Then the young Captain-la.s.sie asked her sister to read the Ninety-first Psalm, "He that dwelleth in the secret place of the Most High shall abide under the shadow of the Almighty," and she told them that was a promise for those who trusted in G.o.d, and she wished they would think about it while they were going to sleep.
"This evening has made me think so much of home," she said thoughtfully, drooping her lashes and then raising them with a sweeping glance that included the whole group, while the firelight flickered up and lit her lovely serious face, and touched her hair with lights of gold, "I suppose it has made every one else feel that way," she went on; "I mean especially the evenings at home when the family gathered in the parlor, with one at the piano and brothers with their horns, and the rest with some kind of instrument, and we had a good "sing;" and afterward father took the Bible and read the evening chapter, and then we had family prayers and kissed Mamma and Papa good night and went to bed. I shouldn"t wonder if many of you used to have homes like that?"
The la.s.sie raised her eyes again and looked on them. Many of the men nodded. It was beautiful to see the look that came into their faces at these recollections.
"And you used to have family prayers, too, didn"t you?" she asked eagerly.
They nodded once more but some of them turned their faces away from the light quickly and brushed the back of their hands across their eyes.
"To-night has been a family gathering," she went on, "We girls are little sisters to all you big brothers, and we have had a delightful time with just the family, and the evening chapter has been read, and now I think it would not be complete if we did not have the family prayers before we separate and go to sleep."
Down went the heads in response, with reverent mien, and the place was very still while the la.s.sie prayed. Afterward the boys joined their gruff voices, husky now with emotion, into the universal prayer with which she closed: "Our Father which are in heaven----"
They were all sorts and conditions of men gathered around the little fire in that old sh.e.l.l-torn church in Neuvilly that night. To quote from a letter written by a military officer, Lt-Col. Frederick R. Fitzpatrick, to his wife:
"There was the lad who was willing but not strong enough for field work, who was in the rear with the office; the walking wounded who had stopped for something to eat; the big, strong mule skinner who could throw a mule down or lift a case of ammunition, who was rough in appearance and speech and who would deny that the moisture in his eye was anything but the effects of the cold. There were the men who had been facing death a thousand times an hour for the last three days, who had not had a wash or a chance to take off their shoes and had been lying in mud in sh.e.l.l holes --men who looked as though they were chilled through and through; men on their way to the front, well knowing all the hardships and dangers which were ahead of them, but who were worried only about the delay in the traffic; doctors who had been working for three days without rest; men off ammunition and ration trucks, who had been at the wheel so long that they had forgotten whether it was three or four days and nights; wounded on their stretchers enjoying a smoke. And as I stepped in the door there were the feminine voices singing the good old tunes we all know so well, and not a sound in the church but as an accompaniment the distant booming of big guns, the rattle of small arms, the whirl of air craft, the pa.s.sing of the ever-present column of trucks with rations and ammunition going up, and the wounded coming back; the shouted directions of the traffic police, the sound of the ammunition dump just outside the door and the rattle of the kitchens which surround the church, and which are working twenty-four hours a day.
There was the crowd of men, each uncovered, giving absolute undivided attention to the good, brave girls who were not making a meeting of it; it was just a meeting which grew--men who in their minds were back with mother and sister. The girls sang the good old songs, and then one of them offered a short prayer, in which all the men joined in spirit, and as I tip-toed out of the church it seemed to me that the four candles at the altar did not give all the light that was shown on the picture of Christ our Saviour. Every man in the building that night was in the very presence of G.o.d. It was not a religious meeting; it was a meeting full of religion.
And it was a picture that will ever stand fresh in my memory and which will be an inspiration in time of doubt. There was nothing there but the real things, absolutely no sham of any kind. Oh, it was wonderful! I hope you can get just a little idea of what it was. I wish you would keep this letter. I want to be able to read it in future years."
In what remained of another village not far distant from Neuvilly, the la.s.sies had a tent erected. The rain was endless--a driving drizzle which quickly soaked through everything but the staunchest raincoats in a very few moments. The ground was so thickly covered by sh.e.l.l craters that they could find no clear s.p.a.ce wide enough for the tent. It so happened that almost in the centre of the tent there was a big sh.e.l.l crater. In this the girls lighted a fire. All through the night, and through nights to follow, wounded men limping back through the rain and mud to the dressing stations came in to warm themselves around the fire in the sh.e.l.l hole, and to drink of the coffee prepared by the girls. As they sat around the blazing wood, the fire cast strange shadows on the bleached brown canvas of the tent. In spite of their wounds, they were very cheerful, singing as lightly as though they were safe at home.
Everybody had worked hard at Neuvilly, but they felt they must get to their own outfit as soon as possible at the Field Hospital up in Cheppy where the wounded were coming in droves and the boys were pouring in from the front half-starved, having been fighting all night with nothing to eat except reserve rations. Some had been longer with only such rations as they took from their dead comrades. The need was most urgent, but the puzzle was how to get there. The roads had been sh.e.l.led and ploughed by explosives until there was no possible semblance of a way, and there were no conveyances to be had. The Zone Major had gone back for supplies, telling the girls to get the first conveyance possible going up the road.
That was enough for the girls. "We"ve _got_ to get there" they said, and when they said that one knew they would. They searched diligently and at last found a way. One girl rode on a reel cart, one on a mule team and one went with an old wagon. They went over roads that had to be made ahead of them by the engineers, and late in the night, bruised and sore from head to foot, they arrived at their destination.
The next morning they reported at the hospital for work and the Major in charge said: "I never was so glad to see anybody in my life!"
They went straight to work and served coffee and sandwiches to the poor half-starved men. The Red Cross men were there, also, with sandwiches, hot chocolate and candy.
The wounded men continued to pour in, later to be evacuated to the base hospital; they kept coming and coming, a thousand men where two hundred had been expected. There was plenty to be done. The girls were put in charge of different wards. They were under sh.e.l.l fire continually, but they were too busy to think of that as they hurried about ministering to the brave soldiers, who gave never a groan from their white lips no matter what they suffered.
The girls worked about eighteen hours a day, and slept from about one or two at night to five or six in the morning. The hospital was in front of the artillery and every sh.e.l.l that went over to Germany pa.s.sed over their heads. When they had been there five days under continual sh.e.l.l fire from the enemy the General gave orders that they _must_ leave, that it was no fit place for women so near to the front.
When the Salvation Army Zone Major brought this order to the girls rebellion shone in their eyes and they declared they would not leave! They knew they were needed there, and there they would stay! The Zone Major surveyed them with intense satisfaction. He turned on his heel and went back to the General:
"General," he said, with a twinkle, "my girls say they won"t go."
The General"s face softened, and the twinkle flashed across to his eyes, with something like a tear behind its fire. Somehow he didn"t look like a Commanding Officer who had just been defied. A wonderful light broke over his face and he said:
"Well, if the Salvation Army wants to stay let them stay!" And so they stayed.
It was in a German-dug cave that they had their headquarters, cut out of the side of a hill and opening into the hospital yard. It was a work of art, that cave. There was a pa.s.sage-way a hundred feet long with avenues each side and places for cots, room enough to accommodate a hundred men.
The German airplanes came in droves. When the bugle sounded every one must get under cover. There must be n.o.body in sight for the Germans were out to get individuals, and even one person was not too insignificant for them to waste their ammunition upon. They had a mistaken idea, perhaps, that this sort of thing destroyed our morale. The tents, of course, were no protection against sh.e.l.ls and bombs, and presently the Boche began to sh.e.l.l the town in good earnest, especially at night. Gas alarms, also, would sound out in the middle of the night and everybody would have to rush out and put on their gas masks. They would not last long at a time, of course, but it broke up any rest that might have been had, and it was only too evident that the enemy was trying to get the range on the hospital.
One morning, standing by the window making cocoa for the boys, one of the la.s.sies saw an eight-inch sh.e.l.l land between the hospital tents, ten feet in front of the window, and only five feet from the door of the place where the severely wounded were lying. These sh.e.l.ls always kill at two hundred feet. All that saved them was that the sh.e.l.l buried itself deep in the soft earth and was a dud.
The sh.e.l.ls were coming every twenty minutes and there was no time to lose for now the enemy had their range. At once all hands got busy and began to evacuate the wounded men into the Salvation Army cave. The cave would accommodate seventy men, but they managed to get a hundred men inside, most of them on litters. They were all safe and the girls heard the whistle of the next sh.e.l.l and made haste toward safety themselves. But someone had carelessly dropped a whole outfit of blankets and things across the pa.s.sageway of the dugout and the first woman to enter fell across it, shutting out the other two. Before anything could be done the next sh.e.l.l struck the doorway, partly burying the fallen young woman.
Inside the dugout rocks came down on some of the men on litters, and anxious hands extricated the la.s.sie from the _debris_ that had fallen upon her, and lifted her tenderly. She was pretty badly bruised and lamed, besides being wounded on her leg, but the brave young woman would not claim her wound, nor let it become known to the military authorities lest they would forbid the girls to stay at the front any longer. So for three weeks she patiently limped about and worked with the rest, quietly bearing her pain, and would not go to the hospital. One la.s.sie outside was struck on the helmet by a piece of falling rock. If she had not had on her helmet she would have been killed.
The sh.e.l.ling continued for six hours.
The hospital was all the time filled with wounded men and there was plenty to be done twenty-four hours out of every day. The women moved about among the men as if they were their own brothers.
A poor sh.e.l.l-shocked boy lay on his cot talking wildly in delirium, living over the battle again, charging his men, ordering them to advance.
"Company H. Advance! See that hill over there? It"s full of Germans, but _we"ve got to take it_!"
Then he turned over and began to sob and cry, "Oh G.o.d! Oh G.o.d!"
A la.s.sie went to him and soothed him, talking to him gently about home, asking him questions about his mother, until he grew calm and began to answer her, and rested back quite rationally. The stretcher-bearers came to take him to another hospital, and he started up, put out his hand and cried: "Oh, nurse! I"ve got to get back to my men! _I"m the only one left_!"
Thus the heart-breaking scenes were multiplied.
One boy came back to the hospital in the Argonne badly wounded. He called the la.s.sie to him one day as she pa.s.sed through the ward, and motioned her to lean down so he could talk to her. He said he knew he was hard hit and he wanted to tell her something.
"I was wounded, lying on the ground over there in No Man"s Land," he went on. "It was all dark and I was waiting for someone to come along and help me. I thought it was all up with me and while I was lying there I felt something. I can"t explain it, but I knew it was there and I saw my mother and I prayed. Then my Buddy came along and I asked him if he could baptize me. He said he wasn"t very good himself but he guessed the heavenly Father would understand. So he stooped down and got some muddy water out of a sh.e.l.l hole close by and put it on my forehead, and prayed; and now I know it"s all right. I wanted you to know."
Often the boys, just before they went over the top, would come to these girls and say:
"We"re going up there, now. You pray for us, won"t you?"
One day some boys came to the hut when there were not many about and asked the girls if they might talk with them. These boys were going over the top that night.
"We fellows want to ask you something," they said. "Some of the chaplains have been telling us that if we go over there and die for liberty that it"ll be all right with us afterward. But we don"t believe that dope and we want to know the truth. Do you mean to tell me that if a man has lived like the devil he"s going to be saved just because he got killed fighting?
Why, some of us fellows didn"t even go of our own accord. We were drafted.
And do you mean to tell me that counts just the same? We want to know the truth!"
And then the girls had their opportunity to point the way to Jesus and speak of repentance, salvation from sin, and faith in the Saviour of the world.
A la.s.sie was stooping over one young boy lying on a cot, washing his face and trying to make him more comfortable, and she noticed a hole in his breast pocket. Stooping closer she examined it and found it was a piece of high explosive sh.e.l.l that had gone through the cloth of his pocket and was embedded in his Testament, which he, like many of the boys, always kept in his breast pocket.
Another boy lay on a cot biting his lips to bear the agony of pain, and she asked him what was the matter, was the wound in his leg so bad? He nodded without opening his eyes. She went to ask the doctor if the boy couldn"t have some morphine to dull the pain. The Sergeant in charge came over and looked at him, examined the bandage on the boy"s leg and then exclaimed: "Who bandaged this leg?"
"I did" said the boy weakly, "I did the best I could."
The poor fellow had bandaged his own leg and then walked to the hospital.
The bandage had looked all right and no one had examined it until then, but the Sergeant found that it was so tight that it had stopped the circulation. He took off the bandage and made him comfortable, and the agony left him. In a little while the Salvation Army la.s.sie pa.s.sed that way again and found the boy with a little book open, reading.
"What is it?" she asked, looking at the book.
"My Testament," he answered with a smile.
"Are you a Christian?"
"Oh, yes," he said with another smile that meant volumes.
It grew dark in the tent for they dared not have lights on account of the enemy always watching, but stooping near a little later she could see that his lips were murmuring in prayer. There was an angelic smile on his white, dead face in the morning when they came to take him away.