Evening Republican, Volume 21, Number 133, Rensselaer, Jasper County, 13 June 1918 — HIS JOB TO BANDAGE WOUNDED HOUSES [ARTICLE+ILLUSTRATION]

HIS JOB TO BANDAGE WOUNDED HOUSES

American Boss Carpenter Putting frencb Villages Back on the Map It was a monotonous stretch of ugly trench, wire entanglements, gaping snell holes, accented by the blackened skeleton ot shell killed forests silhouet ted against a dull, hopeless sky. This had once been beautiful roiling land like our own Ohio and ln’Hana—rich Ui grain fields, orchards and gardens. Now It was desolation —nothing could live there —seemingly nothing did. We bad come on some rising ground, and as we climbed we reached the brow ot the slope, and of a sudden it seemed that-some giant bad suddenly twisted the old world under our feet and we were back home, for of a sud* den the sounds of life came up to us out of a hustling center of industry. That satisfying chug of an honest hammer bead sinking willing nail into sound wood, and before us was a panorama of new building, with plies of clean lumber stacked here and there, and the framing of many new buildings told where the wood was going. Then we heard the voice of a man who talked real "United States’* —telling 27 other carpenters what to do—out Id this foreign land thousands ot miles from home. We Inquired of the boss as to who be was, and with true sense of humor be said: “I am a Red Cross nurse. My job is bandaging wounded houses." Putting Villages Back on Map. "This was once a French village,” ho went on to say, “in the center of tine sugar beet country. We are living now on the site of the sugar mill,” be said, pointing to a long, low barracks, which plainly bad been recently built "We are working for the American Red Cross —putting villages back on the map. Id four more we’ll be out of here and on our way to the next ruin, for there are many villages that need u& -We go from place to place, always finding that our lumber has reached there first so we can get right to work, clean up and move od again.” It Is just like pioneering, this rebuilding work of our Red Cross-—only more Important—more important because it is vital to the winning of the war that these people come back to their soil and plant new crops—for future years of war or peace. And so the tide of war sweeps back from whence It came, a Bed Cross army follows close behind In uniforms of overalls, armed with Yanked hammers and nails to coax back the foundlings that have been brushed into squalid helplessness tn the south and east They are coming back home now, Just a few days behind these carpenters —back to the beet fields, the gardens and the farms. Soon they will be feeding themselves and thousands of others.