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The War Romance of the Salvation Army

E >> Evangeline Booth and Grace Livingston Hill >> The War Romance of the Salvation Army




After breakfast the girls went to work making pies. There had been no oven
in the little French town in which they were stationed, and so baking had
been impossible, but the boys kept talking and talking about pies until
one day a Lieutenant found an old French stove in some ruins. They had to
half bury it in the earth to make it strong enough for use, but managed to
make it work at last, and though much hampered by the limitations of the
small oven, they baked enough to give all the boys a taste of pie once a
week or so. Pie day was so welcomed that it almost made a riot, so many
boys wanted a slice.

They were having a meeting one night at Baccarat. There was a great deal
of noise going on outside the dugout. The shells were falling around
rather indiscriminately, but it takes more than shell fire to stop a
Salvation Army meeting at the front. There is only one thing that will
stop it, and that is a sudden troop movement. It is the same way with
baseball, for the week before this meeting two regimental baseball teams
played seven innings of air-tight ball while the shells were falling not
three hundred yards away at the roadside edge of their ball-ground. During
the seven innings only eight hits were allowed by the two pitchers. The
score was close and when at the end of the seventh a shell exploded within
fifty yards of the diamond and an officer shouted: "Game called on account
of shell fire!" there was considerable dissatisfaction expressed because
the game was not allowed to continue. It is with the same spirit that the
men attend their religious meetings. They come because they want-to and
they won't let anything interfere with it.

But on this particular night the meeting was in full force, and so were
the shells. It had been a meeting in which the men had taken part, led by
one of the women whose leadership was unquestioned among them, a personal
testimony meeting in which several soldiers and an officer had spoken of
what Christ had done for them. Then there was a solo by one of the
lassies, and the Adjutant opened his Bible and began to read. He took as
his text Isaiah 55:1. "Ho, every one that thirsteth, come ye to the
waters, and he that hath no money; come ye, buy, and eat."

Those boys knew what it was to be thirsty, terrible thirst! They had come
back from the lines sometimes their tongues parched and their whole bodies
feverish with thirst and there was nothing to be had to drink until the
Salvation Army people had appeared with good cold lemonade; and when they
had no money they had given it to them just the same. Oh, they knew what
that verse meant and their attention was held at once as the speaker went
on to show plainly how Jesus Christ would give the water of life just as
freely to those who were thirsty for it. And they were thirsty! They did
not wish to conceal how thirsty they were for the living water.

Just in the midst of the talk the lights went out. Many a church under
like conditions would have had a panic in no time, but this crowded
audience sat perfectly quiet, listening as the speaker went on, quoting
his Bible from memory where he could not read.

Over there in the corner on a bench sat the lassies, the women who had
been serving them all through the hard days, as quiet and calm in the
darkness as though they sat in a cushioned pew in some well-lit church in
New York. It was as if the guns were like annoying little insects that
were outside a screen, and now and then slipped in, so little attention
did the audience pay to them. When all those who wished to accept this
wonderful invitation were asked to come forward, seven men arose and
stumbled through the darkness. The light from a bursting shell revealed
for an instant the forms of these men as they knelt at the rough bench in
front, one of them with his steel helmet hanging from his arm as he prayed
aloud for his own salvation. No one who was in that meeting that night
could doubt but that Jesus Christ Himself was there, and that those men
all felt His presence.

In Bertrichamps the Salvation Army was given a large glass factory for a
canteen. It made a beautiful place, and there was room to take care of
eight hundred men at a time. This building was also used by the Y. M. C.
A. as well as the Jews and the Catholics for their services, there being
no other suitable place in town. But everybody worked together, and got
along harmoniously.

Here there were some wonderful meetings, and it was great to hear the boys
singing "When The Roll Is Called Up Yonder, I'll Be There." Perhaps if
some of the half-hearted Christians at home could have caught the echo of
that song sung with such earnestness by those boyish voices they would
have had a revelation. It seemed as if the earth-film were more than half
torn away from their young, wise eyes over there; and they found that
earthly standards and earthly false-whisperings did not fit. They felt the
spirit of the hour, they felt the spirit of the place, and of the people
who were serving them patiently day by day; who didn't have to stay there
and work; who might have kept in back of the lines and worked and sent
things up now and then; but who chose to stay close with them and share
their hardships. They felt that something more than just love to their
fellow-men had instigated such unselfishness. They knew it was something
they needed to help them through what was before them. They reached
hungrily after the Christ and they found Him.

Then they testified in the meetings. Often as many as twelve or more
before an audience of five hundred would get up and tell what Jesus had
become to them. In one meeting in this glass factory two hundred soldiers
pledged to serve the Lord, to read their Bibles, and to pray.

There were in this place some Christian boys who came from families where
they had been accustomed to family worship, and who now that they were far
away from it, looked back with longing to the days when it had been a part
of every day. Things look different over there with the sound of battle
close at hand, and customs that had been, a part of every-day life at home
became very dear, perhaps dearer than they had ever seemed before. They
found out that the Salvation Army people had prayers every night after
they closed the canteen at half-past nine and went to their rooms in a
house not far away, and so they begged that they might share the worship
with them. So every night they took home fifteen or twenty men to the
living-room of the house where they stayed just as many as they could
crowd in, and there they would have a little Bible reading and prayer
together. The Father only knows how many souls were strengthened and how
many feet kept from falling because of those brief moments of worship with
these faithful men and women of God.

"Oh, if you only knew what it means to us!" one of the men tried to tell
them one day.

Sometimes men who said they hadn't prayed nor read their Bibles for years
would be found in little groups openly reading a testament to each other.

When the girls opened their shutters in the morning they could look out
over the spot in No Man's Land which was the scene of such frightful
German atrocities in 1914.

Our field artillery, stationed in the woods, sent over to the Salvation
Army to know if they wouldn't come over and cook something for them, they
were starving for some home cooking. So two of the women put on their
steel helmets and their gas masks, for the Boche planes were flying
everywhere, and went over across No Man's Land to see if there was a place
where they could open up a hut. They were walking along quietly, talking,
and had not noticed the German plane that approached. They were so
accustomed to seeing them by twos and threes that a single one did not
attract their attention. Suddenly almost over their heads the Boche
dropped a shell, trying to get them. But it was a dud and did not explode.
Two American soldiers came tearing over, crying: "Girls! Are you hurt?"

"Oh, no," said one of them brightly. "The Lord wouldn't let that fellow
get us."

The soldiers used strong language as they looked after the fast-vanishing
plane, but then they glanced back at the women again with something
unspoken in their eyes. They believed, those boys, they really did, that
God protected those women; and they used to beg them to remain with their
regiment when they were going near the front, because they wanted their
prayers as a protection. Some of the regiments openly said they thought
those girls' prayers had saved their lives.

That Boche plane, however, had not far to go. Before it reached Baccarat
the Americans trained their guns on it and brought it down in flames.

The house occupied by the Salvation Army girls as a billet had a sad story
connected with it. When the Germans had come the father was soon killed
and four German officers had taken possession of the place for their
Headquarters. They also took possession of the two little girls of the
family, nine and fourteen years of age, to wait upon them. And the first
command that was given these children was that they should wait upon the
men nude! The youngest child was not old enough to understand what this
meant, but the older one was in terror, and they begged and cried and
pleaded but all to no purpose. The officer was inexorable. He told them
that if they did not obey they would be shot.

The poor old grandfather and grandmother, too feeble to do anything, and
powerless, of course, to aid, could only endure in agony. The grandmother,
telling the Salvation Army women the story afterward, pointed with
trembling lingers and streaming eyes to the two little graves in the yard
and said: "Oh, it would have been so much better if he had shot them! They
lie out there as the result of their infamous and inhuman treatment."

Some most amusing incidents came to the knowledge of the Salvation Army
workers.

An old French woman, over eighty years of age, lived in one of the
stricken villages on the Vosges front. Her home had been several times
struck by shells and was frequently the target for enemy bombing
squadrons. All through the war she refused to leave the home in which she
had lived from earliest childhood.

"It is not the guns, nor the bombs which can frighten me," she told a
Salvation Army lassie who was billeted with her for a time, "but I am very
much afraid of the submarines."

The village was several hundred miles inland.

The activity was all at night, for no one dared be seen about in the
daytime. It must be a very urgent duty that would call men forth into full
view of the enemy. But as soon, as the dark came on the men would crawl
into the trenches, stick their rifles between the sandbags and get ready
for work.

It seemed to be always raining. They said that when it wasn't actually
raining it was either clearing off or just getting ready to rain again.
Twenty minutes in the trenches and a man was all over mud, wet, cold,
slippery mud. In his hair, down his neck, in his boots, everywhere.

Through the trenches just behind the standing place ran a deeper trench or
drain to carry the water away, and this was covered over with a rough
board called a duck-board. Underneath this duck-board ran a continual
stream of water. A man would go along the trench in a hurry, make a
misstep on one end of the duck-board and down he would go in mud and
freezing water to the waist. In these cold, wet garments he must stay all
night. The tension was very great.

As the soldiers had to work in the night, so the Salvation Army men and
women worked in the night to serve them.

The Salvation Army men would visit the sentries and bring them coffee and
doughnuts prepared in the dugouts by the girls. It was exceedingly
dangerous work. They would crawl through the connecting trenches, which
were not more than three feet deep, and one must stoop to be safe, and get
to the front-line trenches with their cans of coffee. They would touch a
fellow on the shoulder, fill his mug with coffee, and slip him some
doughnuts. At such times the things were always given, not sold. They did
not dare even to whisper, for the enemy listening posts were close at hand
and the slightest breath might give away their position. The sermon would
be a pat of encouragement on a man's shoulder, then pass on to the next.

One morning at three o'clock a Salvationist carried a second supply of hot
coffee to the battery positions. One gunner with tense, strained face eyed
his full coffee mug with satisfaction and said with a sigh: "Good! That is
all I wanted. I can keep going until morning now!"

When the men were lined up for a raid there would be a prayer-meeting in
the dugout, thirty inside and as many as could crowded around the door.
Just a prayer and singing. Then the boys would go to the girls and leave
their little trinkets or letters, and say: "I'm going over the top,
Sister. If I don't come back--if I'm kicked off--you tell mother. You will
know what to say to her to help her bear up."

Three-quarters of an hour later what was left of them would return and the
girls would be ready with hot coffee and doughnuts. It was heart-breaking,
back-aching, wonderful work, work fit for angels to do, and these girls
did it with all their souls.

"Aren't you tired? Aren't you afraid?" asked someone of a lassie who had
been working hard for forty consecutive hours, aiding the doctors in
caring for the wounded, and in a lull had found time to mix up and fry a
batch of doughnuts in a corner from which the roof had been completely
blown by shells.

"Oh, no! It's great!" she replied eagerly. "I'm the luckiest girl in the
world."

By this time the Salvation Army had acquired many great three-ton trucks,
and the drivers of those risked their lives daily to carry supplies to the
dugouts and huts that were taking care of the men at the front.

There were signs all over everywhere: "ATTENTION! THE ENEMY SEES YOU!"
Trucks were not allowed to go in daytime except in case of great
emergency. Sometimes in urgent cases day-passes would be given with the
order: "If you have to go, go like the devil!"

The enemy always had the range on the road where the trucks had to pass,
and especially in exposed places and on cross-roads a man had no chance if
he paused. Once he had been sighted by the enemy he was done for. A man
driving on a hasty errand once dropped his crank, and stopped his truck,
to pick it up. Even as he stooped to take it a shell struck his truck and
smashed it to bits.

Most of the travelling had to be done at night. Silently, without a light
over roads as dark as pitch, where the only possible guide was the faint
line above where the trees parted and showed the sky; over rough, muddy
roads, filled with shell-holes, the trucks went nightly. Just fall in
line, keep to the right, and whistle softly when something got in the way.
No claxon horns could be used, for that was the gas alarm. A man could not
even wear a radiolight watch on his wrist or a driver smoke a cigarette.

One very dark night a truck came through with a man sitting away out on
the radiator watching the road and telling the driver where to go. The
only light would be from shells exploding or occasional signal lights for
a moment.

To get supplies from where they were to where they were needed was an
urgent necessity which often arose with but momentary warning--frequently
with no warning at all. The American front was a matter not of miles, but
of hundreds of miles, and the call for supplies might come from any point
along that front. Sometimes the call meant the immediate shipment of tons
of blankets, oranges, lemons, sugar, flour for doughnuts, lard, chocolate
and other materials, to a point 200 miles distant. At times a railroad may
supply a part of the route, but always there is a long, dangerous truck
haul, and usually the entire route must be covered by truck.

During the winter there were many thrills added to the already strenuous
task of the Salvation Army truck drivers. One of them driving late at
night in a snowstorm, mistook a river for the road for which he was
searching, and turned from the real road to the snow-covered surface of
the river, which he followed for some little distance before discovering
his mistake. Fortunately, the ice was solid and the truck unloaded-an
unusual combination.

Another missed the road and drove into a field, where his wheels bogged
down. His fellow-traveller, driving a Ford, went for help, leaving him
with his truck, for if it had been left unguarded it would have soon been
stripped of every movable part by passing truck drivers. Here he remained
for almost forty-eight hours, during which time there was considerable
shelling.

A Catholic Chaplain told the Salvation Army Staff-Captain that he thought
the reason the Salvation Army was so popular with his men was because the
Salvation Army kept its promises to the men.

When the Salvation Army officer went to open work in the town of Baccarat
it was so crowded that he was unable to secure accommodations. He was
having dinner in the cafe, but could get no bread because he had no bread
tickets, The local K. of C. man, observing his difficulty, supplied
tickets, and, finding that he had no place to sleep, offered to share his
own meagre accommodations. For several nights he shared his bed with him
and the Salvation Army officer was greatly assisted by him in many ways.
The Salvation Army is popular not alone among the soldiers.

While the offensive was on in Argonne and north of Verdun, those who were
in the huts in the old training area, which were then used as rest
buildings, decided to do something for the boys, and on one occasion they
fried fourteen thousand doughnuts and took them to the boys at the front.
They traveled in the trucks, and distributed the doughnuts to the boys as
they came from the trenches and sent others into the trenches.

By the time they were through, the day was far spent and it was necessary
for them to find some place to stay over night. Verdun was the only large
city anywhere near but it had either been largely destroyed or the civil
population had long since abandoned it and there was no place available.

Underneath the trenches, however, there had been constructed in ancient
times, underground passages. There are fifty miles of these underground
galleries honeycombed beneath the city, sufficiently large to shelter the
entire population. There are cross sections of galleries, between the
longer passage ways, and winding stairways here and there. Air is supplied
by a system of pumps. There are theatres and a church, also. The Army
protecting Verdun had occupied these underground passages.

When the officer commanding the French troops learned that the Salvation
Army girls were obliged to stay over night, he arranged for their
accommodation in the underground passage and here they rested in perfect
security with such comforts as cots and blankets could insure.

It was said that they were the only women ever permitted to remain in
these underground passages.




VII.

The Chateau-Thierry-Soissons Drive



When the trouble at Seicheprey broke out the Germans began shelling
Beaumont and Mandres, and things took on a very serious look for the
Salvation Army. Then the Military Colonel gave an order for the girls to
leave Ansauville, and loading them up on a truck he sent them to Menil-la-
Tour. They never allowed girls again in that town until after the St.
Mihiel drive.

That was a wild ride in the night for those girls sitting in an army
truck, jolted over shell holes with the roar of battle all about them; the
blackness of night on every side, shells bursting often near them, yet
they were as calm as if nothing were the matter; finally the car got stuck
under range of the enemy's fire, but they never flinched and they sat
quietly in the car in a most dangerous position for twenty minutes while
the Colonel and the Captain were out locating a dugout. Plucky little
girls!

The Salvation Army Staff-Captain of that zone went back in the morning to
Ansauville to get the girls' personal belongings, and when he entered the
canteen he stood still and looked about him with horror and thankfulness
as he realized the narrow escape those girls had had. The windows and roof
were full of shell holes. Shrapnel had penetrated everywhere. He went
about to examine and took pieces of shrapnel out of the flour and sugar
and coffee which had gone straight through the tin containers. The vanilla
bottles were broken and there was shrapnel in the vanilla, shrapnel was
embedded in the wooden tops of the tables, and in the walls.

He went to the billet where two of the girls had slept. Opposite their bed
on the other side of the room was a window and over the bed was a large
picture. A shell had passed through the window and smashed the picture,
shattering the glass in fragments all over the bed. Another shell had
entered the window, passed over the pillows of the bed and gone out
through the wall by the bed. It would have gone through the temples of any
sleeper in that bed. After this they kept men in Ansauville instead of
girls.

The next day the girls opened up the canteen at Menilla-Tour as calmly as
if nothing had happened the day before.

The boys were going down to Nevillers to rest, and while they rested the
girls cooked good things for them and used that sweet God-given influence
that makes a little piece of home and heaven wherever it is found.

The girls did not get much rest, but then they had not come to France to
rest, as they often told people who were always urging them to save
themselves. They did get one bit of luxury in the shape of passes down to
Beauvais. There it was possible to get a bath and the girls had not been
able to have that from the first of April to the first of July. They had
to stand in line with the officers, it is true, to take their turn at the
public bath houses, but it was a real delight to have plenty of water for
once, for their appointments at the front had been most restricted and
water a scarce commodity. Sometimes it had been difficult to get enough
water for the cooking and the girls had been obliged to use cold cream to
wash their faces for several days at a time. Of course, it was an
impossibility for them to do any laundry work for themselves, as there was
neither time nor place nor facilities. Their laundry was always carried by
courier to some near-by city and brought back to them in a few days.

The Zone Major had supper with the Colonel, who told him that none of the
organizations would be allowed on the drive. The Zone Major asked if they
might be allowed to go as far as Crepy. The Colonel much excited said:
"Man, don't you know that town is being shelled every night?" The next
morning a party of sixteen Salvation Army men and women started out in the
truck for Crepy. It was a beautiful day and they rode all day long. At
nightfall they reached the village of Crepy where they were welcomed
eagerly. The Zone Major had to leave and go back and wanted them all to
stay there, but they were unwilling to do so because their own outfit was
going over the top that night and they wanted to be with them before they
left. They started from Crepy about five o'clock and got lost in the
woods, but finally, after wandering about for some hours, landed in Roy
St. Nicholas where was the outfit to which one of the girls belonged.

The Salvation Army boys had just pulled in with another truck and were
getting ready for the night, for they always slept in their trucks. The
girls decided to sit down in the road until the billeting officer arrived,
but time passed and no billeting officer came. They were growing very
weary, so they got into the Colonel's car, which stood at the roadside,
and went to sleep. A little later the billeting officer appeared with many
apologies and offered to take them to the billet that had been set aside
for them. They took their rolls of blankets, and climbed sleepily out of
the car, following him two blocks down the street to an old building. But
when they reached there they found that some French officers had taken
possession and were fast asleep, so they went back to the car and slept
till morning. At daylight they went down to a brook to wash but found that
the soldiers were there ahead of them, and they had to go back and be
content with freshening up with cold cream. Thus did these lassies,
accustomed to daintiness in their daily lives, accommodate themselves to
the necessities of war, as easily and cheerfully as the soldier boys
themselves.

That day the rest of the outfits arrived, and they all pulled into Morte
Fontaine.

Morte Fontaine was well named because there was no water in the town fit
to use.

The girls felt they were needed nearer the front, so they went to Major
Peabody and asked permission.

"I should say not!" he replied vigorously with yet a twinkle of admiration
for the brave lassies. "But you can take anything you want in this town."

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