From tambourine to doughnut--The "Y" and the canteen--Too much on its
hands--Other ministrants--Manifold activity of the Red Cross--But
not at the front--Honor to the army nurses--The chaplain's label
immaterial.
Of the auxiliary organizations serving with the army the Salvation
Army was nearest to the soldier's heart, and the Y. M. C. A., or the
"Y," as the soldiers knew it, the most in evidence. When the pioneer
Salvationists appeared in our training camps early in the winter of
1917-1918, some wits asked if they were to beat the tambourine and hold
experience meetings in the trenches. Soon they were winning their way
by their smiling humility. They were not bothered by relative rank,
which gave some of the personnel of the other auxiliaries much concern.
"If there's anything that anybody else is too busy to do, won't you let
us try to do it?" seemed to express their attitude.
After the fighting began, it was evident that on campaign their
emblem was not the tambourine but the doughnut. When our soldiers
came out of the battle, whom should they see standing in the mud
of the shelled zone but the khaki-clad Salvation lassies, smilingly
passing out doughnuts and hot coffee--free. The tired fighter did not
have to search his pockets for money. All he had to do was to eat the
doughnuts, and drink the coffee. That made a "hit" with him.
The men workers of other auxiliaries went up under fire, and
distributed chocolate and cigarettes. Yet nothing in their gallantry
or devotion could have the appeal of the smiling lassies offering
free doughnuts and hot coffee to a man just out of the shambles, when
his emotions were gelatine to the impressions that would endure.
The Salvationists were ready night and day to bear hardships and do
cheerfully any kind of drudgery. There were relatively few of them;
they filled in gaps, depending upon the personal human touch, which
they exerted with admirable "tactics," as the map experts of the staff
would say.
Possibly the soldier was a little unfair to the "Y"; possibly, too,
the "Y" was the object of critical propaganda, while it neglected
propaganda on its own account among our soldiers, though not at
home. Where nothing was expected of the Salvation Army, everything
was expected of the "Y." It must have motion pictures, singers, and
vaudeville artists, and huts wherever American soldiers congregated
from end to end of France; this was a part of the ambitious plan,
although it could not get the tonnage allowance from home, or the
supplies in France, to carry it out. Another part was that of really
taking the place of a company exchange. Here the "Y" put its head in a
noose; but not unwittingly. When the proposition came from the army to
the "Y," its answer was in the negative.
"Aren't you here to serve?" was the army's question. To this the "Y"
could only say, "Yes, sir." At that time the army authorities--not
foreseeing conditions which later developed--were applying the theory
that gifts to the soldiers meant charity: as a self-respecting man he
would want to pay for his tobacco, candy, or other luxuries.
The "Y" had no such generous fund as the Red Cross; it could not build
huts and theaters, sell cigarettes, chocolate, sandwiches, pie, or
furnish meals below cost. In the early days when our soldiers were
hungry for chocolate, and none was arriving from home, the "Y" bought
it at exorbitant prices in the local market, charging what it had paid.
Later it had supplies from the quartermaster. As soon as a soldier
appeared in a town, he asked, "Where is that blankety-blank 'Y'?" If
there were no "Y" hut, canteen, or motion picture show, his conclusions
were inevitable, and his remarks sometimes unprintable, especially
if he could not buy his home brand of cigarettes. It was the "Y's"
business to be on hand, no less than that of the quartermaster
department to see that he was given his daily rations.
He did not receive his pay more regularly than his mail. If he had no
money, though he might go to the "Y" motion picture show, he could not
get cigarettes, chewing gum, or pie. On one occasion when a "Y" truck
loaded with cigarettes came to the rescue of the tobacco-famished at
the front, the besieging purchasers, when they opened the packages,
found a slip inside, saying that they were from a newspaper's free
tobacco fund. The fat was in the fire. The "Y" might give away all that
truck load of cigarettes as it did, return the money of the deceived
purchasers, and it might give away a dozen trucks of sales cigarettes;
but the explanation that the quartermaster department had mixed the
free cigarettes with sales cigarettes, the "Y" being officially
credited for payment for all, could never overtake the circumstantial
report of the "Y's" profiteering, which grew as it was helped on its
travels, perhaps, by the "Y's" enemies.
If a division commander wanted an errand done in Paris, a check cashed,
or any comfort or entertainment for his men, he called on the "Y,"
which was not "volunteer," but "drafted." No one ever stopped to think
what the army would have done without the "Y" huts, motion pictures,
theatricals, and canteens.
After the armistice, when a large number of returned British and
American prisoners arrived at Nancy, I recollect how the local head
of another auxiliary organization called up the "Y" on the telephone,
saying: "We're helpless. Can you do anything?"
"Send them on!" was the answer.
"There are eight hundred, all hungry. Have you food for them?"
"No, but we'll find it--" which was the spirit of the S. O. S. that
kept us supplied in the Meuse-Argonne battle. Another type of "Y" man
might, however, have thrown up his hands in despair.
The "Y" was an enormous and mixed force, criticized, reasonably I
think, for lack of organization to keep pace with its ambitions. Its
home administration seemed disinclined to take the advice of men
experienced at the front in the choice of personnel. A novelist, a
college professor, a lawyer, or even a regular "Y" secretary is not as
good at running a lunch counter or a hut as a man who regularly runs a
lunch counter or a hotel. A young woman who stood high at college might
not be as useful in the kind of work the "Y" had to do as a practical
housewife who might not have heard of Euclid, but who did know how
to bake, sew, and cook. The soldier judged personnel by the way they
came down to earth, as he had a very earthly job in his fox-holes and
charges. I have gone into this detail because it became the fashion
to give the "Y" a bad name, which was hardly deserved considering the
large contract it had undertaken to fill.
The Knights of Columbus also had huts and theaters, but did not attempt
to cover the whole field. When K. of C. workers opened a counter or
appeared with a truck at the front, the supplies while they lasted were
free to all comers. The soldier who had no change was always looking
for the K. of C. When he passed the "Y," which required money for the
sweets or the tobacco he craved, the contrast in his mind was that
between generosity and commercialism. He was allotting a large portion
of his pay to his family in a time of war, when according to all he
read everybody at home was subscribing liberally in order that the men
who faced hardship and death might not go without comforts. As the K.
of C. appeared in force with the army later than the "Y" and could
profit by example, its workers were seemingly a little more practical
than those of the "Y."
"Boys, we'll give you all we have. Never mind the money!" was their
attitude. The Jewish Welfare Board seems to have been admirably
forehanded and generous in its special attention to the soldiers of
the Jewish race.
We must not overlook the American Library Association, which had a free
library in Paris. It circulated books throughout the army zone by a
system which enabled the reader, if he were traveling, to return a book
to any "Y" hut. If a book were lost, no matter. The thing was that our
fighters should be served.
The Red Cross, having elaborate headquarters in Paris, was an enormous
organization, managed with able statecraft, which covered a broad field
of various activity. Its duties with the army never seemed as specific
as those of the other auxiliaries. The old established Samaritan of
our modern world, with immense funds and resources ready to meet any
emergency when the call came, it opened free dispensaries and succored
refugees; assisted civil populations as well as soldiers; ran some
auxiliary hospitals, convalescent hotels, and hotels for officers;
never selling, always giving, supplied hot coffee and lunches to
soldiers en route across France; and "filled in" on a huge scale in
the same way as the Salvation Army on a smaller scale. More of its
workers were well-to-do and unpaid than in the K. of C. and the Y. M.
C. A. Some of these--for the A. R. C., too, had its difficulties with
personnel--were far more expensive, the practical comrades said, than
if they had received large salaries. The Red Cross doctors and nurses
were ready to supplement the regular army forces when occasion demanded.
The popular idea that the Red Cross had anything to do with bringing
in the wounded from the field, or with the dressing stations or
ambulances, was quite erroneous. All the doctors and medical men in
the front line, and all the stretcher-bearers who endured their share
of gas, shells, and machine-gun blasts, of rains and mud, with heavy
casualties; all the drivers of the ambulances along shell-infested
roads; all the hospital corps men, on their feet twenty-four hours at a
stretch at the _triages_; all the teams of surgeons and their helpers,
whose skill and tireless endurance saved lives--these were of the army.
There is no heroism finer than that of the stretcher-bearer; or of the
surgeon and medical corps man in the front line. Their blood is not hot
in pursuit or combat. They see the red bandages and gaping wounds, and
hear the gasps for breath of the dying. Your medical corps man "took on
for the war"; he was of the army machine. The work of our doctors is
attested by the record of how successfully they patched up the wounded
to return to the battle; of how they kept the stream of wounded flowing
back to the hospitals in amazing smoothness, considering the unexpected
demands of the battle.
There were not enough medical officers, hospital corps men, or nurses;
but they made up for their lack of numbers under the most appealing of
calls by giving the limit of their strength, no less than the soldiers.
The honors to the womanhood which served in France go to our trained
nurses in the army service. They did not report to a Paris headquarters
when they arrived from home, but were hurried to their destinations
on army travel orders; they knew none of the diversions of working
in canteens or of automobile rides about the front. For weeks on end
they were restricted to hospital areas; they were soldiers under army
discipline, in every sense of the word. They had not only kindness in
their hearts, but they knew how to be kind; they not only wanted to do,
but knew how to do.
How their competency shone beside the frittering superficiality of
volunteers who had not even been taught by their mothers to sew, or
cook, or look misery in any form in the face, but who felt that they
must reach France in some way in order to help, or rather to be helped!
It was the difference between the sturdy workhorse drawing a load
upgrade, and a rosette of ribbons on the bridle; between the cloth that
keeps out the cold, and the flounce on the skirt; between knowing how
to bathe a sick man, put a fresh bandage on his wound, move him gently,
and what to say to cheer him; and knowing how to take a chocolate out
of a box daintily. There was no time for ribbons or flounces during
our greatest battle. We rarely had candy from the commissary, which
fact however did require self-abnegation on the part of a few of the
least serviceable of auxiliary workers, which might lead them to think
that they were doing their bit.
Hollow-eyed nurses, driving into bodies aching with fatigue no less
energy of will than the exhausted battalions in their charges, kept the
faith with smiles, which were their camouflage for cheeks pale from
want of sleep. They often worked double the time that they would in
hospitals at home, where they had their home comforts and diversions.
When a soldier, with drawn, ashen face from loss of blood, reeking
still with the grime of the battlefield, came into a ward, an American
woman, who knew his ways and his tongue, was waiting to attend upon
such cases as his. When he was bathed and shaved and his wound dressed,
and he lay back glowing in cleanliness on his cot, his gratitude gave
the nurse renewed strength.
After I had returned home, I heard one day on an elevated train a young
woman telling, in radiant importance, of her "wonderful experience"
as an auxiliary worker of the type to which I have referred, and of
all the officers she had met. Seated near her were two nurses in
uniform, furtively watching her between glances at each other. There
were lines in their faces, though not in hers--lines left by their
service. What she was saying went very well with her friends, but not
with us who know something of who won the war in France. Many of these
nurses--working double shifts in a calling which is short-lived for
those who pursue it for any length of time--will not recover from the
strain on mind and body of the generous giving of the only capital that
most of them had. If you were not in France--in case you were and were
wounded, you need no reminder--when you meet a woman who was in France,
ask if she were an army nurse. If she says that she was, then you may
have met a person who deserves to outrank some gentlemen I know who
have stars on their shoulders.
Then there were the chaplains. General Pershing had his own ideas
on the subject. The chaplain was simply to be the man of God, the
ministrant of religion, the moral companion without regard to
theological faith, who might show, under fire, his greater faith in the
souls of men fighting for a cause.
Bishop Brent, the chief chaplain, was not a militant churchman, but a
man of the gospel militant; and so was Father Doherty, on his right
hand, and all the other chiefs. You ceased to ask whether a man was
Catholic or Protestant, Baptist or Methodist, Christian or Jewish.
Clergymen at home might wonder about this, but they would not after
they had served for a while as our chaplains served, close to the
blood-stained gas-saturated earth, with the eternal mystery of the sky
overhead. The chief chaplains were hard disciplinarians. The punishment
which they meted out to one chaplain who strayed from the straight
and narrow path was not comprised in army regulations. "Wasn't he a
chaplain?" the chaplains argued. Hardest of all on him were the men of
his own church. He had disgraced his church as well as his fellows.
Yet despite the chaplains the men developed the habit of swearing;
soldiers always have. War requires emphatic expressions. It destroys
flexibility of expression--and "damn" and "hell" do seem the fittest
description of a soldier's occupation.
"It's an innocent kind of swearing, though," said a chaplain. "It does
not really blaspheme. It may help them in fighting the battle of the
Lord against the German."
In the assignment of chaplains, of course, the plan was to place
a Catholic with a regiment which was preponderantly Catholic; a
Protestant with a regiment that was preponderantly Protestant; a rabbi
with a regiment that had many Jews. When it was reported that the
majority of the men of a certain regiment were not of the same church
as their chaplain, a transfer was recommended. The colonel wanted to
keep his chaplain, and suggested that he put the question to a vote,
which he did: with the result that all the men of the regiment declared
themselves of the same faith as their chaplain. This chaplain's
religion, as it worked out in the daily association of the drudgery of
drill and the savage ruck of battle, was quite good enough for them,
without regard to the theological label he bore. He had faith, simply
faith, and he gave them faith through his own work.
Division commanders who were not religious men, but hard-hitting
fighters, thinking only of battle efficiency, used always to be asking
for more chaplains. I recollect during the Meuse-Argonne battle
a division commander exclaiming: "Why don't we get more chaplain
replacements? I'm right up against it in my division. I've had one
killed and one wounded in the last two days. I'm going to recommend
both for the Cross, but there's nobody come to take their places. You
stir them up on this question at Headquarters."
The chaplain stoutened the hearts of the fighters against hardship,
cheered the wounded, administered to the dying, wrote letters home to
relatives, went over the fields after the battle with the men of the
Graves Registration Service, which had the pitiful and reverent task of
gathering and burying the dead.
Our soldiers who knew religion at home as repeating "Now I lay me down"
in childhood and the Lord's Prayer when they were older, as grace
before meals, going to Sunday school, sitting in pews listening to
sermons, and as calls from the clergyman, now knew it as the infinite
in their souls in face of death, exemplified by the man of God who was
wearing the uniform they wore, who was suffering what they suffered,
who kept faith with the old thought that "the blood of the martyr is
the seed of the church."