WHEN the war commenced and the banking business shut down temporarily, I found myself with nothing to do.

In a short time I made up my mind to go to Paris; my idea being simply to see the excitement and the French people in war-time.

The prospect of an indeterminate holiday appealed to me strongly, as four years of engineering, and two years in the banking business, had given me but little time to myself, since leaving Princeton in 1908.

I decided to cross in the steerage. The idea came from Bishop Brent of the Philippine Islands, who a year previously had given me a description of a trip he took in the steerage. Accommodations were quickly arranged for, and with most of Philadelphia's visible supply of French gold strapped to my legs, and wearing my City Troop shoes and khaki shirt, I boarded the steerage of the S. S. Laconia in New York, August 19th, 1914.

A brief description of the steerage may be of interest. My cabin had 6 bunks in it, 3 lowers and 3 uppers. The ceiling was 6-1/2 feet high and the room measured about 9' x 7'. There were 6 life preservers, one under each pillow, 6 hooks on the wall, 6 towels, 6 straw mattresses and pillows, 6 rough blankets and that was absolutely all.

This describes the average steerage cabin pretty well. They are put wherever space will allow, and hold from 2 passengers up to 20 or so.

The dining-room contained long narrow tables, bolted to the floor, covered with oil-cloth and each seating from 6 to 10 on a side. The meal hours were as follows:

All the inside deck of the steerage, including the dining-room, halls and cabins, is made of some composition that is waterproof and is drained so that it can be cleaned up by merely turning on the fire hose. Everything was kept quite clean throughout the entire trip. There were about six hundred passengers in the steerage, many of whom were going back to join the British Army or Navy.

We were met at Sandy Hook by a British war-ship, the Essex, which escorted us until dark. All outside lights on our ship were hidden, so each night on deck was passed in total darkness. The second day out the stacks and forward part of the boat were painted to resemble those of a Scandinavian vessel.

I asked some of the stewards about previous voyages. One of them said, "You're lucky that you are not coming in from the Mediterranean with 2,200 of them Wops in the steerage! Dirty! It's perfectly sickening! Put down a dish of bread in front of them and they will all fight for it! One fellow he'll grab nearly all! Thinks it all they are going to get that day."

I laughed and said I supposed it was pretty bad.

"Yes," he said. "Why, they don't know what preserves are. They put the blooming marmalade in their tea! We used to give them pepper and salt to put on their prunes. It did not make no difference, though, they'd mug it all."

August 22nd:

Very cold this morning and a strong breeze blowing. Fifty per cent of the steerage are sea-sick. I am wearing my heaviest winter clothes. We are sailing far out of the usual course. Every night the sun has gone down at right angles to our port beam, so we are heading nearly due north.

My fellow passengers seem to get sick very easily. The stewards tell me that when they have a boat load of Italians, Poles, etc., some of them will lie on the hatches for three days at a time without moving.

Calmer this evening and we had a little impromptu musicale conducted by Tom, the Irishman who plays the fiddle. He worked on the streets laying pavement in New York City, and has a nice face and a huge mustache. The fingers of his hands are so thick and calloused I don't see how he can play a fiddle, but he does.

Some evenings we have a pretty fair chorus, consisting mostly of the stewards, who know all the Music Hall favorites, and the instrumental accompaniment is augmented by an accordion and a pair of bones.

A young girl is on her way back to England. She has been earning her living by cooking. She said, "This is the way I look at it. You earn twice as much in America and your expenses are twice as much, but your savings are twice as much, too. I could never have supported my mother and little sister by doing that kind of work in England."

I ask everybody innumerable questions.

There is a great variety on the boat and it is tremendously interesting to observe the people. Instincts are at their nakedest in this class; there are no studied poses. We have one type which is found everywhere; the tough athletic hero of a coeducational high school in the middle west. I met him in the lavatory, before breakfast, about the third day out, when it was quite crowded.

"Hullo," he said, in a deep loud voice, "why, I haven't seen you before!"

"Well," I replied, "I do not think I have seen you either."

"Why," he said a little non-plussed, "I've been making more noise and kicking up more rumpus than anyone else down here!"

How many people there are, who want just this very thing thought of them, but how few would frankly admit it.

Of course, I had both seen and heard him, but I couldn't let such an opening go by. "Really," I replied, "I never noticed you at all."

Still freezing cold. No one will say where we are, but we must be somewhere near Greenland. We are going in by the North of Ireland and will be escorted to Liverpool by some war-ships.

Approaching Liverpool we went at a snail's pace and simply crawled into the harbor. They said that it was newly mined and that we could not use our screws without danger.

The tipping system on the steerage is simple. A soup plate is passed around the table at the last meal. The average contribution at my table was one shilling per capita. My trip from New York to Liverpool accordingly stands me $35.25.

General confusion and excitement in landing and getting through the customs. For people who know nothing whatever about travelling, it is amazing how well they manage to make out.

I spent the night in Liverpool and on taking a walk before going to bed, met Alec, the Scot, from Edmonton, and a half dozen of his chums, in the station. They were taking the 1.15 A. M. express North and suggested investigating some of the Ale Houses in the vicinity. Alec is a nice looking, big, powerful fellow, rather retiring and quiet. He is to join the Gordon Highlanders. I thought I noticed a sparkle in his eye when I first met him, and as we walked down the street arm in arm, that he seemed more loquacious than usual.

He soon said, "I do na talk much except when I take a dram. You must excuse me, mate."

I slapped him on the back and told him to talk all he wanted.

We sat down at a table in a small tavern where Alec had another dram and then made a speech to the company in general, about how he had been switched around Chicago by the railway and steamship agents; swindled by Jew money changers and clothing venders; stuck by the hotels; misunderstood on account of his accent, and in general played for a sucker. His descriptions were so funny; were given in such a loud voice and with such unique phraseology and Scotch accent, that he soon had nearly the entire tavern in hysterics. I wish I could repeat it all. It was as good as anything Harry Lauder ever turned out.

From there we went to a dingy sort of family place to get something to eat. There were a dozen stodgy Liverpool husbands and wives sitting about and Alec again took the floor, giving a second series which was just as funny as the first. There we stayed until nearly train time when Alec ordered the boy to "bring me a bottle of the best Scotch whiskey ye've got." This I managed to have side-tracked, or Alec would never have got to Glasgow that night. So went the evening and I have seldom spent a better one. As we left the tavern Alec and Duncan drew me aside. I had paid the check at the last place (about three shillings). They looked very serious.

"Ye've been too generous, let's divide it up," said Duncan. "Yes, mate," said Alec, "it's uncommon good of ye, but we both know ye've been put to an awful expense!!!

The time for parting was near at hand, and at 1 A. M. we stood together in the street for the last time, our arms around each other's shoulders, and sang "Just a Wee Doech and Dorris before We Gang Awa." Then we separated, never to meet again.

Upon arriving in London I was informed that it was impossible to cross the Channel, as all the boats had been requisitioned for the transport of troops. I was, therefore, obliged to wait until September 12th, when the first passenger boat left for Havre. After spending 14 hours on the train between Havre and Paris, I arrived there at seven in the morning, feeling somewhat used up, and went immediately to the Cooper-Hewitt Hospital, 21 Avenue de Bois de Boulogne.

The battle of the Marne had just ended some thirty miles from Paris and the troops were fighting along the Aisne, a little further east.

September, 1914:

PARIS was deserted. Nearly all the stores were closed and the windows boarded up. When I turned into the Avenue de l'Opéra it was empty---one cart between the Opéra and the Louvre, and not a soul on the sidewalks.

Mrs. F., the Superintendent of the Hospital, had just returned from Montereau, an assembly point for wounded, and said that the conditions were something frightful. Hundreds of wounded men were lying on filthy straw, most of them not having had their wounds looked at for several days, almost all the wounds septic beyond description, dysentery, gangrene and tetanus prevalent throughout; no bandages, gauze, anaesthetics or capable surgeons and one nurse to about every fifty men. She said they had been looking at compound fractures with nothing but a candle. Tells me that the French officials in Paris do not seem to want wounded men brought in here, although there are some six hundred beds now prepared with first-class equipment and staff all ready and waiting for them; the reason being either that they are afraid the possibility of a siege is not over, or else that they are afraid the moral effect on the French public will be bad.

The little hospital of fifty beds of which Mrs. F. is in charge, is beautifully equipped but as yet has no wounded. She says the only way to get them is to go out, collect them and bring them in yourself. A great many wounded have already been brought into Paris in this way. If you wait for official permission, the French red tape is so abominable that you can never get anywhere.

She was on her way to the Majestic Hotel Hospital on the Ave. Klèber near the Arc de Triomphe, and I walked over with her to see it. They had twelve patients, their first lot, who had been brought in from Montereau the night before. Just as we arrived, a half dozen more came in an ambulance and I helped carry them in. As soon as this was done, I was detailed to hold a delirious Prussian officer who had a bad head wound. He was just coming out of the anaesthetic and had to have someone beside him to keep him still; they had recently removed some three ounces of rotten brains. The patient in the bed on the other side, who had just been brought in, and who was not yet undressed and washed, was wounded in the leg and, like the majority, was reeking with dysentery and septic pus. The Prussian officer was groaning terribly and rolling his eyes so that I could only see the whites of them.

I am not accustomed to this sort of thing and in five minutes I was groggy and the first thing I knew, I had fainted. When I had got my head clear, I took a walk for a few minutes in the air, had a drink of brandy and then came back. A nurse showed me how to keep from fainting, by putting my head down between my knees and holding it there until the blood comes back; this I did at intervals throughout the day.

Three of our men have wounds in the head and why any of them are still alive, is more than I can understand. One German soldier has been shot through the top and back of the head, the bullet coming out underneath the right eye, destroying its sight. All that side of his face is chocolate colored. I should not think he could live through the night. A Frenchman has a sabre cut across the top of his head, which has gone into the skull three inches. He is very restless but quite conscious.

I left the hospital at seven o'clock in the evening to go home and get some sleep, as I had been up in the car all night, after having been told that if I came there the next morning, there would be plenty for me to do. The Metro was not running, so I walked from the Étoille to the Opéra, where I lived. There was hardly a soul in the streets; hardly a light visible. The Place de la Concorde was as dark and still as a country churchyard, save for one huge search light on the top of the Hotel de Crillon, which swept the sky for German aeroplanes. A rather sharp contrast to the Paris of last year.

Tuesday, September 15:

Arrived at the hospital where I met Mrs. F., who said she had been called to Limoges to report on conditions there. The Frenchman who had the sabre cut in his head had died about fifteen minutes before I came in. The hospital is in charge of Dr. G., an Englishman, with three operating surgeons and an X-Ray specialist and a medical man; all the nurses are English or Canadian and about half of them speak French. A couple speak German. There has been no attempt at organization as yet. Nobody has had any particular job assigned to him, no one knows what he or she is to do, and there is general confusion and disorder. The patients' dinner was very badly managed, with the head nurse running around looking after detail, instead of superintending the job.

A French officer was brought in, in a private motor, by some friends about supper time. He had a flesh wound in his arm from a piece of shell, which he only got this noon. After the wound was dressed he took supper with us and was very interesting in talking about the day's fight. Said that the German cannon could be used at such range that the French could not return their fire. He had been wounded from a gun 11 kilometers away.

I shall stay here as an orderly for the time being at least; help is needed badly and there is more work than we can attempt to do.

Wednesday, September 16:

Five more Frenchmen brought in. All officers and all but one quite badly wounded. The German who was shot through the back of the head has recovered in the most wonderful way. When we brought him his lunch to-day he hoisted himself up, swung his legs over the bed and said he could eat it himself. He is incidentally shot through the shoulder, too, and his right arm broken. The delirious Prussian officer with whom I had my introduction to the job, looks pretty bad. He has been continuously out of his head and has not eaten anything for three days.

Hospital still in confusion. This place must be run so everyone knows what he is supposed to do and when he is to do it. The work in the wards is exceptionally hard. Nearly all the patients have dysentery and the wounds are all fearfully septic and require dressing two and three times a day.

One Frenchman was shot through the chest and while he was on the ground a German bayonetted him in the stomach twice, someone else kicked him in the face and then he was walked over, and lay on the ground for two days before he was picked up. Both stomach wounds are discharging fecal matter freely. The Frenchman in the bed next to him has two broken legs and crawled around in a wood for five days before he was found. We have given him eleven litres of saline solution, but he is still nothing but skin and bones and his wounds are so septic that I do not see how he can live. This will give an idea of what the cases are like.

To-night after supper, we got word that a train of British wounded would pass through Villeneuve St. Georges sometime in the early morning where they would stop for breakfast. W., one of the surgeons, a very capable French nurse, and T, decided that we get there some way and see if we could take off some of the more seriously wounded. If we can get some of these men to the hospital, we can probably save several limbs, if not lives, as all these wounds are septic and by the time the men had got to the base it is probable they would be too far gone for hope of recovery. The thing that is most needed, is to get the men off the field and to a place where they can have some sort of attention.

We were told that it was absolutely impossible to get out of Paris in an automobile, and, therefore, went to the railway station where a train was leaving for Villeneuve at midnight. It was then ten o'clock and the train was standing there with almost every seat taken. We decided that we would motor to the gates at any rate and see whether we could get through. We went to the gates where the little French nurse used her smile and supply of rapid French in such a way that in two minutes she had the guard hypnotized, and to our amazement we had been given permission to go through. Once through, away we went for Villeneuve, which was only eight miles outside.

This ride was an exciting one. We were challenged by sentries, who halted us and pointed their bayonets at the radiator of the car. The chauffeur did not know the way; had no light; and was thoroughly scared. Each time we were challenged, he stopped the car so quickly that we nearly went through the wind shield; but by use of Madame's smile and the papers we had been given by the guard, we were passed immediately on each occasion. Arriving at Villeneuve, we went to a large warehouse full of German prisoners and less seriously wounded on all sides. Sentries were posted and camp fires burning. We were told that the train was not expected until about six in the morning. It was then only about half past eleven at night, so the three of us climbed into a day coach that was on a siding and went to sleep.

The commanding medical officer here, a Captain McKinnon, was very decent and said he would let us go through the whole train when they stopped to get breakfast. We managed to get some sleep and at half past five the train was announced. There is no doubt about it---the English know how to run things. Every particular about the arrival of that train, what everyone should do, how the breakfast should be served, had been all thought out and everything went through without a hitch. Englishmen understand the value of discipline.

The train consisted of about twenty box cars, in each one of which were some twenty-five or thirty men packed together upon the floor, lying on straw. About fifteen of the cars contained Scotchmen in their kilts. I had never seen such nerve as these fellows had. Not one of them would admit that there was anything the matter; they all insisted that they were all perfectly right and needed no attention at all and asked us to go on to the next cars "to see to the other lads." We got into each of the cars, examining the men and found a dozen that were very seriously wounded. One fellow, a piper from the famous Black Watch Regiment, had his right arm nearly severed at the shoulder; all the skin and muscle on the back of the shoulder blade was hanging loose. Upon operating on him later, we removed the entire secondary head of a shrapnel from under the skin beside his backbone. It was about the size and shape of the cork of an orange marmalade jar. "I'm not much hurt," he said in the car, "I can go to the Base all right, thank 'e." Poor fellow! He is dead now. Tetanus set in in twenty-four hours after we got him. Those stony, taciturn Scots certainly have real courage. "Nothing the matter with us!" Yes, nothing the matter until they are dead the next day. This man carried his pipes right into the hospital with a firm step and his head up. His name was Reed.

I helped another wounded Scot from the Black Watch, from the car to the warehouse. "Ah, my lad," he said, "I've seen enough of war, and if ye'd seen the sights I saw Monday, ye'd be sick, too! A shell bursts be the side o' three o' your chums and after it's burst, there's not shell, nor man, nor nothing. All of them blown to rags! Don't tell me that the Germans can't shoot with their big guns, either! They can drop shells, one, two, three, four, just like that, right down our lines. There's not three hundred of the Black Watch left and Camerons is about the same."

Little Madame is a genius for putting things through with French officials. She got hold of the station master and in about five minutes had hypnotized him into giving us a car and having it put on the train which left for Paris at 8.30 A. M. We got all of our wounded, twenty-two in all, into it; and got to Paris at 10 A. M. Went to the hospital in a horrible old rattle-trap of an omnibus and another big cart, which caused all the men much unnecessary pain. There are a good many motors which could be put at the disposal of hospitals, but it is quite hard to get hold of them. Mrs. F. tells me that nearly all the people of means who should be doing things here have acted in the most cowardly and selfish way. They promise machines, houses and money and then take their machines out in the country with them, promising to return them the next day. Not a machine comes back. Most of the people who had been counted upon, have gradually petered out and run away.

When we got to the hospital we cut the clothes off most of the men and I tied them up for storage. While I was doing this for one of the Scots, who had a bullet through his chest, another Black Watch man, by the way, he said, "Will ye let me have a look at those kilts?" I gave him the kilts and continued tying up his clothes. I thought he wanted to get something out of a pocket (although there are no pockets in kilts). When I looked up, he was folding them up with his one arm, as carefully as a woman tucking her baby in to sleep.

"See that they're not mussed, will ye?" he said, as he handed them back to me.

On this particular man, Joll, one of our surgeons, did a nice job. The bullet wound of entrance was under his left arm and there was no wound of exit. Joll passed his hand over his back and in a minute located the bullet on the other side of his body, quite close underneath the skin. I could feel or see absolutely nothing. This he cut out without removing the patient from his bed or giving him an anaesthetic.

We are short of men this afternoon and there are a great many operations necessary. I am to help in the operating room all afternoon and probably most of the night. We started in at two in the afternoon. The first operation was amputating the French captain's leg below the knee. The foot was entirely black and there was no chance to save it. This operation was the first major operation I have ever seen and by some chance, proved to be a most unusual one. When he had cut the leg off, tied up the arteries and loosened the tourniquet, the blood from one artery still kept pumping out. Upon investigation, it developed that a splinter of the bullet which passed through his leg had gone up and cut this artery about two inches above the place where he had amputated, and it was a question of taking the leg off above the knee, or getting up in some way and tying that artery. This Joll did after twenty minutes' work. Of course, I know nothing about surgery, but I do know that that man understands his business. It was one of the most interesting hours I ever spent in my life. I did not have the slightest feeling of faintness. The work in the ward has cured me of anything like that.

No. 1 in Ward 1 is dead at last. The poor fellow had two mitrailleuse bullets through his head, and how he managed to keep alive for four days since we have had him, is incredible. He was so nice while he was still conscious and kept apologizing to us for the trouble he gave.

The next two operations were on Scots from the Cameron Highlanders. Both of them had terrible elbows, although not so septic as usual. One man had lost all the flesh on one side and the other had his elbow-joint and forearm splintered and broken in several places. The bullet which struck this last man had broken into several pieces and had torn the arm all to bits. This fellow is about as perfect an animal as I have ever seen. He said he was the champion sprinter of his Regiment. Beautifully made and beautifully muscled. Poor fellow, he is a cripple for life now.

To-night we brought in a Frenchman who had a severe gunshot wound in the back of his head. He was quite delirious. In some way the bullet has stimulated the part of his brain that he used when he was a child of about five. He seems to have forgotten everything else. He shouts, laughs and hurrahs and sings little nursery songs which he must have learned when he was a child. It is pathetic, but he is in such a splendid humor it is hard to keep from laughing yourself; he is a big handsome fellow about 23 years old, evidently a man of good birth, although a private. We operated on him at one o'clock this morning, trephining the skull. Joll got about a teaspoonful of splintered bone out of his brain, which had been driven down from one to two inches, but said it was too dangerous to try to remove the bullet, although he located it with his telephone probe. How he can go digging around in the brain the way he does without killing the patients, seems marvellous. He says there is not much chance for this man recovering his senses, and that he will probably be a permanent imbecile.

Friday, September 18:

The hospital is entirely full now, and we want a place to put about six convalescents so that we can make room for others. Two surgeons and six nurses of our staff arrived this morning from Montereau, from where they have come bringing a barge load of wounded up the Seine. All these men are badly wounded, but comparatively few have dysentery-, which is a relief. We operated on them nearly all day. Most of them are English and Scotch and have wonderful nerve. The men are all pretty well played out and under weight. It takes hardly any chloroform to produce anæsthesia. Many of them shout about the battle as they are going under. All of these men have been in action almost every day since the beginning of August. One old French captain kept shouting, "Allons, mes enfants, tous ensemble, en avant; en avant; en avant.---- A-h!"

One of the Scots told me that when the men deployed and lay down and they gave the order to commence firing, five minutes afterwards, you would only see about one man out of six firing, all the rest would be fast asleep.

Three English officers were brought in to-night. Two of them are boys of twenty-two and twenty-three and have nothing at all the matter with them excepting that they are tired out. One was diagnosed as typhoid. One of them came in lying on a stretcher beside a Tommy. I got into the ambulance and started to take them out.

The Tommy said, "Get the Orficer out first, sir." The "Orficer" took this as a matter of course and allowed himself to be removed. I supposed that he was badly wounded. There was nothing the matter with him at all except that he wanted a rest.

The first thing he said was, "Cawn't I have a bawth.?"

I was furious! I said, "I think we will attend to the wounded men before we give you any 'bawths."

He then said, "I say, don't I know you?"

"No," I answered, "I'm quite sure you don't" and turned my back on him. The Tommy who had asked me to take his superior officer out of the ambulance first, had his leg amputated at the knee that afternoon, got tetanus and died four days afterward.

I want to say right here that these two fellows are in a class by themselves as far as English officers are concerned. As a whole, they are the finest lot of men I have ever seen.

An English boy upon whom we operated to-night, was hit on the right side of the jaw. The entire side of his jaw is gone. You could put an orange into his mouth through the cheek. What is left is horribly swollen and dripping yellow septic pus. I said, "That fellow really cannot live, can he?" But Joll said, "Oh, yes, there is no reason why he should die, if we can keep him from getting poisoned." The bottom part of his tongue is gone, so that he cannot speak articulately and if he holds his head back, his tongue falls backward in his mouth and chokes him. He has to lie face downward and of course cannot take anything but liquid food. When he feels like eating anything, he raps on the table with his feeder and we go to his bed, put a basin in front of him and a rubber cloth around his neck; then he pushes a rubber tube down his throat and we pour in beef tea, or milk, through a funnel. About every other swallow, it goes down the wrong way and he strangles for two minutes; then nods his head as if to say "all ready again." In the course of three-quarters of an hour feeding in this way, which must be exceedingly painful, he can get down about one feeder full of beef tea or milk, half of an ordinary glassful.

I said, "My gracious! you've got more nerve than anyone I've ever seen."

He made a quick motion with his hand, like an umpire waving away players at a baseball game, frowned at me and gurgled, "I'm all right."

On for the night to-night, although I have been on all day and got to bed last night at one o'clock, after having been up for two days and a night in succession. Took a walk with G. first. By the way, G. and N. are both professional singers. They have never done this sort of work before and are perfect trumps. The scenes that we experience in the wards daily are not exactly designed for artistic temperaments. N. nearly cries at some of the things he has to do, but he sticks right to it and finishes them out like a good one.

My first night in Ward 2 was pretty bad. Nearly all of the men had been operated on either that day or the day before, and their wounds were commencing to pain them fearfully. The Scotch piper who had the piece of shrapnel taken out of his back was in terrible agony. He is getting a stiff neck and spells of breathlessness, which means lockjaw, and the poor fellow will be out of his pain before very long. I tried to comfort him and told him what we had got out of his back.

"Thank God for that," he said, "it makes me feel easier," but the convulsions became more frequent and terrible and he died in agony at seven in the morning.

We moved the officers into another ward, which was quite an undertaking, as most of them were badly wounded and two weighed over 200 pounds.

More wounded coming in and operations as fast as we can do them. There has been terrific fighting along the Marne and the Aisne, all of this week. Williams is splendid with his X-Rays. Nearly all the patients are photographed before operating upon them. Williams has located a great many bullets, pieces of shell, overcoat, etc., and makes first rate pictures of fractures. These, he develops in about three minutes and brings into the operating room so that J. and S. can see them before the patient is thoroughly under anæsthesia.

G. left for London this morning and before leaving drew up a very rough organization chart, which assigns me as an attaché of the operating room. This is splendid. I have been practically doing the work of surgeon's assistant there for the past 48 hours.

Saturday, September 19:

Went to bed at ten in the morning and slept for three hours. Came back to the hospital at two in the afternoon, where we operated continuously until two in the morning. Four head cases, four fractured femurs, three arms and a number of minor operations.

Sunday, September 20:

Slept until noon. Had some lunch at two and went out and walked in the Bois for an hour. It was the first fresh air I have had for some time. Had supper with F., who wanted to talk over the prospect of going to some of the field hospitals, which it is proposed to establish close to the line of battle. It has been my wish to do this sort of work, and I feel I could be of far more use out there, than in a hospital. If the men could only receive some sort of attention on the field, it would be a very different story when they are finally got to the hospital. Out of twenty-five patients in Ward 1, fully half of them lay on the battlefield for three days without food or water, before they were picked up. Some of them four and five days.

Monday, September 21:

When I arrived at the hospital this morning I was informed that they had decided to put G. and myself on night duty for the coming week. This is something of a disappointment, but I shall be back again in the operating room at the end of that time.

There were four deaths on Sunday. The Prussian with whom I had my introduction to the job; the man with the awful leg in Ward 1, and two others whom we had just taken in and who were about dead when they arrived. One of them died a few hours after having his leg amputated at the hip. There really was not much use in doing it; the leg was so rotten that you could nearly have pulled it off with your hands; besides that, the poor fellow had fearful dysentery and had become so reduced that he looked like pictures of people in India who have died from famine.

After lunch, went down town with Mrs. F. in her car, where we inspected the Ritz Hotel, which has been turned into a hospital. There are sixty-four beds there, splendid equipment; about twenty-five nurses, everything that could be wished, and no patients. The reason is, that the French doctors in charge will not move without authority from the officials of the Bureau de Santé. We told them that they would never get any patients if they waited for authority from them. Mrs. F. has been making a list of available beds now waiting for patients in Paris, and says she is sure there are over nine hundred, yet the French red tape and petty officialism is so abominable that nothing is done, and wounded men are lying at the gates of Paris amid conditions that can hardly be described. At Limoges---in the center of France---two weeks ago, there were over nine thousand wounded, and accommodations for about half that number; there was absolutely no provision for their care at all, and they are dying like flies in the autumn.

NOTE: It must be remembered that this was at the very beginning of the war. They had no time in which to organize themselves or make any preparation for handling the wounded. All their efforts had been directed toward saving Paris.

The French management of wounded trains is so shocking that it can hardly be spoken of. Men are crowded into box cars where they lie about on the floor, dead and living together, for three or four days, in filth that is beyond description. All the men have dysentery, all the wounds are septic and, of course, they cannot remove any part of their clothes which have been on their bodies for weeks. We have spoken to the Bureau de Santé but they say, "We must consider this one of the horrors of war." Joll said that in one place the wounded were in such numbers that the French surgeons merely amputated above the wound in every case where careful dressing would be required.

W., who went out to Villeneuve with us, came in from another expedition for wounded to-night; they had been out along the Marne River in our ambulance with its white body and Red Cross painted on the sides. As they were passing a wood about one hundred meters from the road, twenty or thirty Germans sprang out of it and opened fire upon them with their carbines. This is the first time I have really had first hand information of Germans firing upon Red Cross ambulances. They put six holes through the cover of the car, but fortunately did not hit anybody in it. There are considerable numbers of Germans who have become lost during this rapidly moving line of fighting and are prowling about the country, hiding during the daytime and ready to take any means of rejoining their companions.

It is not an uncommon occurrence in the suburbs of Paris these days, to find a stranded German soldier in the early morning, trying to rob your chicken roost.

German atrocities have been, of course, much overdrawn, but there is no doubt that many of the stories are true. A Belgian who had been in the Home Guard of Brussels and who had fought at Louvain, told me that he had seen Germans kill wounded men on the ground by smashing them on the head with the butts of their carbines. I said: "Did you actually see them with your own eyes?" "Oui, Monsieur, pas une fois, mais douze fois!" he replied. Other French soldiers have told me, however, that while they lay wounded on the ground, the Germans stopped and gave them water to drink out of their own canteens. As Mr. Burke says, "You cannot draw an indictment against a whole nation."

Tuesday, September 22:

A busy night to-night. There were three head operations. We got the bullets out of two.

We brought in a new wounded man to-day, who has two fingers of his right hand gone and a very septic wound. He is a fine looking fellow, a private in the Coldstream Guards, and the first man I have seen yet, either officer or private, who has talked coherently about the tactics of the fighting. He knew what his regiment and the other regiments with his, were trying to do in most of the actions they were engaged in, naming nearly all of them.

He was very interesting and had been in action almost every day for four weeks.

Said they had only been landed in Ostend for fifteen minutes, when they had their first skirmish with a German patrol which ran into them without knowing they were there. Said that at Mons the slaughter of the Germans had been terrific; that he had seen men shooting from behind piles of dead Germans three feet high. Said that a good deal of the work had been hand-to-hand mix-ups. Said that about August 12th they had nearly the entire right wing of the German army surrounded, and that if the Germans had not broken through the Belgian left, they would have captured or killed all of them. As it was, the Germans lost about twenty-five thousand. They then asked for an armistice for twenty-four hours to bury their dead, but this armistice was not granted, as the real purpose of asking was to give them time to reorganize themselves. Said that the Germans fired on Red Cross organizations consistently, that the first time they had sent out a detachment of the R. A. M. C. in the daytime near Mons, the Germans almost annihilated them. Out of two hundred and fifty that went out, only about ninety returned. Since then all this work has been done at night.

One of the first wounded we got in from the Marne, is a little æsthetic looking Frenchman, whom we call "Peeping Tom" because he is always peeping like a little chicken. I don't blame him, for he has a nasty septic wound on the thigh and fractured femur, but he is a nuisance and is always asking for this, that or the other thing, whether he needs it or not. The Sisters had him in a private room at Montereau and he was well spoiled by them. He is only about twenty-two. A couple of days ago he was making an unusual amount of racket about the "jambe," and I went over and asked him what was the matter.

"Oh, ça fait mal; ce n'est pas bien placé," he moaned.

I raised the knee slightly as he directed me to, and when he said that it was easier, I put a china soap cup which was lying on the table beside the bed, underneath it to keep it in that position.

"Oh, la, la; Oh, Docteur!" he shouted.

"What's the matter? Is it hurting you worse?" said I.

"No," he replied.

"Well, what's the matter then?" I asked.

He clasped his hands in front of him, holding them out toward me with a look of supplication.

"Oh, mais c'est si froid!" he wailed.

"You shut up!" said I, laughing, and he had to even smile himself.

Got to bed at ten in the morning and slept until one. Back again at two in the afternoon for another week of day duty.

Thursday, September 24:

We need some system here badly. The nurses may be very good technical nurses, but not one of them knows the first thing about organization or management. After half a dozen lunches where everything was in confusion---three people doing one job and no people doing two jobs,---I thought it was about time to outline the work a bit myself. So I drew up an organization chart assigning everybody definite duties. The head nurse said she hadn't any objections to my trying it, so we put it into operation. The meals, at least, will run smoothly now, although the difficulty about running a place like this is that it is not on a hiring and firing basis, like other business organizations. If you have inefficient help you have to keep them, and do the best you can.

A boy was brought in here this morning with a hand and arm like nothing I have ever seen before. He already shows the first symptoms of tetanus. We have kept the arm in a bath and given him the maximum amount of tetanus serum. His hand is a slimy green thing, the size of a mop, with the poor fingers like rotten cucumbers. It cannot be described on paper, one has to see it to get an idea of what it is like.

Another man who has been shot in the leg has something the matter with his stomach, too, and has been vomiting steadily since nine o'clock this morning. They have given him medicine, but it does not stop, and he is so reduced and exhausted that he does not look as if he could live long.

We have another bad case. A young English sergeant with a piece of his spine shot away. He has been married only six months and his wife is in Paris and at the hospital now. It is very pathetic. He cannot live, and to hear them talking about what they will do when he gets better, almost makes one cry. There is no use telling her that he is going to die.

To-night Joll gave instructions to have four patients in Ward No. 2 sent into the theater, in a certain order and at a certain time. The day shift went off duty and the night shift came on duty without being given these instructions. As a result, when he was ready to commence work, no one in the ward knew anything. Joll was furious; sent upstairs and got the head nurse out of bed and had her come down and point out the patients. He is quite right; she must be made to understand that it is necessary to systematize her work.

Very interesting operations again to-night and I stayed at the hospital until 1 A. M.

One operation was the injection of Stovane serum into the spinal column. It renders the part of the body below the point of injection insensible to pain for twenty-four hours or so. Within ten minutes after giving this injection, Joll cut into the patient's leg, hooked out the sciatic nerve and injected anti-tetanic serum into it. The patient was sitting up and talking all the time without any feeling of pain at all. This was wonderful work. The sciatic nerve is almost in the middle of the thigh and Joll got down to it in about one minute without cutting a muscle or losing more than a few teaspoonfuls of blood.

Friday, September 25:

Saw Mr. Bacon, the former Ambassador to France, this morning and had an hour's talk with him. He says there isn't any chance of getting to the front. The English and French armies won't have any outsiders messing about their work. I think they are quite right, but it is a disappointment. Mr. Bacon has been to the general staff, so there is not much use in trying anything after that.

Dinner and supper went off in first rate shape to-day, and we cleaned up the ward and pantry and got everything that wasn't working, out of the way.

The man who was vomiting all day yesterday, died this morning shortly after I came in. It was rather a sudden death. He had seemed easier and was talking to a nurse beside his bed-asked her to get him something; she went away and when she came back again---within one minute---he was dead. We don't yet know what he died of, except that he was generally all in.

The young sergeant who had had the section of his spine shot away, is also dead, and his poor little wife is in a pitiful state. N. took her out riding in an automobile. He can talk to people like a father; and she needs a change of scene and fresh air or else she will break down, too.

Saturday, September 26:

M., the little French nurse who went to Villeneuve with us to get the wounded, is suspected of being a German spy! I do not know what to think. I cannot size her up exactly. She is certainly very smart, and doesn't look like a French woman. Mme. P. who sent her to us from the Union des Femmes de France, told us she didn't know much about her, and suggested that we watch her. N. is a good authority on languages, speaking French, English and German perfectly enough to pass for any one of the three. He says he knows she is not French by the way she pronounces certain French words, and that he is almost certain she is German on account of other distinctive pronunciations. I do not know what to think.

I told little M. that there was a report going about to the effect that she was a German spy. She had been told this before, and I wanted to see what she would say. She seemed quite angry, and said that people could be put in prison for making assertions of that kind without cause. I told her that it was all nonsense, of course, and that none of us thought there was anything in it and that we all knew she was French. She said she could prove it easily enough. (Later on she did.)

Our relations with the management of this hotel are decidedly unpleasant. I am quite sure that the only reason the hotel was given as a hospital was as a sort of insurance proposition. When the Germans were at the gates of Paris and their entrance to the city imminent, a hotel containing wounded soldiers, especially wounded Germans, would be less liable to be looted and damaged. Now that there is no chance of the Germans getting in here, I think they would jolly well like to kick us all out. The French manager is an impossible little fellow, and has been given instructions by someone else to cut down expenses to the last cent. He runs about having electric lights turned off, and hiding cups, plates, knives, forks, etc., and making it generally uncomfortable for us. I had to go out this morning and buy three dozen drinking glasses for the patients in our ward; it saved time to get them that way rather than fight with these people.

The little Scotch boy with the awful hand is beginning to have convulsions. It is terrible to watch him, but he is kept so full of morphine that he does not feel much. He has such a nice gentle face.

Sunday, September 27:

Four bombs were dropped on Paris at noon to-day; one of them landed in the Avenue du Trocadero, about 300 yards from the hospital, and blew a little girl's leg off. It also came quite close to Mr. Herrick, the American Ambassador. Not much other damage done, however.

The boy with the awful hand is somewhat better. Joll says he is likely to live, as the convulsions extend only above the waist. He hasn't yet had any that extend over his entire body, where the head and heels are bent backwards like a bow until they almost meet. I do not know why a hand and arm like that are left on him, but the nurses tell me that when a patient has tetanus, they don't operate.

Helped to dress the captain's leg to-day with Dr. S. and Tom. . . . It is wonderfully improved. A terrible septic shell wound in the thigh and fractured femur. The first time I saw that leg I thought: What is the use of keeping it on? The man had been in a German hospital for two weeks, where the leg had received practically no attention, although he said they did what they could for him. When I first picked it up, the skin parted at the heel like wet tissue paper, and yellow slime ran out, while the wound on the thigh looked and smelt like rotten fish. Now the flesh is good and red, and although there are enormous incisions on each side which go clean through, he will probably be able to walk on it before this time next year. We take almost a basinful of stuffing out of it every time it is dressed. It reminds me of a conjurer pulling guinea pigs and things out of a hat. There seems to be no end to them.

Monday, September 28:

Had breakfast at the Hotel de l'Empire this morning, as the hospital one is irregular and bad,---one waiter for fourteen men, and twenty-five nurses. The other morning we came in and found only six cups on the table. Upon asking why there were no more, we were informed that the management had not left out any more.

It appears that they had set aside one cup each for the patients, and one each for the staff, etc., and that some of the cups were mislaid. Williams ran and got the manager and told him he would punch his head, if he didn't get us other cups in five minutes.

We have a new head nurse in Ward 2 now, Miss W. She is fine, the first woman we have had here yet who knows how to give orders. Miss A. is a nice girl, and, I suppose, a fairly good nurse, but she knows no more about management than a babe in arms. This new nurse will soon have everything in shipshape. She accomplished more this morning than the rest of them have done in a week.

The boy with the awful hand died this morning. It was a shame to have him go; he made a splendid fight for life and we all thought he was going to get well. There is not much hope for tetanus, though. I believe the mortality is over ninety per cent. I have bought a pair of gloves and a linen coat. I am afraid to handle patients like that with my bare hands and have them touch my clothes. If you should have anything open on your hand and get any of that stuff into it, it is an even chance that you will get tetanus yourself, and I handle dirty cases hourly.

Had a little conversation with my friend Jock Constable, the Black Watch Scot, who has been in the ward for some ten days. He said that when he first got hit (they were charging the Germans with the bayonet), it turned him end over end, and he was unconscious for about an hour. He said when he came to, he was lying in a little depression on the ground with some other wounded men. Beside him was a German whose head was blown off. At about dusk the Germans came up.

"I saw them a comin', so I closed my eyes," he said, "but I could na help from smiling hearin' 'em say 'Yah, yah, yah' to each other."

The Germans went over them and took their bully beef and hard tack, which they immediately devoured. They left soon afterwards, and it began to rain and continued raining all night.

In the morning he heard some soldiers coming up, and when he saw they were English, he said, "Is the coast clear?" They answered, "You're all right, Jock, they're all ahead of us now." So he got up and got to the rear himself and sent the stretcher bearers up for the others.

Tuesday, September 29:

Our ambulance brought in seven new cases from Noisy-le-Sec, all of which are pretty bad. One man has a bullet through the left side of his face which has taken out nearly all of the upper row of canine and molar teeth. The face is badly swollen and there is no wound of exit. He is conscious, though, and Joll says he will probably get well even if we do not remove the bullet. Face wounds look terrible but they are generally much less serious than they seem. I would a great deal rather have a face wound like that than a fractured femur. Another boy---one of the little chasseurs Alpines---has a bullet wound passing sideways through his wind-pipe. He was just able to breathe. Joll did the tracheotomy operation on him with local anaesthetics in about ten minutes, and had him back in the ward breathing through a silver tube stuck in his neck above the collar bone. They say he will be all right in two weeks. Another man has a shrapnel bullet which came down on him from above, cutting through his neck about four inches, but not breaking the jaw. It then passed into the shoulder at the point of the scapula, breaking the bone and lodging under the skin at the neck of the humerus. Took out the bullet and sewed up the wound. The face wound is merely superficial.

The next man had the largest assortment of wounds that I have seen yet. All of them were over ten days old and you could smell him from across the room. He had a cut on the top of his head four or five inches long, with the skin hanging loose. His right shoulder and the upper part of his arm were the color of morocco leather with blood infusion under the skin, and the shoulder badly broken. He had been thrown violently against something. The right arm had been almost completely severed at the wrist, all tendons were cut and the hand chocolate colored and smelling like rotten meat, which it was. Three fingers were gone from the other hand and a piece of flesh missing from the calf of his right leg as big as a mutton chop. We went over him in the theater; the scalp wound proved to be superficial and the skull not damaged. The septic arm had to be amputated below the elbow, as there was no possibility of conservative treatment. The rest of his wounds were cleaned and dressed. The man was French, a fine looking and well-educated fellow, although a private. He got out of bed and on to the stretcher himself and talked to us cheerfully, although he must have been in terrible pain. I asked him if he had not knocked over a cavalry charge, but he said, "Non, un obus seulement."

Several fractured femurs are being treated in a rather peculiar way. A tenpenny nail is driven into the bone and the leg hung from the nail. J. says it is the latest and best way of supporting a fractured limb. It does not seem to hurt the patients, but it looks very queer to see the head of an ordinary nail sticking out of the flesh with a string tied to it.

Dressed the Captain's leg again. He has to be put under chloroform each time. The leg is wonderfully better and hardly smells at all now.

Wednesday, September 30:

The new head nurse-Miss W.----- is fine.

She has the place running like a machine now, and there isn't so much to do. After lunch this afternoon, I took Jock S., one of the Scots, out in an open carriage in his kilts, for a drive through Paris. He only had a fracture of the humerus and is now convalescent. He has been brought up in a little country town in Scotland all his life and had never been in a big city. I took him past the Arc de Triomphe; down the Champs Elysées; past the Louvre and to Notre Dame and told him about Revolutionary French history. We had tea and a couple of large sized portions of his native Scotch whiskey. He had a good time, I think. He kept repeating---"Ah, ye don't know what this means to a bloke like me. Ah, but I wish the missus was along. It's the best afternoon I ever spent in my life."

I had to run into Brentano's for a moment and left Jock in the open barouche outside, on the Avenue de l'Opéra. When I came out I found him surrounded by a crowd of at least fifty people, who were all asking him questions in both French and English. Jock looked terribly unhappy. When I got into the carriage and we started off, he put his hand on my knee and said, with a look of unspeakable relief, "Lord, I was just a prayin' for ye to come."

We have a large flock of visitors now daily. Every afternoon between four and five o'clock a lot of philanthropic old ladies, together with relatives of the wounded, arrive, bringing cigarettes, chocolate, books, etc. Last week one old lady appeared and suddenly from under, her cloak produced a squirt gun, about two feet long, loaded with cologne, and started around the ward with it. One of the first men she got to was Jock Constable, of the Black Watch. She marched up to him, held the nozzle a few inches from his nose and soused him with perfume. Jock had never been up against this sort of thing before and didn't quite know what to do. You could see he didn't know whether to duck or not. He, nevertheless, submitted with good grace and escaped uninjured.

Thursday, October 1:

Mr. Bacon stopped at the hotel this morning and asked me if I would come with him to the American Ambulance. He has been using his own car as an ambulance and has brought in a number of special cases direct from the field. We went to Neuilly in his automobile and he told me that I could get work there which would offer me more opportunities than the Majestic Hotel Hospital. I said that anything which would get me near the front could have me. The American Ambulance is located in a huge new public school building. They have three hundred and fifty patients there now, with immediate capacity for five hundred, and an ultimate capacity for one thousand.

I forgot to say that about ten days ago we called them up and asked if they could get us some patients with their automobiles. They told us they could get us twenty wounded which they were bringing in from Villeneuve that night. I do not know the details of the case, but there was some inexcusable mix-up on our part. They arrived with the twenty and we were ready to take only five. This was at three o'clock in the morning and it was raining. They had to take the rest of their patients away to put them anywhere they could. I was on duty that night and remember it well. Their head ambulance man was very angry and rightly so. I met him at the American Ambulance this morning, and spoke of that night.

He said: "I am done with the Majestic. When I got there that night, you know, the first thing I did was to spend fifteen minutes trying to find somebody who knew anything at all. Finally I got hold of some man who said ‘he thought they were to take some wounded, but that the only man who knew was the chief surgeon.' I was then shown in my street clothes into the operating room, where the chief surgeon was at work on a patient who was lying on the table with his brain exposed. As I was getting ready to leave, some dub came out who said that we had given them four patients and not five and wanted me to come into the ward and count them. I think he was drunk." (That was N. and he wasn't drunk.)

Nevertheless, he is more or less right in what he says. That mix-up was inexcusable and was entirely due to G. not having organized the hospital. J. and W. are not supposed to be organizers. They were brought there to operate and have been busy doing it all the time.

Well, the place is all right now, and there will never be anything like that again.

Mr. Bacon introduced me to Dr. De Bouchet, the head of the Ambulance, and Dr. Gross, the chief medical man. They told me that they would put me in the Ambulance Corps if I wanted to come. They are about to take on five more Ford Ambulances, to operate from various bases, twenty miles or so from Paris. This is more like the work I have been wishing to do. Another proposition, which seems even better, Mr. Bacon spoke of to-day: It seems that there is being organized at this moment, an ambulance service to operate in direct conjunction with the British and French armies in the field. This is being run by Mr. Harjes, of Morgan, Harjes & Co. Of course, it is exactly what I want and Mr. Bacon will get me into it, if he can.

Back to the hospital in time to serve the patients' lunch.

Went out for a walk at five and upon returning, find a note from Mrs. Harjes asking me to call upon her to-night to talk over going to the front with their Ambulance Service and Field Hospital. "Ambulance Mobile de Premiers Secours," as it is called.

Friday, October 2:

I called upon Mrs. Harjes this morning, who tells me that they have definite authority to work as they had planned. They already have a half dozen automobiles, nearly all their equipment, two operating surgeons in Paris, and Mr. J. P. Morgan of New York has cabled them that he has sent over four more. They are now on the ocean.

Dr. W., an American, is their chief surgeon, and I had a half hour's talk with him. He says that the thing is absolutely settled and that we are going to start just as quickly as we can get all our equipment together. We shall probably leave Sunday afternoon.

The idea is to follow up the lines of battle, get the wounded men off the field and bring them to a point as close to the rear as we deem safe, where we will give them first aid and send them on. He has accepted my offer to help in this work and this diary will stop here for the time being.

Note: The subsequent writing was not commenced until three weeks later.

Part Three
Table of Contents