My loved ones in the Homeland
Are waiting me to come,
Where neither death nor sorrow
Invades their holy home;
O dear, dear native country!
O rest and peace above!
Christ, bring us all to the Homeland
Of Thy redeeming love.

Into the midst of the song came the engine on the little narrow track straight toward where he stood, and he had to step aside onto a pile of dirt to finish his song.

That same Captain went on ahead to the Home Land not long after when the epidemic of influenza swept over the world; and he was given the honor of a military funeral.

VI.
The Baccarat Sector

Baccarat was the Zone Headquarters for that Sector.

Down the Main street there hung a sign on an old house labeled “Modern Bar.”

Inside everything was all torn up. It had never been opened since the battles of 1914. The Germans had lived there and everything was in an awful condition. One wonders how they endured themselves. The Military detailed two men for two days to spade up and carry away the filth from the bedrooms, and it took two women an entire week all but one day, scrubbing all day long until their shoulders ached, to scrub the place clean. But they got it clean. They were the kind of women that did not give up even when a thing seemed an impossibility. This was the sort of thing they were up against continually. They could have no meetings that week because they had to scrub and make the place fit for a Salvation Army hut.

Two of the lassies were awakened early one bright morning by the sound of an axe ringing rhythmically on wood, just back of their canteen. It was a cheerful sound to wake to, for the girls had been through a long wearing day and night, and they knew when they went to sleep that the wood was almost gone. It was always so pleasant to have someone offer to cut it for them, for they never liked to have to ask help of the soldiers if they could possibly avoid it. But there was so much else to be done besides cutting wood. Not that they could not do that, too, when the need offered. The sisters looked sleepily at one another, thinking simultaneously of the poor homesick doughboy who had told them the day before that chopping wood for them made him think of home and mother and that was why he liked to do it. Of course, it was he hard at work for them before they were up, and they smiled contentedly, with a lifted prayer for the poor fellow. They knew he had received no mail for four months and that only a few days before he had read in a paper sent to one of his pals of the death of his sister. Of course, his heart was breaking, for he knew what his widowed mother was suffering. They knew that his salvation from homesickness just now lay in giving him something to do, so they lingered a little just to give him the chance, and planned how they would let him help with the doughnuts, and fix the benches, later, when the wood was cut.

In a few minutes the girls were ready for the day’s work and went around to the kitchen, where the sound of the ringing axe was still heard in steady strokes. But when they rounded the corner of the kitchen and greeted the wood-chopper cheerily, he looked up, and lo! it was not the homesick doughboy as they had supposed, but the Colonel of the regiment himself who smiled half apologetically at them, saying he liked his new job; and when they invited him to breakfast he accepted the invitation with alacrity.

After breakfast the girls went to work making pies. There had been no oven in the little French town in which they were stationed, and so baking had been impossible, but the boys kept talking and talking about pies until one day a Lieutenant found an old French stove in some ruins. They had to half bury it in the earth to make it strong enough for use, but managed to make it work at last, and though much hampered by the limitations of the small oven, they baked enough to give all the boys a taste of pie once a week or so. Pie day was so welcomed that it almost made a riot, so many boys wanted a slice.