Sung on Memorial Day in France
“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:
‘For 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 His eternal 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 on to a pile of dirt to finish his song. The same captain went on ahead to the Homeland not long after when the epidemic of influenza swept over the world; and he was given the honor of a military funeral.”
Edward Marshall had an article in Scribner’s Magazine in 1898 which is here abbreviated, about the unique conditions under which the boys sang