As soon as they reached the trenches they were told: "Keep your heads down, ladies, the snipers are all around!" It was an intense moment as they crept into the narrow housings where the men had to spend so much time. But it was wonderful to watch the glad light that came into the men's eyes as they saw the women.
"Here's a real, honest-to-goodness American woman in the trenches!" exclaimed a homesick lad as they came around a turn.
"Yes, your mother couldn't come to-day," said the motherly Salvationist, smiling a greeting, "so I've come in her place."
"All right!" said he, entering into the game. "This is Broadway and that's Forty-second Street. Sit down."
Of course there was nothing to sit down on in the trenches. But he hunted about till he found a chow can and turned it up for a seat, and they had a pleasant talk.
"Just wait," he said. "I'll show you a picture of the dearest little girl a fellow ever married and the darlingest little kid ever a man was father to!" He fumbled in his breast pocket right over his heart and brought out two photographs.
"I'd give my right arm to see them this minute, but for all that," he went on, "I wouldn't leave till we've fought this thing through to Berlin and given them a dose of what they gave little Belgium!"
They went up and down the trenches, pausing at the entrances to dugouts to smile and talk with the men. Once, where a grassy ridge hid the trench from the enemy snipers, they were permitted to peep over, but there was no look of war in the grassy, placid meadow full of flowers that men called "No Man's Land." It seemed hard to believe, that sunny, flower-starred morning, that Sin and Hate had the upper hand and Death was abroad stalking near in the sunlight.
It was a twelve-mile walk through the trenches and back to the hut, and when they returned they found the men were already gathering for the evening meeting.
That night, at the close of a heart-searching talk, eighty-five men arose to their feet in token that they would turn from the ways of sin and accept Christ as their Saviour, and many more raised their hands for prayers. One of the women of this party in her three months in France saw more than five hundred men give themselves to Christ and promise to serve Him the rest of their lives.