The War Romance of the Salvation ArmyHill, Grace Livingston
History
The War Romance of the Salvation Army
Hill, Grace Livingston
World War, 1914-1918 -- War work -- Salvation Army
“Oh, that’s nothing,” was the gay reply, “I can see everything out of
the other eye. I’ve got seven holes in me, too, but believe me I’m not
going home for the loss of an eye and seven holes! I’ll get out yet and
get into the fight!”
The Salvation Army officer and his wife who were stationed at
Bonvillers visited every man in the local hospital every day, sleeping
every night in the open fields. As they are quite elderly, this was no
little hardship, especially in rainy weather.
Five lassies stationed at Noyers St. Martin were for several weeks
forced by the nightly shelling and air-raids to take their blankets out
into the fields at night and sleep under the stars. One of these girls
was called “Sunshine” because of her smile.
On the eve of Decoration Day a military Colonel visited her in the hut.
He seemed rather depressed, perhaps by the ceremonies of the day, and
said that he had come to be cheered up. In parting he said, “Little
girl, you had better get out of town early to-night; I feel as though
something is going to happen.” Less than an hour later, while the girls
were just preparing for the night in a field half a mile distant, an
aerial bomb dropped by an aviator on the house in which he was billeted
killed him and two other Captains who were sitting with him at the
time. He had been a great friend of the Salvation Army.
Out in a little village in Indiana there grew a fair young flower of a
girl. Her mother was a dear Christian woman and she was brought up in
her mother’s church, which she loved. When she was only twelve years
old she had a remarkable and thorough old-fashioned conversion, giving
herself with all her childish heart to the Saviour. She feels that she
had a kind of vision at that time of what the Lord wanted her to be, a
call to do some special work for Christ out in the world, helping
people who did not know Him, people who were sick and poor and
sorrowful. She did not tell her vision to anyone. She did not even know
that anywhere in the world were any people doing the kind of work she
felt she would like to do, and God had called her to do. She was shy
about it and kept her thoughts much to herself. She loved her own
church, and its services, but somehow that did not quite satisfy her.
One day when she was about fourteen years old the Salvation Army came
to the town where she lived and opened work, holding its meetings in a
large hall or armory. With her young companions she attended these
meetings and was filled with a longing to be one of these earnest
Christian workers.
Her mother, accustomed to a quiet conventional church and its way of
doing Christian work, was horrified; and in alarm sent her away to
visit her uncle, who was a Baptist minister. The daughter, dutiful and
sweet, went willingly away, although she had many a longing for these
new friends of hers who seemed to her to have found the way of working
for God that had been her own heart’s desire for so long.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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