Half an hour afterwards the same information had been disseminated throughout the camp. Lieutenant-Colonel Townsend had also arrived to award the citations and the Distinguished Service Crosses to the officers and soldiers who had merited the distinction.
Never were Sonya Clark and the six Red Cross nurses to forget this, their last picture of an American camp in France before the great movement of the victorious army toward the Rhine.
The clouds of the earlier afternoon had grown heavier and more snow was falling in larger flakes, so that the earth was covered with a thin white carpet.
A cold wind was blowing across the winter fields.
The American soldiers stood in long, even lines, erect, rugged and efficient.
Sonya and her group of Red Cross nurses managed to protect themselves a little from the cold by standing behind a group of officers and near one of the officer's tents, not far from Lieutenant-Colonel Townsend and Major Hersey. They were the only women in the camp at the present time.
Therefore the only feminine applause emanated from them when the first young officer came forward to receive his citation from the hands of the Commanding Officer.
First Lieutenant Leon De Funiak was a young French officer who had been attached to a division of the United States Marines.
In the name of the President he was presented with the Distinguished Service Cross for extraordinary heroism in action near St. Mihiel on September 12 when with excellent courage he had captured a machine gun which he turned upon an adjoining trench forcing the enemy occupants to surrender.
The second award was made to Corporal Donald Hackett, a friend of Carlo Navara's and an acquaintance of the Red Cross girls. Later, two citations were given to privates with whom they had no acquaintance.