'Over there,' reality set in amidst the mud and blood

IN THIS SECTION

Introduction

Shattered bodies
and minds

Gallery

HOME

NORTHWEST

Obituaries

Sci-Tech

Special Reports

Photo Journal

Transportation

Susan Paynter

SPORTS

OPINION

Home Delivery

See the P-I's front page

Thursday, September 24, 1998

'Over there,' reality set in amidst the mud and blood

By CAROL SMITH
SEATTLE POST-INTELLIGENCER REPORTER

Witness to War
On July 14, 1918, she sailed on the troop ship Northland for the 18-day trip to Liverpool and then Le Havre.

"I never knew how many ships were in our convoy, but I guessed about 18," she wrote in her memoir. "That month, about 300,000 troops went over. We were told to throw nothing overboard, as any floating objects would reveal our course to any lurking submarine."

Tucked in her small Army trunk was a box camera and developing fluid -- despite warnings they were not to take pictures.

By Aug. 4, she had left Paris and was on duty in Evacuation No. 7, a field hospital in the VO Surg District in France.

"If it hadn't been the amputation ward, maybe the shock wouldn't have been so devastating," she wrote. "But helping dress those quivering stumps and hearing the laughter and jokes in spite of their misfortune was too much for me and I cried all that first day.

The nurses of Evac 5 worked under primitive conditions. Hand-washing supplies was part of the job.

"I thought they had made a mistake by putting us through that experience so soon, but maybe it was for the good and I could stand anything after that miserable week."

The nurses sent closest to the front were equipped with a helmet, gas mask, mess kit and canteen. She was one of them.

They headed straight into the horror of the first "modern" war. Poison gas, aerial bombardments and machine guns were being used for the first time. In four years of madness, more than 65 million men would go to war. Many were slaughtered in the bellies of trenches that gashed the length of France.

The terrorist bullet that took the life of Archduke Franz Ferdinand ended up gutting a generation. The casualties -- more than 8 million by war's end -- left a deep scar across several continents.

Mobile hospitals at the front worked frantically to save what was left of men's bodies as they came in. But the damage was frequently too great. Double amputations were common.

Many died on the operating tables. Sometimes they arrived on stretchers, scared yet hopeful, their young faces untouched. But when their uniforms were cut away, they would be nearly shot in two. Nurses could do nothing but hold their hands as they died.

Few of the women spoke of their experiences, even decades later, silenced as much by trauma as social norms.

"It was too sad," my grandmother said during my recent visit. "So many hurt boys. Seeing the stumps and their bones . . ." She could not finish.

From her original hospital, my grandmother was dispatched closer to the front. She went with Evac 5 to what had been a town on the River Marne. The unit, totaling about 1,000 beds, received casualties directly from the trenches. Each operating tent had 10 surgery tables in use around the clock. At full capacity, the hospital had about 48 nurses, each handling 20 patients.

"When the wounded began to come in, the stretchers were laid on the ground and the corpsmen stripped them of their muddy clothes and deloused them, usually before we received them in the operating tent," she wrote.

The most seriously wounded were operated on right away, and those who could stand the journey were evacuated to base hospitals farther from the front.

The nurses worked under primitive conditions, layering men's socks and underwear under their uniforms for warmth, sleeping on the ground or on cots in their tents, sometimes subsisting on little more than beans and hardtack. They worked eight hours on and eight hours off, around the clock.

"I had the afternoon off today for the first time," she wrote home. "With so much time on my hands I didn't know what to do so I slept till supper time. Then tonight we went out to get water in our canteens and took a little walk. . . . The moon looked so pretty tonight shining on the ruins."

During the bitter-cold fall of 1918, rain drilled down relentlessly. They pitched their camps in fields filled with viscous, sucking mud.

"The worst thing we have to contend with is the mud," she wrote home. "The blankets on the cots hang over into it and then they get all wet and so dirty you dread to put them on the patient. Then the pillows and cots get wet through the tent. Believe me, it's some mess."

Eight decades later, it isn't hard for her to remember what was different from what she had expected.

"The mud," she said.

"And the blood."

Next: Working amidst shattered bodies and shattered minds

AP LOCAL HEADLINES
· Cancer survival handbook aims at Alaska Natives
· Trolling for 'the very best salmon in the world
· Historic Ohme Gardens asks for support
· Fast-food workers helping ID dangerous drivers
· Saturday is 150th anniversary of Battle of Steptoe