Suddenly in front of them yawned a black gulf. The Adjutant jammed on

his brakes, but it was too late. The game little Ford sailed right into

a big shell hole, and settled down three feet below the road right side

up but tightly wedged in. The two travelers climbed out and

reconnoitered but found the situation hopeless. There had been many

sleepless nights before this one, and the men, weary beyond endurance,

rolled up in their blankets, climbed into the car, and went to sleep,

regardless of the guns that thundered all about them.

They were just lost to the land of reality when a soldier roused them

summarily, saying:

“This is a heck of a place for the Salvation Army to go to sleep! If

you don’t mind I’ll just pick your old bus out of here and send you on

your way before it’s light enough for Fritzy to spot you and send a

calling card.”

He was grinning at them cheerfully and they roused to the occasion.

“How are you going to do it?” asked the Adjutant, who, by the way, was

Smiling Billy, the same one the soldiers called “one game little guy.”

“It will take a three-ton truck to get us out of this hole!”

“I haven’t got a truck but I guess we can turn the trick all right!”

said the soldier.

He disappeared into the darkness above the crater and in a moment

reappeared with ten more dark forms following him, and another soldier

who patrolled the rim of the crater on horseback.

“How do you like ’em?” he chuckled to the Salvation Army men, as he

turned his flashlight on the ten and showed them to be big German

prisoners of war. Under his direction they soon had the little Ford

pushed and shouldered into the road once more. In a little while the

Salvationists reached their destination and found to their relief that

the rumor about the lassies was untrue.

At Mesnil-St.-Firmin one of the lassies, a young woman well known in

New York society circles, but a loyal Salvationist and in France from

the start, drove a little flivver carrying supplies for several nights,

accompanied only by a young boy detailed from the Army. Every mile of

the way was dark and perilous, but there was no one else to do the

work, so she did it.

Here they were under shell fire every night. The girls slept in an old

wine cellar, the only comparatively safe place to be found. It was

damp, with a fearful odor they will never forget—moreover, it was

already inhabited by rats. They frequently had to retire to the cellar

during gas attacks, and stay for hours, sometimes having only time to

seize an overcoat and throw it over their night-clothes. They were here

through ten counter-attacks and when Cantigny was taken.

There seemed to be big movements among the Germans one day. They were

bringing up reinforcements, and a large attack was expected. The

airplanes were dropping bombs freely everywhere and it looked as if

there would not be one brick left on the top of another in a few hours.

Then the military authorities ordered the two girls to leave town. When

the boys heard that the hut was being shelled and the girls were

ordered to leave they poured in to tell them how much they would miss

them. They well knew from experience that their staunch hardworking

little friends would not have left them if they could have helped it.

Also, they dreaded to lose these consecrated young women from their

midst. They had a feeling that their presence brought the presence of

the great God, with His protection, and in this they had come to trust

in their hour of danger. Often the boys would openly speak of this,

owning that they attributed their safety to the presence of their

Christian friends.

One young officer from the officers’ mess where the girls had dined

once at their invitation, brought them boxes of candy, and in

presenting them said:

“Gee! We shall miss you like the devil!”

The lassie twinkled up in a merry smile and answered: “That sure is

some comparison!” The officer blushed as red as a peony and tried to

apologize:

“Well, now, you know what I mean. I don’t know just how to say how much

we shall miss you!”

They left at midnight on foot accompanied by one of the Salvation Army

men workers who had been badly gassed and needed to get back of the

lines and have some treatment. It was brilliant moonlight as they hiked

it down the road, the airplanes were whizzing over their heads and the

anti-aircraft guns piling into them. They started for La Folie, the

Headquarters of the Staff-Captain of that zone, but they lost their way

and got far out of the track, arriving at last at Breteuil. Coming to

the woods a Military Police stationed at the crossroads told them:

“You can’t go into Breteuil because they have been shelling it for

twenty minutes. Right over there beyond where you are standing a bomb

dropped a few minutes ago and killed or wounded seven fellows. The

ambulance just took them away.”

However, as they did not know where else to go they went into Breteuil,

and found the village deserted of all but French and American Military

Police. They tried to get directions, and at last found a French mule

team to take them to La Folie, where they finally arrived at four

o’clock in the morning.

The next day they went on to Tartigny, where they were to be located

for a time.

One of the lassies left her sister with the canteen one day and started

out with another Officer to the Divisional Gas Officer to get a new gas

mask, for something had happened to hers. As they reached a crossroads

a boy on a wheel called out: “Oh, they’re shelling the road! Pull into

the village quick!”

When they arrived in the village there was a great shell just fallen in

the very centre of the town. The girl thought of her sister all alone

in the canteen, for the shells were falling everywhere now, and they

started to take a short cut back to Tartigny, but the Military Police

stopped them, saying they couldn’t go on that road in the daytime as it

was under observation, so they had to go back by the road they had

come. The canteen was at the gateway of a chateau, and when they

reached there they saw the shells falling in the chateau yard and

through the glass roof of the canteen. It was a trying time for the two

brave girls.

They had been invited out to dinner that evening at the Officers’ Mess.

As a rule, they did not go much among the officers, but this was a

special invitation. The shells had been falling all the afternoon, but

they were quite accustomed to shells and that did not stop the

festivities. During the dinner the soldier boys sang and played on

guitars and banjos. But when the dinner was over they asked the girls

to sing.

It was very still in the mess hall as the two lovely lassies took their

guitars and began to sing. There was something so strong and sweet and

pure in the glance of their blue eyes, the set of their firm little

chins, so pleasant and wholesome and merry in the very curve of their

lips, that the men were hushed with respect and admiration before this

highest of all types of womanhood.

It was a song written by their Commander that the girls had chosen,

with a sweet, touching melody, and the singers made every word clear

and distinct:

Bowed beneath the garden shades,

Where the Eastern—sunlight fades,

Through a sea of griefs He wades,

And prays in agony.

His sweat is of blood,

His tears like a flood

For a lost world flow down.

I never knew such tears could be—

Those tears He wept for me!

Hung upon a rugged tree

On the hill of Calvary,

Jesus suffered, death, to be

The Saviour of mankind.

His brow pierced by thorn,

His hands and feet torn,

With broken heart He died.

I never knew such pain could be,

This pain He bore for me!

Suddenly crashing into the midst of the melody came a great shell,

exploding just outside the door and causing everyone at the table to

spring to his feet. The singers stopped for a second, wavered, as the

reverberation of the shock died away, and then went on with their song;

and the officers, abashed, wondering, dropped back into their seats

marvelling at the calmness of these frail women in the face of death.

Surely they had something that other women did not have to enable them

to sing so unconcernedly in such a time as this!

Love which conquered o’er death’s sting,

Love which has immortal wing,

Love which is the only thing

My broken heart to heal.

It burst through the grave,

It brought grace to save,

It opened Heaven’s gate.

I never knew such love could be—

This love He gave to me!

It needs some special experience to appreciate what Salvation Army

lassies really are, and what they have done. They are not just any good

sort of girl picked up here and there who are willing to go and like

the excitement of the experience; neither are they common illiterate

girls who merely have ordinary good sense and a will to work. The

majority of them in France are fine, well-bred, carefully reared

daughters of Christian fathers and mothers who have taught them that

the home is a little bit of heaven on earth, and a woman God’s means of

drawing man nearer to Him. They have been especially trained from

childhood to forget self and to live for others. The great slogan of

the Salvation Army is “Others.” Did you ever stop to think how that

would take the coquetry out of a girl’s eyes, and leave the sweet

simplicity of the natural unspoiled soul? We have come to associate

such a look with a plain, homely face, a dull complexion, careless,

severe hair-dressing and unbeautiful clothes. Why?

Righteousness from babyhood has given to these girls delicate beautiful

features, clear complexions that neither faded nor had to be renewed in

the thick of battle, eyes that seemed flecked with divine lights and

could dance with mirth on occasion or soften exquisitely in sympathy,

furtive dimples that twinkled out now and then; hands that were shapely

and did not seem made for toil. Yet for all that they toiled night and

day for the soldiers. They were educated, refined, cultured, could talk

easily and well on almost any subject you would mention. They never

appeared to force their religious views to the front, yet all the while

it was perfectly evident that their religion was the main object of

their lives; that this was the secret source of strength, the great

reason for their deep joy, and abiding calm in the face of calamities;

that this was the one great purpose in life which overtopped and

conquered all other desires. And if you would break through their sweet

reserve and ask them they would tell you that Jesus and the winning of

souls to Him was their one and only ambition.

And yet they have not let these great things keep them from the

pleasant little details of life. Even in the olive drab flannel shirt

and serge skirt of their uniform, or in their trim serge coats, the

exact counterpart of the soldier boy’s, except for its scarlet

epaulets, and the little close trench hat with its scarlet shield and

silver lettering, they are beautiful and womanly. Catch them with the

coat off and a great khaki apron enveloping the rest of their uniform,

and you never saw lovelier women. No wonder the boys loved to see them

working about the hut, loved to carry water and pick up the dishes for

washing, and peel apples, and scrape out the bowl after the cake batter

had been turned into the pans. No wonder they came to these girls with

their troubles, or a button that needed sewing on, and rushed to them

first with the glad news that a letter had come from home even before

they had opened it. These girls were real women, the kind of woman God

meant us all to be when He made the first one; the kind of woman who is

a real helpmeet for all the men with whom she comes in contact, whether

father, brother, friend or lover, or merely an acquaintance. There is a

fragrance of spirit that breathes in the very being, the curve of the

cheek, the glance of the eye, the grace of a movement, the floating of

a sunny strand of hair in the light, the curve of the firm red lips

that one knows at a glance will have no compromise with evil. This is

what these girls have.

You may call it what you will, but as I think of them I am again

reminded of that verse in the Bible about those brave and wonderful

disciples: “And they took knowledge of them that they had been with

Jesus.”

Two of the Salvation Army men went back to Mesnil-St.-Firmin the day

after the lassies had been obliged to leave, to get some of their

belongings which they had not been able to take with them, and one of

them, a Salvation Army Major, stayed to keep the place open for the

boys. He was the only Salvation Army man who is entitled to wear a

wound stripe. By his devotion to duty, self-sacrifice, and contempt of

danger, he won the confidence of the men wherever he was. He chiefly

worked alone and operated a canteen usually in a dugout at the front.

On one occasion a soldier was badly wounded at the door of a hut, by an

exploding gas-shell. He fell into the dugout and while the Major worked

over him, the Major himself was gassed and had to be removed to the

rear and undergo hospital treatment. For this service he was awarded a

wound stripe. During the St. Mihiel offensive he was appointed in the

Toul Sector and followed up the advancing soldiers, and later was

active in the Argonne. He is essentially a front-line man and always

takes the greatest satisfaction in being in the place of most danger.

The following is a brief excerpt from his diary when he manned the

dugout hut in Coullemelle:

May 12

“Arrived in Coullemelle Sunday night, May 12. Was busy with my work by

mid-day, Monday, 13. After cleaning our dugout, gave medicine to sick

man, who refused to sleep in my bed because he was not fit. However, I

made him feel fine, helped. I had a long talk with the boys.

_Tuesday, 14:_ Shell struck opposite to dugout and sent tiles down

steps. The Captain of E Battery visited me to-day, and then I visited

the Battery and had chow with them. Airplane fight: while batteries

were roaring, the Germans came down in flames.

_Wednesday, 15:_ No coming to dugout in the day-time on account of

shelling. I did good business in the evening and also had long services

by request of the boys. Received a letter from B—— here to-day, I slept

good.

_Thursday, 16:_ I visited army, the officers and men of F Battery.

Their chow kitchen is in a bad place, all men coming down sick. I had

an arrangement with the doughboys that they might come in my dugout any

hour in the night, whenever they wanted. I visited infantry officers

to-day, Capt. Cribbs and Capt. Crisp. I had a lovely talk with them. I

offered to go to the trenches with my goods, but Capt. Cribbs said I

would just be killed without doing what he knew I wanted to do, namely,

serve the boys with food and encourage them.

_Friday, 17:_ I was startled by a fearful barrage at four o’clock when

I got up, washed my clothes: was visited by the Y.M.C.A. Secretary: was

shelled from five o’clock till ten o’clock. I went for chow and found

shell ball gone through kitchen. High explosive, black smoke shells

bursting intermittently, tiles fell into my dugout. I took pick shovel

in with me; my kitten ran away but came back. A three-legged cat came

to the ruined home where I am; its leg evidently had been cut off by

shrapnel. Great air fight all day. Incendiary shells were fired into

the town and burnt for a long time. I visited Battery F, and gave the

fellows medicine. To-day both officers and men were in the gun pits and

I with them, while they were deviling with Fritzy. Big business in

evening with long service, gave out Testaments and held service in

dugout; got a Frenchman to interpret the scripture to his comrades.

Bequests for prayer. Doughboys came in 12:30, through a barrage, and

got sixty-five bars of chocolate, others got biscuits. I am very, very

tired; artillery is roaring as I go to sleep.

_Saturday, 18:_ Capt. Cribbs came down to dugout and said he was

worried to death over me (thought I was killed). I assured him I was

all 0. K., and that it was their end of the town that needed looking

after. He laughed and enjoyed it. My supplies are kept up by the

courage and devotion of the Staff-Captain and Billy, who, taking their

lives in their hands, bring the Ford with supplies along the shell-torn

road at great peril. Capt. Corliss also came.

During the day, the officer of Battery F wanted the Victrola and got

the use of it in their dugout for three days. In the meantime I had

furnished Battery D the use of the Victrola and the day I made the

promise, I found the boys without chow for twelve hours. When about to

serve it, the town was gassed and their food with it and no one was

permitted to touch a thing, they were blessing the Kaiser as only

soldiers can under such circumstances. When I arrived among them, after

finding out the way of things, I suggested to the officers that I

should be permitted to supply them with such food as I had. They

assured me it would be a mighty good thing for them if I would, and I

took four boxes of biscuits and six pots of jam and other things to

their trench in the rear of their batteries— they surely thought I was

an angel and I left them pretty happy. This was all done under fire and

at great risk. I chowed with Battery E and saw shell hole through

building which was new since my last visit—boys offer to teach me how

to work gun, their spirit is wonderful under the terrific strain which

they labor. I visited ruined church and went inside; here were some

graves of the French soldiers, some of the bodies being exposed. Could

not stay very long. Overtook soldier-boy limping, got him to stay

awhile and gave him hot chocolate; persuaded him to let his limb be

seen to, which he did, and was sent to hospital. I visited hospital

corps-fellows and arranged that in case of gas, they would visit and

rouse me at night. They are fine fellows. Doughboys bought lots of

goods and blessed the Salvation Army a thousand times. These lads come

in from the trenches and have some hair-raising stories to tell.

_Sunday, 19:_ Quiet till the afternoon when a gas barrage started. I

was driven out of my dugout. I had a narrow escape, while reaching the

hospital corps dugout. Lieut. Roolan (since promoted), of the Fifth

Field Artillery, was there for two hours and half. 480 shells, I was

informed, came down, averaging up three and four per minute. All night,

from 6 o’clock to 3 A.M., 3000 shells are sent into the town. I slept

in the Headquarters Signal Corps dugout with my gas mask on all night.

_Monday, 20:_ Visited Y.M.C.A. and found their dugout had been struck

and the Secretary’s eyes were gassed after a man took his place. I saw

Colonel Crane to try and get out of my dugout and get the one he had

left. He gave me permission, assuring me that it was not a very good

one at that. I took my Victrola with two of the battery boys from F

Battery. I carried the records and they the Victrola. We dodged the

shelling all the way and I had the pleasure of hearing the “Swanee

River” song at the same time as the firing of the big guns much to the

enjoyment of the boys. I understand that General Summerall visited and

heard the Victrola soon after I had taken it to the boys. I placed

about fifty books among officers of the Hospital Corps, Infantry

officers, Battery officers. They were highly appreciated. I slept with

Signal Corps boys again as Fritzy decided to continue the bombardment

of the town which he did from 5.30 P.M. to 5.30 A.M. I slept with mask

on and had no ill effects of the gas at all so far; but about five

o’clock a terrific crash just outside of my dugout followed by a man

shouting as he rushed down the dugout steps, “Oh, God, get me to the

doctor right away.” That shell nearly got me. I was only eight feet

from it. I sprung up and rushed him from the dugout over to the

hospital. I had to chase around from one dugout to another and finally

landed my man (his name was Harry), who was taken to the hospital.

_Tuesday, 21:_ After taking the man to the doctor, I went to my own

place and found a nine-inch gas shrapnel shell had burst 15 or 20 feet

from my dugout, about fifteen holes were torn through the door, the top

of the shell lay six feet from the top of the steps, pieces of the

shell were scattered down the steps, and my dugout to the gas curtain,

was full of gas. If Staff-Captain and Billy had been visiting me that

night, the shell would have hit the Ford right in the center. Fierce

bombardment all the day. Houses were struck on the entire street from

end to end. Shells fell in the yard, one struck the corner of the

house. The soldiers next door have gone, and my place can only be

opened in the evenings. Things are pretty hot, I started out visiting

the batteries to-day, but was driven back and could get out only by the

back entrance to the yard. I am told by a soldier of the Intelligence

Dept., that their bombardment is what is known as a “Million-Dollar

Barrage,” and that all were fortunate to have passed through it, he

also told me the number and nature of the shells. I served hot

chocolate this Tuesday night and noticed that my hands were very red.

_Wednesday, 22:_ I visited the Battery in their trenches again and took

them food. My eyes are affected by the gas, and I got treatment at the

Evacuating Hospital. Some shells come very close to my dugout—to-day

thirty feet, fifty feet and twenty feet. I gather up a box full of

remnants. I find I am gassed by a contact with the poor fellow coming

in whom I took to the doctor. I get treatment two or three times for my

eyes and throat. My hands begin to crack and smart. The flesh comes off

from my neck and other parts of my body. I had a fine meeting with boys

in dugout and am again visited by the doughboys and officers. I visit

the ruined church area again and get a few relics.

_Thursday, 23:_ My eyes are very red and becoming painful and also my

throat and nose, _etc_. I plan to move my dugout and pack up

accordingly. Things are quieter today; had services again in the

evening. French schoolmaster among the number, six requests for prayer.

_Friday, 24:_ Am all ready to move to a new dugout when Staff-Captain

arrives and tells me I am ordered out by the military.”

Here is the Military Order received by the Staff-Captain:

“To Major Coe,

“Salvation Army:

“(1) Major Wilson, Chief G1, directs that the Salvation Army evacuate

‘Coullemelle’ as soon as possible.

“(2) He desires that they leave to-night if possible.

“(3) This message was received by me from the office of G1.

“L. Johnson,

“1st Lieut., F. A.”

Orders also arrived soon for the removal of the Salvation Army workers

in Broyes:

“Headquarters, 1st Division, G-1.

“American Expeditionary Forces,

“June 3, 1919.

“Memorandum: To Mr. L. A. Coe, Salvation Army, La Folie.

“The hut, which it is understood the Salvation Army is operating in

Broyes, will, for military reasons, be removed from there as soon as

practicable.

“It is contrary to the desire of the Commanding General that women

workers be employed in huts or canteens east of the line

Mory-Chepoix-Tartigny, and if any are now so located they are to ’be

removed.

“The operations of technical services, Red Cross, Y.M.C.A., and other

similar agencies is a function of this section of the General Staff and

all questions pertaining to your movements and location of huts should

in the future be referred to G.-1.

“By command of Major General Bullard.

“G. K Wilson,

“Major, General Staff,

“A. C. of S., G.-1.”

In Tartigny they found a house with five rooms, one of them very large.

The billeting officer turned this over to the Salvation Army.

There was plenty of space and the girls might have a room to themselves

here, instead of just curtaining off a corner of a tent or making a

partition of supply boxes in one end of the hut as they often had to

do. There was also plenty of furniture in the house, and they were

allowed to go around the village and get chairs and tables or anything

they wanted to fix up their canteen. The girls had great fun selecting

easy-chairs and desks and anything they desired from the deserted

houses, and before long the result was a wonderfully comfortable, cozy,

home-like room.

“Gee! This is just like heaven, coming in here!” one of the boys said

when he first saw it.

Just outside Tartigny there was a large ammunition dump, piles of

shells and boxes of other ammunition. It was under the trees and well

camouflaged, but night after night the enemy airplanes kept trying to

get it. The girls used to sit in the windows and watch the airplane

battles. They would stay until an airplane got over the house and then

they would run to the cellar. They came so close one night that pieces

of shell from the anti-aircraft guns fell over the house.

Sometimes the airplanes would come in the daytime, and the girls got

into the habit of running out into the street to watch them. But at

this the boys protested.

“Don’t do that, you will get hit!” they begged. And one day the nose of

an unexploded shell fell in the street just outside the door. After

that they were more careful.

In this town one afternoon a whole truck-load of oranges arrived, being

three hundred crates, four hundred oranges to a crate, for the canteen,

and they were all gone by four o’clock!

The Headquarters of the Division Commander were in a beautiful old

stone chateau of a peculiar color that seemed to be invisible to the

airplanes. There were woods all around it and the house was never

shelled. It was filled with rare old tapestries and beautiful

furniture.

The Count who owned the chateau asked the Major General to get some

furniture that belonged to him out of the village that was being

shelled. Later the Count asked the General if he ever got that

furniture. The General asked his Colonel, “What did you do with that

furniture?” “Oh,” the Colonel said, “it’s down there all right!” “And

where is the piano?” “Oh, I gave that to the Salvation Army.”

In this area it was one lassie’s first bombardment; it came suddenly

and without warning. The soldiers in the hut decamped without ceremony

for the safety of their dugouts. One soldier who had been detailed to

help the lassie, shouted: “Come on! Follow me to your dugout!” Without

further talk he turned and started for cover. The girl had been baking.

A tray full of luscious lemon cream pies stood on the table. She did

not want to leave those pies to the tender mercies of a shell. Also she

had some new boots standing beneath the table, and she was not going to

lose those. Without stopping to think, she seized the shoes in one hand

and the tray in the other and rushed after the soldier. A little gully

had to be crossed on the way to the dugout and the only bridge was a

twelve-inch plank. The soldier crossed in safety and turned to look

after the girl. Just as she reached the middle of the plank a shell

burst not far away. The lassie was so startled that she nearly lost her

balance, swaying first one way and then the other. In an attempt to

stop the tray of pies from slipping, she almost lost the shoes, and in

recovering the shoes, the pies just escaped sliding overboard into the

thick mud below.

The soldier registered deep agitation.

“Drop the shoes!” he shouted. “I can clean the shoes, but for heaven’s

sake don’t drop them pies!” And the lassie obeyed meekly.

In the little town of Bonnet where the rest room was located in an old

barn connected with a Catholic convent, one Salvation Army Envoy and

his wife from Texas began their work. They soon became known to the

soldiers familiarly as “Pa” and “Ma.”

It was in this old barn that the tent top, later made famous at

Ansauville, was first used. Stoves were almost impossible to obtain at

that time, but “Ma” was determined that she would bake pies for the

men, so the Envoy constructed an oven out of two tin cake boxes and

using a small two-burner gasoline stove, “Ma” baked biscuits and pies

that made her name famous. Through her great motherly heart and her

willingness to serve the boys at all times, under all circumstances,

she won their confidence and love. One soldier said he would walk five

miles any day to look into “Ma’s” gray eyes.

From Bonnet they were transferred to command a hut at Ansauville, but

“Ma” could never rest so long as there was a soldier to be served in

any way. She worked early and late, and she made each individual

soldier who came to the hut her special charge as if he were her own

son. She could not sleep when they were going over the top unless she

prayed with each one before he went.

The meetings which she and her husband held were full of life and power

and were never neglected, no matter how hard the strain might be from

other lines of service.

It was not long before “Ma’s” strength gave out and it was necessary to

move her to a quieter place. She was transferred to Houdelainecourt.

She would not go until they carried her away.

Houdelainecourt at this time was on the main road travelled by trucks,

taking supplies by train from the railroad at Gondrecourt to the front.

Truck drivers invariably made it a point to stop at “Ma’s” hut and here

they were always sure to receive a welcome and the most delicious

doughnuts and pies and hot biscuit which loving hands could make.

Not satisfied with this service alone, she undertook to fry pancakes

for the officers’ breakfast. It was through these kindly services,

ungrudgingly done, at any time of the day or night, that her name was

established as one of the most potent factors in contributing to the

comfort and welfare of the men, and there was no hole or tear of the

men’s clothes that “Ma” could not mend.

A short time after the pie contest over at Gondrecourt, “Ma” and one of

her lassie helpers set out to break the record of 316 pies as a day’s

work. Their oven would hold but six pies at a time; their hut had but

just been opened and all their equipment had not yet arrived, so they

were short a rolling pin, which had to be carved from a broken

wagon-shaft with a jack-knife before they could begin; but they

achieved the baking of 324 pies between 6 A.M. and 6 P.M. that day. It

is fair to state for the sake of the doubter, however, that the pie

fillers, both pumpkin and apple, were all prepared and piping hot on

the stove ready to be poured into the pastry as it was put into the

oven, which, of course, helped a good deal.

A sign was put out announcing that pie would be served at seven

o’clock, but the lines formed long before that.

[Illustration: “Ma”]

[Illustration: “They had a pie-baking contest in Gondrecourt one

day”—the renowned “Aunt Mary” in the right-hand corner]

The pies were unusually large and cut into fifths, but even at that

they were much larger pieces than are usually served at the ordinary

restaurant.

By half-past eight some men were falling in for a second helping, but

“Ma” had been watching long a little company of men off to one side who

hovered about yet never dropped into line themselves, and made up her

mind that these were some of those who perhaps sent much of their money

home and found it a long time between pay-days. Casting her kindly eye

comprehendingly toward these men she mounted a chair and requested:

“All of the men who have already had pie, please step out of the line;

and all of those boys who want coffee and pie but have no money, step

into line and get some, _anyhow!_”

She gave the boys one of her beautiful motherly smiles and that made

them feel they had all got home, and they hesitated no longer. “Ma,”

however, was more deeply interested in her meetings than in mere pie.

The Sunday before this contest over five hundred soldiers had attended

the evening meeting, and almost as many had been present at the morning

service. Also, there had been twenty-eight members added to her Bible

class. Though the hut was a large one it had been crowded to its utmost

capacity in the evening, with men packed into the open doorways and

windows on either side, and forty of the men who announced their

determination to follow Christ that night could not get inside to come

forward. More than a dozen gave personal testimony of what Christ had

done for them. One notable testimony was as follows:

“I used to be a hard guy fellers,” he said, “and maybe I had some good

reasons when I used to say that nothing was ever going to scare me, but

when we lay out there with a six-hour barrage busting right in front of

us and ‘arrivals’ busting all around us, I did a whole lot of thinking.

It seemed as though every shell had my number on it! And when we went

over and ran square into their barrage, I’ll admit I was scared yellow

and was darned afraid I was going to show it! We were under a barrage

for ten hours. A shell buried me under about a foot of earth, and for

the first time I can remember, while my bunkie was digging me out, I

prayed to God. And I want to say that I believe He answered my prayer,

and that is the only reason I came out uninjured. I promised if I got

out I’d call for a new deal, and I want to say that I’m going to keep

that promise!”

A boy who had been converted in one of the meetings a few nights before

came into the hut and sought her out. He told her he was going over the

top that night, and he had something he wanted to confess before he

went. He had told a lie and he had felt terrible remorse about it ever

since he was converted. He had treated his mother badly, and gone and

enlisted, saying he was eighteen when he was only sixteen. “Now,” said

he with relief after he had told the story, “that’s all clear. And say,

if I’m killed, will you go through my pockets and find my Testament and

send it to mother? And will you tell my mother all about it and tell

her it is all right with me now? Tell mother I went over the top a

Christian. You’ll know what to say to her to help her bear up.”

She promised and the boy went away content. That night he was killed,

and, true to her promise, she went through his pockets when he was

brought back, and found the little Testament close over his heart; and

in it a verse was marked for his mother:

“The blood of Jesus Christ His Son cleanseth us from all sin.”

During the early days of the Salvation Army work in France, while the

work was still under inspection as to its influence on the men, and one

Colonel had sent a Captain around to the meetings to report upon them

to him, “Ma’s” was one of the meetings to which the Captain came.

She did not know that she was under suspicion, but that night she spoke

on obedience and discipline, taking as her text: “Take heed to the

law,” and urging the men to obey both moral and military laws so that

they might be better men and better soldiers. The Captain reported on

her sermon and said that he wished the regiment had a Salvation Army

chaplain for every company.

The hospital visitation work was started by “Ma” in the Paris hospitals

while she was in that city for several months regaining her strength

after a physical break-down at the front. She was idolized by the

wounded. If she walked along any hospital passageway or through any

ward, a crowd of men were sure to call her by name. They knew her as

“Ma,” and frequently, overworked nurses have called up the Paris

Salvation Army Headquarters asking if Ma could not find time to come

down and sit with a dying boy who was calling for her. She observed

their birthdays with books and other small presents, wrote to their

mothers, wives and sweethearts, and performed a multitude of

invaluable, precious little services of love. For weeks after she left

Paris, returning to the front, the wounded called for her. She is one

of the outstanding figures of the Salvation Army’s work with the

American Expeditionary Forces in France. She is indelibly enshrined in

the hearts of hundreds of American soldiers.

A Salvation Army lassie bent over the bed of a wounded boy recently

arrived in the Paris hospital from the front, and gave him an orange

and a little sack of candy.

“I know the Salvation Army,” he said with a faint smile, “I knew I

should find you here.”

She asked him his division and he told her he belonged to one that had

been coöperating with the French.

“But how can that be?” she asked in surprise, “we have never worked

with your division. How do you know about us?”

“I only saw the Salvation Army once,” he replied, “but I’ll never

forget it. It was when I came back to consciousness in the Dressing

Station at Cheppy, and the first thing I saw was a Salvation Army girl

bending over me washing the blood and dirt off my face with cold water.

She looked like an angel and she was that to me. She gave me a drink of

cold lemonade when I was burning up with fever, and she lifted my head

to pour it between my lips when I had not strength to move myself. No,

I shall not forget!”

One bright young fellow with a bandaged eye turned a cheerful grin

toward the Salvation Army visitor as she said with compassion: “Son,

I’m sorry you’ve lost your eye.”

“Oh, that’s nothing,” was the gay reply, “I can see everything out of

the other eye. I’ve got seven holes in me, too, but believe me I’m not

going home for the loss of an eye and seven holes! I’ll get out yet and

get into the fight!”

The Salvation Army officer and his wife who were stationed at

Bonvillers visited every man in the local hospital every day, sleeping

every night in the open fields. As they are quite elderly, this was no

little hardship, especially in rainy weather.

Five lassies stationed at Noyers St. Martin were for several weeks

forced by the nightly shelling and air-raids to take their blankets out

into the fields at night and sleep under the stars. One of these girls

was called “Sunshine” because of her smile.

On the eve of Decoration Day a military Colonel visited her in the hut.

He seemed rather depressed, perhaps by the ceremonies of the day, and

said that he had come to be cheered up. In parting he said, “Little

girl, you had better get out of town early to-night; I feel as though

something is going to happen.” Less than an hour later, while the girls

were just preparing for the night in a field half a mile distant, an

aerial bomb dropped by an aviator on the house in which he was billeted

killed him and two other Captains who were sitting with him at the

time. He had been a great friend of the Salvation Army.

Out in a little village in Indiana there grew a fair young flower of a

girl. Her mother was a dear Christian woman and she was brought up in

her mother’s church, which she loved. When she was only twelve years

old she had a remarkable and thorough old-fashioned conversion, giving

herself with all her childish heart to the Saviour. She feels that she

had a kind of vision at that time of what the Lord wanted her to be, a

call to do some special work for Christ out in the world, helping

people who did not know Him, people who were sick and poor and

sorrowful. She did not tell her vision to anyone. She did not even know

that anywhere in the world were any people doing the kind of work she

felt she would like to do, and God had called her to do. She was shy

about it and kept her thoughts much to herself. She loved her own

church, and its services, but somehow that did not quite satisfy her.

One day when she was about fourteen years old the Salvation Army came

to the town where she lived and opened work, holding its meetings in a

large hall or armory. With her young companions she attended these

meetings and was filled with a longing to be one of these earnest

Christian workers.

Her mother, accustomed to a quiet conventional church and its way of

doing Christian work, was horrified; and in alarm sent her away to

visit her uncle, who was a Baptist minister. The daughter, dutiful and

sweet, went willingly away, although she had many a longing for these

new friends of hers who seemed to her to have found the way of working

for God that had been her own heart’s desire for so long.

Meantime her gay young brother, curious to know what had so stirred his

bright sister, went to the Salvation Army meetings to find out, and was

attracted himself. He went again and found Jesus Christ, and himself

joined the Salvation Army. The mother in this case did not object,

perhaps because she felt that a boy needed more safeguards than a girl,

perhaps because the life of publicity would not trouble her so much in

connection with her son as with her daughter.

The daughter after several months away from home returned, only to find

her longing to join the Salvation Army stronger. But quietly and

sweetly she submitted to her mother’s wish and remained at home for

some years, like her Master before her, who went down to His home in

Nazareth and was subject to His father and mother; showing by her

gentle submission and her lovely life that she really had the spirit of

God in her heart and was not merely led away by her enthusiasm for

something new and strange.

When she was twenty her mother withdrew her objections, and the

daughter became a Salvationist, her mother coming to feel thoroughly in

sympathy with her during the remaining years she lived.

This is the story of one of the Salvation Army lassies who has been

giving herself to the work in the huts over in France. She is still

young and lovely, and there is something about her delicate features

and slender grace that makes one think of a young saint. No wonder the

soldiers almost worshipped her! No wonder these lassies were as safe

over there ten miles from any other woman or any other civilian alone

among ten thousand soldiers, as if they had been in their own homes.

They breathed the spirit of God as they worked, as well as when they

sang and prayed. To such a girl a man may open his heart and find true

help and strength.

[Illustration: A letter of inspiration from the commander]

[Illustration: The Salvation Army boy truck driver who calmly went to

sleep in his truck in a shell hole under fire]

It was no uncommon thing for our boys who were so afraid of anything

like religion or anything personal over here, to talk to these lassies

about their souls, to ask them what certain verses in the Bible meant,

and to kneel with them in some quiet corner behind the chocolate boxes

and be prayed with, yes, and _pray!_ It is because these girls have let

the Christ into their lives so completely that He lives and speaks

through them, and the boys cannot help but recognize it.

Not every boy who was in a Salvation hut meeting has given himself to

Christ, of course, but every one of them recognizes this wonderful

something in these girls. Ask them. They will tell you “She is the real

thing!” They won’t tell you more than that, perhaps, unless they have

really grown in the Christian life, but they mean that they have

recognized in her spirit a likeness to the spirit of Christ.

Now and then, of course, there was a thick-headed one who took some

minutes to recognize holiness. Such would enter a hut with an oath upon

his lips, or an unclean story, and straightway all the men who were

sitting at the tables writing or standing about the room would come to

attention with one of those little noisy silences that mean, so much;

pencils would click down on the table like a challenge, and the

newcomer would look up to find the cold glances of his fellows upon

him.

The boys who frequented the huts broke the habit of swearing and

telling unclean stories, and officers began to realize that their men

were better in their work because of this holy influence that was being

thrown about them. One officer said his men worked better, and kept

their engines oiled up so they wouldn’t be delayed on the road, that

they might get back to the hut early in the evening. The picture of a

girl stirring chocolate kept the light of hope going in the heart of

many a homesick lad.

One ignorant and exceedingly “fresh” youth, once walked boldly into a

hut, it is said, and jauntily addressed the lassie behind the counter

as “Dearie.” The sweet blue eyes of the lassie grew suddenly cold with

aloofness, and she looked up at the newcomer without her usual smile,

saying distinctly: _“What did you say?_”

The soldier stared, and grew red and unhappy:

“Oh! I beg your pardon!” he said, and got himself out of the way as

soon as possible. These lassies needed no chaperon. They were young

saints to the boys they served, and they had a cordon of ten thousand

faithful soldiers drawn about them night and day. As a military Colonel

said, the Salvation Army lassie was the only woman in France who was

safe unchaperoned.

When this lassie from Indiana came back on a short furlough after

fifteen months in France with the troops, and went to her home for a

brief visit, the Mayor gave the home town a holiday, had out the band

and waited at the depot in his own limousine for four hours that he

might not miss greeting her and doing her honor.

Here is the poem which Pte. Joseph T. Lopes wrote about “Those

Salvation Army Folks” after the Montdidier attack:

Somewhere in France, not far from the foe,

There’s a body of workers whose name we all know;

Who not only at home give their lives to make right,

But are now here beside us, fighting our fight.

What care they for rest when our boys at the front,

Who, fighting for freedom, are bearing the brunt,

And so, just at dawn, when the caissons come home,

With the boys tired out and chilled to the bone,

The Salvation Army with its brave little crew,

Are waiting with doughnuts and hot coffee, too.

When dangers and toiling are o’er for awhile,

In their dugouts we find comfort and welcome their smile.

There’s a spirit of home, so we go there each night,

And the thinking of home makes us sit down and write,

So we tell of these folks to our loved ones with pride,

And are thanking the Lord to have them on our side.

V.

The Toul Sector Again

When the German offensive was definitely checked in the Montdidier

Sector, the First Division was transferred back to the Toul Sector and

the Salvation Army moved with it. They had in the meantime maintained

all the huts which had been established originally, and with the return

of the First Division, they established additional huts between Font

and Nancy. When the St. Mihiel drive came off, they followed the

advancing troops, establishing huts in the devastated villages, keeping

in as close contact with the extreme front as was possible, serving the

troops day and night, always aiming to be at the point where the need

was the greatest, and where they could be of the greatest service.

The first Americans to pay the supreme sacrifice in the cause of

liberty were buried in the Toul Sector.

As it drew near to Decoration Day there came a message from over the

sea from the Commander to her faithful band of workers, saying that she

was sending American flags, one for every American soldier’s grave, and

that she wanted the graves cared for and decorated; and at all the

various locations of Salvation Army workers they prepared to do her

bidding.

The day before the thirtieth of May they took time from their other

duties to clear away the mud, dead grass and fallen leaves from the

graves, and heap up the mounds where they had been washed flat by the

rains, making each one smooth, regular and tidy. At the head of each

grave was a simple wooden cross bearing the name of the soldier who lay

there, his rank, his regiment and the date of his death. Into the back

of each cross they drove a staple for a flag, and they swept and

garnished the place as best they could.

One Salvation Army woman writing home told of the plans they had made

in Treveray for Decoration Day; how Commander Booth was sending enough

American flags to decorate every American grave in France, and how they

meant to gather flowers and put with the flags, and have a little

service of prayer over the graves.

In the gray old French cemetery of Treveray five American boys lay

buried. The flowers upon their graves were dry and dead, for their

regiments had moved on and left them. The graves had been neglected and

only the guarding wooden crosses remained above the rough earth to show

that someone had cared and had stopped to put a mark above the places

where they lay. It was these graves the Salvation Army woman now

proposed to decorate on Memorial Day.

The letter went to the Captain for censorship, and soon the Salvation

Army woman had a call from him.

“I understand by one of your letters that you are thinking of

decorating the American graves,” he said. “We would like to help in

that, if you don’t mind. I would like the company all to be present.”

The day before Memorial Day this woman with two of the lassies from the

hut went to the cemetery and prepared for the morrow.

In the morning they gathered great armfuls of crimson poppies from the

fields, creamy snowballs from neglected gardens, and blue bachelor

buttons from the hillsides, which they arranged in bouquets of red,

white and blue for the graves. They had no vases in which to place the

flowers but they used the apple tins in which the apples for their pies

had been canned.

The centuries-old gray cemetery nestled in a curve of the road between

wheat fields on every side. A gray, moss-covered, lichen-hung wall

surrounded it. The five American graves were under the shadow of the

Western wall, and the sun was slowly sinking in his glory as the

company of soldiers escorted the women into the cemetery. They passed

between the ponderous old gray stones, and beaded wreaths of the French

graves; and the officers and men lined up facing the five graves. The

women placed the tricolored flowers in the cans prepared for them, and

planted the flags beside them. Then the elder woman, who had sons of

her own, stepped out and saluted the military commanding officer:

“Colonel” said she, “with your permission we would like to follow our

custom and offer a prayer for the bereaved.” Instantly permission was

given and every head was uncovered as the Salvationist poured out her

heart in prayer to the Everlasting Father, commending the dead into His

tender Keeping, and pleading for the sorrow-stricken friends across the

sea, until the soldiers’ tears fell unchecked as they stood with rifles

stiffly in front of them listening to the quiet voice of the woman as

she prayed. God seemed Himself to come down, and the living boys

standing over their five dead comrades could not help but be enfolded

in His love, and feel the sense of His presence. They knew that they,

too, might soon be sleeping even as these at their feet. It seemed but

a step to the other life. When the prayer was finished a firing squad

fired five volleys over the graves, and then the bugler played the taps

and the little service was over. The lassies lingered to take pictures

of the graves and that night they wrote letters describing the

ceremony, to be sent with the photographs to the War Department at

Washington with the request that they be forwarded to the nearest

relatives of the five men buried at Treveray.

[Illustration: The centuries-old gray cemetery in Treveray]

[Illustration: Colonel Barker placing the commander’s flowers on

Lieutenant Quentin Roosevelt’s grave]

There were exercises at Menil-la-Tour and here they had built a simple

platform in the centre of the ground and erected a flagpole at one

corner.

When the morning came two regimental bands took up their positions in

opposite corners of the cemetery and began to play. The French populace

had turned out en masse. They took up their stand just outside the

little cemetery, next to them the soldiers were lined up, then the Red

Cross, then the Y.M.C.A. Beyond, a little hill rose sloping gently to

the sky line, and over it a mile away was the German front, with the

shells coming over all the time.

It was an impressive scene as all stood with bared heads just outside

the little enclosure where eighty-one wooden crosses marked the going

of as many brave spirits who had walked so blithely into the crisis and

given their young lives.

Some French officers had brought a large, beautiful wreath to do honor

to the American heroes, and this was placed at the foot of the great

central flagpole.

The bands played, and they all sang. It was announced that but for the

thoughtfulness and kindness of Commander Evangeline Booth in sending

over flags those graves would have gone undecorated that day.

The Commanding General then came to the front and behind him walked the

Salvation Army lassies bearing the flags in their arms.

Down the long row of graves he passed. He would take a flag from one of

the girls, slip it in the staple back of the cross, stand a moment at

salute, then pass on to the next. It was very still that May morning,

broken only by the awesome boom of battle just over the hill, but to

that sound all had grown accustomed. The people stood with that hush of

sorrow over them which only the majesty of death can bring to the

hearts of a crowd, and there were tears in many eyes and on the faces

of rough soldiers standing there to honor their comrades who had been

called upon to give their lives to the great cause of freedom.

A little breeze was blowing and into the solemn stillness there stole a

new sound, the silken ripple of the flags as one by one they were set

fluttering from the crosses, like a soft, growing, triumphant chorus of

those to come whose lives were to be made safe because these had died.

As if the flag would waft back to the Homeland, and the stricken

mothers and fathers, sisters and sweethearts, some idea of the

greatness of the cause in which they died to comfort them in their

sorrow.

Out through each line the General passed, placing the flags and

solemnly saluting, till eighty graves had been decorated and there was

only one left; but there was no flag for the eighty-first grave!

Somehow, although they thought they had brought several more than were

needed, they were one short. But the General stood and saluted the

grave as he had the others, and later the flag was brought and put in

place, so that every American grave in the Toul Sector that day had its

flag fluttering from its cross.

Then the General and the soldiers saluted the large flag. It was an

impressive moment with the deep thunder of the guns just over the hill

reminding of more battle and more lives to be laid down.

The General then addressed the soldiers, and facing toward the West and

pointing he said:

“Out there in that direction is Washington and the President, and all

the people of the United States, who are looking to you to set the

world free from tyranny. Over there are the mothers who have bade you

good-bye with tears and sent you forth, and are waiting at home and

praying for you, trusting in you. Out there are the fathers and the

sisters and the sweethearts you have left behind, all depending on you

to do your best for the Right. Now,” said he in a clear ringing voice,

“turn and salute America!” And they all turned and saluted toward the

West, while the band played softly “My Country ’Tis of Thee!”

It was a wonderful, beautiful, solemn sight, every man standing and

saluting while the flags fluttered softly on the breeze.

Behind the little French Catholic church in the village of Bonvilliers

there was quite a large field which had been turned over to the

Americans for a cemetery. The Military Major had caused an arch to be

made over the gateway inscribed with the words: “National Cemetery of

the American Expeditionary Forces.” There were over two hundred graves

inside the cemetery.

On Decoration Day the Regimental Band led a parade through the village

streets to the graveyard, the French women in black and little French

children, with wreaths made of wonderful beaded flowers cunningly

constructed from beads strung on fine wires, marching in the parade.

Arrived at the cemetery they all stood drawn up in line while the

Military Major gave a beautiful address, first in French and then in

English. He then told the French children and women to take their

places one at each grave, and lay down their tributes of flowers for

the Americans. Following this the Salvation Army placed flags on each

on behalf of the mothers of the boys who were lying there.

It was noon-day. The sun was very bright and every white cross bearing

the name of the fallen glittered in the sun. Even the worst little

hovel over in France is smothered in a garden and bright with myriads

of flowers, so everything was gay with blossoms and everybody had

brought as many as could be carried.

Over in one corner of the cemetery were two German graves, and one of

the lassies of that organization which proclaims salvation for all men

went and laid some blossoms there also.

At La Folie one of the Salvation Army lassies going across the fields

on some errand of mercy found three American graves undecorated and

bare on Memorial Day, and turning aside from the road she gathered

great armfuls of scarlet poppies from the fields and came and laid them

on the three mounds, then knelt and prayed for the friends of the boys

whose bodies were lying there.

The whole world was startled and saddened when the news came that

Lieutenant Quentin Roosevelt had been shot down in his airplane in

action and fallen within the enemy’s lines.

He was crudely buried by the Germans where he fell, near Chambray, and

a rude cross set up to mark the place. All around were pieces of his

airplane shattered on the ground and left as they had fallen.

When the spot fell into the hands of the Allies, the grave was cared

for by the Salvation Army; a new white cross set up beside the old one,

and gentle hands smoothed the mound and made it shapely. On Decoration

Day Colonel Barker placed upon this grave the beautiful flowers

arranged for by cable by Commander Booth.

The girls went down to decorate the two hundred American graves at

Mandres, and even while they bent over the flaming blossoms and laid

them on the mounds an air battle was going on over their heads. Close

at hand was the American artillery being moved to the front on a little

narrow-gauge railroad that ran near to the graveyard, and the Germans

were firing and trying to get them.

But the girls went steadily on with their work, scattering flowers and

setting flags until their service of love was over. Then they stood

aside for the prayer and a song. One of the Salvation Army Captains

with a fine voice began to sing:

My loved ones in the Homeland

Are waiting me to come,

Where neither death nor sorrow

Invades their holy home;

O dear, dear native country!

O rest and peace above!

Christ, bring us all to the Homeland

Of Thy redeeming love.

Into the midst of the song came the engine on the little narrow track

straight toward where he stood, and he had to step aside onto a pile of

dirt to finish his song.

That same Captain went on ahead to the Home Land not long after when

the epidemic of influenza swept over the world; and he was given the

honor of a military funeral.

VI.

The Baccarat Sector

Baccarat was the Zone Headquarters for that Sector.

Down the Main street there hung a sign on an old house labeled “Modern

Bar.”

Inside everything was all torn up. It had never been opened since the

battles of 1914. The Germans had lived there and everything was in an

awful condition. One wonders how they endured themselves. The Military

detailed two men for two days to spade up and carry away the filth from

the bedrooms, and it took two women an entire week all but one day,

scrubbing all day long until their shoulders ached, to scrub the place

clean. But they got it clean. They were the kind of women that did not

give up even when a thing seemed an impossibility. This was the sort of

thing they were up against continually. They could have no meetings

that week because they had to scrub and make the place fit for a

Salvation Army hut.

Two of the lassies were awakened early one bright morning by the sound

of an axe ringing rhythmically on wood, just back of their canteen. It

was a cheerful sound to wake to, for the girls had been through a long

wearing day and night, and they knew when they went to sleep that the

wood was almost gone. It was always so pleasant to have someone offer

to cut it for them, for they never liked to have to ask help of the

soldiers if they could possibly avoid it. But there was so much else to

be done besides cutting wood. Not that they could not do that, too,

when the need offered. The sisters looked sleepily at one another,

thinking simultaneously of the poor homesick doughboy who had told them

the day before that chopping wood for them made him think of home and

mother and that was why he liked to do it. Of course, it was he hard at

work for them before they were up, and they smiled contentedly, with a

lifted prayer for the poor fellow. They knew he had received no mail

for four months and that only a few days before he had read in a paper

sent to one of his pals of the death of his sister. Of course, his

heart was breaking, for he knew what his widowed mother was suffering.

They knew that his salvation from homesickness just now lay in giving

him something to do, so they lingered a little just to give him the

chance, and planned how they would let him help with the doughnuts, and

fix the benches, later, when the wood was cut.

In a few minutes the girls were ready for the day’s work and went

around to the kitchen, where the sound of the ringing axe was still

heard in steady strokes. But when they rounded the corner of the

kitchen and greeted the wood-chopper cheerily, he looked up, and lo! it

was not the homesick doughboy as they had supposed, but the Colonel of

the regiment himself who smiled half apologetically at them, saying he

liked his new job; and when they invited him to breakfast he accepted

the invitation with alacrity.

After breakfast the girls went to work making pies. There had been no

oven in the little French town in which they were stationed, and so

baking had been impossible, but the boys kept talking and talking about

pies until one day a Lieutenant found an old French stove in some

ruins. They had to half bury it in the earth to make it strong enough

for use, but managed to make it work at last, and though much hampered

by the limitations of the small oven, they baked enough to give all the

boys a taste of pie once a week or so. Pie day was so welcomed that it

almost made a riot, so many boys wanted a slice.

They were having a meeting one night at Baccarat. There was a great

deal of noise going on outside the dugout. The shells were falling

around rather indiscriminately, but it takes more than shell fire to

stop a Salvation Army meeting at the front. There is only one thing

that will stop it, and that is a sudden troop movement. It is the same

way with baseball, for the week before this meeting two regimental

baseball teams played seven innings of air-tight ball while the shells

were falling not three hundred yards away at the roadside edge of their

ball-ground. During the seven innings only eight hits were allowed by

the two pitchers. The score was close and when at the end of the

seventh a shell exploded within fifty yards of the diamond and an

officer shouted: “Game called on account of shell fire!” there was

considerable dissatisfaction expressed because the game was not allowed

to continue. It is with the same spirit that the men attend their

religious meetings. They come because they want-to and they won’t let

anything interfere with it.

But on this particular night the meeting was in full force, and so were

the shells. It had been a meeting in which the men had taken part, led

by one of the women whose leadership was unquestioned among them, a

personal testimony meeting in which several soldiers and an officer had

spoken of what Christ had done for them. Then there was a solo by one

of the lassies, and the Adjutant opened his Bible and began to read. He

took as his text Isaiah 55:1. “Ho, every one that thirsteth, come ye to

the waters, and he that hath no money; come ye, buy, and eat.”

Those boys knew what it was to be thirsty, terrible thirst! They had

come back from the lines sometimes their tongues parched and their

whole bodies feverish with thirst and there was nothing to be had to

drink until the Salvation Army people had appeared with good cold

lemonade; and when they had no money they had given it to them just the

same. Oh, they knew what that verse meant and their attention was held

at once as the speaker went on to show plainly how Jesus Christ would

give the water of life just as freely to those who were thirsty for it.

And they were thirsty! They did not wish to conceal how thirsty they

were for the living water.

Just in the midst of the talk the lights went out. Many a church under

like conditions would have had a panic in no time, but this crowded

audience sat perfectly quiet, listening as the speaker went on, quoting

his Bible from memory where he could not read.

Over there in the corner on a bench sat the lassies, the women who had

been serving them all through the hard days, as quiet and calm in the

darkness as though they sat in a cushioned pew in some well-lit church

in New York. It was as if the guns were like annoying little insects

that were outside a screen, and now and then slipped in, so little

attention did the audience pay to them. When all those who wished to

accept this wonderful invitation were asked to come forward, seven men

arose and stumbled through the darkness. The light from a bursting

shell revealed for an instant the forms of these men as they knelt at

the rough bench in front, one of them with his steel helmet hanging

from his arm as he prayed aloud for his own salvation. No one who was

in that meeting that night could doubt but that Jesus Christ Himself

was there, and that those men all felt His presence.

In Bertrichamps the Salvation Army was given a large glass factory for

a canteen. It made a beautiful place, and there was room to take care

of eight hundred men at a time. This building was also used by the Y.

M. C. A. as well as the Jews and the Catholics for their services,

there being no other suitable place in town. But everybody worked

together, and got along harmoniously.

Here there were some wonderful meetings, and it was great to hear the

boys singing “When The Roll Is Called Up Yonder, I’ll Be There.”

Perhaps if some of the half-hearted Christians at home could have

caught the echo of that song sung with such earnestness by those boyish

voices they would have had a revelation. It seemed as if the earth-film

were more than half torn away from their young, wise eyes over there;

and they found that earthly standards and earthly false-whisperings did

not fit. They felt the spirit of the hour, they felt the spirit of the

place, and of the people who were serving them patiently day by day;

who didn’t have to stay there and work; who might have kept in back of

the lines and worked and sent things up now and then; but who chose to

stay close with them and share their hardships. They felt that

something more than just love to their fellow-men had instigated such

unselfishness. They knew it was something they needed to help them

through what was before them. They reached hungrily after the Christ

and they found Him.

Then they testified in the meetings. Often as many as twelve or more

before an audience of five hundred would get up and tell what Jesus had

become to them. In one meeting in this glass factory two hundred

soldiers pledged to serve the Lord, to read their Bibles, and to pray.

There were in this place some Christian boys who came from families

where they had been accustomed to family worship, and who now that they

were far away from it, looked back with longing to the days when it had

been a part of every day. Things look different over there with the

sound of battle close at hand, and customs that had been, a part of

every-day life at home became very dear, perhaps dearer than they had

ever seemed before. They found out that the Salvation Army people had

prayers every night after they closed the canteen at half-past nine and

went to their rooms in a house not far away, and so they begged that

they might share the worship with them. So every night they took home

fifteen or twenty men to the living-room of the house where they stayed

just as many as they could crowd in, and there they would have a little

Bible reading and prayer together. The Father only knows how many souls

were strengthened and how many feet kept from falling because of those

brief moments of worship with these faithful men and women of God.

“Oh, if you only knew what it means to us!” one of the men tried to

tell them one day.

Sometimes men who said they hadn’t prayed nor read their Bibles for

years would be found in little groups openly reading a testament to

each other.

When the girls opened their shutters in the morning they could look out

over the spot in No Man’s Land which was the scene of such frightful

German atrocities in 1914.

Our field artillery, stationed in the woods, sent over to the Salvation

Army to know if they wouldn’t come over and cook something for them,

they were starving for some home cooking. So two of the women put on

their steel helmets and their gas masks, for the Boche planes were

flying everywhere, and went over across No Man’s Land to see if there

was a place where they could open up a hut. They were walking along

quietly, talking, and had not noticed the German plane that approached.

They were so accustomed to seeing them by twos and threes that a single

one did not attract their attention. Suddenly almost over their heads

the Boche dropped a shell, trying to get them. But it was a dud and did

not explode. Two American soldiers came tearing over, crying: “Girls!

Are you hurt?”

“Oh, no,” said one of them brightly. “The Lord wouldn’t let that fellow

get us.”

The soldiers used strong language as they looked after the

fast-vanishing plane, but then they glanced back at the women again

with something unspoken in their eyes. They believed, those boys, they

really did, that God protected those women; and they used to beg them

to remain with their regiment when they were going near the front,

because they wanted their prayers as a protection. Some of the

regiments openly said they thought those girls’ prayers had saved their

lives.

That Boche plane, however, had not far to go. Before it reached

Baccarat the Americans trained their guns on it and brought it down in

flames.

The house occupied by the Salvation Army girls as a billet had a sad

story connected with it. When the Germans had come the father was soon

killed and four German officers had taken possession of the place for

their Headquarters. They also took possession of the two little girls

of the family, nine and fourteen years of age, to wait upon them. And

the first command that was given these children was that they should

wait upon the men nude! The youngest child was not old enough to

understand what this meant, but the older one was in terror, and they

begged and cried and pleaded but all to no purpose. The officer was

inexorable. He told them that if they did not obey they would be shot.

The poor old grandfather and grandmother, too feeble to do anything,

and powerless, of course, to aid, could only endure in agony. The

grandmother, telling the Salvation Army women the story afterward,

pointed with trembling lingers and streaming eyes to the two little

graves in the yard and said: “Oh, it would have been so much better if

he had shot them! They lie out there as the result of their infamous

and inhuman treatment.”

Some most amusing incidents came to the knowledge of the Salvation Army

workers.

An old French woman, over eighty years of age, lived in one of the

stricken villages on the Vosges front. Her home had been several times

struck by shells and was frequently the target for enemy bombing

squadrons. All through the war she refused to leave the home in which

she had lived from earliest childhood.

“It is not the guns, nor the bombs which can frighten me,” she told a

Salvation Army lassie who was billeted with her for a time, “but I am

very much afraid of the submarines.”

The village was several hundred miles inland.

The activity was all at night, for no one dared be seen about in the

daytime. It must be a very urgent duty that would call men forth into

full view of the enemy. But as soon, as the dark came on the men would

crawl into the trenches, stick their rifles between the sandbags and

get ready for work.

It seemed to be always raining. They said that when it wasn’t actually

raining it was either clearing off or just getting ready to rain again.

Twenty minutes in the trenches and a man was all over mud, wet, cold,

slippery mud. In his hair, down his neck, in his boots, everywhere.

Through the trenches just behind the standing place ran a deeper trench

or drain to carry the water away, and this was covered over with a

rough board called a duck-board. Underneath this duck-board ran a

continual stream of water. A man would go along the trench in a hurry,

make a misstep on one end of the duck-board and down he would go in mud

and freezing water to the waist. In these cold, wet garments he must

stay all night. The tension was very great.

As the soldiers had to work in the night, so the Salvation Army men and

women worked in the night to serve them.

The Salvation Army men would visit the sentries and bring them coffee

and doughnuts prepared in the dugouts by the girls. It was exceedingly

dangerous work. They would crawl through the connecting trenches, which

were not more than three feet deep, and one must stoop to be safe, and

get to the front-line trenches with their cans of coffee. They would

touch a fellow on the shoulder, fill his mug with coffee, and slip him

some doughnuts. At such times the things were always given, not sold.

They did not dare even to whisper, for the enemy listening posts were

close at hand and the slightest breath might give away their position.

The sermon would be a pat of encouragement on a man’s shoulder, then

pass on to the next.

One morning at three o’clock a Salvationist carried a second supply of

hot coffee to the battery positions. One gunner with tense, strained

face eyed his full coffee mug with satisfaction and said with a sigh:

“Good! That is all I wanted. I can keep going until morning now!”

When the men were lined up for a raid there would be a prayer-meeting

in the dugout, thirty inside and as many as could crowded around the

door. Just a prayer and singing. Then the boys would go to the girls

and leave their little trinkets or letters, and say: “I’m going over

the top, Sister. If I don’t come back—if I’m kicked off—you tell

mother. You will know what to say to her to help her bear up.”

Three-quarters of an hour later what was left of them would return and

the girls would be ready with hot coffee and doughnuts. It was

heart-breaking, back-aching, wonderful work, work fit for angels to do,

and these girls did it with all their souls.

“Aren’t you tired? Aren’t you afraid?” asked someone of a lassie who

had been working hard for forty consecutive hours, aiding the doctors

in caring for the wounded, and in a lull had found time to mix up and

fry a batch of doughnuts in a corner from which the roof had been

completely blown by shells.

“Oh, no! It’s great!” she replied eagerly. “I’m the luckiest girl in

the world.”

By this time the Salvation Army had acquired many great three-ton

trucks, and the drivers of those risked their lives daily to carry

supplies to the dugouts and huts that were taking care of the men at

the front.

There were signs all over everywhere: “Attention! The Enemy Sees You!”

Trucks were not allowed to go in daytime except in case of great

emergency. Sometimes in urgent cases day-passes would be given with the

order: “If you have to go, go like the devil!”

The enemy always had the range on the road where the trucks had to

pass, and especially in exposed places and on cross-roads a man had no

chance if he paused. Once he had been sighted by the enemy he was done

for. A man driving on a hasty errand once dropped his crank, and

stopped his truck, to pick it up. Even as he stooped to take it a shell

struck his truck and smashed it to bits.

Most of the travelling had to be done at night. Silently, without a

light over roads as dark as pitch, where the only possible guide was

the faint line above where the trees parted and showed the sky; over

rough, muddy roads, filled with shell-holes, the trucks went nightly.

Just fall in line, keep to the right, and whistle softly when something

got in the way. No claxon horns could be used, for that was the gas

alarm. A man could not even wear a radiolight watch on his wrist or a

driver smoke a cigarette.

One very dark night a truck came through with a man sitting away out on

the radiator watching the road and telling the driver where to go. The

only light would be from shells exploding or occasional signal lights

for a moment.

To get supplies from where they were to where they were needed was an

urgent necessity which often arose with but momentary

warning—frequently with no warning at all. The American front was a

matter not of miles, but of hundreds of miles, and the call for

supplies might come from any point along that front. Sometimes the call

meant the immediate shipment of tons of blankets, oranges, lemons,

sugar, flour for doughnuts, lard, chocolate and other materials, to a

point 200 miles distant. At times a railroad may supply a part of the

route, but always there is a long, dangerous truck haul, and usually

the entire route must be covered by truck.

During the winter there were many thrills added to the already

strenuous task of the Salvation Army truck drivers. One of them driving

late at night in a snowstorm, mistook a river for the road for which he

was searching, and turned from the real road to the snow-covered

surface of the river, which he followed for some little distance before

discovering his mistake. Fortunately, the ice was solid and the truck

unloaded-an unusual combination.

Another missed the road and drove into a field, where his wheels bogged

down. His fellow-traveller, driving a Ford, went for help, leaving him

with his truck, for if it had been left unguarded it would have soon

been stripped of every movable part by passing truck drivers. Here he

remained for almost forty-eight hours, during which time there was

considerable shelling.

A Catholic Chaplain told the Salvation Army Staff-Captain that he

thought the reason the Salvation Army was so popular with his men was

because the Salvation Army kept its promises to the men.

When the Salvation Army officer went to open work in the town of

Baccarat it was so crowded that he was unable to secure accommodations.

He was having dinner in the cafe, but could get no bread because he had

no bread tickets, The local K. of C. man, observing his difficulty,

supplied tickets, and, finding that he had no place to sleep, offered

to share his own meagre accommodations. For several nights he shared

his bed with him and the Salvation Army officer was greatly assisted by

him in many ways. The Salvation Army is popular not alone among the

soldiers.

While the offensive was on in Argonne and north of Verdun, those who

were in the huts in the old training area, which were then used as rest

buildings, decided to do something for the boys, and on one occasion

they fried fourteen thousand doughnuts and took them to the boys at the

front. They traveled in the trucks, and distributed the doughnuts to

the boys as they came from the trenches and sent others into the

trenches.

By the time they were through, the day was far spent and it was

necessary for them to find some place to stay over night. Verdun was

the only large city anywhere near but it had either been largely

destroyed or the civil population had long since abandoned it and there

was no place available.

Underneath the trenches, however, there had been constructed in ancient

times, underground passages. There are fifty miles of these underground

galleries honeycombed beneath the city, sufficiently large to shelter

the entire population. There are cross sections of galleries, between

the longer passage ways, and winding stairways here and there. Air is

supplied by a system of pumps. There are theatres and a church, also.

The Army protecting Verdun had occupied these underground passages.

When the officer commanding the French troops learned that the

Salvation Army girls were obliged to stay over night, he arranged for

their accommodation in the underground passage and here they rested in

perfect security with such comforts as cots and blankets could insure.

It was said that they were the only women ever permitted to remain in

these underground passages.

VII.

The Chateau-Thierry-Soissons Drive

When the trouble at Seicheprey broke out the Germans began shelling

Beaumont and Mandres, and things took on a very serious look for the

Salvation Army. Then the Military Colonel gave an order for the girls

to leave Ansauville, and loading them up on a truck he sent them to

Menil-la-Tour. They never allowed girls again in that town until after

the St. Mihiel drive.

That was a wild ride in the night for those girls sitting in an army

truck, jolted over shell holes with the roar of battle all about them;

the blackness of night on every side, shells bursting often near them,

yet they were as calm as if nothing were the matter; finally the car

got stuck under range of the enemy’s fire, but they never flinched and

they sat quietly in the car in a most dangerous position for twenty

minutes while the Colonel and the Captain were out locating a dugout.

Plucky little girls!

The Salvation Army Staff-Captain of that zone went back in the morning

to Ansauville to get the girls’ personal belongings, and when he

entered the canteen he stood still and looked about him with horror and

thankfulness as he realized the narrow escape those girls had had. The

windows and roof were full of shell holes. Shrapnel had penetrated

everywhere. He went about to examine and took pieces of shrapnel out of

the flour and sugar and coffee which had gone straight through the tin

containers. The vanilla bottles were broken and there was shrapnel in

the vanilla, shrapnel was embedded in the wooden tops of the tables,

and in the walls.

He went to the billet where two of the girls had slept. Opposite their

bed on the other side of the room was a window and over the bed was a

large picture. A shell had passed through the window and smashed the

picture, shattering the glass in fragments all over the bed. Another

shell had entered the window, passed over the pillows of the bed and

gone out through the wall by the bed. It would have gone through the

temples of any sleeper in that bed. After this they kept men in

Ansauville instead of girls.

The next day the girls opened up the canteen at Menilla-Tour as calmly

as if nothing had happened the day before.

The boys were going down to Nevillers to rest, and while they rested

the girls cooked good things for them and used that sweet God-given

influence that makes a little piece of home and heaven wherever it is

found.

The girls did not get much rest, but then they had not come to France

to rest, as they often told people who were always urging them to save

themselves. They did get one bit of luxury in the shape of passes down

to Beauvais. There it was possible to get a bath and the girls had not

been able to have that from the first of April to the first of July.

They had to stand in line with the officers, it is true, to take their

turn at the public bath houses, but it was a real delight to have

plenty of water for once, for their appointments at the front had been

most restricted and water a scarce commodity. Sometimes it had been

difficult to get enough water for the cooking and the girls had been

obliged to use cold cream to wash their faces for several days at a

time. Of course, it was an impossibility for them to do any laundry

work for themselves, as there was neither time nor place nor

facilities. Their laundry was always carried by courier to some near-by

city and brought back to them in a few days.

The Zone Major had supper with the Colonel, who told him that none of

the organizations would be allowed on the drive. The Zone Major asked

if they might be allowed to go as far as Crepy. The Colonel much

excited said: “Man, don’t you know that town is being shelled every

night?” The next morning a party of sixteen Salvation Army men and

women started out in the truck for Crepy. It was a beautiful day and

they rode all day long. At nightfall they reached the village of Crepy

where they were welcomed eagerly. The Zone Major had to leave and go

back and wanted them all to stay there, but they were unwilling to do

so because their own outfit was going over the top that night and they

wanted to be with them before they left. They started from Crepy about

five o’clock and got lost in the woods, but finally, after wandering

about for some hours, landed in Roy St. Nicholas where was the outfit

to which one of the girls belonged.

The Salvation Army boys had just pulled in with another truck and were

getting ready for the night, for they always slept in their trucks. The

girls decided to sit down in the road until the billeting officer

arrived, but time passed and no billeting officer came. They were

growing very weary, so they got into the Colonel’s car, which stood at

the roadside, and went to sleep. A little later the billeting officer

appeared with many apologies and offered to take them to the billet

that had been set aside for them. They took their rolls of blankets,

and climbed sleepily out of the car, following him two blocks down the

street to an old building. But when they reached there they found that

some French officers had taken possession and were fast asleep, so they

went back to the car and slept till morning. At daylight they went down

to a brook to wash but found that the soldiers were there ahead of

them, and they had to go back and be content with freshening up with

cold cream. Thus did these lassies, accustomed to daintiness in their

daily lives, accommodate themselves to the necessities of war, as

easily and cheerfully as the soldier boys themselves.

That day the rest of the outfits arrived, and they all pulled into

Morte Fontaine.

Morte Fontaine was well named because there was no water in the town

fit to use.

The girls felt they were needed nearer the front, so they went to Major

Peabody and asked permission.

“I should say not!” he replied vigorously with yet a twinkle of

admiration for the brave lassies. “But you can take anything you want

in this town.”

So the girls went out and found an old building. It was very dirty but

they went cheerfully to work, cleaned it up, and started their canteen.

There was a hospital in the town; they knew that by the many ambulances

that were continually going back and forth; so they offered their

services to the doctors, which were eagerly accepted. After that they

took turns staying in the canteen and going to the hospital.

The hospital was fearfully crowded, though it was in no measure the

fault of the hospital authorities, for they were doing their best,

working with all their might; but it had not been expected that there

would be so many wounded at this point and they had not adequate

accommodations. Many of the wounded boys were lying on the ground in

the sun, covered with blood and flies, and parched with thirst and

fever. There were not enough ambulances to carry them further back to

the base hospitals.

The girls stretched pieces of canvas over the heads of the poor boys to

keep off the sun; they got water and washed away the blood; and they

sent one of their indefatigable truck drivers after some water to make

lemonade. The little Adjutant twinkled his nice brown eyes and set his

firm merry lips when they told him to get the water, in that place of

no water, but he took his little Ford car and whirled away without a

word, and presently he returned with a barrel of ice-cold water from a

spring he had found two miles away. How the girls rejoiced that it was

ice cold! And then they started making lemonade. They had known that

the Adjutant would find water somewhere. He was the man the doughboys

called “one game little guy,” because he was so fearless in going into

No Man’s Land after the wounded, so indefatigable in accomplishing his

purpose against all odds, so forgetful of self.

They had but one crate of lemons, one crate of oranges and one bag of

sugar when they began making lemonade, but before they needed more it

arrived just on the minute. It was almost like a miracle. For a whole

car load of oranges and lemons had been shipped to Beauvais and arrived

a day too late—after the troops had gone. They were of no use there, so

the Zone Major had them shipped at once to the railhead at Crepy, and

got a special permit to go over with trucks and take them up to Morte

Fontaine.

The Salvation Army never does things by halves. Colonel Barker sent to

Paris to get some mosquito netting to keep the flies off those

soldiers, and failing to find any in the whole city he bought $10,000

worth of white net, such as is used for ladies’ collars and dresses—ten

thousand yards at a dollar a yard—and sent it down to the hospital

where it was used over the wounded men, sometimes over a wounded arm or

leg or head, sometimes over a whole man, sometimes stretched as netting

in the windows. And no ten thousand dollars was ever better spent, for

the flies occasioned indescribable suffering as well as the peril of

infection.

Wonderful relief and comfort all these things brought to those poor

boys lying there in agony and fever. How delicious were the cooling

drinks to their parched lips! The doctors afterward said that it was

the cool drinks those girls gave to the men that saved many a life that

day.

There were some poor fellows hurt in the abdomen who were not allowed

to drink even a drop and who begged for it so piteously. For these the

girls did all in their power. They bathed their faces and hands and

dipping gauze in lemonade they moistened their lips with it.

The other day, after the war was over and a ship came sailing into New

York harbor, one of these same fellows standing on the deck looked down

at the wharf and saw one of these same girls standing there to welcome

him. As soon as he was free to leave the ship he rushed down to find

her, and gripping her hand eagerly he cried out so all around could

hear: “You saved my life that day. Oh, but I’m glad to see you! The

doctor said it was that cold lemonade you gave me that kept me from

dying of fever!”

In one base hospital lay a boy wounded at Chateau-Thierry. Of course,

when wounded, he lost all his possessions, including a Testament which

he very much treasured. The Salvation Army supplied him with another,

but it did not comfort him as the old one had done. He said that it

could never be the same as the one he had carried for so long. He

worried so much about his Testament, that one of the lassies finally

attempted to recover it, and, after much trouble, succeeded through the

Bureau of Effects. The little book, which the soldier had always

carried with him, was blood-soaked and mud-stained; but it was an

unmistakable aid in the lad’s recovery.

But the honor of those days in Morte Fontaine was not all due to the

Salvation Army lassies. The Salvation Army truck drivers were real

heroes. They came with their ambulances and their trucks and they

carried the poor wounded fellows back to the base hospitals. The

hospitals were full everywhere near there, and sometimes they would go

from one to another and have to drive miles, and even go from one town

to another to find a place where there was room to receive the men they

carried. Then back they would come for another load. They worked thus

for three days and five nights steadily, before they slept, and some of

them stripped to the waist and bared their breasts to the sharp night

wind so that the cold air would keep them awake to the task of driving

their cars through the black night with its precious load of human

lives. They had no opportunity for rest of any kind, no chance to shave

or wash or sleep, and they were a haggard and worn looking set of men

when it was over.

While all this was going on the Zone Major kept out of sight of the

Colonel who had told him he couldn’t go out on that drive; but two days

later he saw his familiar car coming down the road and the Colonel

seemed greatly agitated. He was shaking his fist in front of him.

The Zone Major pondered whether he would not better drive right on

without stopping to talk, but he reflected that he would have to take

his punishment some time and he might as well get it over with, so when

the Colonel’s car drew near he stopped. The Colonel got out and the

Zone Major got out, and it was apparent that the Colonel was very

angry. He forgot entirely that the Zone Major was a Salvationist and he

swore roundly: “I’m out with you for life” declared the Colonel

angrily. “The General’s upset and I’m upset.”

“Why, what’s the matter, Colonel?” asked the Zone Major innocently.

“Matter enough! You had no business to bring those girls up here!”

The Colonel said more to the same effect, and then got into his car and

drove off. The Zone Major wisely kept out of his way; but a few days

later met him again and this time the Colonel was smiling:

“Dog-gone you, Major, where’ve you been keeping yourself? Why haven’t

you been around?” and he put out his hand affably.

“Why, I didn’t want to see a man who bawled me out in the public

highway that way,” said the Zone Major.

“Well, Major, you had no business to bring those girls up here and you

know it!” said the Colonel rousing to the old subject again.

“Why not, Colonel, didn’t they do fine?”

“Yes, they did,” said the Colonel with tears springing suddenly into

his eyes and a huskiness into his voice, “but, Major, think what if

we’d lost one of them!”

“Colonel,” said the Zone Major gently, “my girls are soldiers. They

come up here to share the dangers with the soldiers, and as long as

they can be of service they feel this is the place for them.”

The Colonel struggled with his emotion for a moment and then said

gruffly: “Had anything to eat? Stop and take a bite with me.” And they

sat down under the trees and had supper together.

It was at this town that the girls slept in a German-dug cave, in which

our boys had captured seven hundred Germans, the commanding officer of

whom said that according to his rank in Germany he ought to have a car

to take him to the rear. However, he was compelled to leg it at the

point of an American bayonet in the hands of an American doughboy. The

cave was of chalk rock made to store casks of wine.

The airplanes were bad in this place. One speaks of airplanes in such a

connection in the same way one used to mention mosquitoes at certain

Jersey seashore resorts. But they were particularly bad at Morte

Fontaine, and Major Peabody ordered the canteen to be moved out of the

village to the cave. More Salvation Army girls came to look after the

canteen leaving the first girls free for longer hours at the hospital.

One beautiful moonlight night the girls had just started out from the

hospital to go to their cave when they heard a German airplane, the

irregular chug, chug of its engine distinguishing it unmistakably from

the smooth whirr of the Allies’ planes. The girls looked up and almost

over their heads was an enemy plane, so low that they could see the

insignia on his machine, and see the man in the car. He seemed to be

looking down at them. In sudden panic they fled to a nearby tree and

hid close under its branches. Standing there they saw the enemy make a

low dip over the hospital tents, drop a bomb in the kitchen end just

where they had been working five minutes before, and slide up again

through the silvery air, curve away and dive down once more.

The scene was bright as day for the moon was full and very clear that

night, and the roads stretched out in every direction like white

ribbons. One block away the girls could see a regiment of Scotch

soldiers, the famous Highland Regiment called “The Ladies From Hell,”

marching up to the front that night, and singing bravely as they

marched, their skirling Scotch songs accompanied by a bagpipe. And even

as they listened with bated breath and straining eyes the airplane

dipped and dropped another bomb right into the midst of the brave men,

killing thirty of them, and slid up and away before it could be

stopped. These were the scenes to which they grew daily accustomed as

they plied their angel mission, and daily saw themselves preserved as

by a miracle from constant peril.

We had about eight or ten German prisoners here, who were employed as

litter bearers, and very good workers they were, tickled to death to be

there instead of over on their own side fighting. Most of the

prisoners, except some of the German officers, seemed glad to be taken.

These German prisoners were sitting in a row on the ground outside the

hospital one day when the Salvation Army girls and men were picking

over a crate of oranges. The Germans sat watching them with longing

eyes.

“Let’s give them each one,” proposed one of the girls.

“No! Give them a punch in the nose!” said the boys.

The girls said nothing more and went on working. Presently they stepped

away for a few minutes and when they came back the Germans sat there

contentedly eating oranges. Questioningly the girls looked at their

male coworkers and with lifted brows asked: “What does this mean?”

“Aw, well! The poor sneaks looked so longingly!” said one of the boys,

grinning sheepishly.

There in the hospital the girls came into contact with the splendid

spirit of the American soldier boys, “Don’t help me, help that fellow

over there who is suffering!” was heard over and over again when they

went to bring comfort to some wounded boy.

When the supplies in the canteen would run out, and the last doughnut

would be handed with the words: “That’s the last,” the boy to whom it

was given would say: “Don’t give it to me, give it to Harry. I don’t

want it.”

It was during that drive and there was a farewell meeting at one of the

Salvation Army huts that night for the boys who were going up to the

trenches. It was a beautiful and touching meeting as always on such

occasions. Starting with singing whatever the boys picked out, it

dropped quickly into the old hymns that the boys loved and then to a

simple earnest prayer, setting forth the desperate case of those who

were going out to fight, and appealing to the everlasting Saviour for

forgiveness and refuge. They lingered long about the fair young girl

who was leading them, listening to her earnest, plain words of

instruction how to turn to the Saviour of the world in their need, how

to repent of their sins and take Christ for their Saviour and

Sanctifier. No man who was in that meeting would dare plead ignorance

of the way to be saved. Many signified their desire to give their lives

into the keeping of Christ before they went to the front. The meeting

broke up reluctantly and the men drifted out and away, expecting soon

to be called to go. But something happened that they did not go that

night. Meantime, a company had just returned from the front, weary,

hungry, worn and bleeding, with their nerves unstrung, and their

spirits desperate from the tumult and horror of the hours they had just

passed in battle. They needed cheering and soothing back to normal. The

girls were preparing to do this with a bright, cheery entertainment,

when a deputation of boys from the night before returned. There was a

wistful gleam in the eyes of the young Jew who was spokesman for the

group as he approached the lassie who had led the meeting.

“Say, Cap, you see we didn’t go up.”

“I see,” she smiled happily.

“Say, Cap, won’t you have another farewell meeting to-night?” he asked

with an appealing glance in his dark eyes.

“Son, we’ve arranged something else just now for the fellows who are

coming back,” she said gently, for she hated to refuse such a request.

“Oh, say, Cap, you can have that later, can’t you? We want another

meeting now.”

There was something so pleading in his voice and eyes, so hungry in the

look of the waiting group, that the young Captain could not deny him.

She looked at him hesitatingly, and then said:

“All right. Go out and tell the boys.”

He hurried out and soon the company came crowding in. That hour the

very Lord came down and communed with them as they sang and knelt to

pray, and not a heart but was melted and tender as they went out when

it was over in the solemn darkness of the early morning. A little later

the order came and they “went over.”

It was a sharp, fierce fight, and the young Jew was mortally wounded.

Some comrades found him as he lay white and helpless on the ground, and

bending over saw that he had not long to stay. They tried to lift him

and bear him back, but he would not let them. He knew it was useless.

They asked him if he had any message. He nodded. Yes, he wanted to send

a message to the Salvation Army girls. It was this:

“Tell the girls I’ve gone West; for I will be by the time you tell

them; and tell them it’s all right for at that second meeting I

accepted Christ and I die resting on the same Saviour that is theirs.”

One of our wonderful boys out on the drive had his hand blown off and

didn’t realize it. His chum tried to drag him back and told him his

hand was gone.

“That’s nothing!” he cried. “Tie it up!”

But they forced him back lest he would bleed to death. In the hospital

they told him that now he might go home.

“Go home!” he cried. “Go home for the loss of a left hand! I’m not

left-handed. Maybe I can’t carry a gun, but I can throw hand grenades!”

He went to the Major and the Major said also that he must go home.

The boy looked him straight in the eye:

“Excuse me, Major, saying I won’t. But _I won’t let go your coat_ till

you say I can stay,” and finally the Major had to give in and let him

stay. He could not resist such pleading.

One poor fellow, wounded in his abdomen, was lying on a litter in a

most uncomfortable position suffering awful pain. The lassie came near

and asked if she could do anything for him. He told her he wanted to

lie on his stomach, but the doctor, when she asked him, said “No” very

shortly and told her he must lie on his back. She stooped and turned

him so that his position was more comfortable, put his gas mask under

his head, rolled his blanket so as to support his shoulders better, and

turned to go to another, and the poor suffering lad opened his eyes,

held out his hand and smiled as she went away.

The doctors said to the girls: “It is wonderful to have you around.”

The Red Cross men and their rolling kitchens came to the front, but no

women. Somehow in pain and sickness no hand can sooth like a woman’s.

Perhaps God meant it to be so. Here at Morte Fontaine was the first

time a woman had ever worked in a field hospital.

The Salvation Army women worked all that drive.

It was a sad time, though, for the division went in to stay until they

lost forty-five hundred men, but it stayed two days after reaching that

figure and lost about seventy-five thousand.

The doctor in charge of the evacuation hospital at Crepy spoke of the

effect of the Salvation Army girls, not alone upon the wounded, but

also upon the medical-surgical staff and the men of the hospital corps

who acted as nurses in that advanced position. “Before they came,” he

said, “we were overwrought, everyone seemed at the breaking point, what

with the nervous tension and danger. But the very sight of women

working calmly had a soothing effect on everyone.”

When the drive was over orders came to leave. The following is the

official notice to the Salvation Army officers:

G-1 Headquarters, 1st Division, American Expeditionary Forces, July 26,

1918.

_Memorandum._

To Directors, Y.M.C.A., Red Cross, Salvation Army Services, 1st

Division.

1. This division moves by rail to destination unknown beginning at 6.00

A.M., July 28th. Motor organizations of the Division move overland.

Your motorized units will accompany the advanced section of the

Division Supply Train, and will form a part of that train.

2. Time of departure and routes to be taken will be announced later.

3. Secretaries attached to units may accompany units, if it is so

desired.

By command of Major-General Summerall.

P. E. Peabody,

Captain, Infantry,

G-1

Copies:

YMCA

Red Cross

Salvation Army

G-3

C. of S.

File

The girls stowed themselves and their belongings into the big truck.

Just as they were about to start they saw some infantry coming, seven

men whom they knew, but in such a plight! They were unshaven, with

white, sunken faces, and great dark hollows under their eyes. They were

simply “all in,” and could hardly walk.

Without an instant’s hesitation the girls made a place for those poor,

tired, dirty men in the truck, and the invitation was gratefully

accepted.

There were more poor forlorn fellows coming along the road. They kept

meeting them every little way, but they had no room to take in any more

so they piled oranges in the back end of the truck and gave them to all

the boys they passed who were walking.

Now the girls were on their way to Senlis, where they had planned to

take dinner at a hotel in which they had dined before. It was one of

the few buildings remaining in the town for the Germans, when they left

Senlis, had set it on fire and destroyed nearly everything. But as the

girls neared the town they began to think about the boys asleep in the

back of the truck, who probably hadn’t had a square meal for a week,

and they decided to take them with them. So they woke them up when they

arrived at the hotel. Oh, but those seven dirty, unshaven soldiers were

embarrassed with the invitation to dinner! At first they declined, but

the girls insisted, and they found a place to wash and tidy up

themselves a bit. In a few minutes into the big dining-room filled with

French soldiers and a goodly sprinkling of French officers, marched

those two girls, followed by their seven big unshaven soldiers with

their white faces and hollow eyes, sat proudly down at a table in the

very centre and ordered a big dinner. That is the kind of girls

Salvation Army lassies are. Never ashamed to do a big right thing.

After the dinner they took the boys to their divisional headquarters,

where they found their outfit.

They went on their way from Senlis to Dam-Martin to stay for a week

back of the lines for rest.

There was a big French cantonment building here built for moving

pictures, which was given to them for a canteen, and they set up their

stove and went to work making doughnuts, and doing all the helpful

things they could find to do for the boys who were soon to go to the

front again.

Then orders came to move back to the Toul Sector.

Those were wonderful moonlight nights at Saizerais, but the Boche

airplanes nearly pestered the life out of everybody.

“Gee!” said one of the boys, “if anybody ever says ’beautiful moonlight

nights’ to me when I get home I don’t know what I’ll do to ’em!”

The boys were at the front, but not fighting as yet. Occasional shells

would burst about their hut here and there, but the girls were not much

bothered by them. The thing that bothered them most was an old “Vin”

shop across the street that served its wine on little tables set out in

front on the sidewalk. They could not help seeing that many of the boys

were beginning to drink. Poor souls! The water was bad and scarce,

sometimes poisoned, and their hearts were sick for something, and this

was all that presented itself. It was not much wonder. But when the

girls discovered the state of things they sent off three or four boys

with a twenty-gallon tank to scout for some water. They found it after

much search and filled the big tank full of delicious lemonade, telling

the boys to help themselves.

All the time they were in that town, which was something like a week,

the girls kept that tank full of lemonade close by the door. They must

have made seventy-five or a hundred gallons of lemonade every day, and

they had to squeeze all the lemons by hand, too! They told the boys:

“When you feel thirsty just come here and get lemonade as often as you

want it!” No wonder they almost worship those girls. And they had the

pleasure of seeing the trade of the little wine shop decidedly

decrease.

However near the front you may go you will always find what is known

over there in common parlance as a “hole in the wall” where “vin

blanche” and “vin rouge” and all kinds of light wines can be had. And,

of course, many soldiers would drink it. The Salvation Army tried to

supply a great need by having carloads of lemons sent to the front and

making and distributing lemonade freely.

One cannot realize the extent of this proposition without counting up

all the lemons and sugar that would be required, and remembering that

supplies were obtained only by keeping in constant touch with the

Headquarters of that zone and always sending word immediately when any

need was discovered. There is nothing slow about the Salvation Army and

they are not troubled with too much red tape. If necessity presents

itself they will even on occasion cut what they have to help someone.

The airplanes visited them every night that week, and sometimes they

did not think it worth while to go to bed at all; they had to run to

the safety trenches so often. It was just a little bit of a village

with dugouts out on the edge.

One night they had gone to bed and a terrific explosion occurred which

rocked the little house where they were. They thought of course the

bomb had fallen in the village, but they found it was quite outside. It

had made such a big hole in the ground that you could put a whole truck

into it.

The trenches in which they hid were covered over with boards and sand,

and were not bomb proof, but they were proof against pieces of shell

and shrapnel.

It was a very busy time for the girls because so many different outfits

were passing and repassing that they had to work from morning early

till late at night.

At Bullionville the hut was in a building that bore the marks of much

shelling. The American boys promptly dubbed the place “Souptown.”

The Division moved to Vaucouleurs for rest and replacements. At

Vaucouleurs there was a great big hut with a piano, a victrola, and a

cookstove.

They started the canteen, made doughnuts and pies, and gave

entertainments.

But best of all, there were wonderful meetings and numbers of

conversions, often twenty and twenty-five at a time giving themselves

to Christ. The boys would get up and testify of their changed feelings

and of what Christ now meant to them, and the others respected them the

more for it.

They stayed here two weeks and everybody knew they were getting ready

for a big drive. It was a solemn time for the boys and they seemed to

draw nearer to the Salvation Army people and long to get the secret of

their brave, unselfish lives, and that light in their eyes that defied

danger and death. In the distance you could hear the artillery, and the

night before they left, all night long, there was the tramp, tramp,

tramp of feet, the boys “going up.”

The next day the girls followed in a truck, stopping a few days at

Pagny-sur-Meuse for rest.

VIII.

The Saint Mihiel Drive

The hut in Raulecourt was an old French barracks. Outside in the yard

was an old French anti-aircraft gun and a mesh of barbed wire

entanglement. The woods all around was filled with our guns. To the

left was the enemy’s third line trench. Three-quarters of the time the

Boche were trying to clean us up. Less than two miles ahead were our

own front line trenches.

The field range was outside in the back yard.

One hot day in July a Salvation Army woman stood at the range frying

doughnuts from eleven in the morning until six at night without

resting, and scarcely stopping for a bite to eat. She fried seventeen

hundred doughnuts, and was away from the stove only twice for a few

minutes. She claims, however, that she is not the champion doughnut

fryer. The champion fried twenty-three hundred in a day.

One day a soldier watching her tired face as she stood at the range

lifting out doughnuts and plopping more uncooked ones into the fat,

protested.

“Say, you’re awfully tired turning over doughnuts. Let me help you. You

go inside and rest a while. I’m sure I can do that.”

She was tired and the boy looked eager, so she decided to accept his

offer. He was very insistent that she go away and rest, so she slipped

in behind a screen to lie down, but peeped out to watch how he was

getting on. She saw him turn over the first doughnuts all right and

drain them, but he almost burned his fingers trying to eat one before

it was fairly out of the fat; and then she understood why he had been

so anxious for her to “_go away_” and rest.

Often the boys would come to the lassies and say: “Say, Cap, I can help

you. Loan me an apron.” And soon they would be all flour from their

chin to their toes.

They would come about four o’clock to find out what time the doughnuts

would be ready for serving, and the girls usually said six o’clock so

that they would be able to fry enough to supply all the regiment. But

the men would start to line up at half-past four, knowing that they

could not be served until six, so eager were they for these delicacies.

When six o’clock came each man would get three doughnuts and a cup of

delicious coffee or chocolate. A great many doughnut cutters were worn

out as the days went by and the boys frequently had to get a new cutter

made. Sometimes they would take the top of quite a large-sized can or

anything tin that they could lay hands on from which to make it. One

boy found the top of an extra large sized baking powder tin and took it

to have a smaller cutter soldered in the centre. Sometimes they used

the top of the shaving soap box for this. When he got back to the hut

the cook exclaimed in dismay: “Why, but it’s too big!”

“Oh, that’s all right,” said the doughboy nonchalantly.

“That’ll be all the better for us. We’ll get more doughnut. You always

give us three anyway, you know. The size don’t count.”

They were always scheming to get more pie and more doughnuts and would

stand in line for hours for a second helping. One day the Salvation

Army woman grew indignant over a noticeably red-headed boy who had had

three helpings and was lining up for a fourth. She stood majestically

at the head of the line and pointed straight at him: “You! With the red

head down there! Get out of the line!”

“She’s got my number all right!” said the red-headed one, grinning

sheepishly as he dropped back.

The town of Raulecourt was often shelled, but one morning just before

daybreak the enemy started in to shell it in earnest. Word came that

the girls had better leave as it was very dangerous to remain, but the

girls thought otherwise and refused to leave. One might have thought

they considered that they were real soldiers, and the fate of the day

depended upon them. And perhaps more depended upon them than they knew.

However that was they stayed, having been through such experiences

before. For the older woman, however, it was a first experience. She

took it calmly enough, going about her business as if she, too, were an

old soldier.

On the evening of June 14th they made fudge for the boys who were going

to leave that night for the front lines.

For several hours the tables in the hut were filled with men writing

letters to loved ones at home, and the women and girls had sheets of

paper filled with addresses to which they had promised to write if the

boys did not come back.

At last one of the men got up with his finished letter and quietly

removed the phonograph and a few of its devotees who were not going up

to the front yet, placing them outside at a safe distance from the hut.

A soldier followed, carrying an armful of records, and the hut was

cleared for the men who were “going in” that night.

For a little while they ate fudge and then they sang hymns for another

half hour, and had a prayer. It was a very quiet little meeting. Not

much said. Everyone knew how solemn the occasion was. Everyone felt it

might be his last among them. It was as if the brooding Christ had made

Himself felt in every heart. Each boy felt like crying out for some

strong arm to lean upon in this his sore need. Each gave himself with

all his heart to the quiet reaching up to God. It was as if the eating

of that fudge had been a solemn sacrament in which their souls were

brought near to God and to the dear ones they might never see on this

earth again. If any one had come to them then and suggested the

Philosophy of Nietzsche it would have found little favor. They knew,

here, in the face of death, that the Death of Jesus on the Cross was a

soul satisfying creed. Those who had accepted Him were suddenly taken

within the veil where they saw no longer through a glass darkly, but

with a face-to-face sense of His presence. They had dropped away their

self assurance with which they had either conquered or ignored

everything so far in life, and had become as little children, ready to

trust in the Everlasting Father, without whom they had suddenly

discovered they could not tread the ways of Death.

Then came the call to march, and with a last prayer the boys filed

silently out into the night and fell into line. A few minutes later the

steady tramp of their feet could be heard as they went down the street

that led to the front.

Later in the night, quite near to morning, there came a terrific shock

of artillery fire that heralded a German raid. The fragile army cots

rocked like cradles in the hut, dishes rolled and danced on the shelves

and tables, and were dashed to fragments on the floor. Shells wailed

and screamed overhead; and our guns began, until it seemed that all the

sounds of the universe had broken forth. In the midst of it all the gas

alarm sounded, the great electric horns screeching wildly above the

babel of sound. The women hurried into their gas masks, a bit flustered

perhaps, but bearing their excitement quietly and helping each other

until all were safely breathing behind their masks.

The next day several times officers came to the hut and begged the

women to leave and go to a place of greater safety, but they decided

not to go unless they were ordered away. On June 19th one of them wrote

in her diary: “Shells are still flying all about us, but our work is

here and we must stay. God will protect us.” Once when things grew

quiet for a little while she went to the edge of the village and

watched the shells falling on Boucq, where one of her friends was

stationed, and declared: “It looks awfully bad, almost as bad as it

sounds.”

The next morning as the firing gradually died away, Salvation Army

people hurried up to Raulecourt from near-by huts to find out how these

brave women were, and rejoiced unspeakably that every one was safe and

well.

That night there was another wonderful meeting with the boys who were

going to the front, and after it the weary workers slept soundly the

whole night through, quietly and undisturbed, the first time for a

week.