One does not, under ordinary circumstances at least, have to brush away much dust and mud to find the number plate of the Red Cross car; for the Red Cross follows the method of the American and the British armies in insisting upon absolute cleanliness for its equipment. One of the briskest departments in the huge Louis Blanc garage is the paint shop, and the evidences of its energy are constantly in sight about the streets of Paris.
The energy of some of the other workshop departments of the garage are perhaps less in evidence upon the streets, yet if these departments were not measuring constantly to the fullness of their possibilities their failure would be evident to any one—in constant breakdowns of equipment. The fact that the trucks and touring cars alikehave had so few complete breakdowns, despite the terribly difficult operating conditions, shows that the Red Cross repair shops have been very much on the job at all times.
They are complete shops. In them it is possible to take a huge camion completely apart even to removing the engine and the body from the chassis and the frame, in order that cylinders may be bored anew, piston rings refitted, and bearings entirely renewed. All this work and more has been done under emergency in less than three days.
Close beside this Red Cross truck garage in the Rue Louis Blanc is a hotel for the two or three hundred workers and drivers employed there. It is small, but very neat and comfortable and homelike, and is directly managed by the Red Cross. It gives housing facilities in a portion of Paris where it is not easy to find such. And the long hours of the chauffeurs in particular render it highly necessary that they have living accommodations close to their work.
From Louis Blanc we cross Paris in the longest direction and come to the so-called Buffalo Park, in Neuilly, just outside the gates of the city. Buffalo Park gains its name from the fact that it once was a part of the circus grounds wherein the unforgetable "Buffalo Bill" was wont to disport his redskins for the edification and eternal joy of Paris youth. To-day it is a simple enough inclosure, fenced in a high green-painted palisade, ingeniously fabricated from packing cases in which knocked-down motor cars were shipped from America and guarded by a Russian wolfhound who answers to the name of "Nellie." In the language of the French, "Nellie" functions. And functions, like most of her sex, awfully well. She respects khaki; but her enthusiasm and lack of judgment in regard to other forms of male habiliment has occasionally cost the Red Cross the price of a new pair of green corduroy trousers, always so dear to the heart of the peasant.
Withinthe green-painted inclosure of Buffalo Park there stands a permanent, especially built, fireproof warehouse and office building, and at all times from 175 to 200 camionettes, or light ton or ton and a half trucks. It does not undertake much repair work, particularly of a heavy nature, but its great warehouse holds hundreds upon hundreds of tires (the variety of wheel sizes in unstandardized motor equipment is appalling) and tens of thousands of spare and repair parts. The entire big plant is lighted by its own electric generating plant. A big four-cylinder gasoline engine, taken from a Yankee truck which had its back hopelessly broken on the crowded road to Rheims, and bright and clean and efficient, was thus put to an economic and essential purpose.
The other large garage and repair shop of the Red Cross transportation department in Paris is situated at No. 79 Rue Tangier, close to the plants in Neuilly, yet just within the fortifications. It was the first garage to be chosen, and one easily can see why Osborne and his fellows rejoiced over its selection; for it is one of the most modern and seemingly one of the most efficient buildings that I have seen in Paris—three stories in height and solidly framed in reënforced concrete. It houses each night some two hundred touring cars and has complete shops for the maintenance and repair of this great squadron of automobiles.
Up to the present moment I have only touched upon the use of touring cars for the American Red Cross in France. Yet I should like to venture the prediction that without these cars, the greater part of them of the simplest sort, our work over there would have lost from thirty to forty per cent of its effectiveness. It is useless to talk of train service in a land where passenger train service has been reduced to a minimum and then a considerable distance beyond. Remember that the few passenger trains that remain upon the French railways arefearfully and almost indecently crowded. Folk stand in their corridors for three hundred or four hundred miles at a time. For a Red Cross worker bound from point to point to be forced to use these trains constantly in the course of his or her work is not only a great tax upon the endurance but a fearful waste of time.
The same conditions which exist in the outer country are reflected in Paris. The subway, the omnibus, and the trolley systems of the city all but completely broke down in the final years of the war when man power depletion was at its very worst. The conditions of overcrowding upon these facilities at almost any hour were worse even than the overcrowding upon the transit lines in our metropolitan cities in the heaviest of their rush hours. To gain a real efficiency, therefore, it became absolutely necessary many times to transport Red Cross workers, when on business bent, in touring cars. And because there were at the height of the work some six thousand of these folk—five thousand in Paris alone—it became necessary to engage the services of a whole fleet of touring cars. Some seventy touring cars were assigned to the Paris district. With very few exceptions these were operated on a strictly taxicab basis, with the Red Cross headquarters in the Hotel Regina as an operating center. Here, at the door, sat a chief dispatcher, who upon presentation of a properly filled order, assigned a car; and assigned it and its fellows in the precise order in which they arrived at that central station. It was all simple and efficient and worked extremely well. In the course of an average day the chief dispatcher at the Regina handled from eighty to one hundred requests, for runs lasting from twenty minutes to an entire day.
In the latter part of January, 1919, I saw this Transportation Department bending to an emergency, and bending to it in a very typical American fashion. A strike of the subway employees spreading in part to those of theomnibuses and trolley lines, had all but completely crippled the badly broken-down transportation of the city. And not only was the Red Cross being greatly hampered, but the personnel was being put to inconvenience and discomfort that was not at all compatible with the Red Cross idea of proper treatment of its workers.
In this emergency the transportation department jumped in. It moved up to the front door of the Regina on the first night of the strike a whole brigade of heavy camions and a squad of omnibuses such as it uses in transferring officers and men on leave between the railroad terminals and its various hotels in Paris. These were quickly but carefully assigned to definite routes which corresponded in a fashion to those of the more important subway routes. Huge legible placards announced the destination of each of the buses or trucks—Porte Maillot, Denfert-Rochereau, Place de la Bastille—as the various instances might be. Definite announcement was made of the hours at which these trucks would return on the following morning to bring the workers back again. The strike was over in two days, but if it had lasted two weeks it would have meant little difference to the Red Cross workers. Their organization had shown itself capable of taking full care of them.
We have drifted away, mentally at least, from the big touring-car garage at No. 79 Rue Langier. Yet before we get entirely away from it we will find that it pays us well to see its shops; great, complete affairs situated in a long wing which runs at right angles to the main structure, and which employ at almost all times from eighty to one hundred mechanics—blacksmiths, machinists, painters, even carpenters, among them. French and American workmen are employed together, but never in the same squad. That would be an achievement not easy of accomplishment.
"How do the two kinds of workmen mix?" we ask theyoung Red Cross captain in charge of the garage.
CHOW The rolling kitchens, builded on trailers to motor trucks, brought hot drinks and food right up to the men in actionCHOWThe rolling kitchens, builded on trailers to motor trucks, brought hot drinks and food right up to the men in action
He does not hesitate in his answer.
"The French are the more thorough workmen. They are slower, but their output is finer. The American gains the point more quickly and goes at it to achieve his end in a more direct fashion. Each is good in his own way. And each realizes the strong points of the other."
The Rue Langier garage keeps complete books for all four of the Paris Red Cross garages. We have seen three of them already, and inasmuch as the lunch hour approaches will prefer visiting the motor camp at Parc du Prince, just outside the fortifications and close to the Bois de Boulogne, used chiefly as an overflow park during the stiffest days of Red Cross activities. But in addition to this it does other things, not the least of them the maintenance of the transportation department's own post-office facilities and a clubroom for the use of the chauffeurs when they are off duty, not a very frequent occurrence.
"Do the chauffeurs ever play poker?" we ask Captain Conroy.
He assures us that they do not.
Also poker is supposedly interdicted at the big hotel which Major Osborne has established for the officers and men of his department out in Neuilly, just around the corner from Buffalo Park. There are plenty of other amusements to be found, however—books, games, cigars, cigarettes, a phonograph, and a remarkable cage of rare Oriental birds which, with pretty good success, at times try to silence the phonograph.
It is to this hotel that we find our way for lunch and, without hesitation, pronounce our meal the best we have had in Paris, which has more than a local reputation as a capital of good eating. We find an omelet soufflé—the first to greet us in the town—roast turkey, mashed potatoes, Brussels sprouts, an American apple pie, breadand butter, and coffee with real creamy milk. And all for three francs! It is unbelievable. Our hotel charges us six francs for one pear—and an uncooked pear at that!
This remarkable hotel, which houses about two hundred of the transportation department workers, was one of Major Osborne's pet projects. It more than earned its modest cost in the promotion of the morale, and hence the efficiency, of his department. To its mess table, the major himself often came. Sometimes he brought his aid, Captain Hayes, out with him. Both confessed to a liking for roast turkey and omelet soufflé. At the officers' table there was almost certain to be Captain Harry Taintor, a distinguished New York horseman, then at Buffalo Park and gaining experience in a distinctly different form of highway transportation; Captain M. D. Brown, also of Buffalo Park; Captain F. D. Ford, over from Rue Louis Blanc, and Captain Conroy from Rue Langier. These men and many others came to the hotel, and among them not to be forgotten a certain splendid physician who left a good practice up in Minnesota somewhere to come to Paris and look after the health and strength of the transportation-department personnel. More than sixty years young, no youngster in his twenties gave more freely or more unselfishly than this man. He was always at the service of his fellows in the Neuilly hotel.
His service was typical of the entire remarkable morale organization of the transportation department. It was the same sort of service that Miss Robinson, the capable manager of the hotel, forever was rendering, that the little supply shop across the street gave, that one found here and there everywhere within the department; a morale organization so varied and so complete that it might well stand for the entire American Red Cross organization in France, and yet served but one of the multifold activities of that organization.
Beforewe have quite left the more purely mechanical phases of the transportation department—and lack of space or time will forbid my showing you the other important garage facilities in the outlying cities and towns of France—I want to call your attention to one important part of the problem, the supplying of fuel for the many hundreds of trucks and cars which the Red Cross operates throughout the French republic. You may have noticed at Buffalo Park one or two of the huge 7,500-gallon trailer trucks used to bring gasoline from the United States Army oil station at Juilly, outside of Paris, to the Red Cross garages within the city.
In the months of its greatest activities, the Red Cross in France used an average of 25,000 gallons of gasoline. To have secured and transported this great quantity of oil even in normal, peaceful years would have been a real problem. To secure it, to say nothing of transporting it, in the hard years toward the end of the war, was a surpassing problem; for gasoline seemingly was the most precious of all the precious things in France. If you did not believe it, all you had to do was to ask a Paris taxi driver—even after taxis had become fairly plentiful once again upon the streets of the capital—to take you to distant Montmartre or Montparnasse—and then hear him curse Fate and lack of "essence" in his fuel reservoirs.
But the Red Cross, thanks to the French and American army authorities as well as to its own energies, did get the "essence." How it did it at times is a secret that only Osborne knows. And he probably never will tell.
Remember, if you will, that gasoline was the vitalizing fluid of the war; therefore, in France, it was guarded and conserved with a miser's care. For without it one knew that there could be little mobility of troops, little transport of supplies and ammunition, and no tanks or aëroplanes! Therefore every liter of it which came into France had to be accounted for. And in the years of fighting the privatemotor practically disappeared. Only the militarized car remained mobile and was permitted to retain access to the diminished gasoline stores of the Republic.
Throughout the entire nation, the French Army established gasoline supply stations. In its zones of special activity the American Expeditionary Forces had their own great stations in addition. On the presentation of a properly signedcarnetor book of gas tickets, a military or Red Cross driver was permitted to obtain from any of these depots such an amount of gas or kerosene or lubricating oil as he might really need. Thecarnetslips were in triplicate, so that three records might be kept of the dispensation. No money was paid by the driver; his slip signed and delivered to the depot superintendent was sufficient. And by this method every gallon of gas so obtained was eventually paid for.
The basis of this entire plan was that a gallon of gasoline, no matter where it might be obtained, was a gallon of gasoline from the Allies' supply of the precious fluid and must not only be accounted for but paid for, in whatever way payment might be required. The French Government preferred to be paid in the precious fluid itself, liter for liter, as the Red Cross purchased it from the American Army. If it so happened, as it often did happen, that the restitution was made at a French port, although the original supply was drawn at depots many miles inland, the French were further compensated by the payment of a sum to represent the freight charges from that port to the distribution centers which supplied the depots. But for all the gasoline drawn from the American Army stores cash payment was made by the Red Cross.
To insure the conservation of the gas, the greatest care was used in choosing the men and women—for when we come to consider in detail the peculiarly valuable services rendered by the women personnel of the Red Cross in France, we shall find that more than once they mounted the driver's seat of a camion or touring car and remainedthere for long hours at a time—for drivers. And woe betide the man or woman caught wasting "essence." For when a driver left any of the garages with a car or camion—even if he were going but a short four blocks—he carried with him a time-stampedordre de missionindicating his destination. The quantity of gasoline either in the car's tanks or in the spare containers also was carefully registered. And if the driver should be discovered to have deviated from the shortest path between his garage and his destination he was called upon for an explanation. If this proved unsatisfactory he was warned for his first offense; for the next he went to a punitive period on the "wash rack" in the garage, which meant that from two or three days to two weeks or more he stepped down from the driver's seat and washed the dirty cars as they came in, and to the best of his ability, too. If discipline of this sort was found ineffectual, the culprit, being militarized as a member of the American Expeditionary Forces, was turned over to the provost marshal of the American Army in Paris for such punishment as he might see fit to impose. The latter might extend—and sometimes did extend—to deportation to America.
So far we have not even touched upon the dramatic phases of the work of the transportation function of our Red Cross. Yet do not for one moment imagine that it lacked these a-plenty. I said at the beginning of this chapter that the trucks and camionettes were not used for long hauls—ordinarily. It was far too wasteful and far too extravagant transportation. Yet, extraordinarily, these found their way the entire length and breadth of France. It might not be efficient or economical to ship beds and bedding in trucks; the food relief afforded by even a tightly packed five-ton camion was almost negligible save in a very great crisis. But think of the emergency possibilities of a truckload of surgical instruments rolling up to the battle line, or of five tons of ether finding its wayto a field hospital all but overwhelmed by the inrush of wounded men. These were functions the transportation department could and did perform, and performed them so well as to merit theCroix de Guerremore than once for its men.
On one occasion, in particular, the drivers of a fleet of camions stood by the surgeons of a big field hospital as they performed operation after operation—each a trying mental strain, but performed apparently with no more effort than the simplest of mechanical processes. These boys—the most of them were hardly more than boys—in that long forty-eight-hour trick were surgeons' helpers. They held the arms and legs that the scalpel severed and in the passing of but two days of their lives ceased to be boys and became case-hardened men.
How shall one best describe the really magnificent work of the Red Cross's efficient Transportation Department in such supreme emergencies as the last great drive of the Germans upon the western front; or in emergencies slightly smaller in area yet vastly important in the rôle they played to the rest of the war—such as the fearful explosion in the hand-grenade depot at La Courneuve, just outside of Paris, early in 1918? Of the work of the Red Cross in detail during the drive we have yet to read in other chapters of this volume. For three days after the La Courneuve disaster the French newspapers printed accounts of the American Red Cross work there, and every editorial writer in Paris paid his tribute to the promptness and courage with which that aid was given.
This explosion shook Paris, and the country roundabout for many miles, at a little before two o'clock in the afternoon. The force of the shock may be the better understood when one knows that it broke windows more than six miles distant from the hand-grenade depot. The Parisians thought at first that thebocheshad dared a daylight raid upon their city, but a great yellowish-gray cloud rising like a mighty column of smoke to the north quicklydispelled that notion. Only a mighty explosion could send such a beacon toward the heavens.
Major Osborne chanced to be at luncheon at the moment of the explosion. He jumped from the table and speeded to the main garage of the Red Cross in Paris as quickly as the nearest taxicab could take him; there he ordered five ambulances to be equipped and manned and held for orders. The superintendent of the motor division of the service also had seen that beacon, and he, too, had driven at top speed to the garage. The two men, with the aid of that beacon and a good map of the environs of Paris together with their knowledge of the war activities around about it, decided instantly that it must be La Courneuve that was the scene of the disaster, and without hesitation ordered the ambulances to hurry there.
"Hurry" to an ambulance driver! It was part of his gospel and his creed. In fifteen minutes the squad was at the smoking ruin, and the Red Cross, as usual, was the first ready to render help. It was needed; for although the death list was comparatively small—and one can say "Thank God!" for that—owing to the fact that the first of three thundering detonations had given the workmen a chance to run for their lives, practically all the houses in the near by communities had been shattered, and a great many folk wounded in their homes by falling walls and ceilings. The depot was ablaze when the Red Cross ambulances arrived, and from the center of the conflagration came the incessant bursting of grenades. Although pieces of metal were flying through the air with every explosion, the Red Cross workers went to the very edge of the fire, crawling on hands and knees over piles of hand grenades in search of the wounded. It was courage, courage of the finest sort; courage—I may say—of the Red Cross type.
On the morning of the twenty-second day of March, 1918, Parisians read in the newspapers that came with their matutinal coffee that the long-heralded and much-advertisedGerman drive was actually beginning. Major Osborne and his fellows saw those startling headlines. Instead of wasting time upon speculating as to what their final significance was to be, they interpreted them as a direct and personal call to duty. Within the hour they were at the big garage in the Rue Louis Blanc, realizing that the Transportation Department once again had an opportunity to demonstrate its real efficiency.
The drive was on; the pathetic and tragic seeming defeat of the allied forces begun. Retreat meant that refugees would soon be fleeing from the newly created danger areas, that there would be necessity for increased medical supplies for the rearward hospitals, and a vast amount of incidental work for both camions and men. The work of a transportation function in war is by no means limited to armies that are advancing or even stationary.
At Louis Blanc orders were given to make ready a battery of trucks at once to take on emergency supplies. Even while this was being done, a mud-spattered car came in from the danger zone with the news that important outlying towns were threatened and must be evacuated at once, that thousands of refugees already were falling back, and that the Red Cross warehouses must be stripped in order to prevent the precious stores from falling into the enemy's hands. Ten minutes later the telephone brought even more sinister news. In several villages close to the changing front, folk had been without food for twenty-four hours. Rations must go forward at once. Delay was not to be tolerated, not for a single instant.
Steadily the telephone jangled. Messengers by motor car or motor cycle came in to the transportation headquarters. Major Osborne made up his mind quickly. He is not of the sort that often hesitates. Within a half hour he was on his way toward the front in a car loaded with as many spare tires and tubes and gasoline as it could possibly carry, and headed straight for the little village of Roye. At first it was possible to make a fair degree ofspeed; but as the front was neared the roads became congested with a vast traffic, so fearfully congested that the men in the relief car counted it as speed that they were able to make the seventy-five miles between Paris and Roye in an even three hours. Between Montdidier and Roye the highroads were all but impassable because of the press of the traffic—fleeing townsfolk and the movement of troops and artillery.
At an advanced Red Cross post, Osborne began to get glimmerings of definite information. With them he set his course toward Noyon, eleven miles to the southeast. There was another Red Cross post there where he obtained full enough information to cause him to turn his car squarely around and begin a race against time to Paris. In less than two hours he was in his biggest garage there, drawing out trucks, giving definite orders, and beginning an actual and well-thought-out plan of relief. The story of the execution of that plan is best told in the words of the man who carefully supervised its details. Said he:
"There were six big trucks in the convoy that I took up to the front. We left Paris at midnight, the trucks loaded down with food and medical supplies and blankets. Although there was a great deal of movement on the roads, we plugged along all night without many delays and at five o'clock in the morning had to come to a dead stop. Artillery, transport camions, soldiers, and refugees blocked the way. We couldn't go a yard farther. Our orders were to go to N—— with the supply stuff, but we couldn't have done it without an aëroplane. The army was moving, and the little space that it left in the roadway was occupied by the refugees. They came streaming back in every sort of conveyance or on foot, pushing their belongings in barrows and handcarts. Up ahead somewhere the guns were drumming in a long, ceaseless roll.
"As it was impossible to carry out the original orders, the trucks were sent by crossroads to A——, the nearest important point, and I went on in a little, light car toN——, squeezing my way down the long, hurrying line of troops and transport. When I reached there, the railway station was under shell fire and all about it were British machine guns and gunners awaiting the Germans, who were even then on the outskirts of the town. The attack was being made in force and it was only a matter of a few more hours that the defenders could hope to hold out. They had mined all the bridges over the Oise and were ready to blow them up as they retreated.
"There was one Red Cross warehouse in N—— and when I ran around to it I found that, very properly, the British and French troops had helped themselves from its stores. It was lucky they did, because the town fell into German hands that evening.
"With N—— off the map, as it were, I speeded back to A——, where there was a hospital in an old château. In this were sixty wounded American soldiers and about two hundred French. There were two American Army surgeons and a few French and English nurses. That afternoon we evacuated the Americans from the hospital, and made them all comfortable in their new lodgment at C——. After that we drove back to A—— and turned in, because we looked forward to a hard day. But at two o'clock in the morning a French general waked me up with the announcement that the Germans were advancing and that the hospital had to be completely evacuated in ten minutes. He made it very clear that it would have to be done in ten minutes, otherwise we'd find ourselves in No Man's Land. So I turned the men out and we went to work in the dark. As a matter of fact those ten minutes stretched from two o'clock until a little after six, when we carried out the last of the wounded. Some of them were in a bad way and had to be handled very slowly. We put them in our camions and took them ten kilometers to the Oise Canal, there transferred them to barges and thus they were conveyed to Paris.
"That left the hospital with only two American Armysurgeons, the Red Cross personnel, and a French Army chaplain. The American surgeons looked about the place rather lonesomely, but one of them said he felt that something was going to happen and that before long there would be plenty of work for everybody. The guns thundering all around us seemed to bear him out.
"And he made no mistake! The very next afternoon several American Army ambulances arrived with loads of English and French wounded. They had been hurried down from the advanced dressing stations and a large percentage of them were in bad shape. Although we made only a handful of people, we hustled about and got the hospital going again somehow and started in to take care of the wounded. There were no nurses about the place, none in the town, because the civilians had been ordered out, so the drivers of the Red Cross camions offered their services. Two or three of them had been ambulance men at the front and knew a little something about handling wounded, but there wasn't one who had ever been a nurse! And the stiff part of it was so many of the wounded soldiers brought in were in such a condition that operation without delay was vital.
"When everything was made ready the two American surgeons started operating. They began at 7:30 o'clock in the evening and kept at it steadily until 3 o'clock in the morning. We—I say 'we' because every one had to do his bit—performed seventeen major operations, and every last one was successful! There wasn't a hitch in spite of all the difficulties of the job. In the first place only one set of instruments had been left behind. These had to be sterilized by pouring alcohol over them after they had been used for one operation so they'd be ready for the next. There wasn't time to boil them. And the light by which the surgeons worked was furnished by six candles stuck with their own wax to a board. I held the board. As the surgeon worked I moved it around so he might have the most light on the probing or cutting or sewing, orwhatever it was he had to do. Three of the operations were trephining the skull. Another of the soldiers had fifty-nine pieces of shell in him, and every one of these was located and taken out by candlelight. It was a busy night! One lucky part of the business was that at midnight another American Army surgeon arrived and relieved at the operating table. The worst part of it was that the other worked so steadily that he knocked out most of the drivers and they couldn't give any help at all after a while, so that at last there were only two of us left to bear a hand.
"In the morning we succeeded in evacuating the hospital, taking the wounded to C——, where there were ample facilities. And as soon as the wounded were carried from our trucks we were put to work getting out of the town the refugees who had accumulated there for several days. Then we turned to moving the Red Cross stores. C—— was under air raid every clear night, so we had to sleep in the cellar of its great château. The bombs bursting all about the place made sleep almost impossible.
"And when this little bit of work was ended, the last of the refugees and their baggage transported to a neighboring railroad station, word came the Germans had dropped a .240 on a train at R—— a few kilometers away. So we hustled two camions over there and found four men killed and five wounded. We packed them into the trucks and brought them out, delivering the wounded to the hospital at C——. For two or three days we were busy in that neighborhood taking care of refugees, because they were streaming toward the haven of Paris by the thousands. Now and then we would get a call to go to such and such a point because a shell had killed people, or because stores had to be moved to more secure places. On one of these trips we met two men of an English lancers regiment who had been badly wounded and had ridden twenty kilometers in search of a base hospital. We picked them up, as this was one of our many appointed tasks, andtook them to C—— for treatment. They did not know what to do with their horses, and as there was no possibility of getting food for them every day, they debated whether to shoot them. They solved the problem by giving the two animals to me! And there isn't a doubt the creatures would have turned into elephants on my hands if I had not met a British battery on the road the next day. I offered the horses to the commander and he was overjoyed. 'I've lost eight horses already,' he explained, and hitched up my two and went rumbling off with his guns.
"In a little while the trucks were ordered to swing northward to S——. The French had been there, but had retreated to straighten their lines, and at once the Germans began to shell the place. This eventually drove out the entire civilian population. It then became such a hot corner that it was no longer a billeting area for troops, and army camions were not allowed to pass through the city. But there was a Red Cross staff on the job there, and as it had been decided that no civilian relief was possible, the only task was to get out the staff and all the supplies it would be possible to move from the Red Cross warehouse.
"We went up with three camions, and as we entered the city we saw three big German sausage observation balloons watching the place and directing the gunfire. Thebocheguns were after some of the Aisne bridges, the railway station, or a big supply depot in the city. Within a short time after we got in, the shells began falling all around us. The savages had seen us, there wasn't any doubt of it. There had been no shelling of this place since the battle of the Aisne in 1915, but the Germans were making up for that.
"The Red Cross warehouse was in the chapel of the big seminary in the city, and while we were at work getting things out and loaded, the shells from the .240's came screaming in. The first one banged its way through a house directly across the street, and made a puff of dust of it, but as we were in the courtyard of the seminary wewere protected from flying pieces. After that, at three and a half minute intervals by the watch, the firing continued. The second shell went over our chapel and exploded in an orchard fifty yards back of us. It showered us with mud, and a small piece of shell scored one of our fellows on the cheek. The third one the Germans sent over landed directly in the seminary garden. This was almost a bull's-eye, so far as we were concerned, but we kept at it, making trip after trip, and when the last load left late in the afternoon, we had taken two hundred tons of precious supplies out of that warehouse and stored them several kilometers away.
"The last place on our list was hotter than any of the others, because the Germans were constantly changing their ranges and shelling everything in the back areas. We went to the little town of M—— to bring out a Red Cross unit there which was at work only two kilometers in the rear of the French lines. We had no difficulty in getting the unit out, but when it came to getting the supplies, that was a different matter. We went up there with three cars and tried our best, but the shelling was too severe and we were ordered to come away. Nothing could have lived in that town the day we tried to make it.
"That's the little story of a week, and it was a full one. While the German guns were hunting out the important towns the French batteries were thundering back at them. And it seemed that everywhere we went the French guns came up, planted themselves, and went into action. In one town two .155's were towed in by gigantic tractors, stopped beside our trucks, and as soon as pits could be dug, began firing. Each gun fired four shots as quickly as possible and then the battery limbered up to the tractors and went on its way. I asked the commander why he didn't stay, because it seemed to me that a little protection wouldn't have been a half bad thing for us. He replied that as there was no camouflage possible in that town the guns had to be got away before they were spotted. He added that hewas going on to the next town to fire four more shots, and then to still another one for the same purpose. He promised to come back to our little town soon, but I thanked him and said, 'Never mind, we'll be gone by that time.'"
And experience such as this was typical; not in the least unusual. And this, please remember, was the narrative of but one convoy; there were four others in that same sector, and in the same week, that had similar experiences. When we come to consider the Red Cross in its field activities with our army we shall hear other stories such as this; for, of a truth, the work of the Transportation Department is eternally intermeshed and interwoven with that of American Red Cross relief service of every sort in France. Without transportation, little could ever have been done.
While convoys and relief supplies rushed toward the front, refugees found their way back from it. They came into Paris at the rate of nearly 5,000 a day and the American Red Cross was a large factor in taking care of them, of course. Their arrival at the railroad stations of the city gave the Transportation Department of the American Red Cross another task. All day, and day after day, its camions took food supplies to these terminals and afterward gathered the refugees and their baggage and bore them to other railroad stations and to the trains which were to carry them to their temporary destination.
"It was a busy week," laconically remarked a local Red Cross historian at that time.
These were but the beginnings of the days of real test of Major Osborne's department. For be it recorded that it was in the spring, the summer, and the fall of 1918 that the rush calls for Red Cross service came—and found its Transportation Department ready. We were just speaking of those doleful days of the March retreat, when things looked red and gray and black and misty before the eyes of those who stood for the salvation of the democracy of the world. We spoke in drama, now let us translatedrama into cold statistics; understand quite fully that in the first thirty days of that March retreat, 162 truckloads of Red Cross supplies and materials were sent out on less than twelve hours' notice, 288 truckloads and material on twenty-four hours' notice, and 61 truckloads on forty-eight hours' notice; 511 loads in all. At one time, 35,000 front-line parcels were sent out within ten days.
And while these supplies were going out from headquarters, fifteen trucks were in continuous operation, evacuating the wounded along the routes from Noyon, Rivecourt, Resson, and Montdidier to Beauvais. And six rolling kitchens, operating in that selfsame territory, supplied hot food to the troops, which is typical of the work of the Red Cross Transportation Department in many similar territories. For instance, in that memorable year, in the attack on Pierrefonds, on July 29, word was received that several thousand wounded had been lying on the ground for two days. Twenty fully equipped ambulances went out at once and for seven days worked steadily evacuating the wounded, and all the while under constant fire. The entire section of ambulances went into service on seven hours' notice.
The Twenty-seventh Division—composed almost entirely of former members of the New York National Guard—did not hesitate, in emergency, to call upon our Red Cross. Major General John F. O'Ryan found that he was about to go into action and that less than fifty per cent of his army ambulance equipment was available. He turned to the Red Cross. Could it help him out with ambulances? Of course it could. That was part of its job—the big part, if you please—helping out in war emergencies. Twenty ambulances were immediately sent out from Paris, and during the attacks which took Le Catelet and Solenne, operated all thepostes-de-secourof the Division.
There is still another phase of the Transportation Department,which as yet we have not even touched upon. I am referring now to the actual aid it lent the army with its vehicles from time to time. The Army War Risk Insurance Bureau, for instance, would not have been able to get about France at all if it had not been for twenty Red Cross cars. Its chief, Lieutenant Colonel Richard Cholmonley-Jones, so testified when he wrote to the American Red Cross heads in Paris, saying:
"... I desire to express to the American Red Cross our deep appreciation of the assistance of the organization in our work. By furnishing motor transportation you enabled our field parties to reach the officers and enlisted men of the Expeditionary Forces, to place before them their opportunities under the War Risk Act. Our problem was, after all, a question of transportation. This you solved and I believe that in doing so you could have done no greater service, for you assisted in thus relieving these men of anxiety as to their families at home."
Nor was the aid of our Red Cross limited to the men of our army. It so happened that we had a navy overseas; and it was a real navy and filled with very real boys and men. It, too, came in for its full share of American Red Cross assistance. In fact, one of the larger camps of its aviation service was entirely constructed with the aid of Red Cross transportation.
At another time must be told the story of the work of the Transportation Department of our Red Cross in great bombing raids and cannonading which was inflicted upon Paris, week in and week out and month in and month out. It was part of its great chapter of assistance to the war-shocked population, civil and military, of all France. It is enough to say here and now that the problem was met with the same promptness, the same cheerfulness, and the same efficiency as characterized its work with our army and our navy. This huge portion of our Red Cross machine in France functioned—and functioned thoroughly.
From the Commissioner in Paris came this cablegram: "Get us six of the biggest circus tents that you can."
From the Washington headquarters was flashed this reply:
"Tents are on their way."
For the Red Cross it was all a part of the day's work. When Colonel Harvey D. Gibson, our Red Cross Commissioner in France in the latter half of 1918, found that the absolute limit for storage supplies in and around Paris had been reached and passed and that it would be several weeks at least before more additional warehouses could be constructed, his practical mind went at once to circus tents to meet the emergency. They would be rain-proof, sun-proof, frost-proof as well. And so, turning to the cable, he ordered the tents, as casually as he might have asked for 10,000 sweaters or 100,000 surgical dressings, and received them as he might have received the sweaters or the dressings, without an hour of unnecessary delay.
When we first came to consider the work of the Transportation Department of the American Red Cross in France, I spoke of the women who, with patriotic zeal directing both their minds and their deft, quick fingers, turned out the sweaters, the wristlets, the knitted helmets by not merely the tens, but by the hundreds of thousands. Their capacity—the united capacity of a land of some 20,000,000 adult women workers—was vast. But the necessity was even more vast. And while the proportion of these creature comforts which were handmade and individual grew to great size, there also were vast quantities ofthese things and others which were purchased from manufacturers and in quantities which not only compelled these very manufacturers to turn over the entire output of their plants for many months but also compelled them to add to their factory capacity. And, of course, there were many things which the wives and mothers and sisters and sweethearts of America, with all their loving desires and keen capabilities, could not produce. Which meant that our Red Cross in France must have purchasing and warehousing functions—like big business of almost every other sort.
It would have been foolish and worse than foolish to have even attempted the problem without organization. That was the difficulty of the well-meaning American relief work which was launched upon French soil before the coming of our Red Cross. In the early days of the war the French ports were littered with boxes of relief supplies addressed "The American Embassy," "American Chamber of Commerce," "French Army," and just "France." People did so want to help, and so, in our impulsive American way, sent along things without sending any notice whatsoever as to whom they were to go. One of the big reasons for the foundation of the American Relief Clearing House was to combat this very tendency. As far back as October, 1914, it began by organizing French and American committees, obtaining freedom of customs for relief goods, free sea and rail freights, and finally, by organizing the War Relief Clearing House in New York, as a complementary committee for systematic collection and forwarding.
Eventually the Clearing House brought American donors to the point where they would actually mark the contents of boxes, but there was always great waste in not passing upon the serviceability of shipments until they had reached Paris and great delay in having to pack and re-sort them there. The secondhand material which came was of fair quality, but not sufficient in quantity. And while people here in the United States were always willing tocontribute money generously they seemed disinclined to have goods bought outside this country. The result was that the American Relief Clearing House in Paris never had a sufficient accumulation against emergency. At the time of the first great offensive against Verdun, in the spring of 1916, it was compelled to send out all of the supplies which it held and to appeal to the United States for more clothes, food, and the like, which meant all of a six weeks' delay.
Such a state of things could not exist in our Red Cross work there. And yet the problem in this very phase that confronted Major Murphy and his party was tremendous. The Compagnie Générale Transatlantique had just notified the Clearing House that it could no longer afford to supply free space; and in view of the subsequent shipping situation, the heavy torpedoing, and the army demand for tonnage, it is considered not improbable that had the Clearing House continued it would have had to give up handling anything except money. Yet in spite of obstacles, the Red Cross would have to purchase and store supplies—not in the quantities that the Clearing House had purchased and stored them, but in far, far greater number.
Major Murphy met the problem squarely, as was his way. He cabled to America, and seven men were sent to him late in September, 1917. They were men taken from various corners of the country, but all of them expert in the task allotted to them. At once they began the work of coördinating the vast problem of American Red Cross purchase and supply. There was large need for them; for, while at the very beginning of our Red Cross work over there, while its problem, because of its vastness and its novelty, was still quite largely a question of guesswork, purchases were made for each department as it requisitioned material or was stored for them individually. Such a method was quickly outgrown, and was bound to be succeeded by a far better one, which, as we shall see presently, finally did come to pass.
From the beginningthe main warehouses, like the main garages, of the American Red Cross in France have been located in the headquarters city of Paris. Providing these facilities was one of the first tasks that confronted Major Murphy. And to understand the promptitude with which he met this task understand, if you will, that by the following September he already had six warehouses in Paris, organized with a capacity to handle 10,000 tons of supplies a month, which might quickly be increased to 60,000 tons a month. As a matter of fact, before Armistice Day was reached there were fourteen of these warehouses and they actually were handling some 10,000,000 tons a month.
The nucleus of this warehouse organization was again the American Relief Clearing House. It gave the first three of the store buildings. The next three were obtained by Major Murphy's organization, with the typical keenness of American business men who, having donated their services and their abilities to our great adventure overseas, purposed to make those services and abilities work to their highest possibilities.
Warehouses to be effective and efficient must have not only good locations, but appropriate railroad connections and modern equipment for handling their supplies; this is primary. The French, themselves, long since have recognized it as such. And because the freight terminal tracks at Paris are so abundant and so generally well planned there were plenty of warehouses there, if one could but find them. To find them was not so hard a task, even during the war, if one but had the time. There was the rub. The Red Cross did not have the time; there was not a day, not an hour, to be wasted. It needed storage space at once—ships with hundreds and thousands of tons of Red Cross relief supplies already were at the docks of French ports. More were on their way across the Atlantic. Space to store these cargoes must be found—and found immediately. By October 1, 1917, our Red Cross had twenty-one storage centers in France, giving it 5,000,000cubic feet of space as against but 50,000 three months earlier. The largest unit was a sugar warehouse in the wholesale center of Paris, a five-story stone structure with twelve hoists, two railroad tracks on the outside, and two within.
These facilities cost money, of course. And that in some instances they cost more money because time was a large factor in the question can hardly be denied. Yet economy was practiced as well as speed. This is record fact. Our Red Cross in France did not permit itself to become a waster; even in emergencies which called for a saving of time—no matter at what expense—it carefully watched the outgoing of dollars.
When, for instance, it sought to obtain one of the largest of its needed Parisian warehouses—a really huge structure with 2,500,000 cubic feet of storage space and served by two railroad tracks thrust into its very heart—it tried to drive a good Yankee bargain. The place had been found after a day of seemingly hopeless and heartless search. Its owner was located and the rental cost discussed briefly. The owner wanted ninety centimes (approximately seventeen cents) a square meter. The Red Cross agents demurred. They counter-offered with eighty centimes. The owner accepted.
"Shake!" said the chief of the party. They clasped hands.
"Never mind the formal papers now," laughed our Yankee Red Cross bargainer, "we'll take each other's word. I haven't a minute to lose, as we must have the place ready for supplies within forty-eight hours."
"Impossible!" cried the French landlord. He knew the real condition of the place, which had been unused and unrepaired for months.
Yet within forty-eight hours the Red Cross supplies from overseas actually were being moved in. Immediately upon closing the deal, the Americans had sought labor. It wasnot to be found, they were told; all the surplus labor of Paris being in the trenches or else engaged in some work vital to the war's operations.
"Why not usepermissionnaires?" some one suggested.
The hint was a good one. It so happened that the French Government already had consented to the employment of this very sort of labor by the American Red Cross. So down to the larger railroad stations of Paris hurried our Red Cross agents. Soldiers back from the trenches were given the opportunity to earn a few francs—and gladly accepted it. Within a few hours a crew of more than a hundred men had been gathered and the work of making the newly acquired property ready to receive supplies begun. And under American supervision it was completed—within the allotted two days.
This experience was repeated a few weeks later when the American Red Cross took over the old stables of the Compagnie Générale des Petites Voitures in the Rue Chemin du Vert as still another warehouse and had to clean and make them fit for supplies—all within a mere ten days. The Compagnie Générale des Petites Voitures was an ancient Parisian institution. It operated—of all the vehicles perhaps the most distinctive upon the streets of the great French capital—the little victoria-likefiacre, drawn by a wise and ancient horse with a bell about its neck. The war had drained the city of most of its horses—they were in the French artillery—and for a long time before the coming of our Red Cross the great stables in the Rue Chemin du Vert had been idle; in fact for the first time in more than half a century.
In taking over the place the officers of the American Red Cross were not blind to the fact that they were getting nothing more than a great, rambling, two-story stable and its yards, which were just as they had been left when a thousand horses had been led forth from their stalls. The place was a fearful litter of confusion, while crowded togetherat one end of the courtyard were the oldfiacres—ancient, weather-beaten, decrepit, abandoned. They made a pathetic picture.
Rumor told the neighborhood, and told it quickly, that theCroix Rouge Américaine—as the French know our organization over there—had taken over the old stables and were to use them for warehousing purposes, but rumor was not smart enough to tell how the trick was to be done. It did not know; the Red Cross workers did. They had found after making a careful inventory of the place, that they had on their hands about 8,000 square yards of ground, covered for the greater part with more or less dilapidated buildings a hundred years old or even older. More than that, there were five hundred tons of manure in the structures which must be completely removed and the premises thoroughly disinfected before there could be even a thought of using them for goods storage. Cleaning the Augean stables was something of the same sort of a job.
Various Parisian contractors who specialize in that sort of work were asked what they would charge for the task of getting the big stables clean once again. One said seven thousand francs. Another allowed that it would cost five thousand. He was the lowest bidder. The Red Cross turned from all of them and went to the market gardeners of the great central Halles. Would they help? Of course they would—the name of theCroix Rouge Américainehas some real potency in France. In four days the stables were cleaned—perfectly and at an entire cost of less than two hundred francs!
Then, with the aid of a hundred workmen, the work of rehabilitating them was begun. At that time in Paris carpenters were not to be had for love or for money, so every available Red Cross man who knew how to saw a piece of wood or who could drive a nail without hitting his thumb—and at that, there were many thumbs jammed before the job was entirely done—was pressed into service. From the famous Latin Quarter of Paris came many volunteers,some of them American painters and sculptors more familiar with working tools of other sorts, but all fired with a zeal and a determination to help. Such a prodigious din of work the neighborhood could not easily remember!
Lumber was scarce, almost unobtainable in fact. That did not discourage our Red Cross. One of the lesser buildings in the compound was quickly marked for destruction and actually was torn down in order to supply the lumber needed for the repair of the others. Windows were put in and glazed, doors were hung, wall derricks and hoistways rigged, roofs made water-tight, and the ancient cobbles of the courtyard scrubbed until they were almost blue in their faces. All the stables, the vehicle rooms, and the office quarters were disinfected, electric lights were installed in every corner, fire extinguishers hung throughout the buildings, telephones placed in each department, racks and bins for supplies constructed, lettered, and numbered, smooth cement walks laid to connect each building with its fellows—and not until all of this was done did the Red Cross men who had volunteered for the long hours of hard manual labor really dare stop for a deep breath.
"Talk about Hercules," laughed one of them when it was all done. "He had better look to his old laurels. He never did a job like this—in ten days."
It took the folk of the neighborhood a long time to realize what had happened in ten days.
Yet there it was—if so you were pleased to call it—one of the largest "retail-wholesale" stores in all Paris, with some 15,000 tons of supplies in place in the racks within a fortnight after the herculean and record-breaking cleansing task had been finished; and fresh stuff arriving daily to meet the needs of the hard-pressed peasantry and soldiers of France. And in a little time to perform similar service for the men of our own army and navy over there. Yet, unlike any other general store in the world—wholesale or retail—this Red Cross one was open for business every hour of the day or the night. Comfortablequarters were prepared and furnished for six workers, who volunteered to live in the warehouse and so be prepared at any hour of the night to receive and execute an emergency call for supplies.
One huge task of this particular warehouse was the re-sorting of volunteer or donated shipments. From a period in the early progress of the war the Red Cross accepted only supplies shipped to its general stores—in no case whatsoever to individual organizations—and ordered that all goods should be sorted and re-packed in France for distribution there. So one big room in the Rue Chemin du Vert was turned over to this work. It never lacked variety. In one actual instance a big box sent from some city in the Middle West burst open and the first thing that met the gaze of the Red Cross warehouse workers was a white satin high-heeled party slipper poking its head out for a look at "gay Paree." And it was by no means the only tribute of this sort that thoughtless America gave to starving France. There sometimes were real opportunities for censorship in the re-sorting room.
A man who went to this great warehouse in the early days of its existence brought back a vivid picture of its activities.
"As one entered the long, wide courtyard through the great arch from the street—an arch, by the way, which reminded me wonderfully of the Washington Arch at the foot of Fifth Avenue, New York," said he, "and caught a glimpse of the flags of France and America—and the Red Cross—floating over it, he became immediately impressed with the militarylike activity of the entire place. This was heightened by the presence of a number of French soldiers and some fifty Algerians in their red fezzes, who were at work on crates and boxes. Three or four big gray camions were waiting at the upper end of the yard while the workmen loaded them. Opposite were what had once been the extensive stable structures, now clean and onlyreminiscent of their former tenants in the long line of chain halters hanging motionless against the walls. Here the bulkier, non-perishable goods were stored.
"Halfway up the entrance yard began the series of rooms whose shelves, fashioned ingeniously from packing cases, contained the great supplies of condensed milk, tobacco, sugar, soap, pork, canned beef, and rice. Overhead, on what was once the great hayloft of the stables, were the cubicles where were stacked the paper-wrapped bundles of new clothing for men, women, and children, every package marked with the size, and thesabotswith thick wooden soles and the sturdy leathern uppers—enough to outfit a whole townful of people.
"Across a 'Bridge of Sighs'—the opportunity to call it that is quite too good to be lost—to another building, one came upon stores of chairs, bucksaws, farm implements, boxes of window glass, bedside tables, wicker reclining chairs, iron beds, mattresses, pillows, bolsters, blankets, sheets, pillowcases, and comforters. Through a wide doorway whose lintel was a rough hand-hewn beam as thick as a man's body and a century old, were the dormitory and the messroom of the red-fezzed Algerians who, by the way, were under the command of two French officers. Next came the lofts, with their bins of crutches, surgical dressings, rubber sheeting, absorbent cotton, enamel ware, bright copper sterilizers, and boxes of rubber gloves for hospital use. Still another building housed the immense supplies of wool gloves and socks, pajamas, sweaters, and women's and children's underwear and high stacks of brown corduroy jackets and trousers, for the Red Cross sought to furnish to the peasant just the same sort of clothing that he and his father's grandfather were accustomed to wear; even to the belovedbéret.
"Throughout the storage building one came across evidences of the manner in which every available bit of old wood was utilized for reconstruction in order to avoid further expenditure. Bins and racks were made of ancientdoors and window frames and crates had been carefully fashioned into delivery counters. In fact small 'branch stores' for the distribution of goods in less than box or crate lots were established in every corner of the Rue Chemin du Vert warehouse, with clerks always in attendance upon them. In this way it was as easy to fit out an individual with what he or she needed as to fit out an entire community, and the reverse.
"On the right side of the main courtyard, running back from the administration offices, were the long, narrow shipping rooms where the bundles called for were made up from the stock which lined the walls and were tagged and addressed by a corps of young women; the crate lots being attended to by the men in the courtyard below. Still farther on was the department which received the packages of used clothing, of knitted goods, or the other things sent by humane persons in countless cities of America and France to the needy ones in the fighting lines, or back of them. Below and beyond this room were the coal bins, the carpenter's shop, in which tables and bedside stands constantly were being turned out from new lumber, and the 'calaboose,' for the benefit of an occasionally recalcitrant Algerian. And adjoining the main courtyard was still another room almost as large; and this last was the place of receipt of all supplies. Here they were inspected, counted, and assigned to their proper buildings and compartments. The entire place was a great hive, literally a hive of industry. And the people of the neighborhood never passed its arched entrance without first stopping to look in, it all was so amazing to them. They wondered if there ever could have been a time when a thousand horses were stabled there."
Upon the day of the signing of the armistice and for many months thereafter Warehouse No. 1 in the Rue Chemin du Vert remained a busy hive of industry. It still handled almost every conceivable sort of commodity, and perhaps the only difference in its appearance from theday that the graphic New Yorker saw it was that German prisoners—each with a doggedly complacent look upon his face and a large "P. G." upon his back,—had replaced the Algerians for the hard manual labor. It continued to employ fifteen men and women in its office and from thirty-five to forty Red Cross workers, American or French, while the value of the stock constantly kept on hand was roughly estimated at close to $2,000,000. From thirty-five to forty tons were daily being sent out. Yet how was a stock valuation of $2,000,000 really to be compared with one of $2,500,000 in warehouse No. 6 in the Rue Cambrai or $3,000,000 at No. 24 in the Rue Curial? And these were but three of eleven Red Cross warehouses in Paris at the time of the armistice. And a report issued very soon after showed twenty-nine other warehouses of the American Red Cross in France, eight of them in the city of Dijon, which, because of its strategic railroad location, was a store center of greatest importance for our army over there.
Perhaps you like facts with your picture.
Well, then, returning from the picture of the thing to the fact, we find at the time of the first definite general organization of our Red Cross in France—in September, 1917—a Bureau of Transportation and Supplies was formed under the direction of Mr. R. H. Sherman. A little later a slightly more comprehensive organization was charted, and a separate Bureau of Supplies created, with Mr. Joseph R. Swan as its immediate director. This was subdivided into four main sections: Paris Warehouses, Outside Warehouses, Receiving, and Shipping. This organization remained practically unchanged until the general reorganization plan of August, 1918, which we have already seen, when the bureau became the Section of Stores and, as such, a factor, and a mighty important factor, of the Division of Requirements.
From that time forward the problem was one of growth, great growth, rather than that of organization. It was aproblem of finding warehouses to accommodate our supplies over there; of finding competent men to oversee and operate the warehouses, and then, in due order, of keeping the supplies moving through the warehouses and out to the men at the front. In due course we shall see how these supplies functioned. For the moment consider the fact that in an initiatory six weeks, from October 11 to November 30, 1917, Mr. Swan submitted a detailed account showing how he had invested nearly $8,000,000 in the purchase of general stores for our Red Cross. In the press of emergency work—there hardly was a month or a day from our arrival in France until after the signing of the armistice when the situation could not have been fairly described as emergency—it was possible to take but one general inventory. That was made, for accounting purposes, as of February 24, 1918, and showed the value of the American Red Cross stores then on hand in its warehouses in France to be 33,960,999.49 francs, well over $6,000,000. At the first of the following November—eleven days before the signing of the armistice—another inventory was taken. The stocks had grown. There were in the principal warehouses of the Red Cross alone and including its stock of coal upon the Quai de la Loire supplies valued at 46,452,018.80 francs, or close to $9,000,000. Figures are valuable when they mount to sizes such as these.
Yet figures cannot tell the way in which the warehousing organization of the American Red Cross met the constant emergencies which confronted it. Like the Transportation Department, it was forever and at all times on the job. For instance, from the beginning of that last German advance, in the Ides of March, 1918, until it was reaching its final fearful thrusts—late in June and early in July—there was on hand, night and day, a crew at the warehouse, which had been fashioned from a former taxicab stables in the Rue Chemin du Vert, a complete crew to load camions by the dozens, by the hundreds, if necessary. In such a super-emergency no six men housed in the plant would do;for there were nights on which twenty, thirty, and even forty of the big camions went rolling out through that great archway with their supplies for our boys at the front—the very boys who so soon were to play their great part in the supreme victories of the war. On those summer nights warehouse work was speeded up, to put it very mildly indeed. Men worked long hours without rest and with but a single thought—the accomplishment of real endeavor while there yet remained time to save Paris and all the rest of France. And in such spirit is victory born.
Do not, I pray you, conceive the idea that all the warehouse work was done in Paris. I have hinted at the importance of Dijon, the great army store center, as a Red Cross stores center, and have, myself, stood in the great American Red Cross warehouse upon the lining of the inner harbor of St. Nazaire and have with mine own eyes seen 8,000 cases stacked under their capacious roofs—foodstuffs and clothing and comforts and hospital supplies which came forever and in a steady stream from the transports docking at that important American receiving point, and have known of warehouses to be established in strange quarters, stranger sometimes than the abandoned stables of the horse-drawn taxicabs of Paris, here in an ancient exposition building upon the outskirts of a sizable French city, there in a convent, and again in a church or a school, or even again in a stable.
Here was a little town, not many miles back from the northern front. The Red Cross determined to set up a warehouse there, both for military and civilian relief supplies. An agent from the Paris headquarters went up there to confer with the local representative in regard to the proper location for the plant. The local man favored one building, the Paris representative another which was nearer to the railroad station. While they argued as to the merits of the two buildings German airmen flew over the town and destroyed one of them. And before theycould compromise on the other, the French Government requisitioned it as a barracks.
Now was a time for deep thought rather than compromise. And deep thought won—it always does. Deep thought moved the American Red Cross warehouse into the ancient seminary there, even though that sturdy structure had been pretty well peppered by theboche. When the Red Cross moved in, you still could count fifty-one distinct shell holes in it; another and a final one came while it still was in the process of adaptation to warehouse uses. In this badly battered structure lived the Red Cross warehouse man and his three assistants—all of them camion chauffeurs—after they had put forty-five panes of glass in with their own hands. Then the supply of glass ran out. In the former chapel of the seminary fourteen great window frames had to be covered with muslin, which served, after a fashion, to keep out the stress of weather. Twenty-seven of the precious panes of glass went into the office—where daylight was of the greatest necessity. The rest were used, in alternation with the muslin, for the living quarters, where the Red Cross men cooked their own meals, in the intervals between dealing out warehouse supplies. It was hard work, but the chauffeurs did not complain. Indeed it so happened that their chief did most of the complaining.
"What is the use?" he sputtered one afternoon while the war still was a day-by-day uncertainty. "Those boys will put in a big day's work, every one of them, come home and not know enough to go to bed. Like as not they will take a couple of hours and climb up some round knoll to watch the artillery fire. When the town was in the actual line of fire—not more than a fortnight ago—one of them turned up missing. He had been with us only a moment before, so we began hunting through the warehouse for him. Where do you suppose we found him? Let me tell you: he was up in the belfry, the biggest and the best target in the town. Said he wanted to see where the shells werestriking. I told him to come down, the Red Cross wasn't paying him for damn foolishness. But you couldn't help liking the nerve of the boy, could you?"