They left at midnight on foot accompanied by one of the Salvation Army men workers who had been badly gassed and needed to get back of the lines and have some treatment. It was brilliant moonlight as they hiked it down the road, the airplanes were whizzing over their heads and the anti-aircraft guns piling into them. They started for La Folie, the Headquarters of the Staff-Captain of that zone, but they lost their way and got far out of the track, arriving at last at Breteuil. Coming to the woods a Military Police stationed at the crossroads told them:
“You can’t go into Breteuil because they have been shelling it for twenty minutes. Right over there beyond where you are standing a bomb dropped a few minutes ago and killed or wounded seven fellows. The ambulance just took them away.”
However, as they did not know where else to go they went into Breteuil, and found the village deserted of all but French and American Military Police. They tried to get directions, and at last found a French mule team to take them to La Folie, where they finally arrived at four o’clock in the morning.
The next day they went on to Tartigny, where they were to be located for a time.
One of the lassies left her sister with the canteen one day and started out with another Officer to the Divisional Gas Officer to get a new gas mask, for something had happened to hers. As they reached a crossroads a boy on a wheel called out: “Oh, they’re shelling the road! Pull into the village quick!”
When they arrived in the village there was a great shell just fallen in the very centre of the town. The girl thought of her sister all alone in the canteen, for the shells were falling everywhere now, and they started to take a short cut back to Tartigny, but the Military Police stopped them, saying they couldn’t go on that road in the daytime as it was under observation, so they had to go back by the road they had come. The canteen was at the gateway of a chateau, and when they reached there they saw the shells falling in the chateau yard and through the glass roof of the canteen. It was a trying time for the two brave girls.
They had been invited out to dinner that evening at the Officers’ Mess. As a rule, they did not go much among the officers, but this was a special invitation. The shells had been falling all the afternoon, but they were quite accustomed to shells and that did not stop the festivities. During the dinner the soldier boys sang and played on guitars and banjos. But when the dinner was over they asked the girls to sing.
It was very still in the mess hall as the two lovely lassies took their guitars and began to sing. There was something so strong and sweet and pure in the glance of their blue eyes, the set of their firm little chins, so pleasant and wholesome and merry in the very curve of their lips, that the men were hushed with respect and admiration before this highest of all types of womanhood.
It was a song written by their Commander that the girls had chosen, with a sweet, touching melody, and the singers made every word clear and distinct:
Bowed beneath the garden shades,
Where the Eastern—sunlight fades,
Through a sea of griefs He wades,
And prays in agony.
His sweat is of blood,
His tears like a flood
For a lost world flow down.
I never knew such tears could be—
Those tears He wept for me!
Hung upon a rugged tree
On the hill of Calvary,
Jesus suffered, death, to be
The Saviour of mankind.
His brow pierced by thorn,
His hands and feet torn,
With broken heart He died.
I never knew such pain could be,
This pain He bore for me!