Chapter IV: Part 4

“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 me Is 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 babe And 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.

The Salvation Army hut was home to the boys over there. They came to it in sorrow or joy. They came to ask to scrape out the bowl where the cake batter had been stirred because mother used to let them do it; they came to get their coats mended and have their buttons sewed on. Sometimes it seemed to the long-suffering, smiling woman who sewed them on, as if they just ripped them off so she could sew them on again; if so, she did not mind. They came to mourn when they received no word from home; and when the mail came in and they were fortunate they came first to the hut waving their letter to tell of their good luck before they even opened it to read it. It is remarkable how they pinned their whole life on what these consecrated American women said to them over there. It is wonderful how they opened their hearts to them on religious subjects, and how they flocked to the religious meetings, seeming to really be hungry for them.

Word about these wonderful meetings that the soldiers were attending in such numbers got to the ears of another commanding officer, and one day there came a summons for the Salvation Army Major in charge at Gondrecourt to appear before him. An officer on a motor cycle with a side car brought the summons, and the Major felt that it practically amounted to an arrest. There was nothing to do but obey, so he climbed into the side car and was whirled away to Headquarters.

The Major-General received him at once and in brusque tones informed him most emphatically:

“We want you to get out! We don’t want you nor your meetings! We are here to teach men to fight and your religion says you must not kill. Look out there!” pointing through the doorway, “we have set up dummies and teach our men to run their bayonets through them. You teach them the opposite of that. You will unfit my men for warfare!”

The Salvationist looked through the door at the line of straw dummies hanging in a row, and then he looked back and faced the Major-General for a full minute before he said anything.

Tall and strong, with soldierly bearing, with ruddy health in the glow of his cheeks, and fire in his keen blue eyes, the Salvationist looked steadily at the Major-General and his indignation grew. Then the good old Scotch burr on his tongue rolled broadly out in protest:

“On my way up here in your automobile”—every word was slow and calm and deliberate, tinged with a fine righteous sarcasm—“I saw three men entering your Guard House who were not capable of directing their own steps. They had been off on leave down to the town and had come home drunk. They were going into the Guard House to sleep it off. When they come out to-morrow or the next day with their limbs trembling, and their eyes bloodshot and their heads aching, do you think they will be fit for warfare?

“You have men down there in your Guard House who are loathsome with vile diseases, who are shaken with self-indulgence, and weakened with all kinds of excesses. Are they fit for warfare?

“Now, look at me!”

He drew himself up in all the strength of his six feet, broad shoulders, expanded chest, complexion like a baby, muscles like iron, and compelled the gaze of the officer.

“Can you find any man—” The Salvationist said “mon” and the soft Scotch sound of it sent a thrill down the Major-General’s back in spite of his opposition. “Can you find any mon at fifty-five years who can follow these in your regiment, who can beat me at any game whatever?”

The officer looked, and listened, and was ashamed.

The Major rose in his righteous wrath and spoke mighty truths clothed in simple words, and as he talked the tears unbidden rolled down the Major-General’s face and dropped upon his table.

“And do you know,” said the Salvationist, afterward telling a friend in earnest confidence, “do you _know_, before I left we _had prayer together!_ And he became one of the best friends we have!”

Before he left, also, the Major-General signed the authority which gave him charge of the Guard Houses, so that he might talk to the men or hold meetings with them whenever he liked. This was the means of opening up a new avenue of work among the men.

The Scotch Major had a string of hospitals that he visited in addition to his other regular duties. He knew that the men who are gassed lose all their possessions when their clothes are ripped off from them. So this Salvationist made a delightful all-the-year-round Santa Claus out of himself: dressing up in old clothes, because of the mud and dirt through which he must pass, he would sling a pack on his back that would put to shame the one Old Santa used to carry. Shaving things and soap and toothbrushes, handkerchiefs and chocolate and writing materials. How they welcomed him wherever he came! Sick men, Protestants, Jews, Catholics. He talked and prayed with them all, and no one turned away from his kindly messages.

Six miles from Neufchauteul is Bazoilles, a mighty city of hospital tents and buildings, acres and acres of them, lying in the valley. Whenever this man heard the rumbling of guns and knew that something was doing, he took his pack and started down to go the rounds, for there were always men there needing him.

Then he would hold meetings in the wards, blessed meetings that the wounded men enjoyed and begged for. They all joined in the singing, even those who could not sing very well. And once it was a blind boy who asked them to sing “Lead Kindly Light Amid the Encircling Gloom, Lead Thou Me On.”

One Sunday afternoon two Salvation Army lassies had come with their Major to hold their usual service in the hospital, but there were so many wounded coming in and the place was so busy that it seemed as if perhaps they ought to give up the service. The nurses were heavy-eyed with fatigue and the doctors were almost worked to death. But when this was suggested with one accord both doctors and nurses were against it. “The boys would miss it so,” they said, “and we would miss it, too. It rests us to hear you sing.”

After the Bible reading and prayer a lassie sang: “There Is Sunshine in My Heart To-day,” and then came a talk that spoke of a spiritual sunshine that would last all the year. The song and talk drifted out to another little ward where a doctor sat beside a boy, and both listened. As the physician rose to go the wounded boy asked if he might write a letter.

The next day the doctor happened to meet the lassie who sang and told her he had a letter that had been handed to him for censorship that he thought she would like to see. He said the writer had asked him to show it to her. This was the letter:

Dear Mother: You will be surprised to hear that I am in the hospital, but I am getting well quickly and am having a good time. But best of all, some Salvation Army people came and sang and talked about sunshine, and while they were talking the sunshine came in through my window—not into my room alone, but into my heart and life as well, where it is going to stay. I know how happy this will make you.

The hospital work was a large feature of the service performed by the Salvation Army. In every area this testimony comes from both doctors, nurses and wounded men. Yet it was nothing less than a pleasure for the workers to serve those patient, cheerful sufferers.

A lassie entered a ward one day and found the men with combs and tissue paper performing an orchestra selection. They apologized for the noise, declaring that they were all crazy about music and that was the only way they could get it.

“How would you like a phonograph?” she asked.

“Oh, Boy! If we only had one! I’ll tell the world we’d like it,” one declared wistfully.

The phonograph was soon forthcoming and brought much pleasure.

A lassie offered to write a letter for a boy whose foot had just been amputated and whose right arm was bound in splints. He accepted her offer eagerly, but said:

“But when you write promise me you won’t tell mother about my foot. She worries! She wouldn’t understand how well off I really am. Maybe you had better let me try to write a bit myself for you to enclose. I guess I could manage that.” So, with his left hand, he wrote the following:

Dearest Mother:—I am laid up in the hospital here with a very badly sprained ankle and some bruises, and will be here two or three weeks. Do not worry, I am getting along fine. Your loving Son.

Two automobiles, an open car and a limousine, were maintained in Paris for the sole purpose of providing outings for wounded men who were able to take a little drive. It was said by the doctors and nurses that nothing helped a rapid recovery like these little excursions out into an every-day beautiful world.

A boy on one of the hospital cots called to a passing lassie:

“I am going to die, I know I am, and I’m a Catholic. Can you pray for me, Salvation Army girl, like you prayed for that fellow over there?”

The young lassie assured him that he was not going to die yet, but she knelt by his cot and prayed for him, and soothed him into a sleep from which he awoke refreshed to find that she was right, he was not going to die yet, but live, perhaps, to be a different lad.

A sixteen-year-old boy who at the first declaration of war had run away from home and enlisted was wounded so badly that he was ordered to go back to the evacuation hospital. He was determined that he could yet fight, and was almost crying because he had to leave his comrades, but on the way back he discovered the entrance to a German dugout and thought he heard someone down in there moving.

“Come out,” he shouted, “or I’ll throw in a hand grenade!”

A few minutes later he reached the evacuation hospital with thirty prisoners of war, his useless arm hanging by his side. That is the kind of stuff our American boys are made of, and those are the boys who are praising the Salvation Army!

It was sunset at the Gondrecourt Officers’ Training Camp. On the big parade ground in back of the Salvation Army huts three companies were lined up for “Colors.” The sun was sinking into a black mass of storm clouds, painting the Western sky a dull blood red with here and there a thread of gleaming gold etched on the rim of a cloud. Three French children trudged sturdily, wearily, back from the distant fields where they had toiled all day. The elder girl pushed a wheelbarrow heavily laden with plunder from the fields. All bore farming implements, the size of which dwarfed them by comparison. They had almost reached the end of the drill ground when the military band blared out the opening notes of the “Star Spangled Banner,” and the flag slipped slowly from its high staff. Instantly the farming tools were dropped and the three childish figures swung swiftly to “attention,” hands raised rigidly to the stiff French salute. So they stood until the last note had died. Then on they tramped, their backs all bent and weary, over the hill and down into the grey, evening-shadowed village of the valley.

In a shell-marred little village at the American front, the Salvation Army once brought the United States Army to a standstill. Several hundred artillerymen had gathered for the regular Wednesday night religious service, held in the hutment, conducted by that organization at this point, and, in closing, sang vigorously three verses of “The Star Spangled Banner.” A Major who was passing came immediately to attention, his example being followed by all of the men and officers within hearing, and also by a scattering of French soldiers who were just emerging from the Catholic church. By the time the second verse was well under way three companies of infantry, marching from a rest camp toward the front, had also come to a rigid salute, blocking the road to a quartermaster’s supply train, who had, perforce, to follow suit. The “Star Spangled Banner” has a deeper meaning to the man who has done a few turns in the trenches.

They had a pie-baking contest in Gondrecourt one day, where the renowned “Aunt Mary” was located, with her sweet face and sweeter heart.

One of the other huts had baked two hundred and thirty-five pies in a day. The people in Gondrecourt believed they could do better than that, so they made their preparations and set to work.

The soldiers were all interested, of course. Who was to eat those pies? The more pies the merrier! The engineers had constructed a rack to hold them, so that they might be easily counted without confusion. The soldiers had appointed a committee to do the counting with a representative from the cooks to be sure that everything went right. Even the officers and chaplain took an interest in it.

This hut was in one of the largest American sectors. It was so well patronized that they used on an average fifty gallons of coffee every evening and seventy-five or more gallons of lemonade every afternoon. You can imagine the pies and doughnuts that would find a welcome here. One day they made twenty-seven hundred sugar cookies, and another day they fried eighteen hundred and thirty-six doughnuts, at the same time baking cake and pies; but this time they were going to try to bake three hundred pies between the rising and setting of the sun.

An army field oven only holds nine pies at a time, so every minute of the day had to be utilized. The fires were started very early in the morning and everything was ready for the girls to begin when the sun peeped over the edge of the great battlefield. They sprang at their task as though it were a delightful game of tennis, and not as though they had worked hard and late on the day before, and the many days before that.

It was very hot in the little kitchen as the sun waxed high. An army range never tries to conserve its heat for the benefit of the cooks. In fact that kitchen was often used for a Turkish bath by some poor wet soldiers who were chilled to the bone.

But the heat did not delay the workers. They flew at their task with fingers that seemed to have somehow borrowed an extra nimbleness. All day long they worked, and the pies were marshalled out of the oven by nines, flaky and fragrant and baked just right. The rack grew fuller and fuller, and the soldiers watched with eager eyes and watering mouths. Now and then one of the soldiers’ cooks would put his head in at the door, ask how the score stood, and shake his head in wonder. On and on they worked, mixing, rolling, filling, putting the little twists and cuts on the upper crust, and slipping in the oven and out again! Mixing, rolling, filling and baking without any let-up, until the sun with a twinkle of glowing appreciation slipped regretfully down behind the hills of France again as if he were sorry to leave the fun, and the time was up. The committee gave a last careful glance over the filled racks and announced the final score, three hundred and sixteen pies, in shining, delectable rows!

By seven o’clock that evening the pie line was several hundred yards long. It was eleven o’clock when the last quarter of a pie went over the counter, with its accompanying mug of coffee. Think what it was just to have to cut and serve that pie, and make that coffee, after a long day’s work of baking!

One of the officers receiving his change after having paid for his pie looked at it surprisedly:

“And you mean to tell me that you girls work so hard for such a small return? I don’t see where you make any profit at all.”

“We don’t work for profit, Captain,” answered the lassie. “I don’t think any amount of money would persuade us to keep going as we have to here at times.”

“You mean you sort of work for the joy of working?” he asked, puzzled.

“I don’t know what you mean,” responded the lassie pleasantly, “but when we are tired we look at the boys drilling in the sun and working early and late. They are splendid and we feel we must do our part as unreservedly as they do theirs.”

“No wonder my men have so many good things to say about the Salvation Army!” said the Captain, turning to his companions. But as he went out into the night his voice floated back in a puzzled sort of half-conviction, as if he were thinking out something more than had been spoken:

“It takes more than patriotism to keep refined women working like that!”

These same girls were commissioned also to make frequent visits to the hospitals and talk with the sick soldiers. Often they read the Bible to them, and many a man through these little talks has found the way of eternal life. This in addition to their other work.

One night after a meeting in the hut a lad wanted to come into the room at the back and speak to one of the women about his soul. They knelt and prayed together, and the boy when he rose had a light of real happiness on his face. But suddenly the happiness faded and he exclaimed:

“But I can’t read!”

“Read? What do you mean?” asked the lassie.

“My Bible. Nobody never learned me to read, and I can’t read my Bible like you said in the meeting I should.”

The lassie thought for a minute, and then suggested that he come to the hut every morning just before first call and she would teach him a verse of scripture and read him a chapter. This meant that the lassie must rise that much earlier, but what of that for a servant of the King?

Just a month this program was carried out, and then came marching orders for the boy, but by this time he had a rich store of God’s word safe in his heart from the verses he had memorized. The last night when he came to say good-bye he said to his teacher:

“Your kindness has meant a lot of trouble for you, miss, but for me it has meant life! Before, I was afraid to fight; but now I don’t even fear death. I know now that it can only mean a new life. Thank God for your goodness to me!”

There was one soldier who went by the name of Scoop. He had been a reporter back in the States and learned to love drink. When he joined the army he did not give up his old habits. Whenever anybody remonstrated with him he invariably replied gaily, “I’m out to enjoy life.” On pay-days Scoop celebrated by drinking more than ever.

One day he happened into the Salvation Army hut. Whether the pie or the doughnuts or the homeyness of the place first attracted him no one knows. He said it was the pie. Something held him there. He came every night. The spirit of the Lord that lived and breathed in those consecrated men and girls began to work in his heart and conscience, and speak to him of better things that might even be for him.

When he felt the desire for drink or gambling coming on he gave his money to the girls to keep for him.

On the last pay-day before he was sent to another location he took a paint-brush and some paint and made a little sign which he set up in a prominent place in the hut, his silent testimony to what they had done for him: “For the first time on pay-day Scoop is sober!”

One morning a lassie was frying some doughnuts in the Gondrecourt hut, another was rolling and cutting, and both were very busy when a soldier came in with the mail. The girls went on with their work, though one could easily see that they were eager for letters. One was handed to the lassie who was frying the doughnuts. When she opened it she found it was an official dispatch. The others saw the change of her expression and asked what was the matter, but she made no reply while tears started down her cheeks. She, however, went on frying doughnuts. The others asked again what was the trouble and for answer the girl handed them the open dispatch, which stated briefly that one of her three brothers, who were all in the service, had been killed in action on the previous day. The others sympathetically tried to draw her away from her work, but she said: “No, nothing will help me to bear my sorrow like doing something for others.” This is the spirit of the Salvation Army workers. Personal sorrows, personal feelings, personal difficulties, hardships, dangers, are not allowed to interrupt their labors of love. Fortunately, it was later discovered that this message about her brother was unfounded.

A boy told this lassie one day that the next day was his birthday, and she saw the homesickness and yearning in his eyes as he spoke. Immediately she told him she would have a birthday party for him and bake a cake for it.

She found some tiny candles in the village and placed nineteen upon the pretty frosted cake. They had to use a white bed-quilt for a tablecloth, and none of the cups and saucers matched, but the table looked very pretty when it was set, with little white paper baskets of almonds which the girls had made at each place, and all the candles lit on the white cake in the middle. The boy brought three of his comrades, and there were the Salvation Army Major in charge and the lassies. They had a beautiful time. Of course it was quite a little extra work for the lassie, but when someone asked her why she took so much trouble she had a faraway look in her eyes, and said she guessed it was for the sake of the boy’s mother, and those who heard remembered that her own three brothers were in United States uniform somewhere facing the enemy.

There are several instances in which American soldiers coming from British and French Sectors, where they had been brigaded with armies of those nations, have upon entering a Salvation Army hut for the first time without noticing the sign over the door started to talk to the girls in French—very fragmentary French at that. When they found the girls to be Americans they were almost beside themselves with mingled feelings of bashfulness and delight. Most of the soldiers exhibit the former trait.

One boy approached one of our men officers.

“Can them girls speak American?” he asked, pointing at the girls.

On being assured that they could, he said: “Will they mind if I go up and speak to them? I ain’t talked to an American woman in seven months.”

Two soldiers were walking along the dusty roadway.

First soldier: “Let’s go to the Salvation Army hut.”

Second soldier: “No, I don’t want to.”

First soldier: “They’ve got a piano and a phonograph and lots of records.”

Second soldier: “No, I don’t want to.”

First soldier: “They’ve got books and _beaucoup_ games.”

Second soldier: “No, I don’t want to.”

First soldier: “Two American ladies there!”

Second soldier: “No, I don’t want to.”

First soldier: “They’ve got swell coffee and doughnuts!”

Second soldier (angrily): “No! I said No!”

First soldier: “Aw, come on. They got real homemade pie!”

Second soldier: “I don’t care!”

First soldier: “They cut their own wood and do their own work!”

Second soldier: “Well, that’s different! Why didn’t you say that right off, you bonehead? Come on. Where is it?”

And they entered the Salvation Army hut smiling.