They were just lost to the land of reality when a soldier roused them summarily, saying:
"This is a heck of a place for the Salvation Army to go to sleep! If you don't mind I'll just pick your old bus out of here and send you on your way before it's light enough for Fritzy to spot you and send a calling card."
He was grinning at them cheerfully and they roused to the occasion.
"How are you going to do it?" asked the Adjutant, who, by the way, was Smiling Billy, the same one the soldiers called "one game little guy." "It will take a three-ton truck to get us out of this hole!"
"I haven't got a truck but I guess we can turn the trick all right!" said the soldier.
He disappeared into the darkness above the crater and in a moment reappeared with ten more dark forms following him, and another soldier who patrolled the rim of the crater on horseback.
"How do you like 'em?" he chuckled to the Salvation Army men, as he turned his flashlight on the ten and showed them to be big German prisoners of war. Under his direction they soon had the little Ford pushed and shouldered into the road once more. In a little while the Salvationists reached their destination and found to their relief that the rumor about the lassies was untrue.
At Mesnil-St.-Firmin one of the lassies, a young woman well known in New York society circles, but a loyal Salvationist and in France from the start, drove a little flivver carrying supplies for several nights, accompanied only by a young boy detailed from the Army. Every mile of the way was dark and perilous, but there was no one else to do the work, so she did it.
Here they were under shell fire every night. The girls slept in an old wine cellar, the only comparatively safe place to be found. It was damp, with a fearful odor they will never forget--moreover, it was already inhabited by rats. They frequently had to retire to the cellar during gas attacks, and stay for hours, sometimes having only time to seize an overcoat and throw it over their night-clothes. They were here through ten counter-attacks and when Cantigny was taken.
There seemed to be big movements among the Germans one day. They were bringing up reinforcements, and a large attack was expected. The airplanes were dropping bombs freely everywhere and it looked as if there would not be one brick left on the top of another in a few hours. Then the military authorities ordered the two girls to leave town. When the boys heard that the hut was being shelled and the girls were ordered to leave they poured in to tell them how much they would miss them. They well knew from experience that their staunch hardworking little friends would not have left them if they could have helped it. Also, they dreaded to lose these consecrated young women from their midst. They had a feeling that their presence brought the presence of the great God, with His protection, and in this they had come to trust in their hour of danger. Often the boys would openly speak of this, owning that they attributed their safety to the presence of their Christian friends.