The Birmingham age-herald., 1918-07-08
WAR CASUALTIES IN RECONSTRUCTION HOSPITALS CHEERFUL
Americans Sent Back From Battle Front, Maimed or
 Disfigured, Do Not Lose POise

ualties from the American army fighting in France is now being balanced by re turning convalescents, whose numbers in the reconstruction centers like Wal ter Reed hospital here have reached an appreciable total.
 It is an outstanding fact to all ob- servers that an American youth smashed by a shell, bomb or hand grenade is. notwithstanding. exactly the same kind Of individual he was before he went in. High spirited, mischievous, all personal loss discounted and humanly anxious to resume any dull round of civilian labor, they have a tendency to regard the care fully planned hospital school for re-edu- eating them to usefulness with the same distaste that healthy youth has for the training establishments however desir- able he may know them to be-
 So a chance visitor to the hospital ex. pecting to discover a hero is apt to find a proportion of youths whose clothes have been taken away from them 10 compel them to stay near their beds They are likely to be calculating intel ligently their chances to shirk irksoms routine. Whatever adventure and tor. ture they have lived is being forgotten, while their force and energy are en. tirly devoted to the problem of today.
 "Yes, they are most healthy and nor nal human beings, Jundepressed and en- tirely unworried about anything" ex- plained Major Cotton, one of the chiefs of orthopedic surgery at Walter Reed. We find these are not i'll people. Their mental and physical vigor is most as- tonishing to persons not familiar with the circumstances"
 It is requiring continuation of mill. tary discipline and considerable patience and persistence to work out on this ma terial, the far-sighted plans for teach ing maimed man a new and productive trade. The massage, hydrotherapy and electric treatment to restore wasted mus cle and shrunken limb are regarded as splendid but the schools are lodged most glady. Still, the men are weaving bas. kets, and demonstrating intelligent in- terest in automobile mechanics and oth- erwise submitting to requirements which are made before they can have liberty and leisure.
 See German" responded Maurice Becker, once private in the Sixteenth infantry, who left his left hand in an army hospital near Foul last January. You bet l saw German. Three of them, all at once, one night. patrolling in front of our post. They got my buddy with rifle bullet. and I was cuttin < lose with my automatic and hand gren- ades. We got two and one of my own grenades got me,
 Becker explained the suspicion he had about hand grenades, which is shared by all soldiers in their first meetings with that deadly weapon.
 Yah, they tell you it is timed for five seconds" he announced scornfully, "and then one goes off in three seconds, and the next goes off in seven so Fritz can dump it back on you5'
 They are going to try and teach Becker to be an automobile expert be- fore they send him back home to Misha- waka. Ind.
 Sergt Paul Chamberlain, p years old. and with six years military service be- hind him, had new theory
 I'm a military failure, he announced, after it was explained that a shrapnel had taken away good section of one foot "A fellow with my experience could hve stepped right along promo tion and all, but Fritz picked me off too quick. Nothing heroic about it. we'd been 20 days in trench at Foul. and were going out at dawn on March 3 when they tagged me. There's a bunch of scrap iron in these Dutch shells, and it got me.
 Still, maybe I'll be an instructor or something with the army yet awhile. Down here, I'm studying poultry rais- ing"
 One soldier, a mimic, broke up the dis cussion by re-enactng the scenes in the base hospital wards, when English vis- itors demanded necessarily My word, are you really Yank?"
 Thus, the one grimness about Walter Reed hospital, where HOO patients now are housed is the headquarters map which often adds many red lines on a blue print to show extensions buildings and more yellow lines to show exten- sions planned. It does not extend to the wounded who are back from lover there'
 They. won't let it while they have a joke left.