“Tin hat for a halo! Ah! She wears it well!”“Tin hat for a halo!Ah! She wears it well!”The patient officers who were seeing to all these details worked out almost day and nightThe patient officers who were seeing to all these details worked out almost day and nightAfter that the work went on in record time. In less than a week the hut was finished and ready for business. Two self-appointed details of soldiers from the regulars employed all their spare time in a friendly rivalry to see which could accomplish the most work. When it was dedicated the popularity of the hut was well assured. Later, in another location, a hut 125 feet by 27 feet was put up with the assistance of soldiers in six hours and twenty minutes.More men and women had arrived from America, and the work began to assume business-like proportions. There were huts scattered all through the American training area.As other huts were established the making of pies and doughnuts became a regular part of the daily routine of the hut. It was found that a canteen where candy and articles needed by the soldiers could be obtained at moderate prices would fill a very pressing need and this was made a part of their regular operation.The purchase of an adequate quantity of supplies was a great problem. It was necessary to make frequent trips to Paris, to establish connections with supply houses there, and to attend to the shipping of the supplies out to the camps. At first it was impossible to purchase any quantity of supplies from any house. The demand for everything was so great that wholesale dealers were most independent. Three hundred dollars’ worth of supplies was the most that could be purchased from any one house, but in course of time, confidence and friendly relations being established, it became possible to purchase as much as ten thousand dollars’ worth at one time from one dealer.The first twenty-five thousand dollars, of course, was soon gone, but another fifty thousand dollars arrived from Headquarters in New York, and after a little while another fifty thousand; which hundred thousand dollars was loaned by General Bramwell Booth from the International Treasury. The money was not only borrowed, but the Commander had promised to pay it back in twelve months (which guarantee it is pleasant to state was made good long before the promised time), for the Commander had said: “It is only a question of our getting to work in France, and the American public will see that we have all the money we want.”So it has proved.In the meantime another hut was established at Houdelainecourt.The American boys were drilling from early morning until dark; the weather was wet and cold; the roads were seas of mud and the German planes came over the valleys almost nightly to seek out the position of the American troops and occasionally to drop bombs. It was necessary that all tents should be camouflaged, windows darkened so that lights would not show at night, and every means used to keep the fact of the Americans’ presence from the German observers and spies.Another party of Salvation Army officers, men and women, arrived from New York on September 23rd, and these were quickly sent out to Demange which for the time being was used as the general base of supplies, but later a house was secured at Ligny-en-Barrios, and this was for many months the Headquarters.One interesting incident occurred here in connection with this house. One of its greatest attractions had been that it was one of the few houses containing a bathroom, but when the new tenants arrived they found that the anticipated bathtub had been taken out with all its fittings and carefully stowed away in the cellar. It was too precious for the common use of tenants.All Salvation Army graduates from the training school have a Red Cross diploma, and many are experienced nurses.A Salvation Army woman Envoy sailed for France with a party of Salvationists about the time that the epidemic of influenza broke out all over the world. Even before the steamer reached the quarantine station in New York harbor a number of cases of Spanish influenza had developed among the several companies of soldiers who were aboard, a number of whom were removed from the ship. So anxious were others of these American fighting men to reach Prance that they hid away until the steamer had left port.Land was hardly out of sight before more cases of the disease were reported—so many, in fact, that special hospital accommodations had to be immediately arranged. The ship’s captain after consulting with the American military officers, requested the Salvation Army Envoy to take entire responsibility for the hospital, which responsibility, after some hesitation, she accepted. Under her were two nurses, three dieticians (Y.M.C.A. and Red Cross), a medical corps sergeant (U.S.A.), and twenty-four orderlies. She took charge on the fourth day of a thirteen day voyage, working in the sick bay from 12 noon to 8 P.M., and from 12 midnight to 8 A.M. every day. She had with her a mandolin and a guitar with which, in addition to her sixteen hours of duty in the sick bay, she every day spent some time (usually an hour or two) on deck singing and playing for the soldiers who were much depressed by the epidemic. To them she was a very angel of good cheer and comfort.Many amusing incidents occurred on the voyage.Stormy weather had added to the discomforts of the trip and most of the passengers suffered from seasickness during the greater part of the voyage.On board there was also a woman of middle age who could not be persuaded to keep her cabin porthole closed at night. Again and again a ray of light was projected through it upon the surface of the water and the quarter-master, whose duty it was to see that no lights were shown, was at his wit’s end. His difficulty was the greater because he could speak no English, and she no French. Finally, a passenger took pity on the man, and, as the light was really a grave danger to the ship’s safety, promised to speak to the woman, who insisted that she was not afraid of submarines and that it was foolish to think they could see her light.“Madam,” he said, “the quartermaster here tells me that the sea in this locality is infested with flying fish, who, like moths, fly straight for any light, and he is afraid that if you leave your porthole open they will dive in upon you during the night.”If he had said that the sea was infested with flying mice, his statement could not have been more effective. Thereafter the porthole stayed closed.When the first man died on board, the Captain commanding the soldiers and the ship’s Captain requested a Salvation Army Adjutant to conduct the funeral service.At 4.30 P.M. the ship’s propeller ceased to turn and the steamer came up into the wind. The United States destroyer acting as convoy also came to a halt. The French flag on the steamer and the American flag on the destroyer were at half-mast. Thirty-two men from the dead man’s company lined up on the after-deck. The coffin (a rough pine box), heavily weighted at one end, lay across the rail over the stern. Here a chute had been rigged so that the coffin might not foul the ship’s screws. The flags remained at half-mast for half an hour. The Salvation Army Adjutant read the burial service and prayed. Passengers on the promenade deck looked on. Then a bugler played taps. Every soldier stood facing the stern with hat off and held across the breast. As the coffin slipped down the chute and splashed into the sea a firing squad fired a single rattling volley. The ship came about and, with a shudder of starting engines, continued her voyage, the destroyer doing likewise.During the passage the Adjutant conducted six such funerals, two more being conducted by a Catholic priest. Four more bodies of men who died as they neared port were landed and buried ashore.In the hospital the Envoy was undoubtedly the means of saving several lives by her endless toil and by the encouragement of her cheerful face in that depressing place. The sick men called her “Mother” and no mother could have been more tender than she.“You look so much like mother,” said one boy just before he died. “Won’t you please kiss me?”Another lad, with a great, convulsive effort, drew her hand to his lips and kissed her just as he passed away.All of the American officers and two French officers attended the funerals in full dress uniform and ten sailors of the French navy were also present.The night before the ship docked at Bordeaux a letter signed by the Captain of the ship and the American officers was handed to the Envoy lady. It contained a warm statement of their appreciation of her service. Officers of the Aviation Corps who were aboard the ship arranged a banquet to be held in her honor when they should reach port; but she told them that she was under orders even as they were and that she must report to Paris Headquarters at once. And so the banquet did not take place.As she left the ship, the soldiers were lined up on the wharf ready to march. When she came down the gangplank and walked past them to the street, they cheered her and shouted: “Good-bye, mother! Good luck!”As the fame of the doughnuts and pies spread through the camps a new distress loomed ahead for the Salvation Army. Where were the flour and the sugar and the lard and the other ingredients to come from wherewith to concoct these delicacies for the homesick soldiers?It was of no use to go to the French for white flour, for they did not have it. They had been using war bread, dark mixtures with barley flour and other things, for a long time. Besides, the French had a fixed idea that everyone who came from America was made of money. Wood was thirty-five dollars a load (about a cord) and had to be cut and hauled by the purchaser at that. There was a story current throughout the camps that some Frenchmen were talking together among themselves, and one asked the rest where in the world they were going to get the money to rebuild their towns. “Oh,” replied another; “haven’t we the only battlefields in the world? All the Americans will want to come over after the war to see them and we will charge them enough for the sight to rebuild our villages!”But even at any price the French did not have the materials to sell. There was only one place where things of that sort could be had and that was from the Americans, and the question was, would the commissary allow them to buy in large enough quantities to be of any use? The Salvation Army officers as they went about their work, were puzzling their brains how to get around the American commissary and get what they wanted.Meantime, the American Army had slipped quietly into Montiers in the night and been billeted around in barns and houses and outhouses, and anywhere they could be stowed, and were keeping out of sight. For the German High Council had declared: “As soon as the American Army goes into camp we will blow them off the map.” Day after day the Germans lay low and watched. Their airplanes flew over and kept close guard, but they could find no sign of a camp anywhere. No tents were in sight, though they searched the landscape carefully; and day after day, for want of something better to do they bombarded Bar-lé-Duc. Every day some new ravishment of the beautiful city was wrought, new victims buried under ruins, new terror and destruction, until the whole region was in panic and dismay.Now Bar-lé-Duc, as everyone knows, is the home of the famous Bar-lé-Duc jam that brings such high prices the world over, and there were great quantities stored up and waiting to be sold at a high price to Americans after the war. But when the bombardment continued, and it became evident that the whole would either be destroyed or fall into the hands of the Germans, the owners were frightened. Houses were blown up, burying whole families. Victims were being taken hourly from the ruins, injured or dying.A Salvation Army Adjutant ran up there one day with his truck and found an awful state of things. The whole place was full of refugees, families bereft of their homes, everybody that could trying to get out of the city. Just by accident he found out that the merchants were willing to sell their jam at a very reasonable price, and so he bought tons and tons of Bar-lé-Duc jam. That would help out a lot and go well on bread, for of course there was no butter. Also it would make wonderful pies and tarts if one only had the flour and other ingredients.As he drove into Montiers he was still thinking about it, and there on the table in the Salvation Army hut stood as pretty a chocolate cake as one would care to see. A bright idea came to the Adjutant:“Let me have that cake,” said he to the lassie who had baked it, “and I’ll take it to the General and see what I can do.”It turned out that the cake was promised, but the lassie said she would bake another and have it ready for him on his return trip; so in a few days when he came back there was the cake.Ah! That was a wonderful cake!The lassie had baked it in the covers of lard tins, fourteen inches across and five layers high! There was a layer of cake, thickly spread with rich chocolate frosting, another layer of cake, overlaid with the translucent Bar-lé-Duc jam, a third layer of cake with chocolate, another layer spread with Bar-lé-Duc jam, then cake again, the whole covered smoothly over with thick dark chocolate, top and sides, down to the very base, without a ripple in it. It was a wonder of a cake!With shining eyes and eager look the Adjutant took that beautiful cake, took also twelve hundred great brown sugary doughnuts, and a dozen fragrant apple pies just out of the oven, stowed them carefully away in his truck, and rustled off to the Officers’ Headquarters. Arrived there he took his cake in hand and asked to see the General. An officer with his eye on the cake said the General was busy just now but he would carry the cake to him. But the Adjutant declined this offer firmly, saying: “The ladies of Montiers-sur-Saulx sent this cake to the General, and I must put it into his hands”He was finally led to the General’s room and, uncovering the great cake, he said:“The Salvation Army ladies of Montiers-sur-Saulx have sent this cake to you as a sample of what they will do for the soldiers if we can get flour and sugar and lard.”The General, greatly pleased, took the cake and sent for a knife, while his officers stood about looking on with much interest. It appeared as if every one were to have a taste of the cake. But when the General had cut a generous slice, held it up, observing its cunning workmanship, its translucent, delectable interior, he turned with a gleam in his eye, looked about the room and said: “Gentlemen, this cake will not be served till the evening’s mess, and I pity the gentlemen who do not eat with the officer’s mess, but they will have to go elsewhere for their cake.”The Adjutant went out with his pies and doughnuts and distributed them here and there where they would do the most good, getting on the right side of the Top Sergeant, for he had discovered some time ago that even with the General as an ally one must be on the right side of the “old Sarge” if one wanted anything. While he was still talking with the officers he was handed an order from the General that he should be supplied with all that he needed, and when he finally came out of Headquarters he found that seven tons of material were being loaded on his car. After that the Salvation Army never had any trouble in getting all the material they needed.After the tents in Montiers were all settled and the work fully started, the Staff-Captain and his helpers settled down to a pleasant little schedule of sixteen hours a day work and called it ease; but that was not to be enjoyed for long. At the end of a week the Salvation Army Colonel swooped down upon them again with orders to erect a hut at once as the tents were only a makeshift and winter was coming on. He brought materials and selected a site on a desirable corner.Now the corner was literally covered with fallen walls of a former building and wreckage from the last year’s raid, and the patient workers looked aghast at the task before them. But the Colonel would listen to no arguments. “Don’t talk about difficulties,” he said, brushing aside a plea for another lot, not quite so desirable perhaps, but much easier to clear. “Don’t talk about difficulties; get busy and have the job over with!”One big reason why the Salvation Army is able to carry on the great machinery of its vast organization is that its people are trained to obey without murmuring. Cheerfully and laboriously the men set to work. Winter rains were setting in, with a chill and intensity never to be forgotten by an American soldier. But wet to the skin day after day all day long the Salvationists worked against time, trying to finish the hut before the snow should arrive. And at last the hut was finished and ready for occupancy. Such tireless devotion, such patient, cheerful toil for their sake was not to be passed by nor forgotten by the soldiers who watched and helped when they could. Day after day the bonds between them and the Salvation Army grew stronger. Here were men who did not have to, and yet who for the sake of helping them, came and lived under the same conditions that they did, working even longer hours than they, eating the same food, enduring the same privations, and whose only pay was their expenses. At the first the Salvationists took their places in the chow line with the rest, then little by little men near the head of the line would give up their places to them, quietly stepping to the rear of the line themselves. Finally, no matter how long the line was the men with one consent insisted that their unselfish friends should take the very head of the line whenever they came and always be served first.One day one of the Salvation Army men swathed in a big raincoat was sitting in a Ford by the roadside in front of a Salvation Army hut, waiting for his Colonel, when two soldiers stopped behind him to light their cigarettes. It was just after sundown, and the man in the car must have seemed like any soldier to the two as they chatted.“Bunch of grafters, these Y.M.C.A. and Salvation Army outfits!” grumbled one as he struck a match. “What good are the ‘Sallies’ in a soldier camp?”“Well, Buddy,” said the other somewhat excitedly, “there’s a whole lot of us think the Salvation Army is about it in this man’s outfit. For a rookie you sure are picking one good way to make yourself unpopulartout de suite!Better lay off that kind of talk until you kind of find out what’s what. I didn’t have much use for them myself back in the States, but here in France they’re real folks, believe me!”So the feeling had grown everywhere as the huts multiplied. And the huts proved altogether too small for the religious meetings, so that as long as the weather permitted the services had to be held in the open air. It was no unusual thing to see a thousand men gathered in the twilight around two or three Salvation Army lassies, singing in sweet wonderful volume the old, old hymns. The soldiers were no longer amused spectators, bent on mischief; they were enthusiastic allies of the organization that was theirs. The meeting was theirs.“We never forced a meeting on them,” said one of the girls. “We just let it grow. Sometimes it would begin with popular songs, but before long the boys would ask for hymns, the old favorites, first one, then another, always remembering to call for ‘Tell Mother I’ll Be There.’”Almost without exception the boys entered heartily into everything that went on in the organization. The songs were perhaps at first only a reminder of home, but soon they came to have a personal significance to many. The Salvation Army did not hare movies and theatrical singers as did the other organizations, but they did not seem to need them. The men liked the Gospel meetings and came to them better than to anything else. Often they would come to the hut and start the singing themselves, which would presently grow into a meeting of evident intention. The Staff-Captain did not long have opportunity to enjoy the new hut which he had labored so hard to finish at Montiers, for soon orders arrived for him to move on to Houdelainecourt to help put up the hut there, and leave Montiers in charge of a Salvation Army Major. The Salvation Army was with the Eighteenth Infantry at Houdelainecourt.It was an old tent that sheltered the canteen, and it had the reputation of having gone up and down five times. When first they put it up it blew down. It was located where two roads met and the winds swept down in every direction. Then they put it up and took it down to camouflage it. They got it up again and had to take it down to camouflage it some more. The regular division helped with this, and it was some camouflage when it was done, for the boys had put their initials all over it, and then, had painted Christmas trees everywhere, and on the trees they had put the presents they knew they never would get, and so in all the richness of its record of homesickness the old tent went up again. They kept warm here by means of a candle under an upturned tin pail. The tent blew down again in a big storm soon after that and had to be put up once more, and then there came a big rain and flooded everything in the neighborhood. It blew down and drowned out the Y.M.C.A. and everything else, and only the old tent stood for awhile. But at last the storm was too much for it, too, and it succumbed again.After that the Salvation Army put up a hut for their work. A number of soldiers assisted. They put up a stove, brought their piano and phonograph, and made the place look cheerful. Then they got the regimental band and had an opening, the first big thing that was recognized by the military authorities. The Salvation Army Staff-Captain in charge of that zone took a long board and set candles on it and put it above the platform like a big chandelier. The Brigade Commander was there, and a Captain came to represent the Colonel. A chaplain spoke. The lassies who took part in the entertainment were the first girls the soldiers had seen for many months.Long before the hour announced for the service the soldier boys had crowded the hutment to its greatest capacity. Game and reading tables had been moved to the rear and extra benches brought in. The men stood three deep upon the tables and filled every seat and every inch of standing room. When there was no more room on the floor, they climbed to the roof and lined the rafters. There was no air and the Adjutant came to say there was too much light, but none of these things damped the enthusiasm.With the aid of the regimental chaplain, the Staff-Captain had arranged a suitable program for the occasion, the regimental band furnishing the music.When the General entered the hutment all of the men stood and uncovered and the band stopped abruptly in the middle of a strain. “That’s the worst thing I ever did—stopping the music,” he exclaimed ruefully. He refused to occupy the chair which had been prepared for him, saying: “No, I want to stand so that I can look at these men.”The records of the work in that hut would be precious reading for the fathers and mothers of those boys, for the Fighting Eighteenth Infantry are mostly gone, having laid their young lives on the altar with so many others. Here is a bit from one lassie’s letter, giving a picture of one of her days in the hut:“Well, I must tell you how the days are spent. We open the hut at 7; it is cleaned by some of the boys; then at 8 we commence to serve cocoa and coffee and make pies and doughnuts, cup cakes and fry eggs and make all kinds of eats until it is all you see. Well, can you think of two women cooking in one day 2500 doughnuts, 8 dozen cup cakes, 50 pies, 800 pancakes and 225 gallons of cocoa, and one other girl serving it? That is a day’s work in my last hut. Then meeting at night, and it lasts two hours.”A lieutenant came into the canteen to buy something and said to one of the girls: “Will you please tell me something? Don’t you ever rest?” That is how both the men and officers appreciated the work of these tireless girls.Men often walked miles to look at an American woman. Once acquainted with the Salvation Army lassies they came to them with many and strange requests. Having picked a quart or so of wild berries and purchased from a farmer a pint of cream they would come to ask a girl to make a strawberry shortcake for them. They would buy a whole dozen of eggs apiece, and having begged a Salvation Army girl to fry them would eat the whole dozen at a sitting. They would ask the girls to write their love letters, or to write assuring some mother or sweetheart that they were behaving themselves.Soldiers going into action have left thousands of dollars in cash and in valuables in the care of Salvation Army officers to be forwarded to persons designated in case they are killed in action or taken prisoner. In such cases it is very seldom that a receipt is given for either money or valuables., so deeply do the soldiers trust the Salvation Army.One of the girl Captains wears a plain silver ring, whose intrinsic value is about thirty cents, but whose moral value is beyond estimate. The ring is not the Captain’s. It belongs to a soldier, who, before the war, had been a hard drinker and had continued his habits after enlisting. He came under the influence of the Salvation Army and swore that he would drink no more. But time after time he fell, each time becoming more desperate and more discouraged. Each time the young lassie-Captain dealt with him. After the last of his failures, while she was encouraging him to make another try, he detached the ring from the cord from which it had dangled around his neck and thrust it at her.“It was my mother’s,” he explained. “If you will wear it for me, I shall always think of it when the temptation comes to drink, and the fact that someone really cares enough about my worthless hide to take all of the trouble you have taken on my behalf, will help me to resist it.”“No one will misunderstand” he cried, seeing that the lassie was about to decline, “not even me. I shall tell no one. And it would help.”“Very well,” agreed the girl, looking steadily at him for a moment, “but the first time that you take a drink, off will come the ring! And you must promise that you will tell me if you do take that drink.”The soldier promised. The lassie still wears the ring. The soldier is still sober. Also he has written to his wife for the first time in five years and she has expressed her delight at the good news.On more than one occasion American aviators have flown from their camps many miles to villages where there were Salvation lassies and have returned with a load of doughnuts. On one occasion a bird-man dropped a note down in front of the hut where two sisters were stationed, circling around at a low elevation until certain that the girls had picked up the note, which stated that he would return the following afternoon for a mess of doughnuts for his comrades. When he returned, the doughnuts were ready for him.The Adjutant of the aerial forces attached to the American Fifth Army around Montfaucon on the edge of the Argonne Forest, before that forest was finally captured at the point of American bayonets, drove almost seventy miles to the Salvation Army Headquarters at Ligny for supplies for his men. He was given an automobile load of chocolate, candies, cakes, cookies, soap, toilet articles, and other comforts, without charge. He said that heknewthat the Salvation Army would have what he wanted.The two lassies who were in Bure had a desperate time of it. Things were most primitive. They had no store, just an old travelling field range, and for a canteen one end of Battery F’s kitchen. They were then attached to the Sixth Field Artillery. This was the regiment that fired the first shot into Germany.The smoke in that kitchen was awful and continuous from the old field range. The girls often made doughnuts out-of-doors, and they got chilblains from standing in the snow. All the company had chilblains, too, and it was a sorry crowd. Then the girls got the mumps. It was so cold here, especially at night, they often had to sleep with their clothes on. There was only one way they could have meetings in that place and that was while the men were lined up for chow near to the canteen. They would start to sing in the gloomy, cold room, the men and girls all with their overcoats on, and fingers so cold that they could hardly play the concertina, for there was no fire in the big room save from the range at one end where they cooked. Then the girls would talk to them while they were eating. Perhaps they did not call these meetings, but they were a mighty happy time to the men, and they liked it.A minister who had taken six months’ leave of absence from his church to do Y.M.C.A. work in France asked one of the boys why he liked the Salvation Army girls and he said: “Because they always take time to cheer us up. It’s true they do knock us mighty hard about our sins, but while it hurts they always show us a way out.” The minister told some one that if he had his work to do over again he would plan it along the lines of the Salvation Army work.You may hear it urged that one reason the boys liked the Salvation Army people so much was because they did not preach, but it is not so. They preached early and often, but the boys liked it because it was done so simply, so consistently and so unselfishly, that they did not recognize it as preaching.In Menaucourt as Christmas was coming on some United States officers raised money to give the little refugee children a Christmas treat. There was to be a tree with presents, and good things to eat, and an entertainment with recitations from the children. The school-teacher was teaching the children their pieces, and there was a general air of delightful excitement everywhere. It was expected that the affair was to be held in the Catholic church at first, but the priest protested that this was unseemly, so they were at a loss what to do. The school-house was not large enough.The Salvation Army Staff-Captain found this out and suggested to the officers that the Salvation Army hut was the very place for such a gathering. So the tree was set up, and the officers went to town and bought presents and decorations. They covered the old hut with boughs and flags and transformed it into a wonderland for the children. The officers were struggling helplessly with the decorations of the tree when the Salvation Army man happened in and they asked him to help.“Why, sure!” he said heartily. “That’s my regular work!” So they eagerly put it into his hands and departed. The Staff-Captain worked so hard at it and grew go interested in it that he forgot to go for his chow at lunch-time, and when supper-time came the hall was so crowded and there was so much still to be done that he could not get away to get his supper. But it was a grand and glorious time. The place was packed. There were two American Colonels, a French Colonel, and several French officers. The soldiers crowded in and they had to send them out again, poor fellows, to make room for the children, but they hung around the doors and windows eager to see it all.The regimental band played, there were recitations in French and a good time generally.The seats were facing the canteen where the supplies were all stocked neatly, boxes of candy and cakes and good things. The Colonel in charge of the regiment looked over to them wistfully and said to the Staff-Captain: “Are you going to sell all those things?” The Staff-Captain, with quick appreciation, said: “No, Colonel, Christmas comes but once a year and there’s a present up there for you.” And the Colonel seemed as pleased as the children when the Staff-Captain handed him a big box of candy all tied up in Christmas ribbons.In the huts, phonographs are never silent as long as there is a single soldier in the place. One night two of the Salvation Army girls, who slept in the back room of a certain hut, had closed up for the night and retired. They were awakened by the sound of the phonograph, and wondered how anyone got into the hut and who it might happen to be. They were a little bit nervous, but went to investigate. They found that a soldier on guard had raised a window, and although this did not allow him room to enter the hut, he was able to reach the table where the phonograph stood. He had turned the talking machine around so that it faced the window, and, placing a record in position, had started it going. He was leaning up against the outer wall of the hut, smoking a cigarette in the moonlight, and enjoying his concert. The girls returned to bed without disturbing the audience.One of the most popular French confections sold in the huts was a variety of biscuits known under the trade name of “Boudoir Biscuits” One day a soldier entered a hut and said: “Say, miss, I want some of them there-them there—Dang me if I can remember them French names!—them there (suddenly a great light dawned)—some of them there bedroom cookies.” And the lassie got what he wanted.The Salvation Army men who worked among the soldiers in advanced positions from which all women are barred are among the heroes of the war. Here during the day they labored in dugouts far below the shell-tortured earth, often going out at night to help bring in the wounded; always in danger from shells and gas; some with the ammunition trains; others driving supply trucks; still others attached to units and accompanying the fighting men wherever they went, even to the active combat of the firing trench and the attack. These are unofficial chaplains. Such a one was “La Petit Major,” as the soldiers called him, because of his smallness of stature.The Little Major commenced his service in the field with the Twenty-sixth Infantry, First Division, at Menaucourt. Soon he was transferred to command the hut at Boviolles. At this place was the battalion of the Twenty-sixth Infantry, commanded by Major Theodore Roosevelt. His brother, Captain Archie Roosevelt, commanded a company in this battalion. He was for the greater part of the time alone in the work at Boviolles.By his consistent life and character and his willingness to serve both men and officers, he won their esteem.When they left the training area for the trenches the Major was requested to go with them. He turned the key in the canteen door and went off with them across France and never came back, establishing himself in the front-line trenches with the men and acting as unofficial chaplain to the battalion.There is an interesting incident in connection with his introduction to Major Roosevelt’s notice.For some reason the Salvation Army had been made to feel that they were not welcome with that division. But the Little Major did not give up like that, and he lingered about feeling that somehow there was yet to be a work for him there.A young private from a far Western state, a fellow who, according to all reports, had never been of any account at home, was convicted of a most horrible murder and condemned to die by hanging because the commanding officer said that shooting was too good for him.He accepted his fate with sullen ugliness. He would not speak to anyone and he was so violent that they had to put him in chains. No one could do anything with him. He had to be watched day and night; and it was awful to see him die this way with his sin unconfessed. Many attempts were made to break through his silence, but all to no effect. Several chaplains visited him, but he would have nothing to do with them.On the morning of his execution, to the surprise of everybody he said that he had heard that there was a Salvation Army man around, and he would like to see him. The authorities sent and searched everywhere for the Little Major, and some thought he must have left, but they found him at last and he came at once to the desperate man.The criminal sat crouched on his hard bench, chained hand and foot. He did not look up. He was a dreadful sight, his brutal face haggard, unshaven, his eyes bloodshot, his whole appearance almost like some low animal. Through the shadowy prison darkness the Little Major crept to those chains, those symbols of the man’s degradation; and still the man did not look up.“You must be in great trouble, brother. Can I help you any?” asked the Little Major with a wonderful Christ-like compassion in his voice.The man lifted his bleared eyes under the shock of unkempt hair, and spoke, startled:“You call me brother! You know what I’m here for and you call me brother! Why?”The Little Major’s voice was steady and sweet as he replied without hesitation:“Because I know a great deal about the suffering of Christ on the Cross, all because He loved you so! Because I know He said He was wounded for your transgressions, He was bruised for your iniquities! Because I know He said, ’Though your sins be as scarlet they shall be as white as snow, though they be red like crimson they shall be as wool!’ So why shouldn’t I call you brother?”“Oh,” said the man with a groan of agony and big tears rolling down his face. “Could I be made a better man?”Then they went down on their knees together beside the hard bench, the man in chains and the man of God, and the Little Major prayed such a wonderful prayer, taking the poor soul right to the foot of the Throne; and in a few minutes the man was confessing his sin to God. Then he suddenly looked up and exclaimed:“It’s true, what you said! Christ has pardoned me! Now I can die like a man!”With that great pardon written across his heart he actually went to his death with a smile upon his face. When the Chaplain asked him if he had anything to say he publicly thanked the military authorities and the Salvation Army for what they had done for him.The Colonel, greatly surprised at the change in the man, sent to find out how it came about and later sent to thank the Little Major. Two days later Major Roosevelt came in person to thank him:“I knew that someone who knew how to deal with men had got hold of him,” he said, “but I almost doubted the evidence of my own eyes when I saw how cheerfully he went to his death, it all seemed too wonderful!”The little Major was with this battalion in all of its engagements, and on several occasions went over the top with the men and devoted himself to first aid to the wounded and to bringing the men back to the dressing station on stretchers. Between the times of active engagements, the Major gave himself to supplying the needs of the men and made daily trips out of the trenches to obtain newspapers, writing material, and to perform errands which they could not do for themselves.One of the lieutenants said of him: “He is worth more than all the chaplains that were ever made in the United States Army. He will walk miles to get the most trivial article for either man or officer. The men know that he loves them or he would not go into the trenches with them, for he does not have to go. You can tell the world for me that he is a real man!”One of the fellows said of him he had seen him take off his shoes and bring away pieces of flesh from the awful blisters got from much tramping.The men soon learned to love their gray haired Salvation Army comrade. When an enemy attack was to be met with cold steel he was the first to follow the company officers “over the top,” to cheer and encourage the onrushing Americans in the anxious semi-calm which follows the lifting of a barrage. A non-combatant, unarmed and fifty-three years of age, he was always in the van of the fierce onslaught with which our men repulsed the enemy, ready to pray with the dying or help bring in the wounded, and always fearless no matter what the conditions. By his unfearing heroism as well as his willingness to share the hardships and dangers of the men, he so won their confidence that it was frequently said that they would not go into battle except the Major was with them. The men would crouch around him with an almost fantastic confidence that where he was no harm could come. Knowing that many earnest Christian people were praying for his safety and having seen how safely he and those with him had come through dangers, they thought his very presence was a protection. Who shall say that God did not stay on the battlefield living and speaking through the Little Major?When the first division was moved from the Montdidier Sector he travelled with the men as far as they went by train. When they detrained and marched he marched with them, carrying his seventy pound pack as any soldier did. He was by the side of Captain Archie Roosevelt when he received a very dangerous wound from an exploding shell, and was in the battle of Cantigny in the Montdidier Sector, where his company lost only two men killed and four wounded, while other companies’ losses were much more severe.Protestant, Catholic and Jew were all his friends. One Catholic boy came crawling along in the waist-deep trench one day to tell the Major about his spiritual worries. After a brief talk the Major asked him if he had his prayer book. The boy said yes. “Then take it out and read it,” said the Major. “God is here!” And there in the narrow trench with lowered heads so that the snipers could not see them, they knelt together and read from the Catholic prayer book.In one American attack the Little Major followed the Lieutenant over the top just as the barrage was lifted. The Lieutenant looking back saw him struggling over the crest of the parapet, laughed and shouted: “Go back, Major, you haven’t even a pistol!” But the Major did not go back. He went with the boys. “I have no hesitancy in laying down my life,” he once said, “if it will help or encourage anyone else to live in a better or cleaner way.”He was always striving for the salvation of his boys, and in his meetings men would push their way to the front and openly kneel before their comrades registering their determination to live in accordance with the teachings of Jesus. One tells of seeing him kneel beside an empty crate with three soldiers praying for their souls.It was because of all these things that the men believed in him and in his God. He used to say to the men in the meetings, “We are not afraid because we have a sense of the presence of God right here with us!”One night the battalion was “in” after a heavy day’s work strengthening the defenses and trying to drain the trenches, and the men were asleep in the dugouts. The Major lay in his little chicken-wire bunk, just drowsing off, while the water seeped and dripped from the earthen roof, and the rats splashed about on the water covered floor.Across from him in a bunk on the other side of the dugout tossed a boy in his damp blankets who had just come to the front. He was only eighteen and it was his first night in the line. It had been a hard day for him. The shells screamed overhead and finally one landed close somewhere and rocked the dugout with its explosion. The old-timers slept undisturbed, but the boy started up with a scream and a groan, his nerves a-quiver, and cried out: “Oh, Daddy! Daddy! Daddy!”The Little Major was out and over to him in a flash, and gathered the boy into his arms, soothing him as a mother might have done, until he was calmed and strengthened; and there amid the roaring of guns, the screaming of shells, the dripping of water and splashing of rats, the youngest of the battalion found Christ.An old soldier came down from the front and a Salvationist asked him if he knew the Little Major.“Well, you just bet I know the Major—sure thing!” And the Major is always on hand with a laugh and his fun-making. In the trenches or in the towns, where the shells are flying, the Little Major is with his boys. No words of mine could express the admiration the boys have for him. The boys love him. He calls them “Buddie.” They salute and are ready to do or die. The last time I saw him he had hiked in from the trenches with the boys. He carried a heavy “war baby” on his back and a tin hat on his head. He was tired and footsore, but there was that laugh, and before he got his pack off he jabbed me in the ribs. “No, sir, we can’t get along without our Major!” So says “Buddie.”A request came from a chaplain to open Salvation Army work near his division. The Brigade Commander was most favorable to the suggestion until he learned that the Salvation Army would have women there and that religious meetings would be conducted. As this was explained the General’s manner changed and he declared he did not know that the work was to be carried on in this way; that he did not favor the women in camps, or any religion, but thought it would make the soldier soft, and the business of the soldier was to kill, to kill in as brutal a manner as possible; and to kill as many of the enemy as possible; and he did not propose to have any work conducted in the camps or any influence on his soldiers that would tend to soften them.He ordered them, therefore, not to extend the work of the Salvation Army within his brigade. It was explained to him that Demange was now within the territory named. He appeared to be put out that the Salvation Army was already established in his district, but said that if they behaved themselves they could go on, but that they must not extend.He reported the matter to the Divisional Headquarters and an investigation of the Salvation Army activities was ordered. A major who was a Jew was appointed to look into the matter. During the next two weeks he talked with the men and officers and attended Salvation Army meetings. The leaders, of course, knew nothing about this, but they could not have planned their meetings better if they had known. It seemed as though God was in it all. At the end of two weeks there came a written communication from the General stating that after a thorough examination of the Salvation Army work he withdrew his objections and the Salvation Army was free to extend operations anywhere within his brigade.The Salvation Army hut was a scene of constant activity.At one place in a single day there was early mass, said by the Catholic chaplain, later preaching by a Protestant chaplain, then a Jewish service, followed by a company meeting where the use of gas masks was explained. All this, besides the regular uses of the hut, which included a library, piano, phonograph, games, magazines, pies, doughnuts and coffee; the pie line being followed by a regular Salvation Army meeting where men raised their hands to be prayed for, and many found Christ as their Saviour.It was in an old French barracks that they located the Salvation Army canteen in Treveray. One corner was boarded off for a bedroom for the girls. There were windows but not of glass, for they would have soon been shattered, and, too, they would have let too much light through. They were canvas well camouflaged with paint so that the enemy shells would not be attracted at night, and, of course, one could not see through them.Inside the improvised bedroom were three little folding army cots, a board table, a barrack bag and some boxes. This was the only place where the girls could be by themselves. On rainy days the furniture was supplemented by a dishpan on one cot, a frying-pan on another, and a lard tin on the third, to catch the drops from the holes in the roof. The opposite corner of the barracks was boarded off for a living-room. In this was a field range and one or two tables and benches.The rest of the hut was laid out with square bare board tables. The canteen was at one end. The piano was at one side and the graphophone at the other. Sometimes in places like this, the hut would be too near the front for it to be thought advisable to have a piano. It was too liable to be shattered by a chance shell and the management thought it unwise to put so much money into what might in a moment be reduced to worthless splinters. Then the boys would come into the hut, look around disappointedly and say: “No piano?”The cheerful woman behind the counter would say sympathetically: “No, boys, no piano. Too many shells around here for a piano.”The boys would droop around silently for a minute or two and then go off. In a little while back they would come with grim satisfaction on their faces bearing a piano.“Don’t ask us where we got it,” they would answer with a twinkle in reply to the pleased inquiry. “This is war! We salvaged it!”Around the room on the tables were plenty of magazines, books and games. Checkers was a favorite game. No card playing, no shooting crap. The canteen contained chocolate, candy, writing materials, postage stamps, towels, shaving materials, talcum powder, soap, shoestrings, handkerchiefs in little sealed packets, buttons, cootie medicine and other like articles. The Salvation Army did not sell nor give away either tobacco or cigarettes. In a few cases where such were sent to them for distribution they were handed over to the doctors for the badly wounded in the hospitals or the very sick men accustomed to their use, who were almost insane with their nerves. They also procured them from the Red Cross for wounded men, sometimes, who were fretting for them, but they never were a part of their supplies and far from the policy of the Salvation Army. Furthermore, the Salvation Army sent no men to France to work for them who smoked or used tobacco in any form, or drank intoxicating liquors. No man can hold a commission in the Salvation Army and use tobacco! It is a remarkable fact that the boys themselves did not want the Salvation Army lassies to deal in cigarettes because they knew it would be going against their principles to do so.Occasionally a stranger would come into the canteen and ask for a package of cigarettes. Then some soldier would remark witheringly: “Say, where do you come from? Don’t you know the Salvation Army don’t handle tobacco?”The men were always deeply grateful to get talcum powder for use after shaving. It seemed somehow to help to keep up the morale of the army, that talcum powder, a little bit of the soothing refinement of the home that seemed so far away.To this hut whenever they were at liberty came Jew and Gentile, Protestant and Catholic, rich and poor. War is a great leveler and had swept away all differences. They were a great brotherhood of Americans now, ready, if necessary, to die for the right.To one of the huts came a request from the chaplain of a regiment which was about to move from its temporary billet in the next village. The men had not been so fortunate as to be stationed at a town where there was a Salvation Army hut and it had been over four months since they had tasted anything like cake or pie. Would the Salvation Army lassies be so good as to let them have a few doughnuts before they moved that night? If so the chaplain would call for them at five o’clock.The lassies worked with all their might and fried thirty-five hundred doughnuts. But something happened to the ambulance that was to take them to the boys, and over an hour was lost in repairs. Back at the camp the boys had given up all hope. They were to march at eight o’clock and nothing had been heard of the doughnuts. Suddenly the truck dashed into view, but the boys eyed it glumly, thinking it was likely empty after all this time. However, the chaplain held up both hands full of golden brown beauties, and with a wild shout of joy the men sprang to “attention” as the ambulance drew up, and more soldiers crowded around. The villagers rushed to their doors to see what could be happening now to those crazy American soldiers.When the chaplain stood up in the car flinging doughnuts to them and shouting that there were thousands, enough for everybody, the enthusiasm of the soldiers knew no bounds. The girls had come along and now they began to hand out the doughnuts, and the crowd cheered and shouted as they filed up to receive them. And when it came time for the girls to return to their own village the soldiers crowded up once more to say good-bye, and give them three cheers and a “tiger.”These same girls a few days before had fed seven hundred weary doughboys on their march to the front with coffee, hot biscuits and jam.In one of the Salvation Army huts one night the usual noisy cheerfulness was in the air, but apart from the rest sat a boy with a letter open on the table before him and a dreamy smile of tender memories upon his face. Nobody noticed that far-away look in his eyes until the lassie in charge of the hut, standing in the doorway surveying her noisy family, searched him out with her discerning eyes, and presently happened down his way and inquired if he had a letter. The boy looked up with a wonderful smile such as she had never seen on his face before, and answered:“Yes, it’s from mother!” Then impulsively, “She’s the nearest thing to God I know!”Mother seemed to be the nearest thought to the heart of the boys over there. They loved the songs best that spoke about mother. One boy bought a can of beans at the canteen, and when remonstrated with by the lassie who sold them, on the ground that he was always complaining of having to eat so many beans, he replied: “Aw, well, this is different. These beans are the kind that mother used to buy.”In the dark hours of the early morning a boy who belonged to the ammunition train sat by one of the little wooden tables in the hut, just after he had returned from his first barrage, and pencilled on its top the following words:Mother o’ mine, what the words mean to meIs more than tongue can say;For one view to-night of your loving face,What a price I would gladly pay!The wonderful face . . .. . . smiling still despite loads of care,Tis crowned by a silvering sheen.Your picture I carry next to my heart;With it no harm can befall.It has helped me to smile through many a care,Since I heeded my country’s call.O mother who nursed me as a babeAnd prayed for me as a boy,Can I not show, now at man’s estate,That you are my pride and joy?Good night! God guard you, way over the ocean blue,Your boy loves you and his dreams are bright,For he’s dreaming of home and you.One of the letters that was written home for “Mother’s Day” in response to a suggestion on the walls of the Salvation Army hut was as follows:Dearest Little Mother of Mine:They started a campaign to write to mother on this day, and, believe me, I didn’t have to be urged very hard. If I wrote you every time I think of you this war would go hang as far as I am concerned, for I think of you always and there are hundreds of things that serve as an eternal reminder.Near our billet is one lone, scrubby little lilac bush that has a dozen blossoms, and it doesn’t take much mental work to connect lilacs with mother. Then, too, the distant whistle of a train ’way down the valley reminds me of how you would listen for the whistle of the Montreal train on Saturday morning and then fix up a big feed for your boy to offset a week of boarding-house grub. Those and many other things remind me many times a day of the one who bid me good-by with a smile and saved her tears ’till she was home alone; who knit helmets, wristlets and sweaters to keep out the cold when she should have been sleeping; who (I’ll bet a hat) didn’t sleep one of the thirteen nights I was on the ocean, and who writes me cheerful, newsy letters when all others fail.And I appreciate all those things too, although I’m not much on showing affection. I haven’t always been as good to you as I ought, but I’m going to make up by being the soldier and the man “me mudder” thinks I am.And when I come back home, all full of prunes and glory, we’re going to have the grandest time you ever dreamed of. We’ll go joy riding, eat strawberry shortcake and pumpkin pie, and have all the lilacs in the U.S.A. Wait till I walk down Main Street with you on my arm all fixed up in a swell dress and a new bonnet and me with a span new uniform, with sergeant-major’s chevrons, about steen service stripes, a Mex. campaign badge and a Croix de Guerre (maybe), then you’ll be glad your boy went to be a soldier.I was on the road all of night before last and on guard last night and I’m a wee bit tired so I’m making this kinder short; but it’s a little reminder that the boy who is 5,000 miles away is thinking, “I love you my ma,” same as I always did.And, by gosh, don’t forget about that pumpkin pie!Good-night, mother of mine; your soldier boy loves you a whole dollar’s worth.
“Tin hat for a halo! Ah! She wears it well!”“Tin hat for a halo!Ah! She wears it well!”
“Tin hat for a halo!Ah! She wears it well!”
The patient officers who were seeing to all these details worked out almost day and nightThe patient officers who were seeing to all these details worked out almost day and night
The patient officers who were seeing to all these details worked out almost day and night
After that the work went on in record time. In less than a week the hut was finished and ready for business. Two self-appointed details of soldiers from the regulars employed all their spare time in a friendly rivalry to see which could accomplish the most work. When it was dedicated the popularity of the hut was well assured. Later, in another location, a hut 125 feet by 27 feet was put up with the assistance of soldiers in six hours and twenty minutes.
More men and women had arrived from America, and the work began to assume business-like proportions. There were huts scattered all through the American training area.
As other huts were established the making of pies and doughnuts became a regular part of the daily routine of the hut. It was found that a canteen where candy and articles needed by the soldiers could be obtained at moderate prices would fill a very pressing need and this was made a part of their regular operation.
The purchase of an adequate quantity of supplies was a great problem. It was necessary to make frequent trips to Paris, to establish connections with supply houses there, and to attend to the shipping of the supplies out to the camps. At first it was impossible to purchase any quantity of supplies from any house. The demand for everything was so great that wholesale dealers were most independent. Three hundred dollars’ worth of supplies was the most that could be purchased from any one house, but in course of time, confidence and friendly relations being established, it became possible to purchase as much as ten thousand dollars’ worth at one time from one dealer.
The first twenty-five thousand dollars, of course, was soon gone, but another fifty thousand dollars arrived from Headquarters in New York, and after a little while another fifty thousand; which hundred thousand dollars was loaned by General Bramwell Booth from the International Treasury. The money was not only borrowed, but the Commander had promised to pay it back in twelve months (which guarantee it is pleasant to state was made good long before the promised time), for the Commander had said: “It is only a question of our getting to work in France, and the American public will see that we have all the money we want.”
So it has proved.
In the meantime another hut was established at Houdelainecourt.
The American boys were drilling from early morning until dark; the weather was wet and cold; the roads were seas of mud and the German planes came over the valleys almost nightly to seek out the position of the American troops and occasionally to drop bombs. It was necessary that all tents should be camouflaged, windows darkened so that lights would not show at night, and every means used to keep the fact of the Americans’ presence from the German observers and spies.
Another party of Salvation Army officers, men and women, arrived from New York on September 23rd, and these were quickly sent out to Demange which for the time being was used as the general base of supplies, but later a house was secured at Ligny-en-Barrios, and this was for many months the Headquarters.
One interesting incident occurred here in connection with this house. One of its greatest attractions had been that it was one of the few houses containing a bathroom, but when the new tenants arrived they found that the anticipated bathtub had been taken out with all its fittings and carefully stowed away in the cellar. It was too precious for the common use of tenants.
All Salvation Army graduates from the training school have a Red Cross diploma, and many are experienced nurses.
A Salvation Army woman Envoy sailed for France with a party of Salvationists about the time that the epidemic of influenza broke out all over the world. Even before the steamer reached the quarantine station in New York harbor a number of cases of Spanish influenza had developed among the several companies of soldiers who were aboard, a number of whom were removed from the ship. So anxious were others of these American fighting men to reach Prance that they hid away until the steamer had left port.
Land was hardly out of sight before more cases of the disease were reported—so many, in fact, that special hospital accommodations had to be immediately arranged. The ship’s captain after consulting with the American military officers, requested the Salvation Army Envoy to take entire responsibility for the hospital, which responsibility, after some hesitation, she accepted. Under her were two nurses, three dieticians (Y.M.C.A. and Red Cross), a medical corps sergeant (U.S.A.), and twenty-four orderlies. She took charge on the fourth day of a thirteen day voyage, working in the sick bay from 12 noon to 8 P.M., and from 12 midnight to 8 A.M. every day. She had with her a mandolin and a guitar with which, in addition to her sixteen hours of duty in the sick bay, she every day spent some time (usually an hour or two) on deck singing and playing for the soldiers who were much depressed by the epidemic. To them she was a very angel of good cheer and comfort.
Many amusing incidents occurred on the voyage.
Stormy weather had added to the discomforts of the trip and most of the passengers suffered from seasickness during the greater part of the voyage.
On board there was also a woman of middle age who could not be persuaded to keep her cabin porthole closed at night. Again and again a ray of light was projected through it upon the surface of the water and the quarter-master, whose duty it was to see that no lights were shown, was at his wit’s end. His difficulty was the greater because he could speak no English, and she no French. Finally, a passenger took pity on the man, and, as the light was really a grave danger to the ship’s safety, promised to speak to the woman, who insisted that she was not afraid of submarines and that it was foolish to think they could see her light.
“Madam,” he said, “the quartermaster here tells me that the sea in this locality is infested with flying fish, who, like moths, fly straight for any light, and he is afraid that if you leave your porthole open they will dive in upon you during the night.”
If he had said that the sea was infested with flying mice, his statement could not have been more effective. Thereafter the porthole stayed closed.
When the first man died on board, the Captain commanding the soldiers and the ship’s Captain requested a Salvation Army Adjutant to conduct the funeral service.
At 4.30 P.M. the ship’s propeller ceased to turn and the steamer came up into the wind. The United States destroyer acting as convoy also came to a halt. The French flag on the steamer and the American flag on the destroyer were at half-mast. Thirty-two men from the dead man’s company lined up on the after-deck. The coffin (a rough pine box), heavily weighted at one end, lay across the rail over the stern. Here a chute had been rigged so that the coffin might not foul the ship’s screws. The flags remained at half-mast for half an hour. The Salvation Army Adjutant read the burial service and prayed. Passengers on the promenade deck looked on. Then a bugler played taps. Every soldier stood facing the stern with hat off and held across the breast. As the coffin slipped down the chute and splashed into the sea a firing squad fired a single rattling volley. The ship came about and, with a shudder of starting engines, continued her voyage, the destroyer doing likewise.
During the passage the Adjutant conducted six such funerals, two more being conducted by a Catholic priest. Four more bodies of men who died as they neared port were landed and buried ashore.
In the hospital the Envoy was undoubtedly the means of saving several lives by her endless toil and by the encouragement of her cheerful face in that depressing place. The sick men called her “Mother” and no mother could have been more tender than she.
“You look so much like mother,” said one boy just before he died. “Won’t you please kiss me?”
Another lad, with a great, convulsive effort, drew her hand to his lips and kissed her just as he passed away.
All of the American officers and two French officers attended the funerals in full dress uniform and ten sailors of the French navy were also present.
The night before the ship docked at Bordeaux a letter signed by the Captain of the ship and the American officers was handed to the Envoy lady. It contained a warm statement of their appreciation of her service. Officers of the Aviation Corps who were aboard the ship arranged a banquet to be held in her honor when they should reach port; but she told them that she was under orders even as they were and that she must report to Paris Headquarters at once. And so the banquet did not take place.
As she left the ship, the soldiers were lined up on the wharf ready to march. When she came down the gangplank and walked past them to the street, they cheered her and shouted: “Good-bye, mother! Good luck!”
As the fame of the doughnuts and pies spread through the camps a new distress loomed ahead for the Salvation Army. Where were the flour and the sugar and the lard and the other ingredients to come from wherewith to concoct these delicacies for the homesick soldiers?
It was of no use to go to the French for white flour, for they did not have it. They had been using war bread, dark mixtures with barley flour and other things, for a long time. Besides, the French had a fixed idea that everyone who came from America was made of money. Wood was thirty-five dollars a load (about a cord) and had to be cut and hauled by the purchaser at that. There was a story current throughout the camps that some Frenchmen were talking together among themselves, and one asked the rest where in the world they were going to get the money to rebuild their towns. “Oh,” replied another; “haven’t we the only battlefields in the world? All the Americans will want to come over after the war to see them and we will charge them enough for the sight to rebuild our villages!”
But even at any price the French did not have the materials to sell. There was only one place where things of that sort could be had and that was from the Americans, and the question was, would the commissary allow them to buy in large enough quantities to be of any use? The Salvation Army officers as they went about their work, were puzzling their brains how to get around the American commissary and get what they wanted.
Meantime, the American Army had slipped quietly into Montiers in the night and been billeted around in barns and houses and outhouses, and anywhere they could be stowed, and were keeping out of sight. For the German High Council had declared: “As soon as the American Army goes into camp we will blow them off the map.” Day after day the Germans lay low and watched. Their airplanes flew over and kept close guard, but they could find no sign of a camp anywhere. No tents were in sight, though they searched the landscape carefully; and day after day, for want of something better to do they bombarded Bar-lé-Duc. Every day some new ravishment of the beautiful city was wrought, new victims buried under ruins, new terror and destruction, until the whole region was in panic and dismay.
Now Bar-lé-Duc, as everyone knows, is the home of the famous Bar-lé-Duc jam that brings such high prices the world over, and there were great quantities stored up and waiting to be sold at a high price to Americans after the war. But when the bombardment continued, and it became evident that the whole would either be destroyed or fall into the hands of the Germans, the owners were frightened. Houses were blown up, burying whole families. Victims were being taken hourly from the ruins, injured or dying.
A Salvation Army Adjutant ran up there one day with his truck and found an awful state of things. The whole place was full of refugees, families bereft of their homes, everybody that could trying to get out of the city. Just by accident he found out that the merchants were willing to sell their jam at a very reasonable price, and so he bought tons and tons of Bar-lé-Duc jam. That would help out a lot and go well on bread, for of course there was no butter. Also it would make wonderful pies and tarts if one only had the flour and other ingredients.
As he drove into Montiers he was still thinking about it, and there on the table in the Salvation Army hut stood as pretty a chocolate cake as one would care to see. A bright idea came to the Adjutant:
“Let me have that cake,” said he to the lassie who had baked it, “and I’ll take it to the General and see what I can do.”
It turned out that the cake was promised, but the lassie said she would bake another and have it ready for him on his return trip; so in a few days when he came back there was the cake.
Ah! That was a wonderful cake!
The lassie had baked it in the covers of lard tins, fourteen inches across and five layers high! There was a layer of cake, thickly spread with rich chocolate frosting, another layer of cake, overlaid with the translucent Bar-lé-Duc jam, a third layer of cake with chocolate, another layer spread with Bar-lé-Duc jam, then cake again, the whole covered smoothly over with thick dark chocolate, top and sides, down to the very base, without a ripple in it. It was a wonder of a cake!
With shining eyes and eager look the Adjutant took that beautiful cake, took also twelve hundred great brown sugary doughnuts, and a dozen fragrant apple pies just out of the oven, stowed them carefully away in his truck, and rustled off to the Officers’ Headquarters. Arrived there he took his cake in hand and asked to see the General. An officer with his eye on the cake said the General was busy just now but he would carry the cake to him. But the Adjutant declined this offer firmly, saying: “The ladies of Montiers-sur-Saulx sent this cake to the General, and I must put it into his hands”
He was finally led to the General’s room and, uncovering the great cake, he said:
“The Salvation Army ladies of Montiers-sur-Saulx have sent this cake to you as a sample of what they will do for the soldiers if we can get flour and sugar and lard.”
The General, greatly pleased, took the cake and sent for a knife, while his officers stood about looking on with much interest. It appeared as if every one were to have a taste of the cake. But when the General had cut a generous slice, held it up, observing its cunning workmanship, its translucent, delectable interior, he turned with a gleam in his eye, looked about the room and said: “Gentlemen, this cake will not be served till the evening’s mess, and I pity the gentlemen who do not eat with the officer’s mess, but they will have to go elsewhere for their cake.”
The Adjutant went out with his pies and doughnuts and distributed them here and there where they would do the most good, getting on the right side of the Top Sergeant, for he had discovered some time ago that even with the General as an ally one must be on the right side of the “old Sarge” if one wanted anything. While he was still talking with the officers he was handed an order from the General that he should be supplied with all that he needed, and when he finally came out of Headquarters he found that seven tons of material were being loaded on his car. After that the Salvation Army never had any trouble in getting all the material they needed.
After the tents in Montiers were all settled and the work fully started, the Staff-Captain and his helpers settled down to a pleasant little schedule of sixteen hours a day work and called it ease; but that was not to be enjoyed for long. At the end of a week the Salvation Army Colonel swooped down upon them again with orders to erect a hut at once as the tents were only a makeshift and winter was coming on. He brought materials and selected a site on a desirable corner.
Now the corner was literally covered with fallen walls of a former building and wreckage from the last year’s raid, and the patient workers looked aghast at the task before them. But the Colonel would listen to no arguments. “Don’t talk about difficulties,” he said, brushing aside a plea for another lot, not quite so desirable perhaps, but much easier to clear. “Don’t talk about difficulties; get busy and have the job over with!”
One big reason why the Salvation Army is able to carry on the great machinery of its vast organization is that its people are trained to obey without murmuring. Cheerfully and laboriously the men set to work. Winter rains were setting in, with a chill and intensity never to be forgotten by an American soldier. But wet to the skin day after day all day long the Salvationists worked against time, trying to finish the hut before the snow should arrive. And at last the hut was finished and ready for occupancy. Such tireless devotion, such patient, cheerful toil for their sake was not to be passed by nor forgotten by the soldiers who watched and helped when they could. Day after day the bonds between them and the Salvation Army grew stronger. Here were men who did not have to, and yet who for the sake of helping them, came and lived under the same conditions that they did, working even longer hours than they, eating the same food, enduring the same privations, and whose only pay was their expenses. At the first the Salvationists took their places in the chow line with the rest, then little by little men near the head of the line would give up their places to them, quietly stepping to the rear of the line themselves. Finally, no matter how long the line was the men with one consent insisted that their unselfish friends should take the very head of the line whenever they came and always be served first.
One day one of the Salvation Army men swathed in a big raincoat was sitting in a Ford by the roadside in front of a Salvation Army hut, waiting for his Colonel, when two soldiers stopped behind him to light their cigarettes. It was just after sundown, and the man in the car must have seemed like any soldier to the two as they chatted.
“Bunch of grafters, these Y.M.C.A. and Salvation Army outfits!” grumbled one as he struck a match. “What good are the ‘Sallies’ in a soldier camp?”
“Well, Buddy,” said the other somewhat excitedly, “there’s a whole lot of us think the Salvation Army is about it in this man’s outfit. For a rookie you sure are picking one good way to make yourself unpopulartout de suite!Better lay off that kind of talk until you kind of find out what’s what. I didn’t have much use for them myself back in the States, but here in France they’re real folks, believe me!”
So the feeling had grown everywhere as the huts multiplied. And the huts proved altogether too small for the religious meetings, so that as long as the weather permitted the services had to be held in the open air. It was no unusual thing to see a thousand men gathered in the twilight around two or three Salvation Army lassies, singing in sweet wonderful volume the old, old hymns. The soldiers were no longer amused spectators, bent on mischief; they were enthusiastic allies of the organization that was theirs. The meeting was theirs.
“We never forced a meeting on them,” said one of the girls. “We just let it grow. Sometimes it would begin with popular songs, but before long the boys would ask for hymns, the old favorites, first one, then another, always remembering to call for ‘Tell Mother I’ll Be There.’”
Almost without exception the boys entered heartily into everything that went on in the organization. The songs were perhaps at first only a reminder of home, but soon they came to have a personal significance to many. The Salvation Army did not hare movies and theatrical singers as did the other organizations, but they did not seem to need them. The men liked the Gospel meetings and came to them better than to anything else. Often they would come to the hut and start the singing themselves, which would presently grow into a meeting of evident intention. The Staff-Captain did not long have opportunity to enjoy the new hut which he had labored so hard to finish at Montiers, for soon orders arrived for him to move on to Houdelainecourt to help put up the hut there, and leave Montiers in charge of a Salvation Army Major. The Salvation Army was with the Eighteenth Infantry at Houdelainecourt.
It was an old tent that sheltered the canteen, and it had the reputation of having gone up and down five times. When first they put it up it blew down. It was located where two roads met and the winds swept down in every direction. Then they put it up and took it down to camouflage it. They got it up again and had to take it down to camouflage it some more. The regular division helped with this, and it was some camouflage when it was done, for the boys had put their initials all over it, and then, had painted Christmas trees everywhere, and on the trees they had put the presents they knew they never would get, and so in all the richness of its record of homesickness the old tent went up again. They kept warm here by means of a candle under an upturned tin pail. The tent blew down again in a big storm soon after that and had to be put up once more, and then there came a big rain and flooded everything in the neighborhood. It blew down and drowned out the Y.M.C.A. and everything else, and only the old tent stood for awhile. But at last the storm was too much for it, too, and it succumbed again.
After that the Salvation Army put up a hut for their work. A number of soldiers assisted. They put up a stove, brought their piano and phonograph, and made the place look cheerful. Then they got the regimental band and had an opening, the first big thing that was recognized by the military authorities. The Salvation Army Staff-Captain in charge of that zone took a long board and set candles on it and put it above the platform like a big chandelier. The Brigade Commander was there, and a Captain came to represent the Colonel. A chaplain spoke. The lassies who took part in the entertainment were the first girls the soldiers had seen for many months.
Long before the hour announced for the service the soldier boys had crowded the hutment to its greatest capacity. Game and reading tables had been moved to the rear and extra benches brought in. The men stood three deep upon the tables and filled every seat and every inch of standing room. When there was no more room on the floor, they climbed to the roof and lined the rafters. There was no air and the Adjutant came to say there was too much light, but none of these things damped the enthusiasm.
With the aid of the regimental chaplain, the Staff-Captain had arranged a suitable program for the occasion, the regimental band furnishing the music.
When the General entered the hutment all of the men stood and uncovered and the band stopped abruptly in the middle of a strain. “That’s the worst thing I ever did—stopping the music,” he exclaimed ruefully. He refused to occupy the chair which had been prepared for him, saying: “No, I want to stand so that I can look at these men.”
The records of the work in that hut would be precious reading for the fathers and mothers of those boys, for the Fighting Eighteenth Infantry are mostly gone, having laid their young lives on the altar with so many others. Here is a bit from one lassie’s letter, giving a picture of one of her days in the hut:
“Well, I must tell you how the days are spent. We open the hut at 7; it is cleaned by some of the boys; then at 8 we commence to serve cocoa and coffee and make pies and doughnuts, cup cakes and fry eggs and make all kinds of eats until it is all you see. Well, can you think of two women cooking in one day 2500 doughnuts, 8 dozen cup cakes, 50 pies, 800 pancakes and 225 gallons of cocoa, and one other girl serving it? That is a day’s work in my last hut. Then meeting at night, and it lasts two hours.”
A lieutenant came into the canteen to buy something and said to one of the girls: “Will you please tell me something? Don’t you ever rest?” That is how both the men and officers appreciated the work of these tireless girls.
Men often walked miles to look at an American woman. Once acquainted with the Salvation Army lassies they came to them with many and strange requests. Having picked a quart or so of wild berries and purchased from a farmer a pint of cream they would come to ask a girl to make a strawberry shortcake for them. They would buy a whole dozen of eggs apiece, and having begged a Salvation Army girl to fry them would eat the whole dozen at a sitting. They would ask the girls to write their love letters, or to write assuring some mother or sweetheart that they were behaving themselves.
Soldiers going into action have left thousands of dollars in cash and in valuables in the care of Salvation Army officers to be forwarded to persons designated in case they are killed in action or taken prisoner. In such cases it is very seldom that a receipt is given for either money or valuables., so deeply do the soldiers trust the Salvation Army.
One of the girl Captains wears a plain silver ring, whose intrinsic value is about thirty cents, but whose moral value is beyond estimate. The ring is not the Captain’s. It belongs to a soldier, who, before the war, had been a hard drinker and had continued his habits after enlisting. He came under the influence of the Salvation Army and swore that he would drink no more. But time after time he fell, each time becoming more desperate and more discouraged. Each time the young lassie-Captain dealt with him. After the last of his failures, while she was encouraging him to make another try, he detached the ring from the cord from which it had dangled around his neck and thrust it at her.
“It was my mother’s,” he explained. “If you will wear it for me, I shall always think of it when the temptation comes to drink, and the fact that someone really cares enough about my worthless hide to take all of the trouble you have taken on my behalf, will help me to resist it.”
“No one will misunderstand” he cried, seeing that the lassie was about to decline, “not even me. I shall tell no one. And it would help.”
“Very well,” agreed the girl, looking steadily at him for a moment, “but the first time that you take a drink, off will come the ring! And you must promise that you will tell me if you do take that drink.”
The soldier promised. The lassie still wears the ring. The soldier is still sober. Also he has written to his wife for the first time in five years and she has expressed her delight at the good news.
On more than one occasion American aviators have flown from their camps many miles to villages where there were Salvation lassies and have returned with a load of doughnuts. On one occasion a bird-man dropped a note down in front of the hut where two sisters were stationed, circling around at a low elevation until certain that the girls had picked up the note, which stated that he would return the following afternoon for a mess of doughnuts for his comrades. When he returned, the doughnuts were ready for him.
The Adjutant of the aerial forces attached to the American Fifth Army around Montfaucon on the edge of the Argonne Forest, before that forest was finally captured at the point of American bayonets, drove almost seventy miles to the Salvation Army Headquarters at Ligny for supplies for his men. He was given an automobile load of chocolate, candies, cakes, cookies, soap, toilet articles, and other comforts, without charge. He said that heknewthat the Salvation Army would have what he wanted.
The two lassies who were in Bure had a desperate time of it. Things were most primitive. They had no store, just an old travelling field range, and for a canteen one end of Battery F’s kitchen. They were then attached to the Sixth Field Artillery. This was the regiment that fired the first shot into Germany.
The smoke in that kitchen was awful and continuous from the old field range. The girls often made doughnuts out-of-doors, and they got chilblains from standing in the snow. All the company had chilblains, too, and it was a sorry crowd. Then the girls got the mumps. It was so cold here, especially at night, they often had to sleep with their clothes on. There was only one way they could have meetings in that place and that was while the men were lined up for chow near to the canteen. They would start to sing in the gloomy, cold room, the men and girls all with their overcoats on, and fingers so cold that they could hardly play the concertina, for there was no fire in the big room save from the range at one end where they cooked. Then the girls would talk to them while they were eating. Perhaps they did not call these meetings, but they were a mighty happy time to the men, and they liked it.
A minister who had taken six months’ leave of absence from his church to do Y.M.C.A. work in France asked one of the boys why he liked the Salvation Army girls and he said: “Because they always take time to cheer us up. It’s true they do knock us mighty hard about our sins, but while it hurts they always show us a way out.” The minister told some one that if he had his work to do over again he would plan it along the lines of the Salvation Army work.
You may hear it urged that one reason the boys liked the Salvation Army people so much was because they did not preach, but it is not so. They preached early and often, but the boys liked it because it was done so simply, so consistently and so unselfishly, that they did not recognize it as preaching.
In Menaucourt as Christmas was coming on some United States officers raised money to give the little refugee children a Christmas treat. There was to be a tree with presents, and good things to eat, and an entertainment with recitations from the children. The school-teacher was teaching the children their pieces, and there was a general air of delightful excitement everywhere. It was expected that the affair was to be held in the Catholic church at first, but the priest protested that this was unseemly, so they were at a loss what to do. The school-house was not large enough.
The Salvation Army Staff-Captain found this out and suggested to the officers that the Salvation Army hut was the very place for such a gathering. So the tree was set up, and the officers went to town and bought presents and decorations. They covered the old hut with boughs and flags and transformed it into a wonderland for the children. The officers were struggling helplessly with the decorations of the tree when the Salvation Army man happened in and they asked him to help.
“Why, sure!” he said heartily. “That’s my regular work!” So they eagerly put it into his hands and departed. The Staff-Captain worked so hard at it and grew go interested in it that he forgot to go for his chow at lunch-time, and when supper-time came the hall was so crowded and there was so much still to be done that he could not get away to get his supper. But it was a grand and glorious time. The place was packed. There were two American Colonels, a French Colonel, and several French officers. The soldiers crowded in and they had to send them out again, poor fellows, to make room for the children, but they hung around the doors and windows eager to see it all.
The regimental band played, there were recitations in French and a good time generally.
The seats were facing the canteen where the supplies were all stocked neatly, boxes of candy and cakes and good things. The Colonel in charge of the regiment looked over to them wistfully and said to the Staff-Captain: “Are you going to sell all those things?” The Staff-Captain, with quick appreciation, said: “No, Colonel, Christmas comes but once a year and there’s a present up there for you.” And the Colonel seemed as pleased as the children when the Staff-Captain handed him a big box of candy all tied up in Christmas ribbons.
In the huts, phonographs are never silent as long as there is a single soldier in the place. One night two of the Salvation Army girls, who slept in the back room of a certain hut, had closed up for the night and retired. They were awakened by the sound of the phonograph, and wondered how anyone got into the hut and who it might happen to be. They were a little bit nervous, but went to investigate. They found that a soldier on guard had raised a window, and although this did not allow him room to enter the hut, he was able to reach the table where the phonograph stood. He had turned the talking machine around so that it faced the window, and, placing a record in position, had started it going. He was leaning up against the outer wall of the hut, smoking a cigarette in the moonlight, and enjoying his concert. The girls returned to bed without disturbing the audience.
One of the most popular French confections sold in the huts was a variety of biscuits known under the trade name of “Boudoir Biscuits” One day a soldier entered a hut and said: “Say, miss, I want some of them there-them there—Dang me if I can remember them French names!—them there (suddenly a great light dawned)—some of them there bedroom cookies.” And the lassie got what he wanted.
The Salvation Army men who worked among the soldiers in advanced positions from which all women are barred are among the heroes of the war. Here during the day they labored in dugouts far below the shell-tortured earth, often going out at night to help bring in the wounded; always in danger from shells and gas; some with the ammunition trains; others driving supply trucks; still others attached to units and accompanying the fighting men wherever they went, even to the active combat of the firing trench and the attack. These are unofficial chaplains. Such a one was “La Petit Major,” as the soldiers called him, because of his smallness of stature.
The Little Major commenced his service in the field with the Twenty-sixth Infantry, First Division, at Menaucourt. Soon he was transferred to command the hut at Boviolles. At this place was the battalion of the Twenty-sixth Infantry, commanded by Major Theodore Roosevelt. His brother, Captain Archie Roosevelt, commanded a company in this battalion. He was for the greater part of the time alone in the work at Boviolles.
By his consistent life and character and his willingness to serve both men and officers, he won their esteem.
When they left the training area for the trenches the Major was requested to go with them. He turned the key in the canteen door and went off with them across France and never came back, establishing himself in the front-line trenches with the men and acting as unofficial chaplain to the battalion.
There is an interesting incident in connection with his introduction to Major Roosevelt’s notice.
For some reason the Salvation Army had been made to feel that they were not welcome with that division. But the Little Major did not give up like that, and he lingered about feeling that somehow there was yet to be a work for him there.
A young private from a far Western state, a fellow who, according to all reports, had never been of any account at home, was convicted of a most horrible murder and condemned to die by hanging because the commanding officer said that shooting was too good for him.
He accepted his fate with sullen ugliness. He would not speak to anyone and he was so violent that they had to put him in chains. No one could do anything with him. He had to be watched day and night; and it was awful to see him die this way with his sin unconfessed. Many attempts were made to break through his silence, but all to no effect. Several chaplains visited him, but he would have nothing to do with them.
On the morning of his execution, to the surprise of everybody he said that he had heard that there was a Salvation Army man around, and he would like to see him. The authorities sent and searched everywhere for the Little Major, and some thought he must have left, but they found him at last and he came at once to the desperate man.
The criminal sat crouched on his hard bench, chained hand and foot. He did not look up. He was a dreadful sight, his brutal face haggard, unshaven, his eyes bloodshot, his whole appearance almost like some low animal. Through the shadowy prison darkness the Little Major crept to those chains, those symbols of the man’s degradation; and still the man did not look up.
“You must be in great trouble, brother. Can I help you any?” asked the Little Major with a wonderful Christ-like compassion in his voice.
The man lifted his bleared eyes under the shock of unkempt hair, and spoke, startled:
“You call me brother! You know what I’m here for and you call me brother! Why?”
The Little Major’s voice was steady and sweet as he replied without hesitation:
“Because I know a great deal about the suffering of Christ on the Cross, all because He loved you so! Because I know He said He was wounded for your transgressions, He was bruised for your iniquities! Because I know He said, ’Though your sins be as scarlet they shall be as white as snow, though they be red like crimson they shall be as wool!’ So why shouldn’t I call you brother?”
“Oh,” said the man with a groan of agony and big tears rolling down his face. “Could I be made a better man?”
Then they went down on their knees together beside the hard bench, the man in chains and the man of God, and the Little Major prayed such a wonderful prayer, taking the poor soul right to the foot of the Throne; and in a few minutes the man was confessing his sin to God. Then he suddenly looked up and exclaimed:
“It’s true, what you said! Christ has pardoned me! Now I can die like a man!”
With that great pardon written across his heart he actually went to his death with a smile upon his face. When the Chaplain asked him if he had anything to say he publicly thanked the military authorities and the Salvation Army for what they had done for him.
The Colonel, greatly surprised at the change in the man, sent to find out how it came about and later sent to thank the Little Major. Two days later Major Roosevelt came in person to thank him:
“I knew that someone who knew how to deal with men had got hold of him,” he said, “but I almost doubted the evidence of my own eyes when I saw how cheerfully he went to his death, it all seemed too wonderful!”
The little Major was with this battalion in all of its engagements, and on several occasions went over the top with the men and devoted himself to first aid to the wounded and to bringing the men back to the dressing station on stretchers. Between the times of active engagements, the Major gave himself to supplying the needs of the men and made daily trips out of the trenches to obtain newspapers, writing material, and to perform errands which they could not do for themselves.
One of the lieutenants said of him: “He is worth more than all the chaplains that were ever made in the United States Army. He will walk miles to get the most trivial article for either man or officer. The men know that he loves them or he would not go into the trenches with them, for he does not have to go. You can tell the world for me that he is a real man!”
One of the fellows said of him he had seen him take off his shoes and bring away pieces of flesh from the awful blisters got from much tramping.
The men soon learned to love their gray haired Salvation Army comrade. When an enemy attack was to be met with cold steel he was the first to follow the company officers “over the top,” to cheer and encourage the onrushing Americans in the anxious semi-calm which follows the lifting of a barrage. A non-combatant, unarmed and fifty-three years of age, he was always in the van of the fierce onslaught with which our men repulsed the enemy, ready to pray with the dying or help bring in the wounded, and always fearless no matter what the conditions. By his unfearing heroism as well as his willingness to share the hardships and dangers of the men, he so won their confidence that it was frequently said that they would not go into battle except the Major was with them. The men would crouch around him with an almost fantastic confidence that where he was no harm could come. Knowing that many earnest Christian people were praying for his safety and having seen how safely he and those with him had come through dangers, they thought his very presence was a protection. Who shall say that God did not stay on the battlefield living and speaking through the Little Major?
When the first division was moved from the Montdidier Sector he travelled with the men as far as they went by train. When they detrained and marched he marched with them, carrying his seventy pound pack as any soldier did. He was by the side of Captain Archie Roosevelt when he received a very dangerous wound from an exploding shell, and was in the battle of Cantigny in the Montdidier Sector, where his company lost only two men killed and four wounded, while other companies’ losses were much more severe.
Protestant, Catholic and Jew were all his friends. One Catholic boy came crawling along in the waist-deep trench one day to tell the Major about his spiritual worries. After a brief talk the Major asked him if he had his prayer book. The boy said yes. “Then take it out and read it,” said the Major. “God is here!” And there in the narrow trench with lowered heads so that the snipers could not see them, they knelt together and read from the Catholic prayer book.
In one American attack the Little Major followed the Lieutenant over the top just as the barrage was lifted. The Lieutenant looking back saw him struggling over the crest of the parapet, laughed and shouted: “Go back, Major, you haven’t even a pistol!” But the Major did not go back. He went with the boys. “I have no hesitancy in laying down my life,” he once said, “if it will help or encourage anyone else to live in a better or cleaner way.”
He was always striving for the salvation of his boys, and in his meetings men would push their way to the front and openly kneel before their comrades registering their determination to live in accordance with the teachings of Jesus. One tells of seeing him kneel beside an empty crate with three soldiers praying for their souls.
It was because of all these things that the men believed in him and in his God. He used to say to the men in the meetings, “We are not afraid because we have a sense of the presence of God right here with us!”
One night the battalion was “in” after a heavy day’s work strengthening the defenses and trying to drain the trenches, and the men were asleep in the dugouts. The Major lay in his little chicken-wire bunk, just drowsing off, while the water seeped and dripped from the earthen roof, and the rats splashed about on the water covered floor.
Across from him in a bunk on the other side of the dugout tossed a boy in his damp blankets who had just come to the front. He was only eighteen and it was his first night in the line. It had been a hard day for him. The shells screamed overhead and finally one landed close somewhere and rocked the dugout with its explosion. The old-timers slept undisturbed, but the boy started up with a scream and a groan, his nerves a-quiver, and cried out: “Oh, Daddy! Daddy! Daddy!”
The Little Major was out and over to him in a flash, and gathered the boy into his arms, soothing him as a mother might have done, until he was calmed and strengthened; and there amid the roaring of guns, the screaming of shells, the dripping of water and splashing of rats, the youngest of the battalion found Christ.
An old soldier came down from the front and a Salvationist asked him if he knew the Little Major.
“Well, you just bet I know the Major—sure thing!” And the Major is always on hand with a laugh and his fun-making. In the trenches or in the towns, where the shells are flying, the Little Major is with his boys. No words of mine could express the admiration the boys have for him. The boys love him. He calls them “Buddie.” They salute and are ready to do or die. The last time I saw him he had hiked in from the trenches with the boys. He carried a heavy “war baby” on his back and a tin hat on his head. He was tired and footsore, but there was that laugh, and before he got his pack off he jabbed me in the ribs. “No, sir, we can’t get along without our Major!” So says “Buddie.”
A request came from a chaplain to open Salvation Army work near his division. The Brigade Commander was most favorable to the suggestion until he learned that the Salvation Army would have women there and that religious meetings would be conducted. As this was explained the General’s manner changed and he declared he did not know that the work was to be carried on in this way; that he did not favor the women in camps, or any religion, but thought it would make the soldier soft, and the business of the soldier was to kill, to kill in as brutal a manner as possible; and to kill as many of the enemy as possible; and he did not propose to have any work conducted in the camps or any influence on his soldiers that would tend to soften them.
He ordered them, therefore, not to extend the work of the Salvation Army within his brigade. It was explained to him that Demange was now within the territory named. He appeared to be put out that the Salvation Army was already established in his district, but said that if they behaved themselves they could go on, but that they must not extend.
He reported the matter to the Divisional Headquarters and an investigation of the Salvation Army activities was ordered. A major who was a Jew was appointed to look into the matter. During the next two weeks he talked with the men and officers and attended Salvation Army meetings. The leaders, of course, knew nothing about this, but they could not have planned their meetings better if they had known. It seemed as though God was in it all. At the end of two weeks there came a written communication from the General stating that after a thorough examination of the Salvation Army work he withdrew his objections and the Salvation Army was free to extend operations anywhere within his brigade.
The Salvation Army hut was a scene of constant activity.
At one place in a single day there was early mass, said by the Catholic chaplain, later preaching by a Protestant chaplain, then a Jewish service, followed by a company meeting where the use of gas masks was explained. All this, besides the regular uses of the hut, which included a library, piano, phonograph, games, magazines, pies, doughnuts and coffee; the pie line being followed by a regular Salvation Army meeting where men raised their hands to be prayed for, and many found Christ as their Saviour.
It was in an old French barracks that they located the Salvation Army canteen in Treveray. One corner was boarded off for a bedroom for the girls. There were windows but not of glass, for they would have soon been shattered, and, too, they would have let too much light through. They were canvas well camouflaged with paint so that the enemy shells would not be attracted at night, and, of course, one could not see through them.
Inside the improvised bedroom were three little folding army cots, a board table, a barrack bag and some boxes. This was the only place where the girls could be by themselves. On rainy days the furniture was supplemented by a dishpan on one cot, a frying-pan on another, and a lard tin on the third, to catch the drops from the holes in the roof. The opposite corner of the barracks was boarded off for a living-room. In this was a field range and one or two tables and benches.
The rest of the hut was laid out with square bare board tables. The canteen was at one end. The piano was at one side and the graphophone at the other. Sometimes in places like this, the hut would be too near the front for it to be thought advisable to have a piano. It was too liable to be shattered by a chance shell and the management thought it unwise to put so much money into what might in a moment be reduced to worthless splinters. Then the boys would come into the hut, look around disappointedly and say: “No piano?”
The cheerful woman behind the counter would say sympathetically: “No, boys, no piano. Too many shells around here for a piano.”
The boys would droop around silently for a minute or two and then go off. In a little while back they would come with grim satisfaction on their faces bearing a piano.
“Don’t ask us where we got it,” they would answer with a twinkle in reply to the pleased inquiry. “This is war! We salvaged it!”
Around the room on the tables were plenty of magazines, books and games. Checkers was a favorite game. No card playing, no shooting crap. The canteen contained chocolate, candy, writing materials, postage stamps, towels, shaving materials, talcum powder, soap, shoestrings, handkerchiefs in little sealed packets, buttons, cootie medicine and other like articles. The Salvation Army did not sell nor give away either tobacco or cigarettes. In a few cases where such were sent to them for distribution they were handed over to the doctors for the badly wounded in the hospitals or the very sick men accustomed to their use, who were almost insane with their nerves. They also procured them from the Red Cross for wounded men, sometimes, who were fretting for them, but they never were a part of their supplies and far from the policy of the Salvation Army. Furthermore, the Salvation Army sent no men to France to work for them who smoked or used tobacco in any form, or drank intoxicating liquors. No man can hold a commission in the Salvation Army and use tobacco! It is a remarkable fact that the boys themselves did not want the Salvation Army lassies to deal in cigarettes because they knew it would be going against their principles to do so.
Occasionally a stranger would come into the canteen and ask for a package of cigarettes. Then some soldier would remark witheringly: “Say, where do you come from? Don’t you know the Salvation Army don’t handle tobacco?”
The men were always deeply grateful to get talcum powder for use after shaving. It seemed somehow to help to keep up the morale of the army, that talcum powder, a little bit of the soothing refinement of the home that seemed so far away.
To this hut whenever they were at liberty came Jew and Gentile, Protestant and Catholic, rich and poor. War is a great leveler and had swept away all differences. They were a great brotherhood of Americans now, ready, if necessary, to die for the right.
To one of the huts came a request from the chaplain of a regiment which was about to move from its temporary billet in the next village. The men had not been so fortunate as to be stationed at a town where there was a Salvation Army hut and it had been over four months since they had tasted anything like cake or pie. Would the Salvation Army lassies be so good as to let them have a few doughnuts before they moved that night? If so the chaplain would call for them at five o’clock.
The lassies worked with all their might and fried thirty-five hundred doughnuts. But something happened to the ambulance that was to take them to the boys, and over an hour was lost in repairs. Back at the camp the boys had given up all hope. They were to march at eight o’clock and nothing had been heard of the doughnuts. Suddenly the truck dashed into view, but the boys eyed it glumly, thinking it was likely empty after all this time. However, the chaplain held up both hands full of golden brown beauties, and with a wild shout of joy the men sprang to “attention” as the ambulance drew up, and more soldiers crowded around. The villagers rushed to their doors to see what could be happening now to those crazy American soldiers.
When the chaplain stood up in the car flinging doughnuts to them and shouting that there were thousands, enough for everybody, the enthusiasm of the soldiers knew no bounds. The girls had come along and now they began to hand out the doughnuts, and the crowd cheered and shouted as they filed up to receive them. And when it came time for the girls to return to their own village the soldiers crowded up once more to say good-bye, and give them three cheers and a “tiger.”
These same girls a few days before had fed seven hundred weary doughboys on their march to the front with coffee, hot biscuits and jam.
In one of the Salvation Army huts one night the usual noisy cheerfulness was in the air, but apart from the rest sat a boy with a letter open on the table before him and a dreamy smile of tender memories upon his face. Nobody noticed that far-away look in his eyes until the lassie in charge of the hut, standing in the doorway surveying her noisy family, searched him out with her discerning eyes, and presently happened down his way and inquired if he had a letter. The boy looked up with a wonderful smile such as she had never seen on his face before, and answered:
“Yes, it’s from mother!” Then impulsively, “She’s the nearest thing to God I know!”
Mother seemed to be the nearest thought to the heart of the boys over there. They loved the songs best that spoke about mother. One boy bought a can of beans at the canteen, and when remonstrated with by the lassie who sold them, on the ground that he was always complaining of having to eat so many beans, he replied: “Aw, well, this is different. These beans are the kind that mother used to buy.”
In the dark hours of the early morning a boy who belonged to the ammunition train sat by one of the little wooden tables in the hut, just after he had returned from his first barrage, and pencilled on its top the following words:
Mother o’ mine, what the words mean to meIs more than tongue can say;For one view to-night of your loving face,What a price I would gladly pay!The wonderful face . . .. . . smiling still despite loads of care,Tis crowned by a silvering sheen.Your picture I carry next to my heart;With it no harm can befall.It has helped me to smile through many a care,Since I heeded my country’s call.O mother who nursed me as a babeAnd prayed for me as a boy,Can I not show, now at man’s estate,That you are my pride and joy?Good night! God guard you, way over the ocean blue,Your boy loves you and his dreams are bright,For he’s dreaming of home and you.
One of the letters that was written home for “Mother’s Day” in response to a suggestion on the walls of the Salvation Army hut was as follows:
Dearest Little Mother of Mine:
They started a campaign to write to mother on this day, and, believe me, I didn’t have to be urged very hard. If I wrote you every time I think of you this war would go hang as far as I am concerned, for I think of you always and there are hundreds of things that serve as an eternal reminder.
Near our billet is one lone, scrubby little lilac bush that has a dozen blossoms, and it doesn’t take much mental work to connect lilacs with mother. Then, too, the distant whistle of a train ’way down the valley reminds me of how you would listen for the whistle of the Montreal train on Saturday morning and then fix up a big feed for your boy to offset a week of boarding-house grub. Those and many other things remind me many times a day of the one who bid me good-by with a smile and saved her tears ’till she was home alone; who knit helmets, wristlets and sweaters to keep out the cold when she should have been sleeping; who (I’ll bet a hat) didn’t sleep one of the thirteen nights I was on the ocean, and who writes me cheerful, newsy letters when all others fail.
And I appreciate all those things too, although I’m not much on showing affection. I haven’t always been as good to you as I ought, but I’m going to make up by being the soldier and the man “me mudder” thinks I am.
And when I come back home, all full of prunes and glory, we’re going to have the grandest time you ever dreamed of. We’ll go joy riding, eat strawberry shortcake and pumpkin pie, and have all the lilacs in the U.S.A. Wait till I walk down Main Street with you on my arm all fixed up in a swell dress and a new bonnet and me with a span new uniform, with sergeant-major’s chevrons, about steen service stripes, a Mex. campaign badge and a Croix de Guerre (maybe), then you’ll be glad your boy went to be a soldier.
I was on the road all of night before last and on guard last night and I’m a wee bit tired so I’m making this kinder short; but it’s a little reminder that the boy who is 5,000 miles away is thinking, “I love you my ma,” same as I always did.
And, by gosh, don’t forget about that pumpkin pie!
Good-night, mother of mine; your soldier boy loves you a whole dollar’s worth.