"That was what the French officer recognized. He saluted the gallant fellow standing by the cycle. Then, with a simple movement, took the 'médaille militaire'--the Victoria Cross of France--from his own tunic and pinned it on the coat of the Englishman.
"'I am glad,' young Roger told me when he had finished relating the story, 'to have lived to see that deed. It was glorious!'"
DR. MARY CRAWFORD OF BROOKLYN TELLS OF AMERICAN AMBULANCE WORK IN A PARIS HOSPITAL.
Dr. Mary Merritt Crawford, who in 1907 became widely known as Brooklyn's first woman ambulance surgeon, and who has established for herself since that time an enviable reputation in the medical profession, served in the American Ambulance Hospital at Neuilly-Sur-Seine under Dr. du Bouchet and Dr. Joseph Blake. Her letters recounting her experiences among the wounded describe in the most graphic manner the terrible nature of the wounds inflicted in modern warfare.
"We have been getting so many men with frozen feet from the trenches. They have had much snow near Ypres, they say, and the cold is terrible. Last night one poor Frenchman, who had been in the trenches for several weeks before he was wounded, was told he would be sent away to-morrow. His regiment is still up north and he would be sent there. He went almost mad with despair and tried to kill himself. This is the only case I've come directly in contact with, although I've heard of others. I wonder there aren't more. Most of the little 'piou-pious' take it with wonderful stoicism. It is fate, and they accept it, but no one wants to go back to trench fighting. I don't blame them for anything they do. Human flesh and blood cannot stand it beyond a certain point."
"Two days ago we had a poor wretch admitted, who had, by actual count, 150 shrapnel wounds on him. You never saw anything so ghastly as he was. The shell had burst so close that all his hair was singed, and he was literally peppered with pieces of shell. He died to-night and I couldn't help but be glad a little, for his suffering would have been so awful and long-drawn out had he lived.
"To-day I'm dismissing one of my little zou-zous (Zouaves). He gave me one of his buttons as a souvenir, and when I gave him 2 francs he wouldn't take it until I told him to keep it as a souvenir, not as money. Then he did finally consent. He had to go out in the same dirty uniform, all blood-stained and with the bullet hole in his coat. The French Government is making the gray-blue clothes as fast as possible. I've seen a number when walking in Paris. They are the same cut as before, not as trim and compact as our service clothes, but the men inside are splendid, and as patients, ideal."