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
A Salvation Army Adjutant ran up there one day with his truck and found
an awful state of things. The whole place was full of refugees,
families bereft of their homes, everybody that could trying to get out
of the city. Just by accident he found out that the merchants were
willing to sell their jam at a very reasonable price, and so he bought
tons and tons of Bar-lé-Duc jam. That would help out a lot and go well
on bread, for of course there was no butter. Also it would make
wonderful pies and tarts if one only had the flour and other
ingredients.
As he drove into Montiers he was still thinking about it, and there on
the table in the Salvation Army hut stood as pretty a chocolate cake as
one would care to see. A bright idea came to the Adjutant:
“Let me have that cake,” said he to the lassie who had baked it, “and
I’ll take it to the General and see what I can do.”
It turned out that the cake was promised, but the lassie said she would
bake another and have it ready for him on his return trip; so in a few
days when he came back there was the cake.
Ah! That was a wonderful cake!
The lassie had baked it in the covers of lard tins, fourteen inches
across and five layers high! There was a layer of cake, thickly spread
with rich chocolate frosting, another layer of cake, overlaid with the
translucent Bar-lé-Duc jam, a third layer of cake with chocolate,
another layer spread with Bar-lé-Duc jam, then cake again, the whole
covered smoothly over with thick dark chocolate, top and sides, down to
the very base, without a ripple in it. It was a wonder of a cake!
With shining eyes and eager look the Adjutant took that beautiful cake,
took also twelve hundred great brown sugary doughnuts, and a dozen
fragrant apple pies just out of the oven, stowed them carefully away in
his truck, and rustled off to the Officers’ Headquarters. Arrived there
he took his cake in hand and asked to see the General. An officer with
his eye on the cake said the General was busy just now but he would
carry the cake to him. But the Adjutant declined this offer firmly,
saying: “The ladies of Montiers-sur-Saulx sent this cake to the
General, and I must put it into his hands”
He was finally led to the General’s room and, uncovering the great
cake, he said:
“The Salvation Army ladies of Montiers-sur-Saulx have sent this cake to
you as a sample of what they will do for the soldiers if we can get
flour and sugar and lard.”
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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