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This item WAS NOT SOLD. Auction date was 2003 Nov 09 @ 13:00UTC-5 : EST/CDT
<b>229. WORLD WAR I SURGEON'S CORRESPONDENCE DESCRIBING BRAVERY OF BLACK SOLDIERS UNDER FIRE </b>A highly detailed and brilliantly-written correspondence of approximately 100 (mostly multi paged) letters recording the First World War experiences of Benjamin A. Furman, M.D. as a Captain in the Medical Corps of the U.S. Army. Because he was an officer, Doctor Furman censored his own mail, leaving him free to give his true impressions of what he saw and experienced. Many of the letters are neatly typed, a rarity for letters from the World War I, and the Doctor's handwriting is also surprisingly easy to read! Many of the letters are at least eight pages in length, with some even longer. On several occasions Furman treated a number of black soldiers, and in several of his letters home, despite his initial prejudices to the contrary, praises the toughness and bravery of the African-American Troops. These letters are the first that we have encountered discussing black Americans serving in combat positions during World War I, and as such are probably the most important letters of the group. The series begins with his crossing over to France during which it appears the convoy he was in underwent an attack by German U-boats: <i>"...September 2, 1917...Well, we have sighted England at last , and are about 50 miles from Liverpool...I haven't seen any subs. They say that one took a shot at us yesterday morning at 5:30 with a torpedo that went across our bow...A small liner was torpedoed Friday morning about 25 miles behind us and a hole blown open in her bow, but she got to port all right. One of the destroyers located...the sub under the water and blew it up with a charge of dynamite...Thank God for the English Navy...</i>". Furman had been sent to France as the surgeon of a telegraph unit, but managed to get reassigned to Evacuation Hospital #2, a field hospital, where he soon saw more than his share of wounded as he describes in his letters, in small part: <i>"...Evacuation Hospital #2, July 21, 1918...Yesterday I began to get a little real work. Up to now I have done practically nothing but watch operations and dressings. This war surgery is somewhat different from Civil Surgery and they figure a man must do a lot of observing before he is fit to do any real work...I hope that soon I'll get on a regular operating team as an assistant...</i>". He soon gets his wish: <i>"...August 4, 1918...I had my first surgical operation over here. A young boy from Long Island had a bad wound of his arm - piece of shell went right through it but didn't hit any big vessels or nerves and I was able to sew him up tight...</i>". On Furman's first encounter with black soldiers he writes, in small part:".<i>..September 7, 1918...We have had quite a number of colored troops - draft men and they are a funny bunch. They are making good soldiers, tell Ida, and are fine patients too. They are for the most part patient and gritty and good natured...They are hard to anesthetize...These Darkies are certainly a husky, well built crowd & most of them come from the South. I have only run across one who did not want to go back to the trenches. One of them a couple of days after he had been operated on for half a dozen hand grenade wounds asked: `Doctor, when can I go Home?' Dempsey said to him: `What do you mean by home, back to Alabama?' `NO SUH! Ah wants to go back to ma company'...</i>". As the combat casualties keep coming into the unit, Furman continues to comment on his surgical procedures :"<i>...September 23, 1918...I am on a surgical team and have done quite a few operations myself - debridements and removals of foreign bodies , and have assisted in some very interesting belly cases...I have learned a lot about War Surgery. Best of all I have picked up a great deal about the treatment of compound fractures...I can recall quite a few cases at St. Michael's for whom the Carrel treatment and extension with a Thomas splint would have done wonders for. We'll show the boys a few real stunts when we get back...We have been getting some colored troops in lately, draft men from the South. They are good patients and from what we can judge of them they are good soldiers too...</i>". In a letter to a Boy Scout troop back in America, Furman talks about the war while continuing to praise the conduct of the black troops, in part: "<i>September 28, 1918,...Very much pleased to hear from you all...and to know that all of you are doing your part to lick old Kaiser Bill...You are...making it easier for that fellow who does shoulder that gun to shoot straighter and fight harder, and you can rest assured that he is shooting straight and often. This sector used to be a quiet sector until we Americans came into it and then right off the bat and right away our boys started off and took a couple of villages...It is wonderful to see the spirit of our boys. I have been located in this evacuation hospital since the First of July and have operated on a good many of them as they have come in from the trenches...Believe me, you can't beat them for nerve and pluck. Game to the core, every one of them...Even the colored troops from the South have the same spirit. We had a big hunky Negro whom we had operated on and removed six pieces of Boche hand - grenade...His company was still in the trenches. When we told him that he would have to stay in the hospital for at least two weeks for his wounds to heal up he looked very much depressed...From what we can gather of them as patients they are first class soldiers. They can always see the funny side of almost any situation. This morning while dressing one of them I asked him how he was hurt...He said : ` Bill and me [a patient in the same ward with several broken leg bones] was standing at the door of our dugout when BANG went a great big shrapnel ( as he called it) right beside us. I yells out: `Bill, My leg's busted.". Bill said: That ain't your leg, it's ma leg' As it happened he was right. We get all kinds of patients here, Americans, white and black, French and French Colonials and occasionally a Boche prisoner. The other day we received a young German lieutenant who was pretty badly shot up and as we put him on the X- ray table to find where his bullets were he was still yelling `Camerad' . I suppose that in his semi - consciousness he thought the X-ray was some new form of torture invented by us Wild Indian Americans...</i>". In this same letter, Furman describes the nature of the field hospital system, as well as the ravages of the 1918 Flu epidemic, in part: `'<i>...Don't suppose you fellows know just what an evacuation hospital is. It is a hospital where the men are taken for operation when they are wounded. Starting from the front line trenches and working back you have first the First Aid Dressing Station. This is usually located in the second or third line trench in a dugout. From here the Medical Corps men and stretcher bearers go out and gather in the wounded from No Man's Land and the front line trenches. Here they are simply given first aid treatment and are then carried further, usually on stretchers still, to the Field Hospital where they are sorted out and those who can stand the trip are put in the ambulances and carried back six to ten miles to the Evacuation Hospital. Here they are operated on and fixed up and in the course of two to four weeks they are taken in a hospital train or in ambulances to the base hospital...</i>". As the War continues, increasingly larger portions of Furman's wards are becoming filled with severe flu patients, prompting him to write several letters home to fellow surgeons about the continuing spread of the Great Flu Epidemic. For example, in a letter written on October 20, 1918, Furman observes that: <i>"...We have all been busy as the Dickens the past week. They dumped between 600 and 800 medical cases on our hands on short notice and everyone has been humping some...I have seven wards on my hands, or 140 cases. Most of them are influenza, Spanish Flu as it is nicknamed over here. Some of the Boys are quite sick as some have developed Pneumonia on top of the Grippe. We have had some cases of Meningitis sent in and although I don't have the Meningitis Ward I have to keep a sharp lookout for it...This is a good opportunity to brush up. We have a serum treatment for Meningitis now which seems to be as effective for Meningitis as Diphtheria antitoxin is to Diphtheria...The Diagnosis is the important thing, and an early diagnosis usually means the difference between life and death...</i>". As the War drew to a close, Furman continued writing detailed letters home on subjects ranging from the set-up of the trenches, the condition of released prisoners of War, the devastation of the French Countryside from the incessant shelling, and the attitudes of the defeated Germans, as these excerpts illustrate: "<i>Nov. 17, 1918...A lot of British Tommies who have been prisoners in Germany have been going through here the last few days...This is the first place that they have struck since they got across the lines where they could get something to eat...They came in about as near starved as they could be and we tried to fill a few of them up. About the only things they had to eat in Germany was a sort of Barley soup and bread, and one of them showed me the bread. The worst looking stuff you ever saw. Almost coal black, no, it is more of a mud color and you can see the saw dust in it. Besides being hungry they were awfully dirty and their clothes and shoes were about gone...They were simply turned loose with a half a loaf of bread and they had to march 50 miles to get to where we are which s the first place they could get something to eat...Some of the men were so weak from their partial starvation while in prison that some of them fell off along the roadside with no one to look after them...</i>". In a number of his letters written after the Armistice, Furman takes advantage of relaxed security regulations to provide the folks at home with more detailed accounts of his wartime experiences. In a letter written from the evacuation hospital at Baccarat, France on November 24, 1918, he elaborates on the effects of war upon France and the unnerving effect of German air raids, in part: <i>"...As you can see from the top of this page I am giving you my location. Censor regulations are all off so I can tell you something of interest...I came away on the First of July to come up here. As I told you in my letters, I made the trip in my trusty old Ford Ambulance and it was a pretty and interesting trip...After leaving this town we began to see the evidence of the Hun's handiwork...The ruined houses with the insides entirely gutted , and in some cases with the heavy walls blown down tell the same old story of German Kultur...When we arrived at the Hospital...we heard that there was a German attack expected opposite us. Some prisoners had been taken... belonging to what was known as Hindenburg's Traveling Circus. They were hand picked German troops who were shifted here and there to the front wherever they wanted to do anything big. Their presence opposite us could only be accounted for on the supposition that an attack was immanent. We had orders to move at a moment's notice...</i>". In this same letter, Furman goes into extremely detailed descriptions of the effects of German bombing raids, in part:"<i>...At first he was content in dropping the small bombs, Daisy Cutters as they are called because the explosive force seems to be in a lateral direction and not down or up...When I saw what a real bomb could do...I had a real healthy respect for them. They came over one night and attacked a town about three miles from us where American troops were stationed and killed one or two and wounded a couple of dozen...another man and myself went u on the ambulance...That was the night that I did my first operation. Ever after that I have had a wholesome respect for bombs...The Boche aviators seemed to use this place for a landmark. Our large red crosses laid out on the ground are visible at high altitudes...Every moonlight just after dark you could hear the old siren on the gas works start up and the antiaircraft guns on the hills on either of us would open up...and you would slip on your steel Stetson and beat it for the dug out...while the French seventy - fives were breaking over your head and the pieces of shrapnel were falling on the roofs of the buildings and the machine guns sputtered ( They sounded exactly like automatic riveting machines) you would sometimes hear a bomb drop...</i>". In another postwar letter, January 16, 1919 Furman informs his family on his tour of "<i>No Man's Land</i>", and his desire to go home, writing that: <i>"...For a while we had quite a little war surgery [ with] the 42nd, the 77th, and the 37th Divisions being located in the sector of the front which we drained We got the wounded directly from the trenches...Soon after the Armistice was signed we received orders to pack up and be ready to move to Germany...The most interesting part of our trip was the second day when we passed through the battle area...We came to the old line with first the French and then the German trenches, all well made with basket work to keep up the sides, dunk - board covering and with good drainage...Between the two lines of the trenches were the zig zag lines of barbed wire entanglements, acres of it...The country was bleak and desolate looking and the ground was all plowed up with shell holes...Towns were in ruins for miles behind the lines and of course the houses and villages within the lines were fairly pulverized...At present we have about 1200 patients in the hospital and I have about 17 that belong to my service . We have been rushed to death since coming here...I don't know how long we are due to stay here. I am ready to go any day. They say that it was quite an honor to be picked for the Army of Occupation, but I'd gladly sell my share of all the honor and glory in the whole damned army for a half hour with my girl...</i>". This extremely interesting correspondence comes with a picture of Doctor Furman, hundreds of postcards of towns he passed through, often with his descriptive commentary written on the back, several newspapers celebrating the Armistice, and numerous other supporting documents, including materials from unit reunions. Because of the sheer bulk of this correspondence, we were forced to leave many of Furman's letters still unread, and we suspect that a future reader will find much of interest in these letters as well. Except for the newspapers, this exceptional archive is in fine condition.<b> $1,500-2,000</b>
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