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
One of the older Salvation Army workers remarked jocularly that the
Salvation Army had to go to France and get linked up with the doughnut
before America recognized it; but it was the same old Salvation Army
and the same old doughnut that it had always been. He averred that it
wasn’t the doughnut at all that made the Salvation Army famous, but the
wonderful girls that the Salvation Army brought over there; the girls
that lay awake at night after a long hard day’s work scheming to make
the way of the doughboy easier; scheming how to take the cold out of
the snow and the wet out of the rain and the stickiness out of the mud.
The girls that prayed over the doughnuts, and then got the maximum of
grace out of the minimum of grease.
The young Adjutant lassie who fried the first doughnut in France says
that invariably the boys would begin to talk about home and mother
while they were eating the doughnuts. Through the hole in the doughnut
they seemed to see their mother’s face, and as the doughnut disappeared
it grew bigger and clearer.
The young Ensign lassie who had originated and _made_ the first
doughnut in France contrived to make many pies on a very tiny French
stove with an oven only large enough to hold two pies at a time.
Meanwhile, frying doughnuts on the top of the stove.
It wasn’t long before the record for the doughnut makers had been
brought up to five thousand a day, and some of the unresting workers
developed “doughnut wrist” from sticking to the job too long at a time.
It was the original thought that pie would be the greatest attraction,
but it was difficult to secure stoves with ovens adequate for baking
pies, and after the ensign’s experiment with doughnuts it was found
that they could more easily be made and were quite as acceptable to the
American boy.
Meantime, the pie was coming into its own, back in Demange also.
It was only a little stove, and only room to bake one pie at a time,
but it was a savory smell that floated out on the air, and it was a
long line of hungry soldiers that hurried for their mess kits and stood
hours waiting for more pies to bake; and the fame of the Salvation Army
began to spread far and wide. Then one day the “Stars and Stripes,” the
organ of the American Army, printed the following poem about the lassie
who labored so far forward that she had to wear a tin hat:
“Home is where the heart is”—
Thus the poet sang;
But “home is where the pie is”
For the doughboy gang!
Crullers in the craters,
Pastry in abris—
This Salvation Army lass
Sure knows how to please!
Tin hat for a halo!
Ah! She wears it well!
Making pies for homesick lads
Sure is “beating hell!”
In a region blasted
By fire and flame and sword,
This Salvation Army lass
Battles for the Lord!
Call me sacrilegious
And irreverent, too;
Pies? They link us up with home
As naught else can do!
“Home is, where the heart is”—
True, the poet sang;
But “home is where the pie is”—
To the Yankee gang!
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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