What to exclude in a historical novel? The draperies? Scarlett used them! A few illustrations of my choices!

Inside Church at Benzu-le-Guery, France
Field Hospital No. 1, 2nd Division, June 16, 1918
Note wounded on floor, nurses and doctors tending men

My husband, wise soul that he is, often says he wants to read the essence of the action in a novel. Please, he tells me, do not hang the draperies for me. Nor tell me their color. Tell me about them if they are useful to the plot.
Only Margaret Mitchell used draperies to best fictional purpose: She took them down, altered them and made them into a dress for vain Scarlett so that she might seduce Rhett Butler.
Well, that brings me to the novelists' dilemma: What precisely are the drapes and how do I know?

Here are a few rules of selection from one who has written many hundreds of thousands of words, fiction and non. Yes, non-fiction requires a bit of discretion, too, when writing.

1. Does the fact fit best in this spot, that one...or not at all?

Illustration: I had a few facts about devastation of the French countryside circa 1917-1918 from many primary sources. Where and how to use them?
Why?
I did sprinkle them in at various points to show the journey Gwen Spencer was taking from her peaceful life in Pennsylvania, USA, to the war-torn countryside of north eastern France.

I use the scarcity of population to shade in desertion of the land far back of the line.

Many pages later, I use the ruins of a village to show how war destroyed homes and entire towns.

Much later, as Gwen disembarks on a train at Gare d'lest in Paris, I have her see how hundreds crowd into the cars, their arms full carrying their clothes, a dog or a chicken, their eyes glossy with despair as they flee bombs and advancing armies.

2. Does the particular detail add any color or drama that I don't already have? Or is its addition overload?

Illustration: I have a few sources that describe how British destroyers came out at Portsmouth to accompany US warships on route to St. Nazaire and/or Bordeaux.

Man being carried into Dressing Station in French hillside
April 26, 1918

I showed how intimidating it was to someone like Gwen who had never seen a warship so huge and I had already painted in a tragic event on that warship.  My conclusion was that if I added this fact of British destroyers, I would minimize the "lesson" learned at the end of that tragic chapter.

I decided to forgo the British convoy and instead open the next chapter on the docks in St. Nazaire. Here, Gwen sees an unusual sight that is more intriguing and raises more questions for her to answer than to have put her out to sea, literally, with the British escorts.

3. In a women's historical, just how realistic should I be when describing wounds, surgery and death?

This is the BIG Question which I see so many authors (romance, mystery, fantasy—yes, fantasy!) dealing with as they use war as backdrop to their fiction.

Illustration: In my research, I read numerous first hand accounts by nurses who hated the smell of unwashed bodies, urine and feces. One nurse unwraps a man's bandages and his brains fall out. She is horrified and shoves them back in, not knowing what to do, realizing years later, that he must have been dead already. Another recounts the men who crawled in to her tent, clutching their own entrails in their hands. These things happened. They are a part of any war. They were a part of this war.

Trust me, to have included all of that in raw detail would have raised a ruckus among women readers (my main target audience), even among many who read historical fiction and praise accuracy. I have one review already from a woman who has roundly criticized me for

Triage station, 42nd Division, Suippes, France, July 17, 1918

how "gory" my descriptions are. THAT surprises me. But many will pick up a book, expecting one thing and becoming angry at the author who does not provide precisely that. I personally thought I went out of my way to make the book as useful to set the scene as possible. I knew I was not writing an apologia, and I was definitely not writing a blood and guts battle guide for those, especially men who like to read stories of battles.

An author's choices are myriad. The ones that become a part of a novel are the most useful "translations" of fact to the devices of the plot and nuances of character growth.

Dressing station, motorized ambulance, Ambulance Company No. 137,
Alsace, August 31, 1918

Mobile hospitals, Surgical teams, X-ray trucks, Sterilizers and more!

US Ambulance, circa WWI, holds 4 men!

How do you best save wounded men if:

1. they are sometimes carried by 4-6 stretcher bearers for 1 mile or more before getting to ambulance

2. they must travel over muddy, shell-warped lanes for 3 to 5 miles back of line to get to a sterilized operating room

3. only at night, lest the enemy see the ambulance line during the daylight and bomb them

4. in ambulances that hold either four or eight

5. with only barest field dressings on utterly horrific head, chest and intestinal areas

6. with limited morphine pills

7. not enough front line surgeons

8. who have limited facilities (surgical supplies, no needles, no ether, no nurses, orderlies only...)

The United States Army Medical Corps answered these challenges by creating mobile hospital units. These teams of expert surgeons, nurses and orderlies formed 7-member teams who volunteered to go directly in back of the front lines of Doughboys.

US Army Mobile X-Ray truck, WWI

These men and women were screened to be the most professional, stable, healthy individuals who had proven their resilience and talents in the first months that Americans had gone abroad. Then, as the need for medical teams to be much closer to the wounded became vital, mobile surgical units were created.

Composed of one surgeon, one assistant, two nurses, one nurse anesthetist and two orderlies, this team would receive a wounded man and immediately operate on him.

To ensure that this occurred within minutes, the mobile unit also consisted of admitting officers who were trained in triage, x-ray technicians and ambulance drivers who took the post-op patients and transported them farther down the line to another mobile unit or a larger facility, also mobile, called an evacuation hospital.

Want to read about one in action in the Meuse-Argonne in November 1918 during the Big Push?
Read HEROIC MEASURES, out now.
In there, you see how the main character, Gwen Spencer from Scranton Pennsylvania joins a mobile surgical unit and survives the rigorous PUSH in The Great War.

A group of trucks in a mobile unit would pull into a clearing and go to work!
This was their configuration.

Even men of the ambulance units had to pause to line up and get a bath! Note that water had
"to be carried several blocks an coal is scarce. Rambillard, France, Oct. 23, 1918

18+ days in AEF's footsteps: Day 4, Cantigny

Soldier of the First Division

One side of the hilltop of Cantigny, France

         Cantigny is a tiny village in the French countryside north of Paris. The tranquil village surrounds the mountain top. At most, twenty homes dot the crown. Most are farmhouses. One church stands amid them.

     In May 1918, just as the American Expeditionary Force was arriving in great numbers, the French faced a formidable attack by Germans. This offensive, part of huge drive by the German forces to win the war before the Americans could arrive in great numbers, was the first of many such efforts along the front lines.
     The First Division, or as it is now known the First Army or Big Red One, came from the south to push the German line back toward the north.
     While it is not my attempt here to describe the battle in any detail (I leave that to your own search of good military records), I will tell you that as the Americans joined the French in this hotly contested area this battle was the first fought by AEF and won by them. It is the first in which the German Army and their general staff took note of American strengths and strategies and it is the first in which the AEF's wounded were aided by the first of the medical teams to sail to France. (For a superb description of the battle, please go to this source: The First Division Museum in Wheaton, Illinois, http://www.firstdivisionmuseum.org/museum/online/toward_the_front/battle_of_cantigny/default.aspx

One road atop the hill village of Cantigny.
Notice the blue sign!

The Avenue of the First Division, U.S.A.

     I can show you many pictures of this locale. But I can also tell you that for those who wish to see why a certain spot becomes a battleground, this town exemplifies the importance of that. As you stand on this hilltop and look 360 degrees into the surrounding valley south and north to the plain, you realize that this town afforded a great view of the distances in all directions. The roads lead to many strategic places, including the larger town nearby, Montdidier. Here is a picture of the valley across which AEF forces advanced uphill to take and hold the town.

Valley to south of Cantigny, peaceful today and a farm.

    The destroyed village of Cantigny exemplifies the devastation of these campaigns on the people who lived here.

USA, Army photo, Public Domain

    Commemorating the effort of the First Division is this bronze statue of an AEF soldier. An explanation of the battle is accompanied by a map. Please do download the picture to enlarge the type and read the explanation of the battle.

Description of battle.

Atop the hill are other monuments to the men who fought here. In a circle of shrubs and trees is this tall monument. You can see here the view of the church on the hill.

You can view easily the American eagles here on the sides of this monument.

Another view of the monument.

     At one end of this grove atop the hill is this cross and the memorial flowers.

     As we left the village to have lunch in Montdidier and to return to our B&B in Compiegne, we spotted this monument. At first, thinking it a French memorial, we passed it. Every French town has one or more of these obelisks to those of their own countrymen who fought and died in La Grande Guerre. But we thought we spotted an eagle on top of the memorial and so we our drove back to great reward! Here is another memorial to the First Division and their heroic efforts in the Spring Offensive of 1918.

Memorial to First Division in Battle of Cantigny, south of the hill town.

AEF Map, Public domain

First aid to American wounded soldiers, where, when, how

     A wounded soldier passed through many posts as he was removed from the front. Some of these travels took, sadly, days. Stories abound of men left on the ground in rain, snow and sleet as medical teams walked among them to analyze the severity of their injuries and determine how quickly and where they might be evacuated for treatment. Many men waited close behind the front lines, hearing the sound of the guns, bombs and airplane strikes that hurt them and their fellow soldiers even as they lay wounded. In fact, many doctors and nurses lamented that had they been able to treat their patients sooner, the men would have had a higher rate of survival and faster recovery. (In fact, improving the immediacy of treatment for a wounded soldier was the foremost goal of medical response teams throughout the war by all combatants and was implemented and improved on in each succeeding war.)

     When a soldier was wounded, he was assisted to the first aid station, dressing station or casualty clearing station by his pals or by stretcher bearers. (These first stops along the route backward from a front lines had many names and saw many variations, depending on numbers of medical teams, type of equipment and surgical and nursing specialists available. Triage was a function at each stage back of the line.) But before he got to such a station, the solider had in his possession a field dressing. (I have not yet found a U.S. field dressing picture. If anyone knows of one, I would heartily appreciate the url.)
    Here, courtesy of the British site, The Warwicks 1914-1918 (http://thewarwicks1418.com), I show you their First Field Dressing, FFD and their description:

Courtesy of and Copyright to  http://thewarwicks1418.com

"First Field Dressing (FFD) and Iodine ampoule carried on Active Service inside the lower right of the jacket."

Applied by the soldier himself or by those near him (if capable), this dressing consisted of iodine, the only easily packaged and affordable antiseptic/cleansing agent at the time. Penicillin was not yet used as a means to kill bacteria. Morphine was not readily available at the front lines, only backward of the line.

French church opened as ward used by Field Hospital #1, 2nd Division, June 16, 1918

   The next receiving station was a more intensive care unit. This post was a Mobile Hospital unit, literally moving by truck to one to four miles in back of an active front. This included a surgical team of doctors, nurses, and nurses assistants (what we would call orderlies) and/or stretcher bearers who were generally able-bodied types to carry wounded men. This mobile unit team, in the case of American facilities, assessed soldiers and divided them according to type of wound or disability. A team of doctors and nurses assessed each soldier and sent him either to surgery (in order of severity of wounds and operability), to a mental health receiving station or to a hospital treating only those with diseases. (These divisions were not rigorously applied because not all facilities were available in each sector. And at the end of the war, as fighting and casualties increased especially during the last Big Push from September 1918 through November 1918, dividing became nigh unto impossible.)

Nurse cleansing U.S. Marine's eyes of mustard gas during battle of Belleau Wood, June 1918

This mobile unit moved by truck, motorized or horse drawn, lived in tents and operated in tents. Their patients recuperated in tents, as well. Those who recovered to a stage where they could be transported farther back of the line were taken by ambulance. At this point, they went to a larger recuperative facility far back of the line in what the Americans called a Base Hospital.

Mobile Hospital #2, loaded and prepared for change of location. Carries sterilizers.

At the Base Hospital, the wounded were reassessed for fitness for duty. Some were returned to the front. Many received physical therapy by rehabilitation aides, or re-aids as they became known. Most were sent on down the line toward ports and ships home.

PHOTO, J. Power. Copyright of Illustration: 
Fort Sam Houston Medical Museum, San Antonio, TX