"Prefatory Note" (pp. 1-11) in: Dedication Exercises of the Oscar C. Tugo Circle in Memory of the First Enlisted Man in the American Expeditionary Force to Be Killed in the Great War. Pasteur and Longwood Avenues Boston, Massachusetts October 18, 1921. Reprinted from the Boston Medical and Surgical Journal, Vol. 185, no. 25, December 22, 1921, pp. 739-746.

[CUSHING, Harvey] [TUGO, Oscar C.]

Published by 1921.

About this Item

25 pp; 1 plate (Frontispiece of Oscar C. Tugo). Original wrappers. Wrappers unevenly sunned. Slight crease in upper corner of wrappers and text leaves. Very Good. First Edition. This is the original publication. It was also privately printed in 1922 by the Merrymount Press, with a slightly revised title ending "to Be Killed by the Enemy". Harvey Cushing Bibliography no. 200 (citing both versions). In his "The Story of U.S. Army Base Hospital No. 5" (1919), Cushing had described the bomb that killed Tugo and three others: "The Base had so far been exempt until on the night of September 4, 1917, without warning other than the extinguishing of lights in the area a few moments before, a Gotha swept over the Camiers area and dropped a succession of seven bombs, five of them being direct hits in Base Hospital No. 5's compound. The first two hits were close together among the tents of the recently attached officers. Lieutenant Fitzsimons when last seen was standing at the opening of his tent and was literally blown to pieces by a bomb which fell at his feet. Lieutenants McGuire, Whidden, and Smith, occupying adjoining tents which were literally riddled--someone counted four hundred holes in McGuire's tent--had providential escapes, though all were more or less seriously wounded. The third and fourth bombs struck one of the large marquees full of patients, killing Private Tugo, on orderly duty, and slightly wounding Miss Parmelee, the nurse who was standing beside him. Twenty-two bed patients in this and the adjacent marquee were more or less seriously wounded. The last hit, a few seconds later, was in the reception tent, where two regulars, Private Rubino and Private Woods, our bugler, together with Private McLeod and Sergeant English, were on duty. Woods and Rubino were killed, McLeod so seriously mutilated that both legs had to be amputated at the mid-thigh. Sloan, Mason, and Stanion were also wounded, and English had a serious shell shock from which he was long in recovering. There were, needless to say, many narrow escapes, with not a few acts of heroism, and it was an experience for those who participated in it that gave a profound distaste for the many subsequent air raids the unit had to live through during its year in Boulogne, where it was in a most exposed position to the Gothas coming in, as they usually did, from the sea. On September 8 the bodies of Lieutenant Fitzsimons, with Privates Tugo, Woods and Rubino, were interred in the great military cemetery in the sand dunes between Camiers and Etaples, the first of any of the American Expeditionary Forces to have made the great sacrifice, the more tragic for its having occurred at the hands of an unseen enemy far from the line of battle. Six months later other victims--nurses, officers and men--of far worse raids over hospitals in the vicinity came to lie beside them in that huge field of many thousands of wooden crosses, which lay in plain sight of the great training ground" (pp. 46-47). In his biography of Harvey Cushing, John Fulton describes these "dedication exercises": "Another occasion, and one to which he had given careful thought and preparation, claimed Cushing's attention on 18 October [1921]. At noon a simple ceremony was held at Louis Pasteur and Longwood Avenues, just in front of the Harvard Medical School, at which the members of Base Hospital No. 5 met to dedicate a memorial, the Oscar C. Tugo Circle, in memory of their comrade, the first enlisted man in the American Expeditionary Force to be killed in the great war. President Lowell presided. Bishop Lawrence led the religious preliminaries, the principal address was given by Surgeon General Ireland, and there followed remarks by Andrew Peters, then Mayor of Boston, and General Edwards. President Harding had sent a letter of greeting and regret. H.C. subsequently brought together and had published a full account of the proceedings with a suitable prefatory note" (p. 484).

Seller Inventory # 17732

Bibliographic Details

• Title: "Prefatory Note" (pp. 1-11) in: Dedication Exercises of the Oscar C. Tugo Circle in Memory of the First Enlisted Man in the American Expeditionary Force to Be Killed in the Great War. Pasteur and Longwood Avenues Boston, Massachusetts October 18, 1921. Reprinted from the Boston Medical and Surgical Journal, Vol. 185, no. 25, December 22, 1921, pp. 739-746.
• Publisher: 1921.
• Binding: Soft cover
• Edition: 1st Edition
• Condition: Very Good