The young Adjutant lassie who fried the first doughnut in France says that invariably the boys would begin to talk about home and mother while they were eating the doughnuts. Through the hole in the doughnut they seemed to see their mother's face, and as the doughnut disappeared it grew bigger and clearer.
The young Ensign lassie who had originated and _made_ the first doughnut in France contrived to make many pies on a very tiny French stove with an oven only large enough to hold two pies at a time. Meanwhile, frying doughnuts on the top of the stove.
It wasn't long before the record for the doughnut makers had been brought up to five thousand a day, and some of the unresting workers developed "doughnut wrist" from sticking to the job too long at a time.
It was the original thought that pie would be the greatest attraction, but it was difficult to secure stoves with ovens adequate for baking pies, and after the ensign's experiment with doughnuts it was found that they could more easily be made and were quite as acceptable to the American boy.
Meantime, the pie was coming into its own, back in Demange also.
It was only a little stove, and only room to bake one pie at a time, but it was a savory smell that floated out on the air, and it was a long line of hungry soldiers that hurried for their mess kits and stood hours waiting for more pies to bake; and the fame of the Salvation Army began to spread far and wide. Then one day the "Stars and Stripes," the organ of the American Army, printed the following poem about the lassie who labored so far forward that she had to wear a tin hat:
"Home is where the heart is"-- Thus the poet sang; But "home is where the pie is" For the doughboy gang! Crullers in the craters, Pastry in abris-- This Salvation Army lass Sure knows how to please!
Tin hat for a halo! Ah! She wears it well! Making pies for homesick lads Sure is "beating hell!" In a region blasted By fire and flame and sword, This Salvation Army lass Battles for the Lord!
Call me sacrilegious And irreverent, too; Pies? They link us up with home As naught else can do! "Home is, where the heart is"-- True, the poet sang; But "home is where the pie is"-- To the Yankee gang!
It was no easy task to open up a chain of huts, for there was an amazing variety of details to be attended to, any one of which might delay the work. A hundred and one unexpected situations would develop during the course of a single day which must be dealt with quickly and intelligently. The fact that the Salvation Army section of the American Expeditionary Force is militarized and strictly accountable for all of its action to the United States military authorities is complicated in many places by the further fact that the French civil and military authorities must also be taken into consideration and consulted at every step. Nevertheless, in spite of all difficulties the work went steadily forward. The patient officers who were seeing to all these details worked almost night and day to place the huts and workers where they would do the most good to the greatest number; and steadily the Salvation Army grew in favor with the soldiers.
