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
Inside the improvised bedroom were three little folding army cots, a
board table, a barrack bag and some boxes. This was the only place
where the girls could be by themselves. On rainy days the furniture was
supplemented by a dishpan on one cot, a frying-pan on another, and a
lard tin on the third, to catch the drops from the holes in the roof.
The opposite corner of the barracks was boarded off for a living-room.
In this was a field range and one or two tables and benches.
The rest of the hut was laid out with square bare board tables. The
canteen was at one end. The piano was at one side and the graphophone
at the other. Sometimes in places like this, the hut would be too near
the front for it to be thought advisable to have a piano. It was too
liable to be shattered by a chance shell and the management thought it
unwise to put so much money into what might in a moment be reduced to
worthless splinters. Then the boys would come into the hut, look around
disappointedly and say: “No piano?”
The cheerful woman behind the counter would say sympathetically: “No,
boys, no piano. Too many shells around here for a piano.”
The boys would droop around silently for a minute or two and then go
off. In a little while back they would come with grim satisfaction on
their faces bearing a piano.
“Don’t ask us where we got it,” they would answer with a twinkle in
reply to the pleased inquiry. “This is war! We salvaged it!”
Around the room on the tables were plenty of magazines, books and
games. Checkers was a favorite game. No card playing, no shooting crap.
The canteen contained chocolate, candy, writing materials, postage
stamps, towels, shaving materials, talcum powder, soap, shoestrings,
handkerchiefs in little sealed packets, buttons, cootie medicine and
other like articles. The Salvation Army did not sell nor give away
either tobacco or cigarettes. In a few cases where such were sent to
them for distribution they were handed over to the doctors for the
badly wounded in the hospitals or the very sick men accustomed to their
use, who were almost insane with their nerves. They also procured them
from the Red Cross for wounded men, sometimes, who were fretting for
them, but they never were a part of their supplies and far from the
policy of the Salvation Army. Furthermore, the Salvation Army sent no
men to France to work for them who smoked or used tobacco in any form,
or drank intoxicating liquors. No man can hold a commission in the
Salvation Army and use tobacco! It is a remarkable fact that the boys
themselves did not want the Salvation Army lassies to deal in
cigarettes because they knew it would be going against their principles
to do so.
Occasionally a stranger would come into the canteen and ask for a
package of cigarettes. Then some soldier would remark witheringly:
“Say, where do you come from? Don’t you know the Salvation Army don’t
handle tobacco?”
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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