Rescues a Village
“Somebody would have to do something about it. Who was always doing something or other about something? Battling Bobo and his Red Cross band!
“To dash into the streets of St. Souplet would not help much because the dash would end in a patter of lead and a bouquet of whiz-bangs that would leave nothing but a shell hole where ambulances an instant before had been. Nevertheless young Captain Bobo and his men ’had’ to get there. The Captain called together his Red Cross band, which that day numbered only thirty-five huskies, the others being absent on other work or ill. Captain Bobo explained the situation and asked the thirty-five how many of them would care to volunteer to go into St. Souplet with him—to go up to our front line trenches in the broad light of day and beyond, on into the buildings of a town still thoroughly held by the Germans. Pause a moment, reader, and guess how many of the thirty-five Red Crossers volunteered.... Reader, you’re a wonder: you guessed the exact number the very first time!
“And so the thirty-five started forward with Captain Bobo, scooting along in their ambulances parallel to the fighting lines for a little distance and then making a dash across lots to a grove which stood at an advanced spot where, up to that time, no American soldier had set his foot. And while an amazed American Army looked on, the little band made the woods and disappeared among the trees while hell cracked all around them.
“Providence and Steve Bobo were with them. In the heart of the little clump of trees they found an old road which ran through a ravine to the nearest back alleys of St. Souplet. When they had come to a place where the old road climbed out of the ravine preparatory to entering the town, Captain Bobo jumped off the leading ambulance, gave his followers the high sign, and again gathered them about him for final directions. And Bobo and his band left their ambulances in the protecting ravine and began to crawl on their bellies across the last of the fields and into the town.
“They followed by preference the backdoor route when they had wormed across the last field and straightened up to find themselves in St. Souplet. Even so it was necessary at times to make a dash for it across open streets, a dash that must be completed before the astonished German gentry at far ends of the streets could begin to pepper the thoroughfare with the machine gun bullets. Always, however, Battling Bobo and his band beat the bullets to it.
“In the black cellars of the village they rooted around. Old women lay huddled in the underground gloom; one of them, a very old lady, had been shot through both thighs three days before and, quite unattended, lay cowering in her cellar until Captain Bobo dragged her forth and carried her back to where his ambulances lay hidden. There were old men, little children, young girls for whom the horror of their nights of hiding in the Boche infested village had a terror greater even than gas and the shriek of shells. One by one Bobo and his men carried the sufferers into back yards, through the winding alleys, back of protecting buildings, and so to the wooded ravine, where the ambulances were filled with the stricken villagers of St. Souplet and the bundles of scant belongings which they hugged to their trembling bosoms. Then the dash back through the grove and across the sunlit No Man’s Land to final safety—not final for the Red Cross band, for as soon as they had carried their first load of refugees behind the American lines they turned around and did it all over again, and again, and again. For four hours at one stretch they worked like beavers to save the villagers of St. Souplet, then organized a second series of trips and put in eight hours more darting to and from the town or squirming into its alleys and cellars. And Battling Bobo and his band got the villagers finally to safety without the loss of a Red Cross man, despite the fact that the ‘Jerries’ were systematically shelling the village from the first moment the Red Cross rescuers entered it until the last villager had been saved.”
There were forty-seven Red Cross men in Bobo’s band. To this day the Captain is trying to find out why only twenty of them were cited for exceptional heroism.