AID STATIONS TO HOSPITALS

Sometime late in the afternoon of the 19th five of us were loaded into the ambulance and started over the rough road toward the clearing station several miles behind the lines. Here the bandage on my leg was changed, a check made on my chart pinned to my blanket, and another shot of dope stuck in my arm. A few minutes later we started for the evacuation hospital and after several hours of not too comfortable jogging in the ambulance, we were carried into the waiting room of a bustling hospital. I raised my head to look around the room and, who should I see sitting up on the cot next to me, looking like a scared scarecrow -- Black!

His mouth and nose were wrapped in bandages but he managed to tell me about him being hit a minute after I was (the first I knew of it). A few cots away I could see Crabtree but he was too doped up to see me, just rolling and tossing on his stretcher. I was then carried into the X-ray room where, twisting around in several very painful positions (my leg was hurting like the very devil by then) several pictures were made of my thigh. Now came the operating room -- long tables, huge lights, doctors and nurses in white robes and masks. I wasn't nearly as scared as I thought I would be and talked to the surgeon about what had happened and where the leg hurt the most. The X-ray did not show any shrapnel, the doc said, but something had to make that nice little hole!

From The Brunswicker,
Brunswick, Missouri

Arthur Clayton writes home indicating that he is in the hospital, though he was not permitted to say where he was. He says "you probably have received a telegram by now from the war department" which would indicate that he had been wounded. He says he is receiving excellent treatment and "hopes the war will be over before we have to go back up." Two of his Missouri buddies, who have been with him since he left Camp Roberts, California, are still with him, indicating that they were in the same trouble Art was.