The War Romance of the Salvation Army

by Evangeline Booth; Grace Livingston Hill

“I should say not!” he replied vigorously with yet a twinkle of admiration for the brave lassies. “But you can take anything you want in this town.”

So the girls went out and found an old building. It was very dirty but they went cheerfully to work, cleaned it up, and started their canteen.

There was a hospital in the town; they knew that by the many ambulances that were continually going back and forth; so they offered their services to the doctors, which were eagerly accepted. After that they took turns staying in the canteen and going to the hospital.

The hospital was fearfully crowded, though it was in no measure the fault of the hospital authorities, for they were doing their best, working with all their might; but it had not been expected that there would be so many wounded at this point and they had not adequate accommodations. Many of the wounded boys were lying on the ground in the sun, covered with blood and flies, and parched with thirst and fever. There were not enough ambulances to carry them further back to the base hospitals.

The girls stretched pieces of canvas over the heads of the poor boys to keep off the sun; they got water and washed away the blood; and they sent one of their indefatigable truck drivers after some water to make lemonade. The little Adjutant twinkled his nice brown eyes and set his firm merry lips when they told him to get the water, in that place of no water, but he took his little Ford car and whirled away without a word, and presently he returned with a barrel of ice-cold water from a spring he had found two miles away. How the girls rejoiced that it was ice cold! And then they started making lemonade. They had known that the Adjutant would find water somewhere. He was the man the doughboys called “one game little guy,” because he was so fearless in going into No Man’s Land after the wounded, so indefatigable in accomplishing his purpose against all odds, so forgetful of self.

They had but one crate of lemons, one crate of oranges and one bag of sugar when they began making lemonade, but before they needed more it arrived just on the minute. It was almost like a miracle. For a whole car load of oranges and lemons had been shipped to Beauvais and arrived a day too late—after the troops had gone. They were of no use there, so the Zone Major had them shipped at once to the railhead at Crepy, and got a special permit to go over with trucks and take them up to Morte Fontaine.

The Salvation Army never does things by halves. Colonel Barker sent to Paris to get some mosquito netting to keep the flies off those soldiers, and failing to find any in the whole city he bought $10,000 worth of white net, such as is used for ladies’ collars and dresses—ten thousand yards at a dollar a yard—and sent it down to the hospital where it was used over the wounded men, sometimes over a wounded arm or leg or head, sometimes over a whole man, sometimes stretched as netting in the windows. And no ten thousand dollars was ever better spent, for the flies occasioned indescribable suffering as well as the peril of infection.

Wonderful relief and comfort all these things brought to those poor boys lying there in agony and fever. How delicious were the cooling drinks to their parched lips! The doctors afterward said that it was the cool drinks those girls gave to the men that saved many a life that day.

There were some poor fellows hurt in the abdomen who were not allowed to drink even a drop and who begged for it so piteously. For these the girls did all in their power. They bathed their faces and hands and dipping gauze in lemonade they moistened their lips with it.

The other day, after the war was over and a ship came sailing into New York harbor, one of these same fellows standing on the deck looked down at the wharf and saw one of these same girls standing there to welcome him. As soon as he was free to leave the ship he rushed down to find her, and gripping her hand eagerly he cried out so all around could hear: “You saved my life that day. Oh, but I’m glad to see you! The doctor said it was that cold lemonade you gave me that kept me from dying of fever!”