Sometimes men who said they hadn’t prayed nor read their Bibles for years would be found in little groups openly reading a testament to each other.
When the girls opened their shutters in the morning they could look out over the spot in No Man’s Land which was the scene of such frightful German atrocities in 1914.
Our field artillery, stationed in the woods, sent over to the Salvation Army to know if they wouldn’t come over and cook something for them, they were starving for some home cooking. So two of the women put on their steel helmets and their gas masks, for the Boche planes were flying everywhere, and went over across No Man’s Land to see if there was a place where they could open up a hut. They were walking along quietly, talking, and had not noticed the German plane that approached. They were so accustomed to seeing them by twos and threes that a single one did not attract their attention. Suddenly almost over their heads the Boche dropped a shell, trying to get them. But it was a dud and did not explode. Two American soldiers came tearing over, crying: “Girls! Are you hurt?”
“Oh, no,” said one of them brightly. “The Lord wouldn’t let that fellow get us.”
The soldiers used strong language as they looked after the fast-vanishing plane, but then they glanced back at the women again with something unspoken in their eyes. They believed, those boys, they really did, that God protected those women; and they used to beg them to remain with their regiment when they were going near the front, because they wanted their prayers as a protection. Some of the regiments openly said they thought those girls’ prayers had saved their lives.
That Boche plane, however, had not far to go. Before it reached Baccarat the Americans trained their guns on it and brought it down in flames.
The house occupied by the Salvation Army girls as a billet had a sad story connected with it. When the Germans had come the father was soon killed and four German officers had taken possession of the place for their Headquarters. They also took possession of the two little girls of the family, nine and fourteen years of age, to wait upon them. And the first command that was given these children was that they should wait upon the men nude! The youngest child was not old enough to understand what this meant, but the older one was in terror, and they begged and cried and pleaded but all to no purpose. The officer was inexorable. He told them that if they did not obey they would be shot.
The poor old grandfather and grandmother, too feeble to do anything, and powerless, of course, to aid, could only endure in agony. The grandmother, telling the Salvation Army women the story afterward, pointed with trembling lingers and streaming eyes to the two little graves in the yard and said: “Oh, it would have been so much better if he had shot them! They lie out there as the result of their infamous and inhuman treatment.”
Some most amusing incidents came to the knowledge of the Salvation Army workers.
An old French woman, over eighty years of age, lived in one of the stricken villages on the Vosges front. Her home had been several times struck by shells and was frequently the target for enemy bombing squadrons. All through the war she refused to leave the home in which she had lived from earliest childhood.