New-York tribune., 1919-05-11
Miss Cunningham Is Back
After 10 Months Overseas
With Enthusiastic Praise
for American Heroism

Miss Sara Cunningham, daughter of
Mrs. James C. Cunningham, 124 East
Fiftydfth Street, has come back from
France after ten months extraordinary
overseas experience with the Red Cross
and an abiding enthusiasm 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 we're 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 hu-
manity again." Miss Cunningham said
when seen at the apartment of rela
tlves with whom she is staying at $50
Park Avenue.
"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
the war, you would have mistakenly
called commonplace. Nobody, | think,
who has been even remotely touched
by the last four years can ever he
quite as was before
80 many silly, useless conventions.
so much insincere pose -slipped awav
from men and women near the front
that don't think any of us, now that
were rid OF those silly ultra civilized
hot!ons, Will ever go back to them
again. You got to know people for
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.
III l could only make you see those
n!oys," she said, "as they were brought
in Oh stretchers during the fury of a
pig drive! Often they had long hours
TO wait for attention because the
nurses and doctors were so few and
ne 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 I never once passed
tioH WHO OldnC 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 a drink of
water they'd often as not tell YOU to
pass 1T on to another chan who'd heen
asking for it. - wv"
Now these things weren't isolated
Instances. They are the things that
lappened day after day all the time
was IN france. l saw nothing else. III
was at Complegne during the bad fight
ing around there at the hastily con-
Structed Red Cross evacuation hospital.
enu we had constant stream of men
+ rom Montdldler, from Scissors and
rom Chateau Thierry. For twelve
oayS we had no doctor at my hospital,
and was the only nurse--there were
half dozen girls who had had ]ittle
t1alpng who were there with me. We
TOOK care of everybody that came
oont q THINK 1T would have been possible
w nave seen more or greater suffering
anywhere, and tell you quite honestlv
during all that awful period I did NOT
near near single man complain They all
you picture it? There
were those bleeding, tortured fellows
sm1llng-smiling. Occasionally thev
even told Joke. 1t was heart break
lng' you know-you felt that YOU could
Almost go down on your knees in ac-
acknowledgement of such manhood
Probably Complained Before
ut was funny, too." Miss Cunninp-
nan nam laughed quickly, "to remember
that they were probably chaps who'd
make an awful row about a headacba
or spralned ankle in the days when
they were at home" 7''
This New York girl who has been all
over the lighting front, who has nursed
IN every big drive from the time she she
went to France until the signing of the
a; who has acted as nurse, dieti-
tlan,. interpreter and entertainer. ana
who has gone alone to army posts when
she was the only woman for miles
around, has as much to saw for the
chivalry Of the American fghtinp man %
as for his valor. '''''''
tel, 1n,s9mstimest rnn anet h she said, people will
a;rl os,i yon yo;na apou5 20 the foolhardness of