The letter went to the Captain for censorship, and soon the Salvation Army woman had a call from him.
"I understand by one of your letters that you are thinking of decorating the American graves," he said. "We would like to help in that, if you don't mind. I would like the company all to be present."
The day before Memorial Day this woman with two of the lassies from the hut went to the cemetery and prepared for the morrow.
In the morning they gathered great armfuls of crimson poppies from the fields, creamy snowballs from neglected gardens, and blue bachelor buttons from the hillsides, which they arranged in bouquets of red, white and blue for the graves. They had no vases in which to place the flowers but they used the apple tins in which the apples for their pies had been canned.
The centuries-old gray cemetery nestled in a curve of the road between wheat fields on every side. A gray, moss-covered, lichen-hung wall surrounded it. The five American graves were under the shadow of the Western wall, and the sun was slowly sinking in his glory as the company of soldiers escorted the women into the cemetery. They passed between the ponderous old gray stones, and beaded wreaths of the French graves; and the officers and men lined up facing the five graves. The women placed the tricolored flowers in the cans prepared for them, and planted the flags beside them. Then the elder woman, who had sons of her own, stepped out and saluted the military commanding officer: "Colonel" said she, "with your permission we would like to follow our custom and offer a prayer for the bereaved." Instantly permission was given and every head was uncovered as the Salvationist poured out her heart in prayer to the Everlasting Father, commending the dead into His tender Keeping, and pleading for the sorrow-stricken friends across the sea, until the soldiers' tears fell unchecked as they stood with rifles stiffly in front of them listening to the quiet voice of the woman as she prayed. God seemed Himself to come down, and the living boys standing over their five dead comrades could not help but be enfolded in His love, and feel the sense of His presence. They knew that they, too, might soon be sleeping even as these at their feet. It seemed but a step to the other life. When the prayer was finished a firing squad fired five volleys over the graves, and then the bugler played the taps and the little service was over. The lassies lingered to take pictures of the graves and that night they wrote letters describing the ceremony, to be sent with the photographs to the War Department at Washington with the request that they be forwarded to the nearest relatives of the five men buried at Treveray.