The Red Cross in France
Granville Barker
Paperback
(Forgotten Books, Jan. 23, 2018)
Excerpt from The Red Cross in FranceHe arrives at Boulogne, and before he lands he can count sixty-seven Red Cross ambulances packed on the further quay. He is met at the gangway by a man in a Red Cross uniform, who takes him in charge in his badly battered motor, and lands him at the front door of the head quarters of the e.r.c. At that Port. These head quarters are an old French hotel, converted for the purpose, every part of it full of the most incessant activity, and he takes his orders from the Commissioner. They amount substantially to this, that whatever the Red Cross wants in any direction anywhere he is to be ready to do it, or to help to do it, as far as he can.He takes a view of the stores, which contain everything under Heaven that soldiers, sick or wounded, can by any possibility need, from bedsteads to feather dusters, the Red Cross being ready to furnish everything that the War Office cannot be expected to furnish, and can in ten hours, as the author claims, in case of emergency supply to the sufferers what the War Office would take ten weeks to procure.He shows how the Red Cross accepts the services of men who are refused for the regular army for physical or other causes, or because not up to or far beyond the fighting age, and how eagerly and zealously all these perform the parts assigned them. He shows the wonderful work of the Red Cross ambulances, how they start out to meet the ambulance trains arriving from the front, going at breakneck speed over the rough roads, and how they return loaded with sick and wounded.About the PublisherForgotten Books publishes hundreds of thousands of rare and classic books. Find more at www.forgottenbooks.comThis book is a reproduction of an important historical work. Forgotten Books uses state-of-the-art technology to digitally reconstruct the work, preserving the original format whilst repairing imperfections present in the aged copy. In rare cases, an imperfection in the original, such as a blemish or missing page, may be replicated in our edition. We do, however, repair the vast majority of imperfections successfully; any imperfections that remain are intentionally left to preserve the state of such historical works.