Part 26

They were just lost to the land of reality when a soldier roused them summarily, saying:

“This is a heck of a place for the Salvation Army to go to sleep! If you don’t mind I’ll just pick your old bus out of here and send you on your way before it’s light enough for Fritzy to spot you and send a calling card.”

He was grinning at them cheerfully and they roused to the occasion.

“How are you going to do it?” asked the Adjutant, who, by the way, was Smiling Billy, the same one the soldiers called “one game little guy.” “It will take a three-ton truck to get us out of this hole!”

“I haven’t got a truck but I guess we can turn the trick all right!” said the soldier.

He disappeared into the darkness above the crater and in a moment reappeared with ten more dark forms following him, and another soldier who patrolled the rim of the crater on horseback.

“How do you like ’em?” he chuckled to the Salvation Army men, as he turned his flashlight on the ten and showed them to be big German prisoners of war. Under his direction they soon had the little Ford pushed and shouldered into the road once more. In a little while the Salvationists reached their destination and found to their relief that the rumor about the lassies was untrue.

At Mesnil-St.-Firmin one of the lassies, a young woman well known in New York society circles, but a loyal Salvationist and in France from the start, drove a little flivver carrying supplies for several nights, accompanied only by a young boy detailed from the Army. Every mile of the way was dark and perilous, but there was no one else to do the work, so she did it.

Here they were under shell fire every night. The girls slept in an old wine cellar, the only comparatively safe place to be found. It was damp, with a fearful odor they will never forget—moreover, it was already inhabited by rats. They frequently had to retire to the cellar during gas attacks, and stay for hours, sometimes having only time to seize an overcoat and throw it over their night-clothes. They were here through ten counter-attacks and when Cantigny was taken.

There seemed to be big movements among the Germans one day. They were bringing up reinforcements, and a large attack was expected. The airplanes were dropping bombs freely everywhere and it looked as if there would not be one brick left on the top of another in a few hours. Then the military authorities ordered the two girls to leave town. When the boys heard that the hut was being shelled and the girls were ordered to leave they poured in to tell them how much they would miss them. They well knew from experience that their staunch hardworking little friends would not have left them if they could have helped it. Also, they dreaded to lose these consecrated young women from their midst. They had a feeling that their presence brought the presence of the great God, with His protection, and in this they had come to trust in their hour of danger. Often the boys would openly speak of this, owning that they attributed their safety to the presence of their Christian friends.

One young officer from the officers’ mess where the girls had dined once at their invitation, brought them boxes of candy, and in presenting them said:

“Gee! We shall miss you like the devil!”

The lassie twinkled up in a merry smile and answered: “That sure is some comparison!” The officer blushed as red as a peony and tried to apologize:

“Well, now, you know what I mean. I don’t know just how to say how much we shall miss you!”

They left at midnight on foot accompanied by one of the Salvation Army men workers who had been badly gassed and needed to get back of the lines and have some treatment. It was brilliant moonlight as they hiked it down the road, the airplanes were whizzing over their heads and the anti-aircraft guns piling into them. They started for La Folie, the Headquarters of the Staff-Captain of that zone, but they lost their way and got far out of the track, arriving at last at Breteuil. Coming to the woods a Military Police stationed at the crossroads told them:

“You can’t go into Breteuil because they have been shelling it for twenty minutes. Right over there beyond where you are standing a bomb dropped a few minutes ago and killed or wounded seven fellows. The ambulance just took them away.”

However, as they did not know where else to go they went into Breteuil, and found the village deserted of all but French and American Military Police. They tried to get directions, and at last found a French mule team to take them to La Folie, where they finally arrived at four o’clock in the morning.

The next day they went on to Tartigny, where they were to be located for a time.

One of the lassies left her sister with the canteen one day and started out with another Officer to the Divisional Gas Officer to get a new gas mask, for something had happened to hers. As they reached a crossroads a boy on a wheel called out: “Oh, they’re shelling the road! Pull into the village quick!”

When they arrived in the village there was a great shell just fallen in the very centre of the town. The girl thought of her sister all alone in the canteen, for the shells were falling everywhere now, and they started to take a short cut back to Tartigny, but the Military Police stopped them, saying they couldn’t go on that road in the daytime as it was under observation, so they had to go back by the road they had come. The canteen was at the gateway of a chateau, and when they reached there they saw the shells falling in the chateau yard and through the glass roof of the canteen. It was a trying time for the two brave girls.

They had been invited out to dinner that evening at the Officers’ Mess. As a rule, they did not go much among the officers, but this was a special invitation. The shells had been falling all the afternoon, but they were quite accustomed to shells and that did not stop the festivities. During the dinner the soldier boys sang and played on guitars and banjos. But when the dinner was over they asked the girls to sing.

It was very still in the mess hall as the two lovely lassies took their guitars and began to sing. There was something so strong and sweet and pure in the glance of their blue eyes, the set of their firm little chins, so pleasant and wholesome and merry in the very curve of their lips, that the men were hushed with respect and admiration before this highest of all types of womanhood.

It was a song written by their Commander that the girls had chosen, with a sweet, touching melody, and the singers made every word clear and distinct:

Bowed beneath the garden shades, Where the Eastern—sunlight fades, Through a sea of griefs He wades, And prays in agony. His sweat is of blood, His tears like a flood For a lost world flow down. I never knew such tears could be— Those tears He wept for me!

Hung upon a rugged tree On the hill of Calvary, Jesus suffered, death, to be The Saviour of mankind. His brow pierced by thorn, His hands and feet torn, With broken heart He died. I never knew such pain could be, This pain He bore for me!

Suddenly crashing into the midst of the melody came a great shell, exploding just outside the door and causing everyone at the table to spring to his feet. The singers stopped for a second, wavered, as the reverberation of the shock died away, and then went on with their song; and the officers, abashed, wondering, dropped back into their seats marvelling at the calmness of these frail women in the face of death. Surely they had something that other women did not have to enable them to sing so unconcernedly in such a time as this!

Love which conquered o’er death’s sting, Love which has immortal wing, Love which is the only thing My broken heart to heal. It burst through the grave, It brought grace to save, It opened Heaven’s gate. I never knew such love could be— This love He gave to me!

It needs some special experience to appreciate what Salvation Army lassies really are, and what they have done. They are not just any good sort of girl picked up here and there who are willing to go and like the excitement of the experience; neither are they common illiterate girls who merely have ordinary good sense and a will to work. The majority of them in France are fine, well-bred, carefully reared daughters of Christian fathers and mothers who have taught them that the home is a little bit of heaven on earth, and a woman God’s means of drawing man nearer to Him. They have been especially trained from childhood to forget self and to live for others. The great slogan of the Salvation Army is “Others.” Did you ever stop to think how that would take the coquetry out of a girl’s eyes, and leave the sweet simplicity of the natural unspoiled soul? We have come to associate such a look with a plain, homely face, a dull complexion, careless, severe hair-dressing and unbeautiful clothes. Why?