Back of the lines in the rest billets and concentration camps, provisions were less generous than at the front until the Knights of Columbus took up the task of seeing that the men who were temporarily away from the active fighting had these facilities for bathing. It was but one of the many activities of the Knights of Columbus, but one of the most appreciated.
One of the first requisitions made by Rev. John B. De Valles, one of the first chaplains sent over by the Knights of Columbus, was for a shower bath and he set it up in connection with his headquarters in a little French town and it was overworked from the first. From this spread the movement for establishing shower baths in club houses being opened behind the lines and in villages.
There was no preaching in a Knights of Columbus hall or club room, but there was clean moral environment and healthy recreation and amusement, for this was proven the thing to keep up the morale of fighting men.
The Y. M. C. A. built 1,500 huts in Europe costing from $2,000 to $20,000 each, equipped with canteen, reading and writing and recreational facilities to soldiers. It operated twenty-eight different leave areas with hotels that had a total of 35,000 beds. In addition, in Paris, port towns, and several big centers in the war zone there were "Y" hotels for transient soldiers where one could get a clean bed and a good meal at about half the price charged by French hotels. Over 3,000 movie and theatrical shows a week were provided free, and 300 "Y" athletic directors had charge of the sports in the American army, operating 836 athletic fields. Enormous quantities of cookies and chocolate and cigarettes were supplied.
A hundred of the best known educators from America directed educational work. The staff consisted of Professor Erskine of Columbia University, Professor Daly of Harvard, Professor Coleman of Chicago University, Professor Appleton of the University of Kansas and Frank Spaulding, superintendent of the Cleveland public schools.
Seconding the work of the Y. M. C. A., its sister organization, the Y. W. C. A., extended its activities from the training camps of America to the battle-fields of Europe.
At the close of its first year of America's participation in the war, the Y. W. C. A. had six established lines of work in France:
Hostess Houses, clubs for French working women and business girls, clubs for nurses with the American army, clubs for women of the signal corps, clubs for British women (Waac's) working with the American army, and recreation work for all women employed in any way by the American Expeditionary Force. In one year its activities spread to twenty-five cities, and it had forty-three units.
The Hostess Houses were at Paris and Tours. The Hotel Petrograd, on the Rue Caumartin, was leased in Paris and turned out to be one of the most interesting centers of American life in France. It was run on the most liberal lines, in a thoroughly democratic way. The meals were good and in the big dining-room men were admitted on the same footing as women. There were two of these Hostess Houses at Tours.
For the girls of the signal corps twenty-two homes were opened and there were huts for the Waacs at Bourges and Tours. Y. W. C. A. secretaries were attached to twenty base hospital units and opened fourteen clubs for nurses.