The Living Present

ADDENDUM

NOTE.—­Six months ago I wrote asking Madame d’Andigné to send me notes of her work before becoming the President of Le Bien—­Être du Blessé.  She promised, but no woman in France is busier.  The following arrived after the book was in press, so I can only give it verbatim.—­G.A.

At the time this gigantic struggle broke out I was in America.  My first thought was to get to France as soon as possible.  I sailed on August 2nd for Cherbourg but as we were pursued by two German ships our course was changed and I landed in England.  After many trials and tribulations I reached Paris.  The next day I went to the headquarters of the French Red Cross and offered my services.  I showed the American Red Cross certificate which had been given to me at the end of my services at Camp Meade during the Spanish-American War.  As I had had practically little surgical experience since the course I took at the Rhode Island Hospital before the Spanish-American War I asked to take a course in modern surgery.  I was told that my experience during that war and my Red Cross certificate was more than sufficient.  After serious reflection I decided that I could render more service to France by getting in the immense crops that were standing in our property in the south of France than by nursing the wounded soldiers.  Far less glorious but of vital importance!  So off I went to the south of France.  By the middle of October thousands of kilos of cereals and hay and over 20,000 hectoliters of wine were ready to supply the army at the front.  I then spent my time in various hospitals studying the up-to-date system of hospital war relief work.  It was not difficult to see the deficiencies—­the means of rapidly transporting the wounded from the “postes de secours” to an operating table out of the range of cannons—­in other words auto-ambulances—­impossible to find in France at that time.  So I cabled to America.  The first was offered by my father.  It was not until January that this splendid spacious motor-ambulance arrived and was offered immediately to the French Red Cross.  Presently others arrived and were offered to the Service de Santé.  These cars have never ceased to transport the wounded from the Front lines to hospitals in the War Zone.  I heard of one in the north and another in the Somme.  This work finished, I took up duty as assistant in an operating room in Paris to get my hand in.  I next went to a military hospital at Amiens.  This hospital was partly closed soon afterward, and, anxious to have a great deal of work, I went to the military hospital at Versailles.

The work in the operating room was very absorbing, as it was there that that wonderful apparatus for locating a bullet by mathematical calculation was invented and first used.  There, between those four white walls I have seen bullets extracted from the brain, the lungs, the liver, the “vesicule biliaire,” etc., etc.

From there I was called to a large military hospital at the time of the attack in Champagne in September, 1915.  Soon I was asked to organize and superintend the Service of the Mussulman troops.  At first it was hard and unsatisfactory.  I spoke only a few words of Arabic and they spoke but little French.  I had difficulty in overcoming the contempt that the Mussulmans have for women.  They were all severely wounded and horribly mutilated, but the moral work was more tiring than the physical.

However, little by little they got used to me and I to them.  We became the best of friends and I never experienced more simple childlike gratitude than with these “Sidis.”  I remember one incident worth quoting.  I was suffering from a severe grippy cold—­they saw that I was tired and felt miserable.  I left the ward for a few moments.  On returning I found that they had pushed a bed a little to one side in a corner and had turned down the bed-clothes and placed a hot-water jug in it (without hot water).  The occupant was a Moroccan as black as the ace of spades; he was trepanned but was allowed up a certain number of hours a day.  “Maman,”—­they all called me Maman—­“toi blessée, toi ergut (lie down) nous tubibe (doctor) nous firmli (nurse).”  And this black, so-called savage, Moroccan took up his post beside the bed as I had often done for him.  I explained as best as I could that I would have to have a permission signed by the Medecin-Chef, otherwise I would be punished; and the Medecin-Chef had left the hospital for the night.  He shook his wise black head, “Maman blessée, Maman blessée!”

One called me one day and asked me what my Allah was like.  I told him I thought he was probably very much like his.  Well! if my Allah was not good to me, theirs would take care of me, they would see to that.

In May, 1916, I was asked to organize a war relief work[H] at the request of the Service de Santé.  This work was to provide the “grands blessés et malades” with light nourishing food, in other words, invalid food.  The rules and regulations of the French military hospitals are not sufficiently elastic to allow the administering of such food.  In time of war it would be easier almost to remove Mt.  Blanc than to change these rules and regulations.  There was just one solution—­private war relief work.

  [H] Le Bien—­Être du Blessé.

So, with great regret, I bade good-bye to these children I never would have consented to have left had it not been for the fact that I knew from experience how necessary was the war relief work which was forced upon me, as I had seen many men die from want of light nourishing food.