In the village of Nonsard a little way beyond Mt. Sec they found a building that twenty-four hours before had been a German canteen. Above the entrance was the sign “Kamerad, tritt’ ein.”
The Salvation Army people stepped in and took possession, finding everything ready for their use. They even found a lard can full of lard and after a chemist had analyzed it to make sure it was not poisoned they fried doughnuts with it. In one wall was a great shell hole, and the village was still under shell fire as they unloaded their truck and got to work. One lassie set the water to heat for hot chocolate, while another requisitioned a soldier to knock the head off a barrel of flour and was soon up to her elbows mixing the dough for doughnuts. Before the first doughnut was out of the hot fat several hundred soldiers were waiting in long, patient, ever-growing lines for free doughnuts and chocolate. These things were always served free after the men had been over the top.
The lassies had had no sleep for thirty-six hours, but they never thought of stopping until everybody was served. In that one day their three tons of supplies entirely gave out.
The Red Cross was there with their rolling kitchen. They had plenty of bread but nothing to put on it. The Salvation Army had no stove on which to cook anything, but they had quantities of jam and potted meats. They turned over ten cases of jam, some of the cases containing as many as four hundred small jars, to the Red Cross, who served it on hot biscuits. Some one put up a sign: “This jam furnished by the Salvation Army!” and the soldiers passed the word along the line: “The finest sandwich in the world, Red Cross and Salvation Army!” The first day two Salvation Army girls served more than ten thousand soldiers in their canteen. They did not even stop to eat. The Red Cross brought them over hot chocolate as they worked.
Evening brought enemy airplanes, but the lassies did not stop for that and soon their own aerial forces drove the enemy back.
That night the girls slept in a dirty German dugout, and they did not dare to clean up the place, or even so much as to move any of the débris of papers and old tin and pasteboard cracker boxes, or cans that were strewn around the place until the engineer experts came to examine things, lest it might be mined and everything be blown up. The girls set up their cots in the clearest place they could find, and went to sleep. One of the women, however, who had just arrived, had lost her cot, and being very weary crawled into a sort of berth dug by the Germans in the wall, where some German had slept. She found out from bitter experience what cooties are like.
The next morning they were hard at work again as early as seven o’clock. Two long lines of soldiers were already patiently waiting to be served. The girls wondered whether they might not have been there all night. This continued all day long.
“We had to keep on a perpetual grin,” said one of the lassies, “so that each soldier would think he had a smile all his own. We always gave everything with a smile.” Yet they were not smiles of coquetry. One had but to see the beautiful earnest faces of those girls to know that nothing unholy or selfish entered into their service. It was more like the smile that an angel might give.
Here is one of the many popular songs that have been written on the subject which shows how the soldiers felt:
Salvation Lassie of Mine