The War Romance of the Salvation Army Part 20

Just in the midst of the talk the lights went out. Many a church under like conditions would have had a panic in no time, but this crowded audience sat perfectly quiet, listening as the speaker went on, quoting his Bible from memory where he could not read.

Over there in the corner on a bench sat the la.s.sies, the women who had been serving them all through the hard days, as quiet and calm in the darkness as though they sat in a cus.h.i.+oned pew in some well-lit church in New York. It was as if the guns were like annoying little insects that were outside a screen, and now and then slipped in, so little attention did the audience pay to them. When all those who wished to accept this wonderful invitation were asked to come forward, seven men arose and stumbled through the darkness. The light from a bursting sh.e.l.l revealed for an instant the forms of these men as they knelt at the rough bench in front, one of them with his steel helmet hanging from his arm as he prayed aloud for his own salvation. No one who was in that meeting that night could doubt but that Jesus Christ Himself was there, and that those men all felt His presence.

In Bertrichamps the Salvation Army was given a large gla.s.s factory for a canteen. It made a beautiful place, and there was room to take care of eight hundred men at a time. This building was also used by the Y. M. C.

A. as well as the Jews and the Catholics for their services, there being no other suitable place in town. But everybody worked together, and got along harmoniously.

Here there were some wonderful meetings, and it was great to hear the boys singing "When The Roll Is Called Up Yonder, I'll Be There." Perhaps if some of the half-hearted Christians at home could have caught the echo of that song sung with such earnestness by those boyish voices they would have had a revelation. It seemed as if the earth-film were more than half torn away from their young, wise eyes over there; and they found that earthly standards and earthly false-whisperings did not fit. They felt the spirit of the hour, they felt the spirit of the place, and of the people who were serving them patiently day by day; who didn't have to stay there and work; who might have kept in back of the lines and worked and sent things up now and then; but who chose to stay close with them and share their hards.h.i.+ps. They felt that something more than just love to their fellow-men had instigated such unselfishness. They knew it was something they needed to help them through what was before them. They reached hungrily after the Christ and they found Him.

Then they testified in the meetings. Often as many as twelve or more before an audience of five hundred would get up and tell what Jesus had become to them. In one meeting in this gla.s.s factory two hundred soldiers pledged to serve the Lord, to read their Bibles, and to pray.

There were in this place some Christian boys who came from families where they had been accustomed to family wors.h.i.+p, and who now that they were far away from it, looked back with longing to the days when it had been a part of every day. Things look different over there with the sound of battle close at hand, and customs that had been, a part of every-day life at home became very dear, perhaps dearer than they had ever seemed before. They found out that the Salvation Army people had prayers every night after they closed the canteen at half-past nine and went to their rooms in a house not far away, and so they begged that they might share the wors.h.i.+p with them. So every night they took home fifteen or twenty men to the living-room of the house where they stayed just as many as they could crowd in, and there they would have a little Bible reading and prayer together. The Father only knows how many souls were strengthened and how many feet kept from falling because of those brief moments of wors.h.i.+p with these faithful men and women of G.o.d.

"Oh, if you only knew what it means to us!" one of the men tried to tell them one day.

Sometimes men who said they hadn't prayed nor read their Bibles for years would be found in little groups openly reading a testament to each other.

When the girls opened their shutters in the morning they could look out over the spot in No Man's Land which was the scene of such frightful German atrocities in 1914.

Our field artillery, stationed in the woods, sent over to the Salvation Army to know if they wouldn't come over and cook something for them, they were starving for some home cooking. So two of the women put on their steel helmets and their gas masks, for the Boche planes were flying everywhere, and went over across No Man's Land to see if there was a place where they could open up a hut. They were walking along quietly, talking, and had not noticed the German plane that approached. They were so accustomed to seeing them by twos and threes that a single one did not attract their attention. Suddenly almost over their heads the Boche dropped a sh.e.l.l, trying to get them. But it was a dud and did not explode.

Two American soldiers came tearing over, crying: "Girls! Are you hurt?"

"Oh, no," said one of them brightly. "The Lord wouldn't let that fellow get us."

The soldiers used strong language as they looked after the fast-vanis.h.i.+ng plane, but then they glanced back at the women again with something unspoken in their eyes. They believed, those boys, they really did, that G.o.d protected those women; and they used to beg them to remain with their regiment when they were going near the front, because they wanted their prayers as a protection. Some of the regiments openly said they thought those girls' prayers had saved their lives.

That Boche plane, however, had not far to go. Before it reached Baccarat the Americans trained their guns on it and brought it down in flames.

The house occupied by the Salvation Army girls as a billet had a sad story connected with it. When the Germans had come the father was soon killed and four German officers had taken possession of the place for their Headquarters. They also took possession of the two little girls of the family, nine and fourteen years of age, to wait upon them. And the first command that was given these children was that they should wait upon the men nude! The youngest child was not old enough to understand what this meant, but the older one was in terror, and they begged and cried and pleaded but all to no purpose. The officer was inexorable. He told them that if they did not obey they would be shot.

The poor old grandfather and grandmother, too feeble to do anything, and powerless, of course, to aid, could only endure in agony. The grandmother, telling the Salvation Army women the story afterward, pointed with trembling lingers and streaming eyes to the two little graves in the yard and said: "Oh, it would have been so much better if he had shot them! They lie out there as the result of their infamous and inhuman treatment."

Some most amusing incidents came to the knowledge of the Salvation Army workers.

An old French woman, over eighty years of age, lived in one of the stricken villages on the Vosges front. Her home had been several times struck by sh.e.l.ls and was frequently the target for enemy bombing squadrons. All through the war she refused to leave the home in which she had lived from earliest childhood.

"It is not the guns, nor the bombs which can frighten me," she told a Salvation Army la.s.sie who was billeted with her for a time, "but I am very much afraid of the submarines."

The village was several hundred miles inland.

The activity was all at night, for no one dared be seen about in the daytime. It must be a very urgent duty that would call men forth into full view of the enemy. But as soon, as the dark came on the men would crawl into the trenches, stick their rifles between the sandbags and get ready for work.

It seemed to be always raining. They said that when it wasn't actually raining it was either clearing off or just getting ready to rain again.

Twenty minutes in the trenches and a man was all over mud, wet, cold, slippery mud. In his hair, down his neck, in his boots, everywhere.

Through the trenches just behind the standing place ran a deeper trench or drain to carry the water away, and this was covered over with a rough board called a duck-board. Underneath this duck-board ran a continual stream of water. A man would go along the trench in a hurry, make a misstep on one end of the duck-board and down he would go in mud and freezing water to the waist. In these cold, wet garments he must stay all night. The tension was very great.

As the soldiers had to work in the night, so the Salvation Army men and women worked in the night to serve them.

The Salvation Army men would visit the sentries and bring them coffee and doughnuts prepared in the dugouts by the girls. It was exceedingly dangerous work. They would crawl through the connecting trenches, which were not more than three feet deep, and one must stoop to be safe, and get to the front-line trenches with their cans of coffee. They would touch a fellow on the shoulder, fill his mug with coffee, and slip him some doughnuts. At such times the things were always given, not sold. They did not dare even to whisper, for the enemy listening posts were close at hand and the slightest breath might give away their position. The sermon would be a pat of encouragement on a man's shoulder, then pa.s.s on to the next.

One morning at three o'clock a Salvationist carried a second supply of hot coffee to the battery positions. One gunner with tense, strained face eyed his full coffee mug with satisfaction and said with a sigh: "Good! That is all I wanted. I can keep going until morning now!"

When the men were lined up for a raid there would be a prayer-meeting in the dugout, thirty inside and as many as could crowded around the door.

Just a prayer and singing. Then the boys would go to the girls and leave their little trinkets or letters, and say: "I'm going over the top, Sister. If I don't come back--if I'm kicked off--you tell mother. You will know what to say to her to help her bear up."

Three-quarters of an hour later what was left of them would return and the girls would be ready with hot coffee and doughnuts. It was heart-breaking, back-aching, wonderful work, work fit for angels to do, and these girls did it with all their souls.

"Aren't you tired? Aren't you afraid?" asked someone of a la.s.sie who had been working hard for forty consecutive hours, aiding the doctors in caring for the wounded, and in a lull had found time to mix up and fry a batch of doughnuts in a corner from which the roof had been completely blown by sh.e.l.ls.

"Oh, no! It's great!" she replied eagerly. "I'm the luckiest girl in the world."

By this time the Salvation Army had acquired many great three-ton trucks, and the drivers of those risked their lives daily to carry supplies to the dugouts and huts that were taking care of the men at the front.

There were signs all over everywhere: "ATTENTION! THE ENEMY SEES YOU!"

Trucks were not allowed to go in daytime except in case of great emergency. Sometimes in urgent cases day-pa.s.ses would be given with the order: "If you have to go, go like the devil!"

The enemy always had the range on the road where the trucks had to pa.s.s, and especially in exposed places and on cross-roads a man had no chance if he paused. Once he had been sighted by the enemy he was done for. A man driving on a hasty errand once dropped his crank, and stopped his truck, to pick it up. Even as he stooped to take it a sh.e.l.l struck his truck and smashed it to bits.

Most of the travelling had to be done at night. Silently, without a light over roads as dark as pitch, where the only possible guide was the faint line above where the trees parted and showed the sky; over rough, muddy roads, filled with sh.e.l.l-holes, the trucks went nightly. Just fall in line, keep to the right, and whistle softly when something got in the way.

No claxon horns could be used, for that was the gas alarm. A man could not even wear a radiolight watch on his wrist or a driver smoke a cigarette.

One very dark night a truck came through with a man sitting away out on the radiator watching the road and telling the driver where to go. The only light would be from sh.e.l.ls exploding or occasional signal lights for a moment.

To get supplies from where they were to where they were needed was an urgent necessity which often arose with but momentary warning--frequently with no warning at all. The American front was a matter not of miles, but of hundreds of miles, and the call for supplies might come from any point along that front. Sometimes the call meant the immediate s.h.i.+pment of tons of blankets, oranges, lemons, sugar, flour for doughnuts, lard, chocolate and other materials, to a point 200 miles distant. At times a railroad may supply a part of the route, but always there is a long, dangerous truck haul, and usually the entire route must be covered by truck.

During the winter there were many thrills added to the already strenuous task of the Salvation Army truck drivers. One of them driving late at night in a snowstorm, mistook a river for the road for which he was searching, and turned from the real road to the snow-covered surface of the river, which he followed for some little distance before discovering his mistake. Fortunately, the ice was solid and the truck unloaded-an unusual combination.

Another missed the road and drove into a field, where his wheels bogged down. His fellow-traveller, driving a Ford, went for help, leaving him with his truck, for if it had been left unguarded it would have soon been stripped of every movable part by pa.s.sing truck drivers. Here he remained for almost forty-eight hours, during which time there was considerable sh.e.l.ling.

A Catholic Chaplain told the Salvation Army Staff-Captain that he thought the reason the Salvation Army was so popular with his men was because the Salvation Army kept its promises to the men.

When the Salvation Army officer went to open work in the town of Baccarat it was so crowded that he was unable to secure accommodations. He was having dinner in the cafe, but could get no bread because he had no bread tickets, The local K. of C. man, observing his difficulty, supplied tickets, and, finding that he had no place to sleep, offered to share his own meagre accommodations. For several nights he shared his bed with him and the Salvation Army officer was greatly a.s.sisted by him in many ways.

The Salvation Army is popular not alone among the soldiers.

While the offensive was on in Argonne and north of Verdun, those who were in the huts in the old training area, which were then used as rest buildings, decided to do something for the boys, and on one occasion they fried fourteen thousand doughnuts and took them to the boys at the front.

They traveled in the trucks, and distributed the doughnuts to the boys as they came from the trenches and sent others into the trenches.

By the time they were through, the day was far spent and it was necessary for them to find some place to stay over night. Verdun was the only large city anywhere near but it had either been largely destroyed or the civil population had long since abandoned it and there was no place available.

Underneath the trenches, however, there had been constructed in ancient times, underground pa.s.sages. There are fifty miles of these underground galleries honeycombed beneath the city, sufficiently large to shelter the entire population. There are cross sections of galleries, between the longer pa.s.sage ways, and winding stairways here and there. Air is supplied by a system of pumps. There are theatres and a church, also. The Army protecting Verdun had occupied these underground pa.s.sages.

When the officer commanding the French troops learned that the Salvation Army girls were obliged to stay over night, he arranged for their accommodation in the underground pa.s.sage and here they rested in perfect security with such comforts as cots and blankets could insure.

It was said that they were the only women ever permitted to remain in these underground pa.s.sages.

VII.