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By Root 2373 0

in pyjamas and many in wheelchairs, toasted her beside a Christmas tree. The hospital established a temporary centre on the Normandy coast at Entretat. When the Germans invaded France in mid-May 1940 and made swift advances through the north, the facility had to move. The New York Herald Tribune reported on 8 June 1940 that the hospital’s doctors had already ‘selected a building at Angoulême in the Charente, which has been requisitioned to be turned over to the hospital for this purpose by the French government’. The 100-bed field hospital was on the direct Paris–Bordeaux railway line, so the wounded could be moved there without being trapped on roads blocked by refugees. Other temporary American hospitals and dressing stations opened at Châteauroux and in the casino of Fontainebleau, just south of Paris. Dr Jackson, Dr Bove, Dr Morris Sanders and other American surgeons laboured day and night on the growing number of French soldiers whom the Germans had seriously wounded. Most of the casualties came to the hospital in ambulances of the American Ambulance Corps, paid for by donations from American citizens and driven by American volunteers. When French friendly fire hit one ambulance and wounded a French soldier, Jackson had to amputate his leg in darkness. The amputation was nonetheless clean enough for the leg to take a prosthetic. When he was not operating on patients, Jackson took care of anaesthesia for other doctors. It was grinding, bloody labour without any reassurance that the suffering would save France from German conquest.

French General Lannois came to the American Hospital to award the Médaille Militaire, France’s highest military decoration, and the Croix de Guerre to a wounded Zouave dispatch bearer named Maurice Longuet. With the general was the soldier’s father, whose eye patch marked him as a wounded veteran of the previous war. His 19-year-old son lay in bed, while the general pinned the ribbons on his pyjama shirt. Drs Jackson, Bove, Gros and de Martel watched the informal ceremony. Jackson whispered to Bove, ‘Tel père, tel fils,’ such a father, such a son. More sons were brought in every day.

Dr Bove, who operated beside Sumner Jackson, recalled the chaos of the final weeks:

When the Allies, pushed to the coast, fought a rear-guard engagement at Dunkirk, Paris felt the full impact of things. All city hospitals were crowded with casualties. The nurses were so overwhelmed with work that additional women volunteered by the hundreds to wash the faces and feet of the wounded. They carried cups of coffee to those who were able to swallow. We surgeons operated until late into the night, cutting away on jagged wounds like butchers in a slaughterhouse. I lived on five or six cups of coffee and a few sandwiches daily … We rarely stopped before midnight. The agony of the men awaiting their turn in the outer room and begging us to relieve them made it impossible for us to quit. My feet became so sore that I could barely walk, and to attempt to straighten up out of the bent position I had maintained for so many hours over the operating table caused excruciating pain.

This went on for two weeks. Then, as the Nazis approached Paris, the city was virtually cut off; the wounded began pouring down to evacuation centers in the middle and southern parts of France. As the news filtered into Paris that thousands of British and French troops had been evacuated from Dunkirk, the crowds pushed and fought their way into the churches to light candles to their patron saints and to pray that their loved ones had reached England.

The day before the Germans entered Paris, Dr Bove told Sumner and Toquette, ‘It’s only a matter of a few weeks before Roosevelt brings America in and declares war on Germany. But this time the Boches will have Paris, and if we stay they’ll lock us up.’ Bove prepared to leave. Dr Gros, in Bove’s words, ‘seemed to age before our eyes’ and was no longer able to work. Sumner considered going, but his wife convinced him that the hospital’s French staff would not stay without him. Sumner asked Toquette,