28
Remembering my experience with my first uniforms in London, I make no mistake here. I inquire if any money is available from the government for the first uniforms. There is not only no money for uniforms, there is no money to drink to anyone’s health either. Here a fellow is strictly on his own. This is possibly the reason for the three motley looking officers in the Savoy Hotel lobby in London.
Finding a tailor to make the two uniforms, which I shall pick up on my return en route to Texas, I am measured and on my way. Or I think that I’m on my way. The gentleman informs me very firmly no money, no cuttie, just like London only so different. This fellow wouldn’t trust his own mother. So, if I want the uniforms, I have to fork over the cash. Boy, I now know that this is home sweet home, and my honeymoon in this man’s outfit is going to be a pip. To get any money out of the army, you have to fill out a voucher with a lot of red tape and find an American paymaster someplace to cash it, on or after the first of the month. So different from my past three years, where everything on the ground they made easy for you. All that is required is your devotion to your job, and the world was yours. Paying my newfound tailor, I am off for Boston to spend two weeks with the grandest female I have ever known. With her, I knew there would be no pressure. If I wanted to talk, swell, if I didn’t — that would be good too. So, I am in higher spirit than any time since the boat landed in New York.
Catching the early morning train out of Boston for Marshfield Center, I’m expecting no one to meet me at the station, so I am greatly surprised by a very attractive young lady with a sports car who informs me that she is my cousin. Aunt Jo has insisted I would be on the morning train, although she received no word from me or anyone. My cousin Maud, who I was meeting for the first time, was sure I must have wired, or otherwise how would she know? When I explain to my new cousin that our dear aunt is clairvoyant, she very spiritedly says to hell with that — tell me about the war.
Here we go again! I have just met the gal. How I wish that I could paint her a real horror picture about women and children hanging by their heels, but for this I’m a total loss. No one is going to believe I have been in the war. I can talk specific enough, but they all want the gory kind. My war wasn’t for them. We only were killed, not butchered. I can tell about the Gurkhas, only there were no women in the trenches. There must be women or no dice, it just wasn’t war. This is due to the damn lecture agencies, who are getting financially fat sending out lecturers with a tailor-made story to the women’s clubs, all at a fancy price. They give the girls a picture of rape and mayhem that thrills them to the quick. An honest soldier doesn’t have a chance with these birds. They are the biggest bunch of liars alive and getting real dough, food and drink for one hour of bunk. Home with my charming aunt, I am protected from our mutual relatives and curiosity seekers where I can lounge around in mufti and just rest and give the old back a chance to improve. Tonight, Cousin Maud is entertaining. There will be many young people, and I am supposed to be the honored guest. So Aunt Jo and I shall attend in all our glory.
At this dinner, I outdid myself socially. Surrounded by the elite of young socialites, I was going strong, on about my sixth cocktail before dinner, when some young thing asked if I knew Guy Empey. Her inquiry fell on deaf ears — it just didn’t register. I had never heard of the guy. It seems he was in the British Army somewhere, someplace, and was discharged, so returned to America where some fast promoter grabs the boy and they write and publish a book called Over the Top. This book made Empey the greatest hero since Paul Revere. He was the answer to a maiden’s dream, and I, poor sap, had never heard of him. It was impossible; evidently I hadn’t been in a fighting unit or I was a rank four-flusher. My prestige, my standing at the small gathering, especially with the girls, took a decided tumble.
It was after dinner and how many drinks later that they asked me to tell of some of my experiences overseas. They have me on the spot. When I inquire whether they have ever heard of the great Baron von Richthofen, the boys have, the girls slightly, so I launch forth and give the great baron his biggest buildup, how he is the hero of all Germany with a castle in every village. But best of all, he and I are close personal friends, that every other Wednesday I land near a woods by Arras, where we have lunch with three of his pet ladies, then he escorts me back across my lines toward home. In fact, his sister and I rendezvous every other night in a woods close by and are considering naming our first child Rick, after the great man.
My girl audience are eating it up. What the hell? the males are thinking. I don’t give a damn, when Aunt Jo takes me home. Home sweet home, where I have breakfast in bed with fresh custard pie for dessert and my darling aunt laughs until tears run down her cheeks. When she inquires if I know Guy Empey, I don’t think that my beautiful cousin has quite forgiven me, although she did inquire of our aunt if she thought it was true. The baron has my apologies. I don’t know if the old boy has a sister, but hell, she wouldn’t mind. It was all in clean fun and an overdose of scotch. My prestige must have hit a new high, for we have been invited every day to a lunch or dinner, which Aunt Jo has declined with one exception. My darling has been worried about my back, which is constantly paining me, so we only go out once to an old friend of the family, where I am not asked to perform. It is sufficient that we are all together. This is friendship, which few appreciate or understand.
Two weeks of the happiest time of my life since my schooldays with Aunt Jo have passed, and it’s back to the war for me, or at least away to Texas. What happens there is for the future. Saying goodbye is always tough for me, so we agree to say goodbye or farewell, which Aunt Jo prefers, at home.
My cousin drives me to the station, whispering in my ear, “Darling, write a book and tell them about Empey and Richthofen.” I am away and back in circulation. Damn the war, Empey and the baron included. I have just begun to rest. Now it is over.
My good tailor has completed one uniform and it looks like something the cat drug in, after my RFC uniforms. The other uniform he wants to send to Texas. This boy is a real one. He has had two weeks to play with my money and make one uniform, so I give him twenty-four hours to complete the other. It will make me twenty-four hours late reporting to Texas. The train is sure to be twenty-four hours later, so with luck the war may be over before I reach the great state, and it is a safe bet whoever is in command in Texas doesn’t know I am alive. Both my predictions are correct. After a miserable trip made up of mostly stops and starts, the old train pulls into Fort Worth twenty-six hours late, and Colonel David Roscoe, commanding the aviation section of the Signal Corps, who is a cavalry colonel with no air experience, doesn’t know anything about me. At least he is a gentleman. He gives me a decent welcome and is anxious to know how long it will take me to teach him to fly. This colonel is in no hurry about my status, tells me to report to his office tomorrow and he will have someone drive me out to the new field where I understand they have one Curtiss Jenny with a Curtiss engine of uncertain ability.
Hicks Field, later to be known as Taliaferro Field, was approximately seventeen miles out of Fort Worth. It was a flat piece of land, like all of Texas, the difference being there were a few small buildings for officers’ quarters, with four large structures for hangars if planes were available. At one end was a large tent, like those used in a circus, for a cook place and dining hall. Everything was completely new, even down to the personnel. The only flyers with any experience were the Canadian instructors, and four former RFC officers who were brought back via Canada by request of General Mitchell. All were in American uniforms with the rank of major, which was the rank promised all officers who were transferred with the rank of captain from the RFC. So I naturally expected my commission, when it did come through, would be as a major. I reported to Twenty-second Squadron, which was commanded by Lieutenant Garland Powell, with Lieutenant Frederick Clapp as adjutant, two wonderful chaps with several cadets and one plane to train said cadets and complete a squadron.
A hell of a bleak looking future, which looked like a loss of time, a loss of training when flyers are so badly needed at the front. This same bunch, with one month on an RFC training field in England, could be whipped into a combat squadron. I had a lousy dinner at the public trough, and spent the night in my bed roll on the floor of my newly assigned quarters. Sleep was impossible as my back was really giving me hell, so in the morning I had difficulty getting into my uniform. After some coffee about ten o’clock, I decided to take the Curtiss Jenny up for a look at Texas from the air. Having the boys wheel the old Jenny out, I climb in and the tin cans in the engine go off. This is a motor? Taxiing out, I yank the old crate in the air. It is a pain in the neck. Its performance is equally bad or worse than my first training ship. It just flies, with no ratio of safety, but there is all of Texas to land in, so I try a loop, a roll and a spin and all are bad, but I am having some fun trying. Why it didn’t fall apart, I don’t know. It didn’t, so I land and have to be helped out of the ship. I am so lame and the pain in my back is terrible. Trying the floor in my quarters, I send for the doctor, who, when he arrives, is a very decent sort. He is new in service, though evidently a very efficient doctor in civilian life. He gives me something for my pain with instructions to remain quiet. This advice was unnecessary as, the way I felt, they would have to carry me out. One hour later, this kind person was back, with the news he had cleared me with the command and he personally was going to drive me to a hospital, as there was no equipment where we were to treat anyone in my condition. What my condition was, he didn’t know, but I certainly needed some care. My doctor was a kindly soul and a wonderful person. What happened was no fault of his. It was the fault of too much hurry and lack of experience.
Our journey took us back to Fort Worth, out to a place called Camp Bowie, about three miles out from Fort Worth. My first glimpse of this place was a perfect picture of a prison camp. It was surrounded by barbed wire and contained many low-built frame structures, all mounted on some kind of wood so there was a clearance of about two feet between the ground and the floor of the building, where the wind could howl through and under with a vengeance. Taking me to the CO office, my good doctor finally finds someone to direct him to the officers’ quarters, which is a building like all the others, only it is vacant and I am the first customer. It is beginning to get dark and cold. We find the lights, but no heat. The doctor tells me the hospital has just been completed and to climb into one of the beds, which he makes up with some blanket folded on one end, then he goes to find a nurse or a doctor. My poor doctor. He is the most unhappy man in Texas. He finds we are in a place built under contract. It has no heat in any of the buildings, there are no toilets, just the big JC galvanized can which has to be emptied every day. There is no hot water and, worst of all, there are only five doctors for over two thousand sick soldiers and only four nurses with just a few trained orderlies. All other orderlies are just newly enlisted men. Any food which I am to receive has to be carried across an open space, through the wind and weather, so it will be well cooled by the time it hits our quarters. “Damn it, Libby, I can’t leave you like this. I’m a doctor, not a military man.” By now, my sense of humor is coming through. At least I am inside, out of that cold wind I can hear, so I tell Doc to put a sign on the door and leave the light on and someone will find me. “Just give me a couple more blankets, and say, Doc, if you have a pint of good bourbon in your satchel, leave me that. This is a hell of a lot better than the trenches.”
Covering me up with a couple more blankets, he finds an oil stove which he is afraid to light, but promises to find a nurse somewhere. He ducks out to his car and comes back with a smile on his face. “You know, this is highly unethical, but I’m going to prescribe this pint of Old Crow for you.” The guy won’t even take a drink with me and won’t accept any money. It is a pint he had in reserve for his own needs.
For once, I open my mouth at the right time. Leaving me with the promise he will be back tomorrow, my friend heads for the cookhouse to register me in. He has no faith in the head office, as he puts it. Before they show any interest, I’ll possibly be well and gone, especially if I have a little to eat. What a doctor! After the shot he had given me for my pain, and the shots I had administered for my stomach’s sake thanks to him, I am not uncomfortable when two characters from the kitchen enter my quarters. True to the doctor’s promise to register me in for food, these two boys have pushed through the rain at the late hour of nine o’clock with food, carried in two dish pans, one over the other in an attempt to keep my dinner warm. They have stew, coffee, bread and butter with some kind of dessert. From these boys I learn the history of my new home, which is very new but loaded with sick people and completely understaffed. There are sick men with influenza, measles, spinal meningitis and pneumonia all herded together, with an average death rate of ten per day. This isn’t the fault of the doctors and nurses, it is too many damned sick men with not enough help to care for or to minister to their needs. Included in all these patients are five cadets from the flying field, all of whom are bed patients with broken arms or legs resulting from a crash while making their solo flight. It seems the status of these cadets is not known. They’re in training for their officer’s commission, but how to treat them while in training is a puzzle to the officers commanding, so they throw the boys in with the enlisted men for fear of giving them a break, which might upset all army regulations. This I decide to do something about in the morning, so have my boys from the kitchen help me get the old uniform off. I go to bed, like a fellow should, with plenty of blankets and the lights on. I resolve to help the cadets and have them moved over to the officers’ ward, which may not be much of an improvement, for up to now I haven’t seen a post doctor or nurse, and with the rain like it is, I am sure I won’t until morning.
Morning didn’t dawn. It just arrived with rain and wind, but my own doctor made his first call. It seems his quarters were in Fort Worth, which made it easy to see me first before going to Hicks Field. He knew all about the cadets being over in one corner of a ward, and they were under the care of a bone specialist in private practice in Fort Worth as the doctors in our hospital are medics, not bone specialists. His opinion was that if we could have them removed to our officers’ ward, it might do wonders for their morale and they might have better attention. At least we could help each other. It would take an act of God and the CO’s permission to have these fellows moved, but Doc was game. He starts for the CO’s office with my assurance that these fellows are officers. They just haven’t received their commissions as yet. Evidently, the cadets have been raising hell on their own, for the CO is glad to wash up the whole affair. If the doctor and I will assure him that everything is all right, he will have them moved immediately. As the doctor explained when he gave me the good news, the CO was relieved to transfer the responsibility to someone else. He had been on the hot seat ever since the boys arrived. With all his other troubles, relief from any source was welcomed.
With new life in our quarters came a doctor and nurse. When seeing me for the first time, they inquired how long I had been a patient. They showed no surprise when I informed then I was there when they built the joint; I was just waiting for the rain to stop. The two who were hurt real bad were Biddle and Read of Philadelphia. Both were badly broken up and needed real care in the nursing department, which they had not been getting. All were extremely grateful to be moved into officers’ quarters, although to me it was doubtful if the change was such a vast improvement.
Read had a tube in his throat from the outside, which had to be cleared every so often to keep him breathing. As both his arms were broken, this little matter of life and death had to be performed by someone other than himself. We worked up to where we were assigned an orderly, who was supposed to be constantly on the job, and a nurse supposedly to visit us twice a day. This schedule was never made. With me the only one in our group having two good hands and feet, although also a weak back and an unquestionable weak head, I took on both duties. The only way Read could attract attention when he was choking to death was to kick on the wall with his one good foot. I would then struggle like hell to get out of bed and over to him to remove the tube so the poor devil could breathe. My cadets were five good game boys who had been pushed too fast in training on some bum ship. They were the kind of Americans I would have liked to have taken to the front under the RFC command and flying RFC ships. Here were five young potential pilots cracked up, without a decent chance, and no one appears to give a damn. It is my fifth day. The dead are being hauled out one by one, with the parents of the boys raising hell continually. Parents are trying to take their boys out to private hospitals, only the army won’t release them while they are alive. Only when a boy is dead can a parent claim the body. It is a horrible thing to see happen. Fellows dying like flies. Thousands of miles from the front, just dying through carelessness and inefficiency. Were their sons dying of wounds or exposure in battle, no parent would feel quite so bad, but dying this way isn’t any part of a war. It’s murder!
Today my doctor brought a specialist with him, with the hope he can do something to relieve my pain and help me to get in condition so I can go back to the front. To get out of this mess and back to France is all I ask. Back with my friends. Anywhere but here. The specialist is an ear, eye and nose doctor from Kansas and is newly commissioned a captain. He is very sincere, with a desire to help, which is what I need — help!
After a long examination, he promises me nothing, except that he feels taking my tonsils out may be the answer as my neck is now completely stiff. There is a chance that by removing my tonsils, it may improve my condition. God, I am willing to try anything if I can relieve the pain. So, I ask when he wants to operate and we agree on the next day. He is going to make arrangements at a private hospital in Fort Worth where there are real accommodations, all at the government’s expense. How he is going to wangle this little deal, I don’t know, but it is okay with me. I hope for results. Picking me up in his car, he drives me to the hospital about four p.m., where the doctor has arranged a private room and is going to operate at eight o’clock in the morning. I have insisted on gas as an anesthesia, having a past experience with ether, which made me deathly ill, but there is no gas, so ether it is — anything to get the job done. My final instructions are to eat a light dinner, get a good night’s rest, operation at eight, then back to the officers’ ward at four in the afternoon.
Following my instructions, I have a light dinner and retire early in a decent bed, hoping for a decent rest. Possibly because of my comfortable bed or change from usual routine, I fall asleep with no difficulty. Then the door facing my bed opens slowly and wide, and in walks death in the proverbial long black robe with the hood over the skull and the ghastly appearance which we have seen in many horror pictures. This apparition walks across the room to the side of my bed and falls across my legs. It is so real that I jump in my sleep, causing great pain in my back. I let out a yell which brings a nurse to my room quick. This dream or vision or what-have-you was so ghastly, so frightening, that I don’t tell the nurse, just allow her to think the pain caused me to wake up. It is six-thirty and my operation is listed for eight, so I have time to shave and think. Was that just a bad dream or a warning not to have the operation? This is something to think about. I have been assured that the removal of my tonsils may help. It seems like the only thing that might get me well quick, so I can go back to the front. To hell with my ghost, only I won’t tell my doctor.
There is nothing to the wild dream, for I am still alive and on my way back to our officers’ ward. I tell my doctor all about my affair with Mr. Ghost. It is well I didn’t tell him before he operated, for he very firmly says there would have been no operation. So it is over. All I have to do is improve. The only joker: he is disappointed that the tonsils were firm and sound with no imperfections. The guy is honest. He is afraid my tonsils were not the answer. Anyway, they’re gone. All I can do is hope. At least my doctor tried. He was also hoping.
After one night in a real hospital, our quarters are more than miserable. More sick soldiers are brought in every day until there are well over two thousand real sick boys. With the worst conditions for doctors and nurses to work in. With the rain and mud increasing along with the death rate.
On my ninth day, the CO office sends for me. An investigator is here from Washington in response to all the complaints filed by the parents of dead sons. His first question to me is: How does this hospital compare with hospitals overseas? It seems I am the only person in said hospital who has been out of the country, so he decides on me to answer his question. I assure the gentleman that, when a big push was on in France, the casualty clearing stations near the lines were better than Camp Bowie even on a rainy day. I am taken back to quarters expecting to be shot and perfectly willing, only it doesn’t happen that way. By twelve o’clock the following day, I am given orders for transfer to Army and Navy Hospital, Hot Springs, Arkansas, by order of Washington. They want me out of Bowie and I’m glad. No one knows what kind of a place the Army and Navy Hospital is, only that it is old and that the waters have a curative power. This may be my answer, especially the hot water, as our present death trap doesn’t have hot water, along with the other things they don’t have.
I find the town of Hot Springs strictly a resort town, where the boys and girls from New York and other large cities that can afford the traffic come to play and bathe for two or three months from January through March. My future home is on top of a hill, almost in the center of town, with a climb of ninety steps to reach the entrance. It is a large old fashioned frame structure, which looks very comfortable in comparison with my recent hospital. It is commanded by a regular army colonel of the Medical Corps and is well staffed with nurses and orderlies and has a very exclusive officers’ quarters. Here, each officer has a large separate room, with a joint mess together, with colored cook and waiter. In fact, this is the first real officers’ mess I have seen since leaving the RFC. The officers’ quarters have twenty rooms, with one nurse and orderly on duty twenty-four hours. On my arrival, I made the seventh officer in quarters that could easily care for forty with only two in a room, so different from Camp Bowie. Certainly someone in Washington did me a favor. It must have been the surgeon general’s office. Here at one of the finest military hospitals in the world, I am given every known treatment by a fine staff, with no favorable results. The news from the Western Front where my old squadrons were, and where I had spent most of two years, was all bad. The RFC boys were getting some better ships, but their losses were terrible. Practically all of my old friends had gone west or were out of service, either wounded or prisoners of war.
One bright spot: on Christmas Eve, I received a wire from my old home town, signed by our mayor, together with signatures of twenty-five of my best friends, wishing me a speedy recovery and a quick trip home. Among them was my old friend Guy Galbrieth, who got me the job with Tom Aikens at Flagstaff, Arizona. It was a great boost to be remembered by this bunch of fellows whom I had known the greater part of my life. But my condition is becoming slowly worse, which does away with any trip home. As I can’t go home, my big brother comes to visit me, which is wonderful, only I am limited in the time I can spend with him. Despite this he sticks around for a week and we do as much visiting as possible. What a pal he is to a crazy young brother.
This Christmas, my fourth in uniform, I shall have Christmas dinner with six fellow American officers. Last Christmas I had dinner at the Savoy Hotel with Bill Thaw and Bert Hall. The year before dinner in France with my old motor unit, and my first Christmas in uniform was in Toronto Exposition Park with my motor unit. Where I shall spend my fifth, I wonder. To be crippled and alive is better than average. Only time will tell how much better.
Christmas dinner, 1917, has been wonderful. Cooked by a typical Southern mammy, the food is plentiful and excellent. You wish it could be shared by some of the boys in the trenches. While the food was wonderful, the liquid refreshments were dry, very dry. Milk, tea or coffee, which is supposedly going to be America’s favorite drink for the future. As of January first, anything containing alcohol is taboo for servicemen. Not even the elite who come to eat may partake of alcoholic beverage. Swell country we took from the Indians.