How heroic are you? Excerpt from HEROIC MEASURES about American nurses in WWI France! Out now!

Out now in digital and print at all sites! Here is Buy Link at Amazon:
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How heroic are you?

            Would you volunteer to travel thousands of miles from home with others you don’t know to live in tents, wash your hair in your helmet and work 12-24 hours each day?

            In the Great War, thousands of women did.

            HEROIC MEASURES is the novel that shows you how American nurses went to war, how they lived and served­—and how they loved.

            For nurse Gwen Spencer, fighting battles is nothing new. An orphan sent to live with a vengeful aunt, Gwen picked coal and scrubbed floors to earn a living. But when she decides to become a nurse, she steps outside the boundaries of her aunt’s demands…and into a world of her own making.

            Leaving her hometown for France, she helps doctors mend thousands of brutally injured Doughboys under primitive conditions. Amid the chaos, she volunteers to go ever forward to the front lines. Braving bombings and the madness of men crazed by the hell of war, she is stunned to discover one man she can love. A man she can share her life with.

            But in the insanity and bloodshed she learns the measures of her own desires. Dare she attempt to become a woman of accomplishment? Or has looking into the face of war and death given her the courage to live her life to the fullest?

Excerpt: Copyright, Jo-Ann Power, 2013. All rights reserved.

When she did return to the tent, she had Colonel Scott in tow. She’d told him nothing except their German was now awake, aware and spoke English. She thought it best to let the officer discern the veracity of the man.

“Nurse Spencer tells me you speak our language. Might I ask you where you learned it?”

“At my mother’s knee, Colonel. I am Captain Adam Fairleigh, His Majesty’s Forces. Forgive me, sir, I would greet you appropriately but our erstwhile nurse has strapped me to the bed.”

“Then you must need restraining,” Scott replied. “What the hell is this that you say you’re with the Brits?”

“I am, sir. I am attached to General Pershing’s staff, Chaumont.”

“As what? How do you speak Hun so well and why in God’s name are you in one of their uniforms?”

Fairleigh arched both brows, looking at the short American down his very elegant straight nose. “Liaison to the American Commander, sir. Since December. I speak excellent German because my maternal grandmother came from Saxe-Coburg, the same principality as our late Prince Albert. I speak German, sir, as well as I do English. Before the war, that was no crime, but an asset.”

“I see. And how do you come by this uniform?”

Their patient was no longer so quick or cocky. “I took it off a dead man.”

Gwen swallowed hard at the savage image of this man removing clothing from a corpse.

“I had managed to crawl across a zone where they were not shelling. I thought if I could reach one of their forward trench lines, then I—”

“Preposterous. How did you get that far in your own uniform?”

“I went in peasants’ rags. Our lines abut an old village where only a few huts still stand.”

“Why discard your rags for a German captain’s uniform?”

“Well, sir, he was not only dead but conveniently my size.”

That shut the man up.

Gwen could only marvel at this creature in the bed.

“When I came upon their trench, I could hear their conversation below. Luck was with me. That bunker was a communications center. If I could get in there, I might learn quite enough to make my mission worthwhile. Of course, I couldn’t do that, couldn’t speak German to them and have them believe I was one of them if I wore French farmer’s culottes, could I? So I crept around…among their dead whose bodies they had not retrieved.” He stared at the American with blank eyes. “I happened upon the captain who seemed my height. Then I waited until night fell and—”

He halted, regarding Gwen once more. “I buried my rags and crawled into their trench. They accepted my story. I was privy to their orders that were to move their gun emplacements. Then, as you can expect, I was stuck with them, considered one of them. I had to run with them. I had no opportunity to escape until two nights later when the French opened a barrage in our sector.”

He lifted a hand, let it drop to the sheets. “I managed to hang back when they retreated with their line. I set out to No Man’s Land and prayed to Christ I’d find my way across to French lines. This took me…I’m not clear. A night. Two?” He shrugged. “Here I am.”

“Who is your American liaison in Pershing’s staff?”

“Colonel Samuel Rustings.”

Scott nodded, a hint of a smile curling his lips. “I see.”

“I gather you know him.”

“Same class at West Point.”

“Well, then. If you telegraph him, he will verify who I am and my mission. He knew I went out, you see.”

“A man from headquarters is already on his way here.”

“Splendid.”

“We thought we had ourselves a Heinie.”

The man’s mouth quirked in bitterness. “Sorry to disappoint you.”

“Oh, you’ll do, sir. What did you say your name was?”

Gwen noticed that Scott had not addressed him by his rank.

“Fairleigh.”

“We’ll see what our man from Chaumont has to say about you. In the meantime, my private is outside the tent.”

Fairleigh inclined his head in acknowledgement of his warder.

“Nurse. Finish up here. Untie him. ”

“Thank you, Sir.”

“Good day, then.”

When Scott had departed, Fairleigh regarded her with appraising eyes. “What is your name?”

“Spencer.”

“Nice name. Spencer.”

“Thank you.” She pulled her cart closer to his bed. No matter who he was, he was to be made whole as efficiently as she could.

“I am sorry, Spencer, for being an ass.”

She saw on his face honest contrition. Unaccustomed to apologies from those who insulted her, she had no reason to trust the value of his. Yet she gave him credit for the courtesy of it. He had done such a brave act. What kind of man would do as he had done? A fool. An opportunist. A man who saw this was work which he and he alone was best suited for? Was that hubris? Cunning? Or duty? If indeed, he had done it. If he hadn’t lied.

“Spencer, I am grateful for your help. Please do patch me up. I’d hate to lose my hands because I lacked good manners.”

He was making conversation to heal their rift. She picked through her gauze looking for the needle she had misplaced when she had left him. Brusqueness served her where experience did not. “Lie back then and be good.”

“Chilly. Do you they teach you to be frosty like that in America?”

“Yes.”

He feigned a shiver.

She fought a smile. “Put that spoon between your teeth. This needle will hurt.”

“I wager it will hurt less than your German. You should have warned me that it was so bad.”

“Careful.” Fingering her needle, she began to thread the eye. “You need me to be gentle as I sew. Besides,”—she could taunt him now that he was rational and at her mercy—“I doubt I’ll ever sing with you again.”

“I will endeavor to ensure you do.”

His attempt to charm her flattered her. She would do well to ignore it. “This is war, sir. Neither of us has the time.”

“Then sing to me instead.”

“When I put my needle in your skin, I will hear you sing and off key, too.” She threatened him, hiding all the humor his compliment inspired. “The spoon, sir. Now!”

HEROIC MEASURES BUY links:

Amazon:  http://amzn.to/1dWojVz  digital

                    http://amzn.to/1f30XAx   print

Barnes and Noble: http://www.barnesandnoble.com/w/heroic-measures-jo-ann-power/1117014178?ean=2940148469186

Kobo:  http://store.kobobooks.com/en-US/ebook/heroic-measures-1#readThisOn 

iTunes:  https://itunes.apple.com/us/book/heroic-measures/id719986822?mt=11&ls=1

Allromanceebooks.com :  https://www.allromanceebooks.com/product-heroicmeasures-1310153-162.html

Wild Rose Press: http://www.wildrosepublishing.com/maincatalog_v151/index.php?main_page=product_info&cPath=209&products_id=5334

Read Jo-Ann’s HEROIC MEASURES blog about American nurses: http://theyalsofought.blogspot.com

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 the AEF's footsteps: Day 8, Traveling through Champagne, East to the extended American front line and City of Verdun

 

Town Center of City of Verdun
This statue symbolizes the resistance
of the people of Verdun
to the German advances north of the town
in the Ring of Forts

     As the First Division arrived in France in 1917 and more Divisions came to fill in the ranks and enlarge the battalions, the American front line became more of a reality, less of a concept.
 
     Remember that the American sector, such as it was defined, was a creation of General Pershing who refused to combine the American forces with those of the French or British. Those allies wished for more men to fill out their ranks, decimated as they had been by three years of bitter trench warfare.
 
    With the arrival of more and more American soldiers and Marines, Pershing foresaw that he could build a fighting force as strong or stronger than his allies'. He wisely engaged French and British instructors in every type of training from flame-throwing to grenade use to efficient medical procedures. Furthermore, Pershing was an advocate of aggressive tactics and refused to fight the inch-by-inch warfare that had stymied the French and British efforts to get out of the trenches and pierce the German lines.
 
    Driving east from Chateau-Thierry through the Champagne is a peaceful agrarian scene. Bright yellow with mustard plants or grape vines along the rolling hills, the land is a lovely vision. Pictures of the landscape in 1917-1918 show a stark contrast. Awed as we were by the huge expanses of crops and large number of privately held farms, my husband and I had to research the level of farm production in France. Sure enough, it is huge, producing 20% of all food for Europe. Although this French percentage to the food basket of Europe is larger today than in the war years, we saw the potential that Germany must have gauged. Germany, before the war, had a prosperous economy with a growing population. Given the emphasis on industrial production, fertile French land must have been a lure to feed their hungry people.

Along the banks of the River Meuse stand these five French soldiers of
La Grande Guerre. Ever-mindful of the enormous efforts of the French military
to save the City manning The Citadel and in the Ring of Forts,
the citizens prize this sculpture which represents
each type of soldier who served in the war.

 
     We chose to make our base the City of Verdun as we explored the areas of the American eastern front lines. We were happy we did. Why? The City is one of the loveliest and best preserved even from that period. Assaulted as it was from most sides, the City represents to this day the stalwart nature of the French who retained the land at the cost of hundreds of thousands of French poilus, the near-starvation of the City's populace and the Americans who came to help them save it.

  On Sunday along the west bank of the quai, we ate our dinner. Prosperous, the citizens shop, eat, take their children and walk their dogs along the River. (Enlarge this pix to see the 5 French soldiers situated near the pole here, but along the eastern bank of the Meuse.)

   We stayed in a hotel along the banks of the Meuse, within walking distance of The Citadel. (Return for my next post when I take you there.) Verdun today is a serene city along the River Meuse. There on a weekend, we strolled along the quai and ate in a riverside cafe. We marveled that this city was once the prize fought over by millions of men on both sides of the conflict. But nestled as it is along the ridge of mountains near the Alsace and German border, we see the town's vulnerability. Controlling it meant access to the other rivers and major cities west, including Paris.

   We marveled too at the influence of Americans and Germans. How did we gauge it? Everything—signs, brochures, menus and more—are most often given in triplicate: French, German and English. (A treat for this gal whose German-American family taught her the German language!)

18+ Days in AEF's footsteps: DAY 7, Chateau Thierry and the Second Battle of the Marne

USA Monument to those who fought and fell at Chateau-Thierry
sits atop a hill overlooking the prosperous city.

(River Marne to the left of pix and this road which runs along the river.) 

Sculpture on the Chateau-Thierry Monument
France and USA, holding hands,
Partners in War and Peace

    Chateau Thierry is a lovely town along the Marne River approximately 50 miles east of Paris. In the spring of 1918, the Germans decided to attack their lines in France with great force and hopefully win the war before the Americans could arrive in massive numbers.
   A year had passed since America had declared war and finally, the country had enough recruits, transportation routes and sufficient supplies to convey a million men to Europe, feed, clothe and care for them.
   No small part of this was the need to provide medical care. While a few Base Hospitals (as the primary structure of medical personnel was called by the Army Medical Corps) had arrived in France in spring 1917, they assisted the French and British caring for those nationals.
   Now with the arrival of American men, other based hospital units arrived in huge numbers. Consisting of doctors, dentists, orderlies and pharmacists and nurses, these units could vary in numbers. (In fact, as the Spring Offensives of 1918 proceeded, the US Army called for more recruiting of doctors and nurses. The Army originally thought 50 nurses per Base would be sufficient but soon sought 100 per Base.) While Army Nurse Corps recruits assisted in the Operating Rooms and ran the wards, American Red Cross nurses who had much less training worked as their staff. Usually 50 to 100 nurses worked the Base Hospital wards and surgical units along with 50 or more doctors and dentists. Orderlies and pharmacists (or trained orderlies who did this work) were fewer in number and varied according to location, total force numbers in the area and notice of imminent attack of the enemy.
   Within one mile of the town was a major Base Hospital at Aulnois. Here, the nurses often sponsored dances for their patients. Men who played instruments practiced in the wards and became pick-up bands. These entertainments were welcomed by the staff and the soldiers breaking the tedium of their days and the journey back to health.

One of Operating Rooms, Mars Hospital Center, France*
Note cinder block structure in this OR
as opposed to wooden structures or tents used for Mobile Hospital Units.
Note, too, nurses in grey crepe uniforms with white butcher aprons used in ward duty.
*Mars was composite center far back of front lines and not in Chateau-Thierry sector but farther east near Toul.

Lab at Mars Hospital Center, France
Orderly Mixing Compounds

Memorial atop a hill overlooking the town.
Inscription: "This monument has been erected by the United States of America to commemorate the services of her troops and those of France who fought in this region during the World War. It stands as a lasting symbol of the friendship and cooperation between the French and American Armies."

   Traveling the area around Chateau-Thierry, I easily saw the importance of this town along the Marne. Hold it and any military force could easily attack or defend the river's access to the capital city of Paris.
Do see the picture at the top of this post once more. There on that hilltop, I capture its position which was a disputed territory taken eventually by the American First, Second and Third Divisions. See also views east and west along the Marne, now serene.

Along the River Marne, looking in the same direction
as American Monument

View of the Marne, flowing east, in this lovely city.

American troops crossing the Marne in Chateau-Thierry.

American troops in public square after capture
of Chateau-Thierry,  July 1918.
This square facing Hotel de Ville to the right of picture and Marne to the left is now a parking lot!

Ruins of Chateau-Thierry, in upper right you see Hotel de Ville, City Hall.

American troops clearing a road in Chateau-Thierry.

Aisne-Marne Salient Map on the American Monument high above Chateau-Theirry.

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

Planning transport into France of soldiers and wounded from front lines to home

Photo Copyright, Jo-Ann Power.
Exhibit:
Fort Sam Houston Medical Museum,
San Antonio, Texas.

Transporting all Americans, both military personnel and medical staff, into France to the front lines was a huge logistical problem.
This is one reason why arrival of American fighting force levels took nearly a full year from the date of declaration of war.
The flow of personnel in presented one challenge. However removing wounded American soldiers from the A.E.F. front lines back through French countryside to base hospitals, rehabilitation sites, onward to the French Atlantic coast and home to the United States was an immensely more complex logistical challenge.
Planning routes was the first task, but in fact, the simplest. Drawing lines on a map seems easy, yet the best routes were not the ones which could be used. The front lines of British and French troops meant a southwest exit from American lines northeast and east of Paris was necessary. But huge problems existed.

Most American soldiers did not speak French. Secondly, they served in a terrain new to them.  Still more confounding was the fact that French rail lines were badly in need of repair and without synchronized gauges to lock one train route/system to another. (French trains transporting nurses from their embarkation point in St. Nazaire often stopped at the end of a line for hours awaiting the next train east. Nurses recount stories of waiting, tired, hungry and often bitterly cold.)
Here are a few pictures of the types of transport and machinery needed to ensure adequate transport home for wounded American soldiers.

Horse-drawn ambulance
Photo, Copyright Jo-Ann Power.
Exhibit: Fort Sam Houston Medical Museum,
San Antonio, Texas

Interior of motorized ambulance, U.S. Army Ambulance Service

Transport by boat and barge was also necessary. These, like ambulance trains, had nursing staff to aid wounded during their journey across country and on the Atlantic Ocean.

Hospital barge, stretcher bearers and nurse on board.

Interior of hospital train ward car, shown from attendant's compartment.

Nurses served as attendants on these transports because the nature of many soldiers' conditions were precarious. Doctors were needed at the front, as were male stretcher bearers. Nurses on board responded to the immediate needs of wounded men whose physical needs could change in an instant.

Here is the photograph of the interior of an operating room on board a hospital train.