The herald-advance. (Milbank, S.D.) 1890-1922, 1916-03-03
SAVED The WOUNDED
GOOD WORK OF THE RAILROADS
OF FRANCE.
Ambulance Trains Have Conveyed SOL
diers, Injured While on Duty in
the Trenches, to Points Where
Relief Could Be Afforded.

The French have equipped a system
OF ESQ special ambulance trains for
carrying wounded men from the front
to hospitals, where they will be prop
erly cared for. AS the wal goes on the
railroad stands out more and more
clearly as the ~inalienable servant of
the warning armies. In the beginning
it served only as a carrier OF troops
and supplies, but now we have in ad-
hospital train service, about which re
wolves every other service for the
wounded. The careful and rapid trans
portation of troops has been the means
of saving a multitude Of valuable lives,
for the greatest enemy Of the wound
ed soldier is infection, the bullet or
shell having carried into the flesh
soiled pieces of his clothing. 1t then
becomes a race against time and dis
lance to get the man into a real hos
pital, where his wound can be washed
and disinfected. AS organized
the stats of the hospital trains under
take to wash the soldiers wounds en-
route il necessary.
beginning before the war with seven
hospital trains, kept almost for show,
since nobody could foresee the need
for hundreds of trains and thousands
of specially equipped cars, sufficient to
carry a half million wounded a month,
there have been slowly prepared in
France no less than ESQ thoroughly
equipped hospital trains, composed OF
1000 cars. or one thirteenth the total
number Of passenger cars used on all
the roads of the United States. The
total capacity Of these $50 trains Is
about loo, 900 wounded. 1t is estimated
that to date, including German wound
ed, nearly 1900, 900 men have been car
ried from the front to the hospitals in
France in these trains.
Each train is as perfectly organized
as a hospital ship. Each has its num-
Der, each has Red Cross emblems
painted on every car, each its selected
set of officers and nurses who
leave it, each it's allowance Of supplies,
it's special equipment and its special
duties.
The wonderful part about this serv-
ice is the minimum of cost for opera
ton. Although M less than $160, 000,-
900 is being spent for the wounded
this year, a comparatively small part
of this money has gone into the hos
pital trains. The organization con-
trolling these trains is particularly re-
markable in that it was born of a
necessity which no n but railroad
men could understand until the past
spring. Literally millions upon mil
lions Of men and women, mindful OF
their own loved ones, have been and
are giving Of their time and their
money to the wounded. But while
everybody could visualize the need for
s~tretchers, for additional hospitals, or
for motor ambulances for use on the
battlefields, or to meet trains at in
terror railway stations, and to carry
the wounded to the hospitals, but few
could understand that it was a matter
Of life and death to fit trains properly
for the carrying of the wounded dur
ing a brief 10 or 20 hours. So it was
only this spring that there came any
public realization Of the need Of organ
izing the work of the trains. The work
that had been done had been carried
on by a few railroad men and train
surgeons clamoring for money from
public or private sources. Finally, they
were understood, and each city Of
France began to contribute money;
then q few Americans contributed
money, and now, with the service in
good order, funds are available from
other Quarters.-From an article In
the Railway Age Gazette.