Part 38

On the evening of June 14th they made fudge for the boys who were going to leave that night for the front lines.

For several hours the tables in the hut were filled with men writing letters to loved ones at home, and the women and girls had sheets of paper filled with addresses to which they had promised to write if the boys did not come back.

At last one of the men got up with his finished letter and quietly removed the phonograph and a few of its devotees who were not going up to the front yet, placing them outside at a safe distance from the hut. A soldier followed, carrying an armful of records, and the hut was cleared for the men who were “going in” that night.

For a little while they ate fudge and then they sang hymns for another half hour, and had a prayer. It was a very quiet little meeting. Not much said. Everyone knew how solemn the occasion was. Everyone felt it might be his last among them. It was as if the brooding Christ had made Himself felt in every heart. Each boy felt like crying out for some strong arm to lean upon in this his sore need. Each gave himself with all his heart to the quiet reaching up to God. It was as if the eating of that fudge had been a solemn sacrament in which their souls were brought near to God and to the dear ones they might never see on this earth again. If any one had come to them then and suggested the Philosophy of Nietzsche it would have found little favor. They knew, here, in the face of death, that the Death of Jesus on the Cross was a soul satisfying creed. Those who had accepted Him were suddenly taken within the veil where they saw no longer through a glass darkly, but with a face-to-face sense of His presence. They had dropped away their self assurance with which they had either conquered or ignored everything so far in life, and had become as little children, ready to trust in the Everlasting Father, without whom they had suddenly discovered they could not tread the ways of Death.

Then came the call to march, and with a last prayer the boys filed silently out into the night and fell into line. A few minutes later the steady tramp of their feet could be heard as they went down the street that led to the front.

Later in the night, quite near to morning, there came a terrific shock of artillery fire that heralded a German raid. The fragile army cots rocked like cradles in the hut, dishes rolled and danced on the shelves and tables, and were dashed to fragments on the floor. Shells wailed and screamed overhead; and our guns began, until it seemed that all the sounds of the universe had broken forth. In the midst of it all the gas alarm sounded, the great electric horns screeching wildly above the babel of sound. The women hurried into their gas masks, a bit flustered perhaps, but bearing their excitement quietly and helping each other until all were safely breathing behind their masks.

The next day several times officers came to the hut and begged the women to leave and go to a place of greater safety, but they decided not to go unless they were ordered away. On June 19th one of them wrote in her diary: “Shells are still flying all about us, but our work is here and we must stay. God will protect us.” Once when things grew quiet for a little while she went to the edge of the village and watched the shells falling on Boucq, where one of her friends was stationed, and declared: “It looks awfully bad, almost as bad as it sounds.”

The next morning as the firing gradually died away, Salvation Army people hurried up to Raulecourt from near-by huts to find out how these brave women were, and rejoiced unspeakably that every one was safe and well.

That night there was another wonderful meeting with the boys who were going to the front, and after it the weary workers slept soundly the whole night through, quietly and undisturbed, the first time for a week.

It was a bright, beautiful Sunday morning, June 23, 1918, when a little party of Salvationists from Raulecourt started down into the trenches. The muddy, dirty, unpleasant trenches! Sometimes with their two feet firmly planted on the duck-board, sometimes in the mud! Such mud! If you got both feet on it at once you were sure you were planted and would soon begin to grow!

As soon as they reached the trenches they were told: “Keep your heads down, ladies, the snipers are all around!” It was an intense moment as they crept into the narrow housings where the men had to spend so much time. But it was wonderful to watch the glad light that came into the men’s eyes as they saw the women.

“Here’s a real, honest-to-goodness American woman in the trenches!” exclaimed a homesick lad as they came around a turn.

“Yes, your mother couldn’t come to-day,” said the motherly Salvationist, smiling a greeting, “so I’ve come in her place.”

“All right!” said he, entering into the game. “This is Broadway and that’s Forty-second Street. Sit down.”

Of course there was nothing to sit down on in the trenches. But he hunted about till he found a chow can and turned it up for a seat, and they had a pleasant talk.

“Just wait,” he said. “I’ll show you a picture of the dearest little girl a fellow ever married and the darlingest little kid ever a man was father to!” He fumbled in his breast pocket right over his heart and brought out two photographs.

“I’d give my right arm to see them this minute, but for all that,” he went on, “I wouldn’t leave till we’ve fought this thing through to Berlin and given them a dose of what they gave little Belgium!”

They went up and down the trenches, pausing at the entrances to dugouts to smile and talk with the men. Once, where a grassy ridge hid the trench from the enemy snipers, they were permitted to peep over, but there was no look of war in the grassy, placid meadow full of flowers that men called “No Man’s Land.” It seemed hard to believe, that sunny, flower-starred morning, that Sin and Hate had the upper hand and Death was abroad stalking near in the sunlight.

It was a twelve-mile walk through the trenches and back to the hut, and when they returned they found the men were already gathering for the evening meeting.

That night, at the close of a heart-searching talk, eighty-five men arose to their feet in token that they would turn from the ways of sin and accept Christ as their Saviour, and many more raised their hands for prayers. One of the women of this party in her three months in France saw more than five hundred men give themselves to Christ and promise to serve Him the rest of their lives.

A little Adjutant lassie who was stationed at Boucq went away from the town for a few hours on Saturday, and when she returned the next day she found the whole place deserted. A big barrage had been put over in the little, quiet village while she was away and the entire inhabitants had taken refuge in the General’s dugout. Her husband, who had brought her back, insisted that she should return to the Zone Headquarters at Ligny-en-Barrios, where he was in charge, and persuaded her to start with him, but when they reached Menil-la-Tour and found that the division Chaplain was returning to Boucq she persuaded her husband that she must return with the Chaplain to her post of duty.

That night she and the other girls slept outside the dugout in little tents to leave more room in the dugout for the French women with their little babies. At half-past three in the morning the Germans started their shelling once more. After two hours, things quieted down somewhat and the girls went to the hut and prepared a large urn of coffee and two big batches of hot biscuits. While they were in the midst of breakfast there was another barrage. All day they were thus moving backward and forward between the hut and the dugout, not knowing when another barrage would arrive. The Germans were continually trying to get the chateau where the General had his headquarters. One shell struck a house where seven boys were quartered, wounding them all and killing one of them. Things got so bad that the Divisional Headquarters had to leave; the General sent his car and transferred the girls with all their things to Trondes. This was back of a hill near Boucq. They arrived at three in the afternoon, put up their stove and began to bake. By five they were serving cake they had baked. The boys said: “What! Cake already?” The soldiers put up the hut and had it finished in six hours.

While all this was going on the Salvation Army friends over at Raulecourt had been watching the shells falling on Boueq, and been much troubled about them.

These were stirring times. No one had leisure to wonder what had become of his brother, for all were working with all their might to the one great end.

Up north of Beaumont two aviators were caught by the enemy’s fire and forced to land close to the enemy nests. Instead of surrendering the Americans used the guns on their planes and held off the Germans until darkness fell, when they managed to escape and reach the American lines. This was only one of many individual feats of heroism that helped to turn the tide of battle. The courage and determination, one might say the enthusiasm, of the Americans knew no bounds. It awed and overpowered the enemy by its very eagerness. The Americans were having all they could do to keep up with the enemy. The artillerymen captured great numbers of enemy cannon, ammunition, food and other supplies, which the trucks gathered up and carried far to the front, where they were ready for the doughboys when they arrived. One of the greatest feats of engineering ever accomplished by the American Army was the bridging of the Meuse, in the region of Stenay, under terrible shell fire, using in the work of building the pontoons the Boche boats and materials captured during the fighting at Chateau-Thierry and which had been brought from Germany for the Kaiser’s Paris offensive in July. The Meuse had been flooded until it was a mile wide, yet there was more than enough material to bridge it.

As the Americans advanced, village after village was set free which had been robbed and pillaged by the Germans while under their domination. The Yankee trucks as they returned brought the women and children back from out of the range of shell fire, and they were filled with wonder as they heard the strange language on the tongues of their rescuers. They knew it was not the German, but they had many of them never seen an American before. The Germans had told them that Americans were wild and barbarous people. Yet these men gathered the little hungry children into their arms and shared their rations with them. There were three dirty, hungry little children, all under ten years of age, Yvonne, Louisette and Jeane, whose father was a sailor stationed at Marseilles. Yvonne was only four years of age, and she told the soldiers she had never seen her father. They climbed into the big truck and sat looking with wonder at the kindly men who filled their hands with food and asked them many questions. By and by, they comprehended that these big, smiling, cheerful men were going to take the whole family to their father. What wonder, what joy shone in their eager young eyes!

Strange and sad and wonderful sights there were to see as the soldiers went forward.

A pioneer unit was rushed ahead with orders to conduct its own campaign and choose its own front, only so that contact was established with the enemy, and to this unit was attached a certain little group of Salvation Army people. Three lassies, doing their best to keep pace with their own people, reached a battered little town about four o’clock in the morning, after a hard, exciting ride.