“Aren’t you tired? Aren’t you afraid?” asked someone of a lassie who had been working hard for forty consecutive hours, aiding the doctors in caring for the wounded, and in a lull had found time to mix up and fry a batch of doughnuts in a corner from which the roof had been completely blown by shells.
“Oh, no! It’s great!” she replied eagerly. “I’m the luckiest girl in the world.”
By this time the Salvation Army had acquired many great three-ton trucks, and the drivers of those risked their lives daily to carry supplies to the dugouts and huts that were taking care of the men at the front.
There were signs all over everywhere: “Attention! The Enemy Sees You!” Trucks were not allowed to go in daytime except in case of great emergency. Sometimes in urgent cases day-passes would be given with the order: “If you have to go, go like the devil!”
The enemy always had the range on the road where the trucks had to pass, and especially in exposed places and on cross-roads a man had no chance if he paused. Once he had been sighted by the enemy he was done for. A man driving on a hasty errand once dropped his crank, and stopped his truck, to pick it up. Even as he stooped to take it a shell struck his truck and smashed it to bits.
Most of the travelling had to be done at night. Silently, without a light over roads as dark as pitch, where the only possible guide was the faint line above where the trees parted and showed the sky; over rough, muddy roads, filled with shell-holes, the trucks went nightly. Just fall in line, keep to the right, and whistle softly when something got in the way. No claxon horns could be used, for that was the gas alarm. A man could not even wear a radiolight watch on his wrist or a driver smoke a cigarette.
One very dark night a truck came through with a man sitting away out on the radiator watching the road and telling the driver where to go. The only light would be from shells exploding or occasional signal lights for a moment.
To get supplies from where they were to where they were needed was an urgent necessity which often arose with but momentary warning—frequently with no warning at all. The American front was a matter not of miles, but of hundreds of miles, and the call for supplies might come from any point along that front. Sometimes the call meant the immediate shipment of tons of blankets, oranges, lemons, sugar, flour for doughnuts, lard, chocolate and other materials, to a point 200 miles distant. At times a railroad may supply a part of the route, but always there is a long, dangerous truck haul, and usually the entire route must be covered by truck.
During the winter there were many thrills added to the already strenuous task of the Salvation Army truck drivers. One of them driving late at night in a snowstorm, mistook a river for the road for which he was searching, and turned from the real road to the snow-covered surface of the river, which he followed for some little distance before discovering his mistake. Fortunately, the ice was solid and the truck unloaded-an unusual combination.
Another missed the road and drove into a field, where his wheels bogged down. His fellow-traveller, driving a Ford, went for help, leaving him with his truck, for if it had been left unguarded it would have soon been stripped of every movable part by passing truck drivers. Here he remained for almost forty-eight hours, during which time there was considerable shelling.