“The Salvation Army does much good work in keeping the boys in the right spirit so that they are glad to go back to the trenches when their turn comes. There is no Salvation Army hut on this front. I often wish there was one on every front. I believe the Salvation Army does not get its full credit over in the States. Perhaps the people over there do not understand the full meaning of the work it is doing over here. I want the Salvation Army to know that it has all of the boys over here back of it and we want to keep up the good work. We will go through hell, if necessary, because we know the folks back home are back of us. We want the Salvation Army to feel the same way. The boys over here are really back of it and we want you to continue your good work.”
“There is just one thing more I wish to speak of, and that is the little old Salvation Army. You will never see me, nor any of the other boys over here, laugh at their street services in the future, and if I see anyone else doing that little thing that person is due for a busted head! I haven’t seen where they are raising a tenth the money some of the other societies are, but they are the topnotchers of them all as the soldiers’ friend, and their handouts always come at the right time. Some of those girls work as hard as we do.”
“The Salvation Army over here is doing wonderful work. They haven’t any shows or music, but they certainly know what pleases the boys most, and feed us with homemade apple pie or crullers, with lemonade—a great big piece of pie or three crullers, with a large cup of lemonade, for a franc (18-1/2 cents).
“These people are working like beavers, and the people in the States ought to give them plenty of credit and appreciate their wonderful help to the men over here.” “We were in a bomb-proof semi-dugout, in the heart of a dense forest, within range of enemy guns, my Hebrew comrade and I. We were talking of the fate that brought us here—of the conditions as we left them at home. There was the thought of what ‘might’ happen if we were to return to America minus a limb or an eye; we were discussing the great economic and moral reform which is a certainty after the war, when through the air came the harmonious strumming of a guitar accompanying a sweet, feminine voice, and we heard:
Lead, Kindly Light, amid the encircling gloom;
Lead Thou me on;
The night is dark and I am far from home,
Lead Thou me on.
Keep Thou my feet; I do not ask to see
The distant scene—
One step enough for me.
“It was the Salvation Army! In a desert of human hearts, many of them wounded with heartache, these brave, brave servants of the Son of David came to cheer us up and make life more bearable.
“In our outfit are Greeks, Italians, Bohemians, Irish, Jews—all of them loyal Americans—and the Salvation Army serves each with an impartial self-sacrifice which should forever still the voices of critics who condemn sending Army lassies over here.
“Those in the ranks are men. The Salvation Army women are admired—almost worshipped—but respected and safe. Men by the thousands would lay down their lives for the Salvationists, and not till after the war will the full results of this sacrifice by Salvation Army workers bear fruit. But now, with so many strong temptations to go the wrong way, here are noble girls roughing it, smiling at the hardships, singing songs, making doughnuts for the doughboys, and always reminding us, even in danger, that it is not all of ‘life to live,’ bringing to us recollections of our mothers, sisters, and sweethearts, and if anyone questions, ’Is it worth while?’ the answer is: ‘A thousand times yes!’ and I cannot refrain from sending my hearty thanks for all this service means to us.
“A few miles in back of us now, a half dozen Connecticut girls representing the Salvation Army are doing their bit to make things brighter for us, and say, maybe those girls cannot bake. Every day they furnish us with real homemade crullers and pies at a small cost, and their coffee, holy smoke! it makes me homesick to even write about it. The girls have their headquarters in an old tumble-down building and they must have some nerve, for the Boche keeps dropping shells all around them day and night, and it would only take one of those shells to blow the whole outfit into kingdom come.”
In a letter from a private to his mother while he was lying wounded in the hospital, he says of the Salvation Army and Red Cross: