Meantime, the American Army had slipped quietly into Montiers in the night and been billeted around in barns and houses and outhouses, and anywhere they could be stowed, and were keeping out of sight. For the German High Council had declared: “As soon as the American Army goes into camp we will blow them off the map.” Day after day the Germans lay low and watched. Their airplanes flew over and kept close guard, but they could find no sign of a camp anywhere. No tents were in sight, though they searched the landscape carefully; and day after day, for want of something better to do they bombarded Bar-lé-Duc. Every day some new ravishment of the beautiful city was wrought, new victims buried under ruins, new terror and destruction, until the whole region was in panic and dismay.
Now Bar-lé-Duc, as everyone knows, is the home of the famous Bar-lé-Duc jam that brings such high prices the world over, and there were great quantities stored up and waiting to be sold at a high price to Americans after the war. But when the bombardment continued, and it became evident that the whole would either be destroyed or fall into the hands of the Germans, the owners were frightened. Houses were blown up, burying whole families. Victims were being taken hourly from the ruins, injured or dying.
A Salvation Army Adjutant ran up there one day with his truck and found an awful state of things. The whole place was full of refugees, families bereft of their homes, everybody that could trying to get out of the city. Just by accident he found out that the merchants were willing to sell their jam at a very reasonable price, and so he bought tons and tons of Bar-lé-Duc jam. That would help out a lot and go well on bread, for of course there was no butter. Also it would make wonderful pies and tarts if one only had the flour and other ingredients.
As he drove into Montiers he was still thinking about it, and there on the table in the Salvation Army hut stood as pretty a chocolate cake as one would care to see. A bright idea came to the Adjutant:
“Let me have that cake,” said he to the lassie who had baked it, “and I’ll take it to the General and see what I can do.”
It turned out that the cake was promised, but the lassie said she would bake another and have it ready for him on his return trip; so in a few days when he came back there was the cake.
Ah! That was a wonderful cake!
The lassie had baked it in the covers of lard tins, fourteen inches across and five layers high! There was a layer of cake, thickly spread with rich chocolate frosting, another layer of cake, overlaid with the translucent Bar-lé-Duc jam, a third layer of cake with chocolate, another layer spread with Bar-lé-Duc jam, then cake again, the whole covered smoothly over with thick dark chocolate, top and sides, down to the very base, without a ripple in it. It was a wonder of a cake!
With shining eyes and eager look the Adjutant took that beautiful cake, took also twelve hundred great brown sugary doughnuts, and a dozen fragrant apple pies just out of the oven, stowed them carefully away in his truck, and rustled off to the Officers’ Headquarters. Arrived there he took his cake in hand and asked to see the General. An officer with his eye on the cake said the General was busy just now but he would carry the cake to him. But the Adjutant declined this offer firmly, saying: “The ladies of Montiers-sur-Saulx sent this cake to the General, and I must put it into his hands”
He was finally led to the General’s room and, uncovering the great cake, he said: