Atlanta tri-weekly journal. [volume] (Atlanta, Ga.) 1920-19??, 1920-07-13
BY WARD GREENE

From the old gray town of Blois
on the banks of the River Loire
is coming to Atlanta this week a
very lovely lady, to see again the
always be the bravest heart in
France. s
They call her "the Mother of the
Emory Unit" and she is just that
for it was her courage, her kindness
and her comfort which, during all the
weary months the Emory unit spent
in France, did most to hearten its
members and make them feel at
home.
And now, just because they wanted
her here and because she in turn
wanted them, Madame Henri Raguin.
of st. George Department, Loire-Et-
Cher, has Travelled thousands of
the second annual reunion of the
Emory unit next Saturday afternoon
at the farm of DR.. E. c. Davis. four
| miles from Buckhead, near Atlanta,
| Ga, U. S. A. r
With her will come another per-
tenant Robert Fletcher, of Texas.
who left two legs in France. but
brought back with him to America
the same undying sunshine of spirit
| that made him the "favorite patient"
while he was in Base Hospital For
ty-Three, Blois. .-,I..
Lieutenant Fletcher is still in Wal
ter Reed hospital, Washington, but
Madame Raguin will stop there on
her way south and will bring him to
the Atlanta reunion.
The story of Madame Reguin and
what she meant to the Emory Unit
could only be told properly BY one
who had known her and come be-
| meath the influence of her gentle
ness and her kindness. But the sim
pie facts are these: =,
She was a wealthy woman, with a
chateau at st. Georges, four hours
ride away. During the war, while
her husband was. serving at the
front, her only child, a daughter,
died of spinal meningitis. Madame
Raguin was heart-broken. Because
to others could she find again the
happiness she had lost, she left her
home and in Paris began to study
under the famous DR.. Carroll, grad
uate of the Rockefeller Institute and
originator of the celebrated Carroll
Dakin solution for wound treatment
She made a record in her work,
and when the members of the Emory
Unit arrived in France in the latter
part of May, 1918, and were as
signed to Base Hospital Forty-Three
at B!o1s, they found that Madame
French volunteer nurse.
Then began the friendship between
the patrician lady of France and the
strangers from America that won for
Madame Raguin the love and ADM
ration Of every member Of the unit.
alike, and the title Of mother"
which each of them bestowed upon
her in all sincerity.
In the hospital wards she was
understanding from morning till
night for hours on a stretch, espe-
eially during those heart-breaking
1918, when the bloody hospital
trains came in from the front two
and three times a week, loaded down
with $50 patients each to keep the
doctors and their helpers laboring
far into the night.
"Madame"-for that was all the
the unit with her knowledge and
experience: but to patients and
workers alike she was more than
One of those terrible trains in
October, soon after the fighting in
the Argonne began, brought a patient
in pitiable condition. He, like MANY
another, poor lad in that jungle
where the living fought on desper-
ately across the dying, had had to
lie unattended until gas gnawed into
the wounds and gangrene began it's
DEVILS march,
There seemed no hope at all for
Lieutenant Robert Fletcher. Both
| legs were. infected, and the doctors
| had to amputate, a double operation
| putated again; for the poison, creep
| ing slowly upward, was too fast for