University of Virginia Library

LXI. The World War—Base Hospital
No 41, Continued

On July 6, the unit embarked on the Scotian for
Europe. There were thirty-nine officers and one hundred
an ninety-eight men on board. The nurses' corps,
which mobilized in New York, departed by a boat which

sailed on a later date. There were fifteen vessels in
the convoy, besides the Scotian; and all were escorted by
a battle cruiser, which steamed well to the head. For
some distance, the ships were accompanied by a small
dirigible, a large biplane, and five sub-chasers of the mosquito
fleet. A few days before, a German U-boat had
been reported to be prowling off the coast of New England,
and there was a chance of its bobbing up in the
water nearby at any moment now so long as the shores of
America remained on the horizon. Every vessel in the
convoy carried depth bombs; and an unceasing watch
was kept up during the twenty-four hours. On the
third day of the voyage, a target resembling a periscope
was dropped some distance forward in the waves, with
orders to every one of the gunners of the fleet to fire at it.
The route was altered constantly. First, the ships made
for the south, but afterwards swerved so far towards the
northeast that the north star seemed to be shining in the
vault of Heaven just above the masthead. There was no
difficulty, during that interval, in reading on deck until ten
o'clock at night.

The members of the unit wore their life preservers
throughout the day, and slept with them under their
bunks. During two nights, no one was permitted to take
off any portion of his clothes except his shoes; at the
most unexpected moments, all were summoned to abandon
the ship; and there were also daily drills for boat-fire.
At one stage of the voyage, the fleet passed through a
large quantity of drifting wreckage; but no other evidence
of the enemy's former presence was to be seen. The hours
were enlivened by prize fights and other strenuous tests
of physical strength and skill. And on one occasion,
there was a spectacular swimming match. A gun was
fired on one of the ships, and simultaneously a man

leaped from its hurricane deck into the water and turned
his face towards the rear of the convoy. Mounting to
the hurricane deck of a second vessel, he again leapt
into the ocean as the second gun went off; and after thus
changing boats several times, he finally halted on the flagship,
where he received, in solemn ceremony, the croix
de mer.

On the approach to the British coast, the voyagers
were met by a small cloud of destroyers. Afterwards,
the ships entered the Clyde; and as they slowly advanced
up that narrow stream, the men aboard greeted the
Scotchmen on the shore with cries of "hoot mon." From
every house, the Stars and Stripes were floating in the
wind.

By July 19, the hospital unit had arrived at Southampton,
and leaving that port for Havre, amid the moving
strain of My Old Kentucky Home, they reached Paris
on July 25, after spending a few days in a rest camp near
the sea, where each batch of twelve men were compelled
to sleep in a single tent eleven feet in diameter. Army
trucks transported the unit to L'Ecole de la Legion
d'Honneur at St. Denis, which was situated about five
miles from the Place de l'Opera in Paris. As they rumbled
through the teeming streets en route, they were
greeted with a continuous roar of welcome from the
populace, and were received at their destination with
graceful and gentle formality by the principal and the
other ladies in charge of the school, which had previously
been devoted to the education of the daughters of the
most distinguished families in France.

The Abbey of St. Denis was said to have been
founded by the first Dagobert, and a portion of the
original structure had been burned down during an incursion
of Norman pirates. It was restored, in a very

much enlarged and beautified form, in the twelfth and
thirteenth centuries, and, in part, renovated in the eighteenth.
All that remained of the mediaeval chapel and
circular monastery was now used as a recreation hall.
The modern chapel had been, at one time, the hall of
the guards; and it was here that the coffins of the French
monarchs rested before their final deposit in the vaults
of the abbey. The southern end of the main building
still displayed the Benedictine shield, on which was inscribed
the one word Pax, surrounded by a wreath of
thorns.

The unit had been in occupation of these historic
edifices ten days before they received word that their
equipment had been unloaded in France. In the meanwhile,
the first steps had been taken to convert the contiguous
buildings into one great hospital. Apartments
were arranged on the first floor as administrative offices,
dining halls, kitchens, and storage quarters, while on the
second, the space was reserved for wards, operating
rooms, laboratories, shock-rooms, x-ray rooms, and
rooms for sterilizers. At the east end of the main structure,
apartments were assigned to the dental experts and
the experts on the eye, ear, and nose; and here too were
placed additional laboratories. Although the hospital
was designed for a thousand beds only, it was called upon,
before the end of the war, to take in three thousand.
Two of the hallways were converted into wards; and
more space still was got by transferring the medical supplies
to a separate roof. Fifty-two marquise tents were
erected, each for the housing of thirty-seven patients;
and the same number of patients respectively were cared
for in the thirteen double Beaseneau tents which were
afterwards put up. The chapel and the old receiving
ward were also turned into apartments for the wounded,

while field kitchens were installed for the cooking of a
larger quantity of food.

When the armistice was declared, Base Hospital No.
41 was ministering to the acute needs of twenty-nine hundred
patients. The first convoy rolled in at midnight on
August 16. There occurred at this moment a beautiful
scene which those who witnessed it will never cease to
remember. The kind and pious ladies of the school
were standing near the main entrance, and as each of
the litters was slowly borne in, one of the group,—all
of whom knew only a few words of English,—would lean
over each wounded man, and in her soft French accent
whisper the one word, "welcome." By the end of the
first week, there were seven hundred wounded soldiers
concentrated in the wards. Between September 6 and
30, about two thousand in all were admitted,—General
Foch's counter offensive was now at its height,—and
occasionally, a convoy would embrace as many as four
hundred patients. The five wards in the building accommodated
about six hundred; the fifty tents, twenty-two
hundred more; and the chapel, a considerable additional
number.

Down to October 7, Base Hospital No. 41 served as an
evacuation hospital only; it received patients directly
from the front, to whom only first aid had already been
given; and these men were sent on to a second hospital
so soon as they were sufficiently improved to travel.
The Base Hospital No. 41 was, therefore, filled with
wounded whose condition demanded immediate surgical
attention. These had passed first into the receiving
ward, where they were washed and dressed; and, afterwards,
they had been distributed in the supplementary
wards, according to the state of their wounds. Many
of the convalescent soldiers served as orderlies, stretcher-bearers,

and the like; and it was said that, without this
assistance, all the work which had to be done in the
buildings could never have been performed.

An epidemic of influenza broke out in October, which,
by disabling one-fourth of the officers, nurses, and enlisted
men, reduced the effective force to two hundred
and thirty. These served throughout the twenty-four
hours at a time when two thousand patients were in the
hospital, and a complement of seven hundred were expected.
About ten thousand meals had to be daily provided.
Although between August 16 and January 17,
1918–19, about forty-eight hundred cases were treated,
—of which, thirty-five hundred were surgical,—there
were only sixty-eight deaths, of which, twenty-seven
resulted from pneumonia that followed influenza. Only
thirty-nine of the surgical cases were lost. Although
there were ten such establishments situated in Paris,
it is estimated that Base Hospital No. 41 received
one-fourth of all the wounded who were brought to
the city from the front. "A few air raids," says a
member of the unit, "one a very spectacular daylight
raid, the flashing and the booming of the guns on the
Chateau Thierry line, and an occasional shell from Big
Bertha, were the only things that made us realize that
the greatest war of all time was in progress, except for
our own men coming in from the trenches. We saw
after all the more pitiable and the more trying side of
war, with the glory and excitement of battle replaced
by the grim battle of life and death that we fought with
these men that made our victory possible."

Previous to October (1918), the Protestant services
held in the hospital were conducted by Rev. R. F. Blackford,
a member of the unit, who made the daily round of
the wards; and after that date, Rev. Beverly D. Tucker,

Jr., the regular chaplain, took charge of the religious ministrations
to those of his own faith, while a devoted priest
of the Abbey of St. Denis served as the spiritual adviser
and consoler of the Catholics. For the diversion of
the tenants of the hospital, concerts and other musical
entertainments were given by the representatives of the
Young Men's Christian Association, and by the Knights
of Columbus; and also, for their enjoyment, the first
violinist of Paris played, with his most exquisite skill,
before them, and the Fifth Regiment band of New
York, in its turn, followed that kindly example. The
Brotherhood of St. Andrew had organized a local chapter
in the hospital, with Bernard P. Chamberlain as secretary;
and at the meetings of the members, interesting
short addresses were delivered and musical programmes
offered. The Red Cross converted the theatre of the
school into a recreation hall; and here, picture-shows
and dramatic plays were presented.

In the course of the last months, basket-ball games
were contested on the concrete tennis-court during the
day, and even at night, under electric lamps. There
were also tests of skill in boxing and wrestling. Football
games out of doors and baseball within took place;
and a field-meet was even arranged, but its events were
forestalled by the dispersion of the convalescents. A
few copies of a journal known as Between Convoys were
issued. At Christmas, the corps of the Base Hospital
contributed eleven hundred and twenty-eight francs for
the support of two French children, whose father had
been killed in battle, and who had been adopted by the
unit. Their names were Yvonne and Georges Lefevre.

In a letter addressed to the Board of Visitors, in
May, 1919, the Surgeon-General of the Army referred
to the work of the corps as "the invaluable service

rendered by that splendid organization, Base Hospital
No. 41"; and he eulogized as a "glorious heritage of
splendid achievement" the record of duty performed
which its members would hand down to posterity. "The
chief of the medical service," he added, "is very appreciative
of the cooperative spirit shown by every medical
officer of the Hospital, and at no time, has he ever
heard one complaint of any work assigned him." "Most
of these officers," a witness has stated, "had held previous
appointments in hospitals as internes, but these
same men bowed their heads over dressings hours every
day, day after day, and were happy doing their utmost
for the soldiers. The soldiers will never forget the
nurses of Base Hospital No. 41 because their kindness
and gentle care of the wounded began when the patient
entered the receiving ward, and continued through the
operating-room and various wards. At no time was a
nurse ever too tired to adjust a pillow, or in other ways
make a patient more comfortable and help him on to
recovery by cheerful words."