The Farmington times. (Farmington, St. Francois County, Mo.) 1905-1926, 1918-11-15
A Patients Praise

NSAiN"i WI 20
A Patients Praise
To the Editor Of the Stars and
Stripes:- =.
The doughboys have a pretty rank
sort of existence at times, don't you
think? When they're going right ov-
err open country into the face of ma
chine gun fire and when they're down
in shell craters, ducking the chance
of another one hitting the same spot,
or when they've received orders to
move just as their old pedal extreme
ties were about all in and they needed
a rest, or when they are bombed from
above and when they see their bunkies
carried from vigorous life to eternity
in less time than the telling takes, and.
all the rest of liant it hell?
But there's another bunch of fell
lows, and their jobs no cinch, and
there's mighty little relief for them.
Sometimes they meet with all the fuss
of an attack or an advance, but not
any majority of them. And the boys
l mean are those who are keeping the
hospitals of the S. o. S. going, and at
many times they go rather keenly.
Life up front is very unstable
sort of affair, at best, and death is so
common that it loses some Of its
sting through familiarity, and when
bunkie falls, doesn't it make the
survivor more set in his purpose, and
isn't there that ever-present feature
of adventure and action to help pacify
the appetites of the men which the in
sufficient supply of bully beef and
spuds failed to appease? Many of our
hospitals have no women nurses in
them, and there man lacks that
motherly tenderness found in women
and that being patient and attentive
to the wants of others which has ever
been very much part of his life.
Just now I'm in such hospital, and
my ward is run by sergeant and
about six orderlies. There are beds
for 81, and these men keep things GO
ing and frictionless day and night,
and it's no piker's job.
There's only one ward in any hos
pital which is meaner place to work
in than the place filled with patients
suffering from dysentery. And here
these big, healthy men are diligently,
carefully and patiently making it cas-
Ter for the men who have become so
weak that they cannot control the ac-
tions of their organs.
From early morning until late at
night the same faces may be seen
moving about the ward washing men,
changing foul bedding, emptying re-
fuse cans, taking temperature and pull
SEES, passing out medicine, bringing in
food for the men on liquid, light and
regular diets, and hearing them all
ask for more, cleaning the dishes,
heating water, tidying the ward or fill
ing some fellows water glass.
Why, there's one poor devil a few
beds from mine who is just skele-
ton and is in need of constant atten-
ton, and the sergeant spends most of
when the fellow calls his half-hearted
and strengthless Sergeant, Ser
geantl" and he's as well treated as eh
could be by his own folks, and so it is
with the other fellows.
Nothing seems to be too much trou-
BILE for them, and I've never heard one
of them growl at the rankest, rotten
est job man can picture. They sell
dom smile, but they never frUwn.
And some day, when this game has
been played, and we're all back home
applauding the movies of cur advan-
ce over Jerry's lines, l hope they'll
find some way of cheering these fell
lows who cure one to make room for
another, who work harder than most
of the rest of us, and who are men to
their backbones, but are seldom laud-
ed.
Serg. Arthur H. Lynch, A. S.