Part 12 (1/2)

Then there were the things for which the Medical Corps frankly made no provision, which could have no place in a strictly military programme, such as food delicacies of great cost, special articles of clothing, and amus.e.m.e.nts. Every hospital convalescent ward had its phonograph, its checker-boards, its chess-sets, and its dominoes. That was the Red Cross.

[Ill.u.s.tration: Red Cross Hospital at Neuilly, formerly the American Ambulance Hospital]

The Red Cross had three hospitals of its own in Paris. The first of these was at Neuilly, the hospital which had been the American Ambulance Hospital from the beginning of the war, given over on the third anniversary of its inauguration. Here French and American soldiers, American civilians who worked with the army, and Red Cross officers and men were cared for. The second had been Doctor Blake's Hospital, and when it became a Red Cross hospital, it was made to include the gigantic laboratory where investigations were made, and where the American Red Cross had the honor to ferret out the cause of trench-fever. This fever had been one of the baffling tragedies of the war, because in the press of caring for their wounded, other hospitals had been unable to give it sufficient research.

The third was the Reid Hospital, equipped and supplied by Mrs. Whitelaw Reid.

In the long period when all this hospital organization was at the command of civilian France, inestimably fine work was done. It was a sort of poetic tuition fee for the instruction in war surgery which was meanwhile going on from veteran French surgeons to the American newcomers. At the end of the first year, the Medical Corps was itself ready for any stress, and it had mightily relieved the stress it had already found.

CHAPTER XV

IN CHARGE OF MORALE

If the army as a whole was a story of old skill in new uses, certainly the most extraordinary single upheaval was that of the Y. M. C. A.

Though it had grown into many paths of civil life, in peace-times, that could not have been foreshadowed by its founders, probably the wildest speculation of its future never included the purveying of vaudeville and cigarettes to soldiers in France.

Yet just that was what the Y. M. C. A. was doing, within less than a year from the American Army's arrival in France, and its only lamentation was that it had nowhere near enough cigarettes and vaudeville to purvey.

It accepted the offer of the United States Government to watch over the morale of the soldiers abroad, partly because it was so excellently organized that it could handle a task of such vast scope, and partly because both French and British Armies had got such fine results from similar organizations that the American Y. M. C. A. felt itself to be historically elected.

The Y. M. C. A. had cut its wisdom-teeth long before it became a part of the army. Its directors had accepted the fact that a young man is apt to be more interested in his biceps than in his soul, and that if he can have athletics aplenty, and entertainment that really entertains, he'd as lief be out of mischief as in it.

But even this was not quite broad enough for the needs of the army away from home. And one of the first things the Y. M. C. A. did in France, and the stoutest pillar of its great success, was to abandon the slightest aversion to bad language, or to the irreligion that brims out of a cold, wet, and tired soldier in defiant spurts, and to cultivate, in their stead, a sympathetic feeling for the want of smokes and a good show.

The secretaries sent abroad to build the first huts and watch over the first soldiers were men selected for their skill in getting results against considerable obstacles. Those who followed, as the organization grew, were specialists of every sort. There were nationally famous sportsmen, to keep the baseball games up to scratch, and to see that gymnastics out-of-doors were helped out by the rules. There were men who could handle crowds, keep an evening's entertainment going, play good ragtime, make good coffee, and produce cigarettes and matches out of thin air.

And, most important of all, they were men who could eradicate the doughboy's suspicion that the Y. M. C. A. was a doleful, overly prayerful, and effeminate inst.i.tution.

The Y. M. C. A. was dealing with the doughboy when he was on his own time. If he didn't want to go to the ”Y” hut, n.o.body could make him.

Certain things that were bad for him were barred to him by army regulation. But there was a margin left over. If the doughboy was doing nothing else, he might be sitting alone somewhere, feeling of his feelings, and finding them very sad. The army did not cover this, but the Y. M. C. A. took the ground that being melancholy was about as bad as being drunk.

But, naturally, the Red Triangle man had to use his tact. If he didn't have any, he was sent home. His job was to persuade the doughboy, not to instruct him. And before long, the rule of the Y. M. C. A. was flatly put: ”Never mind your own theories--do what the soldiers want.”

That is why the ”Y” huts--the combination shop, theatre, chapel, and reading-room, coffee-stall and soda fountain, baseball-locker and cigarette store, post-office and library which are run by the Y. M. C.

A. from coast to battle-line--are packed by soldiers every hour of the day and evening.

The ”Y” huts began with the army. Before the second day of the First Division's landing, there was a circus banner across the foot of the main street stating: ”This is the way to the Y. M. C. A. Get your money changed, and write home.” By following the pointing red finger painted on the banner, one found a wooden shack, with a few chairs, a lot of writing-paper and French money, a secretary and a heap of good-will.

As the army moved battleward, these huts appeared just ahead of the soldiers, with increased stores at each new place. American cigarettes were on the counters. A few books arrived.

The Y. M. C. A. proved its persuasiveness by its huts. A member of the quartermasters' corps said, one day, in a fit of exasperation over a waiting job: ”How do these 'Y' fellows do it--I can't turn without falling over a shack, built for them by the soldiers in their off time.

Do I get any work out of these soldiers when they're off? I do not.

They're too busy building 'Y' huts.”

The first entertainment in the ”Y” huts was when the company bands moved into them because the weather was too bad to play out-of-doors. The concerts were a great success. By and by, men who knew something interesting were asked to make short lectures to the soldiers. It was an easy step to asking some clever professional entertainer to come down and give a one-man show. Then Elsie Janis, who was in Europe, made a flying tour of the ”Y” huts, and a little while after, E. H. Sothern and Winthrop Ames went over to see how much organized entertainment could be sent from America.