The heroic work of the Smith College girls was described by a
correspondent at the French front under date of March 29:
"Working unceasingly under a constant shellfire, for days without sleep,
the girls demonstrated admirable initiative and ability and the extreme
coolness of the tried soldier. They are still in the field today,
ministering to old men, women, and children. I have talked to the first
persons to come in from the front, who saw them last Saturday, when
shells were falling at Grecourt, the tiny Somme village where the unit
has been quartered for months, aiding the folks of a dozen surrounding
villages.
"When it became evident that the Germans were coming the girls worked
frantically with auto trucks, gathering together all the people in
their territory. In one village they went three times to try to persuade
an aged woman to leave, but she refused to move unless the ancestral
bedstead on which she lay could be transported with her. In final
desperation the girls brought a big supply wagon and loaded the bedstead
and the woman into it, leaving the village fifteen minutes before the
first of the Uhlans arrived.
"The girls organized themselves into small units and each unit was
charged with the evacuation of a single village. Cavalcades of refugees,
generaled by the Smith girls, marched or rode from their abandoned homes
to Roye, where a special train was waiting to carry them westward. Even
cows, chickens, dogs, and cats helped to form the cavalcade which
reached Roye on Saturday morning. Here the refugees vainly tried to
crowd the animals into the train.
"The girls of the Smith College unit then proceeded to Montdidier.
There, with W. B. Jackson of Washington, a former Red Cross delegate at
Ham, assisted by a group of American Quakers and Red Cross workers, they
organized a canteen and began giving out blankets and other comforts and
making a marvelous bean soup and a special food for babies, the basis of
which was condensed milk. As the refugee trains, some containing as many
as 1,000 men, women, and children, poured into Montdidier the arriving
refugees were fed until the supply of food was exhausted.
"Then Montdidier became too hot under the increasing shellfire and the
workers were forced to split, some going to Amiens and others to
Beauvais, where they continued their work. Since then practically all
the Smith College girls and some other workers have gone to Amiens,
where they are weathering the enemy bombardment in cellars, but carrying
on their work as usual."