One cannot realize the extent of this proposition without counting up all the lemons and sugar that would be required, and remembering that supplies were obtained only by keeping in constant touch with the Headquarters of that zone and always sending word immediately when any need was discovered. There is nothing slow about the Salvation Army and they are not troubled with too much red tape. If necessity presents itself they will even on occasion cut what they have to help someone.
The airplanes visited them every night that week, and sometimes they did not think it worth while to go to bed at all; they had to run to the safety trenches so often. It was just a little bit of a village with dugouts out on the edge.
One night they had gone to bed and a terrific explosion occurred which rocked the little house where they were. They thought of course the bomb had fallen in the village, but they found it was quite outside. It had made such a big hole in the ground that you could put a whole truck into it.
The trenches in which they hid were covered over with boards and sand, and were not bomb proof, but they were proof against pieces of shell and shrapnel.
It was a very busy time for the girls because so many different outfits were passing and repassing that they had to work from morning early till late at night.
At Bullionville the hut was in a building that bore the marks of much shelling. The American boys promptly dubbed the place "Souptown."
The Division moved to Vaucouleurs for rest and replacements. At Vaucouleurs there was a great big hut with a piano, a victrola, and a cookstove.
They started the canteen, made doughnuts and pies, and gave entertainments.
But best of all, there were wonderful meetings and numbers of conversions, often twenty and twenty-five at a time giving themselves to Christ. The boys would get up and testify of their changed feelings and of what Christ now meant to them, and the others respected them the more for it.
They stayed here two weeks and everybody knew they were getting ready for a big drive. It was a solemn time for the boys and they seemed to draw nearer to the Salvation Army people and long to get the secret of their brave, unselfish lives, and that light in their eyes that defied danger and death. In the distance you could hear the artillery, and the night before they left, all night long, there was the tramp, tramp, tramp of feet, the boys "going up."