Evening Republican, Volume 22, Number 9, Rensselaer, Jasper County, 10 January 1919 — HUNGRY SAILORS FIND REAL HAVEN [ARTICLE]

HUNGRY SAILORS FIND REAL HAVEN

Red Cross Canteen With Fine “Eats” and at Small Cost. WERE ON THE WAY HOME Tell Interesting Stories About Their Trip and the Work They Had Finn*—/">"• Mod R'v Rrn*h. ers In the Service. London. —They were sailors and they were dirty —hungry, too. They were going from one port that begins with “fe,’ to another port that begins with “B,” and they had to stop over on their way, not because they wanted to, but because the trains ran that way. in a big city in Brittany. It was ten o’clock when they got there, tired and dirty and hungry. Not very happy.elther; they were being shipped home because of sickness or injury or incipient lung trouble. Their train left at four the next morning. ■ Fed by Red Cross. Suddenly they saw a big red-letter sign, “American Red Cross.” They followed the pointing arrow. The station was too .full to harbor a canteen, so the Americans had put up barracks alongside. The only available ground was full of. big trees, so they had built the barracks around the trees and whitewashed their trunks to match the walls. There was a dormitory with double tiers -of hunks and a big wash room and a canteen, long tables and benches and a cpuhter with blue-aproned American girts behind it. They served the sailors with hot chocolate or coffee or a strange pink French “soft drink” that whs cojd'ahd pleasant, and salad and sandwiches or more substantial food, all for a sum that would have been, reasonable in the United States before the war. • While they fed them and struggled with complicated problems in International mathematics, like , taking 1 franc 75-out of $5 and returning the change' in American money, the. blue-aproned girls listened to the sailors’ stories about their trip and the. ,WQrk tUetJlfld done before and

how they felt about going home and all about their families. Six Brothers in •’Service. “I’ve got six brothers,” said one broad-shouldered lad, “and every one lain the navy or the army, and my mother and sister are doing Red Cross work at home.” He had strained his back trying to lift part of an engine that was much too heavy for him and was going back with the cheerful prospect before him of three months in a plaster cast, but he didn’t care; he had done as much as he could and perhaps he would be able to get back into it beforb It was (over. He had just one regret. “I had to sell the farm she left me, the lady I used to drive for in New York. She made me promise not to sell It, but when the war came along I knew she’d rather have me sell it and buy Liberty bonds before I enlisted.”