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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




Two small stoves cast circles of heat in the big hut at Demange. Around
them the men crowded with their wet garments steaming so profusely that
the hut often took on the appearance of a steam-room in a Turkish bath.
The rest of the hut was cold; but compared to the weather outside, it was
heaven-like. For all of its size, the hut was frail, and the winter wind
blew coldly through its many cracks; but compared with the soldier's
billets, it was a cozy palace. The Salvationists spent hours each week
sitting on the roof in the driving rain patching leaks with tar-paper and
tacks.

The life was a hard one for the girls. They nearly froze during the days,
and at nights they usually shivered themselves to sleep, only sleeping
when sheer exhaustion overcame them. There were no baths at all. The
experience was most trying for women and only the spirit of the great
enterprise in which they were engaged carried them through the winter.
Even soldiers were at times seen weeping with cold and misery.

One night the gasoline tank which supplied light to the hut exploded and
set the place on fire. A whole regiment turned out of their blankets to
put out the blaze. This meant more hours for those in charge repairing the
roof in the snow. They also had to cut all of the wood for the hut. Later
details were supplied to every hut by the military authorities to cut
wood, sweep and clean up, carry water, etc. Soldiers used the hut for a
mess hall. There was no other place where they could eat with any degree
of comfort.

By this time the fact that the Salvation Army was established at Demange
was becoming known throughout the division.

One of the towns where there had been no arrangements made for welfare
workers at all was Montiers-sur-Saulx, where the First Ammunition Train
was established, and here the officer temporarily commanding the
ammunition train gave a most hearty welcome to the Salvation Army.

Two large circus tents had been sent on from New York and one of these was
to be erected until a wooden building could be secured.

The touring car went back to Demange, picked up a Staff-Captain, a
Captain, five white tents, the largest one thirty by sixty feet, the
others smaller, carried them across the country and dropped them down at
the roadside of the public square in Montiers.

There stood the Salvationists in the road wondering what to do next.

Then a hearty voice called out: "Are you locating with us?" and the
military officer of the day advanced to meet them with a hand-shake and
many expressions of his appreciation of the Salvation Army.

"We are going to stay here if you will have us," said the Staff-Captain.

"Have you! Well, I should say we would have you! Wait a minute and I'll
have a detail put your baggage under cover for the night. Then we'll see
about dinner and a billet."

Thus auspiciously did the work open in Montiers.

In a few minutes they were taken to a French café and a comfortable place
found for them to spend the night.

Soon after the rising of the sun the next morning they were up and about
hunting a place for the tents which were to serve for a recreation centre
for the boys. The American Major in charge of the town personally assisted
them to find a good location, and offered his aid in any way needed.

Before nightfall the five white tents were up, standing straight and true
with military precision, and the two officers with just pride in their
hard day's work, and a secret assurance that it would stand the hearty
approval of the commanding officer whom they had not as yet met, went off
to their suppers, for which they had a more than usually hearty appetite.

Suddenly the door of the dining-room swung open and a gruff voice
demanded: "Who put up those tents?" The Salvation Army Staff-Captain stood
forth saluting respectfully and responded: "I, sir." "Well," said the
Colonel, "they look mighty fine up on that hill--mighty fine! Splendid
location for them--splendid! But the enemy can spot them for a hundred
miles, so I expect you had better get them down or camouflage them with
green boughs and paint by tomorrow night at the latest. Good evening to
you, sir!"

The Staff-Captain and his helper suddenly lost their fine appetites and
felt very tired. Camouflage! How did they do that at a moment's notice?
They left their unfinished dinner and hurried out in search of help.

The first soldier the Staff-Captain questioned reassured him.

"Aw, that's dead easy! Go over the hill into the woods and cut some
branches, enough to cover your tents; or easier yet, get some green and
yellow paint and splash over them. The worse they look the better they
are!"

So the weary workers hunted the town over for paint, and found only enough
for the big tent, upon which they worked hard all the next morning. Then
they had to go to the woods for branches for the rest. Scratched and
bleeding and streaked with perspiration and dirt, they finished their work
at last, and the white tents had disappeared into the green and the yellow
and the brown of the hillside. Their beautiful military whiteness was
gone, but they were hidden safe from the enemy and the work might now go
forward.

Then the girls arrived and things began to look a bit more cheerful.

"But where is the cook stove?" asked one of the lassies after they had set
up their two folding cots in one of the smaller tents and made themselves
at home.

Dismay descended upon the face of the weary Staff-Captain.

"Why," he answered apologetically, "we forgot all about that!" and he
hurried out to find a stove.

A thorough search of the surrounding country, however, disclosed the fact
that there was not a stove nor a field range to be had--no, not even from
the commissary. There was nothing for it but to set to work and contrive a
fireplace out of field stone and clay, with a bit of sheet iron for a
roof, and two or three lengths of old sewer pipe carefully wired together
for a stovepipe. It took days of hard work, and it smoked woefully except
when the wind was exactly west, but the girls made fudge enough on it for
the entire personnel of the Ammunition train to celebrate when it was
finished.

When the girls first arrived in Montiers the Salvation Army Staff-Captain
was rather at a loss to know what to do with them until the hut was built.
They were invited to chow with the soldiers, and to eat in an old French
barn used as a kitchen, in front of which the men lined up at the open
doorways for mess. It was a very dirty barn indeed, with heavy cobwebs
hanging in weird festoons from the ceiling and straw and manure all over
the floor; quite too barnlike for a dining-hall for delicately reared
women. The Staff-Captain hesitated about bringing them there, but the
Mess-Sergeant offered to clean up a corner for them and give them a
comfortable table.

"I don't know about bringing my girls in here with the men," said the
Staff-Captain still hesitating. "You know the men are pretty rough in
their talk, and they're always cussing!"

"Leave that to me!" said the Mess-Sergeant. "It'll be all right!"

There was an old dirty French wagon in the barnyard where they kept the
bread. It was not an inviting prospect and the Staff-Captain looked about
him dubiously and went away with many misgivings, but there seemed to be
nothing else to be done.

The boys did their best to fix things up nicely. When meal time arrived
and the girls appeared they found their table neatly spread with a dish
towel for a tablecloth. It purported to be clean, but there are degrees of
cleanliness in the army and there might have been a difference of opinion.
However, the girls realized that there had been a strenuous attempt to do
honor to them and they sat down on the coffee kegs that had been provided
_en lieu_ of chairs with smiling appreciation.

The Staff-Captain's anxiety began to relax as he noticed the quiet
respectful attitude of the men when they passed by the doorway and looked
eagerly over at the corner where the girls were sitting. It was great to
have American women sitting down to dinner with them, as it were. Not a
"cuss word" broke the harmony of the occasion. The best cuts of meat, the
largest pieces of pie, were given to the girls, and everybody united to
make them feel how welcome they were.

Then into the midst of the pleasant scene there entered one who had been
away for a few hours and had not yet been made acquainted with the new
order of things at chow; and he entered with an oath upon his lips.

He was a great big fellow, but the strong arm of the Mess-Sergeant flashed
out from the shoulder instantly, the sturdy fist of the Mess-Sergeant was
planted most unexpectedly in the newcomer's face, and he found himself
sprawling on the other side of the road with all his comrades glaring at
him in silent wrath. That was the beginning of a new order of things at
the mess.

The Colonel in charge of the regiment had gone away, and the commanding
Major, wishing to make things pleasant for the Salvationists, sent for the
Staff-Captain and invited them all to his mess at the chateau; telling him
that if he needed anything at any time, horses or supplies, or anything in
his power to give, to let him know at once and it should be supplied.

The Staff-Captain thanked him, but told him that he thought they would
stay with the boys.

The boys, of course, heard of this and the Salvation Army people had
another bond between them and the soldiers. The boys felt that the
Salvationists were their very own. Nothing could have more endeared them
to the boys than to share their life and hardships.

The Salvation Army had not been with the soldiers many hours before they
discovered that the disease of homesickness which they had been sent to
succor was growing more and more malignant and spreading fast.

The training under French officers was very severe. Trench feet with all
its attendant suffering was added to the other discomforts. Was it any
wonder that homesickness seized hold of every soldier there?

It had been raining steadily for thirty-six days, making swamps and pools
everywhere. Depression like a great heavy blanket hung over the whole
area.

The Salvation Army lassies at Montiers were in consultation. Their
supplies were all gone, and the state of the roads on account of the rain
was such that all transportation was held up. They had been waiting,
hoping against hope, that a new load of supplies would arrive, but there
seemed no immediate promise of that.

"We ought to have something more than just chocolate to sell to the
soldiers, anyway," declared one lassie, who was a wonderful cook, looking
across the big tent to the drooping shoulders and discouraged faces of the
boys who were hovering about the Victrola, trying to extract a little
comfort from the records. "We ought to be able to give them some real home
cooking!"

They all agreed to this, but the difficulties in the way were great. Flour
was obtainable only in small quantities. Now and then they could get a
sack of flour or a bag of sugar, but not often. Lard also was a scarce
article. Besides, there were no stoves, and no equipment had as yet been
issued for ovens. All about them were apple orchards and they might have
baked some pies if there had been ovens, but at present that was out of
the question. After a long discussion one of the girls suggested
doughnuts, and even that had its difficulties, although it really was the
only thing possible at the time. For one thing they had no rolling-pin and
no cake-cutter in the outfit. Nevertheless, they bravely went to work. The
little tent intended for such things had blown down, so the lassie had to
stand out in the rain to prepare the dough.

The first doughnuts were patted out, until someone found an empty grape-
juice bottle and used that for a rolling-pin. As they had no cutter they
used a knife, and twisted them, making them in shape like a cruller. They
were cooked over a wood fire that had to be continually stuffed with fuel
to keep the fat hot enough to fry. The pan they used was only large enough
to cook seven at once, but that first day they made one hundred and fifty
big fat sugary doughnuts, and when the luscious fragrance began to float
out on the air and word went forth that they had real "honest-to-goodness"
home doughnuts at the Salvation Army hut, the line formed away out into
the road and stood patiently for hours in the rain waiting for a taste of
the dainties. As there were eight hundred men in the outfit and only a
hundred and fifty doughnuts that first day, naturally a good many were
disappointed, but those who got them were appreciative. One boy as he took
the first sugary bite exclaimed: "Gee! If this is war, let it continue!"

The next day the girls managed to make three hundred, but one of them was
not satisfied with a doughnut that had no hole in it, and while she worked
she thought, until a bright idea came to her. The top of the baking-powder
can! Of course! Why hadn't they thought of that before? But how could they
get the hole? There seemed nothing just right to cut it. Then, the very
next morning the inside tube to the coffee percolator that somebody had
brought along came loose, and the lassie stood in triumph with it in her
hand, calling to them all to see what a wonderful hole it would make in
the doughnut. And so the doughnut came into its own, hole and all.

That was at Montiers, the home of the doughnut.

One of the older Salvation Army workers remarked jocularly that the
Salvation Army had to go to France and get linked up with the doughnut
before America recognized it; but it was the same old Salvation Army and
the same old doughnut that it had always been. He averred that it wasn't
the doughnut at all that made the Salvation Army famous, but the wonderful
girls that the Salvation Army brought over there; the girls that lay awake
at night after a long hard day's work scheming to make the way of the
doughboy easier; scheming how to take the cold out of the snow and the wet
out of the rain and the stickiness out of the mud. The girls that prayed
over the doughnuts, and then got the maximum of grace out of the minimum
of grease.

The young Adjutant lassie who fried the first doughnut in France says that
invariably the boys would begin to talk about home and mother while they
were eating the doughnuts. Through the hole in the doughnut they seemed to
see their mother's face, and as the doughnut disappeared it grew bigger
and clearer.

The young Ensign lassie who had originated and _made_ the first
doughnut in France contrived to make many pies on a very tiny French stove
with an oven only large enough to hold two pies at a time. Meanwhile,
frying doughnuts on the top of the stove.

It wasn't long before the record for the doughnut makers had been brought
up to five thousand a day, and some of the unresting workers developed
"doughnut wrist" from sticking to the job too long at a time.

It was the original thought that pie would be the greatest attraction, but
it was difficult to secure stoves with ovens adequate for baking pies, and
after the ensign's experiment with doughnuts it was found that they could
more easily be made and were quite as acceptable to the American boy.

Meantime, the pie was coming into its own, back in Demange also.

It was only a little stove, and only room to bake one pie at a time, but
it was a savory smell that floated out on the air, and it was a long line
of hungry soldiers that hurried for their mess kits and stood hours
waiting for more pies to bake; and the fame of the Salvation Army began to
spread far and wide. Then one day the "Stars and Stripes," the organ of
the American Army, printed the following poem about the lassie who labored
so far forward that she had to wear a tin hat:

"Home is where the heart is"--
Thus the poet sang;
But "home is where the pie is"
For the doughboy gang!
Crullers in the craters,
Pastry in abris--
This Salvation Army lass
Sure knows how to please!

Tin hat for a halo!
Ah! She wears it well!
Making pies for homesick lads
Sure is "beating hell!"
In a region blasted
By fire and flame and sword,
This Salvation Army lass
Battles for the Lord!

Call me sacrilegious
And irreverent, too;
Pies? They link us up with home
As naught else can do!
"Home is, where the heart is"--
True, the poet sang;
But "home is where the pie is"--
To the Yankee gang!

It was no easy task to open up a chain of huts, for there was an amazing
variety of details to be attended to, any one of which might delay the
work. A hundred and one unexpected situations would develop during the
course of a single day which must be dealt with quickly and intelligently.
The fact that the Salvation Army section of the American Expeditionary
Force is militarized and strictly accountable for all of its action to the
United States military authorities is complicated in many places by the
further fact that the French civil and military authorities must also be
taken into consideration and consulted at every step. Nevertheless, in
spite of all difficulties the work went steadily forward. The patient
officers who were seeing to all these details worked almost night and day
to place the huts and workers where they would do the most good to the
greatest number; and steadily the Salvation Army grew in favor with the
soldiers.

It was extremely difficult to obtain materials for the erection of huts--
in many cases almost impossible. Once when Colonel Barker found troops
moving, he discovered the village for which they were bound, rushed ahead
in his automobile, and commandeered an old French barracks which would
otherwise have been occupied by the American soldiers. When the soldiers
arrived they were overjoyed to find the Salvation Army awaiting them with
hot food. They were soaked through by the rain, and never was hot coffee
more welcome. There was a little argument about the commandeered barracks.
It was to have been used as headquarters, but when the commanding officer
went out into the rain and saw for himself what service it was performing
for his men, and how overjoyed they were by the entertainment he said:
"We'll leave it to the men, whether they will be billeted here or let the
Salvation Army have the place." The men with one accord voted to give it
to the Salvation Army.

In one town, after an animated discussion with a crowd of enlisted men, a
sergeant came to the Salvation Army Major as he worked away with his
hammer putting up a hut and said: "Captain, would it make you mad if we
offered our services to help?"

[Illustration: "Tin hat for a halo! Ah! She wears it well!"]

[Illustration: 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.

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