Part 12

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?”

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.