Number Three, on the left bank of the Seine, was for a time known as the Reid Hospital. It was at one time a home or dormitory for girl art students in Paris. Later it was transformed into a hospital by Mrs. Whitelaw Reid of New York, who gave it, furnished and equipped, to the American Red Cross and arranged to pay practically all its running expenses. It was a comparatively small establishment of eighty beds, which were reserved almost entirely for officers, and personnel of our Red Cross.
From this most modest nucleus there was both steady and rapid growth until, at the time of the signing of the armistice, there were not three but eight of the American Red Cross Military Hospitals: the three of which you have just read; Number One in Neuilly; Number Two (Dr. Blake's) in Rue Piccini; Number Three (the Reid Hospital) in the Rue de Chevreuse; Number Five, the tent institution which sprang up on the famous Bois de Boulogne race course at Auteuil; Number Six at Bellevue; Number Seven at Juilly; Number Eight at Malabry (these last three in the suburbs of Paris), and Number Nine in the Boulevard des Batignoles, within the limits of the city itself.
The so-called American Red Cross hospitals were generally somewhat smaller. They were Number 100 at Beaucaillou, St. Julien in the Gironde, Number 101 at Neuilly, Number 102 at Neufchâteau, Number 103 also at Neuilly, Number 104 at Beauvais, with an annex at Chantilly, Number 105 at Juilly, Number 109 at Evreux, and Number 113, the Czecho-Slovak Hospital, at Cognac. In addition to these there was a further group of smaller hospitals, which were operated in the same way as the American Red Cross military hospitals. These included Number 107 at Jouy-sur-Morin, Number 110 at Villers-Daucourt, Number 111 at Château-Thierry, Number 112 in the Rue Boileau, Paris, Evacuation Hospital Number 114 at Fleury-sur-Aire in the Vosges, Base Hospital Number 41 at St. Denis, and Base Hospital No. 82 at Toul. While outside of all of these lists were three small institutions in Paris, operated in coöperation with the French, but far too unimportant to be listed here.
There were twenty-six of these American Red Cross hospitals of one form or another established in France through the war. Yet, impressive as this list might seem to be at a first glance, it, of course, falls far short of the great total of the regular base and evacuation hospitals set up by the Medical Corps of our army throughout France and the occupied districts of Germany. Yet even these, as we shall see presently, were constantly dependent upon the functioning of our Red Cross. And, after all, it was chiefly a question of the mere form of organization.