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
There were in this place some Christian boys who came from families
where they had been accustomed to family worship, and who now that they
were far away from it, looked back with longing to the days when it had
been a part of every day. Things look different over there with the
sound of battle close at hand, and customs that had been, a part of
every-day life at home became very dear, perhaps dearer than they had
ever seemed before. They found out that the Salvation Army people had
prayers every night after they closed the canteen at half-past nine and
went to their rooms in a house not far away, and so they begged that
they might share the worship with them. So every night they took home
fifteen or twenty men to the living-room of the house where they stayed
just as many as they could crowd in, and there they would have a little
Bible reading and prayer together. The Father only knows how many souls
were strengthened and how many feet kept from falling because of those
brief moments of worship with these faithful men and women of God.
“Oh, if you only knew what it means to us!” one of the men tried to
tell them one day.
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.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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