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The girls stowed themselves and their belongings into the big truck. Just as they were about to start they saw some infantry coming, seven men whom they knew, but in such a plight! They were unshaven, with white, sunken faces, and great dark hollows under their eyes. They were simply “all in,” and could hardly walk.
Without an instant’s hesitation the girls made a place for those poor, tired, dirty men in the truck, and the invitation was gratefully accepted.
There were more poor forlorn fellows coming along the road. They kept meeting them every little way, but they had no room to take in any more so they piled oranges in the back end of the truck and gave them to all the boys they passed who were walking.
Now the girls were on their way to Senlis, where they had planned to take dinner at a hotel in which they had dined before. It was one of the few buildings remaining in the town for the Germans, when they left Senlis, had set it on fire and destroyed nearly everything. But as the girls neared the town they began to think about the boys asleep in the back of the truck, who probably hadn’t had a square meal for a week, and they decided to take them with them. So they woke them up when they arrived at the hotel. Oh, but those seven dirty, unshaven soldiers were embarrassed with the invitation to dinner! At first they declined, but the girls insisted, and they found a place to wash and tidy up themselves a bit. In a few minutes into the big dining-room filled with French soldiers and a goodly sprinkling of French officers, marched those two girls, followed by their seven big unshaven soldiers with their white faces and hollow eyes, sat proudly down at a table in the very centre and ordered a big dinner. That is the kind of girls Salvation Army lassies are. Never ashamed to do a big right thing.
After the dinner they took the boys to their divisional headquarters, where they found their outfit.
They went on their way from Senlis to Dam-Martin to stay for a week back of the lines for rest.
There was a big French cantonment building here built for moving pictures, which was given to them for a canteen, and they set up their stove and went to work making doughnuts, and doing all the helpful things they could find to do for the boys who were soon to go to the front again.
Then orders came to move back to the Toul Sector.
Those were wonderful moonlight nights at Saizerais, but the Boche airplanes nearly pestered the life out of everybody.