Kellogg, McGinnis, and some other of our Red Cross men—to say nothing of a big Red Cross truck—kept with it. While it had been assumed by the Paris headquarters of the American Red Cross that it would be impossible to serve the boys on their long march into the occupied area and so no provision was made for the forwarding of comfort supplies, as a matter of actual fact there was a good deal that could be done—and was done.
In such a situation was Red Cross opportunity, time and time and time again. And if Paris for a little was neglectful of the fullness of all of it, our Red Cross men who were at the Rhine were not—not for one single moment. They were on the job, and, with the limited facilities at hand, more than made good with it. One single final incident will show:
On the morning that the Thirty-second swung down into Wasserbillig from the pleasant, war-spared Luxembourg country and first entered Prussian Germany, the Red Cross men with it found that two of their fellows—Lieutenants R. S. Gillespie and Robert Wildes—were already handling the situation. These men had previously been engaged in similar work at Longwy, and had been sent forward with a five-ton truck, loaded with foodstuffs, for such returning prisoners—and there were many of them—as the Thirty-second might encounter on its eastward march. Under Lieutenant Gillespie's direction a canteen already was in operation at the railroad station there in Wasserbillig. Equipped with a small supply of tin cups, plates, and the like—to say nothing of several stoves—it was serving soup, bread, jam, beans, bacon, corned beef, and coffee. The prisoners (soldiers and civilians—men, women, and children, and many of them in a pitiable condition) came through from Germany on the trains up the valley of the Moselle. They had a long wait, generally overnight, in Wasserbillig. And there the American Red Cross fed them by the hundreds, and in every possible way ministered to their comfort.
It saw opportunity, and reached to it. It saw a chance of service, and welcomed it. The record of its welcome is written in the hearts and minds and memories of the boys who marched down the valley of the Moselle, through Treves and Cochem, to Coblenz. From those hearts and minds and memories they cannot easily be erased.
CHAPTER VIII
OUR RED CROSS PERFORMS ITS SUPREME MISSION
After all is said and done, what is the supreme purpose of the Red Cross?