Part 19 (2/2)

Over in one corner of the cemetery were two German graves, and one of the la.s.sies of that organization which proclaims salvation for all men went and laid some blossoms there also.

At La Folie one of the Salvation Army la.s.sies going across the fields on some errand of mercy found three American graves undecorated and bare on Memorial Day, and turning aside from the road she gathered great armfuls of scarlet poppies from the fields and came and laid them on the three mounds, then knelt and prayed for the friends of the boys whose bodies were lying there.

The whole world was startled and saddened when the news came that Lieutenant Quentin Roosevelt had been shot down in his airplane in action and fallen within the enemy's lines.

He was crudely buried by the Germans where he fell, near Chambray, and a rude cross set up to mark the place. All around were pieces of his airplane shattered on the ground and left as they had fallen.

When the spot fell into the hands of the Allies, the grave was cared for by the Salvation Army; a new white cross set up beside the old one, and gentle hands smoothed the mound and made it shapely. On Decoration Day Colonel Barker placed upon this grave the beautiful flowers arranged for by cable by Commander Booth.

The girls went down to decorate the two hundred American graves at Mandres, and even while they bent over the flaming blossoms and laid them on the mounds an air battle was going on over their heads. Close at hand was the American artillery being moved to the front on a little narrow- gauge railroad that ran near to the graveyard, and the Germans were firing and trying to get them.

But the girls went steadily on with their work, scattering flowers and setting flags until their service of love was over. Then they stood aside for the prayer and a song. One of the Salvation Army Captains with a fine voice began to sing:

My loved ones in the Homeland Are waiting me to come, Where neither death nor sorrow Invades their holy home; O dear, dear native country!

O rest and peace above!

Christ, bring us all to the Homeland Of Thy redeeming love.

Into the midst of the song came the engine on the little narrow track straight toward where he stood, and he had to step aside onto a pile of dirt to finish his song.

That same Captain went on ahead to the Home Land not long after when the epidemic of influenza swept over the world; and he was given the honor of a military funeral.

VI.

The Baccarat Sector

Baccarat was the Zone Headquarters for that Sector.

Down the Main street there hung a sign on an old house labeled ”MODERN BAR.”

Inside everything was all torn up. It had never been opened since the battles of 1914. The Germans had lived there and everything was in an awful condition. One wonders how they endured themselves. The Military detailed two men for two days to spade up and carry away the filth from the bedrooms, and it took two women an entire week all but one day, scrubbing all day long until their shoulders ached, to scrub the place clean. But they got it clean. They were the kind of women that did not give up even when a thing seemed an impossibility. This was the sort of thing they were up against continually. They could have no meetings that week because they had to scrub and make the place fit for a Salvation Army hut.

Two of the la.s.sies were awakened early one bright morning by the sound of an axe ringing rhythmically on wood, just back of their canteen. It was a cheerful sound to wake to, for the girls had been through a long wearing day and night, and they knew when they went to sleep that the wood was almost gone. It was always so pleasant to have someone offer to cut it for them, for they never liked to have to ask help of the soldiers if they could possibly avoid it. But there was so much else to be done besides cutting wood. Not that they could not do that, too, when the need offered.

The sisters looked sleepily at one another, thinking simultaneously of the poor homesick doughboy who had told them the day before that chopping wood for them made him think of home and mother and that was why he liked to do it. Of course, it was he hard at work for them before they were up, and they smiled contentedly, with a lifted prayer for the poor fellow. They knew he had received no mail for four months and that only a few days before he had read in a paper sent to one of his pals of the death of his sister. Of course, his heart was breaking, for he knew what his widowed mother was suffering. They knew that his salvation from homesickness just now lay in giving him something to do, so they lingered a little just to give him the chance, and planned how they would let him help with the doughnuts, and fix the benches, later, when the wood was cut.

In a few minutes the girls were ready for the day's work and went around to the kitchen, where the sound of the ringing axe was still heard in steady strokes. But when they rounded the corner of the kitchen and greeted the wood-chopper cheerily, he looked up, and lo! it was not the homesick doughboy as they had supposed, but the Colonel of the regiment himself who smiled half apologetically at them, saying he liked his new job; and when they invited him to breakfast he accepted the invitation with alacrity.

After breakfast the girls went to work making pies. There had been no oven in the little French town in which they were stationed, and so baking had been impossible, but the boys kept talking and talking about pies until one day a Lieutenant found an old French stove in some ruins. They had to half bury it in the earth to make it strong enough for use, but managed to make it work at last, and though much hampered by the limitations of the small oven, they baked enough to give all the boys a taste of pie once a week or so. Pie day was so welcomed that it almost made a riot, so many boys wanted a slice.

They were having a meeting one night at Baccarat. There was a great deal of noise going on outside the dugout. The sh.e.l.ls were falling around rather indiscriminately, but it takes more than sh.e.l.l fire to stop a Salvation Army meeting at the front. There is only one thing that will stop it, and that is a sudden troop movement. It is the same way with baseball, for the week before this meeting two regimental baseball teams played seven innings of air-tight ball while the sh.e.l.ls were falling not three hundred yards away at the roadside edge of their ball-ground. During the seven innings only eight hits were allowed by the two pitchers. The score was close and when at the end of the seventh a sh.e.l.l exploded within fifty yards of the diamond and an officer shouted: ”Game called on account of sh.e.l.l fire!” there was considerable dissatisfaction expressed because the game was not allowed to continue. It is with the same spirit that the men attend their religious meetings. They come because they want-to and they won't let anything interfere with it.

But on this particular night the meeting was in full force, and so were the sh.e.l.ls. It had been a meeting in which the men had taken part, led by one of the women whose leaders.h.i.+p was unquestioned among them, a personal testimony meeting in which several soldiers and an officer had spoken of what Christ had done for them. Then there was a solo by one of the la.s.sies, and the Adjutant opened his Bible and began to read. He took as his text Isaiah 55:1. ”Ho, every one that thirsteth, come ye to the waters, and he that hath no money; come ye, buy, and eat.”

Those boys knew what it was to be thirsty, terrible thirst! They had come back from the lines sometimes their tongues parched and their whole bodies feverish with thirst and there was nothing to be had to drink until the Salvation Army people had appeared with good cold lemonade; and when they had no money they had given it to them just the same. Oh, they knew what that verse meant and their attention was held at once as the speaker went on to show plainly how Jesus Christ would give the water of life just as freely to those who were thirsty for it. And they were thirsty! They did not wish to conceal how thirsty they were for the living water.

<script>