Women of Belgium: Turning Tragedy to TriumphKellogg, Charlotte
History
Women of Belgium: Turning Tragedy to Triumph
Kellogg, Charlotte
Commission for Relief in Belgium; World War, 1914-1918 -- Hospitals
For when the C. R. B. sent out a call for new clothing materials in
January, 1916, somehow it reached a weather-beaten school-house on a
lonely stretch of coast 30 miles south of San Francisco. The teacher
hurriedly got together some wool, and began showing her eight pupils
(they happened all to be boys), how to knit caps for other boys of
their own size. Their few families gathered what they could, and on
her first free Saturday, the teacher started in an open buggy in the
rain for the C. R. B. Bureau in San Francisco. This meant 30 miles
over wretched roads, up hill and down, with her precious box. When we
opened it we found eight knitted caps, one small sack of rice, one
pair of fur-lined gloves, a bag of beans, a lady’s belt, plaid flannel
for a blouse, and 40 cents for eight five-cent stamps for the letters
the boys hoped to receive in answer to those they had carefully tucked
inside the caps. They did not know that our orders were to remove all
writing from all gifts, tho once in a while a line did slip in. I saw a
touching example of what these slips meant when I was leaving Brussels.
A group of women came to me to say, “Madame, we hear you are going
to California—is it true? And, if you are, may we not send a message
of just a single word by you? Will you not tell Margery Marshall, of
Saratoga, that the pretty dress she sent over a year ago, made a little
girl, oh, so happy! She has waited all these long months hoping to find
a way to thank Margery—and we _want_ to thank Margery. Will you tell
her?”
These offerings then were freighted to New York with the month’s
contributions, and there consigned to a C. R. B. ship, starting for
Rotterdam. In Rotterdam they were unloaded into the enormous C. R. B.
clothing warehouse, a corrugated zinc structure as big as a city block.
After the examinations, valuings and listings, they were reloaded on to
one of the C. R. B. barges that ply the canals constantly, and finally
deposited for the Comité National in the Hippodrome at Brussels. There
the women’s work began—in fact, to one woman especially is due the
credit for the completeness of the organization of this clothing
department.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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