Evening Republican, Volume 21, Number 125, Rensselaer, Jasper County, 4 June 1918 — Bombardments Cannot Drive This Woman Back [ARTICLE]

Bombardments Cannot Drive This Woman Back

•be Thinks Coffee for Soldiers Moro important Than Safety.

The following extracts are taken from • letter written by a Red Cross Canteen worker, Helen Mcßlhone, an American woman and college graduate now located tn a district almost constantly under bombardment: “Foyer des Allies, "Bar-le-Duc. •Things took very black to me. I am discouraged at the big outlook of affairs and also at .my small doings, but it may be the blackness that comes before dawn. Let us hope no. Our seen certainly need help now as much as the poilus. I am beginning to soo those who have boon at the treat In fact lam beginning to see gome of the results of this life. They are sick and homesick, and worse things have happened to them. Several have said : 'All we ask is to get to the front and do what we have to do. Anything is better than this life. . . .’ This morning we had more Americans than I have seen before at Ono time. One came up to me here as 1 was

drawing coffee from a big marmlte as fast as I could fill cups and, pointing to his pipe, said, Tobac, tobac.* I said, 'Do you sent some tobacco}* He seemed stunned for a moment and then said: 'Do you know it nearly gave me a 9t to hear you speak English. I haven't heard a woman speak English in five months.* He said he had been walklag about in the cold since four o’clock last night He couldn’t Ind a hotel or a bright light because, of course, everything is closed and darkened on account of the bombardments. . . . The Americans are very fond of ham sandwiches. They oat much more than the French soldiers, and when they first came in and ordered six eggs apiece it caused consternation throughout the land. The funniest thing of all to to hear the Sammies grandly urging these wealthy English girls to ‘keep the change—oh, keep the change I’ . . . We start the day at five and work continuously until nine, when three fresh cantinleres relieve us. At flvo we go on for the evening shift from five to eight, and it is the most exciting and exhausting of the shifts. There is a certain time when they come down on us like a flood, eight or ten deep around the counter and throe or four hundred altogether in this little room, as eager sad tired as schoolboys.’’ The foregoing letter Indicates that our soldiers look to the Red Cross Canteen as an oasis tn a desert. They would not have it if it were not for your Red Cross, \