Chapter 23. 95th General Itself in Bar-le-Duc

Our curiosity satisfied as to where our Rec Hall would be, we struck out the 35 yards or so to check out the two-story concrete Hospital with its 1000 beds.  The gray concrete of the first floor was barren, yet it was quite light inside from windows facing east along the full length of the hallway running past the entrances to 5 wards.  The remaining 5 wards and the hallway of the second floor were replicas of the first floor.

Upon entering a ward the precision of 50 beds marching on the left and 50 on the right set the mood.  Between the 2 rows was an aisle leading to the west windows.  Again the light was heartening!  The nurse’s station on each ward was a walled off small area to the left or to the right of the entrance door from the hallway.  Opposite the nurse’s station lay the “necessity room” facilities.

So, these hospital beds were to be where we Red Cross workers would bring our books, games, and craft materials to visit the half of patients restricted to remaining in the ward.  The other 500 or so ambulatory half would be allowed to wander in their navy blue flannel robes and slippers out into the cold to explore what the Red Cross Shanty had to offer.  Little did we know at that time that they often would have to brave the snow to get across the stretch to our Shanty.

Our Rec Hall furnishings arrived in good time along with the rest of the 95^th belongings, unlike our first weeks in England.  As I recall we had just enough time to work out what employee help we might need and where to seek them.  Our GIs had located pot-bellied stoves, got them working and kept the two coal buckets full.  In a few days the General hired a local French man to take over those GI duties.

Heating fuel was a real scarcity in Bar-le-Duc, so having local labor with access to our Hospital coal pile presented security problems, although not with our Shanty workers.  One night a coal pile guard had to shoot one of the Bar-le-Duc employees caught stealing a bucket of coal.  Showing compassion he had shot him in the heel.  But our whole outfit was pained, not only for the poor family guy needing the coal, but for the guilt felt by the GI guard.  I believe our hospital saw the victim through to recovery and re-hiring.

Later, in place of the French man, a Polish handy man was hired.  A few years earlier he and his family had had a farm in Poland.  Hitler’s troops had forced his family and him off their farm.  He had no idea where his wife and children were.  He joined other forced labor workers who were prisoners of the German forces. When Germany invaded Russia he was forced to fight for the German Army in frigid Russia.  There he had been captured and made prisoner by the Russians.  Freed later, somehow he had found his way to Bar-le-Duc.  He became the handyman for the Red Cross Shanty soon after we got set up.  We sorrowfully said goodbye to him the next year.

The French Croix Rouge in Paris had prepared our local Bar-le-Duc Croix Rouge for our arrival and they offered to help in any way possible.  One of their first efforts was to recommend a local French woman to be a full-time helper at the Shanty.  On their recommendation Margaret, our Social Worker, hired the charming, attractive Cecile.  In her early thirties, with a pre-teenaged son, she had just had her family broken up and become a single mother.  She had been living, unmarried, with the boy’s father, a German soldier who was forced out of the Alsace by Patton’s success.

Hence Cecile’s time was primarily spent in helping with recreation activities in the Shanty.  She always addressed me as “Ma petite Jeannette.”  By the time we arrived in Bar-le-Duc, I had become the head recreation person at our hospital, our former head having been transferred.

Cecile was an invaluable resource for us, especially for me in the recreation realm.  There was nothing she couldn’t do.  She got someone who could do our personal laundry immediately; she sewed the fabric we managed to get for our Shanty curtains.  With the help of my French-English dictionary and pantomime she and I communicated quite well, my having studied only Latin and Spanish.  She was ever so helpful when she told me where to go to buy necessary local items.  Before we had finished unpacking our Red Cross supplies she sent me off to the best local hardware store to buy the tools we needed for the craft work shop.  Sure enough, within a short time, there were no more tools to buy in Bar-le-Duc; or almost any other consumer goods, either, following the arrival of hundreds of buyers from the USA.