Washington University School of Medicine Oral History Project

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Clowns, Base Hospital 21 circus, Rouen, France
Base Hospital 21 invited personnel from the British camps in the Rouen area to the “Unit 21 Circus” in June 1918. The handbill promised great spectacles and amazing feats, which the British, unfamiliar with American ballyhoo, may have taken too literally. The “Tommies,” however, proved a rapt audience for the free (but amateur) entertainment.