Charlevoix county herald., 1919-06-27

Returns After Ten Months Service
Overseas With an Abiding EnthusI-
asm for the Herolsm Of the AmerI.
can soldIer-chIvaIry 10 az Great az
His valor-Wait Patiently for Hours
and Smile Through Il All.
Miss Sara Cunningham, daughter Of
Mrs. James @. Cunningham, 124 East
Fifty-fifth street, New York, has come
back from France after ten months ex-
traordinary overseas experience with
the Red Cross and an abiding enthusi-
asm for the American soldier.
If you've once seen wounded men
sometimes horribly wounded-come
into an evacuation hospital, almost
straight from the trenches, and
watched them smile and heard them
tell you 1T doesn't hurt much when
their faces were gray and their mus
cles drawn with pain-if you've seen
things like that, through one big drive
after another, you'd never quite get
your old pre-war attitude toward hui
mainly again." Miss Cunningham said.
"YOu find out that human beings
aren't just flesh and blood and mind;
you find out how much Of the mystic
and the divine there are In even COM
monplace manor a man who, before
the war, you would have mistakenly
called commonplace. Nobody, think.
who has been even remotely touched
by the last four years can ever be
quite as he was before.
$50 many silly, useless conventions,
so much insincere pose slipped away
from men and women near the front
that don't think any Of us, now that
we're rid Of those silly ultra-civilized
notions, will ever 60 back to them
again. You get to know people for
what they were over there-and saw
under their skins and you found out
| the real qualities that make manhood"
Waited Patiently for Hours.
Miss Cunningham leaned forward
eagerly, with flushed, animated face.
IF could only make you see those
boys" she said. "as they were brought
In on stretchers during the fury of
| YAK uTlNtI OltCh tnCJ hhu iOhS hOuh %
to wait for attention because the
nurses and doctors were so few and
| the wounded so many. Sometimes there
would be piles, tier on tier, Of stretch
ers, and the wounded would lie for
hours waiting their turn. Do you think
they complained or whimpered? Not
they! In all the heat and confusion
of the worst rush l never once passed
wounded man who didn't look up
and smile. Sometimes when a mans
| turn for attention would come he'd
say, You better go to my buddy first,
nurse He's worse hit than / ami
And when you'd give them drink OF
water they'd often as not tell you to
pass IL on to another chap who'd been
asking for 1t.
snow, these things weren't Isolated
instances. They are the things that
happened day after day all the time
was in France. i saw nothing else. /
was at Compiegne during the bad fight
ing around there at the hastily con-
structed Red Cross evacuation hospital,
and we had q constant stream Of men
from Montdidier, from Scissors and
from Chateau Thierry. tell you quite
honestly during all that awful period
| / did not hear q single man complain.
They all smiled-can you picture it2
fellows, smiling-smiling. Occasion
ally they even told joke. 1t was
heart-breaking, you know-you felt
that you could almost 20 down on your
knees In acknowledgment Of such man.
hood"
Tells Of Their ChIvaIry.
This New York girl who has been all
over the fighting front, who has nursed
In every big drive from the time she
went to France until the signing Of the
armistice, who has acted as nurse,
dietitian, interpreter and entertainer,
and who has gone alone to army posts
when she was the only woman for
miles around, has as much to say for
the chivalry of the American fighting
man as for his valor.
Sometimes" she said, people will
tell you about the f0Olhardiness Of
girl going to France among soldiers
about the dangers and insults to which
she Is being exposed. II there were
girls treated with disrespect by any
man Of any rank In our army l think
those girls must have been In some
way esponsible-perhaps they didn't
realize II themselves, but they must
have invited that sort Of thing, even
| fhouOh fhav did ao unpOnacioualv I
am convinced Of this, because I'm sure
that nobody could have been more 'ex-
posed than 1 was-I met all sorts and
conditions Of men alone, under all
circumstances, at every hour of the day
and night, and they were-oh, simply
wonderful
II can't tell you how fine they were.
Everybody acted as II he, individually,
were responsible for your welfare
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