That night they slept in the woods on litters, and the next day they went on farther into the woods, twelve kilometres beyond what had been German front.

Here they found a whole little village of German dugouts in the form of log cabin bungalows in the woods. It was a beautifully laid out little village, each bungalow complete, with running water and electric lights and all conveniences. There were a dance hall, a billiard room, and several pianos in the woods. There were also fine vegetable gardens and rabbit hutches full of rabbits, for the Germans had been obliged to leave too hastily to take anything with them.

The boys were hungry, some of them half starved for something different from the hard fare they could take with them over the top, and they made rabbit stews and cooked the vegetables and had a fine time.

The girls up at the front had no time for making doughnuts, so the girls back of the lines made 8000 doughnuts and sent them up by trucks for distribution. They also distributed oranges to the soldiers.

News came to the girls after they had been for a week in Nonsard that they were to make a long move.

Back to Verdun they went and stopped just long enough to look at the city. They were much impressed with St. Margaret’s school for young ladies, and a wonderful old cathedral standing on the hill with a wall surrounding it. Just the face of the building was left, all the rest shot away, and through the concrete walls were holes, with guns bristling from every one.

They did not linger long for duty called them forward on their journey. At dusk they stopped in a little village, bought some stuff, and asked a French woman to cook it for them. They inquired for a place in which to wash and were given a bar of soap and directed to the village pump up the street. After supper they went on their way to Benoitvaux. Here they found difficulty in getting quarters, but at last an old French woman agreed to let them sleep in her kitchen and for a couple of days they were quartered with her. The word went forth that there were two American girls there and people were most curious to see them. One afternoon two French soldiers came to the kitchen to visit them. It was raining, as usual, and the girls had stayed in because there was really nothing to call them out. The soldiers sat for some time talking. They had heard that America was a wild place with beaucoup Indians who wore scalps in their belts, and they wanted to know if the girls were not afraid. It was a bit difficult conversing, but the girls got out their French dictionary and managed to convey a little idea of the true America to the strangers. At last one of the soldiers in quite a matter of fact tone informed one of the girls that he was pleased with her and loved her very much. This put a hasty close to the conversation, the lassie informing him with much dignity that men did not talk in that way to girls they had just met in America and that she did not like it. Whereupon the girls withdrew to the other end of the kitchen and turned their backs on their callers, busying themselves with some reading, and the crest-fallen gallants presently left.

They only had a canteen here one day when they were called to go on to Neuvilly.

When the offensive was extended to the Argonne the Salvation Army followed along, keeping in touch with the troops so that they felt that the Salvation Army was ever with them, sharing their hardships and dangers, and always ready to serve them.

Just before a drive, close to the front, there are always blockades of trucks going either way.

The Salvation Army truck filled with the workers on their way to Neuvilly one dark night was caught in such a blockade. They crawled along making only about a mile an hour and stopping every few minutes until there was a chance to go on again. At last the wait grew longer and longer, the mud grew deeper, and the truck was having such a hard time that the little company of travellers decided to abandon it to the side of the road till morning and get out and walk to Neuvilly. There was a field hospital there and they felt sure they could be of use; and anyway, it was better than sitting in the truck all night. They were then about eight kilometers from the front. So they all got off and walked. But when they reached the place, found the hospital, and essayed to go in, the mud was so deep that they were stuck and unable to move forward. Some soldiers had to rescue them and carry them to the hospital on litters.

Their help was accepted gladly, and they went to work at once. There were many shell-shocked boys coming in who needed soothing and comforting, and a woman’s hand so near the front was gratefully appreciated.

When at last there was a lull in the stream of wounded men the girls went to find a place to sleep for a little while. It was early morning, and sad sights met their eyes as they hurried down what had once been a pleasant village street. Destruction and desolation everywhere. The house that had been selected for a Salvation Army canteen was nearly all gone. One end was comparatively intact, with the floor still remaining, and this was to be for the canteen. The rest of the building was a series of shell holes surrounding a cellar from which the floor had been shot away.

The women reconnoitred and finally decided to unfold their cots and try to get a wink of sleep down in that cellar. It did not take them long to get settled. The cots were brought down and placed quickly among the fallen rafters, stone and tiling. Part of the walls that were standing leaned in at a perilous slant, threatening to fall at the slightest wind, but the lassies took off their shoes, rolled up in their blankets, and were at once oblivious to all about them, for they had been travelling all the day before and had worked hard all night.

One hour later, still early in the morning, they were awakened by the arrival of the truck and the thumping of boxes, tables and supplies as the Salvation Army truck drivers unloaded and set up the paraphernalia of the canteen. The girls opened their eyes and looked about them, and there all around the building were American soldiers, a head in every shell hole, watching them sleep. There was something thrilling in the silent audience looking down with holy eyes—yes, I said holy eyes!—for whatever the American soldier may be in his daily life he had nothing in his eyes but holy reverence for these women of God who were working night and day for him. There was something touching, too, in their attitude, for perhaps each one was thinking of his mother or sister at home as he looked down on these weary girls, rolled up in the brown blankets, with their neat little brown shoes in couples under their cots, nothing visible above the blankets but their pretty rumpled brown hair.

The women did not waste much more time in sleeping. They arose at once and got busy. There were five tables in the canteen above and already from each one there stretched a long line of men waiting silently, patiently for the time to arrive when there would be something good to eat. The girls had no more sleep that day, and there simply was no seclusion to be had anywhere. Everything was shell-riddled.

When night came on the question of beds arose again. The cellar seemed hardly possible, and the military officers considered the question.

Across the road from the most ruined end of the canteen building stood an old church. All of its north wall was gone save a supporting column in the middle, all the north roof gone. There were holes in all the other walls, and all the windows were gone. The floor was covered with dÉbris and wreckage. It had been used all day for an evacuation hospital.

Just over the altar was a wonderful picture of the Christ ascending to heaven. It was still uninjured save for a shot through the heart.

The military officer stood on the steps of this ruined church, and, looking around in perplexity, remarked:

“Well, I guess this is the wholest place in town.” Then stepping inside he glanced about and pointed:

“And this is the most secluded spot here!”

The seclusion was a pillar! But the girls were glad to get even that for there was no other place, and they were very weary. So they set up their little cots, and prepared to roll themselves in their blankets for a well-earned rest.

The boys had built a small bonfire on the stone floor against a piece of one wall that was still standing, and now they sent a deputation to know if the girls would bring their guitars over and have a little music. The boys, of course, had no idea that the girls had not slept for more than twenty-four hours, and the girls never told them. They never even cast one wistful glance toward their waiting cots, but smilingly assented, and went and got their instruments.

Beneath the picture of the Christ, in front of the altar a few men were at work in an improvised office with four candles burning around them. In the rear of the church Lt.-Col. Frederick R. Fitzpatrick of the One Hundred and Tenth Ammunition Train had his office, and there another candle was burning. Some wounded men lay on stretchers in the shadowed northwest corner, and around the little fire the five Salvation Army lassies sat among two hundred soldiers. They sang at first the popular songs that everybody knew: “The Long, Long Trail,” “Keep the Home Fires Burning,” “Pack Up Your Troubles in Your Old Kit Bag and Smile! Smile! Smile!” and “Keep Your Head Down, Fritzie Boy!”

By and by some one called for a hymn, and then other hymns followed: “Jesus Lover of My Soul,” “When the Roll Is Called Up Yonder,” and, as always, the old favorite, “Tell Mother I’ll Be There!”

They sang for at least an hour and a half, and then they did not want to stop. Oh, but it was a great sound that rolled through the old broken walls of the church and floated out into the night! One of the lassies said she would not change crowds with the biggest choir in New York.

Then they asked the girls to sing and the room was very still as two sweet voices thrilled out in a tender melody, speaking every word distinctly:

Beautiful Jesus, Bright Star of earth!
Loving and tender from moment of birth,
Beautiful Jesus, though lowly Thy lot,
Born in a manger, so rude was Thy cot!

Beautiful Jesus, gentle and mild,
Light for the sinner in ways dark and wild,
Beautiful Jesus, O save such just now,
As at Thy feet they in penitence bow!

Beautiful Christ! Beautiful Christ!
Fairest of thousands and Pearl of great price!
Beautiful Christ! Beautiful Christ!
Gladly we welcome Thee, Beautiful Christ!

Before they had finished many eyes had turned instinctively toward the picture in the weirdly flickering light.

Then the young Captain-lassie asked her sister to read the Ninety-first Psalm, “He that dwelleth in the secret place of the Most High shall abide under the shadow of the Almighty,” and she told them that was a promise for those who trusted in God, and she wished they would think about it while they were going to sleep.

“This evening has made me think so much of home,” she said thoughtfully, drooping her lashes and then raising them with a sweeping glance that included the whole group, while the firelight flickered up and lit her lovely serious face, and touched her hair with lights of gold, “I suppose it has made every one else feel that way,” she went on; “I mean especially the evenings at home when the family gathered in the parlor, with one at the piano and brothers with their horns, and the rest with some kind of instrument, and we had a good ‘sing;’ and afterward father took the Bible and read the evening chapter, and then we had family prayers and kissed Mamma and Papa good night and went to bed. I shouldn’t wonder if many of you used to have homes like that?”

The lassie raised her eyes again and looked on them. Many of the men nodded. It was beautiful to see the look that came into their faces at these recollections.

“And you used to have family prayers, too, didn’t you?” she asked eagerly.

They nodded once more but some of them turned their faces away from the light quickly and brushed the back of their hands across their eyes.

“To-night has been a family gathering,” she went on, “We girls are little sisters to all you big brothers, and we have had a delightful time with just the family, and the evening chapter has been read, and now I think it would not be complete if we did not have the family prayers before we separate and go to sleep.”

Down went the heads in response, with reverent mien, and the place was very still while the lassie prayed. Afterward the boys joined their gruff voices, husky now with emotion, into the universal prayer with which she closed: “Our Father which are in heaven——”

They were all sorts and conditions of men gathered around the little fire in that old shell-torn church in Neuvilly that night. To quote from a letter written by a military officer, Lt-Col. Frederick R. Fitzpatrick, to his wife:

“There was the lad who was willing but not strong enough for field work, who was in the rear with the office; the walking wounded who had stopped for something to eat; the big, strong mule skinner who could throw a mule down or lift a case of ammunition, who was rough in appearance and speech and who would deny that the moisture in his eye was anything but the effects of the cold. There were the men who had been facing death a thousand times an hour for the last three days, who had not had a wash or a chance to take off their shoes and had been lying in mud in shell holes —men who looked as though they were chilled through and through; men on their way to the front, well knowing all the hardships and dangers which were ahead of them, but who were worried only about the delay in the traffic; doctors who had been working for three days without rest; men off ammunition and ration trucks, who had been at the wheel so long that they had forgotten whether it was three or four days and nights; wounded on their stretchers enjoying a smoke. And as I stepped in the door there were the feminine voices singing the good old tunes we all know so well, and not a sound in the church but as an accompaniment the distant booming of big guns, the rattle of small arms, the whirl of air craft, the passing of the ever-present column of trucks with rations and ammunition going up, and the wounded coming back; the shouted directions of the traffic police, the sound of the ammunition dump just outside the door and the rattle of the kitchens which surround the church, and which are working twenty-four hours a day.

There was the crowd of men, each uncovered, giving absolute undivided attention to the good, brave girls who were not making a meeting of it; it was just a meeting which grew—men who in their minds were back with mother and sister. The girls sang the good old songs, and then one of them offered a short prayer, in which all the men joined in spirit, and as I tip-toed out of the church it seemed to me that the four candles at the altar did not give all the light that was shown on the picture of Christ our Saviour. Every man in the building that night was in the very presence of God. It was not a religious meeting; it was a meeting full of religion. And it was a picture that will ever stand fresh in my memory and which will be an inspiration in time of doubt. There was nothing there but the real things, absolutely no sham of any kind. Oh, it was wonderful! I hope you can get just a little idea of what it was. I wish you would keep this letter. I want to be able to read it in future years.”

In what remained of another village not far distant from Neuvilly, the lassies had a tent erected. The rain was endless—a driving drizzle which quickly soaked through everything but the staunchest raincoats in a very few moments. The ground was so thickly covered by shell craters that they could find no clear space wide enough for the tent. It so happened that almost in the centre of the tent there was a big shell crater. In this the girls lighted a fire. All through the night, and through nights to follow, wounded men limping back through the rain and mud to the dressing stations came in to warm themselves around the fire in the shell hole, and to drink of the coffee prepared by the girls. As they sat around the blazing wood, the fire cast strange shadows on the bleached brown canvas of the tent. In spite of their wounds, they were very cheerful, singing as lightly as though they were safe at home.

Everybody had worked hard at Neuvilly, but they felt they must get to their own outfit as soon as possible at the Field Hospital up in Cheppy where the wounded were coming in droves and the boys were pouring in from the front half-starved, having been fighting all night with nothing to eat except reserve rations. Some had been longer with only such rations as they took from their dead comrades. The need was most urgent, but the puzzle was how to get there. The roads had been shelled and ploughed by explosives until there was no possible semblance of a way, and there were no conveyances to be had. The Zone Major had gone back for supplies, telling the girls to get the first conveyance possible going up the road. That was enough for the girls. “We’ve got to get there” they said, and when they said that one knew they would. They searched diligently and at last found a way. One girl rode on a reel cart, one on a mule team and one went with an old wagon. They went over roads that had to be made ahead of them by the engineers, and late in the night, bruised and sore from head to foot, they arrived at their destination.

The next morning they reported at the hospital for work and the Major in charge said: “I never was so glad to see anybody in my life!”

They went straight to work and served coffee and sandwiches to the poor half-starved men. The Red Cross men were there, also, with sandwiches, hot chocolate and candy.

The wounded men continued to pour in, later to be evacuated to the base hospital; they kept coming and coming, a thousand men where two hundred had been expected. There was plenty to be done. The girls were put in charge of different wards. They were under shell fire continually, but they were too busy to think of that as they hurried about ministering to the brave soldiers, who gave never a groan from their white lips no matter what they suffered.

The girls worked about eighteen hours a day, and slept from about one or two at night to five or six in the morning. The hospital was in front of the artillery and every shell that went over to Germany passed over their heads. When they had been there five days under continual shell fire from the enemy the General gave orders that they must leave, that it was no fit place for women so near to the front.

When the Salvation Army Zone Major brought this order to the girls rebellion shone in their eyes and they declared they would not leave! They knew they were needed there, and there they would stay! The Zone Major surveyed them with intense satisfaction. He turned on his heel and went back to the General:

“General,” he said, with a twinkle, “my girls say they won’t go.”

The General’s face softened, and the twinkle flashed across to his eyes, with something like a tear behind its fire. Somehow he didn’t look like a Commanding Officer who had just been defied. A wonderful light broke over his face and he said:

“Well, if the Salvation Army wants to stay let them stay!” And so they stayed.

It was in a German-dug cave that they had their headquarters, cut out of the side of a hill and opening into the hospital yard. It was a work of art, that cave. There was a passage-way a hundred feet long with avenues each side and places for cots, room enough to accommodate a hundred men.

The German airplanes came in droves. When the bugle sounded every one must get under cover. There must be nobody in sight for the Germans were out to get individuals, and even one person was not too insignificant for them to waste their ammunition upon. They had a mistaken idea, perhaps, that this sort of thing destroyed our morale. The tents, of course, were no protection against shells and bombs, and presently the Boche began to shell the town in good earnest, especially at night. Gas alarms, also, would sound out in the middle of the night and everybody would have to rush out and put on their gas masks. They would not last long at a time, of course, but it broke up any rest that might have been had, and it was only too evident that the enemy was trying to get the range on the hospital.

One morning, standing by the window making cocoa for the boys, one of the lassies saw an eight-inch shell land between the hospital tents, ten feet in front of the window, and only five feet from the door of the place where the severely wounded were lying. These shells always kill at two hundred feet. All that saved them was that the shell buried itself deep in the soft earth and was a dud.

The shells were coming every twenty minutes and there was no time to lose for now the enemy had their range. At once all hands got busy and began to evacuate the wounded men into the Salvation Army cave. The cave would accommodate seventy men, but they managed to get a hundred men inside, most of them on litters. They were all safe and the girls heard the whistle of the next shell and made haste toward safety themselves. But someone had carelessly dropped a whole outfit of blankets and things across the passageway of the dugout and the first woman to enter fell across it, shutting out the other two. Before anything could be done the next shell struck the doorway, partly burying the fallen young woman. Inside the dugout rocks came down on some of the men on litters, and anxious hands extricated the lassie from the dÉbris that had fallen upon her, and lifted her tenderly. She was pretty badly bruised and lamed, besides being wounded on her leg, but the brave young woman would not claim her wound, nor let it become known to the military authorities lest they would forbid the girls to stay at the front any longer. So for three weeks she patiently limped about and worked with the rest, quietly bearing her pain, and would not go to the hospital. One lassie outside was struck on the helmet by a piece of falling rock. If she had not had on her helmet she would have been killed.

The shelling continued for six hours.

The hospital was all the time filled with wounded men and there was plenty to be done twenty-four hours out of every day. The women moved about among the men as if they were their own brothers.

A poor shell-shocked boy lay on his cot talking wildly in delirium, living over the battle again, charging his men, ordering them to advance.

“Company H. Advance! See that hill over there? It’s full of Germans, but we’ve got to take it!”

Then he turned over and began to sob and cry, “Oh God! Oh God!”

A lassie went to him and soothed him, talking to him gently about home, asking him questions about his mother, until he grew calm and began to answer her, and rested back quite rationally. The stretcher-bearers came to take him to another hospital, and he started up, put out his hand and cried: “Oh, nurse! I’ve got to get back to my men! I’m the only one left!”

Thus the heart-breaking scenes were multiplied.

One boy came back to the hospital in the Argonne badly wounded. He called the lassie to him one day as she passed through the ward, and motioned her to lean down so he could talk to her. He said he knew he was hard hit and he wanted to tell her something.

“I was wounded, lying on the ground over there in No Man’s Land,” he went on. “It was all dark and I was waiting for someone to come along and help me. I thought it was all up with me and while I was lying there I felt something. I can’t explain it, but I knew it was there and I saw my mother and I prayed. Then my Buddy came along and I asked him if he could baptize me. He said he wasn’t very good himself but he guessed the heavenly Father would understand. So he stooped down and got some muddy water out of a shell hole close by and put it on my forehead, and prayed; and now I know it’s all right. I wanted you to know.”

Often the boys, just before they went over the top, would come to these girls and say:

“We’re going up there, now. You pray for us, won’t you?”

One day some boys came to the hut when there were not many about and asked the girls if they might talk with them. These boys were going over the top that night.

“We fellows want to ask you something,” they said. “Some of the chaplains have been telling us that if we go over there and die for liberty that it’ll be all right with us afterward. But we don’t believe that dope and we want to know the truth. Do you mean to tell me that if a man has lived like the devil he’s going to be saved just because he got killed fighting? Why, some of us fellows didn’t even go of our own accord. We were drafted. And do you mean to tell me that counts just the same? We want to know the truth!”

And then the girls had their opportunity to point the way to Jesus and speak of repentance, salvation from sin, and faith in the Saviour of the world.

A lassie was stooping over one young boy lying on a cot, washing his face and trying to make him more comfortable, and she noticed a hole in his breast pocket. Stooping closer she examined it and found it was a piece of high explosive shell that had gone through the cloth of his pocket and was embedded in his Testament, which he, like many of the boys, always kept in his breast pocket.

Another boy lay on a cot biting his lips to bear the agony of pain, and she asked him what was the matter, was the wound in his leg so bad? He nodded without opening his eyes. She went to ask the doctor if the boy couldn’t have some morphine to dull the pain. The Sergeant in charge came over and looked at him, examined the bandage on the boy’s leg and then exclaimed: “Who bandaged this leg?”

“I did” said the boy weakly, “I did the best I could.”

The poor fellow had bandaged his own leg and then walked to the hospital. The bandage had looked all right and no one had examined it until then, but the Sergeant found that it was so tight that it had stopped the circulation. He took off the bandage and made him comfortable, and the agony left him. In a little while the Salvation Army lassie passed that way again and found the boy with a little book open, reading.

“What is it?” she asked, looking at the book.

“My Testament,” he answered with a smile.

“Are you a Christian?”

“Oh, yes,” he said with another smile that meant volumes.

It grew dark in the tent for they dared not have lights on account of the enemy always watching, but stooping near a little later she could see that his lips were murmuring in prayer. There was an angelic smile on his white, dead face in the morning when they came to take him away.

There was a funeral every day in that place. A hundred boys were buried that week. Always the girls sang at the graves, and prayed. There would be just the grave digger, a few people, and some of the boys. Off to one side the Germans were buried. When the simple services over our own dead were complete one of the girls would say: “Now, friends, let us go and say a prayer beside our enemy’s graves. They are some mother’s boys, and some woman is waiting for them to come home!”

And then the prayers would be said once more, and another song sung.

Those were solemn, sorrowful times, death and destruction on every side. The fighting was everywhere. United States anti-aircraft guns firing at German planes; Germans firing at us; air fights in the sky above.

And in the midst of it all the boys had meetings every night on log piles out in the open. These meetings would begin with popular songs, but the boys would soon ask for the hymns and the meetings would work themselves out without any apparent leading up to it. The boys wanted it. They wanted to hear about religious things. They hungered for it. So they were held at the throne of God each night by the wonderful men and girls who had learned to know human hearts, and had attained such skill in leading them to the Christ for whom they lived.

It was not alone the doughnut that bound the hearts of the boys to the Salvation Army in France, it was what was behind the doughnut; and here, in these wonderful God-led meetings they found the secret of it all. Many of them came and told the girls they did not believe in the so-called “trench religion” and wanted to know the truth from them. And those girls told them the way of eternal life in a simple, beautiful way, not mincing matters, nor ignoring their sins and unworthiness, but pointing the way to the Christ who died to save them from sin, and who even now was waiting in silent Presence to offer them Himself. Great numbers of the men accepted Christ, and pledged themselves to live or die for Him whatever came to them.

How close the Salvation Army people had grown to the hearts and lives of the men was shown by the fact that when they came back from the fight they would always come to them as if they had come to report at home:

“We’ve escaped!” they would say. “We don’t know how it is, but we think it’s because you girls were praying for us, and the folks at home were praying, too!”

There were three cardinal principles which were deemed necessary to success in this work. The first and most important depended upon winning the confidence of the boys. This was a prime requisite in any work with the boys, especially by a religious organization.

The first quality looked for in a person professing religion is always consistency. It was felt that if the boys saw that the Salvation Army was consistent, that it stood only for those things in France which it was known to stand for in the United States, that the first step would be established in winning the confidence of the boy. It was therefore determined that the Salvation Army would not, under any circumstances, compromise, and that it should stand out in its religious work and adhere to its teachings as firmly and as vigorously as it was known to do at home.

A stand upon the tobacco question was, therefore, highly important. Other organizations were encouraging the use of tobacco but those who had come in contact with the Salvation Army at home knew that it had always discouraged its use, and although the officers had to go against the judgment of many high military authorities who thought they should handle it, they decided that the Salvation Army would not handle tobacco and that no one wearing its uniform should use it. The consistency of the Salvation Army and the careful conduct of its workers won the esteem of the boys.

The second requisite was that the Salvation Army should be willing to share their hardships. To accomplish this, it was made a rule that Salvation Army workers should not mess with the officers but should draw their rations at the soldiers’ mess, also that they should not associate with the officers more than was absolutely necessary and that in the huts. It was neither possible nor desirable that officers should be kept out of the huts, but as far as possible soldiers were made to feel that the Salvation Army was in France to serve them and not for its own pleasure or convenience.

The third requisite was that the Salvation Army should be willing to share their dangers and this was proved to them when they went to the trenches—the Salvation Army moved to the trenches with them and established huts and outposts as close to the front line as was permitted.