Wausau pilot. [volume] (Wausau, Wis.) 1896-1940, 1918-10-08

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men refused to go, and though official
| ~ lhey were not there in the trench,
they stayed until they took the cap
tam away. Then, back to billets-not
Dullets this tine. believe that we re-
celVed an army citation for that piece
OF work, but / do not know. as I was
Ill the hospital for a short time after
"ard. DO not remember much about
going to the hospital except that the
ambulance made an awful racket going
over the stone-paved streets of Etaples,
ana that the bearer who picked up one
emu Oh my stretcher, had eyes like dead
nsh hOating on water; also, that there
were some civvies standing around the
entrance as we were being carried in.
Inc first thing they do in the hos
pltal is to take off your old dirty band
ages and slide your stretcher under a
Dig electric magnet. A doctor comes
IN and places his hand over your
wound, and they let down the magnet
over his hand and turn on the Juice.
II the shell fragment or bullet in you
IS more than seven centimeters deep,
you cannot feel the pain. The first
doctor reports to the chief how deep
your wound is, and where it is stu
ated, and then a nurse comes up to
you, where you lie, with your clothes
stlll on, and asks you to take the
pressure"
linen they lift you on q four-wheeled
cart, and roll you to the operating the
alter. They take off your clothes there.
L remember l liked to look at the
nurses and surgeons; they looked so
good in their clean white clothes.
Then they stick hollow needles into
you, which hurt a good deal, and you
take the pressure. After a while, they
begin cutting away the bruised and
maybe rotten flesh, removing the old
cloth, pieces of dirt, and so forth, and
| scraping away the Splinters of bone.
You think for sure you are going to
bleed to death. The blood rushes
through you like lightning, and if you
| get sight of yourself, you can feel
yourself turning pale. Then they hurry
you to your bed, and cover you over
with blankets and hot-water bottles.
They raise your bed on chairs, so the
blood will run up toward your head,
and after while, your eyes open and
the doctor says, "Oui, oui, il vivra,"
meaning that you still had some time
to spend before finally going west.
The treatment we got in the hospital
was great. We received cigarettes to-
! bacco, matches, magazines, and clean
| clothes. The men do not talk about
their wounds much, and everybody
tries to be happy and show it. The
food was fine, and there was lots of it.
l do not think there were any doc
! tors in the world better than ours, and
! they were always trying to make
! things easy for US. They did not rip
| the dressings off your wounds like.
/ some of the butchers do in some of our
dispensaries that l know Of, but took
them off carefully. Everything was
very clean and sanitary, and some of
the hospitals had sun parlors, which
were well used, you can be sure.
! Some of the men made toys and
! fancy articles, such as button hooks
and paper knives. They made the
/ handles from empty Shel! cases, or
shrapnel, or pieces of Zeppelins, or
anything else picked up along the
| front.
! When they are getting well, the men
! learn harness making, mechanical
/ drawing, telegraphy, gardening, poul-
/ try raising, typewriting, bookkeeping
I 10 20
! make canes out of shell cases, and
rings of aluminium, and slippers and
| gloves out of blankets.
The nurses certainly work hard.
| They always have more to do than
| they ought to, but they never complain,
and are always cheerful and ready to
play games when they have the time,
or read to some poiIu. And their work
is pretty dirty too: 1 would not like
TO have to do it. They say there were
! lots of French society ladies' working
| as nurses, but you never heard much
| about society. or any talk about Lord
Helpus. or Count WhoSis, or pink teas
or anything like that from these
! nurses.
| A few shells landed near our hos
pital, while was there, but no patient
was hit. They knocked a shrine of Our
Lady to splinters, though, and bowled
over big crucifix. The kitchen was
near by. and 1t was just the chefs luck
| that he had walked over TO our ward
10 see a pal of his, when a shell landed
plumb in the center of the kitchen.
and all you could see all over the bar
racks was stew.
| That was regular eatleSS day for
us, until they rugged up bogieS and got
some more dixies, and mixed up some
J cornmeal for us. The chef made up
| for it the next day, though. The chef
/ was a great little guy. He was a
''blesSe" himself. and guess his stom-
ach Sympathized with ours.
There was a Frenchman in the bed
next to me who had the whole side of
4 his face torn off. He told me he had
! been next TO bomber. who had just
lit fuse and did not think it was
/ burning fast enough, SO he blew on it.
1t burned fast enough after that, and
there he was.
There was Belgian in one of the
other wards. whom l got to know pretty
well, and he would often come over
and visit me. He asked many QaeS-
/ tionS about Dixmude, for he had had
relatives there, though he had lost
/ track of them. He often tried to de-
scribe the house they had lived in. so
that l might tell him whether it was
still standing or not. but l could not
/ remember the place he spoke Of. Dur
| ing our talks, he told me about many
atrocities. Some of the things ne told
me had heard before, and some OF
them / heard OF afterward. Here are
some things that he either saw or