Part 19

“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.”