A Story of the Red Cross Part 8

The Cubans who had just come into camp expressed a desire for any a.s.sistance we could give them. They would be glad to have the Red Cross Sisters in their little hospital, but begged us to wait just a day until it could be put in better order. The Sisters were not the persons to grant that day of preparation.

On the contrary they at once went to work, thoroughly cleaned the little three-room building--Garcia's abandoned headquarters, to be used as a hospital--and when the day closed the transformation showed clean rooms, clean cots, and the grateful occupants wondering whether Heaven itself could be more comfortable, or anything more desirable than the palatable food prepared for them by the Sisters.

Three days later the following letter was received:

"To MISS CLARA BARTON, President,

"American National Red Cross:

"I have the honor to request your a.s.sistance in caring for the patients in a so-called hospital near the landing at this point.

"The orders are to the effect that all patients now under treatment on the sh.o.r.e shall be transferred to the Iroquois and Olivette, but the facilities for carrying out this order are apparently inadequate. In order that the division hospital may remain unhampered for the care of the wounded in the engagement about to take place, it is necessary for me to request this favor of you, and I trust that you may find it possible to comply with said request.

"Your obedient servant,

"LOUIS A. LE GARDE,

"Major and Surgeon, U. S. A., Commanding Hospital."

To this the following reply was immediately returned:

"Steamship State of Texas,

"SIBONEY, SANTIAGO DE CUBA, _June 30, 1898_.

"DR. LOUIS A. LE GARDE,

"Major and Surgeon, U. S. A., Commanding Hospital.

"Major: Permit me to express the pleasure given me by your letter inviting the a.s.sistance of the persons here under my direction in the care of the sick and wounded of the engagement about to take place.

Although not here as a hospital ship by any means--not legitimately fitted for the work--still we have some hospital supplies, a few intelligent workers, skill, experience, the willingness to serve, the readiness to obey, and I believe the true spirit of the Red Cross, that seeks to help humanity wherever its needs exist. I send them to you in the hope that they may be of service.

"Cordially yours,

"CLARA BARTON,

"President, American National Red Cross."

Our surgeons and a.s.sistants went on sh.o.r.e, where Dr. Le Garde and Dr.

Lesser secured a small house, and in a few hours this had undergone the same transformation and by the same hands as the Cuban hospital. The Red Cross flag was hoisted, Dr. Lesser placed in charge, and scores of our soldiers who had been lying on the filthy floors of an adjacent building, with no food but army rations, were carried over, placed in clean cots, and given proper food. From that on, no distinction was made, the Red Cross flag floating over both the American and Cuban hospitals.

A few feet away, all the available army tents were put up as additional accommodation for the "wounded in the engagement about to take place."

It did take place the following day, and, as will be well remembered, in those two days, Friday and Sat.u.r.day, the first and second of July, the tents were more than filled with wounded in the battle of San Juan Hill.

Three of the five Sisters went into the operating tent, and with the surgeons worked for thirty hours with only a few moments' rest now and then for a cup of coffee and a cracker or piece of bread. We heard nothing more about a woman nurse being out of place in a soldiers'

hospital.

On Sat.u.r.day evening, the second day of the San Juan battle, a slip of paper with these penciled words was brought to the door of the hospital:

"Send food, medicines, anything. Seize wagons from the front for transportation.

"SHAFTER."

The call for help was at once sent over to the State of Texas, and we worked all night getting out supplies and sending them ash.o.r.e with a force of Cubans, only too glad to work for food.

I wish I could make apparent how difficult a thing it was to get supplies from our ship to the sh.o.r.e in a surf which, after ten o'clock in the morning, allowed no small boats to touch even the bit of a pier that was run out without breaking either the one or the other, and nothing in the form of a lighter save two dilapidated flat-boat pontoons. These had been broken and cast away by the engineer corps, picked up by ourselves, mended by the Cubans, and put in condition to float alongside of our ship, and receive perhaps three or four tons of material. This must then be rowed or floated out to the sh.o.r.e, run onto the sand as far as possible, the men jumping into the water from knee to waist deep, pulling the boat up from the surf, and getting the material on land. And this was what was meant by loading the "seized wagons from the front" and getting food to the wounded. After ten o'clock in the day even this was impossible, and we must wait until the calm of three o'clock next morning to commence work again and go through the same struggle to get something to load the wagons for that day. Our supplies had been gotten ash.o.r.e, and among the last, rocking and tossing in our little boat, went ourselves, landing on the pier, which by that time was breaking in two, escaping a surf which every other moment threatened to envelop one from feet to head, we reached the land.

Our "seized" wagons had already gone on, loaded with our best hospital supplies--meal, flour, condensed milk, malted milk, tea, coffee, sugar, dried fruits, canned fruits, canned meats, and such other things as we had been able to get out in the haste of packing--entirely filling the two wagons already in advance.

An ambulance had been spoken of. We waited a little while by the roadside, but the ambulance did not appear. Then, halting a wagon loaded with bales of hay, we begged a ride of the driver, and our little party, Dr. and Mrs. Gardner, James McDowell, and myself, took our seats on the hay and made our way to the front, Dr. Hubbell following afoot. Four hours' ride brought us to the First Division Hospital of the Fifth Army Corps--General Shafter's headquarters.

The sight that met us on going into the so-called hospital grounds was something indescribable. The land was perfectly level; no drainage whatever; covered with long, tangled gra.s.s; skirted by trees, brush, and shrubbery; a few little dog-tents not much larger than could have been made of an ordinary table-cloth thrown over a short rail, and under these lay huddled together the men fresh from the field or from the operating-tables, with no covering over them save such as had clung to them through their troubles, and in the majority of cases no blanket under them.

Those who had come from the tables, having been compelled to leave all the clothing they had, as too wet, muddy, and b.l.o.o.d.y to be retained, were entirely nude, lying on the stubble gra.s.s, the sun fitfully dealing with them, sometimes clouding over and again streaming out in a blaze above them. Fortunately, among our supplies were some bolts of unbleached cotton, and this we cut in sheet lengths, and the men of our party went about and covered the poor fellows, who lay there with no shelter either from the elements or the eyes of the pa.s.sers-by.

A half dozen bricks laid about a yard apart, a couple of pieces of wagon-tire laid across these, so low and so near the ground that no fire of any strength or benefit could be made--the bits of wet wood put under crosswise, with the smoke streaming a foot out on either side, two kettles of coffee or soup, and a small frying-pan with some meat in it--appeared to be the cook-house for these men. They told us there were about eight hundred men under the tents and lying in the gra.s.s, and more constantly coming in.

After a few moments' consultation as to the best methods to be pursued, we too gathered stones and bricks and constructed a longer, higher fireplace, got more wagon-tires, found the water, and soon our great agate kettles of seven and ten gallons were filled.

The rain, that had been drizzling more or less all day, increased. Our supplies were taken from the wagons, a piece of tarpaulin found to protect them, and as the fire began to blaze and the water to heat, Mrs.

Gardner and I found the way into the bags and boxes of flour, salt, milk, and meal, and got material for the first gallons of gruel. I had not thought to ever make gruel again over a camp-fire. I can not say how far it carried me back in the lapse of time, or really where, or who I felt that I was.

It did not seem to be me, and still I seemed to know how to do it.

When the bubbling contents of our kettle thickened and grew white with the condensed milk, and we began to give it out--putting it into the hands of men detailed as nurses, and our own men, to take around to the poor sufferers, shivering and naked in the rain--I felt that perhaps it was not in vain that history had repeated itself. When the nurses came back and told us of the surprise with which it was received, and the tears that rolled down the sun-burned, often b.l.o.o.d.y face, into the cup as the poor fellow drank his hot gruel, and asked where it came from, who sent it, and said it was the first food he had tasted in three days (for they had gone into the fight hungry), I felt that it was again the same old story and wondered what gain there had been in the last thirty years.

The fires burned, the gruel steamed and boiled--bucket after bucket went out--until those eight hundred men had each a cup of gruel and knew that he could have another and as many as he wanted. The day waned, the darkness came, and still the men were unsheltered, uncovered, naked, and wet--scarcely a groan, no word of complaint--no man said he was not well treated.

The operating-tables were full of the wounded. Man after man was taken off, brought on his litter and laid beside other men, and something given him to keep the little life in his body that seemed fast oozing out. All night it went on. It grew cold--for naked men bitter cold--before morning. We had no blankets, nothing to cover them, only the strips of cotton cloth.

Early in the morning ambulances started, and such of the wounded as could be loaded in were taken to be carried back over that rough, pitiless road, down to Siboney, to the hospitals there--that we had done the best we could toward fitting up--where our hundred cots, hundred and fifty blankets had gone, cups, spoons, and delicacies, that would help to strengthen these poor, fainting men, if they could get there, and where also the Sisters would care for them.

They brought man after man, stretcher after stretcher, to the waiting ambulances, and they took out seventeen who had died in the night, unattended, save by the nurse.

More supplies arrived, and this time came large tarpaulins, more utensils, more food, and more things to make it a little comfortable. We removed our first kitchens across the road, up alongside the headquarter tent of Major Wood, in charge of the camp. Words can not do justice to his kind-hearted generosity. He strove in every way to do all that could be done, and the night before had given us a small tent in which we had huddled from the pouring rain, for a couple of hours, in the middle of the night, the water rushing through like a rivulet.

The tarpaulins were put over supplies, a new fireplace made near us--magnificent in its dimensions--shelter given for boxes and barrels that by this time had acc.u.mulated about us, and there was even something that looked like a table, on which Mrs. Gardner prepared her delicacies.

Early in the day there came to our improvised headquarters an officer in khaki uniform showing hard service, and a bandanna handkerchief hanging from his hat, to protect the back of his head and neck from the fierce rays of the sun.

It was Colonel Roosevelt, and we were very glad to meet the gallant leader of the "Rough Riders." After a few moments conversation he said:

"I have some sick men with the regiment who refuse to leave it. They need such delicacies as you have here, which I am ready to pay for out of my own pocket. Can I buy them from the Red Cross?"