too shared the discomforts as well as the respon- sibilities and to all of them is due the great success of the enterprise. And it was a success in its every de- tail of intended helpfulness. In the first three months of its activity, it exchanged three quarters of a million dol- lars for the home-bound men and was equipped to go on as far beyond a million as any demand might necessitate. It added in no small way to their comfort and, to many, was a far more tangible token of their home-going than the official order which set their faces westward. Colonel Rethers, frank in his appreciation of the ac- complishment, said to the writer: " It meant more to the army than I can express to you. A DRAMA IN FINANCE 147 And how the Red Cross accomplished it simply amazes me, for when the emergency arose I tried everywhere in the London market to get American money, with the result that I collected a few thousand dollars, a trifling sum in view of the great amount so urgently needed. But the Red Cross, at a moment's notice, tapped a money stream which has proved inexhaustible. It was wonderful, to say the very least of it! " As a matter of cold, hard business, if one can look at it in that way, it has been more than satisfactory, for the fixed rate of exchange is obviously in favor of the men. As an example of prompt helpfulness it is just what the Red Cross has been to the men of the army in all of its undertakings." And now to hark back to Lieutenant Malcolm and Mrs. Elsee who, by this time — for their train was two hours late! — have reached Liverpool with their precious money bags. There awaiting them at Knotty Ash Camp on the edge of the city, were fourteen thousand American soldiers, their pay in uninspiring English money heavy in their pockets, their eyes on the troopships impatient to embark them. They were men of the Aero Squadrons and the first to be ordered home in the dismantling of the great military machine America had erected in Britain. Abundant promise, indeed, of a busy task and, with every man's ex- change allowance set at two pounds, the exhaustion of the thirty-two thousand dollars unmistakably in sight! But, cheered by the knowledge that more money would arrive on the morrow, Malcolm and Mrs. Elsee installed themselves in the Red Cross storehouse of the camp and set to work. They commandeered the services of all the available Red Cross men on detail there, placed two long tables to form an aisle in the storehouse, laid the money out on them in convenient piles, and announced that they were ready to begin business. The news that the Red Cross was opening a " Dollar 148 THE PASSING LEGIONS Exchange " spread by " camp wireless " to every quarter of the reservation and hundreds- of men came flocking to it. Under the supervision of their officers they were formed in a queue with instructions to enter at one door, pass between the tables in two lines with their money ready,— not more than two pounds, understand ? — and then go out as quickly as they could by the other. Although they came tramping into the storehouse eagerly enough as soon as the doors were opened, it was as quickly evident that blind faith had brought a great many of them. These, always perplexed by England's quaint and incon- venient money system, had been told that they would secure 4.80 from the Red Cross, whatever that meant, and they were willing to " let it go at that." They did not bother, half the time, to count the money they presented. A soldier would stop before one of the workers, toss down whatever his pocket contained of crumpled bills and silver and say: " I don't know how much that is in Honest to God money, but give it to me, just the same! " An- other, with more of reminiscence than finance in his heart, would exclaim, as he smoothed out his ten-shilling notes, " Gimme just two of those good old long green ones an' you can keep the change! These soap wrappers don't mean a thing to me! " And still another, fairly beaming, would confess, as he gathered up his share, " Well, this is the best thing I've bought since I've been in England, and I'm going to take it home to my girl for a souvenir! " The arrangement of the tables and the number of Red Cross workers pressed into service made it possible to do the exchanging on both sides of the aisle and for eight men at once, so the line was kept in reasonably constant move- ment. Each process of exchange, however, meant count- ing the money proffered — this frequently complicated by the worn, wrinkled state of the bills — reference, to the rate table and then the counting out of the American equivalent. As speed was a desideratum, no time could be spared to separate the English money into its denomina- A DRAMA IN FINANCE 149 tions. It was thrown, bills and silver together, a rag- man's jumble, into rough wooden sugar boxes on the floor, as fast as it was received. " That's the place for it, all right, all right," said a corporal as he saw it tossed away. " I never could get the hang of the darned stuff, anyhow." And, catching up the familiar bills of his own country, he kissed them with a resounding smack. " Oh, Baby, come to your Poppa! " The mere sight of the American money was electric in its effect. The men in the oncoming line craned their necks to give it slangy greeting and grinned and joked over it as they shuffled out, rustling the Treasury notes beneath one another's noses. " You can quit kiddin' your- self now, Shorty; you've got some real money — that's right, feel 'em, Bo; feel 'em — now you know you're go- ing home, don't you ? " There was little apparent interest, at least in those first moments, in the amount they had received, every- thing else being quite secondary to their actual posses- sion of money that " talked" to them in a voice they had not heard for many months. The restriction of ex- change to two pounds for each man bothered them not at all, and for good reason. They simply took their places again in the queue and presented themselves and an- other two pounds when their turns came! And so on, to the very bottom of their pockets. While this solved a problem for the men there came a time that day when it created almost a financial panic in the storehouse. Just after noon it was discovered that at this rate of business the American dollars would last prob- ably an hour longer. And then what, with a line of ex- pectant men stretching a hundred yards from the door- way? Money from London was out of the question; money from somewhere was an absolute necessity — and at once! Mrs. Elsee, desperately busy at one of the tables, sud- denly jumped up, pushed what remained of her dwindling 150 THE PASSING LEGIONS pile to the worker nearest her and darted out of the storehouse. Around the corner a Red Cross driver was tinkering with his car. Mrs. Elsee ran to him and said, in .the haste of deadly earnest, " Please do that after you get back, but take me now as fast as you can to the biggest bank in Liverpool. I've got to get some money for the men." Twenty minutes later at Parr's Bank she startled the foreign exchange manager out of years of unruffled calm by the headlong announcement: " I want all the American money you have "— and then —" How much have you ? " The manager put on his glasses, took them off again and replied, " Well — er — that is, I mean to say, we have — er — about thirty-five thousand dollars, but —" " I want it all, then — and you'll let me have it just as quickly as you can, won't you ? " Mrs. Elsee beamed at him. " Yes, I see, but — to be quite regular, you know — what kind of money do you wish to give in exchange — or do you wish to deposit securities for the amount ? It's quite large, you know." He joined the tips of his fingers and beamed back at her. " I haven't any money at all to give in exchange," Mrs. Elsee explained in the high note of despair, " and I didn't have time to bring any securities. But I must have the money. It's for the American soldiers who are going home! " " Ah, yes, but," and on went the eye glasses for emphasis, " we don't give out money, thirty-five thousand dollars, for example, to — that is — to any young lady who chances to ask for it. It isn't done, I assure you." He smiled through the wicket in both friendliness and finality. " I'm afraid you don't understand," Mrs. Elsee per- sisted. " I'm a member of the American Red Cross — we're changing the English money for the men at Knotty Ash. It isn't for me, you know. I'll pay you for it to- A DRAMA IN FINANCE 151 morrow. It's for the American Red Cross. Please let me have it." " On what security ? " the banker asked, his eyebrows high over his glasses. " This," Mrs. Elsee replied, touching the Red Cross badge on her shoulder strap. " And my receipt for it," she added. The manager, intrigued into a smile, pondered a moment, his keen eyes searching her face. Then, with- out so much as another question, he told her that the bank would be very glad indeed to give her the thirty-five thou- sand dollars, and would she be kind enough to affix her name to a receipt for the amount ? Mrs. Elsee, in whose ears the impatient throbbing of the car at the door had never ceased to beat, caught up the bit of paper upon which the still smiling official hastily penned the date and the amount, and signed in the name of the American Red Cross what was in all likelihood the most remarkable receipt for money ever accepted by an English bank. And in another twenty minutes, with the precious money under her arm, she was back in the Red Cross storehouse. " It's all right, I've got it! " she cried out cheerily as she dumped it down on a table and tore off the wrappings. " Now we can change all the money you boys have," she announced to the soldiers, adding, with a wise smile, " After this you'll not have to get in line two or three times! " And the laugh that followed convicted at least five men in the room. Until 7 o'clock that evening the exchanging went on unceasingly. By that time the litter of money was deep in the sugar boxes and marked inroads had been made upon the mounds of American bills and silver on the tables. More than four thousand men — by an officer's estimate — had passed through the exchange and they had taken out with them just a little less than forty-one thousand American dollars. 152 THE PASSING LEGIONS The Red Cross workers " shut up shop " for the day by squeezing the pound and ten-shilling notes and British silver indiscriminately into empty " Comfort bags " and, with the remaining American currency stowed in the at- tache cases, started wearily for their hotel. The day's work, however, was by no means at an end. There re- mained, after dinner, the tedious task of separating and counting the rag-bag of English money. This was done in the bedroom of one of the workers and required four hours of monotonous labor. And, as a further impost, the one chosen to guard the accumulated treasure had to sleep as best he could with one eye open. But, bright and early next morning, the " Dollar Ex- change " was in action again, with another and even longer queue of eager soldiers stretching away from its door. For this day's requirement there was ample provi- sion of funds, as Captain Bridges, eternally at it in London, had gathered in sixty-two thousand dollars more and hurried it to Knotty Ash by Miss Marjorie Taylor, one of the staff of his department. Miss Taylor, who de- clared her conviction that every one in the train knew exactly what she had in her leather case and only awaited her dropping off to sleep, delivered her charge with a pro- found sigh. " Now," she said, " I can draw my first deep breath for six hours! " As the work went on the flow of money increased, the Liverpool banks contributing their large share and bring- ing the amount collected from all sources in a single day, the 21st of November, to more than seventy-three thou- sand dollars — and this was only the third day of the new enterprise! Under the inspiration of such success, the Red Cross exchange at once took on not only the conversion of all the money the soldiers had, but of the officers' pay as well and the cashing of Quartermaster and personal cheques, bank drafts and American, English, and Inter- national money orders. The storehouse had become a A DRAMA IN FINANCE 153 bank! Instead of proffering two pounds the men now came forward with thirty or forty pounds apiece in some instances, and received their equivalent in American money. And whenever it was learned that a soldier, through detachment from his unit and consequent failure to receive pay, was going back with empty pockets, he was told by the Red Cross that his signature was good for five dollars if he wished them, and that he could return the money after he reached home and " got everything straightened up." As a token of the unquestioning trustfulness with which this entire service was received, many officers and men who had bank accounts in England drew cheques for the balances due them in the name of one or another of the Red Cross workers in the exchange, merely asking that the money be collected, converted, and forwarded to them in America. A number of them signed cheques in blank,-un- certain as to the exact amount which remained banked to their credit. If, on the other hand, they wished these personal cheques cashed at once, it was done without hesi- tation. No service of any kind could have been broader or more considerate; certainly none was more appreciated. It was in the second day of its unfolding at Knotty Ash, that this magic drama, played until then in so high and dominating a key of comedy, struck sharply away from it and all its noisy movement. The three troop- ships, Lapland, Minnekahda, and Mauretania, then lying in readiness at their piers in Liverpool, were to take back to America not only the men who had filled the storehouses with their jesting and laughter, but a long roster of sick and wounded, many of them helpless in their cots. These, to the capacity of the transports, had been told off from the hospitals at Tottenham, Dartford, Sarisbury Court, Paignton, Hursley Park, and Mossley Hill and brought with all reasonable haste to Knotty Ash where they were to have a brief rest before the voyage. Those among them who were " walking cases," that is, 154 THE PASSING LEGIONS convalescents from illness or from wounds or operations — for a number belonged to units which had been brigaded with the British on the Western Front — could, and did, go to the storehouse for the exchange of their pounds and shillings. But there were many, less fortunate in the chances of war, the men in their cots, to whom this was an immediately recognized impossibility. As the obliga- tion to them was even greater than to the others, a detail was chosen from the " Dollar Exchange " staff and sent with an ample equipment of American money, to make the rounds of the hospital wards. Then it was, for these players at least, that all the drama changed in an instant. Instead of the dusty storehouse and the hilarious soldier crew with its rough drolleries, its joyous profanity at faring home and its endless tramp^ tramp of heavy boots between the busy tables, here was the sudden silence of long, clean rooms wherein men lay motionless on their cots, the very remembrance of move- ment challenged by their bandages, and all of them heavy eyed with the weariness of pain and monotony; no sounds about them save a nurse's quiet voice, the tinkle of a glass, her guarded footfall and the rustle of her skirt as she passed. When, into the first of the wards, the Red Cross workers came and the men were told of their errand, there was a stirring that ran like a whisper through the room and then — but the story comes best from a woman who was there: " What -an unforgettable day that was! It went so deep into my heart that I — Oh, yes, I cried, and it wasn't because I was a woman, either. Ask the men who went around from cot to cot, I know they felt it just as I did. Many times after that I went to other hospitals to change money for the men and always with a lump in my throat, but I shall never forget that first day. _ " We had decided that there would be much less like- lihood of confusion or error if we went to each man in- A DRAMA IN FINANCE 155 dividually, so two of us, one for each line of cots, took the first ward while the others were sent elsewhere. " On the cot at which I started in was a youngster — he was from New Jersey, I think — whose gray, drawn face was so woefully at odds with the smile he gave me that I hadn't the heart to begin on the cold-blooded, how- much-dc-you-want money business. So I said to him: " ' I'm glad you're going home so soon, aren't you ?' " ' Indeed I am, Sister,' he answered — they always call us ' Sister,' you know —' even though I'm taking home one less leg than I brought over. But that's all right. Some fellows I used to know won't ever go home! ' " I knew then it was high time I got to work, so I opened my bag and he began fumbling under his pillow. " ' I don't think I'm going to give you much trouble,' he said with a funny little twist to his mouth as he drew out a flattened cigarette package with a rubber band about it. ' I've only got a couple of pounds and some shillings! ' " His deep eyes watched as I unfolded the packet and counted it out, and when I handed the American money to him — and I gave as much of it as I could in one dollar bills for a childish reason which you can easily guess — he spread it in his thin hands and exclaimed, ' Gee, Sister, but these look like letters from home!' " As I got up to go, because there were many others waiting and I had seen them looking so eagerly at me, he slid a hand furtively across the bedclothes and thrust a ten- cent piece into my fingers. ' Keep that for yourself,' he whispered and, even though my eyes filled, I saw him wink at me. The coin ? — Yes, I kept it; I've got it still. It would have hurt him — and me too — to have given it back. " As I went from cot to cot I might have been a Fairy Godmother for the reception given to me. The men were so delighted over the actual, tangible money, truly a homely message to every one of them, that I began to hear them calling to one another down the line, their troubles for a 156 THE PASSING LEGIONS time forgotten. 11 didn't think it would last till you got to me, Sister; that guy in the next cot is sure some miser,' was, phrased in a dozen ways, a favorite greeting as I came to them. One of the men, who brought his money from a letter pinned to the breast of his pajamas, confided to me that ' anybody who could change that stuff into sure enough money was his friend for life.' He was from Iowa, he said, and I hope he'll remember me as long as I shall remember him. " Almost at the end of the range of cots I came upon a sergeant, an older man with a face the more rugged for the new lines in it and these the deeper now with his smil- ing. He lay with the bed coverings in undisturbed, un- wrinkled folds close beneath his chin. " ' Well, we're going home, aren't we, Sister ?' he asked, turning his head slowly toward me. ' Do you know when ?' he continued as I nodded. ' I hear I'm booked for the Lapland.' " I told him she was all ready and would probably leave in a day or two. ' Say, that's fine, isn't it ?' he went on, ' 'cause I've got some folks over there who'll be mighty glad to see me. You married, Sister? No? J got a wife! Yep, looks something like you, too — I'm not kid- ding you. She's got brown hair just like yours. Staying with her people just outside of Pittsburgh 'til I get home.' " He was so like others, eager to talk about anything to one of his own country, delighted to break the monotony of endless hours. I knew he would keep me there in- definitely, so I swung my money bag before me and took out a handful of bills. " ' I know you'll want to take some of these home with you,' I said, leading the way to business, for a man in the next cot was making obvious signs to me with an old black pocketbook. " ' You bet! ' he replied, with a bright smile. ' They're just what the doctor ordered! ' " I waited for him to unearth from somewhere the little A DRAMA IN FINANCE 157 package of his guarded money, but he was evidently think- ing of other things, because now he was not looking either at me or at the magnetic bills I held. Then something, my silence, perhaps, drew his face toward me. ' Oh, yes, the money,' he said. ' I forgot. I guess you'll have to help me, Sister,' he went on, ' 'cause I can't move. I've only got one arm and I've lost my other hand, and —,' he hesitated; — I knew now why he had not held out a hand to me in greeting as the rest had done when I came up — ' and if it isn't any trouble, you'll find the money round my neck — just pull that string up, Sister.' " He put his head to one side and I found the string and drew up a little bag made of the palm of an old kid glove. " ' There you are! That was easy, wasn't it ?' he laughed. ' There ought to be six or seven pounds in it, and some other things. Dump 'em out.' " I emptied the bag on the cot — seven pounds and eight shillings, a pair of silver cuff buttons and, wrapped in a torn bit of tissue paper, a small gold brooch set with an amethyst. And all of them warm from their contact with him. " While I was counting out the American money due him I could feel his eyes upon my face. Of the hundreds for whom I had done this service he was the first whose sole attention was not upon the transaction. As I folded the bills and was about to tuck them into the bag he stopped me. " ' Wait a minute, Sister — you certainly do look like my girl — what's your name ? — will you tell me ?' " I told him and, quite unconnectedly, he said, nodding toward the bag, ' That's a dandy pin, isn't it ?' and, with- out awaiting my answer, he added, as if to give the trinket greater value, ' I bought it off a British Tommy up near Cambrai — it would look mighty good on you, Sister — how would you like to have a pin like that ?' He smiled with a great expectancy. '— Something to remember —' 158 THE PASSING LEGIONS " I suppose I gulped, as I did over the ten-cent piece, but I cut him short. It wasn't pleasant to see the smile die on his lips, when I swore to him that I had a brooch almost exactly like it, even to the amethyst, but it was the only thing I could think to say. He helped me out after an uncomfortable pause with, ' That's too bad, Sister, I'm sorry — but never mind, put 'em all back — and thanks — it's good to be going home, isn't it ? — even the way I'm going —!' " I touched his cheek just a moment in an answer I hope he understood and tucked the bag about his neck and went on my way with another lump in my throat. " For all the heart-wrenching it gave me, it was wonder- ful to go down that line of men and talk with them and help them. Money-changing may seem a strange form of hospital ministration, but I feel that every dollar I took with me did its bit and was veritable medicine to those un- fortunates. And I can tell you that, time and time again, it was all I could do to match their brave cheerfulness. I paid as much out of my heart as I did out of my money case. " The last boy of all was shadow-thin. He looked like an Italian. His eyes were burning in his dark face. As soon as I was beside him he clutched my hand in both of his and half rose from his pillow. A nurse, who had paused for a moment at the foot of his cot, came behind me and put her hand to his forehead, gently pressing him back. ' You're better to-day, aren't you ?' she asked, giving his pillow a pat-pat. ' You'll be all right in no time! ' And, as she went by me again she whispered in sick-room code, ' Excitable — been terribly ill — typhoid — bundle of nerves.' " ' What did she say, Miss ?' he asked me in quick sus- picion as the nurse went out. " ' Only that you were getting well,' I replied, and I felt his clasp tighten as I started to draw my hand away. " l Am I, Sister ? — I dunno,— I don't feel right, some- A DRAMA IN FINANCE 159 how!' He looked up at me in bewilderment. ' The doctor says I'm doing fine. I don't hear the guns any more.' " ' Yes, and you're going home, too,' I assured him, this time disengaging my hand and opening my horribly material money case. " I know I am.' He stopped and looked about to see if any one listened, then added in a low voice, ' But somehow I don't feel like I'm ever going to get there —' " Why, of course you are! ' I exclaimed with all the conviction I could muster, for I knew he believed what he said. l And you're going to take home some real money, too — the kind you know all about!' " This formula had never failed of its interest, especially when I simultaneously produced a packet of bills. But the boy didn't take it in just the way I hoped. " ' Yes, I want to talk to you about that,' he said thoughtfully. ' I've got some money here'— he drew a rubber tobacco pouch from under the covers and put it in my hand —' but I'm not going to take it with me — I want you to send it home for me — you understand, don't you ? — If I don't get home, that will — see ? — I got a mother home.' " There was a wistfulness and an earnestness in the request against which I couldn't prevail, however I argued with him. His worn pouch held nearly fourteen pounds, and when I had exchanged them he would take only a few dollars, all the rest were to be sent to America. So I wrote down the directions as he gave them to me and put them with his money. As I moved away from him he hung tight to my hand and suddenly drew it down and kissed it — and when I took it away there was a tear on the back of it. I glanced over my shoulder as I hurried to the doorway, but everything was so blurred I couldn't see him. I never did see him again but he got home safely. I know that because his mother wrote to thank me for — well, for nothing at all." 160 THE PASSING LEGIONS It required the greater part of the day to complete the rounds of the hospital wards and then the workers went back, with no little relief, to the comedy of the storehouse which had been playing merrily on in their absence. A broad canvas sign, " American Red Cross Dollar Ex- change," was now hung on the outer wall and an additional exchange table set up for business beneath it. Orders had been issued that the Lapland, the first troopship to sail from England home-bound after the Armistice, must cast off on the morning of November 24 and the Minnekahda and Mauretania as soon as possible thereafter. This made it necessary to rush the exchange work and it was done with such dispatch that when the Lapland put off on the appointed day with the Minnekahda an hour astern of her and the Mauretania on the following morning, every soldier aboard them had had his money changed and was at ease on that score at least. As the work grew, the burden of carrying the money back and forth between the camp and the hotel in town grew with it until the Manager of the Foreign Depart- ment of Parr's Bank in Liverpool came to the rescue with the generous offer of a safe. This was transported to the storehouse and Lieutenant Colonel Launcelot M. Pur- cell, Q. M. C, the army officer in command at Knotty Ash, provided a night sentry detail to guard it. Also he invited the women workers in the exchange to the officers' mess for luncheon and put a happy end to their biscuit- and-cold-tea makeshift even if he did create something of a sensation in the mess. The comedy of the exchange received a decided fillip when a negro labor battalion arrived. It was a happy-go- lucky crowd until the question of money arose, and then the men were caution itself, even while they joked over it. Very few were inclined to offer at once all the money they had. Perhaps they wanted to sample, as it were, the services of the exchange before committing themselves. Perhaps they preferred that the next man in line should A Xew Use for a Building in Southampton Nine Hundred Years Old A DRAMA IN FINANCE 161 not know their exact financial status, for sheer human curiosity invariably prompted every man to watch his neighbor's transaction. At any rate, most of them began by laying down ten shillings or a pound, as if they were buying an admission ticket, and when the Red Cross worker had made the exchange, which the recipients duly counted and stowed away, out of another pocket would come another pound. Not infrequently four or five such installments would appear, each as an unexpected discovery and tendered with a wider grin. It augmented the work of the exchange people but more than once the comments it provoked from the waiting line were ample payment. One " customer " who held up the column while he ex- tracted bills and silver from his pockets, his cap, even his shoe, was asked by one behind him in a voice which almost broke in its pathos, " Say, man, is you bleedin' money ? " Another favorite habit among them was the presentation with their money of a slip of paper on which they had carefully worked out the exchange. But it was nearly always wrong and then usually to their own disadvantage. " Yaas, Miss — thanky, Miss. This here English 'rith- metic kinda bent under me, didn' it ? " While the aggregate of money in the battalion was not- ably high it was spread very thinly in places. Many of the men had only a few shillings while others offered as much as forty or fifty pounds. Noting this, as well as the comment of those near by when one of them offered for exchange nearly four hundred pounds, it was readily deducible that baseball was not the only American pastime which had been carried to England to flourish on her soil. " Oh, you bones! " This was the first of the illuminating comments on the four hundred pounds and it lighted the way for others in the waiting line. " He did n' shoot no Germans, but he cert'n'y did shoot ev'ybody else! " 162 THE PASSING LEGIONS " Nem-mind, we'll git dat nigger when he gits on de boat!" " Not me, boy; nosuh — any coon what can shoot de works and five twice — nosuh — not me! " The unperturbed object of all this folded and creased his American dollars with marked deliberation and tucked them deep in his pocket. Then he turned, looked down the line, and said in slow, fine scorn: " On de boat, hey ? Zasso ? Why that's when I'm g'on t'git de income tax outer you! " And he laughed himself all the way out of the storehouse. As the capacity of Knotty Ash was 40,000 men, other camps and hospitals " cleared " through it in returning their contingents to the States, so, for a long time, a con- stant stream of soldiers flowed in and out of the " Dollar Exchange." The numbers which arrived made such heavy demand upon the enterprise that in addition to the sums the London and Liverpool banking, express and brokerage houses were able to furnish, it was necessary to seek the aid of many Scotch, Welsh, and Irish financial concerns. Days in which the exchange amounted to forty thousand dollars were by no means uncommon. In the first six weeks of the existence of the " Dollar Exchange " at Knotty Ash alone, the transactions in American money totaled more than $450,850 ! It was when the troopships were about to sail that the exchange staff was put to its utmost effort, for its work had to be accomplished not only as quickly as possible but without interfering with the ordered routine of embarka- tion. The day before the Leviathan, once the boast of Germany's merchant marine, sailed from Liverpool on her first post-war voyage, it was necessary for the Red Cross workers to take their bags of money aboard and tour the decks in order to finish their task. Everything went well until it was discovered that two thousand naval avia- tion men had been marched to the ship without an oppor- tunity of having their English money changed. At that A DRAMA IN FINANCE 163 moment only seven thousand American dollars remained, so Lieutenant D. E. Shumaker, Auditor of the Red Cross, who had now taken charge of the exchange work at Knotty Ash, went on a dead run to Parr's Bank and " borrowed " twenty-three thousand dollars on an " I. 0. U." When he returned, the situation was further saved by Paymaster Harris of the ship, who lent his office to the Red Cross so that the soldiers and sailors might be formed in a queue and paid through his window. The Leviathan's company included 1,500 sick and wounded men, of whom more than a hundred were stretcher cases from hospitals in the Winchester area. These had been carried directly from their train to the ship and as soon as they were placed in the sick bay, two of the workers were sent below to go from cot to cot with the money cases. From noon, when the work was begun, the corps of cashiers kept at it until half-past eleven o'clock that night. Two armed men were then assigned to accompany the Red Cross party on its long journey to the hotel in the city and stayed there the night on guard. At 7.30 next morning, which was December 4, the little band hastened back to the ship and there found three of Paymaster Harris' assistants asleep on chairs in his office! They had volunteered to sit up all night in order to finish the work put aside when the office was so graciously lent to the Red Cross. The Leviathan sailed at 10.15 o'clock that day and only ten minutes before that time did the exchange workers close their bags and slip over the side. And one hundred and fifty dollars were all that remained of the thousands in American money they had taken aboard. But at least a week before the Leviathan put off the " Dollar Exchange" had outgrown Knotty Ash. The army, delighted with the success of this cooperation, had sent word that the men were to be paid off at other rest stations and hospitals, Tottenham, Dartford, Winchester, 164 THE PASSING LEGIONS Paignton, Portsmouth; " and would not the Red Cross, etc.— etc." Sometimes the request was supplemented by some such announcement as, " the men are to be paid off this afternoon as they sail at 4 o'clock to-morrow morn- ing." This allowed little enough time for all that had to be done, but with the arrival of three hundred thou- sand dollars in new $1, $2 and $5 bills in a stout box from America on December 9, the problem was much simplified. Incidentally, the box was held up for a time by the British Customs officials who cited against it a charge of seven and a half per cent of its value until they learned the destined use of the money, when it was immediately re- leased and forwarded to London. It arrived, fortunately, at a time in which the English supply of American cur- rency was almost exhausted. Now squads of cashiers could be dispatched post-haste in answer to every call from the Chief Quartermaster, visits were made to all the London hospitals and a general notice was issued that the " Dollar Exchange " in Red Cross Headquarters in Grosvenor Gardens was always " open for business." Officers and men on their way to France made frequent use of it and even one day a soldier came in to ask if he could buy a three-cent silver piece, " for a young lady's coin collection." The increased activities of the money exchange often meant long night or day journeys, both week days and Sun- days, at scarcely more than a moment's notice. But what- ever tasks the undertaking imposed, they were always per- formed with prompt cheerfulness, with no thought of self, even when they carried the workers into the contagion wards of hospitals, as they sometimes did. Too much cannot be said of the capable and altogether faithful serv- ice given by the young women of the Red Cross Depart- ment of Finance — Mrs. Elsee, Miss Taylor, Miss Christine Lefrere, Miss Kathleen King, Miss Queenie Haskins, Miss Winifred St. George, Miss Kathleen Challis A DRAMA IN FINANCE 165 — and of many others who did their so valuable share in making the " Dollar Exchange " a success. This chronicle would not be complete without reference to two other " adventures " of the Red Cross Finance De- partment. When the American troops were ready for dispatch to Archangel in the summer of 1918, Captain Bridges was asked if he wouldn't look about and get some Russian rubles for them. " I looked about," Captain Bridges said afterward in narrating the incident, " and it made me dizzy. The rate for rubles was going up and down like a slide trombone. The first day I took a look you could buy 268 rubles for ten pounds. When I looked again next day you could get 420! And, mind you, there were two kinds of rubles, the Kerensky kind, and the Imperials which the Bolsheviki used after blotting out the picture of the Czar. They kept going up and down quite independently of each other — it was like watching a juggler toss balls in the air. I kept close to the ground and when one came down I bought it. In this way I collected a mixture of 100,000 rubles and handed them over to the soldiers. They rather sniffed at them, but I knew they would be good in Archangel, that is, if the troops hurried! " The second episode deals with a box of Roumanian lei. When Lieutenant Colonel Henry W. Anderson, who is now Red Cross Commissioner to the Balkans, was Com- missioner to Roumania and had to hasten away from the uncertainties of life, liberty and Red Cross pursuits there, he managed to bring out a boxful of lei. This was turned over to the Red Cross in London for conversion into English money. The lei market was almost as frisky as that for rubles, the value dancing up and down on both sides of nineteen cents. Again Captain Bridges had to keep a weather eye cocked, and by watching the rate and 166 THE PASSING LEGIONS biding his time he was able eventually to dispose of the boxful for £120,000 — approximately $600,000 — but not before he had collected £2,000 in interest on it during its sojourn in the bank! " The American Red Cross has bought American dollars, French and Belgian francs, Danish kroner, Russian rubles, Dutch florins, Italian lire, and Roumanian lei! " Captain Bridges exclaimed one day. " And I'm only waiting now for some one to send in an order for Zulu cowries! " CHAPTER IX THE " SHEPHERD " AT LIVERPOOL WHEN men go forth to war they not infrequently return with wives. (See page 1, volume I of the history of any war.) In olden times they were brought home, either in chains — for there was nothing chic in be- ing wayward in those days — or else all smiles on gayly caparisoned steeds, caracoling beside their masters' charg- ers. At all events they were brought and some lived happily ever after. When the United States forces turned homeward from the battle regions of Europe, the custom was too well- recognized to be ignored. They followed it — with a variation; they did not bear their wives home, that is, not many. They sent for them. It was by reason of this modern amendment to a vener- able practice that the American Red Cross came to play an important role in behalf of a large number of the soldiers and sailors of our oversea legions. It did not furnish caparisoned palfreys, but it did supply smiles and smoothed the way for the far-faring of these wives to the husbands who awaited them in the States. In more than one instance it turned dismay into laughter and mirac- ulously proved that a five-pound note could appear among the few hoarded shillings tied in the corner of a tear-sodden handkerchief. The marriage of these soldiers and sailors was in- evitable, particularly among those remaining long at one encampment or station. And just as inevitable was the difficulty of getting the brides back to America. Rules were, of necessity, very rigid in such a matter. There 167 168 THE PASSING LEGIONS was no question of a man's right to marry, but the Gov- ernment insisted upon prescribing the terms upon which the new wife might join her husband. Permission for the married soldiers to take wives with them on their home- ward-bound transports was, as a practice, obviously out of the question. Nor could such soldiers obtain detach- ment from their returning units in order to sail by the transports which carried women. Therefore, the only course was to leave the problem in the hands of the Gov- ernment and pray for patience. The Government's kindly- intentioned reply was: " We'll send your wife to you as soon as a proper ship is available." So, willy-nilly, the soldiers and the sailors sailed away, all of them anxious, many quite in ignorance of the con- ditions the Government would impose and of the difficulties their wives were to face. It was a wretchedly unhappy situation for every one, but military and naval regula- tions are adamant. In agreement upon a common debarkation port for the wives of men of both services, the army and navy author- ities selected Liverpool, and then drew up the governing regulations. It was not intended that these should, in any instance, prove to be a hardship. Rather was it intended as a safeguard, to prevent deception and imposition. First of all, a woman claiming to be the wife of a soldier or sailor was required to produce indubitable proof of her marriage, in addition to her marriage certificate, and also establish the fact that her husband desired her with him in America. Thereafter, in turn, she must, if a British subject or other foreigner, register at the Alien Bureau, make a written or personal application at Army or Navy Headquarters in London for oversea transportation, show possession of at least five pounds sterling, with a total of funds sufficient to carry her to her destination in America, and finally apply to an American Consul for an emergency passport good for thirty days. Upon com- pliance with all these requirements she then received an THE " SHEPHERD " AT LIVERPOOL 169 order for transportation and finally assignment to a par- ticular ship. The authorities agreed to take all the young women to America passage-free, but exacted from them the payment of one dollar a day for maintenance during the voyage. As the greater number of these wives were girls, either still in their teens or just beyond them, who never before in their lives had been more than ten miles from home, the contemplation of a long journey to a strange country quite appalled them. Their dismay often robbed them even of simple intelligence. They were like lost and be- wildered children. It was a predicament for women and authorities alike. Perplexed and distraught by the ever-increasing com- plexities of the situation, the U. S. Naval Base at Liver- pool called upon the Red Cross one day late in February, 1919, to ask if it would not undertake the chaperonage of these frightened voyagers, help -and comfort them, do some- thing to make the task happier for every one. In re- sponse, Miss Byrd McFall, of Oklahoma, one of the Red Cross workers, a self-reliant, sisterly young woman, re- ported at Navy Headquarters in the Northwestern Hotel, ready to enlist the Red Cross as shepherd to the flock. At that time the only ships available for the transport of the " military wives" were the Plattsburg, Harris- burg, and Louisville. Later, however, in the middle of March, seventy-five were dispatched on the Aquitania and an equal number on the Kronprinz Friedrich Wilhelm. It was then possible to provide a ship about every ten days. The problem confronting the army as well as the navy, was how to care for wives when they either disobeyed in- structions and in their eagerness came to Liverpool far in advance of the designated sailing day or else, having re- ported in time, were compelled to endure a necessarily postponed sailing. Liverpool was crowded — every one was working at high-tension — the women were an added responsibility — it was a problem indeed. 170 THE PASSING LEGIONS When Miss McFall arrived at Navy Headquarters she found more than a dozen distressed brides. They were frightened, sad, excited, or dazed according to their natures and not one of them had the least idea of what to do for herself or with herself. The Naval officer who had sought the aid of the Red Cross delivered them into the worker's hands with a look that bespoke his dilemma. They were the wives of sailors already in America, they were to go as soon as possible aboard the Plattsburg, which was due to sail on the following morning — and couldn't something be done to cheer 'em up a bit ? As a matter of fact what that little party most needed just then was a woman and it was relieved to see one. The first task was to make sure that all papers were in order, all obligations fulfilled. The papers were in every way satisfactory, but when it came to the financial require- ment, there was the rub. Several of the women had only a few pounds, others less than a dozen shillings. They were to sail to-morrow, they were miles from home and friends, probably their pocket-books held all they had, all they could get anywhere. So at once the Red Cross stepped in with a tangible ministration; it offered to advance to each de- linquent a sufficient amount to bring her treasury to the stipulated sum of five pounds, the advance to be deemed a loan and receipted for as such. And with that the sun came out! Next in order was the collection of the luggage of the women, rarely more than a small hand bag for each of them, the proper labeling of it and the gathering up of the in- evitable small almost-left-behind bundles, and the squad was ready to move. It was a long journey to the steamship pier so the Red Cross engaged a trio of taxicabs, stowed the women and their baggage within and carried them off in comfort. Once aboard the transport, Miss McFall found there seven additional young women, the wives of soldiers, who had, somehow or other, managed for themselves. But only three of these had sufficient money for maintenance THE " SHEPHERD " AT LIVERPOOL 171 during the voyage and were in grave distress. But, to their amazement and delight, the Red Cross came to their aid as it had come to that of the others and the last difficulty was swept away. The efficiency with which the Red Cross managed this initial emergency and the amount of aid it was to the authorities resulted in placing all future arrivals under Red Cross care during their stay in Liverpool. In this way it was possible to obviate the confusion and errors into which these young women fell through sheer nervousness over their great adventuring. Also the Red Cross greatly facilitated the financial matter by making it possible for any sailoror soldier to arrange for a loan for his wife at the time of his own departure for America. Thus, whatever money she needed would be in readiness for her upon her arrival later at Liverpool. Of course not all of the women were in need of guidance or assistance, although the Red Cross took them safely aboard ship with the others, but everyone was asked to register her name and destination in the United States, as the names of all who sailed were im- mediately cabled to New York. There the travelers were met by the Red Cross, taken to comfortable quarters and later dispatched to their destinations. In every case a telegram was sent to the wife's new home giving news of her coming and the hour at which her train would arrive. So these women were under Red Cross care practically from the time they entered Liverpool until they crossed the threshold of the homes that awaited them in far America. For more complete and systematic shepherding of its charges, the Red Cross created a bureau at its Liverpool headquarters, No. 35 Dale Street, and there Miss McFall established herself. At first, when there were only a few applicants, it was possible to provide accommodations for them in hotels in the city. Later, however, it was neces- sary to obtain quarters for as many as forty at a time, and then the Red Cross set up a " home " or club in one of the non-wards of the Knotty Ash Camp Hospital on the out- 172 THE PASSING LEGIONS skirts of Liverpool. It was equipped to provide sleeping facilities for fifty women and furnished with a piano, music, books, newspapers and magazines — far more com- forting than a hotel room. It had the additional advantage of being directly opposite the Red Cross canteen and ar- rangements were made to provide meals for them there. But it was in the Dale Street room, rather than in the improvised camp " club," that one more clearly realized the Red Cross problem and the patient solution of it. It has been said, most of the hopeful voyagers were young women, but in some instances the soldiers or sailors had married widows, even with children. One such " bride " started for her husband with a brood of four, the eldest of which was five years old. Also a few of the young women had babies which their fathers, long since returned to America, had never seen. Two girls, who sailed on one of the voy- ages of the Louisville, had children six or eight months old born after their fathers had been invalided home. One baby was born on the Louisville in April, 1919. It was appropriately named " Louis " and presented with a purse of $350 made up on the ship. In the Dale Street bureau one morning, five young women were in the reception room, awaiting turn to be questioned by the Red Cross " Shepherdess" to make certain that their papers and all the rest of it were in ac- cord with regulations. It was difficult to look upon them as brides eager to be off to their liege-lords. They seemed, rather, to be waifs, lost in a great city. Now and then they talked together but always in low tones and with con- stant glances at doors and at their small valises and bundles. And every minute or two one of them would begin a hur- ried, agonized searching of every pocket and recess of her clothing. The lost was invariably found and proved to be a paper which, after perusal, was instantly transferred to another hiding place. A few minutes later the frenzied search would be begun all over again. There was no doubt that these women were a-quiver with nervousness. THE " SHEPHERD " AT LIVERPOOL 173 The reason for it was not obscure. They were young, unaccustomed to travel, save of the most limited kind, and, generally, possessed of only vague understanding of where they were to go and how. America was millions of miles away, across a great ocean; they were to be out of sight of land for days and days. It was quite enough to daunt these simple country girls, for that's what so many of them were. But, for all their apprehension, they had an admirable hardihood and determination to face anything if they might only get to their husbands in America. Suddenly the first girl was called to the desk in the ad- joining room. She started forward from her seat, drop- ping a bundle, picking it up, dropping another and break- ing into a laugh in which, for their own relief, all the others joined, as she passed out. She was of the type that is slender but strong, with bright, clear eyes, a ruddy English color and had evidently dressed herself with scrupulous care. The first questions she answered disclosed her husband's name, rank, and service, her own name before marriage and her home,— in the south of England. " You're an army girl, aren't you ? " She was asked by Miss McFall, who then requested all her papers. Imme- diately this necessitated the excited search of pockets and dress front. When the documents were found to be in mili- tary order, the questioning was resumed. The girl was go- ing to Chicago to meet her husband, she said. " What do you know about your husband ? " Her answer was, unfortunately, identical with that which nine out of ten of these young women gave. " N-nothing — much." " When did you meet him ? " " I was a waitress in a restaurant where he used to come. He asked me to go out with him. I knew him that way a couple of months, and then he asked me to marry him — so we got married. I stayed in the cafe and he went back to camp, but I used to see him every few days." She had 174 THE PASSING LEGIONS become quite breathless as she ran on, and stopped abruptly with an embarassed smile. " How old are you ? " " Eighteen, that is, eighteen and two months." She scarcely looked it. " Has your husband told you anything about his people at home ? " " Oh yes; he says he hasn't any. But he's got an aunt, he says, who's going to take me in till he's demobilized." " Have you had any letters from him since he returned to America ?" In answer, she unbuttoned the waist of her dress and drew out several compactly folded and rather worn pages and lay them, still warm, in Miss McFall's hand. " You don't mind if I take just a little look at them, do you ? " First came a blush, a smile and the catching of a lower lip between the teeth in momentary hesitancy. " Well, they're — you know, he — er — all right, you can look at them." The letters were nearly always alike, physically and spiritually, for, after all, the language of love varies not in root or branch, only in its flowers. There was the same token of brief schooling in the labored handwriting and the occasional misspelling, and the reiterations for lack of more words in which to tell of affection and lonesomeness and longing. And again and again the letters ended with the familiar " Lots of love and kisses " and the cabalistic string of X's. " How much money have you ? " followed the return of the letters to their hiding place. From another recess came a small, round leather purse, with a worn nickel clasp, and from it were extracted in turn, a newspaper clipping, a bit of soiled ribbon, a key, three hairpins and — two pounds, ten shillings. The girl lay the money on the desk and hastily crowded the odds and ends back into the purse. She glanced at the crumpled THE " SHEPHERD '.' AT LIVERPOOL 175 bilk and the coins with an indifference which was tell-tale of her satisfaction. " Is that all you have ? " A look of genuine surprise greeted the inquiry. Two pounds, ten shillings did not seem such a trifling sum. She had evidently been long in saving it. That was what made it so difficult to tell her that she must have so much more before she could be permitted to sail. There must be money for her maintenance aboard, and enough left over to take her all the way to Chicago. Had she not thought of that ? Her silence, the sudden compression of her lips spoke for her. And then, with an uncontrollable quiver- ing of her chin, came the tears. Between her deep sobs, she stammered her despair; it was all the money she had, her husband had never given any to her, what could she do ? But, quick as was the despairing outburst, Miss McFall had sprung up and laid a hand on the girl's shoulder. Now, now, she mustn't cry — it wasn't so hopeless as that, because the Red Cross was there to help her, it was there just for that purpose. It would lend her husband what- ever money she needed to get her home to him. She could tell him about it and he would send it back to the Red Cross as soon as he was able. Now wasn't that all right? Conviction did not come very quickly. It seemed in- credible that the weight which had fallen so heavily upon her could be so miraculously lifted. But in a little while the sodden handkerchief was tucked away and something besides tears began to shine in the girl's eye. And then, the smile — " Oh, it's worth living for, that smile of relief-that comes into their faces," said Miss McFall, when the girl of a wife had gone out, leaving her troubles behind her. " It's not pleasant to have to question them so closely, but we must do it, and now and then I pay for it with a tear of my own. You see, so few of them, particularly the very young ones, are able to save enough money to undertake the journey. They are all, or nearly all, working girls who have earned 176 THE PASSING LEGIONS small wages. And, unfortunately, their husbands have not thought to provide them with money, perhaps they haven't had it themselves. So it's just like exploding a shell in the room to tell them that they need five or six pounds more than the amount they have so carefully put aside. Some of them, of course, have quite enough money, even to get rooms for themselves in Liverpool, so they do not require our help. But for the majority, the large majority, the Red Cross is an angel unaware. " Then, too, the nervous plight of the girls who came here is pathetic. They are like little children. I've known them fail to remember their names! They forget their baggage, their passports, everything it is impossible to for- get. I can only imagine what would happen to them if they were not actually shepherded aboard their ships. There they are safe, because afterward not one of them is permitted to come ashore save in my personal charge. The authorities had to make that regulation to prevent them from wandering off and, in all likelihood, missing the ship. " For another thing, they seem to have so little idea of distance, of the vastness of the country to which they are going. I remember one little girl who was going to Port- land, Oregon. She had only two pounds in her purse and when I asked her how she expected to get to Portland on that, she replied, bless your heart, with the most confident smile: ' I'll call my husband on the telephone as soon as I get to New York and tell him I'm there, and he'll come meet me! ' I told her that when she arrived in America she would then be just as far from her husband as she was that minute from New York, and she promptly burst into tears. Another girl asked me when her ship stopped at Brighton, which is near Birkenhead, just across the river, because some of her friends wanted to come to the wharf to see her off. She opened her eyes in amazement when I explained that if the ship stopped at all, it would be at Brest in France. " However, it is not only in the little money transactions THE " SHEPHERD " AT LIVERPOOL 177 and in caring for the girls and seeing them safely aboard that the Red Cross is able now and then to give a helping hand. There was one girl, she was little more than a child, eighteen, perhaps, who came from Birkenhead. She came directly aboard the transport to which she had been previ- ously assigned, on the afternoon before sailing. It was her belief that she had come to report and she intended to take the ferry home at six o'clock. I knew nothing of this and, in due course, assigned her;, with the others, to a cabin. Later, I found her in her room, weeping her eyes out. When I asked what could be the matter, she told me she had tried to leave the ship and had been stopped. Her mother was waiting for her, and what would she think had become of her! * I've never even said good-by to her!' she cried. So I sent a telegram to her mother, because I couldn't let the girl leave the ship at that late hour — it was to sail early next morning — and the old lady, far beyond sixty, came to the ship with her daughter's little trunk. I got permission to bring her aboard and she and her daugther had a very happy-wretched time crying over their farewells all alone in the girl's cabin. The mother called down all sorts of blessings upon the Red Cross because this was the youngest of her four daughters, the last one to leave her and the only one she knew she should never see again. I patted them and I guess I cried over them a little, too, and I couldn't bear to lead the old lady away when the time came for her to go. " So, you see, it's not always an easy thing to get these girls off—I mean, it isn't always easy on one's heart. And it's made harder by the fact that many are so pathetically helpless. It is no fault of the husbands that they have had to sail away and leave the women behind, but it is a pity that all of them could not have left sufficient money with their wives to save them the unhappiness of having to borrow. But there was one party of wives which sailed for America in high spirits. Almost the entire membership of Company F of the 162nd Infantry — men from the 178 THE PASSING LEGIONS Western Coast—had married here in England. They asked if they might not be sent home with their wives. So they were formed into a casual company in November, 1918, and they remained at Knotty Ash until mid-April, and then they and their wives were assigned to a trans- port. I am sure no happier troopship ever crossed the Atlantic! " And just then the second girl in the day's contingent, ap- peared in the doorway, halting at the threshold in timid wondering. " Come in, my dear, this is the fold," Miss McFall sang out cheerfully. CHAPTER X CROWNED HEADS AND MERRY MEN AT DARTFORD THERE were two memorable days in the history of Dartford Hospital. One was signalized by the visit of the King and Queen of England, the other by the sign- ing of the Armistice. The royal visit lasted two hours — a long time for so busy a sovereign as King George. The affairs incidental to November 11th lasted until everyone in the hospital was worn out — far too short a time in which to expand so much enthusiasm. Of course there were days made notable by the visits of other distinguished persons, among them Secretary Baker, accompanied by Major General John Biddle, commanding the American forces in Great Britain, and Brigadier Gen- eral F. A. Winter, the Chief Surgeon; Mrs. Walter Hines Page, wife of the then Ambassador, and Samuel Gompers, president of the American Federation of Labor. But these lacked the spectacular appeal of royal visitors, they were " their own people," while a King was something quite new to democratic Americans, many of those at Dartford never until then having seen one. And, incidentally, if any of them looked for austerity and a forbidding mien they were disappointed. They learned about monarchs from him. King George shook hands and talked in win- ning cordiality with scores of wounded American soldiers and particularly asked to witness those activities the Red Cross was conducting for the men of Dartford. The royal visit occurred during the last part of October, 1918. The King and Queen, accompanied by Princess Mary and one or two officers of the King's personal staff, motored from Buckingham Palace, arriving at Dartford about three o'clock in the afternoon. It was a brilliantly sunny day and the spacious grounds of the hillside hospital 180 THE PASSING LEGIONS were dotted with groups of convalescents — from a distance they looked like a flock of sheep on a rising meadow-land — when the royal car arrived at the main entrance gate. There it was met by a tiny hospital runabout which acted as pilot to the King's huge machine through the maze of avenues and lanes running between the straggling village of hutments erected as annexes to the main hospital build- ings. Knowing the intended hour of the visit — there is noth- ing in the world so swift as " hospital wireless "— unless it be its fellow, " camp wireless "— such of the American wounded as were permitted to roam about, and there were hundreds of them, all in hospital blue, had gathered along " the route of the procession." Bandaged, on crutches, some even in wheel-chairs, they ranged themselves on both sides of the roadways, cheering and waving their greeting to the visitors. The King, in the khaki uniform of a field marshal — one rarely saw him in " civvies," as the British call it, even in London during the war — repeatedly raised his hand to his camp visor in answer, his pleased smile and the bow which accompanied it robbing the salute of all its military stiffness. The Queen, too, smiled as she bent for- ward in gracious acknowledgment of the reception. And so, between lines of men, recovering from wounds brought back from the red sectors in France, the party rode on to the headquarters of Colonel E. H. Fiske, the surgeon com- manding. There Colonel Fiske and a number of Army and Red Cross officers were presented to King George and Queen Mary, who a few minutes later were escorted, through a lane of cheering American soldiers, toward the ward buildings. But the King did not want to reach the wards before seeking out a soldier with whom to talk. He had gone not more than a half a dozen paces when his eye was caught by a youngster with a green and yellow ribbon on his breast, swinging along on a crutch. Two quick strides took him to the soldier's side and, in another, he had caught step with the crutch. CROWNED HEADS AT DARTFORD 181 " Good afternoon," said the King. (" Just like that! " said the soldier in his next letter home.) And after that, with all the interest and lack of formality his captain or his surgeon might have shown, the soldier was questioned by the King as they went slowly together, almost brushing elbows, about himself, his wounds, and the ribbon which had arrested the royal eye. The soldier was Sergeant E. J. Donnell, of Chicago, who had been badly torn up by machine-gun fire in " Chipply Wood " near Albert. As for the ribbon, that was for service on the Mexican border. To all that Donnell told him, King George listened atten- tively, now and then interjecting a comment or a question to lead the conversation on. While they were thus walking together the King sud- denly spied a row of wounded men on cots which had been carried from a neighboring ward and placed at the edge of a border of shade trees so that the patients might enjoy the play of the wind and the sunshine about them. Instantly he halted, gave Donnell's disengaged hand a firm grip with a word of God-speed, and, pausing an instant, led Queen Mary and the Princess toward the cots. He stopped be- side that of William Enkler, who haied from peaceful Freeport, Long Island. Enkler was just about to turn to another page of a Sunday's " Pittsburgh Dispatch " when the King appeared. As he lowered the newspaper, King George took it up, with a quick glance at the date of it. " How did you get that paper so quickly ? " he asked. " It was published a very short time ago." " The American Red Cross, Sir," Enkler replied. " It distributes newspapers in the hospital from all parts of the United States." " Do you come from Pittsburgh ? " " No, sir, I am from New York. I've read all my papers. We pass them on. This one arrived yesterday and it's been read about thirty times already! " " You men like your newspapers from home, don't you ? " the King inquired. 182 THE PASSING LEGIONS Enkler answered with a grin that they surely did, where- upon King George agreed that nothing was more natural and, pointing to the headlines of the paper, he added, " The news is better, don't you think, than it was a few months ago?'; This was Enkler's turn to agree and for several minutes he and the King had a war dicussion that both evidently much enjoyed. As Enkler's nurse went past him after the royal party had moved on to the other cots he beckoned to her. " O Friend of Kings, what is it ? " she asked with a sup- pressed smile and a surreptitious bow of humility. " Well, that's the first King I ever met, and all I've got to say is he's a real human being! " Down the entire line of cots went the King and Queen, with a stop at each and words of greeting and inquiry. Thence the party entered the wards and, as before, greatly pleased the sick and wounded men with both the kindli- ness of their questioning and their hearty good wishes for rapid recovery. The men liked King George's frank, dem- ocratic manner of approaching them, his deep, resonant voice and his hearty way of saying, " Remember that you are in England, and if there is anything we can do for you at any time we want to know it, and shall take real pleasure in doing it." Not only in the wounded, was the Queen interested, but also in the American nurses and their training and methods, asking them many questions which showed marked knowledge of their humane, self-sacrificing pro- fession. She seemed to be especially intrigued when Private Ules Fox told her that he owed his life to his nurse. He had been wounded at Dickebusch, he said, and the quaint Southern melodiousness with which he pronounced the name — he came from Model, Tennessee — brought a delighted smile to the Queen's lips. Then they had carried him at last to Dartford and there his nurse had just " made " him get well. The nurse, Miss Nota Calligan, of CROWNED HEADS AT DARTFORD 183 Weatherf ord, Texas, who was standing beside the cot blush- ing furiously, went a shade deeper as Queen Mary turned to her and held out a congratulatory hand. That, she said, was the sublime task of nurses, their highest achievement, to make live the men whose sufferings had overcome their wish to live. As the treatment and care of fractures and orthopedic cases has long been a hobby of King George, it was in the ward devoted to these, and to which the Red Cross made frequent contributions of special boots and other foot gear, that he remained longest during the visit. He was especially attracted to the complicated contrivance of framework, pulleys, and weights employed in treating the badly fractured leg of Corporal C. A. Better, of Pittsburgh, and had it explained to him in detail, chatting with Better the while. Then he engaged himself for an equally long time over the apparatus in use upon Private George Lynch, of New York, who has been severely wounded at Dicke- busch and lay in what looked like a species of cantilever bridge. His Majesty was invariably desirous of learning of the comfort of the men and the readiness and fortitude with which they became accustomed to their appliances. With Lieutenant J. P. Kerrigan, of Rutland, Vt., whose right leg had been amputated below the knee as the re- sult of wounds from a bursting shell at Ypres, the King talked at length. He cited the case of a British soldier similarly handicapped, the progress of whose treatment at Queen Mary's Hospital in Roehampton he had watched with much interest. This soldier, he was glad to tell Ker- rigan, was now able to walk as comfortably as ever with a well-fitted artificial leg. It was at Roehampton, as the King knew, that the Amer- ican Red Cross had provided a special omnibus service for the British soldiers reporting at the artificial limb work- shops for fittings or adjustments. Hitherto these men had been compelled to walk as best they could from the nearest rapid-transit station to the hospital, and frequently this 184 THE PASSING LEGIONS part of the journey, which was up a hill, was a matter of no little difficulty to them. The establishment of the 'bus service, however, with sixteen daily trips between Roe- hampton and Barnes Common, had done away with the hardship. In every instance of his conversations with the American soldiers at Dartford, the King showed himself to be famil- iar with their engagements and familiar with the places at which they had been wounded. He proved to be a practical encyclopaedia of the war and often amazed the men with his knowledge of details. An American aviator, Charles Corse, of Minneapolis, who had been wounded by one of his own bombs, narrated an experience which visibly interested King George. Dur- ing a raid, Corse had swooped down to within twenty feet of the ground, bent upon making the target with the last bomb in the rack. He dropped the bomb and it exploded promptly, a dead hit, but a large fragment of the projectile flew upward and struck him as he soared away. In spite of the wound, Corse succeeded in piloting his " bus " to a good landing back of his own lines. After that he vaguely remembered being carried off to a hospital. King George regarded this as a highly unusual experi- ence and commented upon it by relating the singular ad- ventures of several British and French flying men with whom he had recently talked. The last hospital ward visited was that in which the shell- shock cases were under treatment. This had been dec- orated and furnished by a committee of Red Cross women only a short time before. The King and Queen manifested liveliest interest in the patients, talking with all those whose condition permitted and asking many questions of the at- tending physicians, especially regarding the case of a boy who, utterly unable to walk, played the piano for hours, to the great enjoyment of his fellows, and of another who was just learning to talk again after a silence of more than a month. Here, too, the King met Alfonso Delarenzo, a CROWNED HEADS AT DARTFORD 185 New York sculptor who had enlisted in the hospital unit as a kitchen orderly, but had been rescued by his talents. Hje was now assigned to decorative work in the ward, his abilities being more needed for that than for exploitation in the arts culinary. His translation provoked a mirthful laugh and a very earnest congratulation from the King. From the wards, the royal party then went the rounds of the activities which the Red Cross had established in con- nection with the hospital. The magnitude of the service it was possible thereby to render to the men greatly grati- fied the visitors. It was explained to them that the Red Cross supplemented the regular army supplies of drugs, medicines, surgical dressings, bed linen and clothing, especially such articles as socks, gloves, underwear, pajamas, bed jackets, bath robes and sweaters. In the Red Cross storehouse was shown to them the large stock of commodities for personal use which were distributed freely among the patients — the tooth brushes, tooth paste, combs, candy, razors and razor blades, soap, writing materials, chocolate, cigarettes, smoking tobacco, comfort kits and " housewives " with which they might do their own bits of mending and button sewing. At the " Hospital Exchange " which, in the few months the Red Cross operated it, transacted business to the tune of more than $7,000, they inspected the so-called " lux- uries," the things quite unobtainable from the hospital's stores, which were provided for the benefit of the staff and the convalescent patients. Then they came to the Recrea- tion Hut, which the Red Cross had erected at a cost of $12,000 for both personnel and patients. This was a large T-shaped building, steam-heated and lighted by gas, the cross bar being a general clubroom and the vertical stroke a combination theater and cinema. In the clubroom, emptied now by the greater attraction of the royal visit, were card tables and writing desks, a library of 500 volumes, and racks containing the current English and American magazines and newspapers. 186 THE PASSING LEGIONS This practically brought to an end the visit of the King and Queen and Princess Mary, but before leaving, the party returned for a moment to the hospital and signed the much-prized " Visitors' Book." Then it entered the wait- ing oars and rolled away on the return journey to Bucking- ham Palace. At the gates, as the cars passed through, a crowd of nearly a thousand convalescents cheered and waved their caps in Godspeed. During his two-hour visit the King had talked with eighty-three American soldiers from twenty-two different States. It was a Red Cross messenger who brought to Dartford the first news of the signing of the Armistice on the morn- ing of November eleventh. The small motor car which dashed up to the main hospital building with the tidings and announcing copies of the " Red Cross Daily Bulletin " — which, by the way, " scooped " all the London papers, being first in the field with the historic news — caused a hilarious stampede. Every patient who could hop, hobble, or crawl, every disengaged nurse or doctor, gathered around the machine or came to window or door. Dartford was one great cheer. Even the weary men in the wards, tortured as they were by their wounds, forgot everything in this instant of rejoicing. In Ward P., for instance, all the patients ap- parently went mad. By a chance, which they considered most fortunate, there were neither nurses nor orderlies about the place, so, accompanied by triumphant cries, shoes, slippers, pillows, everything that lay to hand went flying about the room. " Creeping barrage from the 75's of the American front line! " roared a determined leader on one side, supporting himself against his cot with one leg and a crutch. The response to his command came in a hurricane fire of maga- zines, books, dressing gowns rolled in huge lumps, towels, and hastily knotted handkerchiefs. " Give Fritz merry hell! " he cried in encouragement. "•Open up with the 440's! " screamed the leader of the opposing forces on the opposite side of the ward. CROWNED HEADS AT DARTFORD 187 " Boom! "— he hurled a pillow far down the line of cots. The air was fairly alive with Red Cross comfort bags, sweaters, woolen socks, and felt shoes in the counter fire. " Now fellows, let's go! — Over the top to Berlin! " ordered the bandaged general of the American forces. Three patients on crutches hopped as fast as they could across the wide aisle of the ward, yelping as they charged. They flung themselves upon the " enemy " cots and began a hearty pommeling of their occupants. Their neighbors, strapped in their cots, came to the rescue with a withering fire of Red Cross hot water bags. " Give 'em the bayonet! " yelled one legless man, feint- ing thrusts with his crutch. " Clean up the dug-outs! " cried another, using his one remaining arm to pound with a pillow an adversary who had pulled the bed-clothes over his head. The battle would have gone on to exhaustion if a startled dove of peace in the uniform of a nurse had not come into the ward just then. She signed the armistice and hurried the grinning men back into their cots in short order. There were no casualties, save for a few scrapes and bruises, but the nurse was busy a half-hour collecting the " ammunition " and restoring it to its proper owners. As an instance of the native cheerfulness of the American wounded, this incident is noteworthy. For the foregoing " battle " occurred in a ward whose every patient had lost either an arm or a leg. At that time the men at Dartford were mainly those of the 27th and 30th American Divisions which had been through the tremendous fighting that broke the boasted Hindenburg Line between Cambrai and St. Quentin during the last days of September and the first days of October, 1918. The men had therefore been in hospital only a short time when the blood and iron of Germany's military power dissolved into ink with which to sign an armistice. As soon as they caught breath after their first whirlwind of enthusiasm, fifteen hundred of them — half the popula- 188 THE PASSING LEGIONS tion of the hospital — formed in line, with an American flag and a Red Cross standard at its head, and, cheering and making noises upon anything that would add to the din, marched and counter-marched through the grounds. To add a costume touch to the festivities, many wore flags across their breasts, others turned their jackets inside out and some had Red Cross comfort bags on their heads. A large number were in bright-patterned bathrobes, just as they had swarmed out from the wards. And well up in the line were several convalescents, still unable to walk but mighty at cheering, who were pushed along in their wheel- chairs by sturdier comrades. When the entire area of the hospital reservation had been covered the paraders obtained permission to march through the big German prison camp, a few hundred yards away down the hill. There they encountered a rejoicing no less boisterous and sincere than their own. The prison- ers had been told of the Armistice at practically the same hour that the news was brought to the Americans and they began celebrating forthwith. Their camp orchestra played " The Star Spangled Banner " and they, too, had a parade with a tin-basin band in the vanguard as it went about the barbed-wired-encircled compound. Immediately following the " band " was a " camel," contrived of two Germans bearing a mattress upon boards spanning their shoulders, the man in front carrying a long-handled mop. Over all, small dark blankets were thrown, one fastened about the mop-head, and a rider lifted into his precarious saddle, made doubly so by the antics of the steed. The German sergeant-major of the camp, constituted himself the " camel's " Arab leader, with mustache and beard of soot from the kitchen chimney, a colored handkerchief about his neck and bare above the waist save for the improvised " bournous " of a blanket. As he led his charge about the enclosure he shouted alternately, " Hoch, Camile! " and " Hoch die Republic! " to the great glee of the prisoners. CROWNED HEADS AT DARTFORD 189 The arrival of the Americans in their camp was re- soundingly cheered by the Germans who lined up to greet them. They took off their little skull caps and waved them as the flags went by. They gave every evidence of thank- fulness that the dreadful business was at an end. This dramatic encounter between the Germans and the Americans appealed particularly to the Red Cross moving- picture man, who had hurried up from London Head- quarters to record Dartford's day. As permission to enter the enclosure for any such purpose as photography had to be obtained from the British authorities, a messenger was rushed to the city in a Red Cross car and back again with the properly signed order. Great was the delight of the prisoners to disport them- selves before the camera and many feet of film were taken to perpetuate the meeting and the unique celebration by victors as well as vanquished. The festivities caused no end of surprise to the Cockney driver of the Red Cross car. " Blimy, if these 'ere Hamericans don't go a-torkin' to the bleedin' 'Uns an' a-givin' of 'em cigarettes, all friendly like. An' larst week they was a-killin' of each other! " The camera man ground away until luncheon time and then stopped, although the Germans begged for more pic- tures. When he returned to the enclosure early in the afternoon no one but the sergeant-major was visible. He explained to the Red Cross men that as the prisoners were paid in accord with the amount of work they did in the camp, they would have lost money had they stayed to be photographed. This was too much for the Cockney driver. " Syvin' for to set up a shop in Lunnon after the war, wot ? " And he swore and spat upon the ground. None of the German officers in the camp would submit to portraiture. They were polite, or nearly so, but very firm. Some said that they were not in their regular uni- forms, others that they were too shabby, but all presented excuses. One haughty Prussian major drew himself up, 190 THE PASSING LEGIONS "I am celebrating no armistice! I do not recognize the armistice nor the Government which has agreed to it. I am still at war! " But the parade did not by any means bring to an end Dartford's celebration of the Armistice. The patients still had a fund of enthusiasm for expenditure. So a sham battle was arranged and fought in a large field near the hospital. It was not only in celebration of the day but commemorative in many ways of the past that these men had played in shattering the Hindenburg Line. There were no guns and no powder, of course, but it was carried out with much explosive laughter on the part of both con- testants and spectators, several hundred of the latter being on the " side lines " to cheer on the warriors. To provide forces for the engagement the convalescents were formed in two detachments, one to represent the at- tacking Americans, the other the Germans. Volunteers for the German side being decidely scarce, conscription had to be resorted to, the wages being two bars of Red Cross chocolate. To distinguish themselves the " Germans" wore their caps inside out. Many of the men on both sides were on crutches, the " tanks " were the severely wounded men in wheel-chairs, propelled to the attack by their fellow convalescents; the hand-grenades were mud-balls and the ambulances wheel-barrows. After the " Germans " had taken up their position and signaled their readiness, the Americans attacked, preceded by forty " tanks " propelled as rapidly as the comfort of the patients and uneven ground permitted. The infantry, some on crutches, some steadying themselves with canes, went " over the top " with a yell and charged the defenses. The " casualties " afforded the spectators great amuse- ment. The " dead men " refused to stay dead and climbed into the barrow ambulances, insisting upon being carried back into action. Several of the most severe cases were those of men suffering from attacks of what the fighters called " laughing gas." CROWNED HEADS AT DARTFORD 191 After an exciting hand-to-hand fight which, from a dis- tance, with crutches and canes waving in the air, reminded one of a " Keystone " battle, the " Germans " threw up their bands, cried " Kamerad! "—'and the " Line " was broken. Then came a mirthful exhibition of grenade-throwing. A nest of " Germans" in a " shell hole" had to be " cleaned up" and a party of Americans in command of a lieutenant was sent in to do the bloody work. From the shelter of a clump of bushes, the Americans crept upon their foes and suddenly assailed them with a rain of mud- ball grenades. They hurled them into the shell-hole until all save one of the " Fritzies " had been declared killed. This last one was " rushed," captured and made to kiss the American flag while the audience roared with merriment. It was late in the afternoon when the warfare came to an end, and then both sides adjourned, very amicably, very willingly and very tired, to the hospital for tea. Secretary Baker's visit, in the autumn of 1918, a short time before that of King George and Queen Mary, included his service as a Red Cross " helper," because in his journey through the wards and afterward on the lawns, he dis- tributed a large quantity of Red Cross cigarettes and choco- late to the men with whom he talked. Later he delivered an address to more than five hundred of the patients in the hospital Concert Hall, where one of the Red Cross musi- cal entertainments was in progress at the time of his unex- pected arrival. In the officers' mess, where he went for tea, it surprised and interested him to find in an issue of the Red Cross Bulletin a picture of himself talking with a sol- dier cousin whom he had run across in the course of a visit to one of the camps in the neighborhood of Winchester, and also a long article devoted to a description of his tour of in- spection of American military posts and hospitals. It was at the conclusion of this tour that Secretary Baker wrote to the American Red Cross in London: " On this trip I have received fresh and noteworthy 192 THE PASSING LEGIONS evidence of the astonishing efficiency of Red Cross opera- tions in France and England. I have been delighted to see how much the American Red Cross has done to weld the hearts of the Allied people together." The Red Cross found another enthusiastic " helper " in Mr. Samuel Gompers, when the president of the American Federation of Labor visited Dartford during the presence of the American Labor Mission in England in August, 1918. Mr. Gompers was accompanied on this visit by Colonel Endicott, the Red Cross Commissioner, and Lieu- tenant Colonel F. A. Washburn, of the U. S. Army Medical Corps, and with them made an extended tour of the wards. In a signed account of his day at Dartford, written for the Red Cross Bulletin, Mr. Gompers said: " Americans I met from almost every State in the Union, many of whom I had seen or known before. And never have I been so proud to meet my countrymen. Our visit was quite unannounced and the boys were surprised and pleased. I walked about among them, handing them cigarettes, American flags, and comfort bags made by women in America for the Red Cross to dispose of to our boys wherever they may be. It was a great experience and touched me deeply. Every little while I could feel a lump come in my throat. I just couldn't help it. " The Red Cross had sent out with us a motor car full of things which we distributed. The cigarettes were from two shipments sent over here by the people of Providence, R.I., and by the Rotary Club, of Honolulu, Hawaii, and each package had a little card by which the recipient could acknowledge the gift. It was a pleasure for me to hand these gifts to the men. They came from America and I thought of every one as a link between these soldiers and the mothers, wives and sweethearts of America. " If the Red Cross did nothing more than distribute these things it would be worth while. I am a member of the Red Cross in America, just like so many millions of other Americans. In the last drive I helped to raise some CROWNED HEADS AT DARTFORD 193 of that giant fund, and I expect to lift my voice for it again in the next drive. I shall be able to speak first-hand of its work for our men." After his round of the wards, Mr. Gompers talked on the lawn with a number of the convalescents. The grow- ing crowd eventually called upon him for a " speech," which he delivered briefly as, what he called, " a message from the folks at home," and every word of it was intently followed by his impromptu audience. CHAPTER XI THE MIRACLE OF ROMSEY AND SARISBURY COURT IN the annals of the American Red Cross in Great Britain there are two names which stand out in sharp silhouette against the background of its varied and increas- ing activities. These are Romsey and Sarisbury Court. They mean a great deal to the Red Cross; The army will never forget them. Linked in no uncertain fashion by the exactions and difficulties common to all undertakings in time of war, Romsey and Sarisbury stand for an un- paralleled determination and ingeniousness and a conquest of seemingly unsurmountable obstacles. As names, they represent two hospitals which the Red Cross created in England for the critical needs of the army; as hospitals, they represent institutions which in equipment and effi- ciency acknowledged no superior of their kind throughout the British Isles. To the English military, who knew so well how war restrictions could hamper even the most ur- gent enterprises, they were concrete evidence that the American Red Cross could obey every regulation yet " carry on " through thick and thin. There was a large American rest camp at Romsey, lying six miles from Winchester, which had been taken over from the British in a very incomplete state. It had a capacity of 7,000 troops and came into use when Morn Hill could no longer accommodate the incessantly arriving American de- tachments. A great deal of construction work was im- mediately necessary there as the British had used it only as a " temporary camp," never intending it for the more per- manent and wider use to which the Americans were com- pelled to put it. There was, for instance, a tent hospital which had been adequate enough for its British use, that of 194 THE MIRACLE OF ROMSEY 195 holding patients for only a few hours at most, until am- bulances could gather and convey them to the nearest mili- tary hospital. It was a row of tents along one of the broad camp streets equipped not with cots but with straw ticks laid upon boards raised about half a foot from the flooring. For a few hours' occupancy during the pleasant English spring and summer such a hospital imposed no hardships, but was out of the question in an English winter. There- fore the necessity of providing a big waterproof hospital was obvious and urgent because, in many cases, as has been already pointed out; the system of the American soldier did not take kindly to the overseas voyage nor the novelties of English climate. There being so great an amount of construction and re- construction already upon its hands to fit the camp for its new services, the army appealed to the Red Cross for aid, specifically for a hospital structure. In response, Colonel Endicott, the Commissioner for Great Britain, visited Romsey to learn the army's plans and rather definitely its needs. One of the first questions he asked was whether the camp was to be permanently occupied, as this would naturally govern the provisions of the Red Cross. He was told that this was what the army intended and, further- more, as there would always be five or six thousand troops in the camp awaiting transportation to the front, a hospital of at least 250 beds would be necessary. Colonel Endicott's answer for the Red Cross was, as usual, instantly forthcoming: it would erect a hospital capable of fulfill- ing all such requirements and all possible emergencies. Before that, however, the Red Cross would provide thorough equipment for the tent hospital which the army must continue to use until the new structure should be com- pleted. On the following day a large consignment of beds, blankets, mattresses, bedcovering, and similar hospital ap- pliances was dispatched from the Red Cross warehouses in London. Also the Red Cross set up at once a warm, com- fortable hut for the examination of patients. 196 THE PASSING LEGIONS This happened in the spring, England's finest season, one for which she might almost be forgiven her winters and there were months of fine weather ahead, so the task of the Red Cross in constructing a building of the dimensions re- quired seemed not to be unusually difficult. But soon was the awakening. It came when the Red Cross cast about for labor and materials. British labor, save in discouragingly small units, was unobtainable as the Government at that time required practically every ounce of the Nation's man- power. As for the building-material market, it had few doors open and these scarcely more than ajar. In such circumstances the Red Cross had but one hopeful recourse, the services of the army itself, the labor of its own men. In this the army was more than willing to comply but it, too, was in a quandary. It explained that it could provide workers only from labor battalions during their brief and always uncertain intervals of halting at Romsey. And as these battalions were at that time being concentrated with all speed upon the construction of great aerodromes in the eastern and southern parts of England, notably at Eastleigh in Hants and Emsworth, Ford Junction and Tangmere in Sussex, few men, scarcely more than fifty or seventy-five at a time, could be promised for the work. But the promise sufficed and the Red Cross went into the building market in search of material with which to build not a swiftly-contrived temporary structure, difficult enough to erect, but a strong, solid, permanent hospital — a labor worthy of Hercules. While it was seeking concrete, slate, stone, anything that might be obtained in the neces- sary amounts, a lieutenant in the army who had been an architect in Rhode Island, telegraphed to Red Cross Head- quarters that he had obtained an option on a quantity of brick, and would that do ? It not only would do, but did, for from the moment the receiver went back on the hook, Romsey Hospital became a brick hospital! And this gave it much distinction in the days to come. Hitherto such constructions, however substantial and adequate, being THE MIRACLE OF ROMSEY 197 temporary, had always looked the part. Therefore it was not to be wondered at that subsequent visitors commented upon the Red Cross buildings at Romsey with the re- mark, " You Americans must expect the war to last a long time when you put up structures like that." The reply of the commanding officer was informative and conclusive: " We hope it won't last long," he said, " but whether it does or does not, we must have comfortable hospitals for our men and we and the Red Cross believe that the best is none too good for them," Although every one was interested, vitally, one may say, in speeding the Romsey task, military conditions made this impossible. Working squads were sometimes detailed for periods of two or even three weeks, but in many in- stances they had to be withdrawn after only two or three days of employment. There might, and frequently did, ensue even a week's delay until another labor battalion should arrive and another detail of men be assigned to take up the task where it had been so abruptly dropped. Yet this was the only method by which the thing could be done, and so was the Romsey Hospital built. However, looking back upon even the most discouraging hours when work was at an utter standstill, walls half finished, walls just begun, material lying in dead, undisturbed piles, there is prideful satisfaction in the knowledge that all the labor on Romsey hospital was done by American soldiers. For many it was their first " bit" in the cause for which they had come so far, and they went about it with a whistling, singing disregard of obstacles. All the lumber used for the roof and the interior trimming was cut forty miles away in the New Forest (" New " means dating back to the Saxon Kings!), sawed in small, portable mills, and taken out in American motor trucks as fast as it was made ready. Fortunately, the services of part of a " construction company " were obtained to lay the concrete, and direct certain phases of allied building operations. Many of the 198 THE PASSING LEGIONS men in this detachment had been contractors and high- grade artisans well over draft age who were earning large wages at home before their enlistment. At Romsey, how- ever, for the army's stipulated " thirty a month and rations," they made concrete, pushed wheelbarrows, loaded and unloaded trucks, did everything in fact, to advance the work. The concrete laying was, for a time, a grave problem, that is, until the Red Cross discovered and pur- chased an American mixing machine and sent it out to Romsey. A great deal of extra labor might have been saved in the early days of the work if the Red Cross had been able to purchase what contractors call an ordinary " grading scoop," but such was the condition of the market that there was not one to be found in all England. For this reason it was necessary in leveling to take out all the earth with picks, shovels and barrows instead of by the quicker and simpler method of horse-drawn graders. Nevertheless, the work went forward slowly and surely, and course by course the walls arose. To give the exterior of the buildings a touch of distinction, the mason details " raked out" the seams between the bricks, leaving the latter in relief, this method of brick-laying being seldom seen in England. It was only natural that the soldier squads should take great pride in this hospital of theirs. So skillfully and untiringly did the construction and labor units perform their task that at the end of four months, in June, 1918, the Red Cross was able to deliver Romsey Hospital to the army medical authorities, ready for oc- cupancy with an initial capacity of 105 beds. The in- terior had been finished with the same care as that given to the artistic outer walls, the wards were long and roomy, and lighted by wide, bright windows. There were com- pletely appointed operating and X-ray rooms, smaller wards for special cases, diet kitchens, a milk-pasteurizing plant, and gas and electric equipment throughout. It waa truly a model hospital. Nothing bebter illustrates the adaptability and ver- THE MIRACLE OF ROMSEY 199 satility of the American soldier than this small hospital. It may not seem a feat, to construct a brick hospital in four months, but if one takes into consideration that it was erected solely by the labor of troops which halted for a brief time on their way to France, that adequate tools were sometimes unprocurable, that not infrequently the avail- able details succeeded one another at two-day intervals, and that there were, in all, weeks when no work could be done, it must be accounted a real achievement. The passing men of the rest camp, even those whose services lasted no more than a day or two, helped the Red Cross to write an ineffaceable record at Romsey. In time, as the buildings were finished, the hospital grew to 220 beds and in December, 1918, its fixed capacity was 260 patients, although at the height of the influenza epidemic it had accommodated more than three hundred. But the hospital was only the beginning of Red Cross construction work at Romsey. When the Americans took the camp the only facilities for bathing were comprised in a draughty shed with canvas sides. Here was installed a bathing appliance known as the " petrol-tin system." It is a system for the man who will " try anything once "— and never again. It gives not so much a bath as an ex- perience. Two old gasoline cans were suspended from the roof of the " structure " and the man desiring, that is, determined, to bathe himself, climbed a ladder and first filled one can with cold water, the other with hot. Then, getting beneath the contraption, he pulled the strings at- tached to the cans, tipping them and deluging himself according to his dexterity and agility. If he missed him- self with the tins he had to try all over again. By this process only a few score of men could get through with this aquatic sport in the course of a morning and it involved about as much labor as a " hike," so bathing at Romsey was in a fair way to become a lost art. Just at that moment, however, the Red Cross stepped into the situa- tion and began a second task, that of erecting suitable 200 THE PASSING LEGIONS bath houses for the entire camp. And as brick was the only material to be obtained, these buildings were made part of the architectural scheme which had been com- menced with the hospital. Three large houses were con- structed, equipped with showers as complete and sanitary as those of any gymnasium in America and capable of pro- viding baths, hot or cold, for eight thousand men a day. So, every morning, after these were completed, hundreds of men clad in raincoats and shoes and little else, filed from tents and barracks to the showers, and there was not a man-Jack among them who didn't bless the Red Cross. At one end of each bath-house was a laundry where the men, each provided with soap, a tub and a washboard, cleansed their clothing, and indeed, came to fancy them- selves quite a bit over the way they " did up " their shirts and things. A dental hut, recreation buildings for privates and non- coms, clubs for officers and nurses, canteens — these were other works of the Red Cross at Romsey and the best testi- mony of what its representatives had to do is to be found in the following extracts, taken at random from the weekly reports of the officer in charge: The influenza epidemic struck this camp just as we were ready to open our new hospital. We rushed the final work and were able to take care of all the patients as they came. Fortunately, the Red Cross storehouses were well stocked with blankets, pneumonia jackets, pajamas, towels and all the other things which were needed in this emergency. Every man of the Red Cross staff worked eighteen hours a day during the time of high pressure and did everything from helping to undress patients to carrying in supplies. The Red Cross has now assisted in 500 cases of American soldiers unable for various reasons to get their back pay. We had in camp here this week approximately 100 transient women of the United States Army, the majority being tele- phone girls and nurses. They were housed by the Red Cross and we did all we could to make their stay comfortable. They THE MIRACLE OF ROMSEY 201 used the Red Cross reading room at Abbotswood in the eve- nings and had at all times the use of the Red Cross Nurses' Club in the camp. The refitting and interior work on the Officers' Club is now completed, and all permanent officers, both of the camp and hos- pital, are now quartered in rooms on the upper floors, while the lower floors include mess-halls, lounges, reading and writing rooms, not only for the permanent officers of the camp, but also for the scores of transients who are found in the camp every day. The Nurses' Club has overflowed its old quarters and a piece of land adjacent has been leased on which a large hut is being erected to accommodate the overflow. We are bearing all the expenses in connection with this house. The signing of the Armistice has put a stop to the construc- tion and equipment work on our new canteen building for troops arriving at Romsey Rest Camp. This would have opened in about a fortnight, with equipment for canteening about 2,000 troops at one time. Red Cross activities at Romsey were discontinued on December 11, 1918, when the camp was evacuated by the American Army. Immediately the British War Office, recognizing the excellence of the Red Cross structures, asked if it might not take them over in connection with the demobilization of British troops, requesting that a sale price be fixed. The reply of Colonel Endicott was, in ef- fect : " The Red Cross will accept whatever sum you de- cide as measuring their worth to you." As the Red Cross owned all the buildings in question but not the land on which they stood, it was agreed that the British should oc- cupy them and appoint a commission to decide upon a price after a thorough appraisal of structures and equipment. So the British went in on March 1, 1919, for a period of one year, after which they will dispose of them for the account of the American Red Cross. The original cost of the buildings and their fittings was £14,000, approximately $70,000. 202 THE PASSING LEGIONS At Sarisbury Court, the Red Cross undertook its most ambitious project. It determined to make this the largest American hospital in Great Britain. The resolution was born of one of the gravest military emergencies of the war. Germany, with the supreme power of her armies, was steadily driving toward the coveted Channel ports. The British, and the Americans brigaded with them, were striving to stay this apparently irresistible advance with all their strength and tactics of defense and counter-attack. By hundreds the wounded were coming back. The startling German successes aroused the fear that many hospitals in France and Bel- gium might have to be evacuated. The British authorities could no longer spare institutions for the expected inflow of American casualties. Already Hursley Park, Ports- mouth and Tottenham Hospitals had been thus relin- quished; all others and more would be sorely needed by the British. The American Army was in extremity; it must have, and without long delay, hospital resources well in excess of those then provided or contemplated by both its Medical Corps and the Red Cross. What was more natural than that in such a plight it should turn again to the Red Cross ? It asked if the Com- mission for Great Britain could not in some way and as soon as possible obtain, provide, create — do something to give it a hospital near Southampton, the main port to be used in bringing the American wounded from France. It was, perhaps, not an easy request to make, for its magnitude was obvious. As for fulfillment under exist- ing conditions, so well exemplified at Romsey,— that was almost dismaying because the army made it clear from the beginning that what it wanted was a hospital capable of taking care of thousands of patients — thousands, mind you! But the Red Cross took up the burden with characteris- tic eagerness and hope and sent representatives to search the countryside for miles around the seaport. And, at last, THE MIRACLE OF ROMSEY 203 after many days, the place was found. It was in sunny Hampshire, an estate of 186 acres on Southampton water, six miles from the port in a bend of the River Hamble — Sarisbury Court. On a rise, above rolling farmland, meadow and wood, stood the Manor House, a severe Tudor pile in brick and stone, massive, three- stories in height with fifty rooms. It had been built about thirty-five years before and in the mind of the owner there had always been a lurking, philanthropic idea of converting it some day mto a sort of school for boys. Its adaptability to hospital purposes was instantly and encouragingly ap- parent. In addition, the estate was well-equipped with smaller buildings — stable, garages, greenhouses and cot- tages. So enthusiastic over its possibilities were the officers of the Medical Corps that the Red Cross at once negotiated for a lease of the estate. The owner, however, positively refused to entertain any such proposition; only through outright sale would he part with Sarisbury Court. There- upon, the Red Cross bargained for purchase. The price at which the owner held the property was so unusually high that, for a time, the Red Cross considered requesting the British War Office to commandeer it. Well aware that this lay within the province of the Government, the owner, evidently getting wind of such a move, promptly lowered his figures and the Red Cross took an option on the estate. Just at this time, Eastertide, 1918, Mr. Henry P. Davi- son, Chairman of the War Council of the Red Cross, was in England upon a tour of inspection of the organization's many undertakings. Accompanied by General Ireland, Chief Surgeon of the American Expeditionary Forces in France; General Winter, Chief Surgeon of Base Section 3, which was England; Major James H. Perkins, Red Cross Commissioner for Europe, and Colonel Endicott, he visited Sarisbury Court. A round of the Manor House and the extensive acreage of the estate convinced the army 204 THE PASSING LEGIONS surgeons of Sarisbury's suitability for the purposes de- sired. Several times during the tour about the place, Mr. Davison asked the surgeons if the establishment and equipment there of such a hospital would solve certain vital problems of the Army Medical Corps and was so assured in every reply. Upon receiving the last one, he turned to Colonel Endicott and in eight words ended the discussion: " When you return to London exercise your option." In this way Sarisbury Court came into Red Cross hands at a cost of £26,500. At first glance this may seem to have been a high price, but it must be remembered that this was the hour of emergency, when the only consideration which could be allowed to prevail was the duty owed to suffering American soldiers. The ranking army authorities not only sanc- tioned the action, but Brigadier General Winter wrote the Red Cross to say that, pursuant to verbal instructions from the Chief Surgeon, A. E. F., transmitting, in turn, the in- structions of General Pershing, he was justified in stating that all financial obligations incidental to the hospitaliza- tion project at Sarisbury Court would be assumed by the United States Government. So urgent was the army need that it asked " that the extension of this hospital be made by the use of tents and that arrangements be made to com- plete the more permanent construction before «the cold weather." Also it was requested that the Red Cross " im- mediately proceed to install 3,000 beds if possible." As the army's first specific need was a tent-hospital, this was the initial work the Red Cross undertook at Sarisbury, and although it delayed by about three weeks the opening of the more permanent plant, it at least pro- vided the Medical Corps with means of caring for the wounded who were expected to flow into England in July and August. The seventy Bessoneau-type tents which composed it were twenty by forty feet each in size, were double-roofed for insulation, had side-wall windows and were in every THE MIRACLE OF ROMSEY 205 way suited to the purpose. They were set up near the Manor House in units of three to make continuous wards, each unit yielding 45 beds. This tent-hospital is deserv- ing of especial mention as an illustration of the manner in which the American Red Cross was, during the war, re- peatedly called upon to make preparations for emergencies and that it could respond at any time with a well-equipped " base hospital" of canvas capable, as this one at Saris- bury, of accommodating 1,000 patients and admitting of indefinite expansion. Meantime, however, work had been begun upon the con- version of the Manor House, including the installation of adequate heating and plumbing systems, the rearrange- ment of rooms to provide a total ward capacity of 180 cots for severe cases, and an enlargement of kitchen facilities sufficient to prepare food for 1,800 people. This task, begun about the middle of June, was completed in the first week in August, to the expressed satisfaction of the Chief Surgeon of the base who inspected it. The adjustment of the Manor, the provision of tem- porary structures incident to a tent-hospital, the setting up of a canteen composed of two Red Cross hutments which had seen service during the South African War, had been comparatively easy of accomplishment, but now the Red Cross came face to face with a labor to try men's souls, the creation of the great permanent hospital which was to distinguish Sarisbury Court. The plans which had been made contemplated ten acres of substantial ward buildings, administration offices, quarters for a large staff of doctors, nurses and orderlies; laboratories, storehouses, and other structures essential to an institution of 3,000 beds. The Red Cross knew very well what it had encount- ered at Romsey, the delays, the disappointments; but it tried not to think of them, bearing in mind only its deter- mination to make Sarisbury the largest and finest Ameri- can hospital in Great Britain, and to complete it by the early spring of 1919. 206 THE PASSING LEGIONS Sarisbury, as a problem of construction, differed con- spicuously from Romsey; it offered no opportunity to ob- tain the services of passing troops and therefore must be built by British labor. This was a difficulty only equaled by the perennial scarcity of material, another uncherished memory of Romsey. But just at this time, when the perplexities of the Red Cross were most harassing, Fate brought a providential anti-climax. The expected German operations which would have brought hundreds of American wounded to EnglamI, did not occur, and, mercifully, the great city of tents was never populated by wounded. At all events, it had been in readiness, thoroughly equipped with a hos- pital unit of thirty-nine surgeons and 107 nurses from Lex- ington, Kentucky, under Colonel Leonard S. Hughes, in occupation, and did its bit during the influenza epidemic. As the emergency which kept the entire Medical Corps so long on tiptoe had been averted, the Red Cross did not begin constructing the Sarisbury ward buildings until July 1st. But when it did, difficulties dogged every step. Existing roads had to be repaired or new ones cut to facili- tate the transportation of material and supplies, not only from the nearest railway station, Sarisbury Green, a mile and a quarter away, but also to all parts of the extensive hospital site; the avenue of approach was widened to per- mit ambulances to pass; a channel had to be dredged in the River Hamble so that barges of coal and building material from Southampton and Portsmouth might reach a jetty on the estate, and it was necessary to set up a 300-yard aerial ropeway to convey these commodities from the jetty to the ward reservation. Lacking a construction bureau, the Red Cross was again compelled to seek the services of the British engineer who, the year before, had designed and superintended the work at Mossley Hill. The difficulties encountered at Sarisbury deserve re- counting in certain detail, not only because they were sur- mounted, one and all, but for the " deadly parallel" they THE MIRACLE OF ROMSEY 207 afforded to a similar undertaking of less magnitude made by the British, in which they were unable to accomplish what they had planned. But of that, later. Nearly every kind of material used in building Saris- bury Hospital, metal particularly, was controlled by the British Government's system of priorities. This, estab- lished in 1915,, was instituted for the purpose of restrain- ing the supply of materials and manufactured articles to persons who, offering financial inducements, could obtain these goods to the detriment of important war work. Therefore 'the Priority Department of the Ministry of Munitions, taking over control of supplies and raw ma- terials and manufactures, laid down three classifications: Class A, definite work of the war; Class B, incidental war work and the maintenance of industry; Class C, all work not included in the two foregoing. Class A was sub- divided into grades of priority known as PI, P2, P3, P4 and P5. Under these classifications, the controlled in- dustries were allowed to supply raw material or manu- factured goods only in the order of priority. For example, work classified as Al must be finished before A2 work could be undertaken. Similarly, Pi must be completed before the assumption of P2. War hospitals in Great Britain were, save under special circumstances, classified as Class A — P4, and this ap- plied to all manufactures in connection with hospital con- struction or equipment. But through the good fortune which watched over the American Red Cross during all its service in Great Britain, it not only managed, somehow or other, to purchase material for Sarisbury in Class A — P3, but upon one occasion got them in P2. This was note- worthy indeed, for PI and P2 were almost exclusively re- served for vital munitions of war — cannon, rifles, am- munition, battleships and other shipping. In war time, planning was one thing, execution quite another, and although the Red Cross squeezed through the very narrow crack of priority doors, material in quantity 208 THE PASSING LEGIONS was difficult of procurement and ingenuity was almost exhausted in making the Sarisbury Court estate do its share. From its forests, timber was cut and made into boards by portable sawmills, a pit in the woods near the Manor supplied sand and gravel which was pushed along a one-man-power railway laid to the same concrete mixers which the Red Cross had so successfully used at Romsey. England was taking able-bodied men right and left for her armies so labor difficulties at Sarisbury were increas- ing. They ranged from scarcity of workmen to strikes. A large construction force was demanded for the proper and expeditious progress of such an undertaking as Saris- bury, a plan calling for the erection of eighteen double ward buildings, each of a capacity of 160 patients, two isola- tion wards, not to mention such appurtenances as quarters containing more than 1,000 beds for doctors, nurses, orderlies and women servants and the electric and power plants and a roadway lighting system throughout the estate. The climate of England demanded buildings not of hap- hazard construction, but strong and solid, impervious to cold and dampness. Skilled artisans, to say nothing of numbers, were what the Red Cross needed, but it had to content itself with small bands of such workmen as it could gather from the neighboring cities. These were efficient when they worked, but unfortunately, they were not always working. The installation of the roadway lighting system brought about an actual labor crisis. Hop- ing to speed the work, the services of eight American soldiers attached to the Kentucky hospital unit then oc- cupying the Manor were obtained to assist in setting up the poles and stringing the wires. But no sooner was this under way than Colonel Endicott, the Commissioner, re- ceived a communication from the Electrical Workers' Union of Great Britain stating that as the soldiers en- gaged in this occupation were not members of its organi- zation, every Union man employed on the hospital would THE MIRACLE OF ROMSEY 209 be called out unless the soldiers were immediately taken off this work. The letter was at once referred to the British authorities, who advised the Red Cross to follow the line of least resistance, as it had had to do before, and remove the soldiers rather than precipitate a general strike at Sarisbury. So the Red Cross yielded and left the wiring job to Union men. When, later, it was of utmost importance that a larger working force be obtained, the Red Cross considered the possibility of employing German prisoners and, jointly with the army, applied for five hundred. But this led only to another disappointment. A paragraph in the " In- ternational Agreement" was dug up which held that the labor of no prisoners of war could be utilized unless the prisoners were housed, and " housed " meant in houses, not tents. Unfortunately for the Red Cross, the only housing it could then offer was that provided by clean, dry tents which, hitherto, had been both adequate and accept- able. Wherefore that idea had to be abandoned. Only by keeping eternally at it, undaunted, undis- mayed, could the Red Cross maintain the work, and its own people, as well as all the available ones in the hospital unit, lent a hand. In the case of the latter, it brought to light several interesting persons, among them a five-million- dollar orderly sergeant, Louis Haggin, of Lexington, a son of the noted Kentucky horse breeder; and John McCor- mack, another of Kentucky's wealthy men, who enlisted as " chief cook " and made a record for himself in a new calling. As there were no patients then in the hospital, the staff was glad to give all the aid it could in the con- struction, doing draughting and other skilled work as well as manual labor until such time as the arrival of patients would require their services as orderlies. The day came when the resolution which created Saris- bury Court received its reward. In the remembered autumn of 1918 the " flu " epidemic started. Incoming transports from America brought hundreds of cases and 210 THE PASSING LEGIONS the disease spread among the camps like wildfire. To meet so grave a situation, Sarisbury was opened several weeks in advance of the fixed date and three hundred patients were admitted and cared for with all the prompt- itude and comfort they would have received in a great city institution. In the course of the building of Sarisbury many small problems presented themselves. One concerned a laundry, a prime necessity for a hospital. It was found impracti- cable to set one up on the grounds of the estate, so a large modern plant at Southampton was bought outright for $35,000. It had a capacity of 20,000 pieces of washing a week and the Red Cross operated it not only for Saris- bury Court but also for four other hospitals in the military area. So extensive and rich were the Sarisbury lands that the Red Cross tried there its first experiment in hospital farm- ing in England. For the management of this enterprise it obtained the services of an American farmer resident in the country and he outlined a plan of expansion which would, eventually, have provided all the necessary dairy products, ham and bacon, poultry and eggs, and vegetables for the entire hospital. As soon as this undertaking be- came known abroad, the patriotic people of the little islands of Jersey and Guernsey in the English Channel proffered their aid in stocking the farm with pure-bred dairy cows. Mass meetings of cattle breeders were held on both islands, each group enthusiastically contributing thirty cows from its best herds. These were given to the Red Cross to ex- press appreciation of the manner in which America had rationed itself in order to increase the amount of food- stuffs shipped abroad at the time of the food crisis in the British Isles. Although the Government had for two years prohibited the exportation of cows from the Islands, even to the British mainland, a special license was procured and twenty of the pedigreed cattle were immediately shipped to Sarisbury. THE MIRACLE OF ROMSEY 211 From such beginnings Sarisbury Court would have gone steadily onward until it had exceeded even the highest hopes and ambitions that had inspired its foundation and guided its growth. But the abrupt coming of the Ar- mistice left it suspended in mid-air, as it were. The army, which had clung to its request for a 3,000-bed hospital, now decided that Sarisbury should be only a 1,200-bed institu- tion, and, perhaps, this is the best moment in which to say that 1,200 beds was the maximum capacity the Red Cross had originally advised, although it yielded to the Army's wish for an institution nearly thrice that size. The larger building plans and the extension of^the farm pro- ject were, therefore, at once relinquished, but the work was carried on to the extent that in January, 1919, it com- prised, in addition to the Manor House and the original farm buildings and servants' and tenants' cottages, these well-designed, well-built structures: twelve wards of sev- enty-eight beds each, a total of 836 beds; a block of medical officers' quarters for seventy-two beds, one for nurses of 112 beds and one for orderlies of 125 beds; a large operating theater, a mortuary, recreation hall, bathhouse, dining hall for enlisted men, and the electric power plants already mentioned. And if Sarisbury Court did not become a 3,000-bed institution, it did become the main hospital for the American Army in Great Britain. The building of Romsey and Sarisbury Court may justly be accounted achievements, all things considered, and nothing can so accentuate this as a parallel, as a regretful but illuminating reference to an experience of the British Red Cross Society in hospital construction. To do this in fairness, it is necessary to go back to 1917. As a means of special appeal, the British organization had set apart October 17 of that year for a kingdom-wide collection of contributions to its funds. The day was called " Our Day." The American Red Cross, its Commission for Europe then only four months old, responded to this ap- 212 THE PASSING LEGIONS peal by subscribing £200,000, approximately $1,000,000. This gift was conveyed to Sir Robert Hudson, head of the Society, in the following letter: The American Red Cross, London Chapter, 40 Grosvenor Gardens, London, S. W. 1. October 17, 1917 My Dear Sir Robert : The American Red Cross takes great pleasure in subscribing for " Our Day " £200,000 to be used for the following purposes: £50,000 for relief and comforts to sick and wounded in hos- pitals, casualty clearing stations and on lines of communication in territories where British forces are fighting. £50,000 for the maintenance of British Red Cross auxiliary hospitals and convalescent homes in England. £100,000 for institutions in Great Britain for orthopedic and facial treatment and for general restorative work for disabled British soldiers. The distribution of these funds is, of course, to be entirely at your discretion. May I express the peculiar satisfaction that we feel in mak- ing this subscription? From the standpoint of our best judg- ment we rejoice in an opportunity to assist in the superb work that you are doing to relieve suffering and distress. But, in a larger way, we hope that you will accept our contribution as an earnest of the desire of our people to begin to take our share of the burden of the war which your forces have waged for three years on behalf of the whole civilized world. Very truly yours, (Signed) Grayson M.-P. Murphy, Major, A. R. C, U. S. A., American Red Cross Commissioner for Europe. This contribution, which earned the appreciation of the entire English people, was followed, on March 28, 1918, by a second one of £250,000. In transmitting it, Colonel Endicott wrote Sir Robert Hudson: THE MIRACLE OF ROMSEY 213 I am authorized by the War Council of the American Red Cross to give to the British Red Cross £250,000 and I take great pleasure in handing you herewith our check for that amount. We realize how little it is in our power to lessen the horrors of war, but we feel it a privilege to aid by this contribution in the care of the wounded who have so gallantly fought for the cause which is now ours as well as yours, and to alleviate as far as possible the suffering caused by the great battle now raging in France. May we therefore, ask that you use this money for the pur- chase of hospital supplies and the care of the sick and wounded. This donation is accompanied by our heartiest good wishes and our sincere appreciation of the wonderful work that your society has accomplished. As a tangible token of thanks for these two donations, the British Red Cross in June, 1918, expressed its de- sire to build and equip as fine a 500-bed hut-hospital as the Kingdom could provide, and present it outright to the American Red Cross. It explained the offer by saying it felt sure that American hospital needs would be far in excess of those anticipated and, therefore, wished to be of all possible service in solving the approaching problem. And by way of an inkling of what this hospital promised to be, King George offered to lend the land for it in his own Windsor Great Park. Colonel Endicott communi- cated this gracious proposal to the War Council at Wash- ington, which replied with enthusiastic acceptance. Unfortunately, however, succeeding steps in the project disclosed the fact that Windsor Great Park was unsuit- able for drainage purposes, owing to its clay formation. When the King was informed of this he immediately proffered a site in Richmond Park, which was found to be advantageous in every way, and a location on high ground overlooking miles of country was accordingly selected. Work was begun in June, 1918, the British Red Cross explaining that it intended to build the hospital through the agency of His Majesty's Office of Works which, re- lieved of the obligation of obtaining priority certificates, could accomplish construction with more expedition than 214 THE PASSING LEGIONS the ordinary contractor. It was expected, under this con- dition, to have the hospital finished and ready for occu- pancy in the following September, three months from the commencement of work. Three weeks after the signing of the Armistice, or about December 1st, the British Red Cross informed the Ameri- can Red Cross in England that in spite of every effort on its part and on that of the Office of Works, the hospital was then so far from completion that it did not seem pos- sible to finish it before March 1st, 1919, and, perhaps, not until thirty days thereafter. By this time the Ameri- can Red Cross had no need for this graciously offered institution and, with much reluctance, so replied to the British organization and work upon it was therefore stopped. With the next coming of " Our Day," on October 24th, 1918, the American Red Cross made a third donation to the allied British organization, this time to the amount of £500,000, bringing the total of these contributions to £950,- 000, or about four million seven hundred and fifty thou- sand dollars ($4,750,000). The check conveying this sum, which had been voted by the War Council at Wash- ington, was presented to Sir Robert Hudson during a dinner given by Colonel Endicott to the representatives of the British Red Cross and Order of St. John of Jerusalem, a number of notable Englishmen and Americans being present, including the Duke of Connaught, Lord Reading, General Biddle and Admiral Sims. In the brief speech of presentation, Colonel Endicott said: " You have placed at our disposal your entire organiza- tion, and I could cite countless instances of your valuable assistance. It is manifestly impossible for us to return in kind your many kindnesses, but we should be sadly lacking in appreciation if we did not make some effort to show our gratitude." In the same key was a letter accompanying the gift, THE MIRACLE OF ROMSEY 215 which was written to Sir Robert Hudson by Mr. Henry P. Davison, and read at the dinner: Again on the occasion of " Our Day " anniversary, it becomes the privilege of the American Red Cross, acting for the Ameri- can people, to endeavor to express in a concrete and material way the appreciation of that people for the stupendous and con- stantly increasing effort during four years of war on the part of the indomitable men and women of Great Britain whom we have joined in an unfaltering resistance to the deadliest menace to which civilization has ever been subjected. It is with a feeling of thankfulness and gratitude that we are able to ask you to accept from the American Red Cross on behalf of the American people, this check for five hundred thousand pounds to be used in such ways as the experienced judgment of your Society may suggest, confident in our belief that in this way the best results will be attained, and that in the immortal words of Lincoln, it is our duty to dedicate all our resources and all our strength to insure " that those who have died shall not have died in vain." With the deepest appreciation of all that the British Red Cross and Order of St. John of Jerusalem has done for the American Red Cross, and conscious of the fact that in your hands this money will be spent so as best to serve the identical aims of our two societies . . . After Sir Robert had formally accepted, the Duke of Connaught also thanked the American Red Cross and added: " I am confident that gifts of this sort help to bind closer for all time the great Red Cross organizations on both sides of the Atlantic. Meeting at this moment, we cannot but hope that this may prove to be the last great war ap- peal of the Joint War Committee. To all of us, and we hope to all of you, it will ever be a pleasant memory that out of evil came good and out of the terrible suffer- ing of the war have grown a clearer comprehension of one another's aims and a closer cooperation in our common work of humanity." In addition to these gifts to the British Red Cross 216 THE PASSING LEGIONS numerous American women in England, members of the American organization, helped in many ways on " Our Day " to increase the popular subscription, establishing themselves in a store in Bond Street, and decorating it with American and Red Cross flags. The three donations made by the War Council indi- cate that the American Red Cross did not confine itself to work in purely American hospitals nor through dis- tinctly American channels. It was always eager to do anything it could to aid war humanities, and the Com- mission for Great Britain contributed funds and supplies wherever they were needed. It gave a $30,000 Christmas gift in tobacco, pipes, and cigarettes to the British enlisted men lying wounded in British hospitals; it sent the Lord Mayor of London a check for $25,000 " as a token of the appreciation which Americans feel for the care given to American wounded in the London civil hospitals," to be distributed among these institutions; it gave $100,000 to the Scottish Women's Hospitals for Home and Foreign Service in recognition of Miss Kathleen Burke's work for these hospitals and to enable her to give more time to American Red Cross activities, this money being used for institutions in France, Serbia, Macedonia, Russia, and Corsica; it contributed $185,000 to the British National League for Health, Maternity and Child Welfare to main- tain eight American Red Cross Maternity Centres, two being in London, and one each in Glasgow, Aberdeen, Swansea, Birkenhead, Middlesborough, and Barrow-in- Furness, and day nurseries and mother's schools in sev- eral parts of the Kingdom. Indeed, one of the very first gifts made by the Ameri- can Red Cross for British relief work was the sum of $20,000 to establish infant welfare centers in Great Britain. Part of this gift was devoted by the National Baby-Week Council to the establishment of a center in Bethnal Green, a suburb of London. This center, typical THE MIRACLE OF ROMSEY 217 of such a form of much-needed endeavor, was fitted up in a building which had been a public house, or saloon. As usual, this was one of the best buildings in the district. When the Government prohibited the sale of drink save during stated hours, many of the saloons in London were ready to go out of business, so it was not a difficult matter to obtain these premises. Public houses, even in the slums, have always been able to afford any luxury that would make their exteriors more attractive, and this one sported an alluring sign hung from an ornamental and ancient bracket. When the " pub" went out and the " centre " went in, the sign was repainted by an " artist" of the neighborhood, who had been engaged for the work by an American woman living in London. In its new dress it read: " American Red Cross Maternity And Child Welfare Center," with the Stars and Stripes rippling between the lines of lettering. The transformation of the " pub " was as complete as cleaning and painting could make it, but the entire cost of conversion, furniture, gas-stoves and plumbing rear- rangement was only $1,200. All the work was done by neighborhood workmen, who took proprietary interest in their old rendezvous, and who, without exception, were thankful to have it transformed into a place where their children might find health and amusement and their womenfolk advice and recreation. As the man who was laying the linoleum there one day said to a Red Cross representative, " Drink was all right before the war, an' I took my drop with the rest of 'em, but it's the babies we got to look arfter now, the babies what we fought for. An' what's a drop o' gin against them, I arsk ye ? " This will convey a comprehensive idea of the extent of the indirect work of the organization in Great Britain and although the British Red Cross received the largest 218 THE PASSING LEGIONS share of contributions, the total of funds donated by the American Red Cross between November 1st, 1917, and February 28th, 1919, was in excess of five million dollars. CHAPTER XII THE WATER-GATE TO FRANCE--SOUTHAMPTON AS Southampton was the chief British port from which American troops embarked for France, Red Cross activities there were intense. More than 913,000 Amer- ican soldiers sailed from Southampton. Nor does this mark the full tally of Red Cross service, for there were other thousands which came in from the Northern sec- tors of the battle front, sick and wounded men, in need of much care, and these, too, were attended in the measure of their needs. Originally Southampton was comprised within the Win- chester area of Red Cross work, but military activity be- came so great at the port that a small, triangular zone was detached from Winchester early in June, 1918, with Southampton as its official center. The new area thus created included four American camps, one in Southamp- ton Common, two miles outside the city, the others at Netley, Beaulieu, and Eastleigh; four hospitals, the great one at Sarisbury Court, another in the rest camp on the Common and the British hospitals at Netley and Shirley, which received large numbers of American patients; two infirmaries at Eastleigh and Beaulieu, the Red Cross farm at Sarisbury, the Red Cross Laundry, and the endless movement at the docks. During the time Southampton was employed mainly with the transportation of -troops to the Continent, that is, from February, 1918, to the following November, 868,358 enlisted men, 45,141 officers, 6,872 nurses, 4,381 tons of stores and 1,543 vehicles passed through. When the stream began to flow the other way, 10,000 wounded or 220 THE PASSING LEGIONS ill American soldiers and 9,000 returned prisoners of war of several allied nations came through the. port. And long after the Armistice was signed, as late as March, 1919, hundreds of men, on two weeks' leave from France, passed on their way to holidays in England, Scotland, Wales and Ireland and then, in fourteen days, again took ship for their return. All the men of these hundreds of thousands were welcomed by the Red Cross, received canteen serv- ice or, in the case of the leave men, a well-filled luncheon box to cheer them on their journey back to duty. Cloth- ing was distributed where it was needed, comfort kits were provided, everything done that could be done. The Red Cross maintained a large office in Southampton as a base for the work with the passing troops as well as the point from which the building operations a»t the big Sarisbury Court Base Hospital were directed. The Southampton staff was of constant service to the officers of the Army Medical Corps stationed at the rest camp hospital and at their request various tasks of furnishing and renovating were done in the hospital hutments, the staff and other officers' quarters. However, Red Cross work naturally centered about the docks and the canteen service there had a large equip- ment with facilities for serving any number of troops. In one day more than 15,000 cups of coffee were given to the men as they filed to the transport gangways. At the rest camp there was also " field service " by the can- teen workers for the soldiers who came marching in, dusty and thirsty, from Winchester, Romsey, Stanton and Cod- ford, distances varying from eight to ten miles, the route from Romsey being over one of the finest Roman roads in Britain, on their way to embarkation. The men usually reached the camp at about noon in detachments ranging from 500 to 6,000. Here they were marched to a glade called " Back o' the Walls," where Cromwell's men had camped in Roundhead days, and where now the Red Cross and the American flags flew over four big portable counters THE WATER-GATE TO FRANCE—SOUTHAMPTON 221 loaded with food about which stood twenty canteen ex- perts in readiness for the task. So skillful did the young women on duty become that as many as 5,000 men could be provided with coffee, sandwiches or buns, chocolate and cigarettes in one hour. This work began early in August and was continued until shortly after the Armistice. For a long time it was the only coffee canteen the embarking soldiers had, because, in the judgment of the British Mili- tary Authorities it was unwise to permit such a canteen on the docks. There can be no doubt of the serious respon- sibilities of the officer in charge of so important a port as Southampton, with its vast fleet of arriving and depart- ing shipping and its legions of passing soldiery upon whom so much depended. Everything about the docks had to be performed with the utmost expedition and the command- ing officer felt that his burden of responsibility would be much augmented if others than those directly attached to the military or naval services be granted access to the piers. So this was the reason the Red Cross established its coffee canteen in the glade " Back o' the Walls." The influenza epidemic of the late summer and early autumn of 1918 brought its emergency calls upon the Southampton area as upon every other Red Cross area in Great Britain. The climax of the scourge in Southampton came with the arrival of the great liner Olympic on Sep- tember 29th, carrying 6,000 troops and 150 other pas- sengers. When she docked at the long pier in front of Red Cross headquarters the epidemic had just begun to assert itself aboard and she came in with 400 cases. But during the next two days, before the troops had been de- barked, the number of victims had increased to 2,000. At that time tfie weather was very unfavorable in Southampton. It was cold and wet, the air filled with the thick, chilling mist so characteristic of the low coasts of southern England at that time of the year. This was particularly unfortunate as the troops aboard the Olympic were from training camps in the mild climate of the 222 THE PASSING LEGIONS the Southern States and therefore keenly susceptible to so great a change in climate conditions. For this reason the medical authorities hesitated to set them ashore, especially as the only place to which they could be taken there in the port was Southampton R«st Camp situated on low, damp ground and without sufficient facilities for taking care of a great number of sick men and of those who had been exposed to an epidemic such as had raged on the ship. Most of the housing of the camp was in tents without cots and the men had to sleep on floors which consisted merely of one layer of thin boards raised only a few inches above the moist ground. So, for a day or two, the men were detained on the Olympic and the doctors tried to fight the disease on ship- board. But the influenza became so virulent that it was necessary, finally, to debark the troops and take them to the rest camp in spite of the inadequate quarters and care that could he offered them there. From the time that the big troopship came to her pier until she was entirely unloaded, sick soldiers were being taken from her con- stantly. Of those who contracted the " flu" on the Olympic it was said that fully a third developed pneu- monia and that the proportion of fatalities was very large. The medical authorities in the hospitals around Southamp- ton were well provided to deal with any ordinary outbreak of disease, but this emergency taxed to the breaking point all their accommodations and preparations. Supplies, not only of drugs and equipment, but also of doctors and nurses, were rapidly exhausted. The Red Cross responded with all its resources. Its representatives boarded the Olympic as soon as she came in and thus learned the con- dition of things. It was able from the beginning, through all the time in which conditions grew steadily worse, to keep in touch with the authorities and furnish a steady stream of medicines, instruments, bedding, ambulances and oxygen tanks in response to the requests of the Army Medical Corps. There was particularly a shortage of am- THE WATER-GATE TO FRANCE—SOUTHAMPTON 223 bulances and the Red Cross turned over to the army every one of its wheeled vehicles for use in conveying the sick to hospitals. Sarisbury Court, the big American Red Cross hospital just outside of Southampton, had not yet been opened and the plans did not call for this for some weeks, but in view of the tragic emergency, the plans were at once changed and by dint of strenuous endeavor it was possible to arrange matters so that the hospital could immediately receive about 300 patients- By good fortune, the army medical unit assigned to Sarisbury was already on the ground although many of its personnel had been loaned temporarily to other hospitals. Colonel Hughes, the com- manding officer, recalled every surgeon, nurse and enlisted man he could find and was able to take care of the Olympic's men as they arrived. During this period, the personnel of the Red Cross at Southampton worked day and night without respite, co- operating closely with the army authorities and acting always in the most cordial harmony with them. All the supplies asked for were of an emergency character and instant delivery was obviously essential and as many of the things needed were not to be found in the Red Cross warehouses at Southampton, they were purchased either there in the city or by telegraph in London and conveyed in Red Cross automobiles all the way to the port to avoid any possibility of delay in train shipments. More than 2,000 suits of heavy underwear for the men of the Olympic were obtained from the army quartermaster in London. The advantage which the Red Cross always had in an emergency of this kind was its ability to cut all the red tape of formal " requisitions " and " appropriations " and procure immediate delivery of the needed supplies. And more than once this enabled it to be of incalculable assist- ance to the army. Two incidents in its service for the Olympic s men are remarkable by reason of the unusual 224 THE PASSING LEGIONS sort of aid it rendered. Colonel Endicott, the Commis- sioner, was in Southampton when the Olympic's sick were brought ashore. One of the army surgeons came up with despair in every feature. " We are terribly up against it," he said; " we have no whiskey at all for these men. I've searched every- where and can't get a drop. If we don't get it — well, it will be mighty bad for a lot of our boys." Colonel Endicott, who knew what this meant, said he would try to get some, and hurrying into his car he went at top speed to the largest hotel in the city where he offered to buy then and there every bottle of whiskey in the hostelry's cellar at any price. The proprietor, de- murring at first on account of his " steady customers," finally agreed to part with five dozen quarts, asking that he be repaid, not in coin, but in whiskey as this was far less plentiful than money just then. Within five minutes the whiskey was loaded into the Colonel's car and on its way to medical headquarters. That night all sixty bottles were dispensed to the sick men and the surgeons agreed that thereby many lives had undoubtedly been saved. The fol- lowing morning Colonel Endicott and the Red Cross staff purchased all the available whiskey in Southampton and supplied the army's every need. The second incident came when the army medical authorities called upon the Red Cross officer in charge at the Southampton office for assistance in putting up parti- tions between the beds of the influenza patients as a means of checking the spread of pneumonia. This request came at the inopportune hour of midnight, but a fleet of auto- mobiles was at once sent out to the homes of a number of Southampton merchants, they were routed out of bed and persuaded to open their stores and supply the neces- sary paraphernalia, consisting principally of sheeting, wire, and screw-eyes. By 2 o'clock in the morning the Red Cross had delivered at the camp hospital all the re- quired equipment and before long every bed in the in- THE WATER-GATE TO FRANCE—SOUTHAMPTON 225 fluenza wards was surrounded by a partition of sheeting which could be sprayed with antiseptic solution and serve as a curb upon the disease. Throughout the long battle with influenza in this dis- trict, the Red Cross furnished special foods, such as milk and eggs and fruit which, in the opinion of the medical men, were of greatest aid in assisting and strengthening convalescence. In the early part of August, 1918, the American soldiers on the British front were just beginning to go into action and, in consequence, numbers of wounded were coming back to Southampton on the hospital ships which brought the British cases from Le Havre. That the Americans might be met and well cared for while their cases were being classified and assigned to hospital in accordance with types of illness or injury, the Red Cross formed a separate staff to undertake the task. This was begun on September 3rd. The point to which these transports brought their wounded was designated as " Dock 22," where there was a great shed, long enough to hold an en- tire hospital train of ten cars, into which the classified wounded were borne. It was of vital importance that the Red Cross should have some one actually on the pier to see to the welfare of the Americans, so an appeal was again made to the officer in command of the port. This time he consented that one American Red Cross woman, Mrs. Margaret Foster, of the Military Relief Department, should go to the docks, but he was still obdurate about the serving of coffee as it required too much apparatus. So, for a time, the Americans, whether wounded or embarking for France, received " dry rations "— biscuits, chocolate, and cigarettes — at the piers, but early in December the old General was completely won over and permitted coffee to be served, remarking he very much regretted not hav- ing given his consent at the outset, but that he had not believed any one could do what the Red Cross promised — and fulfilled —" serve coffee without confusion or slopping 226 THE PASSING LEGIONS it about." In November Mrs. Foster was joined by Mrs. Gerald O'Brien, of the same department — the General welcomed the Red Cross with open arms now — and they remained at the task until the middle of February, 1919, when there was no longer need of their so helpful service there. The number of American wounded received at the Southampton docks on a single day frequently rose above 700 during the height of the fighting on the Western Front, for at that time from three to five hospital ships arrived every forenoon. The cot cases were carried from the transports and unless they were critical cases, desig- nated by an ominous red label, were placed indiscrimi- nately with the English, Canadians, and Australians on a large platform in the train shed. Red label cases were borne immediately to ambulances waiting at the docks and hurried to hospitals in the neighborhood. Sometimes the bearers brought ashore a still figure covered by a flag, which had not survived the crossing and never knew that his longing for " Blighty " had been fulfilled. It was the task of the two Red Cross women to seek out the Ameri- cans among all those cot cases and in the parties of walk- ing cases gathered, waiting, at one end of the dock. While many of these were promptly sent away to hospitals, others often had to wait for hours until the trains assigned to their particular destinations came in, for although train succeeded train as rapidly as possible, each was assigned to serve a special hospital district and each collected cases according to their character. However, every one of the Americans was always sought out and found and to each was given an American flag, a bar of chocolate, a hand- kerchief, and a package of cigarettes and later, when the General relented, coffee and whatever food they might be permitted to have. Everything possible was done to make the men com- fortable during the time they waited for the departure of their trains. On many occasions it was necessary to effect THE WATER-GATE TO FRANCE—SOUTHAMPTON 227 a slight adjustment of splint or bandage and sometimes the men asked for some special medical attention and then the Red Cross workers would notify the British or Ameri- can medical officers and see that prompt attention was ac- corded. Immediately upon their arrival all the wounded were served by the British orderlies with hot beef tea and biscuits, and while this was a blessing to them, there is no gainsaying the keen pleasure of the men at meeting an American woman — something which, perhaps, had long been denied them — and their appreciation of the Ameri- can flags that were given to them. If they were well enough to raise their hands they invariably took the flag before the chocolate and many touched it to their lips. It was tucked in the caps of the very sick men and always pro- voked a smile upon the dreariest face. Some of the young- sters stuck little flagstaffs into their splints and bandages and waved them despite their injuries. The packages of chocolate, by reason of an enclosed card stating that the nourishment in them equaled such and such an amount of ordinary foods, came to be known as " lamb chops," and were infrequently referred to officially as such by the pier authorities. When there were long periods of waiting for particular hospital trains, the Red Cross women were able to perform many acts of kindness for the men, not the least of which was that of writing post cards, and it was invari- ably true that no matter how badly wounded a soldier might be, even if seen to be past hope of recovery, he in- sisted upon having injuries, troubles, and homesickness minimized in these scraps of message to his homefolk. " Please write for me, Sister, but go light on the wound," was the way he would put it. " Say: { This is Jimmie writing. I'm sending you love and kisses. I'm all right. I've landed in England and the Red Cross is going to see that I'm all right in the hospital. I'll let you know where I'm going when I get there. Don't worry. It isn't any- thing bad that I've got, just a bum arm.' " Naturally, the number of British and Colonial troops ar- 228 THE PASSING LEGIONS riving at the docks was much larger than that of the Ameri- cans. And it was a great pleasure to the American workers to be able to minister to the needs of these allied soldiers. One British Tommy who received a package of American cigarettes and a cake of Red Cross chocolate as he lay on his stretcher wiped a tear from his eye when he said, " Thank you, Sister, that's the first present that I've had in four years." This man had been fighting since the beginning of the war; this was his first home-coming. Frequently the workers were called upon to go aboard de- parting hospital ships, both those which carried Americans and those which were loaded with Canadians and Aus- tralians and here they found opportunities to do much help- ful work in distributing supplies and arranging for the com- fort of the men. When the repatriated prisoners of war began returning through Southampton there were, at the beginning, only a few Americans, comparatively, the mass being British, but the Red Cross distributed its stores to all alike. On Thanksgiving Day all the Americans received a copy of President Wilson's Proclamation, which had been re- printed by the Red Cross Department of Information in London for circulation throughout Red Cross posts in Britain and on Christmas Day the Red Cross had a sufficient number of stockings — more than 1,000 of them — for everybody on the docks, the arriving wounded, American, British, and Colonial, and also for the faithful dock laborers, orderlies and assistants who had been dealing with the wounded for so many months. And every man who received a Red Cross stocking, filled with nuts, choco- lates, cigarettes, a pipe and a handsome metal cigarette case, was as happy as if he had had an extra month's pay. Never was gift more appreciated and it did much to lift Christmas Day on the docks out of the unhappy daily rou- tine and make it at least something of a holiday for wounded and workers alike. As a historic foot-note, one of England's very dis- THE WATER-GATE TO FRANCE—SOUTHAMPTON 229 tinguished and oldest buildings was used as a garage by the Red Cross at Southampton. It was close to the water front and built in the days when King Canute defied the rising tide in his capital at Southampton. The structure was originally part of the city wall and a post for expert archers. In the thirteenth century the city became a great wool port and this part of the wall was set aside as the wool market. During the Napoleonic Wars the " Wool House " was converted into a prison for French soldiers who fell into Wellington's hands and on the great roof trusses many of these unfortunates carved their names or initials which are today as sharply clear as ever. Then, in the twentieth century came the American Red Cross, a wide gateway for cars and vans took the place of the narrow prison doorway with its heavy, iron-spiked oaken barrier, and a high sign- board proclaiming the " American Red Cross " was set up, hiding the narrow loopholes through which the archers used to let their arrows fly. And so times change. CHAPTER XIII THE FLYING SQUADRON AND SOME OE ITS PLIGHTS ON a shiny marble pillar in the entrance hall of No. 52 Grosvenor Gardens, which, before it became an Amer- ican Red Cross administration building, was the town house of Sir George Faudel-Phillips, a Lord Mayor and High Sheriff of London, an assertive square of pasted paper ap- peared one day. Surrounded by the low tones of walls and hangings and of carved sixteenth century cabinets, it gleamed like a light. So deliberately did it catch the eye that no one who came in could resist reading what, in chal- lenging hand, was written upon it: TRY AND CATCH US! Five hundred dollars will be paid to the American Red Cross if, at any time, it can be proved that the " Flying Squadron " is not in action or ready for duty night or day (24 hours). Captain Wells, Emergency Department. Signed by the Commander of the " Flying Squadron." 1st Lieutenant Jeffers. Quite aside from the fact that the " Flying Squadron " was never " caught," this defiant square of paper expressed, with rare terseness, a pride and loyalty not exceeded in any department of the Red Cross organization in Great Britain. It had been put up half in jest as answer to a laughing prophecy made by one of the men in another bureau: " You people are certainly getting away with it, but you'll crack some day, see if you don't." Yet, in reality, it was the un- furling of the flag under which the Squadron had always gone into action and under which it served with unfailing zeal and resourcefulness to the very end. 230 " THE FLYING SQUADRON " 231 If it visibly proclaimed the spirit of a little corps of men reasonably and jealously proud of their success, so, with equal forcefulness, did a cheerless, quite uninviting room on one of the upper floors of the building proclaim it. This, furnished with four plain iron beds, four stiff chairs, a table and a telephone — lacking even the picture cards and colored gimcracks which a fellow far from home usually sticks upon the wall — was the night watch-tower of the " Flying Squadron." During the day, when all the machinery of the Red Cross was in full motion, every man at his station, the warehouses open, even the engines of the motor lorries warmed up, the work of the Squadron, while no less distinguished, was measurably simplified. In this there is no implication that the day tasks which fell to it were either easy or pleasant. Many of them were decidedly neither of the two and de- manded tireless energy. In fact, they predominated and were the ones in which the corps really wrote its enviable record. It was at night, naturally, that the Squadron had to ex- ercise its greatest ingenuity and drum up at all sorts of hours whatever agencies it required to meet sudden and un- expected demands. Its boasted preparedness throughout the twenty-four hours was based on the fact that from night- fall till morning two members of the corps were always on active duty, and the others, with their equipment of motor trucks and ambulances, their coffee urns and medical sup- plies, always within ready reach. The duty detail re- mained up and about at headquarters until midnight and after that went to sleep in the watch-tower, their uniforms arranged fireman-fashion for instant donning, a telephone between their beds. By arrangement with the London Telephone Company, all Red Cross calls after midnight were rung on that line. It is doubtful whether there existed in any other Com- mission in Europe an organization comparable with the " Flying Squadron." In the first place every man in it had 232 THE PASSING LEGIONS to be a skilled motor driver, an EDIBLE cook (" if you know what I mean "), an expert on the typewriter (one of the corps, sotto voce: "Even if he can't spell!"), the possessor of a reasonable amount of ready money, and a HUMAN BEING. (The same voice asked if these two words might not be capitalized.) Such a thing as a " grouch " was unknown in the corps. In addition the members were expected to be as quick of thought as of foot and hand, for the men of the " Flying Squadron " were em- powered to act " on their own," to do whatever they deemed the occasion of their service required. There was no tele- phoning "higher up," no let's-ask-the-Major; the emer- gency was for solution by whatever man or men had tackled it. " And outside of the fact that we were on duty seven days a week," one of them explained, " those were about all the regulations." Under these requirements were brought together more than a dozen capable young men, strong, self-reliant, inde- fatigable. And it was their esprit de corps, no less than their initiative, which made them so effective, which won no end of friends for the American Red Cross. Many important tasks fell upon their ready shoulders in the diverse work in Great Britain. They aided the rescued men of the Tuscania; they hurried to Islay to help bury the dead and succor the survivors of the Otranto; they gathered the homeless American soldiers and sailors in the night streets of London and gave them lodgings; they shep- herded the bluejackets of Admiral Sims' fleet into the Royal Law Courts for a bunking place; they transported emer- gency equipment of all kinds at unheard-of hours; they went on countless flying-canteen excursions, taking hun- dreds of gallons of hot coffee miles from London to the men of arriving troopships; they met American officers entering the city and found quarters for them long after the me- tropolis had shut its doors and turned in; they met confused prisoners of war, fed, entertained, and housed them and whisked them off to hospitals when this was necessary; they " THE FLYING SQUADRON " 233 provided from somewhere, at dead of night, medical and surgical supplies when lives hung upon their procurement; they gave a sturdy helping hand to every other bureau of the Red Cross organization, for whenever an undertaking seemed scarcely possible of accomplishment, some one was sure to say, " The ' Flying Squadron ' will put that across for you." And so it would, with never a failure. When a chauffeurs' strike threatened to tie up temporarily the ac- tivities of the Commission, eight men of the Squadron re- ported one morning to the director of transportation and said, " Don't give in; we'll run all the cars you'll need "— and broke the strike! The cessation of hostilities in November had the effect of filling London with jubilation and human beings. While the former was universal, the latter were made up in large part of American sailors on leave, first from torpedo boats and mine sweepers and afterward from the big ships of the Scapa Flow fleet. London, already overcrowded — it was estimated that the transient population exceeded a million — was now taxed to the limit of hospitality. The " Standing Room Only " sign could have been hung on every hotel in the city. The result was that hundreds of enlisted men were walking the streets, bedless. This was particularly hard on the Americans, many of whom had never before been in London and were like lost sheep. As precedents and conventions meant absolutely nothing to the " Flying Squadron," which recognized only the. rules and regulations governing every " human " creature, it de- cided that the well-heated Red Cross Headquarters build- ings themselves would not make such bad bunking places. So, one fine night, taking things in its own hands, it simply commandeered them, collected a large party of bluejackets who did not know where they were going but were on their way, and shepherded them into the big mansions in Gros- venor Gardens. First of all the men were taken to No. 52, where the Squadron had an emergency canteen which provided them with hot coffee, sandwiches, chocolate, 234 THE PASSING LEGIONS oranges and cigarettes. Then the department rooms in building after building were given over to the sailors, with two blankets for each of the " guests " and the option of making his bed in a chair or on the floor. When all other rooms were filled, the Squadron genius in charge of the party, ushered half a dozen of his charges into the large private office of the Commissioner, moved the desks and chairs against the walls, threw down a pile of blankets, and said calmly, " Now, go ahead, you fellows, and pound your ears in peace; you're in the boss's office! " Such use of the buildings made it necessary to hurry the sleepers out at half-past seven o'clock in the morning so the rooms might be set to rights for the day's affairs. But tbe sailor folk were not left even then to the cheerless obliga- tion of routing themselves out and hustling about for break- fast. The " Flying Squadron " was astir long before that hour. It awakened the men and by the time the first one was in his clothes the emergency canteen at No. 52 was again ready with gallons of hot coffee and enough bread and jam for a ship's crew. At the risk of spoiling the " efficiency " part of this in- cident, the writer must say that in the case of one bureau, its chief arrived at his office at 8 o'clock one morning to find a sailor lying on his desk stretching luxuriously be- fore arising and another tying his neckerchief at the office mirror. He was greeted with a punctilious " Good morn- ing, Sir, and thanks for the quarters." It was the fifth night his room had been so utilized and he had never known it. So, perhaps, there was some " efficiency " in it after all. As the number of enlisted men on leave increased day by day, so did the problems of the " Flying Squadron " and the entire Emergency Bureau. However, by the kind aid of Colonel Matthews, who was in charge of the Rest Rooms of the British Army, permission was obtained to lodge some of the Americans in a building of the Royal Mews, in the gardens of Buckingham Palace, and a Red Cross canteen THE FLYING SQUADRON" 235 was set up in the Buckingham Palace Hotel across the way. This, with the use of Red Cfoss Headquarters — for no one ever interfered with the " Flying Squadron "— was a tem- porary solution of the difficulties. But to make it the more successful, the Squadron established its famous bus service. It chartered two omnibuses from the London company, hung upon each a large Red Cross flag and a sign reading "U. S. Navy Sleeping Quarters," and sent them " to sea " under discretionary orders. The sole instructions given to the two Squadron men who manned each of these " cruisers" was to search the streets of London for " cast- aways," pick them up and take them either to the haven of the Mews or to Red Cross Headquarters. They were to promise supper, a bed and breakfast to every man they found. The " cruises " began at 9 o'clock and continued until 4 o'clock in the morning, the Strand, that ceaselessly busy street-of-all-the-world, being the highway most thoroughly searched, although the vehicles put in at every port of Lon- don to which sailors might be making in hope of an anchor- age. Any one familiar with the persuasive vocal methods of 'bus drivers at a rural railway station when " the train from the city " comes in, will have an excellent idea of the manner in which the homeless sailormen were invited to partake of Red Cross hospitality. One Squadron man was stationed on the top, or " bridge " of the " cruiser," the other on the conductor's ' " quarter-deck." Whenever a single sailor or a knot of them was encountered, the 'bus crew would begin its hailing: " Here you are mates; we've got a place for you to sleep to-night! " or, " Have some eats and a flop-down on the Red Cross, Jack ? " or, " Here's the American Red Cross sleep-finding 'bus, all aboard for sup- per, bed and breakfast! " If the crowd was large the man on the top of the 'bus would get down and circulate among the men, telling them to come to the Red Cross headquarters then or later, just as they wished — but here was the 'bus 236 THE PASSING LEGIONS all ready, why not jump in and ride there? Don't go to a hotel and spend your money, come to the Red Cross, it doesn't cost you a cent — Hey, bed, bed, who wants a bed?" The cries and the general merriment of the party always drew a crowd from the strollers in the street. When the sailors clambered aboard the 'buses they added to it all by hailing their fellows as they passed and inviting them to " join up." Normally, the London 'bus accommodates thirty-four persons, inside and out, but the sailors swarmed up the Red Cross " cruisers " until there were at least fifty aboard each one of them. When a vehicle could hold no more, even by dint of pushing and squeezing, it was headed for Grosvenor Gardens. There it discharged its load and went " to sea " again for another cargo. Not infrequently soldiers were picked up in the same way and now and then an Australian or a Canadian who happened to be " spend- ing the evening " with his American friends, because in the Red Cross headquarters buildings alone, sleeping space was available for nearly 600 men. For many nights five hundred men at a time berthed there. Throughout the time of London's greatest congestion the 'bus service was continued. When, early in December, it became necessary to find extensive quarters for the men and the Royal Law Courts were thrown open to them, as related in another chapter, it was the " Flying Squadron " which hunted the streets for the wandering sailormen and took them to the Courts by the 'bus-load. To the sailors crowd- ing into London, the American Red Cross meant everything in the matter of helpfulness and interest in their comfort. They came to rely upon it with implicit and by no means misplaced faith. One little episode amply illustrates this. As the crowd in the Strand was hurrying homeward from work one December night, two huge motor trucks filled with American sailors drew up to the curb. A " Bobbie," pass- ing on his beat, stopped a moment with a kindly grin to give them greeting. THE FLYING SQUADRON" 237 " Going home ? " he asked. " Not on your life, Bo," came in quick reply from one of the bluejackets. " We've just got here and we're giving your burg the once-over, see ? " " Well, you take my advice," the policeman replied gravely, " and find some place to sleep first off. A door- step is a cold place on a December night, and that's all that's left in London nowadays." " Oh, we're all right," the sailor sang out. " Our Red Cross is taking care of us! " Just at that moment a " Flying Squadron " man ap- peared at the front of the truck and called to the driver, " The end building, 'round the corner from Victoria Street,— number Fifty-two Grosvenor Gardens ! " And as the convoy moved on again, the bluejacket leaned over the edge of the truck, tapped the " Bobbie " on the helmet and said: " Say, Cop, did you hear that ? Didn't I tell you we were all right ? " As the soldiers and sailors continued to arrive in London, either on leave or moving from one post to another, the Red Cross decided to establish permanent rest houses or canteens extraordinary to provide them with food and shelter. While the idea was surely begotten of an intent to provide comforts for these brief sojourners in a teeming city, it may have been linked in some way with a determination to keep the " Flying Squadron " out of trouble! Because the Com- mission had every reason to believe that, if all else failed, some one in the corps would begin making eyes at Bucking- ham Palace! Therefore, as quickly as possible, fearful, no doubt, of delay, the Red Cross inaugurated three such hos- pitable stations in London. And while they simplified the problems of the Squadron", at the same time they curtailed its ingenuity. One of these stations was at No. 48 Eaton Place, close to the American Army Headquarters; the second was at 28 Golden Square, beside the headquarters of the Provost Mar- 238 THE PASSING LEGIONS shal; the third, for naval men, was at the busiest spot in the Strand, the first London street for which a sailor looks. All three of these were in full operation late in 1919 and it was planned to maintain them as long as the need con- tinued. The rest house in Eaton Place was a large, well-ap- pointed town house only a few hundred yards from Red Cross Headquarters as well. Canteen workers were on duty morning, afternoon and evening to act as hostesses, to serve coffee and biscuits, sandwiches and chocolate, to talk, play checkers, and to divert the men generally. The rooms on the main floor were made attractive with comfortable sofas, chairs, rugs and pictures. There was a large table for magazines, newspapers, and a talking machine, and smaller tables for letter writing. On the second floor was the ball-room, capable of being converted into a huge dormi- tory in case of emergency. The stories above were divided into sleeping rooms, while the basement provided kitchens and storage. Occasionally the men gave musical entertain- ments in the house and every week there was a dance, the young women of the Red Cross attending in sufficiently large numbers to furnish the men with at least a third of a partner apiece. A short time after this place was opened, the Red Cross was notified by the American military authorities that 150 men were expected in London daily on leave from France. The Red Cross desired to provide canteen service for these men on their arrival at some point which would facilitate their registration with the Provost-Marshal, this being the soldier's first duty. Also it had been looking for a suitable place for use as a club room for the American Military Police, whose headquarters were at the Provost-Marshal's office. It seemed possible to combine these two services, and after a hurried inspection of available premises, the Red Cross representatives selected " the shabbiest house in London," at No. 28 Golden Square, adjoining the Provost- Marshal's Office itself. It had not been occupied for eight "THE FLYING SQUADRON" 239 years and there were only two days left in which to get it into condition to receive the first party of 150 men. Now, if there was one thing in the world that appealed to the " Flying Squadron "— of course it was called in, it was always called in! — here it was; a whole house to be " done-over" in forty-eight hours! " Can we do it ? Why, that's where we LIVE! " was the unofficial answer to the official summons to action. So the Squadron turned out with a large and active staff of cleaners and painters, plumbers and carpenters, elec- tricians and gas men, house furnishers and house wreckers, and went at that building. They literally tore it inside out. While one detail of the Squadron was busy pulling up, knocking down and dragging out its internal arrange- ments, another equally energetic detail was hauling in, put- ting down and setting up the new contraptions of transfor- mation. In those two days the house was sufficiently oc- cupied to make up for all of the eight years of idle peace- fulness. The noise created the impression that a munition factory had moved into the neighborhood. Food supplies, chairs, sofas, tables, rugs, china, table- ware were brought by the van-load from the Red Cross warehouses, shouldering their way to the doorstep through the trucks lugging off the debris of demolition. It was a race against time with the " Flying Squadron " perspiring but happy.. And it won out, with minutes to spare, for within the time limit everything was ready, even to the bright chintz curtains in the windows and the cheerful array of American and Red Cross flags on the walls. So systematically had the work been done, so carefully had the functions of the establishment been planned that it ran like clockwork from the first day, and entertained weekly an average of more than seven hundred men. The third establishment was provided when the Red Cross leased the Strand Imperial Hotel, opposite the fam- ous Gaiety Theater and opened it in December as a club house for American sailors. Attractive sleeping quarters 240 THE PASSING LEGIONS and excellent food were provided for the men at such prices as enabled the institution to pay its own way from the out- set, purchasing its own supplies and receiving nothing from the Red Cross save the payment of the rent. Its first patrons were the men of " Admiral Sims' Naval Jazz Band," famous throughout the service, and they proved such an attraction that the house rules were amended in order that they might become permanent residents. " Mother " Robertson, the chatelaine of this hospitable establishment, endeared herself to thousands of American sailors. Many of them sought their old rooms every time they came to London on liberty, and it is safe to say that very few passed through the city homeward bound without dropping in for a word of good-by — and a last piece of the chocolate cake or pie for which the club was justly famous. " Mother " Robertson conducted the club with due regard for discipline as well as comfort for, with all her greatness of heart, she had " an eye like Mars " to threaten and com- mand. One of the outstanding qualities of the " Flying Squad- ron " was the speed with which it accomplished things. This caused surprise even at Headquarters. If, in the early days, some one " higher up " telephoned to the Emer- gency Bureau to inquire about a " rush order " which had been sent through probably half an hour before, the answer invariably was, " Oh, that ?; why, the ' Flying Squadron's ' already attended to it," or " The ' Flying Squadron' has flown! " Later no one ever called up to inquire. The speed and efficiency of the corps was often well tried out and as well demonstrated in providing canteen service for the American troops when their transports put in at Royal Albert Docks or Tilbury Docks, the first fifteen, the other twenty-nine miles below London. These arrivals could nearly always be classed as " emergencies," for the military authorities guarded until the very last minute the destination of a convoy, and such a " last minute " allowed precious little time for Red Cross preparation. Further- "THE FLYING SQUADRON" 241 more, there were often as many as 3,000 soldiers to a trans- port and the capacity for coffee, buns, sandwiches and chocolate of the soldier who has been at sea for nearly two weeks is worthy of physiological research. By reason of the necessarily preserved secrecy in refer- ence to the troop arrivals, the first ship which the " Flying Squadron " met at the Royal Albert Docks gave it a busy time. What happened is in every way better told in the words of one of the corps who had a hand in it: " We got news at Headquarters at 6 o'clock one night — it was September 8th — that*a transport was on its way up to the docks. That meant hustle with a capital H. The first thing we did was to make enough coffee to fill two twelve-gallon urns — knowing how to make coffee is part of our job. These urns keep hot for about seven hours, you know, and we packed them into a big motor truck with a lot of ground coffee and condensed milk, sugar, biscuits, choco- late and cigarettes, and a thick bundle of the Daily Bulletin of that morning with most of the news from home in it. Wherever and whenever we went on a call like that we took the Bulletin, because it was just what the men wanted — and it lasted longer than anything to eat! " It was nearly 8 o'clock by the time everything was ready and then we climbed into the truck, put a foot on the accelerator, and didn't take it off till we got to the docks. That was an hour later, but it was good speed for fifteen miles because we had to go a great part of the way through London streets. But we had Red Crosses on our head- lights, so that made everything all right. " We expected to see the transport coming in when we got there, but no such luck! The very best of official in- formation was that the vessel could not come up until 7 o'clock next morning on account of the tide or something. Well, it was all in the night's work, so we lugged the coffee urns aboard a merchantman lying in one of the docks and prevailed upon the steward to keep the coffee hot for us. As it happened, we were not the only ones waiting that 242 THE PASSING LEGIONS night; there were trains and crews all ready on a siding to take the newcomers off to camp. There wasn't anything for us to do around there, so we took to the truck and set out on a hunt for a hotel in the neighborhood. While we were on the way several people in a crowd in the dark, see- ing our Red Crosses on the lamps, hailed us. We stopped and learned that a man riding a bicycle had been run over by a train, so we picked him up with his broken wheel and went at top speed to the nearest hospital. After we'd carried him in we got his name and address from papers in his pocket and at once headed the truck for his home. His wife had been dead less than two weeks, but he had a sister-in-law taking care of his three little children, so we hurried her to the hospital to see the injured man and brought her home again. Incidentally, we gave the kid- dies some Red Cross chocolate and a little collection we took up among ourselves. " That left us just where we started: looking for a hotel. To save gas we parked the truck at a police station and be- gan again on foot. At 2 o'clock in the morning we found ' Jake's Palace '! The ' Palace ' part of it consisted of one big room with one hundred and fifty beds in it! The fellow who let us in boasted about the number and I believe him. It looked as if an army was asleep in the place. We turned in all standing, boots and all, and slept as if we were dead. But Gabriel came around with the well-known Trumpet at half-past five and we turned out again, feeling as if we'd never even lain down. As we didn't have to stop to dress, we got the truck, went to the docks and had the coffee ashore, piping hot and more brewing, before 7 o'clock. " But there was no transport, certainly none of joy in our breasts. We posed around, first on one foot and then on the other until half-past ten o'clock, when up came the troopship as if she had the whole day before her. She had about 2,200 men aboard and they were mighty glad to see us when they tramped down the gang-plank. " Well, we kept the coffee going, making it as fast as we THE FLYING SQUADRON " 243 could, because it takes 150 gallons to supply 2,000 men, and while we were in the midst of the work, in came another vessel with 1,500 soldiers, hungry Yankee soldiers, hang- ing over her rails! That was a facer, because we had been told to count on 2,000 men and could stretch the service to 2,400, but an added 1,500 was too, too much! " In order to do anything at all after the coffee was all gone — it was impossible to get any more in the short time between debarkation and entrainment — we had to cut down the chocolate, biscuit and cigarette rations, but every man got a little of each of them. Both ships were a long time coming inio the dock and it was six o'clock in the after- noon when the last train pulled out. By the time we had everything washed up and stowed in the truck it was nearly 9 o'clock and then we started on the journey back to Lon- don." " But that was an easy job," piped up another member of the Squadron, " compared with one at Tilbury Docks about two weeks later. There was a railway strike on just then and a transport we went to meet had to stay out in the stream a day and a night before trains could be provided to take the men to their camp. But we got a small boat and carried the coffee aboard the ship and served it on deck. There were 2,000 colored troops on that vessel and if it had been a still day you could have heard them drinking that hot coffee a mile away. They had had no cigarettes for three days until we passed them around. The Red Cross certainly made a hit that time. During the night that the transport lay off the docks not one of us could lay off for a sleep; we had to stay up to make a hundred and fifty gallons more of coffee for the morning. But that much of our work was all for nothing, so far as the troops were con- cerned, because when they came ashore they were put aboard the emergency trains so rapidly that we didn't have a chance to give them a drop of it. However, we did sup- ply them with more cigarettes and chocolate and after the trains left we treated the dock superintendents and laborers 244 THE PASSING LEGIONS to as much coffee and biscuits as they could possibly hold. That turned out to be a better job than we ever thought. It was like casting bread upon the waters, because in the days to come we frequently got tips by telephone from the docks — of course we didn't know where they came from — far in advance of official notification concerning the hour of transport arrivals and thereby gained time for fuller preparation. I know that the ' Flying Squadron ' made a host of friends for the American Red Cross." Mr. Henry P. Davison, Chairman of the War Council, was a witness of the speed with which the Squadron worked. Early in November, 1918, while making a two-day tour of inspection of Red Cross activities in the South of England, he was the guest of Colonel Endicott at a dinner in London which was attended by the heads of the various Red Cross departments. Among those invited was Lieutenant Jeffers, Commander of the " Flying Squadron," who confided to a bosom friend that it was the first time he had been able to get into a white collar since his arrival in Eng- land ; wherefore it was an event. In an address of congratulation upon the work the entire Red Cross organization had done in Great Britain, Mr. Davison came, in time, to speak of the admirable efficiency of the " Flying Squadron," with particular reference to the care of the survivors of the Otranto disaster, a large part of which had fallen to Jeffers. But Jeffers was not there to hear. Just as he was buttoning his white collar the spe- cial telephone of the " Flying Squadron " rang like mad. A private hospital in London was on the wire with the message that one of its patients, a lieutenant in the British Army, was undergoing a serious operation and would surely succumb unless some tanks of oxygen could be at once ob- tained. The voice explained that the hospital had its last tank then in use and could find no other anywhere in Lon- don; and would not the American Red Cross come to its aid? Off came the gala collar and away went all idea of reach- " THE FLYING SQUADRON " 245 ing the dinner as Jeffers scrambled into his blouse. A scarcity of oxygen containers had long been prevalent in London; the Red Cross had not been able to keep any of them in stock, but it was now up to the Squadron to main- tain its cherished reputation. There were three possible sources from which to draw, at least to tap: two in the city, St. Katharine's Lodge and the Red Cross Naval Hos- pital in Park Lane, and one, U. S. Base Hospital 29 at Tottenham, eight miles away. From three different tele- phones these places were called and as each promised a tank of gas, two motor cars were at once ordered out with need- less instructions to the drivers to go over the tops of the houses if necessary to get them. And within an hour all three tanks were delivered at the private hospital. As an appropriate finis, the officer's life was saved — and Jeffers got to the dinner in time for coffee. " Outside" requests such as this often came to the Squadron, which had a sufficiently large staff to answer every call, even two or three at once. An unusual one came one night at 11 o'clock in a telegram from a small village on the south coast of England; it was signed with a woman's name: My father, late captain U. S. Transport Service, now dying, has always expressed wish for U. S. chaplain at the last. Can you favor me with name and address of one within reach? Grateful thanks. The Squadron man on night duty had never before been asked for that kind of help, but, calling his duty-mate to re- place him, he went out to get, not an address, but a chap- lain. After an hour's journey he found Chaplain Locke, of the Red Cross, returned to Headquarters and telegraphed the answer: Chaplain arrive your house to-morrow morning. Deepest sympathy of the American Red Cross. Chaplain Locke caught the first train for the village shortly after daylight. 246 THE PASSING LEGIONS Toward the end of October, 1918, the "flu" became severe among the sailors at Berehaven, the American Naval Base at the southern tip of Ireland. There were no hos- pital accommodations ashore sufficient to cope with the out- break and the situation grew to be acute almost im- mediately. The Red Cross obtained from Admiral Sims the necessary authority to set up a hospital on the Furious Pier and Lieutenant Cameron of the Squadron was selected to take the requisite equipment to the scene. This consisted of twenty-five beds, with their mattresses and pillows, seventy-five sheets and blankets, six wicker lounge- chairs, and a generous quantity of medicinal supplies. The instructions to Cameron were as terse as always to a member of the corps: " See how quickly you can get to Bantry Bay!" Now, speed on such a journey at such a period would have been a problem to a man traveling all alone; it be- came something indescribable when he had to take two truck-loads of impedimenta with him. But the Squadron men were accustomed to this kind of thing, surprised at nothing. As soon as the trucks were loaded at the Red Cross warehouse in Coleman Street, Cameron piloted them to the passenger train for Holyhead and had their contents put aboard as personal baggage! " It was the first time, I'll bet you, that those railway porters ever saw a man traveling about with his own personal hospital," Cameron said afterward, " and either from curiosity or interest they were right on the job when it came to packing the stuff into the luggage vans." It was 6:30 o'clock next morning when the train reached Holyhead and there the first hitch occurred. The mail boat could not take the " hospital" aboard on account of its weight, but Cameron searched up and down the piers until he found a cargo boat which was going out that afternoon. As there was no one else to help, every one being busy, he and a solitary porter appropriated a pair of hand trucks and, piece by piece, pushed that " personal hospital" to "THE FLYING SQUADRON" 247 another pier at which the cargo boat was moored. By 2 o'clock it was all stowed in the hold and an hour and a half later the vessel sailed. Seven hours were required for the run, four hours longer than the time of the mail boat, but the cargo carrier went slowly and warily because only a short time before the Irish mail boat Leinster had been tor- pedoed in those waters with the loss of more than six hun- dred lives and the Japanese ship Hiramo Maru had met a like fate. The skipper was taking as few chances as pos- sible, especially as he was running without convoy of any kind. At Kingston, Cameron cajoled the crew into breaking out his belongings quickly and they were stacked on the pier by 1 o'clock. The next train bound in the general direc- tion of Bantry Bay and Berehaven was due to leave North Wall, Dublin, six miles away, at 10:30 o'clock that morn- ing, so the Squadron man hired two motor trucks, piled his hospital into them, made the transfer and got to Cork late that night. Now occurred the second hitch. It was Satur- day night and there were no trains for Berehaven on Sun- days ! It was a heart-breaker, but Cameron " carried on " as well as he could, having the two railway luggage vans which contained his stores transferred to another railway line and attached to the Berehaven train just five minutes before it drew out of Cork on Monday morning. At 2:30 o'clock that afternoon he delievered the " hos- pital " to Captain Russell at the Naval Base, less than forty-eight hours after leaving London! In innumerable instances the Squadron saved the day by rushing emergency supplies to hospitals, by taking addi- tional quantities of coffee, food and cigarettes to railway and camp canteens when their stocks had been suddenly exhausted by unusual demand, and by caring for every American soldier and sailor, officer and enlisted man who came into its hands or who could be enticed into them. It was a sleepless, fatigueless organization and thousands of Americans who passed through England on their way to or 248 THE PASSING LEGIONS from the battle areas will never know how much of the comfort that was brought to them came through the en- thusiastic, devoted service of the " Flying Squadron." There is another story of this little band of men still to be related. Its rightful place is in the narrative of the American Expedition to Russia, and there it will be found. CHAPTER XIV A ROYAL " BERTH-DECK " IN England, custom and precedent were believed to be established upon a rock, firmer, perhaps, than else- where in all the world. " It just isn't done, you know " was an expression with a fixed and useful place in the lan- guage, serving to convey both surprise and finality. It was something behind which one could not go and possessed a determined value in maintaining dignities, and all that sort of thing, as well as holding the country rigid against un- desirable experiment. And then the war came and, with it, a new order. Things had to be done which had never been done before, nor were likely ever to be done again. So the venerable expression recurred with decreasing frequency until it be- came meaningless and, at last, obsolete. Englishmen grew accustomed to whatever strange demands this new order made imperative. They ceased to be surprised at any- thing, though it threatened the rock itself. This was all very well in war time, but, with the war at an end and the conventions clamoring for recognition, imagine saying to an average Londoner, even in the most polite way, " We'd like to borrow your Royal Courts of Justice to use the building as sleeping quarters for Ameri- can sailors!" What a picture it conjures to the mind! — consternation — incredulity, and then " You're spoofing, what ? " But the picture is all wrong in any event, for these identical words were addressed, not, as it happened, to an average Londoner, but to the Lord High Chancellor of Great Britain and Ireland — and forty-eight hours later 249 250 THE PASSING LEGIONS twelve hundred American sailors were asleep in the Royal Courts of Justice of Great Britain! Nor was it in the emergency of a single night that this extraordinary thing came to pass. Every night for a week the sailors slept there — more than nine thousand of them in all — the welcome guests of a hospitable Lord High Chancellor and the American Red Cross, which had asked this unprecedented favor in their behalf. The mere idea of it intrigues the imagination! The " Great Hall" of the Royal Courts, ante-chamber of Eng- land's highest and most austere tribunals — a sailors' " hotel! " This vast, stone edifice, associated with the very foundation of an Empire people's rights, the abode of unsmiling effigies of countless departed Chancellors in all the solemnity of wig and robe and given to endless nights of respectful silence — echoing to the jest and laughter of a horde of irrepressible bluejackets going reluctantly to bed! A thousand of them with their mattresses dotting a rich mosaic floor as long as a New York City block and wider than Fifth Avenue. High in the gray walls about them, the dim, narrow windows, many-paned and blazoned with the colorful arms of England's successive Chancellors for nine hundred years. And over all lost in the whisper- ing darkness, the deep arches or a vaulted roof for ceiling, eighty feet and more above their drowsy heads. But these were not all of the sailormen. There were two hundred others, scattered through the flanking alcoves, on the wide stair landings, beneath the dignified busts of the gowned Lords in the corridors, even in the high-flung balcony in which Queen Victoria sat, surrounded by her Court, and ceremoniously opened the great structure thirty- six years before. As unrestricted and inconceivable as their possession was, it meant even more than a lodging for the night. For with them came an American Red Cross canteen, a cheery complement of workers with a numerous paraphernalia of urns and dishes, food and drink. It provided them with A ROYAL " BERTH-DECK " 251 supper and breakfast throughout the period of their me- morable occupancy, never closing until the last hungry man had struggled in, though it were three o'clock in the morn- ing yet ready for the first who stirred when daylight came. And one night, these tireless young women of the canteen put by awhile their cups and things and gave the blue- jackets a " supper dance " to the music of a Naval " Jazz Band"—in the "Great Hall" of the Royal Courts of Justice! Verily, the old order changeth! But this is inverting a remarkable story and beginning it at the end. Its actual preface is the detachment, after the Armistice, of the great ships of the American Navy, with their 15,000 men, from important and exacting service with the British Grand Fleet. For more than a year they had been constantly under steam in the bleak waters north of Scotland, their crews always on tiptoe, never ashore save in small parties for a few hours at a time and these at long and trying intervals. It had been " liberty " but not much else. That the men were entitled to a share of real sailormen diversion, once their vigilant task ended, was well recognized by their Commanders and, of course, London at once suggested itself as the ideal place for it. But London was already full to overflowing, hotels and lodging-houses were bulging with the people squeezed into them, and civilians, as well as soldiers and seamen, were roaming the streets in search of beds. To find sleeping quarters for several thousand American sailors was de- clared to be an impossibility. Even a particularly agile A.B. would have difficulty in finding enough to swing a hammock. This was a great disappointment to those at Navy Head- quarters because they wanted the men to have a chance to visit London but had no intention of permitting them to come and shift for themselves in a strange and over- crowded city. So it had been definitely decided that such 252 THE PASSING LEGIONS liberty would be granted to only a small number of them. The others would have to stand their regret with the same fortitude with which they stood their watches. And in the meantime the ships were on their leisurely way from Inverness to Southampton, every man Jack aboard shad- ing his eyes and looking toward London. It is just at this point that the American Red Cross comes into the story. One day — it was while the fleet was steaming leisurely southward — Captain Richard Armstrong, the Director of the Red Cross Bureau of Naval Sendee, asked a member of Admiral Sims' staff what arrangements had been made to bring the crews to London. The regretful reply was that beyond allowing a few men liberty, the thing was quite out of the question. " London is jammed with people now. There isn't a bed left in it. We can't let nine or ten thousand bluejackets stand on the street corners all night long." This was, in substance, the remainder of the reply. What followed will undoubtedly be the better understood with a word or two about Armstrong. In the first place, there are very few officers in the American Navy who do not know him. The time is not far distant when every rear admiral on the list will be " Hello, Bill," or " Hello, Tom," to him — many of the " four stripers " are that now. For Dick Armstrong coached the football teams and the crews at Annapolis in 1897-8-9 and has kept in touch with the Navy ever since. Turning back one biographical leaf will disclose him at Yale in the Class of 1895, on the 'Varsity eleven and in the 'Varsity boat. Armstrong fully appreciated that the answer to his in- quiry was reasonable enough, but it did not satisfy him. " Too bad, isn't it ? " he asked after a pause. "Those fellows have been up north so long, it's a pity they can't come here just for a day or two, isn't it ?" He was not asking the questions with the least expecta- A ROYAL " BERTH-DECK " 253 tion of contradiction; he was gaining time in which to think. " You're going to have a lot of badly disappointed boys on your hands if they don't get a chance to come to Lon- don," he went on. "And I look at it this way, too: we ought to do all we can for international good feeling — it's going to do a lot of good to have our bluejackets come here and sort of mix up with the people. They don't know the English; the English don't know them. It's a pity they'll have to go home and take Scapa Flow and the Orkneys as their only recollection. I think it's a duty we owe to these boys, indeed I do, to bring them here. They've worked hard, they ought to have a chance to play a bit — and if they play in London they'll be playing on our side! Our soldiers have made the English good friends of ours; it's too bad we can't show them our sailor- folk." The naval staff officer agreed with everything Armstrong said but repeated that there was no place in London to house the men at night. The day offered no problem at all; that began with the dark. " Well, now listen to this proposition," Armstrong said at last. " The Red Cross will do the impossible and pro- vide quarters for these men. We'll get them somewhere. And when we do, will you go right into the Admiral's cabin and say it's absolutely necessary that the men come to London ? " The officer agreed to this, probably more to please an enthusiast than with any idea that the thing could be done. There was, however, one proviso: the Red Cross would have to guarantee the care of the men, otherwise the Navy would grant liberty to a few sailors only. Armstrong did not hesitate one moment. " I'll give you that guarantee here and now," he said. " The Red Cross will provide for these men. It will give them sleeping quarters and supper and breakfast as long 254 THE PASSING LEGIONS as they're here. You people send them up to London and we'll do the rest! " And that day he and Captain H. S. Wells, Director of the ever-resourceful Emergency Bureau of the Red Cross, which thrived on problems, set out to ransack London for what no one believed to exist — sleeping quarters for thou- sands of men. Hotels and lodging-houses were, for good reason, eliminated in the search which followed. Empty buildings, skating rinks and dance halls were what re- mained and these were investigated throughout the city, but not a place for the sailors could be found. Armstrong, still sanguine, took his troubles to every one he knew, hop- ing that some one might suggest a solution. During his round he asked a friend on The Daily Mail to help with a paragraph or two about the desirability of having the American sailors come to London, with accent upon " in- ternational friendship, hands-across-the-sea — you under- stand, old man. See if you can't get Lord Northcliffe in- terested." The first result of this was both Lord Northcliffe's in- terest and an article in the Mail; the second was that Lieutenant Colonel A. G. Cousins of the British Army, in charge of the billeting of English troops in London, caught a ripple of the splash Armstrong was making. He came forward at once with an offer to the Red Cross of the use of seven drill halls in the city belonging to the London Scottish, the Queen's Westminsters and other London regiments. He explained that they would accom- modate about 1,400 men and could be withdrawn from the service of their own troops for a limited period but that the Red Cross would have to supply the requisite bedding and blankets. This was an encouraging beginning but only a beginning, so Armstrong and the others continued their quest and tramped London from end to end. The day before the United States ships came into Portsmouth, an American resident in London, D. Camp- A ROYAL " BERTH-DECK " 255 bell-Lee, Esq., a Barrister-at-Law and Secretary of the American Navy League in London, suggested that perhaps the Royal Courts of Justice might be an excellent place in which to billet the sailors. Armstrong and the Emergency Bureau would no more have thought of suggesting this than of hinting for Buckingham Palace! But Mr. Campbell- Lee was quite in earnest and even asked the Red Cross to inspect the Great Hall " to see whether it would do." What the Red Cross men found took their breath away. Here was a vast chamber, 240 feet long, 45 feet wide and 85 feet high, warm as a bedroom and equal to berthing all the men of the fleet! In the groined crypt adjoining it were dining rooms and a restaurant kitchen equipment. The place was ideal, but it was impossible not to believe that there was a catch in it somewhere. Nevertheless, the American barrister assured them it was far from impossible and would send them word about it in an hour or so. In that interval he went to the High Lord Chancellor and lay the matter before him. It required less than one minute for Lord Finlay to decide. He told Mr. Campbell- Lee that the American Red Cross might have the Great Hall for the sailors' use for as many nights as were neces- sary, only asking that the greatest care be exercised to prevent encroachment upon the regular and ordinary rou- tine of the chamber and its daily employment in connec- tion with the courts. And as Mr. Campbell-Lee left his chambers, the Chancellor said, with a smile, " I am sorry that we did not think of this hospitality long ago." When Armstrong learned this he dropped everything else and flew to Navy Headquarters. " Now let your bluejackets come! " he cried to his friend on the Staff. " We've got a palace for 'em! Send ten thousand if you want, only let 'em come in two or three batches and when they get home they'll certainly have a yarn to spin. They're going to bunk in the Royal Law Courts which, I take it, is going some! " This admitted of no disagreement and, leaving the Navy 256 THE PASSING LEGIONS captain with his mouth wide open, Armstrong dashed back to cheer up the Emergency Bureau which had received the news and already begun its work. The Royal Courts of Justice, in the Strand at Temple Bar, which was once a London slum, is an imposing structure housing the entire twenty-three civil courts of England. The Great Hall, which is the main entrance to them, is built of Portland stonre, quarried by prisoners at Dartmoor, and is one of the great monuments of modern architecture. In employing it as a billet for American sailors it was imperative that the injunction of the Lord High Chancellor be carried out to the letter and in such a way that no trace of its novel use should remain when the time came for the courts to open. The courts were sitting daily from 9.30 until 5.30 so, between those hours, on the other side of the clock, the Great Hall with its five miles of alcoves and corridors, was at the service of the sailors. The day the permission was granted, the Emergency Bureau had 10,000 billeting cards printed for use of the men assigned to the drill halls and those who came -to the Law Courts. The cards bore the name and address of each billeting place, the hour at which it was open, a list of things of interest to be seen in London and a note: " Show this card to any police officer and he will give you directions." Another little card was also printed giving information about the Great Hall, its dimensions, some- thing of its history and a concluding paragraph which said: " Every sailor who sleeps here may justly feel that he has had a unique experience, as this courtesy which has been extended is without precedent." These things accomplished and everything else arranged, Armstrong and the Emergency Bureau sat and waited for word from Navy Headquarters. It came on the morning of December 4, 1918, saying that the first liberty party of bluejackets from the fleet would arrive that evening. A ROYAL " BERTH-DECK " 257 As the Courts were busy up to the very minute of their closing at 5.30 nothing could be done toward transforming the Great Hall until after that time, with an added interval to permit the last court employee and the last clerk to leave the great building. Early in the day it had been possible to move an adequate equipment of mattresses and blankets into the several drill hails and at once the Red Cross turned these places over to the Y. M. C. A. for administration, in accordance with an agreement with that organization. On the stroke of half-past five the Red Cross motor lorries began their task with the Great Hall. From the Southwark Warehouse in London twelve hundred mat- tresses and thirty-six hundred blankets, kept for just such an emergency, were broken out and loaded into the vans which ran back and forth between the warehouse and the Courts until all had been delivered. A corps of fifteen Red Cross men in the Great Hall stowed the bed gear in careful piles in the alcoves. Also they hung a huge Ameri- can flag and one equally large Red Cross banner high across the lofty hall to give their unfailing greeting to the bluejackets. Meanwhile the canteen service was busy transporting its impedimenta of urns and cups and food, coffee, sandwiches, chocolate and buns, and " setting up shop " in the vaulted crypt. Eight energetic young women attended to that job and enlarged upon it a bit by decorat- ing their severe precincts with flags. It was at 9 o'clock that night that the first liberty party from the fleet arrived at Paddington Station in London. By that time the Royal Courts had been prepared and the Great Hall had relapsed into the silence of waiting. A detail of Red Cross men with packets of underground rail- way tickets in their hands were at the station to meet the sailors and escort twelve hundred of them to their strange " hotel," the others being told off for a lodging in the London drill halls. 258 THE PASSING LEGIONS The impression that the Great Hall of the Law Courts made upon the bluejackets as they piled into it will doubt- less remain with them for many a day. " Gee, Bill, we're in a church! " one of them said in a half whisper as he stared about him, the clustered lights revealing the vastness of the place with its pillared, ecclesiastic-looking door-ways and its long rows of narrow, pointed, stained-glass windows. " Then you're out of luck, Bo," was the ready answer. " Shut up, you two," came in quick admonition from another. " Don't you know where you are ? You'll wake up the King in a minute and then you'll get merrihel." The marble statue of the architect of the great structure at the right of the entrance caught the eye of one of the guests. " Say, fellers," he called, jerking a nod toward it, " there's a guy what beat us to it and got a room! " In the midst of the joking a bluejacket became really serious. " Stow that kidding stuff a minute, will you," he exclaimed, " and tell me what room this is ? " A shipmate wheeled on him with the answer. " Well, mister, since you ask," he said, " it's my room. Yours is No. 72 on the second floor. Here, boy, show the gentle- men up to 72." In all the joking and crowding and curiosity, the Red Cross men had to work quickly and sympathetically to get their charges in order. Each man was required to register, after which he received a billeting card and was told that the Red Cross canteen was open in the crypt and waiting for him. " And after you've had supper," Armstrong advised each squad as it passed, " you can go out and see the town. Come back here whenever you get sleepy. There's a mat- tress with three blankets for every man. You'll find them stacked in the alcoves. Bring them out here, if you want, or find a place for yourself anywhere in the corridors. This is your house now, and you don't need a latchkey! " Most of the men, of course, hurried to the canteen where A ROYAL "BERTH-DECK" 259 gallons of hot coffee and huge basketfuls of sandwiches and honey-spread buns had been prepared for them. Others, however, who felt that there wasn't anything new about eating, they could do that any old time, trailed out of the Hall and into the flow of the busy Strand. It cannot be said, however, that those who availed themselves of this initial canteen service dawdled very long over it. Within a short time they, too, had fared out into the crowded London streets. To a large majority of these men this was the first time they had ever come into contact with the American Red Cross. Their arduous work in the northern waters, their isolation, as it were, from any such ministrations, had robbed them even of acquaintance with the Red Cross. Most of them knew it only by hearsay and that at home. The result of this was a number of amusing but wholly for- givable misunderstandings on the part of some of those who came to the Great Hall of the Law Courts. They believed that payment for what they received was an in- evitable requirement, and scarcely one of the eight young women in the canteen failed of an experience with this belief. One of the first of these began with the offhand inquiry, " H.ow much, Sister ? " as a bluejacket set his cup on the canteen bar and reached into the pocket of his peajacket. " How much for what ? " the young woman asked, striv- ing to keep the twinkle out of her eye. " Let's see; two cups of coffee, two sandwiches, a bun, a pack of cigarettes — oh, yes, and a bar of chocolate." The girl pretended to figure a moment and then replied, " That will cost you just — nothing at all! " "You're joshing, ain't you, Sister?" Out came his hand with a tinkle of silver coins. He looked at her in- credulously as she turned to refill several cups from a steaming urn. When she came back to him he darted an- other question at her. " Say, are you Limies ? " The young woman who knew that this was the all-corn- 260 THE PASSING LEGIONS prehensive sailor word for the English — a relic of the days when their ships were called " limejuicers "— shook her head. " No, we're Americans, just as you are. This is the American Red Cross. Do you mean to say you didn't see the big flag when you came in ? " A wide grin broke across the sailor's face. " Excuse me, Sister; I'll take it all back," he stammered, " I thought I was three thousand miles from America! " Later that same evening another bluejacket, just as in- tent upon paying for his supper, put a half-crown upon the counter. " Is that enough, Miss ? " he asked. " No, it's a half-crown too much," was the canteen work- er's reply, trusting that her smile would explain. " I don't get you, Sister," the sailor confessed, looking dubiously at both her and the coin. " Nothing to pay ? " " Not a penny," the worker declared. " This is only a gift from yourself to yourself. It's your Red Cross, you know, not ours. The sailor hesitated between a blush and a grin, then, pocketing the money he leaned across the counter and said, " If that's so, Sister, I'll take another cup of my coffee! " The coffee apparently was the hit of the evening and any number of bluejackets demonstrated the fact that for years the doctors have been all wrong about the liquid capacity of the human stomach. One of the men pro- claimed that it alone was worth a trip to London. " It's like the good old stuff we used to get at home," he explained to a worker between bites and sups as he hung about the coffee urns. " When do we begin paying, Sister?" " You don't ever begin," was the amused answer, which halted the cup on its way to an open mouth. " By the way, your mother's a member of the Red Cross, isn't she ? " the canteen girl asked. " She sure is," was the quick reply. " She knits and sews things for it. My sister's a member of it, too; she got up a concert for the last drive." A ROYAL "BERTH-DECK" 261 " Well, then, you can think that your mother made this coffee and your sister put the honey in the buns. They couldn't come over themselves to give them to you, so they sent us instead, do you see ? Now you don't want to pay, do you ? " The arrested cup went up again, raised this time to the level of one of the Red Cross banners over the urns. " Here's to you, friend," said the sailor, with a nod to the banner, and drained the cup. " Thanks for that," the worker replied, with a quick little laugh. " And remember that wherever you see the flag of the American Red Cross you can be sure that your mother and your sister have helped to put it there." The lure of London was quick to draw the remaining men away even from the attractions of the canteen and within half an hour the Great Hall was once more prac- tically deserted. But in the crypt there was no resting, be- cause in a few hours the sailors would come trooping in again, just as hungry as before. So the coffee urns were refilled and all hands fell to preparing the dripping honey buns. It was, perhaps, half an hour after midnight that the returning began, the men drifting in by twos and threes, some of them promptly setting a course for the canteen, others foot-weary and glad to turn in at once. Although the Navy had provided a police detail, there never was a crowd more easily managed, and this held true to the very end of the visit. Practically the only service the police had to render was to indicate the four long lines with a wide aisle down the center, in which the sailors were to lay their mattresses. If, however, they preferred to go off in corners by themselves they were at liberty to do it. Each man had his three blankets with his mat- tress and as the Great Hall was, in addition, well heated, the berthing was eminently comfortable. The homing of the bluejackets was somewhat of the nature of a procession since it required nearly three hours 262 THE PASSING LEGIONS to pass a given point — the portal of the Great Hall. But eventually every man straggled in and generally by three o'clock all was quiet. In order that the Great Hall might be put all ship- shape and Bristol fashion in readiness for the Court pro- cedure of the day, it was necessary to turn out the men at 7 o'clock in the morning. So at that time with the cus- tomary admonitions to " bear a hand " and " shake a leg," the Navy police got the crowd awake and stirring. Each man was required to fold his blankets carefully, put them on his mattress and stow the bedding in regular piles in the alcoves. Then, after a visit to the washroom, where the Red Cross had provided an abundance of towels, soap and hairbrushes, the hungry crew trooped into the canteen for breakfast. Meanwhile a squad had been set to work sweeping the Hall, the flags were taken down and put away and, in due time, the canteen equipment itself fol- lowed, being loaded in trucks and returned to headquarters. And by half-past eight o'clock the Great Hall had been so well restored to its normal state that even the crustiest, most suspicious of snuffy old barristers would never have known that it had been used as a " bedroom " for 1,200 American sailors. At the time that these men from the Grand Fleet visited London, liberty parties from American destroyers, chasers, mine layers and sweepers, dispatch and supply boats on duty along the coasts were still coming to the city. Nightly possession of the Royal Courts was a great aid in solving the problem of providing quarters for them. And again it was by resort to the potent bus-method. Two of these heavy passenger " Ships of the Streets " were chart- ered by the Red Cross, tricked out with big side banners bearing the world-known emblem and canvas signs pro- claiming, as before: U. S. NAVY SLEEPING QUARTERS A ROYAL " BERTH-DECK » 263 and these fastened high upon the superstructures so that any one might read without running. The busses were to serve a double purpose, gathering up also any of the Law Courts' guests who had lost their way or their billet cards or both. . The vehicles went into commission on the second night at 9 o'clock, each of them manned by two members of the fatigueless " Flying Squadron " of the Emergency Bureau. The only sailing directions they gave the drivers were to cruise up and down the Strand and the main streets leading from Trafalgar Square and to stop whenever the bell rang. The emergency men required no other instruc- tions than to pick up any American sailor who wanted supper, a warm bed, and breakfast and take him to the Law Courts. For seven hours, from nine o'clock until four in the morning, they cruised the streets in their rock- ing craft and, as a result, gathered in at least a hundred men that night and, in fact, every other night that the service was maintained. All that this added number of men necessitated was an increased supply of mattresses and blankets which were readily forthcoming from the Red Cross warehouse, and more food supplies, as promptly ob- tainable. The popularity of the Law Courts as a billet was mani- fest from the very beginning and, far from being like cats in a strange garret, the men made the stately enclosure echo with songs. Every night the arches rang with " The Long, Long Trail," " Keep the Home Fires Burning," and " Over There! " It became veritably a sailor's club and, that the men might have an appropriate souvenir of it, the Red Cross provided them with post cards showing the in- terior of the Great Hall, which were mailed to the States in thousands with many such jocular comments penned upon them as, " How's this for a shake down ? " " This was my little shanty for two weeks," " I've put a cross where I slept last night. I'll bet you don't have a room like this for me when I get home." 264 THE PASSING LEGIONS One of the gala nights in the Hall was, of course, that of the dance to the startling syncopations of the Naval " Jazz Band." It was play, so far as the sailors were con- cerned, but it meant unceasing work to the young women of the canteen, for they were eight among eight hundred and every mother's son of the eight hundred bent upon dancing. The rush for these young women following the opening bars of the waltzes and one-steps, the energetic " cutting in " which limited a bluejacket to scarcely more than half a dozen steps with his partner and the hey !-port- your-helm-bump-crash dancing of the men with their own shipmates made for a merry confusion such as those gray walls will never see again. Another gala night came when Admiral Sims, Senior Officer of the American Naval Forces, and several members of his staff visited the Hall. The assembled blue- jackets gave him a cheer that set the flags a-flutter. He was frankly surprised at the completeness of the com- fort which had been provided for the men and the care bestowed upon giving them supper and breakfast. And as his eyes ranged down the great chamber, far above the heads of the men, to the pillared doorways, the churchly windows and the sweep of the massive walls, he smiled, as if at some flashing thought. Few are permitted to ask a Senior Officer what he is thinking, but it is fair to hazard a guess that he was saying to himself, " What an amazing berth-deck!" CHAPTER XV THE CLUBMEN OF MORN HELL " And we're go-ing back " 'Cause it's over over here! " THE paraphrased song ended with a mighty thump of a chord, two whole handfuls of keys, and the soldier in the British uniform swung himself around on the piano stool for two revolutions by way of joyous emphasis. While he was still spinning, even before the thunder had died in the recesses of the piano, another soldier, at the far end of the long room, with a brass Welsh leek on his cap, apparently deep in a newspaper, was stirred as by harmonic vibration. Without lifting his eyes from the page he voiced his reply: "Yea, Bo!" It was only one voice but it had the volume and the sincerity of a choral amen. It spoke of everything that had been in his breast, in the breasts of all of them, for days. The piano player and the others laughed, but their hearts responded with a leaping eagerness that went thrill- ing all through them. And there was not one whose mind did not spring from the confines of that room, speed across England and the wide Atlantic and alight in some cherished place in America. For it was over, over here and they were just awaiting the word which would re- lease them to follow that flight to the place which each called " home." It made no difference whatever that these men wore the King's uniform, all their thoughts were turned toward America, because they were Americans and, furthermore, they were on an American Island in the 265 266 THE PASSING LEGIONS midst of an English Sea. The flag of their own country was flying by the doorway, the American Red Cross banner beside it and they were in their own United States — almost. Their long, low building lay at the edge of a dusty road which dropped away to the distant level where, in the warm sunshine, Winchester drowsed about its gray Cathe- dral towers. All around it were gathered the flat, unin- spiring buildings of a great camp; they flanked the yellow highway and rose across the hills in ugly, orderly rows. But it was of two-fold interest to Americans, this roll- ing, treeless countryside, for it was Morn Hill Rest Camp, the first mobilization point for the United States troops as they landed from the fleet of transports which had hur- ried them into action two years before. Here in their thousands they had halted for a few days of rest in the journey across England to the coast where troopships were waiting to bear them to France. And here, too, when this was written, in June, 1919, was the great demobiliza- tion center for the legion of Americans who had enlisted in the armies of Great Britain, had honorably completed their service and were entitled to be sent back across the sea. The choice of Morn Hill as a military clearing-house of this kind was a happy one. It served to give Win- chester still another association with Americans, such co- horts of whom it had seen in the days when this was an American camp. Indeed, Winchester had already made preparation for a lasting memorial to the arms of her Western ally, for in the venerable Cathedral, on an aisle set apart to proclaim and commemorate the losses suffered by British regiments in many wars, the Dean and Chapter had reserved a window and the deep panels beneath it " For the Dedication of a Perpetual Memorial to be Erected by the British Nation to Those Gallant Americans Who Have Given Their Lives for the Cause of Freedom in the Great War." THE CLUBMEN OF MORN HILL 267 At the sweeping outbreak of hostilities in Europe in 1914, varying emotions of sentiment, sympathy and ad- venture had impelled great numbers of Americans — their own country seemingly disposed to remain neutral — to seek service against the German. Some hastened across the northern boundary and enlisted in Canadian con- tingents, others went to England and joined the ranks of famous British regiments. It was supposed that by the time the United States entered the general conflict at least 20,000 Americans had taken the King's Shilling. But when the repatriation bureau was opened at Morn Hill in the spring of 1919 and men began to come forward to claim discharge and passage back to the States the mounting figures led to a reasonable estimate that, with all casual- ties included, the number of Americans who served under British colors was about one hundred thousand. These were the men who were now gathered at Morn Hill from every part of the world to which the Great War had summoned British fighting men — France, Belgium, Italy, Palestine, Salonica, Turkey, Macedonia, Russia, Singapore, German South-west Africa, these and many others throughout the Eastern Hemisphere — to be held under indulgent discipline until ships could be found to take them home. For all Americans who served under the Union Jack, wherever it may have flown, with the exception of those who elected to return to Canada with the units in which they had enlisted, were required to pass through this camp for inspection, interrogation, and dis- charge. They had to produce their papers and clearly substantiate their claim to discharge and transportation home. Frequently this was no easy matter. A man might have enlisted in Canada, fought on two or three fronts and served in several different units in widely separated parts of the fighting world. In such case his entire record had to be collected from regimental archives and tabulated before he could even begin to see a sailing date on the far horizon. 268 THE PASSING LEGIONS This process was necessarily circumscribed by official regulation and for that reason often long and always wearying to the men. The war, with its adventurings, its hazards, its exhilaration even to those whose services lay miles back of the lines, was at an end; the men had little to do now save long for the home-faring day. Like a god-send the American Red Cross came to them. The British military authorities had done everything within power and regulation to make them comfortable, but they missed America and American things and Ameri- can voices, from which they had so long been cut off. Through four and a half years many of them had fought side by side with the men of another race, they had ap- propriated the stranger slang and habits, they were, to all appearances, British Tommies, but under the tunics were hearts that yearned for homes very far from the dusty Winchester downs. They were lonesome. There was not even the comfort of being with their own old regiments. The men they had met in the comradeship of arms were scattered to a hundred places. Some were at home, others were in hospital, many were in their graves. Now had they come among chance strangers — even the Americans were strangers — to wait and wait and wait. They wanted America and nothing could even remotely assuage the longing until the Red Cross came and estab- lished the club for them — the long, low building in which the piano player had sung his song and called forth that heartfelt amen. When it was realized that the official procedure involved in the discharge of the American volunteers and their as- signment to a westbound troopship might mean detention at Morn Hill for a month or more, the Red Cross estab- lished a combined club and canteen. This would suffice for the needs of those lucky enough to be quickly away, for the others who might, days on end, await release, and be ready also, even with a bit of tradition behind it, when THE CLUBMEN OF MORN HILL 269 the Americans should drift in from the distant British units in India, Egypt and Mesopotamia. The building granted for the purpose by General Mc- Pherson, the " C. O.," was one which had been used hither- to as a storehouse for Red Cross reserve medical supplies. It was near the center of the encampment, a structure one hundred and fifty feet long and fifty feet wide and beyond being weather-proof, was nothing more than four walls and a roof when it came a second time into Red Cross hands. And then, one rare spring day, Miss Lilian Baldwin, of Lakewood, N. J., who for many months had directed Red Cross canteen work at the American Base Hospital at Dart- ford, arrived at Morn Hill to start — literally, to create — the club. Whether she had or had not reckoned upon the Ameri- cans in the camp to aid her, they turned out by hundreds to lend a hand the day she appeared. They were so eager to help and there were so many of them demanding jobs that Miss Baldwin had to divide them into squads and dele- gate special tasks to each in order that they might not be forever tumbling over one another. One detachment laid thick linoleum, another hung curtains, a third hammered bookshelves together, and a fourth strung lines of allied flags along the rafters. Easy chairs, tables and writing- desks, a pianola, two pianos and a victrola were moved in, the " Buckshee " counter — the center of that little universe — was set up, a small kitchen was built " out back "— and the empty, resounding storehouse had become an American club! Then came the flag-raising on the inaugural day, with the " C. O." and his staff attending and the roars of cheers from eight hundred enthusiastic Americans. That was a day! It is not possible to set down here the " heart" that spoke in what the American Tommies said that day as they hailed the opening of their club. It was bluff to the point 270 THE PASSING LEGIONS of obviously hiding a swift and deep emotion, it was care- less and jocular, although one knew by the timbre of the laugh that it came from a lump in the throat — and it was sometimes frank to the point of sudden speechlessness. An indescribable mixture of the slang of two peoples ac- claimed the U. S. A., the Red Cross, Miss Baldwin, the coffee and pie, the cigarettes and tobacco, the rocking- chairs, the two-weeks-old newspapers, everything that the club offered to those men, starving for the home things. They danced around, banging one another on the back, and probably would have hugged Miss Baldwin to breathless- ness had they dared. A membership roster was begun that day — the sole requirement being American nationality — and the reg- istration showed that the Americans then in camp who had served with the British forces had come from thirty- one different States, from the District of Columbia, from Alaska, even from Hawaii, half-way round the world. They had belonged to some of the most distinguished regi- ments of the British Army, the Royal Horse Guards, the Grenadiers, the Dragoons, the Welsh Guards, the Cold- streams, the Cameron Highlanders, the Lancers, the " Death or Glory Boys," the Princess Pat's, the Prince of Wales' Fusiliers. There were scores of sleeves there bear- ing the red chevron of 1914. But, come into the club, see the men and talk with them and learn for yourself what a haven it is. There is a youngster at the piano, of course — there always is, because in homesickness and in health, in sor- row and in anger, sometimes in sheer cruelty, the male human, in gatherings of his kind, invariably exerts himself upon the most convenient musical instrument. Three others are beside him, two of them singing at the top of voice and ability, the third rummaging through a pile of music for a favorite song. The sound wings out through the doorway as if to call the men from the barracks. They THE CLUBMEN OF MORN HILL 271 come over the hills, along the dusty road, calling greetings, running a few steps to catch up with a little party ahead. Tanned almost to the color of their war-worn uniforms, wearing the glittering brass badges of well-known regi- ments, they are not in any way distinguishable from the Britons with whom they now share the camp above Win- chester. A few yards beyond the narrow wooden walk which leads across the uneven ground between roadside and doorway, a gang of German prisoners is carrying steel rails to the head of a new spur track. One of the Ameri- cans, his foot on the threshold, calls out an impersonal offer: " Hey, Fritz, I'll give you a piece of pie for that rail! " The prisoners look around with a grin as they disap- pear past a corner of the building. With a clatter of heavy, hobbed boots the men file through the narrow roadway, each displaying his club membership card to the corporal at the little desk by the entrance. Some of the newcomers have British Tommies in tow; for each of the Americans is permitted one daily guest from the camp and is proud of the privilege. Scat- tered about the big room are a hundred or more of their fellows, playing checkers or chess, reading, writing letters or drowsing in the enfolding arms of deep chairs, reveling in the relaxation of unbuttoned tunics and an unsoldierly, star-fish sprawl. Now Miss Baldwin takes you under her wing and sketches her club members for you. The two boys, one with a violin under his arm, who have just been urged up to the piano, used to be in a roof garden orchestra in New York. On their caps are the sacred seven-branched candlesticks of the Jewish regiment which, under British officers, fought in Palestine for the deliverance of the land of their forefathers. Two men in a fairly quiet corner are making the last strategic moves in a game of checkers, an interested audience in stockade around them. The elder player, the club champion, is a Scotch-American who 272 THE PASSING LEGIONS had been a track-walker on one of the Southern railway lines before joining an artillery brigade in 1915. His brother, who enlisted with him, had been gassed and was buried in Belgium. His opponent across the board, with the engineer's device and the sergeant's chevrons, is a sturdy son of Wisconsin. The red chevron he wears is the treasured symbol of 1914 but not, in his case, for serv- ice either in France or Belgium in that memorable year. It stands for the campaign " down German West," as South Africans abbreviate it. This was the one in which German South West Africa was completely conquered. Over an area nearly twice as great as that of European Germany the British forces and the Boers fought shoulder to shoulder, sharing the privations and vicissitudes of war- fare almost primitive in its tactics, long intervals of "trekking" following the engagements and blackwater fever more certain of victims than bullets. In the enclos- ing group a red-haired youth in the first of his twen- ties —- the one with the cap set rakishly over an ear — has been in the Army Service Corps and done his bit from helping the stevedores on the wharves of Salonica to carry- ing up supplies through the mountain passes of Macedonia. The man with the " Royal Air Force " arched across his shoulder seam, writing post cards at the desk by the window, is from Tennessee, an expert motor mechanic whose father owns a garage; the elated one who has just this moment won $260 from himself at " Canfield," is a Texan, a horse-artilleryman who was with the guns at Ypres — see the red chevron ? — and the fellow lounging in, who has a broad scar across his cheek, is a Californian, prouder of Los Angeles than of the scar and the service stripes. He was with the Canadians at Cambrai. And so it goes from man to man, every branch of the British service represented by these American volunteers They had sweated at the docks of half a dozen countries to keep the war gear flowing to the front; they had handled munitions on the mysterious train-ferry between Eng- THE CLUBMEN OF MORN HILL 273 land and France — one of the few secrets of the war which remained a secret until the Armistice was concluded — they had crouched, too, on the fire-step, awaiting the " zero hour " to go over the top — and they had gone so often, a few of them, that they risked belief in telling of it. There had been no fighting in any part of the world during the last five years, from the Singapore mutiny to the Egyptian trouble, from the conquest of the German islands in the South Pacific to the turmoil in the six-months' night of the Murmansk winter, in which one or another of the men who were drifting into this Red Cross club had not taken part. And every last one of them was an American! Suddenly, from a distance not too great to mar either distinctness or meaning, come the sounds of pouring water, of a tin cup clanking against another, of dishes being moved about. And then, in just a little while, the in- sinuating odor of coffee! The men look up and sniff, with much wrinkling of noses. Were it not for possible misconstruction derogatory to Miss Baldwin's brew, it might be said that most of the club members look as if they expected a gas alarm. But the smile that comes not later than the second sniff dis- pels this uncharitable similitude and hopeful eyes turn toward the " Buckshee " counter. Miss Baldwin, ener- gized, apparently, by the same sounds and odor, runs off with an I'11-be-back-in-a-minute wave of the hand to dis- appear into the kitchen. This seems to be a generally ac- cepted signal, for instantly most of the men in the room put aside their games and diversions and advance in mass attack upon the counter. Now " Buckshee " means " free "— one of the clubmen (quite a metropolitan sound, that!) credited it to New Zealand, another to Australia, a third said he had picked it up in Egypt, so there's a choice of sponsors — and at this counter along the wall opposite the entrance doorway the men receive twice daily all they wish of coffee, its team- mate the doughnut and pie (on special days) and sand- 274 THE PASSING LEGIONS wiches. At one end of it is a' deep canister of tobacco bearing the admonitory legend: " Don't fell youb POCKET-- FILL YOUR PIPE OR ROLL A CIGARETTE," and flanked by a box of cigarette papers. The mass attack, as it goes forward, resolves itself into a shuffling line with an occasional rough, good-natured contest for priority. It is one of Miss Baldwin's regula- tions that the men must come up to the counter in single file and behave themselves, or seem to. Impatience always bends the line into a sharp curve as it stretches down the room and likewise flings more than one pointed suggestion to the loiterer at the head for the love o' some deity to get his chow and move on. As soon as a man is served he balances his cup and plate into a convenient corner and gives himself up to a blissful content — knowing that he can go back for more till contents spells content. And between either bite or sup he will tell you how much his club means to him. " It's hearing American spoken that gets closest to me," one of them explained, adding in the same breath, " but that's not saying a word against this coffee and doughnuts and the real American cigarettes Miss Baldwin gives us. I'm from Seattle — that's the place! — and I've been sort of everything in this man's army — infantry, artillery, tanks — nearly three years of it, and up to two weeks ago I thought I'd have to wait six months before I could see anything that looked anyways like home. But me and the other boys stepped right into the old U. S. A. the day the flags went up over this building. And, believe me, I've been nearer home in this shack than I was in the barracks at, Halifax. Why? 'Cause I've written more letters home in the last two weeks at that old desk down there than I ever did in all my life. Miss Baldwin came up to me the first day I dropped in and said, ' Why don't you write the folks and tell 'em about the club and the coffee and things ?' She gave me some paper and envelopes and a stamp, and just so's not to disappoint her I wrote to my THE CLUBMEN OF MORN HILL 275 mother. She'll think I've gone bugs to send her eight pages when she said she'd be happy if she only got a postal card every week. After that I sort o' got the habit, 'cause next day Miss Baldwin gave me an American magazine and a Coast newspaper and I had to tell the Missus all about that, too. I know they'll think I'm looney at home, but I haven't had anything like this for nearly three years and, well, I guess I must have gone dippy over it, all right." An elder man, grizzled and lined, with A. S. C. on his shoulder straps, puts down his cup, loosens his belt and develops a slow smile. " What do I think of the club ? Better you should ask me what I know, for it's then I can sing to you. But wouldn't you rather know first that I'm fifty-six years old, so it's no giddy boy telling you a tale ? And of course you never guessed I was Irish — no, you thought the brogue was Persian, now didn't you ? " This brings a laugh from the little circle of listeners and the Irishman himself pauses to smile again, his head cocked aside like a robin's. " But let's be getting on," he says, " I'm from South Boston — County South, I call it — and yet for all that they'd not let me get up to the scrapping. I guess they thought I was too old. They put me in the Army Serv- ice Corps and the first work I had was bringing copper shell bands across from Pittsburgh. It didn't seem like battle to me, but it didn't do much to help the German cause. And then I had two years of it in Belgium and France. It wasn't so bad at first, but after a while the lonesome sickness took hold of me and I'd 'a' given half my right eye for a sight of the old lady and the children, or even Bunker Hill Monument. Maybe I got old all of a sudden, I dunno. However, they ordered me down here and it sort o' eased my mind. Yes, till I'd been here a month, hanging about, nothing to do but wait. I'd have rowed home if they'd let me. I would that! 276 THE PASSING LEGIONS "And then one day what happens? The Red Cross brings a little slice of America out here and spreads it sort o' thin so's to cover a lot of space, and hoists the flags to show it's America, and here it is, just where you're stand- ing. It's home to me, more, I guess, than it is to any of these laddies here. They've had the exciting things to keep 'em going — adventures, they call 'em — but I've had none o' that; I've never even heard the guns but twice. It's been hard work all the time and I'm tired and — a man thinks more of home when he's fifty-six and has a good one waiting for him. This is the nearest thing to it that I've had since I joined up, because my detachment never ran into the American Red Cross while we were in service. I guess we were in too out-of-the-way places. Until I came in here I hadn't seen an American woman or heard one of 'em talk for two years. I didn't care then where I sat down, 'cause all the places looked strange to me. But in here I'm more than halfway home, and if they don't find a steamer for me this week, why I'll come here and talk about South Boston to Miss Baldwin and let it go at that! And now I've talked myself dry and I'll go get my- self another cup o' coffee." What any of the other men have to say is little more than a variant of this. Services differed, as did experi- ences, but every man agrees, each in his own phrasing, that this Red Cross club is " the nearest thing to home " he has found in the Old World. It provides, as you see, a place in which he can find rest, recreation and companion- ship of his own people, his familiar newspaper, a bit old, perhaps, but welcome, whatever the date, and happier sur- roundings in which to discuss the one, heart-filling topic — the chance of having his demobilization papers signed in time for the next ship home. Now that you have met Miss Baldwin, the moment has come to disclose a remarkable feature of the club. It is that under the Red Cross, Miss Baldwin founded it alone and conducted it alone to its closing day, with a staff of THE CLUBMEN OF MORN HILL 277 ten or a dozen " orderlies," assigned to the duty by the " C. O.," as her only aids. She was, from the beginning, the only woman about the place, the only " officer," the sole " Big Sister " to the thousands of Americans passing through the camp on their eager homeward way. Realizing her task, she sought in innumerable ways to interest her clubmen, to keep them not only off the Win- chester streets and in the club, but from eating their hearts out in longing for release. She arranged special evenings for the men of certain States in order to bring these kindred souls together. She interrogated the entire mem- bership roster to discover musicians and had them give concerts. She decreed " honey days," " jam days," " pie days " that she might win their affection by the proverbial route. And every venture was a success. The time came when the men so filled the place with music or clamorings for honey and pie that the more nervous letter-writers gave up in despair. " Are they not a wonderful lot of boys ? " Miss Baldwin asks with shining eyes as she comes from behind the " buck- shee " counter. There are more than three hundred of her clubmen in the room, half of them eating, the others awaiting turn in the long curving line. A Highlander has just brought in a second hot urn of coffee. The " fatigue detail " is attending to the service, passing out the filled enamel-ware cups, the jam sandwiches and the cigarettes. " I consider every one of these men a hero," she adds, " because none was compelled, either by patriotism or the draft, to come into the war. These men chose to come, they volunteered. While scores joined up with the British long before America entered the conflict, many had been rejected by our own recruiting boards as unfit for military service. If you look about, you'll see that some of them are thin and undersized, some wear glasses, others have fin- gers or an eye missing or are slightly malformed and still others are far past military age. But they wanted to go in, to help in any way they could. Their own country, with 278 THE PASSING LEGIONS so many able-bodied men available, had no use for them, so they went to the nearest British recruiting station and offered themselves. Great Britain needed every man she could get, so she took them eagerly, listing them as * low category ' men for service at the rear. They were destined to plod through the war, not to catch even one reflection of its brilliance, and they knew it. But they went in. That's what I think is so wonderful in them and what they've done. " No one who has not lived and worked among them can understand what this club means to them. Whatever their service, they have been among a stranger people, some of them in detached units in which there was not another American. The talk of home they heard all about them was of alien cities and countrysides, of places they'd never even heard of. No one ever spoke of America and no one understood or cared when they spoke of it. " And those who came late into the ranks were thrown all at once among the veterans of three years, war-weary men little minded to give thought to a newcomer or seek or value his friendship. These newcomers had no dramatic personal experiences to offer, nothing to make themselves interesting enough to be listened to when the yarn-spinning began. But they served well for all that, their hearts far sturdier than their bodies. " Now, after it is all over, they have come here and found a place which is all American, where they hear Eng- lish spoken in their own way with the almost forgotten slang, where they find an American woman ready to listen to outpouring of everything that has been so long locked up in their breasts. I've seen them come into that doorway and stop, agape, scarcely believing they'd found this Amer- ican island. I won't say that I've seen tears in their eyes because — well, for several reasons. But I know, deep down in my heart, just how great a help this little club is to these boys of mine. " And I am the only one who truly knows what a happi- THE CLUBMEN OF MORN HILL 279 ness it is to me to care for them. When they tell me their troubles, show me photographs of girls ' back home ' and read me their letters from oversea, then I feel that I must have been of some help to them. Not one of them will ever forget this Red Cross club — nor shall I." On the wall back of the " buckshee " counter hangs a rough wool sweater, the pride of Miss Baldwin's life. Fastened upon it in such numbers that it looks like a shirt of mail, are the metal cap and collar devices of most of the famous regiments of the British Army, all affixed there by Americans who served in them. There are more than 250 of these badges, each given to Miss Baldwin in re- membrance by a member of the club. And here and there, to add a bit of color to the thing, a man has pinned either his wound stripe or the ribbon of his medal, and another has stuck in a button or two from a German uniform. There is a vivid chapter of the Great War in that keep- sake sweater. It is the story of a British Foreign Legion of a hundred thousand Crusaders. CHAPTER XVI HERE AND THERE IN BRITAIN THE historic city of Cambridge was selected as a center for Red Cross work among two score or more small American camps in east-central England. Hospital serv- ice embraced fifty-five British and American hospitals, in- cluding six at Cambridge, four at Norwich, three each at Stamford and Wisbach and others at such places as Dux- ford, Feltwell (not a bad name for a hospital town), Fowl- mere, Harling Road and Spittlegate. In eight camps Red Cross infirmaries were established. From Cambridge the distance covered by the Red Cross headquarters was so great in the matter of attending to all the outlying points that the officer in command spent most of his time " on the road." The camp nearest the Cam- bridge office was eight miles away and the most remote more than seventy miles, but every camp was visited at least twice a month and every large hospital weekly. Prac- tically all the camps in this area were British to which American units of fifty to 500 men had been attached, the total number of Americans in the district being about 4,000. When the Red Cross representative visited one of these small camps he first obtained from the commanding officer a list of the needs of the detachment and when these could not be immediately supplied from the loaded lorry which carried him about the countryside like a peddler, requisi- tions were immediately forwarded to Cambridge and the things delivered by another truck while he kept on his round of visits. Aside from the usual articles of comfort and personal use, the Red Cross furnished the camps with HERE AND THERE IN BRITAIN 281 bathing equipment, barbering outfits, and camp-hospital re- quisites. At one station where 100 men were billeted in scattered houses over a wide area, each man had to bring his mess kit to the central hall for every meal. At the re- quest of the area inspector the Red Cross provided the mess hall with all necessary equipment so that the men were no longer required to lug their pots and pans and things with them. Oxford was another center of camp activities, less im- portant than Cambridge but covering a wide area which in- cluded eight American camps and a considerable number of British hospitals holding American soldiers. A canteen was established at Oxford for men from all the camps who usually spent their " days off " in the delightful university town, and this canteen was in operation at the end of the year. Most important centers of hospital service in this area were at Bath, Bristol, Cheltenham and in the town of Ox- ford itself. Red Cross infirmaries were set up in five camps. There was a good deal of variation in the number of Americans in the camps thereabout, but it averaged 1,400, month in, month out. These men were employed mainly in British aerodromes as engineers and mechanics and in work incident to the repair and general up-keep of air-service equipment. They were in charge of American officers and each squadron had its own medical man. As an example of the service performed for these men, the camp at Port Meadow was a so-called " temporary camp " of tents and was without adequate infirmary provision. The British quartermaster supplied a large marquee tent and this was furnished by the Red Cross with a regulation six-bed infirmary equipment, including bath tubs and water heaters, and the medical officer received a fund for the special requirements of patients, fresh eggs and milk and the like. At Rendcombe the camp was similarly supplied and as soon as possible infirmaries were provided at three other camps. They were of highest value when the " flu " 282 THE PASSING LEGIONS hit the camps and spread among the 1,200 men of the area. Fortunately only six deaths occurred. Storehouses were being erected for the American Army at Didcot and as the camp was on damp ground, the Red Cross put up huts for the workmen and furnished them completely, giving thus comfortable accommodations for 250 men. In addition to the infirmary features of Red Cross work, the comfort and welfare of the hale and hearty men were constantly considered and considerable quantities of cloth- ing, toilet articles and reading matter were distributed. When the sick men were sent to British hospitals, the Red Cross followed them with its ministrations. During the autumn, the arrival of large convoys of wounded Americans from the Western Front at these British hospitals in the Oxford area added a new task to the duties of the Red Cross men stationed there. The Bristol district was created in October by reason of the large influx of American patients to the British hospi- tals at Bristol, Bath, Gloucester and Cheltenham, these cities being comprised in the British hospital region known as the " Second Southern General." In Bristol alone there were five main hospitals in which Americans were received and in the whole district there were not less than fifteen British hospitals which suddenly became important places for Red Cross work. There was also a certain amount of service for the naval vessels coming into Bristol and Avon- mouth and for casual troops travelling across England. At the time the American Red Cross office was opened there were about 800 American patients in the British hos- pitals of the district and this number so rapidly increased that within two weeks it had reached more than 1,200. The influenza epidemic brought a heavy task with it. In a single arriving convoy of 300 wounded there were seventy- five " flu " cases for which the Red Cross furnished special foods and medicines. It was planned at this time to open a special Red Cross convalescent hospital but the situation HERE AND THERE IN BRITAIN 283 moderated so soon that it was not begun. There were 450 American patients in hospital at Thanksgiving time and convalescents were entertained at celebration dinners and those unable to attend were supplied with boxes filled with such things as the doctors permitted them to have. By the end of the year, the number of wounded in the Bristol dis- trict had decreased to 200, practically all of whom were evacuated a short time afterward. The number of deaths was only six, all from influenza. Still another center of camp service was Lincoln, in cen- tral England, from which the Red Cross visited a dozen small American camps and five British hospitals. Red Cross camp infirmaries were established in nine camps, in- cluding the one at Killingholme, the largest American avia- tion camp and of peculiar significance to Americans. It was at Immingham, near there, that the Pilgrim Fathers lived and the church in which they offered prayers for safety before going to Plymouth to embark for Massachu- setts is still standing. The total number of American soldiers in the district was about 6,000 as it comprised so large a territory that a Red Cross trip of inspection " around the loop " meant a journey of 320 miles. The supplies furnished were of great variety, ranging from razor blades to a complete printing-press outfit sent to the Killingholme camp. All Americans in hospital were visited at least twice a week, the Red Cross Divisional Commander taking with him a great load of supplies and materially lightening his burden at every stopping place. Early in October the influenza reached the Lincoln area and at one time there were twenty-seven American cases in one of the hospitals. The Red Cross staff worked all around the clock for many days, providing bedding, med- icines and general hospital supplies. Twice during the epidemic the Divisional Commander was attacked by the disease but managed to fight it off. 284 THE PASSING LEGIONS IN FAR SCOTLAND Nearly a year before the United States entered the war a Red Cross Care Committee of American women was formed at Edinburgh, with Mrs. Rufus Fleming, wife of the American consul, as chairman. Its work at that time was taking care of the numerous Americans who had joined the English or Canadian forces and had found their way into the Scottish hospitals among the sick or the casualties. There was often considerable difficulty in locating these men, as the majority had intentionally concealed their identity and nationality upon joining the British forces. However, the Care Committee at Edinburgh went about finding these boys in business-like fashion and every im- portant hospital in or near the city had a poster on the wall of every ward announcing: EDINBURGH CARE COMMITTEE for AMERICAN SOLDIERS AND SAILORS Mrs. Rufus Fleming, 71, George Street, Edinburgh, will be very glad to receive the names and addresses of the men of American nationality in this hospital. When the United States came into the war the work of this Red Cross Committee was reinforced by a committee of Scotch people who established the " American Welcome Club " as a sign of their appreciation of America's en- trance into the world conflict. The Red Cross and the " Welcome Club " worked together in Edinburgh through- out the year and it was impossible for an American sol- dier or sailor to pass through the city without coming into contact with one or the other of these helpful agencies. In the Edinburgh district there were eleven important hospitals, most of them, however, located from two to twenty miles from the center of the city and, on this ac- count, the adequate " covering " and visiting of these insti- tutions involved a great amount of labor. Occasionally HERE AND THERE IN BRITAIN 285 American patients were found in all of them, but, distance or no distance, the Red Cross women visited every patient regularly and provided him with every needful comfort. In the list of articles thus distributed there were many things of unusual character, for your American soldier and sailor have fanciful tastes. Thus, in the list for August, 1918, was found the entry, " One mince pie." The story of this delectable thing was thus told by the Care Com- mittee visitor: " An American sailor who had been badly injured by an accident on shipboard, was hovering between life and death in one of our Edinburgh hospitals. Everything had been done by the surgeons, doctors, nurses and the Red Cross workers to minister to his comfort, yet there seemed some- thing lacking. " He was homesick. His mind was constantly back in his home town on the New England coast, and nothing that the good people in this strange part of the world could do consoled him. It was home that he craved, and his yearn- ing thoughts groped for a symbol, a visible, tangible token of far-away Massachusetts. He wanted something that he could touch and say, ' This is a bit of HOME ! ' " One day, in the midst of his pain and soul-suffering, there flashed upon him the object of his maddening quest, and he murmured ecstatically, ' Oh, if I could only have a piece of mince pie! ' " It wasn't that he wanted to eat a piece of pie, he was far too ill for that. His hunger was for what the pie rep- resented, and when you stop to think of it there is nothing more American than mince pie. So the Red Cross woman who was here managed with some difficulty to procure all the ingredients of a real New England mince pie, she cooked it and brought it to him with a piece of cheese in which was planted a miniature Stars and Stripes. " He could not eat either pie or cheese, but they con- tributed just the home touch needed to improve his mental condition. When the wife of the American consul visited 286 THE PASSING LEGIONS him a day or two later and remarked upon this improve- ment, he replied: " ' Two days ago I was in such misery that I could have welcomed death. Now I feel that America is not so far away as I thought and that I have got to hang on!' " This sailor recovered in due course and was sent to his home in America." In the Edinburgh hospitals the Americans were, in the main, seamen suffering from illness or accidents. When the American aerodromes were erected in Scotland a num- ber of cases came from these camps. Six Glasgow hospitals received occasional American cases and here too there was an efficient, well-organized Care Committee of American women who worked with the Red Cross officer in charge of the district. In Glasgow the Red Cross maintained a club for the United States forces where thousands of soldiers and sailors were entertained during the year. It is worthy of note that the Scotch land- lord who owned the premises refused to accept any rent and a large number of residents of the city volunteered to assist in the work of the club and insisted upon paying part of the expenses. This club was opened on April 15th and offered its guests the usual lounge rooms, reading and writing rooms, billiard room, canteen, and information bureau. A piano and other musical instruments were temptingly provided as was a large assortment of American magazines and newspapers not too old. There was a weekly concert and trips and out- ings were periodically arranged. For the athletically in- clined the club had a large stock of tennis and baseball equipment and there were several parks, squares and parades where these could be conveniently used. There is nothing which the American soldier and sailor, just set down from a trans-Atlantic voyage so much enjoys as a game of baseball, so the club regularly " promoted" matches between nines from the various arriving ships or those of the aero-squadrons in the neighboring camps. All HERE AND THERE IN BRITAIN 287 the ball players made the Red Cross Club their head- quarters and there were many merry gatherings at the can- teen before and after the games. In the basement of the club was a great Red Cross store- house and here supplies were kept on hand in sufficient quantities to provide for an arriving convoy of troops to the number of 10,000. Various medical and surgical goods were in stock for the needs of the aero camps and naval hospitals and the articles thus supplied began with operat- ing tables and ended with fresh eggs. The occasional ar- rival of convoys at Glasgow, owing to the presence of Ger- man submarines near Liverpool, brought sudden and heavy demands upon the Red Cross. These troops were generally entrained for the south immediately. They had a hot meal aboard ship just before debarkation and arrangements were made to supply them with hot coffee and sandwiches at Carlisle, the first railway stop on the journey to Win- chester. Because of these provisions there was no need for an elaborate Red Cross canteen menu at the Glasgow docks. Coffee, chocolate, cigarettes and sandwiches were generally supplied, but there were other and more pressing needs on the part of these men just from America. Ex- perience demonstrated that the great wish of almost every American soldier upon his arrival on dry land was to let his people at home know of his safe arrival and the next greatest wish to see a newspaper. So the Red Cross can- teen women were provided with large quantities of Red Cross post cards and a plentiful supply of British and American newspapers not to mention the Daily Bulletin published at London headquarters with its baseball scores and wireless news of the kind the soldiers wanted. Owing to the haste with which the men were entrained there was seldom time for them to write their post cards before de- parture, so the Red Cross had them collected and mailed at Carlisle. One of the most interesting American military works in the region of Glasgow, in fact, in all Great Britain, was 288 THE PASSING LEGIONS that of a corps of engineers which was laying a pipe line to carry fuel oil from Glasgow to Inverness, on the north- east coast. This was a work of the highest military im- portance and, strangely enough, it was kept more or less a secret. The completion of this line meant not only a continuous flow of fuel for the oil-burning warships of the American and British navies, but a tremendous saving in tank tonnage and probably of ships themselves, as it ter- minated the necessity of sending oil carriers on the danger- ous trip around the north of Scotland. The men engaged in this work were not easily accessible, as they moved their camp forward as their work progressed, but it was part of the task of the Red Cross men in Glasgow to follow the en- gineers and see that they wished for nothing in vain, and the Red Cross men did it, often to the surprise of the pipe- layers who never tarried long in one place. All the Scottish aero camps were visited by the Red Cross at frequent intervals, supplementing their living ar- rangements, bathing facilities and hospital accommoda- tions as was necessary. The small camp infirmaries which the Red Cross installed filled a great need. These were not meant for serious cases, but in the wear and tear of aero-squadron life, cases of minor ailments and accidents constantly occurred and could be promptly and adequately dealt with while the graver cases could be accommodated awaiting their removal to hospital. There was a great demand for Red Cross supplies of vari- ous kinds in these camps, most of which were situated at a considerable distance from a town or village, where the damp, cold climate of Scotland was particularly penetrat- ing and warm, woolen clothing absolutely indispensable. The United States Navy Base Hospital at Seafield, Leith, was housed in what was at one time a poorhouse. Close to the sea, on spacious grounds, commanding a won- derful view of ocean and mountain, it was a fine building with glass-roofed corridor of unusual length. Within its HERE AND THERE IN BRITAIN 289 walls accommodation could easily be found for 650 patients, or even for 800 without discomfort. Scottish poorhouses, before the war, were centers of con- troversy in the stormy days of British politics, but they were, without exception, splendidly designed and con- structed buildings. After the outbreak of hostilities these poorhouses entered upon a new phase of life as hospitals and sanatoria, and it was one of the best of them that was turned over to the American Navy. Its equipment was one of the marvels of American energy. Los Angeles was its patron, supplying 250 tons of Red Cross stores, which were sent on to Philadelphia for shipment. At the League Island Navy Yard they were packed by hundreds of men working in four-hour shifts. One hundred freight cars were required to convey the 5,500 packages from the port of debarkation in Great Britain to their destination, yet only thirty-six cans of corn and one box of surgical instruments of all that vast consignment went astray. On an afternoon in August the poorhouse was taken over as a hospital and the staff was ready forthwith to care for 200 patients! Patients were already in the institution the day the first Red Cross representative inspected it, and this was less than two weeks after the 250 tons of equipment had been dumped on the premises. He found an oculist's room, a dentist's room, an X-ray chamber installed, all the fittings, to the last least detail, having been brought from California! A plan of extensive alteration was carried out and hut- ments, also brought from America, were erected on the grounds to accommodate the staff. The personnel num- bered 247, including twenty-two physicians, sixty-three female and eighty male nurses. Proper decoration of a hospital is regarded nowadays as an essential in the treat- ment of sick and wounded, and this was well followed out in the Seafield establishment. The buildings had not been 290 THE PASSING LEGIONS painted for eleven years and the remains of the old crude colorings were covered over with soft French grays, devoid of polish, as most conducive, according to experience, to the welfare of the suffering. One of the first things done by the American Red Cross at Seafield was to begin the construction of a home for the nurses. This was half finished when the Armistice was signed. All the plans were ready, also, for the erection of a recreation hall capable of seating 700 persons. To the United States Naval Base Hospital at Strath- peffer, the Red Cross sent supplies and comforts for the sick and wounded who, at times, numbered 600. The re- moteness of the place did not prevent American women living in Scotland from paying regular visits to their countrymen. A Red Cross unit recruited in San Francisco staffed the hospital and that city furnished a major part of the equipment of the institution which was opened on March 1, 1918, simultaneously with the arrival of im- portant naval forces in the adjacent waters. The hospital was closed on January 15, 1919. Strathpeffer is in the heart of the Highlands and the hospital building was at one time a spa, one of the magnificent " hydropathics " which are to be found at vari- ous salubrious spots throughout Scotland. It had accom- modation at the beginning for 500 patients, but could readily have been expanded for the use of at least 1,000. THE WORK IN IRELAND As there were large American naval bases at Queenstown and Berehaven, a receiving and distributing station at Passage and naval aviation camps scattered throughout the Island, Red Cross work in Ireland was chiefly among American bluejackets and marines. Its central offices were at Queenstown and Dublin. At Queenstown, which was both a permanent station for about 8,000 men and the base for forty United States de- stroyers, a naval hospital, its unit recruited by the Red HERE AND THERE IN BRITAIN 291 Cross in Providence, R. I., was built in response to a grow- ing demand for accommodations for the men being taken care of in the sick-bays of the Melville and the British hos- pital at Haulbowline. This hospital, for which the Red Cross provided everything that was needed, was opened on October 11, 1918, several weeks before scheduled time, in order to receive twelve men from the U. S. Destroyer Shaw which had been cut in two off Ireland by the Aquitania, two officers and ten men losing their lives in the collision. It was fortunate that the hospital had been opened as it was then in complete readiness for the influenza emergency which swept through the forces so soon afterward, attack- ing particularly the destroyer crews. At that time the Red Cross furnished ambulances to convey the sick from the docks. The epidemic created a serious situation at Bere- haven, where the battleships were, and made necessary the transportation of a 25-bed tent hospital from London just as soon as it could be got there, this service being described in its picturesque details in the chapter narrating the ex- ploits of the doughty " Flying Squadron " attached to Lon- don headquarters. From time to time throughout the summer and autumn various freight transports called at Queenstown and nearly all of them took on board invalided men bound for Amer- ica. All of these vessels were visited by the Red Cross, their sick-bays inspected and provided with such things as were needed to make the return trip of the sick men more pleasant. Eight hospitals in Queenstown and its vicinage were the especial care of the Red Cross and its service was a great boon to the men. One Red Cross woman visited 1,625 Americans in hospitals during the month of December alone and 3,115 in the year, distributing 9,000 comfort ar- ticles. In many cases gifts which were mere trifles in themselves, a comfort kit or a " housewife," seemed to pro- duce an almost incredible effect of relief to a serious case. A sailor, who had narrowly escaped death in an accidental 292 THE PASSING LEGIONS explosion of depth charges on a destroyer, regained con- sciousness after many days and his awakening thoughts centered on the knowledge that he had lost all of his per- sonal effects. His first coherent request was for a tooth brush! The Red Cross woman at his bedside handed him a complete comfort bag, containing many more things than just one tooth brush, and the physician admitted that this seemed to do him more good than all the medicines and surgery and care that they had given him. The shipmates of a badly injured man sent to the Red Cross office one day a package enclosing American pie tins, white flour, sugar and apples, and a note stating that their pal's favorite dish was apple pie. So the Red Cross worker baked a beauty and took it to the hospital with the story of thoughtfulness behind it and the injured man exclaimed, "Why, I'd rather have this pie than a twenty-dollar bill! " The erection of naval air stations was begun on a large scale in the late summer and to care for cases of illness or injury in them and also among the American mechanics assigned to British Air Force training camps, the Red Cross established a small hospital in Dublin and a camp infirmary at Gormanstown. The Dublin hospital, to which, by the way, General Biddle paid three visits, was a residence overlooking a park and had fourteen rooms, two of them large enough to be transformed into ten-bed wards and a third which was converted into an officers' ward of six beds. Possession of this building was obtained early in October and the first patient to be received was a con- valescent soldier from the City of York which had put into Belfast with a number of sick aboard. She had had a very rough passage during which a large number died of pneumonia. Thirty-three of the most severe cases were taken off the ship and put in various hospitals in Belfast, but twelve of them died during the first two or three days and nine more during the next fortnight. The Red Cross did all it could for these men, supplying special foods, medicines and the various indispensables for pneumonia HERE AND THERE IN BRITAIN 293 patients. Those who died were buried with full military honors in the Belfast City Cemetery in a plot set aside for American soldiers. When, early in September, Americans were being brought to the camps in Ireland in parties of about 100, the Red Cross set up a canteen at the docks at North Wall, Dublin, to serve them, as well as to serve departing troops. The American Army headquarters in Dublin being too small for the growing importance of the Irish area, the Red Cross put several rooms in its headquarters at the disposal of the army, providing offices for the Chief Surgeon, offices and storeroom for the Quartermaster, and an office for the Provost Marshal. As it was often very difficult to obtain suitable billets in the city, sleeping quarters were allotted at Red Cross headquarters for the army's motor sergeant and his drivers. In the eastern part of Ireland the work of the Red Cross was largely carried on by the Dublin and Belfast branches of the London Chapter. The Dublin Committee of Ameri- can Women opened club rooms for the American soldiers and sailors with a canteen service, reading and writing rooms and an information bureau. Also it carried out many kinds of helpful work, from hospital visiting to enter- tainment. The ladies in charge of the club room served tea every afternoon and supper every evening entirely at their own expense. CHAPTER XVII THE BLUEJACKETS OF CARDIFF AND PLYMOUTH AT Cardiff, in Wales, the United States Navy estab- lished one of its most important bases in Great Britain, for it was to this port that seventeen of its giant colliers came for fine Welsh coal for the American fleet in British waters and here also came eighty-two other Gov- ernment vessels to load coal for Brest, Bordeaux, Nantes, and St. Nazaire for the use of the American Army. Al- most every day there was a coal ship in or out of the port. Two thousand American sailors were based at Cardiff, the working crews, guns crews, and radio men of the colliers. It was an extensive field for the Red Cross not only by rea- son of the things which could normally be counted upon to happen, but for those likely to happen, because the German submarines were after those coal ships every run. So the Red Cross created a base of its own there and put in charge of it a cattle rancher from Wyoming. That may seem a strange thing to have done, but if personalities may, for a moment be permitted, the Red Cross never did a wiser thing than when it sent Ira Casteel to Cardiff. It is quite impossible to write of what was done in that busy Welsh port without writing first of all of Casteel, for it was he who " put over " the Red Cross there. It's slang, perhaps, but it's expressive and he " put it over " in a way that will endear the Red Cross to every naval man who came in contact with it, from Rear Admiral Philip Andrews, the base commander, down to the newest and youngest " rookie." Casteel went at the work in July, 1918, and at that time he had brown hair. This detail would mean nothing were it not for the fact that when he left Cardiff 294 BLUEJACKETS OF CARDIFF AND PLYMOUTH 295 in June, 1919 his hair was white. Of course this might have happened if he had remained on the Wyoming ranch, but it didn't. When the " flu " descended upon the world in the autumn of 1918 and sick men were being set ashore at Cardiff from the colliers daily, when nurses were every- where engaged and none to be had, Casteel was nurse, orderly, messenger, everything in the little Red Cross hos- pital he set up. He nursed the men, he cooked their food and every night he washed their clothes, all alone, and this for nearly six weeks! He had three critically ill men in his hospital, a naval lieutenant and two sailors. The place was so small and overcrowded that all three were put in one little room, but as the lieutenant seemed to have a chance to live, while the other two were all but passing out, the officer was placed in the center of the three with the only screen in the house around his bed. Also it kept the two dying men on the flanks of his bed from seeing each other and how ill each was. To understand this situation one must realize that the " flu " of that autumn swept across the world like a plague and a hospital with two patients in it on one day might have two hundred the next, or even 2,000, and pneumonia stalked the " flu " like a gray wolf. It was so sudden, so severe that once the navy had to send a vessel 300 miles to sea from Cardiff to bring in a cargo whose crew was too ill to work her to port. But, to go back, there was one nurse in the Red Cross hospital the night the three men were brought in and Casteel set her to watch over one of the bluejackets who, in the delirium of his last hours, was trying his best to get out of bed to see his pal on the other side of the screen. In a little while this man collapsed and died, and both the other men knew it, sensed it, although he went out without a sound. For once, as Casteel passed the lieutenant's cot, the officer looked up and said, " I'll be the next, I guess." Casteel took away the screen, sat down by the man's bed 296 THE PASSING LEGIONS and in a quarter of an hour had infused him with the de- termination to live. Casteel found out that the man had a wife and he played upon this string until the lieutenant would in Casteel's own words, " have lived if he died for it." When this task was accomplished Casteel went away to call up the undertaker to remove the dead man, because he wasn't sure about keeping up the morale of the others with a sheeted body only a few feet away. After the under- taker had brought out the body, Casteel besought him to re- main, because he felt that, for all he could do, the other two men were as well as gone. " There will be two more to take out in a little while," he explained to the under- taker, " so please wait. I'd rather they were all taken out at the same time, so the other fellows in the hospital won't be made to feel unnecessarily depressed. I'd lose my grip on a lot of them if they saw a procession of bodies going out, you know." But there was never a thought of not trying to " beat" the undertaker, so he raced back to the little room where the two very sick men remained and sat by them in turn. " You're going to be all right now," he assured them. " You've gone past the worst part of it — here, have a drink of this. It's up to you now, old man, you're the boy who can do it. See, you're smiling, I knew you were all right." From bed to bed he went, holding the men by their life- less hands, imploring them to " buck up," telling them in the sea language they understood — and where a Wyoming ranchman ever picked it up is a mystery — that they'd " weathered hell, even if their lee leeches were smoking," and that every little thing was all right now. He fixed their pillows, fanned them, bullied them and then, when- ever he could do it, he dashed down again to the undertaker seated and fidgeting in the office below, pleading with him to wait just a few minutes more because the fellows up- stairs couldn't last much longer. And, in turn, darting BLUEJACKETS OF CARDIFF AND PLYMOUTH 297 up to the little room with the beds in it, working, praying, threatening, fighting for the lives of the two. This went on from nine o'clock in the evening until after midnight, when the undertaker finally fidgeted out, saying he couldn't wait another instant, that he had to get back to his shop. As a matter of fact, he need never have waited one in- stant, because, by some miracle, Casteel pulled both of those men back to life and eventually sent them home to Amer- ica. Perhaps it's not so strange after all that his hair turned white. It was Casteel, too, who fought with owners, lawyers, authorities, every one in Cardiff who opposed him when he set about acquiring a large disused aeroplane factory as a dormitory and club house for the bluejackets who came to the base. He got it eventually, you may be sure, and fitted it up with bunks and a mess hall and a handy 24-foot ring in which the men could work off their ambitions and their surplus energy. When he thought it would be a good idea to have concerts or dramatic entertainments every week at the barracks, he went to the managers of the theaters in Cardiff and three days later one of the companies sent nearly a dozen of its members who had volunteered to cheer the " gobs " along, and every week thereafter a perform- ance was thus provided for the men. Casteel tried to buy emergency stores for the Red Cross from the navy and was told it couldn't be done, regulations forbade it. That was too bad, but he'd see what he could do about it; so he took the matter up with Admiral Sims — and after that he bought stores for the Red Cross from the navy. He was a man with a great heart, a great determination, this Casteel man from a Wyoming ranch. After a while he got all his mechanisms running smoothly, his hospital established in three adjoining houses, a detail of six Red Cross nurses, a big warehouse and a garage and then an average of forty bed patients were cared for and about 100 men a day attended at the Red Cross 298 THE PASSING LEGIONS dispensary. It had not been easy going for a number of reasons, but there never was a man more wrapped up in the work than Casteel, and the sailors worshipped him. " I hate to give it up," he said when he came back to London late in June last, " because I've never been so happy in my life over anything I've done. And I'd like to have kept at it a bit longer, just to see if my hair wouldn't go back to brown." Naval service extended far outside the limits of the hos- pital and the dispensary. Money was forwarded to rela- tives in the States for more than 500 of the bluejackets and the tally of articles distributed included 3,000 sweaters, 1,000 pairs of gloves, 2,000 wristlets, helmets and mufflers, 10,000 packages of chocolate, and more than 150,000 cigarettes. The Red Cross received immediate information as to the arrival or departure of every American ship and an automo- bile service was maintained for the purpose of putting needed supplies aboard a vessel at the earliest possible mo- ment. As soon as a ship arrived, the men aboard her were notified of the location of Red Cross headquarters and of the facilities at their disposal there, including billets, sup- plies, a laundry, reading and writing rooms, a dispensary, and, in short, an organization ready to give them what- ever they needed from head to foot. ^ Emergency stations with Cardiff as a center, were estab- lished at Milford Haven, Swansea and Tenby, at each of which were stored such things as might be needed by the crews of shipwrecked or •torpedoed vessels. The stations were of a character similar to that of the ones in Ireland which were of such great value at the time of the Otranto disaster. Other relief stations were placed at Abery- stwyth, Cardigan and Pembroke and there was a large American Red Cross child welfare center at Swansea. Shortly before the signing of the Armistice there were indications that a great naval engagement impended and the Cardiff office perfected arrangements to care for 3,000 BLUEJACKETS OF CARDIFF AND PLYMOUTH 299 men, the equipment gathered including beds, mattresses, linen and hospital supplies. For United States Naval Headquarters, the Red Cross provided ninety mattresses, 200 blankets, two motor cars, a motorcycle and the usual complete array of surgical and hospital appliances. Several times the Cardiff station supplied clothes and other necessities to the crews of wrecked vessels, notably those of the U. S. S. Lake Weston, driven ashore off Nash's Point in a December gale in Bristol Channel, twenty miles from the port while on her way from France with a cargo of mining timbers; the U. S. S. Lake Erie, wrecked off Penarth in mid-January and sinking in twelve minutes, and the U. S. S. Lake Bohrne and Lake Remington, both sunk in the treacherous waters of Bristol Channel. In all of these cases no lives were lost, but as soon as the wreck was reported the Red Cross filled a oar with personal and medical supplies and dashed off down the coast to the rescue. So active was the port of Cardiff that, while the Red Cross was on duty there, more than 100,000 American bluejackets and naval officers entered, passed through or were attached to the base. Of these the Red Cross at- tended more than eighty per cent. It cared for 374 pa- tients — 250 of them " flu " cases — in its own hospital, only nine of whom died, and for 267 in the navy's sick-bay at base headquarters. At the Red Cross dispensary 3,600 sailors received treatment and up to April 1, 1919, a total of 48,000 men had been canteen guests of the Red Cross. The number of billets furnished, which means a lodging for the night, amounted to more than 43,000. In loans to enlisted men £1,256 were given out and by June, 1919, eighty-two per cent of this amount had been repaid. One hundred and seventy ships received Red Cross supplies and the number of complaints was zero. Considerable plans for hospitalization in Wales were under way at the time of the Armistice and then aban- 300 THE PASSING LEGIONS doned. Preparations had been made to take over large properties at Newport and Abergavenny. During the latter part of 1918, a separate Red Cross area was organized with headquarters at Plymouth, cover- ing southwest England from Paignton to Penzance and em- bracing the English counties of Devon and Cornwall. It included the U. S. Base Hospital, at Paignton, formerly an American Red Cross Hospital, and the still newer U. S. Base Hospital at Fort Efford, at Plymouth, which was still in the constructional stage when the Armistice was de- clared. Plymouth was an important center from the point of view of emergency relief, because with stations here and at Falmouth, Ilfracombe and Penzance it was possible to rush supplies to any part of the coast in case of disaster, so much to be expected on that rugged shore-line. In addition to the two American hospitals in this district there was hospital service also for Americans in the British institutions at Exeter and Newton Abbot. The naval side of the work at Plymouth was important as more than 600 United States sailors and 1,200 " chasers " were based on this port. Everything possible was done to make happy the lot of these men. Two recrea- tion rooms, one at Red Cross headquarters in the town and one on the Quay, were established, and there the men came continually in personal touch with the cheerful women of the Care Committee. These recreation rooms had a marked influence upon the men and, through them, many of the sailors made wholesome friendships with the resi- dents of the old town. Of course, the canteen service was highly popular and it ministered to the men in more than 12,000 instances, which means, naturally, that there were many " repeaters." With its supplies the Red Cross was generous as usual, and more than 367,000 individual articles were given away to add to the comfort of the blue- jackets. As the " chasers" were small and not well equipped with bathing facilities, the Red Cross bought hun- BLUEJACKETS OF CARDIFF AND PLYMOUTH 301 dreds of tickets from a Plymouth bath corporation and issued them gratis at all times to any of the sailors who ap- plied. One of the forms of amusement the Red Cross or- ganized was " hikes " on bright days into the interesting countryside. Visits were made to historical places in the neighborhood of Plymouth and to noted estates and in many cases the owners of these estates met the " hiking " parties and hospitably showed them about. Particularly proud was the Red Cross staff of its ability to meet and handle " rush jobs " and it had a number of them to test its mettle. The first came early in January, 1919, when it was called upon to supply 20,000 dressings and miscellaneous equipment to the hospital ship Comfort. In the designated time, the dressings and 18,104 other articles were put aboard. At another time, in mid-Febru- ary, all the " chasers" and their personnel, numbering about 1,100 men, were ordered to other ports. In this in- stance 6,473 articles were supplied in addition to 101,046 cigarettes. Once it was called upon to provide $1,000 worth of dental supplies and in the early spring it prepared and served food to 547 sailors sent from Cardiff to man the Imperator, with only a few hours' notice and only forty-five minutes in which to do the actual service. Although the Red Cross had much else to do, the main part of its activity was in preparation to serve the big base hospital at Ford Efford, which was to have been opened early in December, 1918, but, on account of the Armistice, it was never opened as an American institution but was turned over to the British in its nearly-completed state. There were 1,500 Americans in thirteen British hospi- tals in the district, mainly men wounded in France while brigaded with the British troops. Many of these men had been completely out of touch with their paymasters for a long time and were generally lonesome and forlorn, but the Red Cross hunted them out and helped them, whatever their wants. Toward the end of the year all of them were 302 THE PASSING LEGIONS gathered together and sent home in the hospital ships, and what the Red Cross had done to aid them was expressed by one man as he was going aboard his vessel, " We feel that the Red Cross has done everything for us." CHAPTER XVIII WITH THE ARMY TO! ARCHANGEL DURING war-time the garrulous old lady we call Rumor is busier than anyone else in the world. She goes up and down the land with whisperings and wise nods, doing good and evil impartially. All she desires is to be busy and to stir things up generally. In the course of her travels in July, 1918, she got into Red Cross Head- quarters in London one afternoon and confided, behind her hand, that the United States intended to send an Expedi- tionary Force to the North of Russia to cooperate with the British, French and Italians. She " knew " no more than that just then. It did not seem an unlikely military maneuver, considering the conditions in that part of Europe, and after she left, the Red Cross set about verify- ing the information. Telegrams were dispatched to Paris and Washington in search of confirmation but none was forthcoming. In a little while, however, back came the persistent Old Lady, this time with the announcement that Murmansk had at first been decided upon as the destination of the expedition, but that later counsel had urged Archangel as the better strategic objective and that the troops were certainly to be ordered there. Again the Red Cross flashed out inquiries and this time, after a long delay — definite information was obtained. An Expeditionary- Force was to be sent to Russia, it was to be outfitted in Great Britain and sail from there for Archangel as soon as fully equipped. It was self-evident that such an undertaking would com- pel a heavy draught upon the energies and resources of 303 304 THE PASSING LEGIONS the Red Cross and plans to meet it were at once set afoot by urgent requisition for supplies from headquarters in America. The task before the Red Cross, great enough in the beginning, was soon much increased in one respect, for the military authorities, with the same order which re- duced the number of troops contemplated in the original plan of expedition, moved forward the date of departure. This materially shortened the time in which so much had to be accomplished. But it also served to put the organi- zation on its mettle. About two weeks before the appointed sailing day, the plans of the army had been worked out to a point which made it possible to send a committee of Red Cross officers to Aldershot, where the American troops destined for service in North Russia were encamped, to determine, with the aid of military officials, what the Red Cross could most usefully provide for this far-voyaging command. The ambulance train and medical detachment assigned to the unit were from a base hospital which had been originally organized and outfitted at Detroit, largely through the local chapter of the Red Cross. But inspec- tion at Aldershot disclosed the unfortunate fact that prac- tically all of the principal equipment and baggage of the medical detachment had, through error, been forwarded to France. Thus it was in great need of supplies of all kinds, not the least of which was thick, suitable clothing. Also there was little left of the welfare and recreational material which the Detroit Chapter had so thoughtfully included among its stores. The general equipment for the expedition was being furnished by the British Quartermaster's Department, the uniforms being of a standardized pattern designed by Sir Ernest Shackleton, the Arctic explorer and especially cal- culated to protect the men against the rigors of Russian winter. A large part of the deficiencies in ambulance and hospital equipment was also supplied by the British and a list of these and other articles to be similarly pro- WITH THE ARMY TO ARCHANGEL 305 vided was carefully reviewed and checked by the Red Cross representatives and the medical officers of the expedition. After consultation it was decided that, as the bulk of what may be called routine supplies was satisfactory or had been arranged for, the Red Cross should generally confine itself to furnishing articles of a supplemental char- acter. This included comforts and delicacies for the sick and recreational material. So many things can be legiti- mately included in the latter category that it will cause the reader little wonder to learn that ten pages of closely- typewritten foolscap were necessary for the listing of the articles which the Red Cross provided for this first Arch- angel expedition. The list, as finally prepared, included not only the familiar things, such as sweaters, mufflers, wristlets, mittens, helmets, soap, tooth and hair brushes, razors, " housewives," chocolate, nuts, raisins, dates and figs, but — Jewsharps Ukeleles Carpentry tools. Canned heat Foot-lights Playing cards Hockey sticks Footballs Moving-picture machines Guitars Cigarette lighters Boxing gloves Wigs Theatrical make-up boxes Curling stones Skates Mandolins Accordeons Cameras Indoor-baseball outfits Snowshoes Talking machines Checkers Dominoes An English army officer, who saw the enumeration of these supplies said, " Well, that's the most extraordinary list I've ever laid eyes on! " Perhaps this comment will also suffice for the reader. But the formulation of this list was only the beginning. It was unfortunate, but eminently reasonable, that the army could not give the Red Cross, or any one, for that matter, detailed information about the delivery or wharf 306 THE PASSING LEGIONS destination of these stores. On August 15th, it announced that the supplies must be ready for delivery not later than the morning of the 19th. This was an incredibly short allowance of four days into which to crowd so much work. Available supplies in the Red Cross warehouses were in- adequate in view of so strange and varied a schedule of re- quirements and the stores for which appeal had been made to Washington had not then arrived in volume. So the Red Cross had to ask for permission to purchase freely in the English markets. This was instantly forthcoming and most of the articles were secured in the desired quantities, some, however, with considerable difficulty. One example will serve to illustrate the obstacles the organization had to surmount. Twelve large cooking stoves were among the things called for. There were no stoves of the type desired by the military authorities to be found in London so it was necessary to purchase them in Scotland. To ob- tain delivery at the London docks in time for loading, considering the congested condition of freight transporta- tion throughout Great Britain, was impossible by ordinary means. But after considerable effort, the Red Cross re- ceived permission to attach a freight car to the end of a through passenger train from Scotland, and the stoves ac- cordingly arrived in London well within the time limit, and were eventually loaded aboard the troopship. From August 15th to 17th practically all the energies of the American Red Cross headquarters staff in London were centered upon the purchase, collection and packing of the supplies for the expedition. In this task the British Red Cross cooperated most energetically and was responsible for the forwarding of a large quantity of stores. Two of the American Red Cross warehouses in London packed 7,000 comfort kits in less than three days. And by midnight on the 18th, everything destined for North Russia was crated, labeled and awaiting the receipt of trans- portation instructions. These came only on the morning of the 19th and were WITH THE ARMY TO ARCHANGEL 307 briefly to the effect that a transport would be at the Royal Albert docks in the East-End of London to take on sup- plies during the next twenty-four hours. The British Red Cross sent word immediately that it would deliver all cases of supplies which it was providing, and the American Red Cross supply department augmented its own transport equipment by arranging to hire a large number of addi- tional trucks locally for the transport of the supplies to the port. At the last moment, however, a strike of 'bus and underground railway drivers in London threatened to dis- arrange all the carefully made plans. It was learned that the British Government had commandeered all the avail- able motor transport in the London area to carry munition workers to and from their factories, and on that account it was absolutely impossible for the Red Cross to obtain any outside transportation. American Army headquarters was asked to come to the rescue, and it ordered five large army lorries from Winchester to be immediately dis- patched to assist the Red Cross in London. They came as fast as their engines permitted and it was only with this assistance that the American Red Cross was able to move so large a mass of freight from its warehouses to the dis- tant wharves. But, as if there were not enough already, other difficul- ties developed. American Army headquarters had de- tailed a large number of soldiers to assist in the work of loading the two ships, but, owing to the strike, ar- rangements which had been made to care for this baggage detail at the piers twenty miles down the river had col- lapsed and there were no facilities in sight whereby these men could be fed and housed. In point of numbers, the task would not ordinarily have presented much difficulty but at this particular time it constituted a considerable obstacle. Nevertheless, true to Red Cross traditions, the Commission advised the American Army authorities that the Red Cross would undertake to feed and house seventy men at the Royal Albert Docks and 250 men at Tilbury 308 THE PASSING LEGIONS Docks where another transport of the Russian convoy was being loaded with army supplies. The only available Red Cross canteen equipment in England was then being utilized at Liverpool for a large force of incoming troops. The Liverpool office of the American Red Cross was instructed by telephone to load this entire equipment on the midnight train from Liver- pool after having completed its work for the incoming soldiers. In this way it reached London early on the following morning, was immediately dispatched to the London docks, and went into action by breakfast time. At Tilbury Docks, St. John's, the local church, lent its Thames Church Mission to the Red Cross for use as can- teen buildings in the emergency, and thus the Commission for Great Britain was able promptly to provide food and billets for the troops engaged in loading the equipment and baggage at this point. Now enters the " Flying Squadron " ! For it was at the Royal Albert Docks that the precious band took charge of the housing and food arrangements and, rather more than incidentally, of getting Red Cross supplies aboard the troopship. And at this, so to speak, supplemental task it once more signally distinguished itself. Ask the army if it didn't! In the first place, the brief notice the Squadron re- ceived of the work it had to do in caring for the loading detachment of soldiers and dock workers, required three flying trips from London to transport the necessary food, blankets and paraphernalia. On a pier not far from the berth of the transport, a building erected by the Blue Funnel Line as a shelter for the 'longshoremen which had already been placed at the service of the Red Cross solved the problem of housing. As it left no room for the prep- aration of meals, one of the Squadron went aboard a vessel in a neighboring dry-dock, spent a quarter of an hour " jollying " the cook and came back with the joyful news that the ship's galley had been lent to the Red Cross for WITH THE ARMY TO ARCHANGEL 309 as long a time as it cared to make use of it. That ques- tion settled, two of the corps volunteered as cooks, rolled up their sleeves and set to work. Although the size of the Expeditionary Force had been reduced to, approximately 5,000, the volume of material the Red Cross had supplied was very large. In addition to all this, there was British Red Cross stuff and the American Army was putting aboard the transport its own stores of many kinds and in great quantity. These latter were, not unnaturally, considered vital; they must be stowed, too, as quickly as possible. At the same time, and also not unnaturally, the " Flying Squadron " took a deep and jealous interest in the Red Cross material which mounted higher with every arriving truck. This must be got aboard at the same time. It is, the writer understands, a business maxim that results alone count, details being merely unimportant means to an end. The Squadron was evidently of this belief, because it religiously guarded all the details of its work at the Royal Albert Docks, but so far as results go, the Red Cross stores suddenly began to disappear into the hold of the transport. Up went a case of army goods, up went a Red Cross crate. Hour after hour it continued, the Squadron men selecting the boxes in accordance with a list they had carefully prepared. And every little while, just as a workman was about to lug away a package, a Red Cross man would appear beside him with a tin cup of hot coffee, a brace of doughnuts and adroit counsel: " Wait a minute; try some of this and then perhaps you'll be strong enough to lift two packages ! " Never did the " Fly- ing Squadron " men relax in their determination to make friends wherever they went. They helped the workers lift, load and trundle the crates aboard ship, they were first up and last to turn in. " Don't you ever get tired ? " an American sergeant asked one of them. " Don't have time! " was the succinct reply. Indeed, the fatigueless energy, efficiency and general good humor of the Squadron 310 THE PASSING LEGIONS so completely won over the British port authorities that the Squadron leader was permitted to have a key to the wharf gates and all the rights and privileges appertain- ing thereto. That key proved to be worth much more than its weight in, well, in platinum. It was so valuable that no one outside of the favored circle even knew of its existence. In their own inexorable season, the twenty-four ap- pointed hours for loading supplies on the troopship came to an end — but the work did not. It went on and on, with the stores still arriving. On the morning of August 21st, the British port officials notified the British Red Cross that no more shipments could be received at the pier after noon of that day. Accordingly, at that hour, the flow of goods from the British organization ceased. But through error of some sort the American Red Cross was not simi- larly notified, and, in the absence of any official order, it continued to rush supplies to the docks. Such instruc- tions as were given to the men in charge of the trucks came from the " Flying Squadron " in, or about in, these terms: " Keep on coming and coming fast until we throw up our hands. Then if there's anything left you can lug it back to the Red Cross warehouse." When the ship steamed away from her moorings not one ounce of American Red Cross supplies failed to get aboard. And this was due entirely to the unconquerable " Fly- ing Squadron." Although every department in the Red Cross had done its admirable share in providing, packing and delivering the stores, it was the Squadron that got them on the ship. It meant four long days and late nights of labor, and if the reader wonders what the Squadron did for sleeping quarters during that period, he may be told, with pride in the telling, that its members slept in ham- mocks swung in their covered motor trucks! After loading, the transports at Royal Albert and Til- bury Docks proceeded to Newcastle-on-Tyne, where, on Sunday afternoon, August 29th, the American troops em- WITH THE ARMY TO ARCHANGEL 311 barked to begin the voyage to Russia. Those in this first expedition were the 339th Infantry, Colonel George E. Stewart commanding; 1st Battalion 310th Engineers, Lieutenant Colonel P. S. Morris; 337th Field Hospital, Major J. H. Longley, and the Medical Department of the 339th Infantry, Captain J. C. Hall. As the Red Cross had permission to send a representative with the Expedi- tionary Force, Captain W. H. Winn was chosen in this capacity by the Commission for Great Britain and went aboard the transport Somali, which carried Colonel Stewart and his staff. The narrative of events which followed, both during the voyage and in Russia, is taken gratefully and liberally from Captain Winn's diary. When the ship arrived off Kola Inlet the transport Tsar, with 1,500 Italian troops aboard, silently withdrew from the convoy and went into Murmansk, as nine of her detach- ment had died of the " flu " and a large number were on the sick-list. From the White Sea it required forty-eight hours to reach the mouth of the Dvina River, near Economy, which is the winter port of Archangel, and about two hours from the city proper. As the convoy passed Economy and entered the river, with its winding channel and innumerable sand-bars, the troops caught their first glimpse of typical North Russian country in September. The land lay flat and marshy around them, covered for the most part with a scrubby tamarack growth. Fringing the river on both sides were endless lines of saw-mills, their operatives mainly women who gathered in groups on the banks to stare, displaying no great enthusiasm for the cheerful greetings flung to them by the soldiers. Finally the regimental band on the Somali struck up an irresistible air and this brought an oc- casional wave of hand or handkerchief from the curious crowds ashore. Rounding a point in the river and swinging into the wide harbor at last gave the men a view of Archangel, the metropolis of the Russian Northland, with its flashing 312 THE PASSING LEGIONS white spires and domes, its towering cathedral and large public buildings. There was something unreal about the city, particularly to those in the expedition who had thought to find the rough log-huts of a Klondike camp. Aside from its high, substantial structures, it seemed to be of great size, to stretch for an amazing distance along the waterside. As a matter of fact, Archangel has only length; its width is just enough to provide one main thoroughfare. It is a populated shelf on the brink of a river. Behind it, only a few hundred feet away, lies a morass, an interminable, sinister swamp. When the Somali went in she was met by two high- circling aeroplanes while the Allied craft, moored off the principal quay, fired a salute in honor of Colonel Stewart. She continued to a point opposite the center of the city, followed by the convoy, and dropped anchor there about noon on September 3rd. Then followed the usual official formalities after which the Somali was towed up the river to a wharf at Bakaritza, directly in front of the Archangel Monastery Church, the gaudiest piece of architecture in all Northern Russia, where the debarkation of the troops oc- curred two days later. Much apprehension had prevailed during the last two days of the voyage, owing to the spread of influenza among the troops. The Somali's hospital was crowded to overflowing and additional sick beds had to be improvised aboard. Many of the officers were ill with it and one en- listed man died on the day of arrival. Conditions on the other ships, which were towed later to Bakaritza to land their men, were found to be practically identical. This made it necessary that the Red Cross supplies for the sick should be available without delay, and for three days Captain Winn devoted himself exclusively to getting them ashore. The total shipment of 110 tons was, in that time, carried to land and placed in a shed under heavy guard. In the meantime, despite all that could be done, the "flu" had spread rapidly among the soldiers and was WITH THE ARMY TO ARCHANGEL 313 beginning to develop into a particularly virulent form of pneumonia from which recovery was a long and difficult process. Major Langley, who was detailed as Chief Sur- geon, was stricken with it as were several other officers of his corps. When two battalions of the troops were sent to the front, taking their quota of medical officers, it created a lamentable shortage of doctors for Bakaritza and Arch- angel. " As there was only one hospital prepared for us when we arrived," Captain Winn wrote, " and as that proved inadequate to meet our emergency, temporary hospital ac- commodation had to be improvised at Bakaritza to com- bat the rapid spread of the disease among our troops. When the " flu " began to go into pneumonia and we were losing men every day, it was discovered that the sick be- ing sent to the hospital at Bakaritza were there compelled to lie on a kind of board shelving, instead of being fur- nished with beds. The building had been taken over only a few days before for hospital purposes, its original use being that of barracks for Russian soldiers. " With this discovery, I hurried to G. H. Q. at Arch- angel and reported it to the British Assistant Director of Medical Services — all phases of army control were under the British — stating that I knew he would agree with me in the necessity for remedying such a situation, adding that if he could provide the beds, I had the motor transport waiting at the door to go get them, and that I would arrange for their immediate shipment to Bakaritza. He at once telephoned to a British hospital and ordered twenty-five beds turned over to me. By good luck I was able to get a tug boat from the Russian River Transport Department and had them shipped to Bakaritza that after- noon. Later the board shelving was torn out and a suffi- cient number of canvas cots constructed to answer all needs. " Four days after our arrival some one left a note for me at Headquarters saying that there was a building in 314 THE PASSING LEGIONS the Troitski Prospekt, the principal street of Archangel, which had been used as a Russian Red Cross Hospital and that the Sister in charge wished to see me in reference to turning it over to the American Red Cross in the present emergency. Calling there that afternoon with an inter- preter, I found a very clean and attractive institution of the bungalow type, presided over by a Sister Superior of the Russian Red Cross and six or seven nurses or novitiates of that organization. " The Sister Superior, or head nurse, as we afterward called her, said that she had come from Moscow before the Revolution and established the hospital for the benefit of Russian soldiers of the old regime; that the Bolsheviki, when they had possessed themselves of Archangel early in the spring, had looted the institution of nearly all the furniture of value, taken away almost all of the surgical instruments and appliances, even the kitchen parapher- nalia, and ordered that no more soldiers, save Bolsheviki, should be received and that disobedience would mean annihilation. She added that since that time her faith- ful band had led to a hand-to-mouth existence, living upon what could be raised in a wretched little garden and what else their friends could spare. To the American Red Cross she offered the entire institution, without com- pensation of any kind, provided only that she and her nurses be permitted to remain and help in the hospital work. She was so cheerful, notwithstanding her pathetic difficulties, that the offer was immediately accepted, Col- onel Stewart approving, on the basis of protection for these kind and courageous women and a means of attending the pressing needs of our troops. So I arranged for the for- mal opening of the hospital under the auspices of the American Red Cross on the following morning. " The regimental band and a squad of men were de- tailed to parade at the hospital for the flag-raising cere- mony and it was not lacking in a certain impressiveness. The Colonel, unfortunately, could not be present, but he WITH THE ARMY TO ARCHANGEL 315 sent Major Ely to represent him, and this officer and Cap- tain Hall, acting Chief Surgeon during Major Longley's illness; Captain Griger, ranking Dental Surgeon; Lieu- tenant Allen, Dentist; the Head Nurse and her half-dozen Russian novitiates and the detail of men all stood at at- tention while the band played " The Star Spangled Banner" as I raised the American and Red Cross flags over the institution, taking it over formally in the name of the American Red Cross. The street beyond the hos- pital yard was crowded with curious Russians, and some of our men who could speak their language, told them what it was all about. A guard was placed before the building, and Captain Hall, taking charge at once, began putting the house in order. Captain Griger moved his dental outfit into one of the front rooms and by noon the little hospital had started on what proved to be a very useful career. " Captain Hall was delighted with the opportunity to de- velop an institution in that region along American lines. The cooking in the British hospital to which most of our men had been sent from the Clearing Stations was not to American taste. Every one of our sick men tried to get into the hospital so it was expanded, by a well-studied rearrangement, to a capacity of forty beds. " It was at first designed to be maintained primarily for officers, but conditions made this at once impracticable. On the second day a man was brought in with pneumonia from Olga Barracks at the other end of the street where the Headquarters Company lived, who was so ill that Cap- tain Hall did not think he could have survived if it had been necessary to take him to the British hospital three miles away over incredibly rough roads. The next day an- other man was brought in in the same condition, and for two days these men hung between life and death. The name of the first man was Cooper. I do not recall that of the second, but I had the extreme satisfaction of coming out of Russia with both of these men who were being in- 316 THE PASSING LEGIONS valided to their homes in Michigan. By reason of the smallness of the hospital it was possible to give the patients better personal attention and food than in the larger in- stitutions, and our place was referred to among the sol- diers as " the best one in North Russia to get sick in! " " As the influneza epidemic continued, men who were only slightly affected and others with whom the disease had run its course, were turned out of the hospitals. Some re- turned to their regular units but many, particularly those in the hospitals at Bakaritza, were temporarily sent to the Supply Company's barracks, where there was extra room. But there was no way to provide a special staff in these quarters, which was a necessity for men in such condition. In their behalf, therefore, a search of the city was made for a suitable building in which to establish a convalescent hospital. Many public or semi-public buildings were con- sidered but for good reasons were rejected one after an- other. However, temporary quarters for our convalescents were made by shifting some of the Russians and Czecho- slovaks from buildings they occupied. Meantime, a suit- able location was decided upon, but the transfer of Russian soldiers occupying it to other places and the cleaning and repair of the structure required a great deal of effort and patience. When the time came for the renovation of this building, Major Longley had recovered from his illness sufficiently to supervise this part of the work. " To understand the difficulties encountered in trying to developed anything in Archangel, it must be borne in mind that the Bolsheviki, when they took control of the city pre- vious to the Allied occupation, either destroyed or carried away from the shops and houses everything they thought could be of value to them. Many of the stores had only the semblance of a stock of wares. Articles of furniture, hardware, or tableware were almost unobtainable at any price. In consequence, to secure for our hospitals the very simplest requirements meant a tremendous amount of time and effort. A great deal of ingenuity was necessary to WITH THE ARMY TO ARCHANGEL 317 make the few things obtainable serve other uses than those for which they were designed. Kitchen utensils, for ex- ample, were not to be found. Fortunately we were aided by discovering a Russian with a genius for making pots and pans out of sheet iron and he solved the hardest prob- lems incidental to equipping the convalescent hospital kitchen so that it could provide good American food in sufficient quantity. " We had landed about 5,000 strong in a place already filled to overflowing, where there was only the most meagre supply of things necessary for the needs of the civilian population alone. To care for and properly house our sick demanded every possible effort of the Medical Corps, much work on "the part of the Engineers and all my time in be- half of the Red Cross for every hour of the first three weeks. It was not until then that the ravages of the dis- ease were checked. The total loss of life suffered by our Force amounted to sixty-five men, including one officer. This period of almost daily funerals had a most depressing effect upon the troops stationed in Archangel. " Major Longley having now recovered and the forma- tive days of the Medical Department being past, it now be- came necessary to find a permanent and convenient place for the Red Cross supplies on hand and those expected soon to arrive in the next convoy. The fine shop of the Archangel branch of a Riga rubber concern in the Troitski Prospekt was finally selected. As the manager had sold out practically all his goods and could get no more shipped to him, he was glad to turn his place over to the American Red Cross. On account of the large amount of canned fruit in the first Red Cross consignment and the prospect of much more in the next one, it was imperative that the building be heated during the severe winter weather. The Troitski offices comprised six rooms fitted with eight Rus- sian ovens or stoves and was, furthermore, in the center of the business portion of Archangel. Therefore it was un- doubtedly the best place for the purpose in the city. 318 THE PASSING LEGIONS " Moving the supplies from the improvised warehouse in Bakaritza to the store rooms in Archangel involved nearly every difficulty to be met in a region in which labor details, lorries and river transportation were extremely hard to obtain. It required labor details and lorries at both ends and a tug boat or barge for river transport in the middle. The synchronization of all these into one continu- ous movement involved much that was annoying at the time and highly amusing after it was accomplished. A detail consisting of a sergeant and four men was provided by Major Longley to help with the stores. In the Ambulance Company of the Expedition were four men, who, before entering the army, had been professional entertainers and had afforded much diversion for the troops both during the voyage and later in quarters. These men also were as- signed to my detail for the double purpose of assisting with the supplies and of working up entertainment features for the dreary winter months. It was planned to take them out with stores for the various detachments and let them give a concert at the same time. They called them- selves ' The Jazz Quartette' and were very enthusiastically received wherever they went. " There were two principal fighting fronts in the Archangel district, one down the railroad about eighty miles to the southward, and the other, and more important, Dvina Front, 180 miles away in the same direction. In each of these sectors we had about 1,500 officers and men. Those on the river front were expected to be snowed in and the line of communication for supplies cut off when the river froze, except for the comparatively small amount that could be sent in when sledge lines were established. As the Dvina usually closed tight between the 12th and 21st of October, extreme effort was being made by the army to provide this detachment swiftly with everything needed for the winter." After a meeting of the Allied military authorities, Colonel Banting, Quartermaster of the Expedition, notified WITH THE ARMY TO ARCHANGEL 319 Captain Winn that all arrangements had been made for the land and water transportation of America Red Cross sup- plies for these troops on the Dvina Front on October 1st. However, on the very day that this notice was given, the steamship Ascutney arrived unexpectedly at Archangel with an American Red Cross Commission aboard. It came empowered to take over all military and civilian re- lief in Western Russia, which included that already afoot in and about Archangel. Therefore, into its hands Cap- tain Winn promptly delivered all Red Cross stores, all data concerning work accomplished or contemplated, to- gether with the mass of valuable information his experi- ence had given to him, and on October 28th he set sail for England to rejoin the Commission there. In concluding his diary Captain Winn wrote: " The steamer on which I sailed from Archangel carried seventy-one enlisted men who were being invalided home. We went to Murmansk and remained more than two weeks aboard the ship. About forty-five of the men were trans- ferred to the U. S. S. Olympic and taken to England. We, too, were transferred to another vessel and after wait- ing nine more days finally got away. When we reached England, after a stormy voyage, we had been five weeks coming from Archangel." As Captain Winn had been the representative in North- ern Russia of the Red Cross Commission for Great Britain — which was the pioneer relief agent in that distant re- gion— his return to England terminated its connection with the work of caring for the American soldiers in the Archangel war zone. What was afterward done there is, obviously, not a part of this narrative. A second expedition to Archangel was organized in September, 1918, and when the time came to load the sup- plies the army conceded the prowess of the " Flying Squad- ron " on the first memorable occasion. It asked that the Red Cross men make sure that all American Army stores were loaded along with the Red Cross supplies. The fact 320 THE PASSING LEGIONS that the former were scattered over six or eight different points along the water front made the task of the Squadron infinitely more difficult but it collected them all and put them aboard the transport. So far as the Red Cross goods were concerned, the work in this instance was far easier, owing to a greater time allowance for preparation and stowage. But their volume was much increased, one entire shed at the Royal Albert Docks being filled from floor to ceiling with this shipment. On the eve of the departure of the second expedition, one of the medical officers who had been working in close cooperation with the Commission suggested that the Red Cross should prepare some sort of propaganda pamphlet or leaflet for circulation in North Russia. He had informa- tion that the Russians at Archangel were very friendly toward the Americans, but that there existed considerable regrettable ignorance among the peasant classes as to ex- actly what the Americans were doing in the war. It was a matter of common knowledge that Germany had con- ducted an elaborate and vigorous propaganda campaign throughout Russia to the detriment of the United States and the other Allies. It was evident that an excellent opportunity for the distribution of an American propa- ganda pamphlet would be presented as soon as the Red Cross representatives accompanying the expedition should reach Archangel. Although the time was perilously short, the Red Cross engaged the services of a competent Russian translator and gathered a large amount of material from the speeches and messages of President Wilson and from other available and pertinent documents, showing, first, what the war situation was at that time; second, what the United States had done and intended to do, and third, a fraternal message to the Russian people. All this was carefully prepared and 20,000 copies of the leaflet were printed in the Russian language before the expedition sailed. The elapsed time WITH THE ARMY TO ARCHANGEL 321 from the first suggestion of this work to the time of the expedition's departure was less than fifty-six hours! Later in the year, three large shipments of supplies were made to Copenhagen, consisting mainly of foodstuffs for Russian prisoners in Germany. The first shipment left London on October 23rd, the second on November 18th and the third at the very beginning of January. An idea of what these cargoes contained may be obtained from the list of articles sent on November 18th which included, among other things, 8,000 cases of pork and beans, 2,000 cases of biscuits, 1,500 cases of bread, 1,200 cases of roast beef, 800 cases of oatmeal, 667 cases of corned beef, 800 cases of flaked fish and 800 cases of corned beef hash. The first of these shipments comprised 1,543 cases weighing 115,454 pounds, the second totaled 8,563 cases and the third weighed more than 2,000 tons, occupied the hold of an entire ship and was valued at $750,000. During the latter part of 1918 two consignments of sup- plies were sent to Gibraltar for the use of the American sailors at the naval base there, one arriving at Thanksgiv- ing time and the other just before Christmas. CHAPTER XIX THE UNBREAKABLE LINK WITH " HOME " ONE of the clauses of the charter of the American Red Cross designates it as " a medium of communication between the people of the United States and their Army and Navy," and it is doubtful whether sixteen words were ever before employed to describe an obligation so varied, so far-reaching, so important. It does not minimize the rec- ord of any department in the organization to say that largely through the fulfillment of this obligation did the people at home in America realize that the Red Cross was always at hand to take care of their boys, wherever they might be and whatever their needs. It was a personal task as distinguished from the many valuable impersonal services the Red Cross rendered, and one whose value was beyond reckoning. It must, of its nature, deal individually and personally with the soldier or sailor and his family and concern itself more or less intimately with his affairs. Your soldier and sailor are — they will admit it themselves — "not much on letter writ- ing " and inclined to let cruelly long intervals elapse be- tween the letters which were so fervently promised " once a week at least." It was not a conscious neglect nor was it general but it was none the less hard upon the anxious ones at home who had to bear it. The contributory agencies of interference with letters were manifold; the thoughtless indifference of youth, its absorbing interest in new scenes, new conditions, unexpected troop movements, illness, death — these are a few of them. According to the excellent rule of "Mind Your Own Business," it was, speaking generally, no concern of the 322 THE UNBREAKABLE LINK WITH " HOME " 323 Red Cross whether a man wrote or did not write to his family. One circumstance alone made it Red Cross busi- ness, this, when his family, having no word from or of him for weeks, even months, besought the Red Cross to find out what the silence meant. The character of their letters will be quite well conveyed by the following letter, written from Massachusetts and taken at random from the files of the Service: " I am writing you to ask if you can find out where my nephew is or something about him. He enlisted with the American Army and the last letter I had from him was shortly after his arrival in England. His name is----. I am afraid something has happened to him; please find out something for me. I will wait anxiously for your reply." A request like this was all that was needed to set the entire machinery of the department in motion, to remain so until the person sought had been found and the last, least inquiry of his family answered. In the case just cited, the Service was able to reply two days later that the soldier was safe and sound, on duty in a camp in Great Britain and that he had written his aunt a letter forty- eight hours before the Home Communication officer had called upon him. This was a comparatively easy bit of work, but as there were countless instances of this kind, involving many long searches, sixteen words are little enough to employ in summing it up. In many cases the man whom the Service went out to seek was found to be well — and often not a little chagrined when told that his family wanted to hear from him, as his neglect had so completely escaped him. In other cases he was found in hospital, too ill to write or pre- vented from doing so by a wound. And sometimes tragedy or the shadow of it—"missing"—was the thing upon which the department searchers would at last come, in their tireless questing. But, whatever the answer chanced to be, the Red Cross never failed to send some word to far 324 THE PASSING LEGIONS America. Often the soldier or sailor himself wrote it, in other cases one of the women of the Care Committee, which gave so much aid in this branch of work, would sit at the side of a hospital cot and write at the dictation of the sick or wounded man upon it, or even write without his knowledge picking out her letter with such fragments of personality as he might haltingly have revealed to her in a brighter day. Sometimes the representative of the Service would write to the anxious ones at home just to let them see how much interest was being taken in " their boy," and that the Red Cross was unflagging in its attentions to those for whose aid and comfort it really existed. Such a letter as this was sent to a town in the Middle West, from a south of England hospital, by one of the searchers of the Service: Dear Mrs. ----: I called here yesterday to see your son who is in hospital here. I found him almost entirely recovered, with rosy cheeks and bright eyes, and apparently quite happy. He has been re- ceiving the very best attention and will continue to do so until he is quite well. I understand that your son has been writing you regularly, but I am sending this letter as I know how mothers are apt to worry about their boys, and I thought you would like to hear from me that your son is getting along so well. By the time you receive this he will probably be entirely recovered and out of hospital. I would like to mention that if at any time you need advice or assistance you have only to apply to the branch of the Ameri- can Red Cross which is nearest your home to receive at once every assistance which is possible. It is instances of this kind which show how personal this work was, how human and how necessary. The Home Communication Service of the Red Cross in Great Britain was instituted early in April, 1918, under Captain Herbert Edenborough. At that time there had been comparatively few American troops in England, so, THE UNBREAKABLE LINK WITH " HOME " 325 in the beginning, there was little work save that of organi- zation and preparation. But every minute of this was needed for the task to come. For, from the time the service was in practical operation until its work virtually ended — this being the period from May 1, 1918, to Feb- ruary 28, 1919 — more than 112,000 reports were made to Red Cross Headquarters in Washington concerning Americans — military, naval and civilian. At one time there were 17,000 Americans in hospital in Great Britain, 6,000 of these being in British institutions to which the Service had access at all times for the purposes of visit- ing and inquiry. Every one of the men in hospital be- came, automatically, a charge of the Service and every one was visited and questioned and his case reported to the authorities at home. The family or nearest friend of each man was notified of his illness or wound, his con- dition and whereabouts — the latter as nearly as mili- tary censorship would permit — and, more than that, each was carefully followed during his entire stay in hospital, his transfers and his convalescence and kept in touch with his home throughout it all. At the conclusion of its work, the Service had 60,000 such cases in detail on file in its archives. Some idea of the progress of the Home Communication work may be gathered from the following figures: Dur- ing the first three months in England reports were made on about 5,000 cases, 1,000 of which were cases in which special reports were made and a special dossier opened. During the second three months, ending on September 30, 1918, about 20,000 cases were handled, of which about 4,000 were cases involving special reports. During the three months ending December 31st, reports were made on 30,000 cases of which 8,000 were special cases. In many of the special cases above referred to, there were inquiries to be made in many quarters and a voluminous correspondence in connection therewith. An " ordinary case," in the terminology of the Service, was one in which 326 THE PASSING LEGIONS it was possible to tabulate the information as to what had happened to a boy, in list form on a printed blank. The " special cases" were those which necessitated detailed reports and investigation and inquiry in various quarters. When a soldier was discovered to be so ill or so wounded as not to be able to write for himself, minute data were sent to Washington at short intervals, which would make it possible for Headquarters to dispatch frequent letters to his relatives telling them how his case was progressing. There were, of course, many instances in which these soldiers died in hospital in England and then came the saddest duty of the Home Communication Service, that of sending this news to the ones at home. It was always done by a worker on the spot, one who had known the man during his illness or at least known something about him. This worker gathered all possible details concern- ing his last days and then wrote such a letter as the fol- lowing, which, by the way, is an authentic one, taken from the records of the Service: My dear Mrs.----: Your name has been given to me as the nearest relative of ----, but through some mischance I do not know your relation- ship to him. After all, it matters very little, for no doubt he was dear to you, and it is my hope that I may be able to give you some details of his last illness, which may not have been conveyed to you in the official announcement of his death which you have already received. He was in the American Red Cross Hospital for a minor ailment, but was taken desperately ill about noon of the 30th. He had been up and about that morning, but towards noon was taken with convulsions, became unconscious and remained so until he died about five o'clock on the 31st. An autopsy revealed the cause of death to be meningitis. Other men in the ward had not known him well, for he had only been there a day or two, but they have told me that he received a letter at the hospital from a relative in California containing some photographs, which pleased him very much. I am sorry to have no more details to give you, but the sud- denness of his illness makes it impossible. He was buried to- day, from the hospital chapel, the service being conducted by the THE UNBREAKABLE LINK WITH " HOME " 327 Rev. ---. The coffin was covered with an American flag and a lovely bunch of lilacs and carnations given by the hospital committee. I enclose a spray of flowers from the coffin. The Home Communication Service of the Red Cross extends to you its sincerest sympathy and hopes that the particulars which I have been able to give will in some measure soften the blow which has come to you. Here is a letter written to the mother of a boy who lost his life from injuries received in the torpedoing of a transport: Dear Mrs.----: On hearing of the unfortunate torpedoing of the transport carrying the regiment of which your son was a member, I at once hastened to the port where the survivors had been landed, arriving there on the night of the 24th. Early the next morn- ing I heard of the injuries which your son had received and was grieved to learn later that he died during the night, but I thought it would be a comfort to you if I visited the hosiptal and learned all I could as to his death. I talked for some time to the doctor and orderly who had cared for your son. The doctor told me that everything possible had been done to save his life, but unfortunately without avail; the hospital had very few patients at the time and he had therefore been able to give this case the closest personal atten- tion. I think you will like to hear that in the short time your son was in the hospital he endeared himself to those with whom he came in contact. They spoke with admiration of his fortitude, but what struck them most was his great consideration for others. He spoke of you several times and grieved that he would probably, because of his injury, not be so useful on the farm when he returned home. You will be glad to know that the doctor was able to save your son all pain. He was unconscious at the end and therefore was not able to send you any message, which he would undoubtedly have done otherwise. At the time of his death he was wearing a signet ring which will be forwarded to you. Unfortunately all his other effects were lost when the ship was torpedoed. You may like to hear that your son's fellow patients in the hospital were officers and men of the British warship Vindictive, about which you have no doubt read in the papers recently; they all expressed great sorrow for his death. 328 THE PASSING LEGIONS Your son was buried with full military honors in the mili- tary cemetery here. Flowers were given by officers and men of his regiment. The cemetery is situated in a beautiful spot on a hill overlooking the sea, and the grave will always be cared for by the Red Cross and military authorities. It was decorated by the American Red Cross on Memorial Day. Later on we will have a photograph of it sent to you. By way of showing the appreciation that was felt for this intensely human side of Red Cross work, it is not amiss to quote a letter in reply which came to it from Texas: Just received your sad letter of the 7th of October telling me of the death of my dear boy. It is hard, indeed, to give him up, but a consolation to know that the Red Cross had him in its care in his last hours. I feel that you did everything that could be done for him and it is a comfort to us to know that. I would like you to send me a photograph of his grave and tell me how it is marked, how it will be cared for and also if I could be allowed to do anything for it. You must know that this is great sorrow to his old mother and myself, but we bow in humble submission to God's Will, knowing that our boy gave his life for the noblest of causes. But, oh, it is so hard — just a young man, twenty-four years old. It seemed that he was just entering a life of usefulness, but he is only one among thousands cut down in their prime. Words are inadequate to express our gratitude to you and to the others of the Red Cross, but we are thankful, far more than we can tell, for what you did for our only child and for your kind words to us. Although the greater part of the work of the Home Communication Service was in connection with keeping the sick and wounded men in touch with their people in the States, the almost limitless scope of the Service re- sulted in bringing to it many strange requests for help and, therefore, carried its activities far afield. One, for instance, came from the family of a man born in Turkey of Greek parentage, educated in an American institution in the Near East and resident in Turkey at the outbreak THE UNBREAKABLE LINK WITH " HOME " 329 of the war. This man had been forced, against his will into the Turkish service. He was afterward captured by the British and held a prisoner in Palestine. Rela- tions of his, residing in the United States, did not wish him returned to Turkey when he should be released, but asked if the Red Cross could not have him sent to America. The Service approached the British War Office with this request and was advised of a method by which this rather irregular proceeding might be carried out, and in time, it was effected. At another time the Service was requested by a family in America to find two young girls, sisters, who had gone to England and of whom all trace had been lost by their relatives. The information given, upon which to begin such a search, was both conflicting and incorrect — and England was a large country. But the Red Cross managed at last to discover them both. While one was found to be in domestic service in England, the other was attached to the British Forces in France and both were well and in good circumstances as the Service hastened to report. American soldiers in France frequently asked the Red Cross to locate their relatives in England. One soldier wrote that he had not heard from his father for several years, when he had written from a certain address in the East End of London. Inquiry at this address led to a series of addresses and eventually to the father himself, who had not known whether his son was alive or dead. In this way they were brought together to their mutual delight. A much more difficult task was imposed by a soldier from California who, about to go to England on leave, wanted to visit the relations of his step-mother. All he knew about her was her name — a not at all un- common surname — and that her people lived in or near London. This was a problem for Sherlock Holmes! However the Red Cross went modestly to work and not only found the step-mother but made arrangements for 330 THE PASSING LEGIONS the soldier's visit. This tracing business came to be one of the standard tasks of the Home Communication bureau and it was often asked to locate people who, before the war, had lived in foreign countries and become lost to their American relatives when hostilities turned Europe topsy-turvy. Sometimes it received and delivered special messages from America for individual soldiers or sailors, such messages generally referring to the death of a rela- tive, or some other subject of great personal importance. Also it took on the work of finding scores of Americans who had enlisted in the British or French armies before America entered the war and was instrumental in numer- ous cases in having them repatriated. One of the letters it received in this relation was from a city in Virginia. It ran: I am writing to learn the condition of my son, Lieutenant ----, an American in the Canadian Army. I received a mes- sage six weeks ago saying he was in an American hospital in London, convalescent and able to walk about. Is he still pro- gressing? I know it will be a long time before he will be able to walk well, but I would like to know if there are any compli- cations and if his general health is good. I will be very grate- ful to you if you will write me fully about his exact condition. The Red Cross replied that this officer, who had suffered a compound fracture of both legs, had been granted six months' leave and was expected to sail almost immediately for home. In its " detective " role, the Service once or twice came into contact with obvious enemy propaganda. This was widespread in America when the Communication Bureau began its work and all sorts of false reports were being circulated with the object of making Germany feared. In one instance it was stated, with all the authority which rumors assumed, that an American dentist and his entire family had been killed in the wreck of their home dur- ing an aerial bomb raid. What the Service's investigation disclosed was — the dentist in his office, his waiting-room THE UNBREAKABLE LINK WITH " HOME " 331 full of patients. ~No bomb had ever dropped within miles of his home. At another time it was reported in several communities in the States that American soldiers in Eng- land had been court-martialed and shot for certain grave offenses. The Red Cross, to whom these reports were sent, gave the matter into the hands of the Communication Service with the result that the soldiers said to have been executed were found to be alive and on duty, and, further- more, without a blemish on their records. Nor does this exhaust the list of unusual but valuable services this Red Cross Bureau rendered. It encountered boys in hospital who, having been thus separated from their units, were without pay and at once arranged that their requirements in this respect be fulfilled, much to their comfort and relief. It remitted to America thou- sands of dollars for soldiers and sailors who wished their savings sent home and asked the Red Cross to attend to it for them. It hunted up mail for soldiers in hospital when the army authorities had failed, through lack of proper notice, to forward it. It even busied itself obtain- ing full particulars about babies and small children for persons in America who desired to adopt orphans and foundlings who were then in England, and forwarded complete instructions as to how this might be legally and properly accomplished. An interesting incident is worth recording in connec- tion with a facsimile lithographed letter which was given to American soldiers upon their arrival in England. This letter, in the handwriting of His Majesty King George and signed by him, welcomed American soldiers to British soil. Hundreds of them were sent home as souvenirs, with the result that in some instances, when the boys were not heard from, the relatives forthwith, wrote to the King himself, asking him to take steps to have their boys traced and to perform other little acts in their behalf. Receipt of these letters was always courteously acknowledged from Buckingham Palace to the relatives and the letters were 332 THE PASSING LEGIONS then passed on to the Home Communication Service for its information and attention. Narration of the work of the personnel of this Service is incomplete if it does not refer to the courage and loyalty of all who served. During the influenza epidemic, the work was suddenly more than quadrupled. This, under ordinary circumstances, would have been a sufficiently difficult situation to handle, but it was rendered doubly so by the fact that at least half the Department's workers became ill from the same cause. Those that were left, however, worked as they had never worked before. All who were able stuck to their posts and worked night and day as long as human endurance would permit. The workers in the hospitals deserve especial credit. Where it was allowed, they went among the patients in wards at great personal risk and carried on their labors as in ordinary cases. In this connection it should be mentioned that all the Red Cross workers in hospitals have invariably visited, when permitted to do so, cases even of a com- municable nature, if the case was serious and a soldier's life in danger, so that he might send a message to his rela- tives on the other side. This duty was never shirked in the history of the Red Cross in Great Britain. The proper prosecution of a service so extensive — be- cause it was the determination of the Red Cross that no American soldier or sailor in hospital in Great Britain should fail to receive every attention and that his family should have word of him as soon as he arrived there — necessitated both a large working staff and the establish- ment of special branch offices in all the hospital centers in the Kingdom. These were at Liverpool, Winchester, Portsmouth, Paignton, Dartford, Tottenham, Southamp- ton, Birmingham and Edinburgh. They represented either great base hospitals or places from which it was possible easily to reach hospitals in their vicinity. In the case of distinctly British institutions which, from time to time, received American sick or wounded, the THE UNBREAKABLE LINK WITH " HOME " 333 Service relied upon the British and Canadian Red Cross which were prompt to send word of American arrivals. At the time the Service reached its maximum of effective- ness, and this was within a very short time of its incep- tion, it had representatives in every American Red Cross, Base and Camp hospital, and in every British hospital to which American sick or wounded were taken. Its workers numbered nearly four hundred. In its search for missing men — for this was another task assumed by the Service—the hospitals were of great aid. A list of " missing " was published twice a month by the military authorities and a copy of this was given to each of the searchers to be checked up with the list of all Americans in hospital in Great Britain. A searcher notes, for instance, that John Smith of the----th Regiment is reported missing. Reference to the hospital list shows that James Jones of the same regiment is in such and such an institution, so an immediate visit is paid to James Jones and he is asked: " Did you ever know a man in your regiment named John Smith % " " Sure I did," Jones replies. " I knew him well, a little fellow with sandy hair — some boy, too! " With this as a hopeful preface the searcher will pro- ceed to find out whether Jones was in the same action in which Smith was reported missing, and whether Jones saw Smith during the fight that day or, particularly, after it was all over. Then Jones replies that he saw him blown to pieces or taken prisoner or wounded or has no knowledge whatever of Smith beyond that he was still fighting when he himself was wounded early in the en- gagement and sent to the rear. If Jones has not served to settle the question of Smith, other men of the same regiment are subsequently found and interrogated, or per- haps some one in a different organization may have seen him and disclose what happened to him. By this means it was possible, very often to determine definitely the 334 THE PASSING LEGIONS fate of men listed " missing," and fortunately now and then they were found, wounded but alive, in some distant hospital. Then the Red Cross had indeed a letter to write home! Quite aside from its hospital activities, the Service had much to do with American prisoners of war. It was inevitable that certain information, rumors, reports about such prisoners should filter into Great Britain and at first principally as to officers of the United States Medical Corps who had been attached to the British Army and been captured during the German advance in the spring of 1918. Later, news came through as to American prisoners generally. All such information the Service could obtain was carefully collected and sent to that Red Cross aid center at which it would prove of most value in behalf of the prisoner or persons in question. This frequently resulted in the interests of these unfortunates being cared for much sooner than otherwise would have been the case. It often happened that prisoners so helped through the indirect agency of the Home Communication Service would turn up later in London where the Red Cross officers would invariably produce the documents in relation to their cases and permit the soldiers to read them. They were always interested in the manner in which the Red Cross had discovered and taken care of them, and were unfailing in their appreciation of the steps which had been taken to see that their families were provided with all possible news as to their welfare while in prison camps and that they had been supplied with proper cloth- ing, food and other comforts. After the signing of the Armistice about 600 American soldiers and civilians were repatriated through England. In all of these cases the Home Communication depart- ment met the men and obtained information from them as to the camps in which they had been held, their present state of health, where they were going, their next of kin in America and any message which they wished sent to THE UNBREAKABLE LINK WITH " HOME " 335 their people. Having done this, the Red Cross cabled all the details to Washington for the benefit of the rela- tives of the prisoners. As can be easily understood, some of these cables were very long indeed. One, for example, occupied five sheets of quarto paper. Besides sending the data to Washington, the Red Cross supplied information in connection with these arrivals to the Headquarters of the Army and of the Navy, to the American Red Cross in Paris, to the Red Cross Prisoners of War Committee in Berne, and, in the case of civilians, to the American Consul General in London. In pursuance of instructions from " G. H. Q.," the Home Communion Service undertook the long task of registering and photographing the graves, of the 2,500 American soldiers buried in Great Britain and arranging for the erection of suitable crosses above them. Copies of these photographs will in time be sent by the Red Cross to the families of the men. The Red Cross photogra- phers entrusted with this extensive work were requested to report upon the general state of all these widely scat- tered cemeteries — there is one, containing a single grave, on a bleak island off the Scottish coast — so that if any of them be not in a condition befitting the resting place of American dead, steps may be taken to rehabilitate them without delay. " Home Service," as distinct from " Home Communica- tion," as it dealt with all matters at home which were a cause of anxiety or worry to the American soldiers over- sea, was another personal task of the Red Cross. A large number of the cases to which it attended concerned allot- ments and the welfare of the families of soldiers in the United States. Many cases related to lack of news from home on account of missed or strayed mail, which the Bureau often successfully traced and delivered. It was also consulted in many business matters, some involving litigation, some the practical disposition of property and the adjustment of commercial affairs. 336 THE PASSING LEGIONS It may not be uninteresting to cite a few cases which have an especial appeal to the sympathies: One soldier, a native of a European country but later naturalized as an American, had left in the country of his birth a wife and five small children. He was abruptly informed that his wife had died and also that money he had forwarded, and which he supposed his family was receiving, had never reached its destination. His troubles were further com- plicated by the ordering home of his unit. Probably he was the only man in it for whom this was not the best of news, but the thought of leaving his small children destitute and unprotected in Europe made his situation distressing. The Red Cross, through the Home Service Bureau, represented the state of affairs to the army author- ities, who were willing, under the circumstances, to trans- fer this soldier to a unit which was to remain in England for the time being. Also the Bureau communicated with the American Consul in the city nearest that in which the children lived and, by endorsing the soldier's applica- tion for a furlough, enabled him to see them and arrange for their care until he should be able to send for them to join him in America. Another soldier was told of the death of his wife in the United States, which left their small daughter homeless. Through Washington headquarters, the Bureau turned the matter over to a local Red Cross Chapter which under- took the proper care of the little child. Several marital problems were brought to the atten- tion of the Bureau, involving property interests and vari- ous personal perplexities. One, for example, was that of a soldier who heard that his wife had, in his absence, di- vorced him, or tried to do it, had married again and sold her half interest in their real estate. He wanted infor- mation regarding the validity of such a divorce and advice upon his property situation, all of which was forthwith given to him. Through the excellent organization of Home Service THE UNBREAKABLE LINK WITH " HOME » 337 work in the United States, matters of this kind had the attention of lawyers representing the local Chapters and the men, whose troubles were thus taken care of, were made more efficient soldiers and sailors because of their knowledge that their affairs were in the competent hands of the American Red Cross. CHAPTER XX A SOLDIER'S JOKE--AND WHAT OAME OF IT ! AMERICANS, of all the peoples of the earth, have, probably, the keenest interest in what may compre- hensively be called " the news." It is an insatiable crav- ing to know " what's going on" anywhere, everywhere. In the great cities of America, new editions of their news- papers succeed one another almost hourly throughout the day. Express trains catch them up as they come from the presses and speed them in all directions for hundreds of miles. The smaller communities rely upon these edi- tions to supplement their own less pretentious but no less important journals. Editors lie awake o' nights devising plans whereby they may hasten publication and distribu- tion of the news which flows in ceaselessly from the cable, the telegraph line and the myriad other sources of supply. Americans read newspapers everywhere, in trains, street- cars and subways, in their own motors, even in the street as they walk. And countless thousands of them read, not merely one favorite paper a day, but three or even four, determined evidently, that not one scrap of appealing information shall escape them. This may be a national " habit," fostered, perhaps, by the newspapers themselves. But, confirmed in it, as Americans are, what was more natural than that the American soldiers who arrived in England should feel themselves quite cut off from the sort of news which most interested them. To a conspicuously large majority of the troops this meant events in their own home regions, local politics, baseball scores, boxing results and news of the A SOLDIER'S JOKE —AND WHAT CAME OF IT! 339, great training camps in the States. For, it must be re- membered, these American soldiers were not alone drawn from the so-called sophisticated centers, but also from the far more numerous inconspicuous communities, whose horizon lay just at the village outskirts. In their new surroundings — so dismayingly new to most of them — they could get the English newspapers, of course, but in supplying their needs these were about as valuable as a Babylonian brick. What English newspaper would at any time, even in peace days, devote space to — well, to a World Series ? It just isn't done. Those who have a wider interest in affairs and those who stayed at home may, thoughtlessly, consider this slight deprivation in view of what the soldier must expect when he goes to war. But it was a deprivation, none the less, and markedly accentuated the distance which lay be- tween him and " home." And an army physician will tell you that " homesickness " was one of the chief ills his corps encountered among even the most rugged of our troops. This isolation, so to speak, of the Americans was brought to the attention of the Red Cross by a fortunate little incident which happened in June, 1918, at Morn Hill, in Hampshire, or " Hants," if you will, where there was an American Rest Camp and a large Camp Hospital. At the time there were several thousand soldiers in the camp on their way to France and about 250 men in hospital. In the course of an inspection tour of the camp, Captain Frank M. America, of the Red Cross staff in London, was asked by one of the soldiers, with proverbial American curiosity, what his particular " job " with the Red Cross happened to be. Captain America replied that he was Director of Information. " Well, couldn't you direct a little information about Winsted, Connecticut, down here ? " was the instant in- quiry. " I don't even know if it's still on the map, honest." Then, drawing a crumpled English newspaper 340 THE PASSING LEGIONS from the breast of his shirt, the soldier spread it out and added, with the emphasis of despair: " Say, I've been reading these things for three weeks and I'm wearing out my eyes looking for news. Why, they could burn the old red barn and kill the cat and everything and I wouldn't know anything about it till I got a letter next Christmas. And the Giants and the Cubs and the Red Sox; say, they're all dead if you go by this paper! Take it from me, if you want to help people down here just shoot along a little news once in a while, tell us something about what's going on in God's country, 'cause it's a long way from here." The appeal was irresistible and was repeated in varying degrees of vehemence by half a dozen or more of the men in both camp and hospital. They wanted their kind of news. And what was true of Morn Hill was true of many similar spots in England and Scotland, for the American troops were coming in to build and equip camps and avia- tion bases in half a hundred out-of-the-way places. The men were not then arriving in great numbers but there were 200 or 300 mechanics and student aviators at every one of these stations. In addition, there were in hospitals throughout England hundreds of wounded Americans who had fought with either the British or the Canadians be- fore their own country's entry into the conflict, and to many of these the States must have seemed as far off as the moon. Captain America, a newspaper man in New York for many years, who came into the Red Cross Commission from the London Bureau of the Associated Press, had learned a short time before that the United States Com- mittee on Public Information received a budget of news each day by wireless from America. It had been collected from every State in the Union and a considerable part of it was the very kind of news the soldiers so eagerly wanted. As nearly all the English news journals, through A SOLDIER'S JOKE —AND WHAT CAME OF IT! 341 scarcity of paper, had been reduced in size to two pages and as the chronicle of the war took precedence over every- thing else, there was, frankly, no room in them for dis- tinctively American news even had the editors been in the habit of publishing it. And all of this is by way of preface to the birth of The Daily News Bulletin of the American Red Cross, for it came into the world the day after Captain America's visit to Morn Hill. Arrangements were made whereby the daily wireless service became available and on the morn- ing of July 20th, 1918, the Bulletin first lifted up its small voice in the hubbub of the world. And by way of answer to the soldiers' yearning for news of " what's going on in God's country," it submitted, among others, these items, the first of which was the leading article: Chicago, July 17 — The Chicago Nationals today beat Phila- delphia 2 to 1 in a game which lasted 21 innings. It was the longest game of the season and within one inning of the Na- tional League record game of 22 innings played between Brook- lyn and Pittsburgh in 1917. The American League's record game was 24 innings between Boston and Philadelphia in 1916. San Francisco, July 19 — Mayor James Rolff today an- nounced his candidacy for the Republican nomination for Governor. New York, July 19 — The new Lexington Avenue subway was opened for service here to-day. New York, July 19 -<- News of the American-French offensive has been received with great enthusiasm throughout the United States. Cheering crowds have gathered everywhere and news- papers have been sold as fast as the presses could turn them out. In Wall Street business is suspended whenever any war news arrives over the tickers. In this first Daily Bulletin there were nine news items in all, the others relating mainly to war activities in America. It was a single sheet of paper, a bit larger than ten by seven inches with a printed Red Cross heading 342 THE PASSING LEGIONS in red, " run off" on an old-fashioned, inconvenient duplicating machine, the only kind available at the moment in all London. By dint of time and labor, 250 copies were procured early enough to catch the mail trains which would insure their delivery that day at such rea- sonably near points as Southampton, Winchester, and Liverpool. The Red Cross camp and hospital repre- sentatives to whom they were dispatched were requested to distribute them " as long as they last." Copies were also sent by messenger to all the London hospitals in which there were American soldiers. The effect that this small and not very well dressed journalistic child produced was practically instantaneous. Within two days letters began fluttering into London Head- quarters in comment and compliment and every last one of them asked that such and such a number of copies be sent daily to the undersigned without fail, as the men had all save eaten the first issue. One soldier in the Red Cross hospital at Mossley Hill, in Liverpool, wrote: " It isn't a Chicago Sunday newspaper, but out here it looks like one to me. That stuff about the Cubs is O. K. You don't have to guess that I'm from Chi." News of the publication of the Daily Bulletin ran from camp to camp, from hospital to hospital throughout Great Britain with an unbelievable speed. As the days went on, more letters arrived, from both army and navy, ask- ing that scores of stations and bases be put on the mailing list. One was from Admiral Sims' headquarters, another from the Duke of Sutherland, who said he knew of no other way in which to get American news promptly; still an- other came from Rear Admiral Philip Andrews, in com- mand of the American naval coaling station and mine- sweeping base at Cardiff, in Wales. The American Chamber of Commerce in London asked that it, too, be in- cluded in the list, while a fifth letter was signed by the senior medical officer of a British Military Hospital who A SOLDIER'S JOKE —AND WHAT CAME OF IT! 343 asked in the name of a number of wounded Americans in his care. The Daily Bulletin had suddenly achieved the importance of a metropolitan journal! After its fourth appearance, when paper in sufficient quantity had become available, this news urchin increased in size overnight, outgrowing his clothes and lengthening out to a sturdy youngster of thirteen inches, but with the same, unmistakable red head. He was enabled now to carry considerably more news to the camps and hospitals. Nor was his amazing growth in the length of his coat alone. During the twelve days of July — for the Bul- letin, throughout its life, appeared with equal promptness on Sundays — the total number of copies issued was less than two thousand. In August, by the aid of printed address labels and a duplicating machine capable of pro- ducing 3,000 impressions an hour, it was possible to sup- ply a demand for thirty thousand copies. In September the number rose to fifty thousand and in October leaped to a total " sworn circulation " for the month of more than seventy-five thousand copies! And it was only a little, one-page news sheet, printed from a stencil on not very good paper — born of a soldier's half-jocular re- quest for " a little news once in a while from God's country." But it was read with homesick eagerness at every Ameri- can Military Camp and Naval Base in Great Britain. It was posted on the bulletin boards of ships and rest camps, of hospitals, and Red Cross stations everywhere, even on the rugged Ninth Century wall of the Parish Church at Immingham, in England, where the Pilgrim Fathers worshipped before embarking for America in the Mayflower. It was read aloud to hundreds of sick and wounded men in their hospital cots and tucked into count- less letters as a souvenir for the " home folks " in the States. The fighting men and their commanders were not the only ones it served. It went each day to the Ameri- can Ambassador in London, to all the American Consuls 344 THE PASSING LEGIONS in Great Britain and to the American Legations in Den- mark, Norway, and Sweden. And who shall say that some one, even in so high a seat, was not interested to know, now and then, the result of a " double header " at home? How well it served the soldiers' needs is betokened in scores of letters received from officers and men in camps and hospitals throughout Great Britain. An officer at one of the camps was so emphatic about the success of the publication that he wrote to the Director of Informa- tion: " If this Bulletin is discontinued you will be court-martialed and shot!" In order that the delivery of the Bulletin might be un- failingly made in the great areas about Southampton and Winchester, where there were at one time not less than 25,000 American troops, it was placed on a fast train at noon every day which made the run to Southampton in an hour and a half. Arriving there at half-past 1 o'clock in the afternoon, the bundles were caught up by a man on a motorcycle, who covered his long route at top speed so that all the Bulletins were in the hands of the soldiers before 6 o'clock in the evening. It was obviously impossible to effect such distribution universally, but well within two days the Daily Bulletin had borne its " home news " to the men of the United States Destroyer Flotilla, at Queenstown in Ireland; to Scapa Flow, in the bleak Orkneys north of Scotland, where the American Battle Squadron No. 6 was joined with the British Grand Fleet; to Rossyth, on the east coast of Scot- land, the port of the American cruiser fleet; to the U. S. Naval Base Hospital at Strathpeffer, in the Highlands and to Inverness, the American mine laying base on the eastern coast. In its larger size, the Daily Bulletin was enabled to make a feature of such soul-stirring news as the World Series A SOLDIER'S JOKE —AND WHAT CAME OF IT! 345 games of September, 1918, between Chicago and Boston. It published a prefatory resume of each game with a complete " box score" appended. And, of course, throughout the season it featured all the results of the National and American Leagues. In the autumn it gave the college football scores, with brief comment on the games, not infrequently listing in a Sunday issue as many as twenty-eight games played in America the day before. All important political events were presented to its readers, even if such events were only of importance in the smaller communities. Sporting news — racing, boxing, golf, hockey, tennis and field and track athletics — was fur- nished in such detail as space permitted. Then, too, there were condensed reports from the several battlefronts as the events there concerned the American forces and almost daily news of the American Navy in European waters. The progress of the Liberty Loan, and of ship building and agriculture in the United States were related whenever they came forward in the stupendous history America was making. Now and then the Daily Bulletin was a worthy com- petitor of the press of London, notably on November 11th, 1918, when in the issue for that day appeared the follow- ing: A phone message just received from the United States Com- mittee on Public Information said that the Armistice was signed by Germany early this (Monday) morning and that hostilities ceased at 11 o'clock. Not one newspaper in London " beat" the Bulletin on that because an " edition" was issued the instant the news arrived and the little Red Cross journal was in the hands of the American soldiers in the city as London's elderly, lugubrious-looking newspaper vendors appeared with their armf uls of papers. And the Bulletin was equally prompt just the day be- fore, November 10, with the announcement that the Kaiser 346 THE PASSING LEGIONS had abdicated and that the Crown Prince had renounced his right to the succession. In its publication of battle news the Bulletin could invariably " beat" the London papers. Such news was given out each day at noon at the British War Office in Whitehall and not more than half an hour later the Ameri- can news had been selected, printed in the Bulletin and the distribution begun. By that time the London papers were just setting it up. One melancholy paragraph in each issue was devoted to an enumeration of " Deaths in America yesterday." Singularly enough, this was generally considered one of the most valuable services rendered by the publication, as it was a comprehensive necrological record of important personages throughout the Nation. There was never the least doubt, from the very begin- ning, that the Bulletin was read, line by line. Requests for further information upon published news were con- stantly received from the camps. Delay in the receipt of complete returns of the November, 1918, elections in America brought in a flood of letters, and in answer to them a special two-page edition of the Bulletin was issued on November 7 giving the final official results. Every effort was made to comply with the soldiers' requests, whatever labor it involved. When a man in the Win- chester camp asked for the name of the Senator who had been appointed by the Governor of South Carolina to succeed Ben Tillman, it was necessary to cable to Washington for the information. But in two days the answer came back and was duly included in the Bulletin's news. Another instance of the closeness with which the little paper was read became evident the day after the publi- cation of an item relating the occurrence of a $30,000 fire in the business district of Marchmont. The cable had not transmitted the name of the State, so on the A SOLDIER'S JOKE —AND WHAT CAME OF IT! 347 following day the Bulletin received six letters from men hailing from six Marchmonts in six different States, each asking whether it was his particular Marchmont. During the period of America's maximum military activities in Great Britain, the daily issue of the Bulletin ran, not infrequently, to eight thousand copies. And whenever a convoy of American troops reached English waters, a special edition of that day's Bulletin was printed, dispatched by camion with the canteen supplies, and a copy given to each soldier as he came ashore. As many as five thousand copies were often thus distributed in one day. The soldiers' appreciation of this was very keen and very prompt, because it was the first news of America that they had had for nearly two weeks. And they gave as much attention to their Bulletins as they did to the hot coffee, buns, chocolate and cigarettes they were re- ceiving from the canteen workers. It required no end of skill to hold a tin cup of coffee, a bun, a bar of chocolate, and a Bulletin and read and eat and talk at one and the same time, but thousands of American troops did it. If a recording phonograph could have been set up beside any one of the groups of men who had passed through the can- teen ceremony, the disc would have delivered to posterity something of this kind: " Hey, Bo, come across with a quarter; the Giants finished 'way ahead of Cincinnati — there it is, see it % — right at the top of the page — that stuff about the Georgia peach crop — cut it, kid, my mouth's watering — say, the Fritzies are on the run all right — go ask her your- self, she'll give you another cup — that Jack Dempsey cert'n'y packs the wallop — he put Levinsky out of busi- ness in the third — you guys keep still, there's a fellow just died out in Des Moines — I'll give you my chocolate for your cigarettes. Say, get this: Ty Cobb's a captain in the army — Look out, you're spilling that all over me — if you can't drink it, give it to me — Gee, there's been a 348 THE PASSING LEGIONS big fire out in my home town! — fifteen thousand dollars gone up — that's all right, Shorty, forget it, it wasn't yours! " Many of the news paragraphs which made the Bulletin valuable to the troops would have brought delight (and probably had) to the heart of many a country editor. While, so far as the writer can find, there was never a reference to Cy Higgins' red heifer nor to Squire Hol- comb's prize-winning pumpkin, the Bulletin did give to an eager audience such paragraphs as these, which have been taken at random from its imperishable files: Laramie, Wyo., July 21 — Oil has been struck at Bock Creek, 45 miles northwest of here. Saratoga Springs, July 29 — Chauncey Olcott celebrated his 61st birthday by making a series of patriotic speeches. Frostburg, Md., Aug. 3 — The fire which has been raging for many years in the " Burning Mine " near Vale Summit was put out to-day. Rochester, N. Y., Aug. 19 — Kate Gleason, daughter of James Gleason, a wealthy manufacturer, has been elected Presi- dent of the First National Bank of East Rochester. Elyria, O., Sept. 14 — A baby boy left on the doorstep of the Memorial Hospital here has been named Woodrow Foch Per- shing by the nurses who declared that the baby was entitled to a good, up-to-date name. Biloxi, Miss., Oct. 15 — A local fisherman to-day captured a devil fish weighing 1,700 pounds. It measured thirteen feet. He caught it in a trawl net near Deer Island. It required three motor-boats to haul it into port. Jerome, Ariz., Oct. 16 — A bond issue of $100,000 was ap- proved to-day for building a new City Hall and making im- provements to the fire, sewer, and road system. Boston, Nov. 2 — Nicholas Boland, for many years head porter of the Adams House, died here to-day, leaving an estate of $50,000, a large part of which goes to charity. Seattle, Nov. 14 — The town of Berlin, 40 miles from Seattle, celebrated the signing of the Armistice by changing its name to " Miller Kiver." Half Moon Bay, Cal., Nov. 19 —> John Pitcher, 92 years old, has been reelected Justice of the Peace, an office he has held for 35 years. Bristol, Ten., Nov. 22 — A fire which started in the base- A SOLDIER'S JOKE —AND WHAT CAME OF IT! 349 ment of Dossers Bros. Department store destroyed property worth $750,000. Saginaw, Mich., Dec. 17 — Diamonds valued at thousands of dollars were stolen from the T. Loney Stores in daylight. The thief was a prospective customer who dashed out in the absence of the clerk and has not been captured. Orleans, Cal., Dec. 19 — Mary Dupen, the oldest Indian, is dead here at the age of 115. Sheridan, Wyo., Dec. 24 — Granney and Gardner, the two newly elected State Senators from this district, will shoot craps to decide which gets the four year term and which the two year term. Chicago, Jan. 8 — William Wrigley, the millionaire gum man- ufacturer, to-day took out an insurance policy for $1,000,000. Verona, N. J., Jan. 16 — A bob-tailed wild cat, the first seen in Essex county for 50 years, entered the village last night, kill- ing several chickens and arousing the whole town. Ithaca, Jan. 23 — Hard Cider was officially classed as " alcoholic liquor" here to-day when the police seized 100 gallons in raids on sixteen local stores. The interest the Bulletin created among the soldiers ex- tended even to the staid British press which was frank in admiration of its enterprise, the Pall Mall Gazette of Oc- tober 3, 1918, adding its voice in the following paragraph: " The Daily Bulletin issued under the direction of Captain America certainly helps to make the fighters from across the sea feel at home in Britain, keeping them au courant of just the American news in which they are most interested." As a purveyor of " home news," the Bulletin was in equal favor with the highest officers in the United States military establishment in England, who found it upon their desks every day and read it as religiously as they did their mail. Major General John Biddle, Command- ing the American Forces in Great Britain, whose Head- quarters in the Grosvenor Mansions in London faced the Red Cross Headquarters, said that the Bulletin " did more than any other one thing to keep the Bed Cross be- fore the men," and if, by mischance, the day's issue was late in reaching either him or one of the members of his numerous staff, the telephone would ring with an inquiry 350 THE PASSING LEGIONS for it, or an orderly present himself with General This's or Colonel That's compliments to say that he had not yet received his usual copy. Such popularity as this made necessary the continua- tion of the Bulletin long after the cessation of hostilities and, indeed until most of the Red Cross work had come to an end and all save a small part of the American forces had sailed for home. THE WEEKLY BULLETIN The younger but far more pretentious brother of the Daily Bulletin was the Weekly Bulletin. This came into being on August 7, 1918, as an eight-page illustrated journal, decidedly " cityfied " in its dress of paper, type and reproduced photographs. That it was intended to be a very different sort of person from its " small town" relative was announced in the greeting addressed " To All Red Cross Workers " in the first number: " This is going to be a little newspaper of our own. Whether it will be a little newspaper or a paper of little news will de- pend on you. The purpose of the Bulletin, which will be issued at regular intervals, is to acquaint the workers in various dis- tricts with what is going on in other districts and other de- partments." Following this came a plea to the workers to send in " copy" and photographs on anything of news interest which came within their ken. The rearing of this youngster was entrusted to Lieu- tenant Charles D. Morris, Yale '05, who also came into the Red Cross after extensive newspaper experience, first on the Sun in New York and then in the Associated Press Bureaus of New York and London. As the Weekly was designed for distribution simply among the Red Cross personnel in England, France, and America, it achieved no such publication as the Daily. A SOLDIER'S JOKE —AND WHAT CAME OF IT! 351 But its circulation rose to 2,500 a week and there re- mained until it was discontinued, owing to the closing down of Red Cross work, the last issue, No. 20, bearing date of December 18, 1918. During its life it did valuable service in the reading rooms of rest camps and hospitals and was widely quoted in the British press, which frequently published its stories and articles in full. This was particularly true of such important London newspapers as the Times, Morning Post, Daily Telegraph, Daily News, Daily Graphic, and Sunday Times. It was sent to all the Red Cross Chapters in America which, in turn, reprinted in their weekly bulletins such articles as were of interest to their own circle of readers. According to regulations, the proof-sheets of each Weekly Bulletin had to be submitted to the Censor be- fore publication, but not once did his searching blue pencil delete a word. That he read it was evident from the marks his pencil made when he reread a particular passage in fear that something might be wrong with it. But there never was. As Morris himself remarked, " As a newspaper man I have battled too often with the Censor not to know what to leave in a story and what to take out before it ever got into his hands." The articles which appeared in the Weekly, many written by skilled hands, many more by persons who, until impelled by the sheer humanity of some bit of work, had never tried to write,— these articles graphically re- cited much of the history of the Red Cross in Great Britain. They touched upon practically every phase of its activity and, in many instances, gave the reader the visualizing aid of photographs. And too much cannot be said in appreciation of countless articles which, perhaps relating ever so briefly the personal side of Red Cross work, reached deep into the reader's heart. The reasonable limits of this chapter render it impos- 352 THE PASSING LEGIONS sible to reprint here the many articles which have appealed to the present writer, but there are two upon which he insists: The first one was republished in several London news- papers and attracted attention in America also. In the day of its appearance, November 20, 1918, the Censor would have forbidden mention of the location of the Ger- man prison camp about which the story centers. But it may be said now that it was at Dartford, only a few hun- dred yards from the U. S. Base Hospital whose Armistice Day celebration has been related. In this prison camp there were 1,200 prisoners under the care of twenty American Army Surgeons. WHY GERMANY HATES THE RED CROSS. Officer Prisoner Says It Has Helped Break German Spirit. By Alice Leone Fleenor, San Francisco. A few days ago I visited a German Hospital Prison Camp in England. In one ward I found a Prussian officer who had been captured two days before on the Flanders front. While the nurse was explaining his injury to me I noticed that the German was glaring at the Red Cross on my shoulder strap. As I was about to turn away the patient muttered: "I hate dot Red Cross; I hate it." "Why should you hate the organization which saved your life?" I asked, for I was frankly puzzled by the Prussian officer's evident animosity. " Vy, vy, for dis reason," responded the oberleutnant, raising himself higher while his eyes flashed. " I hate dot Red Cross because it has broken the brave spirit of the German peoples." For fifteen minutes the officer continued to describe the offenses of the American Red Cross in Germany. As I listened to him I began to realize that the American Red Cross had been one of the most potent factors in the breaking down of the morale of the military and civilian populations of Germany. This work was accomplished by our Red Cross un- consciously. Yet it has been done and done well. This is what the German officer revealed to me: Due to a carefully censored press and a lack of any outside communication, the German people have been kept in complete ignorance regarding the other countries of the world. Mean- A SOLDIER'S JOKE —AND WHAT CAME OF IT! 353 time a steady system of propaganda calculated to deceive has been operating. The civilians were told that their sufferings were nothing as compared to those of the Allies, that America was not entering to any appreciable extent into the war, that the American Red Cross had practiced atrocities against the German prisoners. The people believed this propaganda. It had the desired effect for a time of making them endure any sacrifice. They might still believe much of it were it not for the fact that the Ameri- can Red Cross has been quietly operating in the very midst of the German civilians as a great existing proof of the falsity of the German propaganda. It has been the only visible symbol of the " Outside-of-Germany World," but it has been a power- ful one. On the very day that a leading Hamburg paper published an article stating that America would never enter actively into the war a large group of American prisoners was quartered in a small town near by. Immediately there was erected an American Red Cross Depot. Warm clothing, medicine, food, and supplies of all kinds ar- rived in large quantities. The German townpeople came and inspected the depot and its great store of supplies. In the face of this concrete evidence it was not strange that they began to wonder whether America did lack supplies or did intend only to act as a figurehead in the war. On another occasion the Berlin Tagehlatt published an en- tire column in justification of the bombing of Red Cross hospi- tals, the sinking of Red Cross ships, and firing upon Red Cross stretcher-bearers. The Tagehlatt told of the inhumanity of the Allied and American Red Cross in mistreating German prisoners, in starving them and denying them medical attention. Next day a group of more than 500 Germans who had been cared for in the American and Allied Red Cross hospitals were returned to their homes in Germany. They told of clean hos- pitals, expert surgeons, good food, and kind treatment. The German people began to ask questions. Once they questioned the statement of their government and their Press, the supreme confidence of the German civilian population was shaken, for people began to think for themselves. The German oberleutnant hated the Red Cross for dem- onstrating the truth concerning America to his people. We are proud of it for the same reason. Copies of the Weekly containing this article marked were distributed in London to more than 300 American 354 THE PASSING LEGIONS soldiers who had just come from prison camps in Ger- many. Many of them vouched for the truth of what the Prussian officer had said, that the stores of American Red Cross supplies in the prison towns had convinced the German people that the Allies were far from needing food- stuffs as their desperate leaders had told them. As for the second one: A convalescent American soldier came into Stratford Lodge, the Red Cross Rest Room, at Portsmouth, one November afternoon. He had come from the U. S. Base Hospital there in search of an hour's diversion. From one of the tables he picked up a copy of the Weekly Bulletin and sat down by the fire to read it. When he had gone through all its eight pages he went to the writing table and was intently busy there for more than half an hour. At last he got up, and approaching one of the Red Cross workers said, with a smile of embarrassment, as he held out several closely written pages: " Here's something you might like to have for your Bulletin. It's about some Red Cross work our boys did in France." And with that he turned and hurried out, without giv- ing his name or saying a further word about himself. But what he wrote was published in the Bulletin for No- vember 27, with the title " In a French Village,— Why the people of Milancourt love the American soldiers." It seems a pity that its author should not be known. There is a little village in France that will always remember and love the American soldiers. I dont think I am breaking the Censor's rules if I tell you its name. It is Milancourt, a little hamlet on the Somme, about three miles from Abbeville. It was last June when a battalion from a certain New York regiment was billeted there. They were the first American sol- diers that the people of Milancourt had ever seen. The men themselves had arrived from " God's Country " only a few days before, and after a long sea trip it was deemed that eight hours' drill a day with a heavy pack, under the broiling sun of northern France, would bring them into splendid condition again in a few weeks. A SOLDIER'S JOKE —AND WHAT CAME OF IT! 355 The work was hard, but those boys knew what they were train- ing for. They knew that the end of each day brought them nearer to the line where the fighting was, and so they took to the long hikes and the gruelling bayonet drills without a murmur. One would have thought that every man, once his long day's work was over, would straightway seek his bunk. But not these boys. That is, not right away. You \ see, the boys were all billeted in little farm-houses. Each farm-house had its little plot of land, and as the men had all gone to the war the women had to do all the work, assisted by the little boys and girls. It was hard work for these people, and the sight of the women and children toiling early and late in the fields brought the war home to the young American soldiers as nothing else had done. And so each day, after their long drill was over, the Ameri- cans devoted themselves to what they used to call their Red Cross work. They went out into the fields with hoes and shovels and rakes, or plowed and sowed or took in the crops, while the good French mothers stood around in smiling surprise and astonishment and pleasure and supervised the job. Pay? Talk pay to any of those boys and it meant fight! They were more than compensated in just knowing that they were helping a people who were throwing their every energy into a fight for everything in the world worth fighting for. And the children? Is there anybody in the world who gets along so well with children as the American soldier? Eight- year-old Morel was one of the favorites among the children of Milancourt. When Morel would ask, as an aeroplane flew overhead, " Eees eet le Boche ?" the soldier to whom the ques- tion was put would dig his rake in the ground all the harder and reply, " Not on your life, sonny; they'll never get this far! " And so they worked on day after day at their "Red Cross work," far into the evening, until it was too dark to see. And the French people, the old men and the women and the little children were never tired of talking of the " bon " Americans. When the day came for the battalion to leave for its next post, many miles up toward the front, the village folk followed the marchers to the outskirts of the village and gave them farewell presents of food and wine, and bade them a God-speed and a safe return. Yes, these boys will be remembered for many a long year in Milancourt. Some of them will never return, but those who are left will go back to the little French village on a visit one day, and it will be a great reunion. 356 THE PASSING LEGIONS The " star " number of the Weekly was perhaps that for October 23 which gave, among other things, extended narrations of the work on the barren shores of Islay, the Scotch island, where the Red Cross succored the sur- vivors and buried the dead of the wrecked troopship Otranto. Requests for copies of this issue were numerous and came even from far distant India. CHAPTER XXI THE PICTTTEe's THE THING! RECOGNITION of man's immemorial love of pic- tures, no less than the intent to compile a per- manent, graphic record of activity and achievement, made photography an important branch of the Commission's work in Great Britain. And it was only natural that the taking of moving pictures became a vital part of this work. Snapshots or time exposures of persons or events, however distinguished, in short, the entire range of camera pictures which the "movie" operater refers to rather contemptuously as "stills," reach a comparatively small audience. On the other hand, the cinema film, capable of infinite reproduction, is sent broadcast over a country and flashed on a thousand screens, before a million people in a single night. In its photographic accomplishments, the Department of Information of the British Commission was eminently successful. The "movie" results it obtained under autumn and winter weather conditions in England — which would blast the life of a Los Angeles " camera man " — were often miraculous. And the millions of Americans who viewed these results in their favorite cinema houses at home never knew of the dread with which the Red Cross operator carried his film box into the dark room nor how anxiously he watched his pictures come to life in the ruthless developer. Upon one memorable occasion the anxiety was shifted in all its might to the shoulders of a Red Cross em- ployee in a dark room in distant America. There were two reasons for this; one, that the film portrayed Presi- 357 358 THE PASSING LEGIONS dent Wilson's arrival in London and his reception by King George; the other that it enabled the American Red Cross to exhibit the pictures to the people of America several days before any rival films of this historic scene reached the United States. The American Red Cross had been informed of the time of Mr. Wilson's arrival and, in order to take the pictures, had armed itself well in advance with the several and particular documents required by the British Foreign Office and other governmental or military bureaus. This was accomplished through the American Embassy and consumed three days as the permits underwent no end of signing, sealing, and countersigning. Among them, and all-powerful in such a circumstance, was a simple white card bearing solely the cryptic legend: BOARD OF THE GEEEJS" CLOTH but it was signed by Viscount Farquhar, Lord Stewart of the King's Household, and it did what the other imposing documents could not do — it opened the gates of Buck- ingham Palace to the Red Cross operator. The coming of the President filled London's streets with one of the greatest crowds the city had ever known. At Charing Cross, the railway station by which he ar- rived from Dover and where he was met by King George and Queen Mary and their suite, and along the path of the subsequent procession to Buckingham Palace, the people were massed with the determined compactness of a swarm of bees. To prevail against this crowd, it had been arranged that the Red Cross " movie man" should " shoot" from the top of a Red Cross motor, but at the last 'minute the car was commandeered by some Ameri- can general and a very unofficial looking taxicab had to be employed. The operator, however, fortified with his documents, managed to get it through the crush to an ad- mirable vantage point. THE PICTURE'S THE THING! 359 Mr. Wilson arrived at Charing Cross at 1.30 o'clock on the afternoon of December 26, 1918 —" Boxing Day " — and although there were occasional flashes of sunlight, London's inevitable mist hung in a gray veil over every- thing. Nevertheless the operator cranked away prayer- fully until the distinguished party had rolled away in the State carriages. Then, having another taxicab in wait- ing in a side street, because the first one was immovable in such a crowd, he made his way off by a side exit and went at top speed for a selected spot on the line of march. There he got many more feet of film of the crowd, and decorations and then the Royal party as it passed. In the meantime the second operator, with his little " Board of the Green Cloth " card, had obtained a posi- tion inside the yard of Buckingham Palace. And when the party arrived he was able to get a valuable photo- graphic record of the scene. This included, in addition to the arrival, the inspection of the Guard of Honor by the President and King George, Mr. and Mrs. Wilson with the royal family on the balcony of the Palace, with an incidental " shot" at the crowd and at a group of city motor busses, the first ever permitted to enter the Palace courtyard, which were filled with wounded American and British soldiers. It was by the King's own wish that they entered and it is a pity that the film could not record the noisy " Three cheers for the King! " which the Ameri- cans gave as he alighted from the carriage, although it did get the open mouths and the waving of the flags. The result of the day's labors was two boxes of precious film, 390 feet devoted to the reception at Charing Cross and 400 feet to the arrival at Buckingham Palace. As dispatch in getting this record off to America was the fore- most consideration, no attempt was made to develop it. The two boxes of films were taken to a dark room in Picca- dilly, there hermetically sealed in tin boxes and brought to 40 Grosvenor Gardens. At ten minutes after 5 o'clock next morning a Red Cross orderly took them by fast train 360 THE PASSING LEGIONS to Southampton where the troopship Louisville, the old St. Louis of the American Line, was in readiness to cast off for a homeward voyage. It was imperative that the films be placed aboard her as the next ship to sail, the Lapland, would not leave for five days. So the orderly hunted out a Red Cross man among the passengers, Lieutenant John B. Martin, and gave him the boxes with a letter of instruction as to what to do with them. He immediately popped them into a safe as the ship's Chief Surgeon and there they remained until the Louisville came into her berth at New York. But before she even left Southamp- ton, a cablegram announced the forwarding of the films had gone to America and a Red Cross representative was duly on the pier to receive them. Which is the end of the little story of how the Red Cross " scooped " the profes- sional movie people when President Wilson came to London. Upon several other occasions during his visit, the Presi- dent was caught by the cinema men of the American Red Cross, notably when he went to the Guildhall to receive the freedom of the City of London, but the results were not always highly successful. During the autumn and winter the climate of England is an ever-present obstacle to the moving picture operator as no lenses have ever been devised capable of " shooting" through its immemorial mist. For instance, when London was so boisterously cele- brating the signing of the Armistice, it was a drizzling day and many feet of disappointing film resulted. How- ever, a watery sun struggled out for a surprising half- hour now and then for the next three or four days and as the jollification was still going on, the Red Cross managed to put together a reel which conveyed a good idea of how London and the American soldiers in London hospitals greeted the cessation of hostilities. The moving picture operators likewise made journeys to all the places in England at which Red Cross activities were in progress and eventually turned out more than THE PICTURE'S THE THING! 361 fifteen thousand feet of film which were successfully de- veloped and hurried across the Atlantic for projection throughout the States. A short time before Christmas the Red Cross gave an exhibition of its films in London and as these antedated the President's arrival, the pictures which attracted most attention were those depicting the visit of the King and Queen to the American wounded at Dartford hospital, the scenes of Armistice Day there, including the sham battle, staged in celebration by the men of the Twenty- seventh Division to show " How we broke the Hindenburg Line," and the record of the tour by Mr. Henry P. Davi- son, Chairman of the War Council, to the hospitals and other centers in England at which Red Cross activities were in progress. Mr. Davison was seen having a " bite " at the Red Cross canteen at Winchester Rest Camp, reviewing the negro troops leaving the camp for the front, chatting with the wounded at Romsey hospital, congratulating an Amer- ican " V.C." at Portsmouth Hospital and inspecting the famous cows at Sarisbury Court which were a gift to the Red Cross from the farmers of the Channel Islands. An- other part of the exhibition portrayed Major General John Biddle, Commanding the American Forces in Great Britain, standing in a long line of soldiers, waiting his turn to get a Red Cross canteen doughnut and a cup of coffee. Still other parts were devoted to the American wounded at Sarisbury, the arrival of the last convoy of wounded from France with the " Victory Smile " on their faces in spite of their hurts, and the first homeward bound Yankee troops, a picture taken in front of the American Red Cross " Dollar Exchange " Station at Liverpool where in one day forty thousand American dollars were given in exchange for the soldiers' English and French money. The scenes of embarkation of American troops, at South- ampton, where they received farewell gifts from the Red Cross were also flashed upon the screen. The construc- tion of the hospital at Sarisbury Court, planned as the 362 THE PASSING LEGIONS largest American hospital in Great Britain was shown, supplemented by the Red Cross Convalescent Home for American nurses at Colebrook Lodge, Putney, and the making of surgical dressings and hospital requisites in the Red Cross workrooms at No. 32 Grosvenor Gardens, London. The films indicate comprehensively what the Red Cross " movie " men accomplished, although they give no bint of the difficulties they encountered. Among the great difficulties, and quite aside from English weather, was the difficulty of obtaining necessary supplies. The task of purchasing a moving picture outfit in the London market meant at least a fortnight's unremitting search as the War Office, the Admiralty or the Royal Air Force com- mandeered every camera it could find. Photographic lenses were more precious than rubies and ordinary cameras were almost as rare as roc's eggs, wherefore no end of ingenuity was often called into play to take a picture when adequate apparatus was unavailable. As an ex- ample, a Red Cross camera man sought to take a picture from the summit of a bleak Scotch cliff which would show where the troopship Otranto was wrecked, with the loss of hundreds of American soldiers. The picture was of im- portance as a part of the pictorial record of the war, but to take it required a high-quality tele-photo lens. But there was not one in all England. The camera man refused to be daunted and, on the spot, rigged together the lenses from three different cameras in his kit and, by holding them in position with his hand, took the picture. He made three trials and at last got the only view of the scene which has been taken. A copy from that negative is now in the archives of the War Department at Washington. The ordinary camera work of the Red Cross in Great Britain, which was begun in September, 1918, grew as the activities of the Commission broadened. At the outset the number of pictures taken was forty-two a week, but within a short time this had to be increased to 100, so THE PICTURE'S THE THING! 363 that all branches of endeavor might be covered. The " still" man was not without his troubles, as the taking of pictures was surrounded with war restrictions of every kind and complexity. Not infrequently it was necessary that permits be obtained from half a dozen different bureau chiefs to take a single series of photographs. However, when this department was discontinued on January 1, 1919, more than 1,500 photographic plates had been taken and prints from them forwarded to the United States. As a contribution to the permanent historical records of Na- tional Red Cross Headquarters, at Washington, more than a thousand of these photographs were selected and bound in twelve large volumes, with a complete and carefully written title for each picture — fnlly 150,000 words in all — and dispatched to America from the Commission for Great Britain. CHAPTER XXII VALEDICTORY IT is anomalous that war should create and that peace should sweep away, but within a short time after the signing of the Armistice the American Red Cross in Great Britain began, little by little, to curtail its activities, to close this bureau, then that, to dismantle the large and ef- fective structure it had reared. The men in hospital were being sent back to America as quickly as possible by the army, there were no more transports to land their adventur- ing legions at the water gates — the purposes of war were at an end. And as the wounded left by hundreds on the homing ships, so, within a few weeks, the hospitals be- gan, one by one, to close their doors. The army re- linquished all its hospitals save those at Sarisbury and Liverpool, which were kept open all winter, the American wounded being transferred thither from all the other in- stitutions, both American and English. With the evacua- tion of so many of them, the need for canteen and recrea- tion service no longer existed, therefore the only places at which the Red Cross canteens were maintained were the docks — a sort of valedictory to the passing columns. In the work of returning its men to America the army asked the Red Cross to assist in the care of them during their ocean voyage, and it was arranged that a large quantity of Red Cross supplies should be carried on each west-bound hospital ship in charge of a regularly assigned Red Cross officer. The soldiers were sent home in detach- ments of one hundred to fifteen hundred, sometimes on vessels detailed exclusively for hospital uses, but at other times they went on the ordinary transports in which the second cabin accommodations were usually allotted to them 364 VALEDICTORY 365 alone and where, thus collected, they could be under more constant care of the medical men and nurses. The Red Cross officer detailed to such work acted in cooperation with the medical staff. He had an extensive stock of supplies at hand which were distributed as occa- sion demanded to the men in the various " wards." The supplies included comforts of all kinds and food delicacies, as well as medical and surgical requisites. In many cases the transports themselves were provided with sheets, pillow cases and such articles of equipment from the Red Cross warehouses. During the month of December, eight huge transports, incuding the Leviathan, sailed for home with American sol- diers aboard and each of these ships carried from $1,500 to $10,000 worth of Red Cross supplies. The character of them is well indicated by the following list of articles requisitioned for the 250 sick and wounded who sailed two days before Christmas on the Mauretania: Christmas trees, 20,000 cigarettes, 5,000 sheets of writ- ing paper, 2,000 bars of chocolate, 2,000 envelopes, 1,000 handkerchiefs, 1,000 towels, 350 Christmas boxes, 300 cakes of toilet soap, 100 tins of pipe tobacco, 50 pipes, 300 packages of chewing gum, 2 crates of oranges, 600 pounds of lemon drops. A Red Cross " conducting officer's " experience, as re- lated in a report he forwarded to London after reaching New York will give a good idea of the duties and service involved during a voyage. He wrote: " The giving out of supplies is by no means all the serv- ice which a Red Cross conducting officer can render, nor is it even the most important part of his duties. He finds that he is a ' factotum' on board and it is his business to do those little things which are nobody else's business. He must act as comrade and companion; he must write letters and do Home Communication work of all kinds; he must answer all kinds of questions. " I spent a large part of the first day finding out ex- 366 THE PASSING LEGIONS actly what privileges the men in the hospital section of the boat were entitled to under the agreement with the steamship company. We had 820 men in our hospital con- tingent, all of them freshly evacuated from the hospitals in England. These men were entitled to the best of the second class quarters, and it was part of the duty of the Red Cross officer to see that they got it. The men were fed at the tables in the second class dining saloon, except for a few cot cases. The food was good and after a little Red Cross work it was arranged that they should have fruit with both breakfast and dinner. A sergeant was de- tailed to see that the sick men received their portions before any of the other second class passengers were served, and if there was any shortage it was never the sick men who suffered. " About thirty of the men developed temperatures dur- ing the first few days out and it was evident that unless these cases were promptly isolated there would be a good many contacts on the way over. Again the Red Cross man stepped in and helped to make the men see that it was im- portant that a man who appeared to be developing in- fluenza should go to bed promptly and not endanger his fellow-passengers. All the temperature cases were isolated on the upper stern deck where nine cases of mumps and ten of pneumonia were cared for during the voyage. " The pneumonia cases did not seem to be doing very well. The men seemed to need special nourishment and the Red Cross was able to furnish them with a regular diet of egg-nog which was of great assistance. The men with fever needed a bath every day and in many cases the order- lies were too busy to see that this was given properly. So the Red Cross Aide took these cases in hand, put the men into Red Cross pajamas, saw that they were bathed properly and kept them supplied with cool drinks. " The Red Cross Aide, a woman of wide experience, was very useful throughout the trip. In one case, that of a delicate boy who developed pneumonia, she did more to VALEDICTORY 367 pull the patient through the crisis of his sickness than all the doctors aboard. The boy gave himself up for lost, but she brought back his courage and his fighting spirit, made him take nourishment and stayed with him until he was over the worst. " The question of supples for the ship was very carefully worked out before we left Liverpool. Cigarettes, under- clothing, sweaters, comfort kits and various other things were supplied in such quantities as the Red Cros ware- house could spare and whenever there were possible de- ficiencies, arrangements were made to obtain supplement- ary articles through the ship's canteen. " For the distribution of such supplies as cigarettes and chocolate, the assistance of the non-commissioned officers was arranged and these officers also ascertained the exact needs of their men regarding supplies of other kind, such as clothing, so that no man should be in need of anything. He could make application direct to his immediate non- commissioned officer and the latter could draw at once upon the Red Cross supplies for the required articles. " The Red Cross found a great deal of work to be done in changing English money for American dollars, in see- ing that the men got good ventilation and in getting the convalescent cases up on deck for fresh air. There were also a few cases where small loans seemed advisable, these being mostly to men who had failed to receive their month's pay before leaving." Another Red Cross officer, detailed to the Louisville for her Christmas voyage, reported: " We celebrated Christmas on board ship at Southamp- ton just before we sailed. We had excellent assistance from a large party of Red Cross naval nurses aboard. There was a Christmas stocking for each of the wounded men, 120 in all, and a Christmas dinner which left nothing to be desired. On the way across we found a use for all of the 125 comfort kits allotted to us by the Red Cross office in Southampton and also for the 100 Red Cross 368 THE PASSING LEGIONS blankets which were used for the sick cases. A contribu- tion of woolen goods from a collection made by the Holy Trinity Church, Philadelphia, was used on this occasion. The oranges and lemon drops proved the greatest blessing that we had. These were given to the sick and wounded in the ship's hospital and to the sea-sick men, and many a poor fellow declared with a pardonable exaggeration that they saved his life. " On New Year's Eve we had a repetition of Christmas Day, with gift packages for all the men in hospital and an excellent holiday dinner. " Practically all the supplies which we carried were put to good use, including the towels, handkerchiefs, soap, chocolate and cigarettes. These were distributed in most cases to each company through the officers. " The Red Cross was praised on every hand, both by the soldiers and officers, for its great work during the war and on the transports homeward bound." In many cases the Red Cross conducting officer intro- duced himself to the men on board his ship by means of a circular letter, through which he put himself immediately at the service of any men who might be in need of the services of either the hospital and supplies department or of the home Communication Bureau. Circular letters of this kind were quite informal in tone and strove to show the men not only how the Red Cross could be of help to them, but how they could serve one another on the homeward journey. Thus, a letter issued by the conducting officer of the Baltic on one of her hospital journeys, said: " To the Boys of the Baltic: "Now that you have put the wicked back into their places and right and justice have been re-throned, you are getting home to receive the plaudits and gratitude of the folks who have been following you in their thoughts since you left them. " We shall all be together a number of days on the ship VALEDICTORY 369 and I want to ask you to resolve yourselves into one big family and let us all have a good time together. " If each man will help, we can easily while away the time pleasantly and profitably until the shores of the great land from which we came are in sight and the voyage will be a pleasant memory to all of us. _ " The American Red Cross hopes and believes it bas aided and helped you since the great call came. It is anxious to continue to be of service on this voyage and until you are returned to the loved homes from which you came. " To this end, I want to ask you to call on me for any help I can give you on the voyage. At the same time I call on each personally to help all he can to make this a jolly good trip for all on board and one we will always look back on with delightful remembrance." THE END PRINTED IN THE UNITED STATES OT AMERICA NLM051007649