Norwich bulletin., 1915-05-05
Stories of the War
American Girls Experience.

An American girl who recently vol unteered for service with Red Cross ambulance in Belgium sends the fol- lowing account of her first case:
 "The commandant doctor with whom was assigned to work had taken me far up toward the front, where a Bel gian battery was stationed. While he attended to some trifing injuries, there came the sound of cannonadlng, and news that the Germans were at tacking the very section where we were working.
 Suddenly, at what seemed the last minute of safety, two Belgian stretch e--bearers, without a stretcher, rush ed up to me. They said there was a man badly wounded somewhere up the road. I found a stretcher and went off with them to look for him.
 I've went on and on. It probably wasn't more than 500 yards, but it seemed like a very long ways, It seemed impossible to find the house; Then some women came running ana pointed out the place. The stretcher bearers hurried off with their stretch CT. I followed.
 ''The man, horribly hurt with. a wound like red pit below his Shoul- der blades, was brought ana iald on the stretcher. He lay there quietly on his side. in a posture of utter resigna- tion to anguish.
 He was a Belgian peasant, clumsily built; he had a broad, rather ugly face, narrowing suddenly as the fringe of his whiskers became a little Strag- gling beard. But to me he was the most beautiful person I had ever seen. loved him. He was my first wounded man!
 q tricd-I still try--to persuade my self that if I hadn't bullied my two bearers and repulsed an attempt to get my stretcher away for some other patients, he would have been left be- hind in that little house. We got him out of the yard all right, and on to the paved road. Then, to my horror the bearers dumped him down on the paving stones. They said he was much too heavy. They couldn't pos sibly carry him unless they rested.
 q didn't think it was exactly the moment for resting, and told them so were likely to come around the turn in the road at any time. You never knowi
 But the bearers stood stolidly in the middle of the road and mopped their faces and puffed. The situation be- nightmare. So I grabbed on one end of the stretcher and said I would carry it myself. I said l wasn't very strong, and perhaps couldn't do it, but anyhow would try.
 They picked it up at once then, and started off at a good swinging trot over the rough paving stones, jolting my poor patient horribly. I suggested that they walk on the smooth path at the side. They hailed this suggestion as a most brilliant and original idea.
 "As my patient was brought into the village where the battery was sta toned, the ambulance had got it's wounded and was ready to go. But he had to have his wound dressed. He lay there in the middle of the street and I had to watch while the surgeon stuffed his wound with antiseptic gauge. I had always supposed that the dressing of a wound was a cautious and delicate process. But it wasn't. There was a careless audacity about it. The surgeon worked rapidly, un- moved, as if he were stuffing an old crate with straw. And it was all over in a moment or two. There seemed something indecent in the haste with which my Belgian was disposed of. Then the surgeon remarked casu- ally that my patients wound didn't amount to much. It looks much worse than 1t really is,' he said. I felt hurt. as if this beloved person had been sighted, also as if there had been some subtle disparagement of my. friend" Y