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
“The Salvation Army keeps open house, and any time that a body of men
come back from the front lines, in from a convoy, there is hot coffee
and sometimes home-made doughnuts (all free to the men). I was in
command of a town where the hut never closed till 3 or 4 in the
morning, and their girls baked pies and made doughnuts up to the front,
under shell fire, for our infantrymen. A Salvation Army lassie is safe
without an escort anywhere in France where there is an American
soldier. That speaks for itself. I am for any organization that is out
to do something for my men, and I think that it is the idea of the
American people when they give their money. What we want is someone who
is willing to come over here and do something for the boys, regardless
of the fact that it may not net any gain—in fact, may not help them to
gather enough facts for a lecture tour when they return home.”
Headquarters, Third Division,
September 5,1918.
My Dear Mr. Leffingwell:
Your letter of July 22d just received. It has, perhaps, been somewhat
delayed in reaching me, owing to the fact that I have recently been
transferred to another division. I only wish things had been so that I
might have granted you or a representative of the Salvation Army an
interview when I was in the States recently, but, being under orders, I
could wait for nothing. Whatever I may have said, in a casual way, of
the work of the Salvation Army in France, I assure you was all
deserved. Your organization has been doing a splendid work for the men
of my former division and other troops who have come in contact with
it. I have often remarked, as have many of the officers, that after the
war the Salvation Army is going to receive such a boom from the boys
who have come in touch with it over here that it will seem like a
veritable propaganda! Why shouldn’t it? For your work has been
conducted in such a quiet, unostentatious, unselfish way that only a
man whose sensibilities are dead can fail to appreciate it. I have
found several of your workers, whose names at this moment I am unable
to recall, putting up with all sorts of hardships and inconveniences,
working from daylight until well into the night that the boys might be
cheered in one way or another. Your shacks have always been at the
disposal of the chaplains for their regimental services. Whether Mass
for the Catholic chaplains or Holy Communion for an Episcopalian
chaplain, they always found a place to set up their altars in the
Salvation Army huts; and the Protestant chaplains, also the Jewish,
always, to my knowledge, were given its use for their services. I have
found your own services have been very acceptable to the boys, in
general, but perhaps your doughnut program, with hot coffee or
chocolate, means as much as anything. Not that, like those of old, we
follow the Salvation Army because we can get filled up, but we all like
their spirit. More than on one occasion do I know of troops moving at
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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