It was in an old French barracks that they located the Salvation Army canteen in Treveray. One corner was boarded off for a bedroom for the girls. There were windows but not of glass, for they would have soon been shattered, and, too, they would have let too much light through. They were canvas well camouflaged with paint so that the enemy shells would not be attracted at night, and, of course, one could not see through them.
Inside the improvised bedroom were three little folding army cots, a board table, a barrack bag and some boxes. This was the only place where the girls could be by themselves. On rainy days the furniture was supplemented by a dishpan on one cot, a frying-pan on another, and a lard tin on the third, to catch the drops from the holes in the roof. The opposite corner of the barracks was boarded off for a living-room. In this was a field range and one or two tables and benches.
The rest of the hut was laid out with square bare board tables. The canteen was at one end. The piano was at one side and the graphophone at the other. Sometimes in places like this, the hut would be too near the front for it to be thought advisable to have a piano. It was too liable to be shattered by a chance shell and the management thought it unwise to put so much money into what might in a moment be reduced to worthless splinters. Then the boys would come into the hut, look around disappointedly and say: “No piano?”
The cheerful woman behind the counter would say sympathetically: “No, boys, no piano. Too many shells around here for a piano.”
The boys would droop around silently for a minute or two and then go off. In a little while back they would come with grim satisfaction on their faces bearing a piano.
“Don’t ask us where we got it,” they would answer with a twinkle in reply to the pleased inquiry. “This is war! We salvaged it!”
Around the room on the tables were plenty of magazines, books and games. Checkers was a favorite game. No card playing, no shooting crap. The canteen contained chocolate, candy, writing materials, postage stamps, towels, shaving materials, talcum powder, soap, shoestrings, handkerchiefs in little sealed packets, buttons, cootie medicine and other like articles. The Salvation Army did not sell nor give away either tobacco or cigarettes. In a few cases where such were sent to them for distribution they were handed over to the doctors for the badly wounded in the hospitals or the very sick men accustomed to their use, who were almost insane with their nerves. They also procured them from the Red Cross for wounded men, sometimes, who were fretting for them, but they never were a part of their supplies and far from the policy of the Salvation Army. Furthermore, the Salvation Army sent no men to France to work for them who smoked or used tobacco in any form, or drank intoxicating liquors. No man can hold a commission in the Salvation Army and use tobacco! It is a remarkable fact that the boys themselves did not want the Salvation Army lassies to deal in cigarettes because they knew it would be going against their principles to do so.
Occasionally a stranger would come into the canteen and ask for a package of cigarettes. Then some soldier would remark witheringly: “Say, where do you come from? Don’t you know the Salvation Army don’t handle tobacco?”
The men were always deeply grateful to get talcum powder for use after shaving. It seemed somehow to help to keep up the morale of the army, that talcum powder, a little bit of the soothing refinement of the home that seemed so far away.
To this hut whenever they were at liberty came Jew and Gentile, Protestant and Catholic, rich and poor. War is a great leveler and had swept away all differences. They were a great brotherhood of Americans now, ready, if necessary, to die for the right.