Fighting with British at Cantigny, with French near Soissons, video, too!

   

American amputee and nurse, Walter Reed Army Hospital,
U.S. Government, public domain

 For a marvelous movie reel created by the American Signal Corps, please do click on the link to go to YouTube. This marvelous set of stills and reels, done in sepia tones of the period, shows you the American doughboys in the field.
     If you stick with the movie to its conclusion, you will see not only action by artillery and in trenches, but evacuation teams of stretcher bearers, as well as caissons drawn by horses and invasion into a small town, presumably Chateau Thierry.
Go here:
http://youtu.be/PusFK9U51LY

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

Father Louis Pelletier, serving as Army Chaplain in WWI as Major Pelletier

Father Louis Pelletier, S.M., serving as
Major Pelletier, U.S.Army, 1917-1919

    With only one family member among both sides of my husband's and my family to serve (what we know to date) in World War One, here is our great uncle Louis. 
     Born in Van Buren, Maine of a large family of French Canadians who moved to the United States decades before, Father Louis Pelletier was a Marist priest who served in the U.S. Army in France during World War I. Valuable (we are most certain) to many soldiers and commanders at the front because he was an American who spoke fluent French, he became Major Louis Pelletier. After the war, he returned home. With two doctorates in physics and theology, he taught at Catholic University in Washington, D.C. By his students, he was remembered as especially tough!

     Here we see him in his Army uniform, his rank of "Major" written faintly at the top.

     This family group, with Father Louis on front row right, was with his parents, grandparents and his brother, my husband's grandfather, July 12, 1919. Father Louis was then 33 years old. He died of pancreatic cancer at age 33 in Washington, D.C.

     For these heart-warming pictures, I am grateful to our Aunt Annette Pelletier Cronin and her daughters Jane and Liz who saved them. They remembered Uncle Louis and sent these photos to me to use here when my husband and I sent out a family call for anyone's recollections of anyone who served in World War One. To have found Father Louis was a special godsend. We are certain he was precisely that to many soldiers in their hours of need at the front lines.

     “Before World War I, chaplains were appointed to individual regiments. During World War I, the Chaplain of the American Expeditionary Forces coordinated chaplains' activities in the army.”  (Re: Office of the Chief of Chaplains, US. Army, Library of Congress)

     As a rule it was duty of chaplain to go out into no man’s land at night and collect dog tags from those who were fallen. For those still alive, a chaplain administered last rites or tried to bring in stretcher bearers to remove wounded to a clearing station.

Wounded warriors of WWI, home front knowledge of, and new interest in prosthetics

      The US Archives are filled with hundreds of photographs of American wounded soldiers who had amputations and were maimed in battle.
     Yet, during the war and much afterward, almost all pictures (like most personal letters) were censored, i.e., redacted, meaning they were never published at home in newspapers or magazines. This was by order of the War Department, lest morale at home and among the troops suffer. (Yes, this is very similar to the recent contemporary regulations forbidding media coverage of reception of wounded and deceased soldiers from front lines in the Iraqi war or Afghanistan conflicts.)
     Here first is one rare photo of a nurse with two wounded soldiers, one of few pictures to survive the thick black mark of the censor's slanted on the bias across the center.

http://www.amputee-coalition.org/military-instep/rich-history.html

     Another is of a trio of soldiers in a hospital in Vaucaire, France, and the third of two men recuperating at Walter Reed Hospital in Washington, D.C.

http://www.loc.gov/pictures/resource/hec.11308/

     "During World War I, there were 2,635 major amputations among American soldiers." 
(Reference:  http://www.amputee-coalition.org/military-instep/rich-history.html) 
     After they returned home form the front, many wounded required protheses for arms, hands and legs lost in the fighting. Prosthetics became a new interest among doctors and medical technicians. World War One, known for massive destruction by shrapnel, chlorine gas and bombs, was the first war in which men survived wounds which heretofore had been lethal.  Prosthetics were vital to these soldiers in their attempt to return home and adapt to their physical conditions.
    Here is an American prosthetic arm of wooden fingers and metal joints. From the American History Museum, website beneath the photo, is this description: "Arm is a Carnes model from the late teens, William Carnes being an amputee who fashioned the first workable shoulder harness design around 1915."

http://amhistory.si.edu/militaryhistory/exhibition/flash.html

Historical fiction demands historical fact!

Postcard front, post-Battle of Chateau Thierry,
Postcard published by E.B.Remenson, Chicago, 1919
Copyright expired 

   As an author of 18 novels, historical and contemporary, plus a journalism career (and one non-fiction book soon to appear), I know first hand the value of fact. In fiction, it is even more vital, lest the entire book fail to convince the readership of the verisimilitude of the story.
   A writer can attempt to recreate a scene, for example, a dinner party, and cannot even begin without knowing the time of night, the place it's served, or the ordinary menu for that home, that family and their social class. A miner's family in Wales in 1890 will eat a much different meal at night than a banker's family in New York City or an English diplomat's in Shanghai.
   Historical novels demand just as much research, and perhaps more, than their non-fiction counterparts. Why?
   Because novels demand a suspension of disbelief and because they must be a parallel of the period, plus a microcosm of the mores and atmosphere, these books require minute attention to detail. And while many of the details an author collects in her research never show up in her pages, nonetheless, her research or lack of it will soon begin to speak for her. (Having written a few mysteries myself, I can also tell you that mystery readers absolutely demand correct police procedures and up-to-date forensics and analysis techniques in their novels. Failure to use them can mean readers send wild and crazy letters to the author and even the publisher!)
   Back to my topic of proper research for historical novels.
   To illustrate how vital fact is to the recreation of a period in fiction, I list for you a few popular entertainments. Here, I will show how the authors/producers did their homework and among other facts, used one to mightily increase the realism and value of the piece.
   What would popular DOWNTON ABBEY be without the fabulously rendered period clothing? The actresses have even discussed in interviews how the corsets felt so restrictive. Then when they were attired in garments of the 1920s and the corsets were withdrawn, how freeing they felt.
   What would WAR HORSE have meant had not the latter scenes shown the horror of the main character pulling the huge cannon through the muck of the battlefields? His perseverance, to say nothing of his strength of character and body, would have not been as meaningful when he gained his reward and was sent home to be with his original master.
   What would BAND OF BROTHERS have meant if Spielberg had not shown the landing on the French beaches and the struggle to gain every inch of sand? SAVING PRIVATE RYAN would have missed its tragic mark to show total devastation had it not shown the ruins of French villages and German, as well.
   In future weeks, I will bring you a few of my own hard-won facts about life along the American-French lines during World War One. From my years of research, I'll include my own photos along with the text.
   I hope you will return to relish them! Better yet, sign up to receive the posts in your email. You can do this by filling in your email addy at top right.

   Thank you!

Female doctors, Ambulance drivers, Canteen workers and more!

American female doctors volunteered to serve during World War One but, unlike their male colleagues, received no officer rank or pay. The women became "contract surgeons." They did wear a uniform, seen at left.

 http://blog.americanhistory.si.edu/osaycanyousee/womens-history/ 

From the blog of the American History Museum in Washington D.C. comes this description:

"The Colonial Dames Collection includes this uniform worn by an army contract surgeon. Women doctors were not allowed to join the Army Medical Corps. Only the Army Nurse Corps accepted women. But the army did issue contracts to a small number of female physicians, who remained civilians even though they worked in uniform."

Other women served driving ambulances, working in canteens, and as cooks and laundresses. They joined the Red Cross, YMCA, Salvation Army or other organizations many of which sent them abroad. As I stated in my earlier post, others came abroad to fill General Pershing's explicit need for bi-lingual French-English telephone operators. These women became known as the "Hello Girls!"

http://blog.americanhistory.si.edu/osaycanyousee/womens-history/

Here from the same blog entry comes this description of many women's uniforms:

These uniforms are in "...the Arts and Industries Building of the U.S. National Museum during the early 1920s. This case held four Red Cross uniforms, left to right: Motor Corps driver’s skirt and tunic; Motor Corps driver’s uniform; Motor Corps driver’s overcoat; Foreign Service uniform."

http://www.thesalvationarmytucson.org/HISTORY.html

    

Among those who increased their ranks specifically to cater to American troops going abroad was The Salvation Army. Making bread and coffee, these volunteers also began making a now famous recipe for "Doughnuts!"
From their site, here is one woman whipping up those goodies!

http://www.museumsyndicate.com/item.php?item=62020

And here are a few of the women of the Red Cross at a canteen station. This picture comes from US National Museum of Medicine. 

Nurses' uniforms: dress, street, ward and surgical!

http://history.amedd.army.mil/
ancwebsite/uniformpres_files/ClassAWWI-70s.html

     Nurses going to the front needed multiple uniforms.
Each Army Nurse going abroad received different types of uniforms, each with a different use. These outfits came complete with hats, insignia and shoes/boots. Each woman was to wash and take care of her own clothes.
Street wear, seen to the left and below, was of dark navy wool. (This brown uniform has faded from its original dark navy.)

United States Army Center of Military History http://www.history.army.mil/html/museums/aom/2009-03.html

The ward uniform, all white and seen next, was donned by those working in the recovery wards.

http://history.amedd.army.mil/
ancwebsite/uniformpres_files/ClassAWWI-70s.html

For dressing wounds, preparing men for surgery and in operating rooms, nurses wore this grey dress with white butcher's apron.

http://www.history.navy.mil/photos/prs-tpic/nurses/nrs-e8d.htm

And here is her linen ward cap, banded with the small red cross (and not to be confused with the fact that she is an Army nurse, not Red Cross nurse.)

http://www.history.army.mil/html/museums/aom/2009-03.html

Care of recruited nurses and how they were trained, stationed and provisioned

The need for nurses to assist doctors, dentists, medics, stretcher bearers and ambulance drivers was immediate after Congress declared war in April 1917.

Since at that time, the United States had a very small standing army, expanding the current base to a fighting force of more than 1 million meant the development of a huge and almost instant medical assistance group.

Furthermore, recruiting women meant an entirely separate set of arrangements for training, transport, domicile and services had to be built into the organization of a mobile fighting army, navy and marine corps. Providing our fighting forces and medical support unit with barracks—or some similar accommodations—required either appropriation of current homes, chateaux, public buildings such as hotels, etc., or building them.

In France, many donated the use of their homes and chateaux. Many towns and cities offered their public buildings, such as city halls or old factories. The result was that nurses, in particular, those back of the line, might sleep in very nice surroundings—and others find themselves in tents.
Here are a few examples:

Base Hospital #3, Vauclaire, France

Tents used by Evacuation Hospital #1

Accommodating one million men as well as approximately 40,000 medical professionals (including 22,00+ nurses was a huge task, necessary to care of the American fighting man. But it was also a difficult one, made more complex by the fact that women were still considered to be the "weaker sex." Separation of them from their male counterparts implied not only sequestered housing accommodations but also dining, bathing (if possible considering field conditions) and latrine facilities. In the early days of the American war effort, the women even had separate common rooms where they spent their off-duty hours. However, as the frequency and intensity of battles increased, many of these social constraints bowed to the need for efficient responses by medical personnel. As mobile units, immediately behind the lines, became overwhelmed with casualties and as allied hospital units (particularly the French) were destroyed in German advances, social strictures of separating women from the men fell.

Male officers mess, Vichy Hospital Center

What these nurses did not have was rank within the Army.

To quote the Army official history of nursing service (from http://www.army.mil/women/nurses.html ):
"Army nurses during World War I did not have officer status. They were not commissioned, but appointed into the ANC. Medics sometimes refused to accept nurses’ authority on the wards. After the war, Congress, to show their appreciation, gave nurses officer status by allotting them “Relative Rank,” meaning that an Army nurse first lieutenant, for example, received less pay and status than a male first lieutenant."

Other challenges of supply and demand caused controversy within the Nurse Corps command and among other leaders within the greater Army. The most vital need was, of course, to recruit as many qualified, well-trained nurses as possible as quickly as possible. When that number lagged behind quotas, the Army decided to recruit unqualified women to serve abroad. Many of these women worked in other professions or had none at all, joining out of national pride and compassion for wounded Americans. For these women, they were sent to training camps for what we would call a crash course in medical emergency care. Many of them had no idea how to use a hypodermic needle or change a dressing. To train many of these women quickly, the Army established its Army Nursing School and pushed through many aides toward the front.

Another controversial issue was the "separate but equal" status of African-Americans. Black men were enlisted as soldiers and Marines, but were assigned to units separate from white troops. This meant that they would also receive medical care apart from their white brothers in arms. Hence, black women who volunteered to join the nursing corps were also enlisted and served black combat units in "separate but equal" facilities.

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.

Recruiting posters of World War I are stirring, blunt appeals to enlist

Here are only a few of the hundreds of posters the United States government printed to encourage citizens to enlist as soldiers and Marines. Hundreds of other posters encouraged others to enlist as nurses, medical personnel, ambulance drivers, merchant marine and longshoremen. The rhetoric is a mix of appeals to patriotism and a sense of wonderment that the realities of war quickly negated.

The most well-knownAmerican recruitment poster is Uncle Sam pointing to the viewer. This "I Want You" image has been used and adapted over the past 9 decades to recruit for other wars. Adaptations even discouraged enlistment in such wars as the Vietnam conflict.  Here is the original version and its famous British counterpart and predecessor featuring General Kitchener recruiting for the British Army in 1914.

Public domain in U.S. Archives

Public domain in UK, EU and U.S.

After U.S. Marines won the battle of Belleau Wood, their German opponents nicknamed them Devil Dogs, Teufel Hunden. To this day, the U.S. Marines use this name and their museum in Belleau Wood, France bears the title.