Description of the 1st Field Hospital
at Bezu le Gueryby LtCol Richard Derby,
Division Surgeon
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THE ROLE OF THE DIVISION SURGEON
"The Division Surgeon's post is at Division Headquarters, where he can be in the closest possible touch with his General, Chief of Staff, G1 and G3. He must command the confidence of his General and Chief of Staff, and must be familiiar at all times with the strategical situation. It is only through possessing advance information of premeditated troop movements that suitable dispositions of the sanitary troops can be made. Another and most important duty of the Division Surgeon in combat is keeping close touch with the medical officers of the various units engaged. To accomplish this, it is my firm belief that he must use his assistant as his personal representative in the forward area during combat. The job is too big and the area too great for one man to cover single-handed. There must be a division of labor which permits of the Chief Surgeon coordinating and administrating the larger questions of operations and evacuation while his assistant keeps him in touch with the combat units and sees that the needs of the regimental medical personnel are promptly and efficiently filled.
In the forward area I used a side car (attached to a motorcycle), which was assigned to me, for getting round. These were most handy for just this work. On exposed roads under enemy observation they were but a small and rapidly moving target, and could turn in their own length."
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AT FIELD HOSPITAL ONE AT BEZU-LE-GUERY, JUNE 2, 1918
"My first duty on reaching Montreuil was to visit Field
Hospital One at Bezu-le-Guery. Bezu was a village of not more than fifty buildings, placed on the heights to the north of the Marne, built about one winding street. At the extreme northern end was a small church with a two-story school-house adjoining. These two buildings were taken over by the hospital and served a most useful purpose during the five weeks that the Division fought on this front.
The schoolroom was high-ceilinged, with one wall a black-board. It was a room of ghosts. Under date of May twenty-ninth, still stood the composition lesson of that day. Un jour de grand vent. It must have been much more than a day of great wind to the children attending that last class; truly a day of much alarm, borne on the wings of a great Hun advance. Under the caption, La Pensee, the lesson went on: L'homme libre obeit a sa conscience et aux lois de son pays. Almost in the presence of the enemy, the children of France were being taught the righteousness of their fathers' cause. Then came a column of words, the last word unfinished. The lesson had been interrupted.
As I gazed upon the room I saw again the figures of the little children leaning over their desks and writing industriously in their copy books. I saw the teacher pouring her soul into the sentences on the board. I heard the approach of a horse. He was reined up at the door. The loud knock, followed by the appearance of a French soldier, who told of the oncoming enemy hordes, counseling immediate flight. Something else told me that the flight was dignified, not precipitate; that the children were reminded that it was ennobling to suffer pour la France, and that the interrupted lesson would be continued apres la Victoire.
Field Hospital One had installed itself in the church and schoolroom. The pews and desks had been removed and given place to litter racks, each with its blanket-draped litter. A portion of the schoolroom had been partitioned off by means of blankets into a resuscitation ward where the heat from several primus stoves was conserved to the maximum. The remainder of the schoolroom was arranged as a dressing room for the seriously wounded. In the courtyard a tent had been erected in which men exposed to mustard gas could be undressed preparatory to their bath in a small concrete chamber adjoining. Here one of the portable shower baths, always carried by this hospital, had been set up, and was supplied with water by pump from an adjacent well. Another small tent adjoining afforded a dressing room, and was kept well supplied with pyjamas, underclothing, socks, and towels. Under a shed in the corner was piled the men's discarded equipment, which was removed daily by a salvage truck. The church was used as a temporary refuge for the slightly gassed and wounded while awaiting evacuation further to the rear.
Wounded were already coming into Bezu, for our infantry had engaged the enemy to either side of the Paris-Metz road, the center on Le Thiolet Ferme, the right flank on La Nouette Ferme, the left flank on Hill 142, north of Champillon. Heavy casualties were to be expected in the near future, for our men, once in the line, it was a foregone conclusion that they would not be content with simply repelling the enemy's attacks. Sooner or later they would assume the offensive, in spite of the fact that they were opposed by two crack Hun divisions. It worried me greatly to consider that the nearest hospital to Bezu at which our men could receive definitive surgical treatment was at a distance of sixty kilometers. So ruled the French, however, and our principal concern was to get the wounded back."
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AT FIELD HOSPITAL ONE AFTER THE ATTACK ON BELLEAU WOOD AND
BOURESCHES ON THE NIGHT OF JUNE 6-7
(Note: The initial attack against Belleau Wood and Bouresches
by units of the 4th Marine Brigade, on the evening of June 6,
1918, was catastrophic for the Marines. In a few hours they
suffered more casualties than in the whole of their history up
to that time. A toe-hold in Belleau Wood was attained, and
Bouresches was taken, but at terrible cost. Throughout the
evening and into the night, LtCol Derby moved from one advance
dressing station near the front-lines to the next, viewing the
situation at first-hand and determining what supplies were
needed, traveling between them over blackened, treacherous
roads under shellfire, at one point being blown off his feet
and onto the back of mule by the concussion of a high-explosive
shell. Very late in the night he stopped in at Field
Hospital One in Bezu-le-Guery).
Considering the length of evacuation back to Juilly (the nearest base hospital capable of handling serious cases) and the heavy casualties we were suffering, our hospital facilities were utterly inadequate. With the heavily wooded areas just back of our front,k in which our supposrt and reserve battalions were concealed, we might expect a gas bombardment as soon as the enemy's guns were brought up in numbers To handle a large number of gas casualties we were unprepared. Our line was now stabilized and the French could no longer raise their former objection to bringing our hospitals up to the Marne."
"I stopped off at Bezu on the way back to headquarters. Ambulances just in from the front were unloading wounded at the door of the church. The interior presented a weird and somber picture. The whole floor space, except for three aisles running the length of the church, was filled with blanketed figures lying upon stretchers. The church was lit by candles upon the altar and pulpit railing. The chancel was occupied entirely by prisoner wounded, placed there for the ostensible purpose of guarding against their escape. This refinement in their security was hardly necessary, judging from the serious nature of their wounds.
Seated on a bench against one of the side walls was a long row of slightly wounded men, along which passed a medical officer followed by an assistant with a tray of syringes. Each man received an injection of antitetanic serum, and as witness of the fact a broad T was marked by means of an iodine swab upon his forehead. Captain Evans, the C.O. of the field hospital, was passing up and down the aisles, designating the men to be loaded on the waiting ambulances.
(The following day LtCol Derby succeeded in obtaining permission from French authorities to move two hospitals, one for non-transportable wounded and the other for gas cases, closer to the front lines, a move which was effected within two days! This was none too soon, for, as it happened, the Germans launched a major mustard gas attack five days later against the Marines, resulting in the evacuation of over nine hundred members of the Second Battalion, Sixth Marines to the newly relocated Field Hospital Sixteen at Luzancy).
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