1
CHAPTER I
THE FOUNDING OF THE SALVATION ARMY, ITS ORGANIZATION
AND STRUCTURE
On March 10, 1880, at Castle Garden in New York City,
a foreign “army” consisting of Salvation Army officers
George Scott Railton and Emma Westbrook, and six women
soldiers “so graceless that Railton referred to them as his
half-a-dozen ignoramuses” invaded the United States.
Like
the conquistadors of old, they planted their flag and
claimed America for God--and the Salvation Army.
From an
inauspicious beginning in the slums of Philadelphia and New
York, the Salvation Army has become the largest and most
popular charitable organization in America today.
This
achievement is the culmination of over one hundred years of
effort on the part of ordinary men and women who have gone
to extraordinary lengths for their fellow man in the name
of God.1
The coming of the British Salvation Army and its
evangelical crusade to the shores of America was due in
2
great part to years of American revivalist efforts.
As
early as the 1840s revival news from American newspapers
and religious periodicals saturated Great Britain,
spreading American revivalist methods throughout the
country.
The American revivalists James Caughey, Charles
Finney, and Phoebe Palmer stressed “scientific” methods
such as praying for specific results, training converts to
convert others, and using lay ministers.
Their work
greatly influenced William Booth, the founder of the
Salvation Army, and contributed much to the Army’s later
success.
In fact, it was Reverend Caughey’s fiery sermons
in Nottingham in 1846 that turned Booth completely to the
ministry and Finney’s book, Lectures on Revivals of
Religion, published in 1837, took second place only to the
Bible in importance to Booth.2
Though only a youth, Booth
organized street preaching, cottage meetings, and other
religious activities and, at the age of seventeen, he was
appointed as minister to a local church.
This position was
not enough to produce a living wage and Booth took
employment as a pawnbroker, a position for which he had
E. H. McKinley. Marching to Glory: The History of the Salvation Army
in the United States, 1880-1992 (New York: Harper & Row, 1980), 12-13.
2 Booth later made Lectures required reading for all Salvation Army
cadets.
1
3
completed apprenticeship in 1848.
Dissatisfied with his
work, Booth made his way to London where he eventually
obtained various positions in the Methodist and
Congregational churches.
But Booth was drawn to evangelism
and, unable to reach a compromise with the church hierarchy
in which he could continue his evangelistic endeavors
within the confines of the church, he resigned in 1862.
Booth and his wife, Catherine, whom he had married in 1855,
then became successful revivalists in the spiritual
awakenings experienced by many areas in Britain until the
Methodist Conferences closed off their buildings to them.
This act was only part of a greater effort by Britain’s
conservative churches and even Parliament to stifle
revivalism.3
Shut out of mainstream religion, Booth found himself
drawn to East London, a section of the city noted for its
poverty and squalid conditions.
Certainly the people
inhabiting this district needed God as much as anyone.
It
was here that Booth established the Christian Mission.
One
great problem facing the ministry in East London was that
its target population was mired in such misery the word of
Norman H. Murdoch. Origins of the Salvation Army (Knoxville: U of
Tennessee P, 1994), 1-12; Robert Sandall. The History of the Salvation
3
4
God was often not readily received.
The people’s need for
food, clothing, and shelter had to be addressed in order
for the evangelical work to be effective.
“Soup, soap, and
salvation!” became the principle that guided the mission’s
work; evangelism combined with social work would prove to
be the formula for success.4
The Christian Mission grew in size and scope as
converts and volunteers spread out to outlying districts
and towns.
In 1877, Elijah Cadman, a converted pugilist,
put out a call for two thousand men and women to join his
“Hallelujah Army” and march on Whitby, England to add that
town to Booth’s roll.
This military reference made by
Cadman was just part of a wider phenomenon prevalent in
Great Britain during the Victorian Era.
Colonial wars had
made the British military quite popular and this
militaristic attitude spread to other areas of British
society including religion.
The Reverend S. Baring Gould
composed the hymn, Onward Christian Soldiers in 1865; it
was but one of several militant hymns and songs published
during this period.
It is understandable, then, that Booth
would also find a military theme both attractive and
Army, Vol 1, (New York: The Salvation Army, 1947), 3-13.
4 McKinley, 3-4.
5
appropriate.
Booth’s first reference to his mission as an
army came on the first draft of the mission’s 1878 Report
and Appeal in which he called the Christian Mission a
“Volunteer Army.”
He later corrected the paper to read
“Salvation Army.”
There is some question as to why Booth
changed it from volunteer to salvation.
In George
Railton’s book, Heathen England, Railton claims Booth made
the correction stating that “we are not volunteers, for we
feel we must do what we do, and we are always on duty.”
Some point out, however, that the Volunteers, a national
guard first established by King George III and reorganized
in 1863, were much in the public eye during this period for
their less than stellar military skills.
It is possible
that Booth did not want to associate his organization with
such an entity.
Regardless of the reasons, Booth’s action
laid the foundation for the Salvation Army.5
More organization was needed to keep the new Salvation
Army consistently effective.
To this end, at the 1878 “War
Congress,” Booth outlined the military-like system he would
institute; its fundamental principles being “authority,
obedience, the adapted employment of everyone’s ability,
5
Sandall, Vol 1, 226-230.
6
the training of everyone to the utmost, and the combined
action of all.”6
To fully understand the Salvation Army, it is
necessary to be familiar with its organization and rank
structure.
Since the Salvation Army’s founding in London
by William Booth, that city has served as International
Headquarters.
Booth himself was the first General and
commander, and later his sons and daughters dominated the
Army and office of Commander until 1929, when the High
Council of Commissioners deposed General Bramwell Booth
(the Army had tired of dynastic reign).
The degree of
centralization in the Salvation Army also changed in 1929.
The American branch, which had already surpassed Great
Britain in all areas of Army work, found the command
structure cumbersome and ill suited to its needs.
With the
deposition of Bramwell Booth, the army became a federated
bureaucratic entity at last.
The High Council, made up of
commissioners from all over the world, now elected the
General.
The last Booth to hold the rank of General,
Evangeline Booth, was elected in 1934 and served to 1939.
6
Ibid., 231-232.
7
Elected in 1994, Paul Rader became the first American
General.7
The American branch of the Salvation Army has its
headquarters located in Alexandria, Virginia.
It is headed
by the National Commander who is appointed by London.
The
American Army is broken down into four territorial
commands, each headed by a commissioner.
largely independent.
of operations.
Each territory is
It makes policy in almost all areas
Commissioners are appointed by National
Headquarters with approval by London.
further devolved into divisions.
Territories are
The number of divisions
per territory varies depending on population and landmass.
For example, the Southern Territory is comprised of fifteen
states and nine divisions.
Kentucky and Tennessee make up
one division while Texas is a division unto itself.
Divisions provide support services to the corps including
auditing, program assistance, and summer camps.
Division
commanders are usually lieutenant colonels that are
selected by the Territory and approved by London.
Corps
are the local bodies and the workhorses of the Salvation
Army.
They are also the Army’s churches.
Captains,
McKinley, 193-195; Murdoch, 128, 170; Captain Ware, interview by
author, Killeen, Texas, 12 November 1998.
7
8
lieutenants, or sergeants, who are selected by the
division, command them. Large cities may have multiple
corps that are administered by an area command.
Although
the Salvation Army has an impressive command structure, the
corps have a great deal of autonomy and it is up to the
corps to decide which programs to establish and run.8
Large charitable organizations, like the Red Cross,
take in money at the headquarters level and then provide
funds for its regional and local offices.
The Salvation
Army’s funding, however, is mostly from the bottom up.
Although the corps provide much of the support for the
higher headquarters, divisions and territories also receive
funds from donations, legacies, and other means.
The
Southern Territory, for instance, employs an annual mail
appeal.
The corps are the heart of the Army.
the role of church and social service.
They fulfill
The corps pays for
rent on buildings, utilities, vehicles and maintenance,
employee wages, and for all social programs such as paying
the poor’s electric bills or running a halfway house.
bills must be paid before salary is paid.
from corps to corps.
All
Funding varies
Some are given a portion of community
Murdoch, 115; Captain Ware, interview, 12 November 1998; Arthur S.
Marshall, unpublished autobiography, tape recording (number 4), Ajo,
8
9
charity proceeds such as the Combined Federal Campaign or
the United Way, while others are either not given that
opportunity or refuse because too many strings are
attached.
Private donations are a mainstay as is the
ubiquitous Christmas kettle.
Thrift stores are widely used
and can generate income of over a quarter of a million
dollars annually.9
With the dollar amounts a single corps can generate
one might think that Salvation Army officers live well.
In
fact, pay is set by rank and number of dependents. Salaries
as a whole are kept to a bare minimum.
A captain with two
children will earn more than an unmarried major.
William
Booth set the tone when he asked, “Why more than food,
clothes, and a bed to lie on, if he is burning for souls?”
Officers are also discouraged from accumulating personal
possessions by frequent reassignments.10
In the beginning, funding the corps was a constant
problem and many officers lived in poverty and privation.
One officer had to bury his dead child in a cardboard box
in a donated grave.11 When one group of three officers was
Arizona, 20 May 1996.
9 Captain Ware, interview, 12 November 1998; Sergeant Perry, interview
by author, Temple, Texas, 3 November 1998.
10 Murdoch, 98.
11 Ibid., 94.
10
transferred the personal possessions of all three were
carried in a single basket.
Even as late as the 1940s
poverty was a constant companion.
In his unpublished
autobiography, former Salvation Army Captain Arthur
Marshall tells of one brutal winter in Pennsylvania when he
could not afford to buy coal to heat his quarters.
Going
to sleep in almost every piece of clothing he owned he
awoke to the sound of "Niagara Falls." His water pipes had
burst and flooded his second floor quarters, which
collapsed onto the corps meeting area below.
transferred shortly thereafter.
He was
Some officers disliked the
ways in which money had to be raised.
Again, Marshall
relates how he and his officer wife worked a one hundredmile route every Friday and Saturday night.
They would
stop at every tavern, and with a handful of War Cry
newspapers and a tambourine, solicit money from the guiltstricken customers.
It was demeaning for all concerned but
the corps bills had to be paid.12
The Salvation Army has also caused problems for some
of its more independent-minded corps officers.
The Army
had, and continues to have, a great deal of control over
McKinley, 71-72; Arthur S. Marshall, unpublished autobiography, tape
recording (number 4), 20 May 1996.
12
11
the lives of its officers.
The Army approves marriages and
even sets the length of the engagement.
Salvation Army
officers can only marry other officers.
Officers cannot
leave their areas without permission from higher
headquarters.
In the 1930s and 1940s, when many officers
began to own cars, the Army dictated the type and color
automobile one could own.
Corps officers could have black
or dark blue Chevrolets, Fords, or Plymouths.
officer could have a Hudson.
A staff
These rules on cars
fluctuated often and on many occasions an officer would buy
a car only to have it become forbidden later on.
today officers do not own red cars.
reasons for these restrictions.
Even
There were some sound
The officer's wife is
herself an officer and carries an equal share of the duties
of the corps.
And owning a flashy car would cause the
public to wonder what the Army was doing with their
contributions.
Some officers rebelled.
Former Captain
Marshall received so many written rebukes his wife refused
to let him open the mail.13
Rank in the Salvation Army is very rigid. Each grade
has a set time in service requirement: promotions are based
Arthur S. Marshall, unpublished autobiography, tape recording (number
5), 20 May 1996.
13
12
on time, not accomplishment.
Those entering the Army by
attending Training School enter as cadets.14 Although some
titles have changed throughout the years, the rank
structure has remained constant.
Today, upon graduation,
cadets are commissioned as lieutenants and serve in that
rank for five years.
The next grade is captain, which is
held for fifteen years.
Major is the final rank for most.
For command positions, promotion can be made to lieutenant
colonel and full colonel.
However, each territory has a
set number of higher officers.
As in any large
organization, there is a fast track for wunderkind but it
is based on assignment type only.
Wives of officers must
also be officers and the wife normally carries the same
rank as her husband.
At one time it was not uncommon for a
female lieutenant to become a major upon saying “I do,” but
in 1995 women won the right to make and hold their own rank
regardless of the husband’s rank.15
In some instances, due to age or prior experience, some may forgo
Training School and enter the Army as a Sergeant They will remain in
that grade for two years then be promoted to the rank of Auxiliary
Captain for a period of three years. After this total five-year period,
promotion is made to Captain and the regular promotion system. Sergeant
Perry, interview, 3 November 1998.
15 Commissioner Karen Thompson, ed. Salvation Army Yearbook 1996
(London: Powage Press, 1995), 31; Captain Elliott, interview by author,
Waco, Texas, 3 November 1998; Major Hall, interview by author, Waco,
Texas, 3 November 1998; Sergeant Perry, interview, 3 November 1998;
14
13
Salvation Army officers are always recognizable
because they are always in uniform.
They are required to
be by official orders set in 1889 and uniform regulations
written in 1891.
Uniforms are not used to display rank but
to make officers visible to the public at all times.
Militarism was much evident in popular British culture
during the latter half of the nineteenth century and Booth
used uniforms to capture the mood of the era; he translated
military spirit into spiritual militancy.
Booth also
admired the structure of the British Army and copied many
of its aspects.
Booth once said that he got more practical
help from the British army regulations than he did from all
the methods of the church.
This military structure paid
dividends in two ways: it turned the religious effort into
a "holy war" and its organization aided in the assignment
and movement of officers and discipline.
Uniforms
instilled pride in the wearer and officers liked to parade
around in them.
Moreover, a rank structure allowed
officers to transcend class lines through promotion.
A
military motif suited Booth's "imperial command" structure
that was becoming international in scope.
In the
beginning, uniforms were hardly uniform. Although tunics
stuck to the basic colors of blue, yellow and red, headgear
14
was much more varied.
Included were pith helmets, toppers,
cowboy hats, derbies, sailor hats, and discarded American
military headgear.
This individualism was ended when one
style cap was adopted in 1896.16
Perhaps the most novel aspect of the Salvation Army
and its military structure is its usage of military jargon
to describe its activities.
A birth of a child to a
Salvation Army couple was referred to as reinforcements.
Death was a promotion to glory.
were rations.
Daily devotional readings
Prayer was knee drill.
To interject an
“Amen” in a service was to fire a volley.
Soldiers’ weekly
contributions of money to higher headquarters were
cartridges that were fired, not paid.
was the War Cry.
The weekly newspaper
Converts were captives and the number of
converts per service was referred to as prisoners captured.
To move into a new town was to open fire.
Many of these
terms are still in common use and serve as reminders of the
Army's war for souls.17
The Salvation Army has always been closely associated
with bands.
There are many reasons for this.
useful in converting sinners.
16
McKinley, 39-40; Murdoch, 100-104.
Music was
Music could overcome street
15
noise, which was important since many services were
conducted on the streets.
Bands were military in nature
and you could “attack” with music.
Playing in a band gave
a sense of belonging, and it was fun.
Salvation Army bands
were not always musical; one band “attacking” Saco, Maine,
was composed of four drums, five triangles, and twelve
tambourines.
The band was a symbol of the Salvation Army
and it was often used as a tool for ridicule at the Army’s
expense.
Many people likened the Salvationist bands to
circus parades.
This caused an incident of mistaken
identity in Danbury, Connecticut in 1885, when thugs pelted
an actual circus parade with rotten apples believing them
to be a contingent of the Salvation Army.18
As the Salvation Army continued to expand, William
Booth realized the need to educate his officers in the ways
of evangelism and administration.
In 1880, he opened
training houses for men and women cadets where they would
train for three-month periods.
Unfortunately, due to a
high illiteracy rate, much of that time was spent on basic
education. Training schools were also set up in America
based on three-month sessions (it was later extended to
Lieutenant Clifford Marshall, Territorial Historical Symposium,
Atlanta, Georgia, June 8-9, 1984; McKinley, 50-51.
17
16
nine months).
In America, cadets were divided into men and
women's brigades with about ten cadets per brigade
(sessions could have over one hundred cadets).
Everything
was done on brigade level including chores and on-the-job
training in nearby corps.
Subjects studied included public
speaking, the Bible, making sermon outlines, Army doctrine,
accounting (Salvation Army style), and learning an
instrument.
School life was very regimented and resembled
military basic training rather than college.19
Over time it became clear that nine months of training
was inadequate.
The officer attrition rate in the first
five years of duty was extremely high. New officers were
simply overwhelmed by the complexity of religious and
social issues they faced and many could not cope.
After
some delays a two-year program was established in 1960.
New curriculum was established with an emphasis on more
practical training.20 Even with this new reform, many
veteran officers believe it is still inadequate.
The
increasingly complex nature of social programs and services
requires a level of expertise not currently taught.
There
McKinley, 41-44.
Murdoch, 118; Arthur S. Marshall, unpublished autobiography, tape
recording (number 4), 20 May 1996.
20 McKinley, 265-266.
18
19
17
is still no training in dealing with government agencies
such as Federal Emergency Management Administration (FEMA)
or in contracting with government departments.
These
officers recommend training be extended to at least three
to four years.
In a November 3, 1998 interview, Sergeant
Perry half-joked that "the Salvation Army will have to be
dragged kicking and screaming into the 1950s."21
Salvation Army officers are a curious mix.
They come
from all walks of life, all social classes, and all racial
and ethnic groups.
One corps commander could be a college
graduate from suburbia and another corps commander could be
a "saved" heroin addict from the slums.
Their common bond
is that all of them sacrificed everything to save souls:
they all received the "call."
Booth had a vision of an international evangelical
army and his vision has been fulfilled.
Today, the
Salvation Army operates in one hundred one countries and
territories.
That the United States would come to hold a
dominant position in the Salvation Army is something that
he did not foresee.
Captain Ware, interview, 12 November 1998; Captain Elliott,
interview, 3 November 1998.
21
18
CHAPTER II
THE SALVATION ARMY IN AMERICA:
PERSECUTION AND GROWTH
George Railton’s arrival in the United States was only
a formal Salvation Army declaration of war.
Eliza Shirley
had already begun the Army’s work in America in 1879.
Eliza Shirley and her parents, Amos and Annie Shirley, had
immigrated to Philadelphia from England.
Eliza had been a
Salvation Army lieutenant in Coventry, England under Elijah
Cadman and was given a half-hearted blessing by Booth to
follow her family to the United States.
Their efforts to
save American sinners were initially unsuccessful; attempts
to gain audiences for their services were often met with a
hail of mud and garbage.
Dismayed with their dying
crusade, they prayed to God for a sign.
Returning to their
hall after another failed street service, they found a fire
in progress nearby with a large gathering of onlookers.
They dove into the crowd with vigor, singing and preaching.
One infamous local drunk named Reddie asked if God could be
for the likes of him and was assured with an embrace.
When
19
the Shirleys brought Reddie back to their hall, an amazed
crowd followed them.
A service was held and a collection
brought in enough money for the Shirleys to continue their
work.
More success followed and Eliza opened a second
corps in January 1880.
Eliza sent newspaper clippings to
Booth to demonstrate her success and to prod Booth into
taking the fledgling American effort under his wing.
Booth
responded by sending Railton.22
George Railton was enthusiastic about his mission.
He
longed to leave his post as William Booth’s secretary,
which was becoming increasingly dominated by Bramwell
Booth, the General’s son and Salvation Army Chief-of-Staff.
A veteran of a failed one-man crusade to Morocco, Railton
longed to get back in the trenches. It was primarily his
decision to use women in his expedition to the United
States, though Catherine Booth also favored the use of
women in leadership roles, and doubtless it was her
influence with her husband that helped Railton secure the
appointment. Using women would accomplish two things:
first, it would show what women could do and, secondly,
whatever marriages the women might enter into would
McKinley, 5-9; Robert Sandall. The History of the Salvation Army,
Vol. 2, (New York: The Salvation Army, 1950), 228.
22
20
solidify the Army in America as American.
Only a day after
his arrival in New York City, Railton had his first
convert: Ash-Barrel Jimmy. Jimmy was a drunkard who had
earned his nickname when the police had found him in a
drunken stupor in an ash-barrel, his hair frozen to the
barrel bottom.
A judge sentenced him to attend the
Salvation Army’s first meeting planned for that night.
Jimmy arrived in his usual inebriated state but was
converted by Railton all the same.
Railton’s energy was
the cause for much of the Salvation Army’s early successes
in America.
He traveled all over the country and even
opened a corps in St. Louis by himself.
Despite his
accomplishments, Booth called Railton home in January 1881.
Railton did not want to leave, sensing that the American
Salvation Army would be a great force, but Booth insisted.
Railton complied and his removal caused chaos in the ranks
of the American Salvationists that lasted for half a
decade.23
Railton’s successor was Major Thomas E. Moore.
his predecessor, Moore was popular, dedicated, and
energetic.
23
Historian Dr. Edward McKinley, who wrote
McKinley, 9-19.
Like
21
perhaps the finest history of the Salvation Army, described
Moore as having two significant defects: he had little
interest or ability in administration, and he did not
understand that Booth considered the global Salvation Army
as his alone.
It was this latter point that brought the
Salvation Army into crisis in the early 1880s. In the
United States, different state laws required that legal
title to Salvation Army property had to be held by an
American citizen.
Booth could not hold title but Moore,
who became a naturalized American citizen for this purpose,
could and did.
Because of liability laws, the Salvation
Army had to be incorporated or Moore would have been in a
precarious legal state.
In fact, such a state presented
itself when Moore was arrested in New Jersey over
disposition of New Jersey corps funds.
Moore and others
pressed Booth to allow the incorporation but Booth, who did
not grasp the legal concept, refused.
Booth interpreted
incorporation as a loss of personal control over the
American wing of the Army and he would not abide that.
He
saw the problem as one of simple disobedience and decided
to fix the problem by transferring Moore to South Africa.
Moore, for his part, knew that incorporation was vital for
the Army in the United States and continued to command.
22
The crisis deepened when Booth sent the commander of the
Canadian territory, Major Thomas Coombs, to relieve Moore
of command and Moore refused to leave.
Moore called a
conference of officers and presented his plan for
incorporation.
A vote of 121 to 4 approved the plan. The
Salvation Army was incorporated on October 24, 1884.
Additionally, Salvation Army insignia were registered and
the War Cry copyrighted.24
Incorporation did not end the crisis.
Booth, hurt and
angered by Moore’s perceived treason, sent another officer,
Major Frank Smith, to relieve Moore.
This action resulted
in two American Salvation Army commands battling for the
loyalty of Salvationist officers and soldiers, for Moore
refused to give up his post.
Many fine officers such as
Richard Holz attempted to repair the breach but were
rebuffed by Smith as traitors.
Eventually Moore’s
Salvation Army of America shriveled and died mainly from
lack of funds (Moore was still a terrible administrator).
Moore’s own board of trustees deposed him in January 1889.
Command then fell to Holz who finally brought the two
armies together.
24
Ibid., 25-28.
The new Salvation Army commander in
23
America, Ballington Booth, William Booth’s second son,
welcomed everyone back with open arms.25
Life for American Salvation Army officers in the late
1800s was exciting, grueling, and dangerous.
It was a time
of great expansion and the process of establishing a new
corps was simple in theory but exhausting and often
dangerous in reality. "Pioneers" would enter town and
attract as much attention as possible.
the devil in effigy.
One group burned
In Chicago, forty bridesmaids dressed
in star-spangled sashes and red liberty caps marched in a
torchlight parade.
The preferred practice was to "open
fire" en masse with reinforcements from other corps, but it
was often accomplished singly or in pairs.
The officers
would march with music and singing to a busy intersection
or the town square.
There they would announce the arrival
of the Salvation Army, call on sinners to repent, and pray
and sing.
They then would disperse to find a place for
their first service.
Pioneers "opened fire" with only
enough funding for a few days.
After that their target
would have to provide the funds to keep going.
With their
paltry salaries, officers were reduced to eating whatever
25
Ibid., 28-31.
24
they could get.
Some bought leftovers from restaurants.
One officer lived for weeks on eggs, Limburger cheese, and
strawberries.
Another officer had to subsist on crackers
that someone had tossed into an empty box at the back of
the meeting hall.
Once the "fortress" was secured, the
attack party went back to their normal duties leaving the
appointed officer on his own.26
All too often officers were met with hostility and
violence.
Being pelted with garbage and manure were daily
occurrences.
In Sacramento, all the Salvationist officers
and their soldiers were arrested for disturbing the peace,
their corps hall was set on fire, and the state militia had
to be called out to put down the resultant riot.
In
Colorado Springs, a Salvation Army officer died after he
was drenched with a fire hose and then jailed in an unclean
cell.
In Spokane, a female officer was shot and killed.27
In 1882 alone, six hundred and sixty-nine officers were
assaulted and by 1884, six hundred officers had been jailed
on various charges such as parading or disturbing the
peace.
In the period 1880-1896, five officers were killed,
several officers had had their arms broken, three officers
26
27
Ibid., 46-47.
Sandall, Vol 2, 241.
25
had their heads caved in by bricks, and one female officer
lost her hearing forever when she was struck in the head by
a chunk of ice.
Some officers were set on fire and one was
nearly lynched in Connecticut.
One officer, walking with
his baby, was accosted and his baby slapped.
likewise persecuted.
Converts were
In New York, one converted bartender
came out of the corps and was beaten to death.
A
Salvationist soldier in St. Louis was beaten to death with
a club and a woman convert in Pittsburgh was killed by a
“foul assassin’s blow.”28
What accounts for this persecution?
The tactics of
the early Salvationists offended many respected citizens,
which created negative attitudes that only encouraged those
citizens with fewer principles.
Also, the areas in which
the Salvationists preached were populated in most part by
thugs, drunks, and the unemployed.
Attacking the Salvation
Army was seen as an entertaining diversion or sport.
Others, whose livelihood depended on immoral behavior, saw
the Salvationists as a threat that had to be dealt with.
Many of these businesses were shoestring operations where
even the loss of a few customers could mean economic ruin.
Sallie Chesham. Born to Battle: The Salvation Army in America
(Chicago: Rand McNally, 1965), 87.
28
26
The police were of little help.
There was usually a lack
of police in these areas and, when they were present, they
ignored much of the violence and even joined in on some
occasions.
Official persecution was not common but the
police were often corrupt and in league with saloon
owners.29
Some Army officers fought back.
brute was disrupting the service.
In one case, a local
The officer in charge
ordered his cadet helper to "put that fellow outside!"
The
cadet managed to get the brute in a stranglehold and bounce
him over the outside fence.
This impressed the audience
and eased community relations.
In another instance, a
mounted blacksmith attempted to run down a Salvation Army
parade consisting of a captain, a lieutenant, and two boys
with drums.
The captain grabbed the reins of the horse
until his parade had passed, then let go.
The enraged
blacksmith attacked the officer with his whip.
The
captain's bravery turned the crowd from boos to cheers and
they entered the fray on his side.30 Joe Garabed, an
Armenian with the unlikely nickname of “Joe the Turk,”
converted in the early days in New York and now an officer,
29
30
McKinley, 61-65; Murdoch, 120-122.
Lieutenant Clifford Marshall, Territorial Historical Symposium.
27
went to an Illinois town to help with meetings but found
that the mayor had jailed the Salvationists there for
fourteen days.
The mayor, it turned out, had invaded the
town some time before with a band of men and forcibly
established and maintained a single saloon after the town
had voted itself dry.
Joe took charge of the corps and
when the officers were released from jail the town had
finally had enough.
The mayor, fearing what might happen
now that his hold on the town was broken, left quickly.
was followed a day later by the Chief of Police.
He
Joe
declared himself mayor, and the corps officer the new
police chief.
They closed down the saloon and conducted
town business for over five weeks until a new mayor could
be selected.31
Once the corps was established the officer's problems
were far from over.
In the early years of the Army,
evangelism was emphasized and it was difficult to attract
an audience to the services so souls could be saved.
Officers went to great lengths to do this.
One captain
held a mock trial of the devil while another preached about
eternity while standing in front of an empty coffin.
31
Sandall, Vol 2, 239.
28
Technology in the form of stereopticons and
phonographs were big hits.
Personal testimonies from
converts were extremely effective and popular.
converts even gained minor celebrity status.
Some
People would
come from miles
around to hear the stories of the One-armed Converted Opium
Eater, Swearing Billy, the Dutch Volcano, Orange Box
George, and the Welsh Hallelujah Midget.
Officers preached
dozens of times each week so transfers every few months
were common in order that audiences could receive fresh
sermons.32
Some corps catered to different ethnic groups.
Swedish corps were the most successful of these.
The
Four
Swedish laundresses who attended a corps in Brooklyn
conducted services in Swedish after the regular services
had ended.
These Swedish services were so popular that a
separate Swedish corps was opened in December 1887.
More
Swedish corps were established in the following years.
The
Germans were less successful, as many German immigrants
were Catholic, and those that were not preferred to attend
services conducted in English. An Italian corps in Little
Italy was likewise unsuccessful.
The Salvation Army had
29
better luck on the West Coast, establishing a Chinese corps
in San Francisco in 1896.
Attempts to establish black
corps were promising, especially when spearheaded by black
officers.
Four officers, one of whom was a mulatto from
Maine and the other a woman who had been born a slave, led
an “attack” on a town in Virginia.
Their initial services
attracted a large number of blacks prompting the Army to
establish other corps elsewhere in Virginia and in
Maryland. Despite a strong beginning, most of the black
corps withered away due to lack of funds and the
unavailability of black officers.33
As the nineteenth century came to a close, the
Salvation Army became more accepted.
were rare.
expanded.
practical.
After 1896, attacks
Public recognition came when social programs
Social work in the Salvation Army was always
Fees for services were used as much as
possible, even if it was just a penny, so the poor did not
feel degraded.
When they had no money, then work for
services was provided.
Government offices often worked
closely with the Army.
The governor of Illinois, John
Altgeld, used the Army to collect and distribute food to
32
33
McKinley, 56-58.
Ibid., 47-53.
30
strikers during the long Pullman Strike of 1894. Eugene V.
Debs called the Salvationists “Christianity in action.”
Despite their role in the strike, many unions condemned the
Salvation Army for their neutral stance.34
Aid to distressed single people was easy compared to
helping families.
One way the Salvation Army addressed
this problem was through the establishment in 1898 of the
Farm Colonies.
Three colonies were set up in the pilot
program: Fort Amity, Colorado, Fort Romie, California, and
Fort Herrick, Ohio.
Families were provided with land,
housing, stock, tools, and seed.
Schools and other
necessary buildings were also erected.
All colonies were
soon self-supporting and paid off their holdings.35
The Salvation Army expanded rapidly during the late
nineteenth century.
By 1883, corps were established in New
York, Pennsylvania, Connecticut, California, Kentucky,
Indiana, Michigan, Massachusetts, and West Virginia.
was added in 1887.
Maine
Sixteen year-old Lieutenant Edward
Parker single-handedly “attacked” Janesville, Wisconsin in
1888, adding that state to the list.
By 1890, the
Ibid., 56-60.
Bulletin of the Bureau of Labor, No. 48, Frederick Booth-Tucker,
“Farm Colonies of the Salvation Army,” September 1903, reproduced in
The Salvation Army in America: Selected Reports 1899-1903, 983-984;
idem, Monographs on American Social Economics (Albany: Lyon, 1900), 35.
34
35
31
Salvation Army was operating in forty-three states.36 Mrs.
Ballington Booth, wife of the National Commander,
established the Auxiliary League, which enabled her to
reach into the upper echelons of society to collect funds
and gain supporters.
These supporters included Presidents
Cleveland and McKinley.
William Booth even opened the
United States Senate with a prayer and met with President
Theodore Roosevelt.
The Salvation Army also became part of
the popular culture with the 1908 Broadway hit "Salvation
Nell" and D. W. Griffith's 1909 film "The Salvation Army
Girl."37
Although the Salvation Army steadily grew, it faced
some obstacles.
The Army had always had as its ultimate
goal the salvation of the people.
To reach the people, to
ease their suffering so as to make them receptive to the
word of God, the Army had established various social
programs.
These programs had continually expanded and
drained not only funds but also the time and energy of
officers away from evangelism.
concern.
It soon became a cause for
Colonel Holz warned that “unless care is taken,
there is danger that our field officers will become fully
36
37
McKinley, 20-21.
Ibid., 61.
32
absorbed in the charity and relief work, to the exclusion
of the spiritual side of things.”38 Additionally, the
secular spirit of America showed itself as critics
questioned the Salvation Army’s use of funds for religious
work.
Some donations had indeed found their way to
evangelical activities but it was a rare occurrence and
certainly not a standard practice.39
The death of the Salvation Army’s founder, William
Booth, on August 20, 1912 dealt another blow.
been the only General the Army had known.
Booth had
Even for
American Salvationists, who had only seen Booth on his few
infrequent tours, his death created a void.
The dynasty,
however, remained intact as Bramwell Booth took on his
father’s mantle.
There was no power struggle as William
chose Bramwell as his successor in 1890.
Unfortunately,
Bramwell possessed neither the charisma nor the oratory
skills of his father.
His brother, Ballington, thought of
him as not much more than a bureaucrat.40
The Salvation Army, with its great strides in social
work and steady increase in corps, still could not break
into the mainstream.
38
39
Ibid., 109.
Ibid., 109.
For the most part the general public
33
continued to regard it as a fringe element that, however
benign, was to be viewed with suspicion and, in some cases,
derision.
It would take a cataclysmic event, World War I,
to finally bring the Salvation Army into its place in
American culture.
40
Ibid., 110-111.
34
CHAPTER III
THE SALVATION ARMY IN WORLD WAR I:
THE DOUGHNUT MINISTRY
On June 28, 1914, Gavrilo Princip, a Bosnian Serb
devoted to the concept of a Greater Serbia, assassinated
the Archduke Francis Ferdinand, the heir to the Austrian
throne.
This act set in motion a series of moves and
countermoves by the great alliances that resulted in the
First World War.
At the time of the assassination, the
Salvation Army met in its grand International Congress in
London.
Fifty-eight nations were represented. At the grand
finale parade, the Americans were well represented with
some seven hundred Salvationists in cowboy hats, three
brass bands, and African-American soldiers dressed in red,
white, and blue.
41
Robert Treite, the son of the leaders of
the German Salvation Army, was also a delegate at the
Congress.
Treite, a captain in the German Army, had
received special permission from his government to wear his
41
Ibid., 111-112.
35
Salvation Army uniform instead of his German Army uniform.42
The Salvation Army was truly an international organization.
As the Great War began to engulf Europe, America clung
to its neutrality and watched the struggle from the
sidelines.
The Salvation Army also remained neutral if
only because it had officers and soldiers in every one of
the combatant nations.
Unlike America, however, the
Salvation Army was compelled to act.
Salvationists from
all over began to work for the welfare of civilians caught
up in the conflict.
American Salvationists formed groups
to make bandages that were then marked in English, French,
and German to be distributed to all of the belligerents.
Even before America’s entry into the war in 1917 American
Salvationists were hard at work among the warring nations.
They assisted their European associates in establishing
shelters for refugees in Petrograd, Holland, Germany, and
augmented Allied ambulance services.43
Their greatest contribution prior to 1917, however,
was made in Belgium.
To help that war-ravaged country,
Salvation Army headquarters in London called on Major
James E. Beane. “Fields of Honor: The Salvation Army and World War
I,” unfinished manuscript, September 1979.
43 The Salvation Army was an international organization and officers
found it difficult to look upon their brother officers on the opposing
side as enemies. McKinley., 112.
42
36
Wallace Winchell, an American, who was operating an urban
relief center in Jersey City.
The selection of an American
was necessary due to America’s neutral status.
Although
Winchell had letters of introduction from President Wilson
and the Secretary of State, he was held up at Rotterdam,
the main problem being he had arrived through London
instead of directly from the United States.
By
coincidence, while he was trying to sort out the mess in
Germany, Winchell met a Nicaraguan newspaperman whom he had
helped years earlier in New York.
The man, Dr. Asenjo, had
great influence in German government circles and was able
to obtain meetings for Winchell with the right officials.
The Germans were impressed with Winchell’s plans and he was
allowed to proceed to Belgium.44
Winchell found the German occupiers of Belgium
cooperative and efficient.
He also found some Belgian
Salvation Army centers still in operation.
Getting to
work, Winchell established numerous charities including
soup kitchens, milk for babies, and clothing and money
grants for destitute families.
Most of the funding for
these operations came from the United States and Salvation
May Lift Ban, “At Belgium’s Door,” Social News, February 1916, 3-5.
Microfilm.
44
37
Army headquarters in London.45 Much of the donated clothing
came from the United States as did other material that was
not always of use including false teeth, wooden legs, cats,
dogs, a skeleton, and the diary of the physician that
attended to Abraham Lincoln in Ford’s Theatre.
The diary
was donated to a Washington museum; the fate of the rest is
unknown.46
When America slid into the conflagration in 1917, the
Salvation Army was prepared.
The American National
Commander, Evangeline Booth, wired President Wilson placing
the Army at his disposal.
Wilson accepted promptly. Booth
immediately placed the Salvation Army on a war footing.
She mobilized the Army’s command structure for the war
effort and created a National War Board with a headquarters
in New York and a secondary headquarters in Chicago.
The
Army appointed national, territorial, and provincial war
secretaries.
Booth also created the War Service League
that coordinated diverse war efforts such as linen
collections (for bandages) and sewing circles.
Individual
kits were assembled for the soldiers consisting of a safety
razor, a pocket knife, a pair of garters, a collapsible
45
McKinley, 115.
38
aluminum drinking cup, an aluminum comb, a trench mirror,
three toothbrushes in a carton, an olive drab handkerchief,
assorted needles, thread, and safety pins, six buttons, a
Gospel, a box of foot powder, a black silk tie, and a lead
pencil.47 The Red Cross, with which the Army maintained
excellent relations, distributed most of the items
collected.
The League also appointed condolence officers
in anticipation of casualties, and printed condolence cards
to be given to the next of kin (they were highly prized by
those receiving them).
Huts and hostels were built to
provide services for soldiers being mobilized.
These
services included the provision of items such as food,
writing supplies, and toiletries.
Libraries were also
provided with the help of the American Library
Association.48
Although the government appreciated the Salvation
Army’s work towards the war effort, Congress appointed the
American Red Cross as the lead agency for relief work while
the Young Men’s Christian Association (YMCA) gained the
monopoly over the social, recreational, and religious
46Salvation
Army, “Queer Things That Are Sent to the Salvation Army,”
Social News, February 1916, 8-9. Microfilm.
47 Salvation Army, “Kits for Soldiers,” War Service Herald, August 1918,
13. Microfilm.
39
activities for the United States Army.
The Salvation Army
was recognized as an auxiliary agency and the YMCA allowed
it to operate canteens at United States Army training
camps.
Although the Salvation Army was one of the “Seven
Sisters” that made up the Commission on Training Camp
Activities, it only received approximately two percent of
the budget, and it also lacked access to the financial
resources the other organizations enjoyed.49 The Salvation
Army’s greatest contributions were yet to come--in the
trenches of France.
Evangeline Booth selected Lieutenant Colonel William
Barker to find a way to help the American Army in France.
He was chosen not only for his dedication and courage but
also for his tenaciousness.
Booth described Barker in this
way: “If you want to see him at his best you must put him
face to face with a stone wall and tell him he must get on
the other side of it.
No matter what the cost or toil,
whether hated or loved, he would get there.”50 She gave him
a letter of introduction to Joseph Tumulty, President
Wilson’s private secretary.
Barker entered Tumulty’s
Salvation Army, War Service Report of the Salvation Army 1917-1919
(New York: Salvation Army, 1920), 1-3.
49 McKinley, 117-118.
50 Evangeline Booth and Grace Livingston Hill, The War Romance of the
Salvation Army (Philadelphia: J. B. Lippincott, 1919), 44.
48
40
office where Tumulty was engaged in a conversation with
another man, a volunteer member of the staff of the
Attorney General.
Both listened to Barker’s offer of
Salvation Army assistance.
The other man then encouraged
Tumulty to accept the offer, for the Salvation Army had
helped him in his hour of need.
Tumulty gave Barker a
letter of recommendation to the American ambassador in
France.51
On June 30, 1917, Lieutenant Colonel William Barker
and Adjutant Bertram Rodda arrived in France to evaluate
the possible ways in which the Salvation Army could help
the soldiers.
Barker had the letter from Tumulty.
The
United States ambassador to France received Barker and
arranged a meeting with General Pershing, commander of the
American Expeditionary Force (AEF).
Barker found Pershing
very accommodating due to Pershing’s earlier contact with
the Salvation Army in San Francisco in 1915.
Pershing’s
house had caught fire and his wife and three daughters were
killed.
Local churches ignored him, as they did most
soldiers whom they considered transient, but the
Paul Marshall. It’s a Great Old Army (Central Territory: The
Salvation Army, 1997), 160-161.
51
41
local Salvation Army contacted him and gave him support.
Pershing never forgot their kindness and Barker received
carte blanche in the United States First Division area of
operations.
Pershing also authorized the Salvationists to
wear standard army khaki uniforms with the Salvation Army
shield on the cap and epaulettes.
To finance the Army’s
initial efforts in France, Evangeline Booth borrowed
$125,000.
Barker, having made his evaluation of the needs
of the American serviceman, wired home: “send the
‘lassies;’” the Salvation Army would “mother” the American
soldier as far as materials allowed, doing whatever was
needed.52
The Salvation Army then set about to find the
“lassies.” One potential candidate, Ensign Helen Purviance,
received a letter from Salvation Army Colonel W. A.
McIntyre:
My Dear Ensign,
If we should need you for war work in
France are you willing to go and to
sail in the not very distant future? It
would be for six to twelve months. If
you have any choice of a girl whom you
would like to go with you suggest her
in your reply.53
McKinley, 119-120
Colonel W. A. McIntyre to Ensign Helen Purviance, 1 August 1917. Box
68/1, Salvation Army National Archives, Alexandria, Virginia.
52
53
42
Ensign Purviance quickly accepted, as did others.
The
matter did not end there for there were restrictions,
requirements, and qualifications to meet including a strict
physical exam.
Out of twenty-five volunteers, men and
women, only ten were eventually selected for the first
deployment.54 Ensign Purviance recorded Evangeline Booth’s
address to the group before their departure:
“You are not going on a pleasure
excursion, or going out of a
sensational curiosity to see how things
look, or test how it feels to be at the
front; but you are authorized by a
specific commission and with the
confidence of your commander that you
can and will do a specific work. Not
one of you must fail. It is quite
enough, for us to pay your expenses to
be a success; we cannot contemplate
paying them to be a failure,” and then
with a sense of humor remarked, “Any
one failing will be shot.” She
continued by saying, “It is not enough
just to do a specific work,” but
reminded us of a Hebrew proverb: God is
more delighted in adverbs than in
nouns. “It is not so much that which is
done that counts with God; not how much
but how well. It is the well doing that
wins the Well Done. You will,
therefore, not use this opportunity
nounally or verbally, but adverbally,
well.”55
Helen Purviance. Diary. Box 68/2, Salvation Army National Archives,
Alexandria, Virginia.
55 Ibid.
54
43
The first contingent of Salvationists, comprised of
eleven officers: six men, three single women and one
married couple, sailed for France on August 12, 1917, on
the SS Espagne.
13.
The next contingent followed on September
All the girls that eventually served in France, both
officer and soldier, were screened to ensure they met high
moral standards.
This procedure was effective, as there
was never even a hint of scandal throughout their
deployment, even though most of the women were single and
in their twenties.
The quantity was never great--only two
hundred and fifty women served as opposed to over ten
thousand YMCA workers.
Yet, the Salvationists are far
better remembered.56
When the first Salvationist contingent landed in
France, they found Lieutenant Colonel Barker waiting for
them.
With some of the funds advanced by Booth, Barker had
purchased a large touring car that became his office and
bedroom as well as a means of transportation.
It carried
all manner of supplies including the lumber for the first
Salvation Army hut.
Known affectionately as the “super-
car,” it ran almost continuously with two drivers
Salvation Army, The Salvation Army in World War I, (New York:
Salvation Army), 1950), 1-2; McKinley, 122; Chesham, 155.
56
44
alternating.
One Salvationist remembered that “it was not
an uncommon sight to see it tearing down the road at forty
miles an hour, loaded inside and on top with supplies,
several passengers clinging to fenders, and a load of
lumber or trunks trailing behind.”57 Although there were
already sixteen United States Army camps established when
the Salvation Army arrived in June 1917, and some twelve to
thirteen thousand American troops, Barker loaded up the
first Salvationist contingent and took them to a British
base where they could receive training in Salvation Army
huts with British troops.58 The British had pioneered the
concept of huts in support of the military in the Boer War
of 1899-1902 and had been using them in France since 1914.59
Soon after, with the arrival of more American troops,
the Salvationists moved to the American First Division
sector and erected the first American Salvation Army hut.
It was a long sectional building, forty by one hundred and
fifty feet, with ten windows on each side.
consisted of five men and six girls.
The staff
All of the staff
played instruments and regular events included concerts.
Booth and Hill, 56.
Harold Miles, “One Year’s Salvation Army Work in France,” War Service
Herald, November 1918, 5. Microfilm; Booth and Hill, 67.
59 The Salvation Army, “How the Salvation Army First Took Up War Work,”
The War Cry, July 1919, 12.
57
58
45
As more Salvationist reinforcements arrived, they fanned
out to do what they could.
Barker took four girls and set
out to find some boys to “mother.” Their plans were vague.
At Montiers, they found the First Ammunition Train of the
First Division known among the men as the “Suicide Club.”
The women set up a victrola and sang for the soldiers.
60
The men loved music and after the “lassies’” singing,
victrolas were the most popular form.
How popular? Captain
McAllister wrote:
“If you just knew what a victrola means
to those boys. We gave one to an
ambulance outfit, and once during an
attack, a boy left his own equipment
behind while he saved the victrola. It
was all wrapped up, with its fifty odd
records which had been played hundreds
of times, in a couple of blankets
donated by an officer. When a soldier
gives up a blanket it means something
because blankets are their most
cherished possession.”61
Sometimes, the men’s desire for music had to be satisfied
no matter the situation.
Late one night, two “lassies”
woke up to music from the victrola.
They nervously
investigated, wondering who had broken into the hut.
They
found that a guard had opened the window just far enough to
Chesham, 158; McKinley, 122-123; Salvation Army, World War I, 3;
Purviance, Diary.
60
46
start the phonograph.
He stood outside smoking and
listening to a sentimental ballad.
The girls returned to
bed leaving the man to his private concert.62
Ensign Margaret Sheldon and Adjutant Helen Purviance,
seeking to help the men in any way possible, offered to
bake something for the men, but what? Pancakes? Too messy
and no syrup. Doughnuts?
Using a small stove and a pan
that could fry perhaps seven doughnuts at a time, the women
obtained some supplies from the commissary but lacked the
vital ingredient of eggs.
went in search of eggs.
Purviance donned her helmet and
She entered a village and spied a
doughboy talking with a French woman who was laughing
hysterically.
The soldier wanted to buy a chicken but did
not know the word for it.
Purviance recounts what
transpired next:
Unable to pronounce poulet but able to say
oeufs he finally blurted out, “Oeufs, sa
maman!”--not eggs but the mama of the eggs-the chicken. It just about broke her up. But
he got his chicken. I got my eggs-- maybe
two dozen of them-- and we were in the
Salvation Army doughnut business.”63
That first day Purviance and Sheldon made 150
doughnuts; Purviance made 9,000 in the last batch she made
Salvation Army, “Behind the Lines in the Argonne Forest,” War Service
Herald, October 1918, 11. Microfilm.
62 Booth and Hill, 99.
61
47
before leaving France.64 The doughnut soon became the symbol
of the Salvation Army in France.
An editorial in the News,
an Evanston, Illinois newspaper, summed up the doughnut’s
significance perfectly:
It is a symbol- ask any of the boys in
France, if you doubt it- and finer even
in its substance. The doughnut is an
American institution. It has the savor
and fragrance of America. Its sweetened
ring, short and crisp from the boiling
lard, is a frame through which the
lonely and hungry lad, thousands of
miles from familiar faces and cherished
voices, can see the visions of the
little town, the farm, the friends and
loved ones he has left behind. In its
utter homeyness [sic] the doughnut
tells the secret The Salvation Army’s
sympathetic ministry- a ministry that
gets next to the hearts in our boys,
that comforts and encourages, helps and
advises, while it feeds them with the
simple delicacies that used to be
spread on mother’s table.65
Enlisted men and sometimes officers waited patiently
in line for hours to get one doughnut.
In one case,
Retreat sounded requiring the men to move to their places
of duty but some soldiers refused to give up their places
in line.
One soldier, brought up on charges, explained
Roy Kelsey. “Doughnuts, Love and Sympathy,” St. Petersburg Times, 8
May 1977, The Floridian, p.22.
64 Helen Purviance. Diary. Salvation Army Archives, Alexandria,
Virginia.
65 Excerpted editorial from News, Evanston, Illinois. War Service
Herald, October 1918, 13. Microfilm.
63
48
that he was in line for doughnuts and he was not going to
lose his place for anyone.
The officers released him, all
of them agreeing that they could not blame him.66 One
soldier found a better way to get to the doughnuts.
He
came by and said to one Salvationist woman, “Say, you’re
awfully tired turning over doughnuts. Let me help you. You
go inside and rest awhile. I’m sure I can do that.” She let
him take over but peeped around the screen to ensure he was
doing okay.
She watched as he turned the doughnuts over
and drained them but he burned his fingers as he ate them
as they came out of the fat.67 Aviators flew miles to get
doughnuts.
One pilot landed his plane, placed an order,
and picked up enough doughnuts for his entire unit the next
day.
Even a balloonist landed to get his share.68 Some men
in the trenches placed orders. “Ma” Burdick related one
incident:
See, here is a letter just brought in
from the trenches. “Dear Ma- Can you
bake us twenty-six pies and send them
up Tuesday night? Any kind will do. If
you can’t bake pies can’t you, please,
make 150 doughnuts? Let us thank you a
million times for the doughnuts the
other night. Boys tickled to death with
Helen Purviance. “A Doughgirl on the Firing Line,” War Service
Herald, January 1919, 16. Microfilm.
67 Stella Young. Personal notes, Box 136/11, Salvation Army Archives,
Alexandria, Virginia.
68 Chesham, 158.
66
49
them.” That’s their captain’s
signature. We send batches up every
day. Free? To be sure! We never charge
for anything that goes to the men in
the trenches.69
Often, the Salvation Army would be in the front lines
before the soldiers.
One soldier recounts how he and his
unit were marching for the front through sleet and snow.
The icy mud was knee deep.
As they came into an empty town
within the range and sound of the German artillery they
found a reception committee in the form of two Salvation
lassies and a Salvation Army captain.
The girls were busy
making doughnuts and they served them out as fast as they
could be cooked.70 One scout on a reconnaissance mission
cleared no-man’s land and watched the Germans retreat.
He
continued to advance and noticed smoke rising from behind a
pile of stone.
He rushed in brandishing two pistols and
yelling commands in German only to confront two
Salvationist lassies covered with flour and dough.71
How did the men know what the girls were making on a
particular day?
An American Army colonel, walking down a
French road, saw military policemen (MPs) waving their arms
Bert Ford, “Through the Eyes of the Press,” The War Cry, June 1918,
5. Microfilm.
70 Irvin Cobb, Article from the Saturday Evening Post excerpted in The
Mess Kit (Camp Merritt). September 1919, 8. Microfilm.
71 Chesham, 158.
69
50
in big circles.
The next day the colonel noticed the MPs
stamping their feet.
The colonel demanded to know the
meaning of the signals.
An MP explained saying, “Well,
sir, the waving of the arms in circles indicates doughnut
day; and the stamping of the feet is ice cream day. Oh,
boy!”72
The new “Doughnut Ministry” included delivery to the
front lines as well.
Salvationist Joseph Hughes, paralyzed
with fear, filled a car with doughnuts and drove it, with
“eyes closed and hands clenched,” to a delighted artillery
battery.
Seventeen year-old Fred Stillwell and Salvation
Army Captain Charles Marks attempted to drive a truck
filled with several thousand doughnuts to the trenches in
daylight.
German artillery was soon on them and they drove
into a ditch while avoiding a shell.
riddled the vehicle with shrapnel.
Subsequent shells
The two Salvationists
crawled through the mud and gained the safety of the
American trenches.
Lieutenant Colonel Barker, checking on
his men, found the truck and he, too, had to crawl to
safety as the Germans opened up once again. That night,
Barker returned to the ditched vehicle, retrieved the
Excerpt from The News, Chattanooga, Tennessee, War Service Herald,
February 1919, 4. Microfilm.
72
51
doughnuts, and delivered them to the front.
doughnuts were not so lucky.
Other
One truck loaded with
doughnuts and Easter gifts bound for the boys in the
trenches broke down in sight of German artillery observers
and shelling commenced almost immediately.
The shelling
continued for two days with several attempts made to rescue
the poor doughnuts.
All the attempts were driven back by
high explosive and gas.
Finally, on the morning of the
third day, the Germans blew the truck and its precious
cargo to all points of the compass.73
Pies produced by the lassies were also important
commodities.
During one bombardment at Tartigny, soldiers
rushed out of the Salvation Army hut and scurried to their
bunkers.
The Salvation Army girl followed, grabbing her
new boots and a tray of lemon crème pies.
on a plank she wavered.
Crossing a gully
A soldier yelled: “Drop the shoes!
I can clean the shoes but for heaven’s sake don’t drop the
pies!”74
It has been said that an army travels on its stomach.
With their baked goods, the Salvation Army women certainly
did much to keep the doughboys going.
73
74
The soldiers,
McKinley, 147-160; Salvation Army, World War I, 2.
Chesham, 160.
52
marching through miles of thick mud and pouring rain to the
front would find a doughnut and a cup of coffee or hot
chocolate served with a woman’s smile waiting for him.
Many of the men unsure, even afraid, of what lay ahead of
them were comforted by this simple, but effective, service.
It is easy to understand how something as plain as a
doughnut came to take on a far greater significance.
53
CHAPTER IV
THE SALVATION ARMY IN WORLD WAR I:
THE ROLE OF WOMEN SALVATIONISTS
Baked goods, especially doughnuts, certainly became
the trademark of Salvation Army activities in France but
the women performed a plethora of other services, all with
the physical and spiritual needs of the soldier in mind.
The women had no plan; they simply assessed the situation,
prioritized the need, and went to work.
They did this
cheerfully, despite harsh and dangerous living conditions.
This work ethic has always been present in Salvation Army
officers and soldiers and it is key to their success.
To ensure that the soldiers maintained a good moral
character, the Salvationists often set up lemonade posts
alongside stores selling wine and liquor.
Many soldiers
professed that they preferred the lemonade anyway but
certainly the presence of the “lassies” caused many a man
to reconsider his selection of beverage.
The Salvationists
also tried to get the soldiers’ money into the hands of
family back home instead of it being used for immoral
54
purposes.
To this end, the Salvation Army utilized their
web of over a thousand posts throughout the United States
to operate a money order system.
Soldiers could purchase a
money order from any Salvationist in France and the funds
were hand-delivered in the states by other Salvationists.
Thousands of dollars were sent home in this fashion.75
The Salvationists conducted religious services but, in
the words of one Salvationist: “We never forced a meeting
on them.
We just let it grow. Sometimes it would begin
with popular songs, but before long the boys would ask for
hymns, the old favorites, first one, then another, always
remembering to call ‘Tell Mother I’ll Be There.’”76 Of
course, with the possibility of death facing the men each
day they were more open to religion than they might
otherwise have been.
One doughboy sergeant said, “Before I
went up there [to the front] I didn’t know how to pray, but
when they slammed over the first barrage I soon learned and
I’ve been praying ever since.”77
One Salvationist, Ensign “Ma” Burdick, from Houston,
Texas, had a little hand sewing machine and whenever she
Booth and Hill, 51.
Ibid., 92.
77 Salvation Army, “With Our Doughboys in France,” The War Cry, July
1918, 15. Microfilm.
75
76
55
stopped she set up a tailor shop.
Many doughboys had lost
their overcoats in the Battle of Soissons and the new ones
issued did not fit so “Ma” worked almost non-stop to ensure
the men were properly attired.
her as she worked.
The men loved to talk to
Talking was another reason the men
loved the Salvation Army girls.
The girls represented
their mothers, daughters, sisters, wives, and girlfriends
and they were of great comfort when the loneliness or
homesickness was too great to bear.
It was not unusual to
have big, husky soldiers call a twenty year-old
Salvationist girl “Ma.”78
Another reason the soldiers loved the Salvation Army
was because of the way it treated them.
United States Army
officers were welcome in Salvation Army facilities but they
were not given any special privileges. The Salvation Army
was the church of the poor and naturally aligned itself
with the enlisted man.
A general was no more welcome than
a “colored” private from the labor battalion.
Additionally, the government did not provide troops with
incidentals like toiletries, writing paper, sweets and the
like.
Instead, the YMCA and the Salvation Army sold these
Lieutenant W. P. Barron (USA), “The Salvation Army and its Work in
the World’s War,” The Mess Kit, 6.
78
56
items.
The prices charged by the Salvation Army were
minimal and always lower than those charged by the YMCA.
Because of these price differences, the YMCA was seen as
making a profit off the backs of the soldiers.
In their
defense, because of their government charter, the YMCA had
to keep far greater control over their accounts than the
Salvationists.
The Salvationists also gave the doughboys
credit, or “Jawbone,” as the men in the trenches called it.
If a soldier needed an item from the Salvation Army hut,
and he did not have the money to pay for it, then he just
signed a slip of paper and dropped it in a box by the door.
The men proved to be scrupulous in paying off their tabs.
When a soldier was killed the Salvationists cleared the
debt, although it was common for the dead soldier’s unit to
take up a collection and pay his bill.79 In one case, a unit
headed to the front had not been paid and therefore would
not have the ability to buy canteen goods.
The Salvation
Army “jawboned” the entire unit, sending five thousand
dollars worth of goods to the men.80
McKinley, 121-122; Editorial in Tulsa, Oklahoma Democrat, excerpted
in The Mess Kit, 18.
80 Edwin Ranck, “Salvation Army To Be ‘Big Mother’ To A.E.F.,” Excerpt
from New York Times Sunday Magazine, War Service Herald, September
1918, 3. Microfilm.
79
57
Some government officials expressed concern in the
early days of the war over the possibility of
competition among the various service organizations in
France.
Their fears proved to be groundless for the
services acted with a great degree of cooperation.
One
Salvationist arrived in a town to set up a hut and could
find no accommodations.
He also could not get any bread
because he lacked bread tickets.
Observing his
difficulties, a Knights of Columbus (K of C) man supplied
tickets and offered to share his own room.
For several
nights he shared his bed with the Salvationist and assisted
him in other ways.81 The Young Men’s Christian Association
(YMCA) also had deep respect for the work of the Salvation
Army.
One YMCA canteen worker wrote:
“Our relationships are cordial. We help
each other out in the matter of change.
They come to our hut for sweet
chocolate and movies; we go to them,
when our consciences will permit, for
doughnuts. I only wish that one of
their huts could be in every camp in
France.”82
On some occasions the services combined their efforts.
In
Germany, during the occupation, the Red Cross and the K of
Barron, The Mess Kit, 6.
Lettie Gavin, American Women in World War I: They Also Served (Niwot:
UP of Colorado, 1997), 221.
81
82
58
C could not find buildings to set up shop.
Army opened up their “café” to them.
worked well.
The Salvation
The combination
The Red Cross had reading material, the K of
C had writing material, and the Salvation Army had coffee,
doughnuts, and other supplies.83
A typical Salvation Army canteen or hut offered
chocolate, candy, writing materials, towels, shaving
materials, talcum powder, soap, shoestrings, handkerchiefs,
buttons, and “cootie” medicine.
Victrolas.
Many had board games and
The Salvation Army did not deal in tobacco;
they would neither sell nor distribute it.
In the few
cases where tobacco came into their hands, the
Salvationists sent it to the hospital to be disbursed among
the wounded as doctors deemed it helpful in the treatment
of shell shock.84
American women were rare in France and many soldiers
came to the huts and canteens just to hear the women’s
voices.
The mere presence of the women seemed to make the
soldiers more civilized.
In fact, one regular army officer
stated that his men were more contented and more easily
handled since the arrival of the women.
Profanity ceased
John Horgan, “Along the Rhine with the A.E.F.,” War Service Herald,
March 1919, 12. Microfilm.
83
59
in the vicinity of Salvation Army operations though on one
occasion a frustrated mule-driver was not chastised as the
Salvationist “had sympathy for the lad with his ‘dog-gone
mules.’”85 One army officer attributed the following to the
presence of the Salvationists:
Our boys were so much cleaner
physically and morally than the average
Europeans, so free from drunkenness and
vice, lewdness and debauchery, that
they stood out in comparison with the
soldiers of the other allied nations,
excepting the Canadians, who were also
clean men, as a great tall lone pine
tree stands out in a clearing in the
wilderness.86
The doughboys policed themselves and woe upon the man
who would disrespect a “lassie.” The women also kept the
men in check.
One newcomer came into a hut and called a
Salvationist woman “dearie.” She fixed him with cold blue
eyes and said slowly and distinctly, “What did you say?”
The soldier quickly retreated.
One military colonel said
that a Salvation Army girl was the only woman in France who
was safe unchaperoned.87
There is merit in his observation: there were no
recorded attacks on Salvation Army women during the entire
Booth and Hill, 109.
Commandant Joseph Hughes, “A Glance Backward at Life Near the
Trenches,” War Service Herald, February 1919, 16. Microfilm.
84
85
60
period they were in Europe.
Why is this so? Most of the
women were young and many were attractive.
Part of the
answer lies in the attitude of the soldiers.
The Salvation
Army women willingly shared the dangers and hardships that
the men faced every day; to the soldiers they were
comrades.
Add the kindness and readiness to help in any
capacity and one can see why the women were revered among
the front-line soldiers.
This can be illustrated by an
incident in which some Salvationist women had come to a
front-line town to open a canteen.
It was late at night
when they arrived so they bedded down in the place in which
they were to set up shop, a bombed-out house.
When they
awoke the next morning they found every window and shell
hole filled with the face of a doughboy.
watching them as they slept.
The men had been
The women described the men’s
faces as almost “angelic.”88
Another part of the answer lies in the character of
the “lassie” herself.
These women possessed strong moral
character and many had been tested in the roughest streets
of America’s cities.
themselves.
86
87
They certainly knew how to handle
One war correspondent likened them to Abraham
Barron, 4.
Booth and Hill, 175-176.
61
Lincoln’s mother and the wives of American pioneers.
A
regular army officer described them this way:
There is none of the condescending Lady
Bountiful about them. They are neither
vagrant college girls nor peripatetic
sociological workers. They do not smoke
cigarettes, aping the French
demimondaines. They are not over here
to win officer husbands, to collect
souvenirs, or for a joy ride.89
There were safeguards as well.
The mother of Captain
Geneva Ladd told her daughter to wear heavy horn-rimmed
glasses to hide her good looks.90 Some military commanders
issued .45 caliber pistols to the women in their sectors
while others gave sentries to theirs.91 The sentries
provided not only personal protection but also warning of
gas attacks.92 Although the Salvationists were deeply
religious, some of the girls handled weapons.
During one
air battle, Helen Purviance saw enemy planes flying so
close to the ground that the pilot was recognizable.
She
later said that several of the boys and a couple of the
Ibid., 245.
Robert Doman, ”Salvationists Live in Waterfilled Dugouts,” War
Service Herald, July 1918, 7. Microfilm.
90 Gavin, 213.
91 Helen Purviance, Speech notes, 10 May 1979, Annual Meeting of the
Eastern Territory Historical Commission.
92 Booth and Hill, 146.
88
89
62
girls, too, got rifles and shot at him. Other girls went
target shooting with some of the soldiers.93
Life on the battlefront has often been described as
days of monotony punctuated by moments of sheer terror.
Certainly this was true for the Salvation Army women.
A
fine example of this can be seen in the pages of the diary
of Salvationist Griselda Rapson:
Saturday, 20 July- An air raid caused
commotion. A bosh plain [sic] dropped
bombs trying to get a troop train but
missed. Raid was at 11 p.m.- bright
moonlight.
Friday, 26 July- Doughnut day today.
Mae did the frying. Bosh [sic] had us
out last night again, but did not come
very near.
Friday, 4 October- Two gas alerts last
night. Made cake today.
Monday, 7 October- Today we made
cookies. Truck came with supplies.
Still shelling. Kaiser asking for
peace.94
When German artillery barrages became heavy the women would
move to a dugout or other shelter.
woman who would not.
Helen Purviance was one
She wrote:
I couldn’t take dugouts—underground,
totally dark. We soon learned from
observing how the shell blasts chopped
off the trees above the ground that, if
we lay flat with our faces in the dirt,
Helen Purviance, Doughgirl, 3; Helga Ramsay, Personal notes,
Salvation Army Archives, Alexandria, Virginia.
94 Griselda Rapson, Diary, Box 218/17, Salvation Army Archives,
Alexandria, Virginia.
93
63
there was a good margin of safety over
us because the shells burst out and
upward. I much preferred the open field
and lying prone to the trapped
sensation in a dugout.95
After one intense shelling, Colonel Barker insisted the
women use dugouts.
for me.
Helen still resisted saying, “No dugout
If I get a direct hit that would be the finish.
wouldn’t have any building coming down on top of me.
I
Maybe
I’m a bit claustrophobic.”96
Besides the ever-constant threat of death through
enemy action the Salvationists also had to contend with the
harsh living conditions at the front.
Mud was a constant
companion as were “cooties” (lice) and trench rats.
In
fact, one Salvationist woman stated that the girls feared
the mice and rats more than the gas and shelling.97 Another
wrote:
The building was full of trench rats,
and we had to tuck sheets and blankets
around our heads so they would not
reach us. We could feel them crawl on
top of the blankets and jump to the
floor when we shook the cots.98
Dugouts were often cold and damp if not filled with water.
Because the women operated so close to the front lines and
95
96
Purviance, Diary.
Ibid.
64
the enemy could see the smoke from fires, the women often
could not cook or heat their living areas.
They sometimes
had to thaw their shoes over a candle before putting them
on.
One woman broke her shoe in half when she tried to
bend it one morning.
Helen Purviance found nineteen black
spots on her feet, caused by the cold, when she returned to
the states.99
Operating in damp, airless cellars with only a candle
to provide light; working without sleep, food, or adequate
clothing; all were part and parcel of Salvation Army life
even in the United States.
Living and working close to the
trenches in France made the Army unique, but in reality it
was simply standard procedure.
One had to “be near enough
to catch the heart-beat.”100 Evangeline Booth summed it up
succinctly: “Our system in France was not, therefore, an
experiment, but an organized, tested, and proved system. We
were enacting no new role.”101 The Salvation Army was also
experienced in tending to the sick and dying, but caring
for the casualties of the Great War would prove to be a
daunting task.
Bert Ford, “Salvation Army Women Eager to Serve,” Excerpted from The
New York American, The War Cry, June 1918, 4. Microfilm.
98 Ramsay, Personal notes.
99 Booth and Hill, 133; Purviance, Diary.
97
65
CHAPTER V
THE SALVATION ARMY IN WORLD WAR I:
WORKING WITH THE WOUNDED AND DYING
Doughnuts, pies, mending clothes, lectures on good
behavior, music, and just talking were all services
provided by the Salvationists that brought a little piece
of home to the men in the trenches.
The women were
especially idolized for they were the surrogates for the
mothers the young doughboys missed so much.
When the women
worked with the wounded and dying, this relationship
naturally intensified.
Salvation Army officers were not novices when dealing
with medical situations; they graduated from training
school with a Red Cross diploma and many were experienced
nurses.
In one instance, a Salvationist officer attended
to the medical needs of the doughboys before setting foot
on French soil.
On board a troop ship on its way to
France, so many soldiers had come down with Spanish
influenza that a hospital had to be created.
100
Booth and Hill, 7.
The ship’s
66
captain and the regular army officers asked the
Salvationist to take charge.
With two nurses, three
dieticians from the YMCA and the Red Cross, a medical corps
sergeant, and twenty-four orderlies as help, the
Salvationist stabilized the situation.
As some patients
died, she also conducted the burials at sea.102
The Salvation Army did not work with the wounded in
any official capacity; they pitched in as needed.
After
major battles, and the subsequent influx of casualties,
their services were especially desired for there were no
regular army nurses in the forward aid stations.
Dealing
with men who were dying or suffering from ghastly wounds
taxed the Salvationists’ strength and emotions.
Stella
Young, a twenty-two year old officer from Chelsea,
Massachusetts, described her work: “I saw them at their
worst, blind, gassed, without limbs, faces torn by shot and
shell and not a word of complaint from anyone of them.
I
enjoyed that work very much but one cannot stand it for
very long.”103
Since the Salvationists had no set duties in the
hospitals, they handled a variety of tasks.
101
102
Ibid., 14-15.
Ibid., 83-85.
Captain Louise
67
Holbrook’s job consisted of washing the wounded men’s faces
and administering an anti-tetanus serum that was standard
procedure for all wounds. She also helped set broken bones
and treated men for shock.
The work tested the women’s
endurance as Holbrook explained: “We had no regular hours
for work.
We simply kept going until we dropped in our
tracks, then slept until we could work again.
We put
through seventy-five hundred men in ten days.” Holbrook
also recounted the tragic side of the work: “...I went into
the moonlit night, and seeing a young man on a stretcher, I
went over and asked if there was anything I could do for
him.
Receiving no answer, I placed my hand on his
forehead, then recoiled in alarm to find that he was dead.”
There were also moments of laughter such as when a baldheaded German prisoner sat up on his stretcher and was
found to be wearing nothing but his cap.
When asked why he
had come to be that way he replied that he was afraid of
catching cold.104
One small group of Salvationist women, trying to
follow the American advance into the Argonne, had become
stranded in a little town.
103
Stella Young, Personal notes.
They noticed activity around a
68
small church and found that a hospital had been set up.
They immediately offered their services to the doctor who
readily accepted.
They went to the tents and found the
wounded lying on damp blankets.
Quickly surveying the
situation, and demonstrating their organizational skills,
the women found rubber tarps and laid them out.
They then
put down a dry blanket and placed the wounded on top and
covered them with the other half of the tarp.
One badly
wounded regular army officer cried out over and over, “Oh,
my men, my men! They are all shot to pieces.” A few days
later an ambulance came in with the driver badly wounded.
He had driven with only one hand for shrapnel had shattered
one arm.
The women checked the vehicle:
There was a huge hole in the side of
the ambulance and when we took the
patient out we found his head had been
completely severed from his body by a
large fragment of shell. Our days were
often made sad by the dreadful sight of
men so badly wounded and we prayed for
the day when it would all be over and
from all reports it would not be long
now for the Germans were really on the
run.105
Louise Holbrook, World War I, unpublished memoirs, Salvation Army
Archives, Alexandria, Virginia, 3-5.
105 Alice McAllister, Diary, Salvation Army Archives, Alexandria,
Virginia.
104
69
Poison gas, introduced by the Germans at Ypres and
used by both sides, did not break the stalemate of the
Western Front but did produce mass casualties.
There were
different types of gases but Mustard, Phosgene, and
Chlorine were primarily used-- each having a unique effect.
A young soldier described them in his own distinct way:
Yes, and there’s the mustard gas. That
sort of burns you all over, and blinds
you and makes you choke. Then there’s
the convulsion gas- it gives you coma
and convulsion and nauseation and
things. Then there’s the pukation
gas.106
Attending to casualties suffering from exposure to gas
required a slightly different approach:
The first thing we did was to quickly
put a piece of clean gauze in their
hands, because the eyes were badly
affected, and they streamed with tears.
They were wiping their eyes on their
coats, and infection was an ever
present danger. Then we lead them over
to lie down- Germans and Americans or
British. The ones likely to live long
enough to get to hospital back of the
lines were taken to another section,
where they could have emergency care
before going to the hospital. But those
for whom there was no hope were taken
to our section, and we cared for them
to the end. We gave them drinks,
removed their wet and blood stained
James Hopper, “Praising Salvation Army in ‘Violent Terms,’” Excerpted
from Colliers Weekly in War Service Herald, August 1918, 12. Microfilm.
106
70
clothing, made them as comfortable as
we could, some died in our arms.107
Ignorance caused some casualties, such as when two
green soldiers prodded a dud shell with a bayonet, causing
it to explode.
They hobbled into the hospital supporting
each other, one of them missing an arm.
Whatever the
reason for their wounds, all the men responded to the
Salvation Army women.
One doctor said if the women did
nothing but walk through the tents and smile it would be of
tremendous help.
Certainly the hospital work had a
profound effect on the women; in their diaries and personal
papers their emotions are closest to the surface when
discussing the wounded.
Louise Holbrook offers perhaps the
defining moment for the women and their work with the
wounded.
The field hospital where the women were working
was pulling out of the Soissons sector and seven men were
being left behind.
They were dying.
There were nurses to
attend to them but they were French nurses.
Holbrook and
the others went to speak with the men before departing:
There was a big lump in our throats as
we thought of leaving them. I stooped
over one as he lay on the ground I
said, “How are you son?” “I’m fine,
sister.” “You’ve been hurt pretty bad,
Helen Purviance, interview by Brigadier Christine E. McMillan, July
1980, transcript, Salvation Army Archives, Alexandria, Virginia.
107
71
haven’t you?” “Yes, I’ve got it. I
guess.” I didn’t know what to say, I
felt so useless. So I said, “Would you
like to tell me something about it?”
“Sister,” he replied, “it was terrible
out there. I got mine the first day, in
my legs. My buddy dragged me into a
shell hole and then he went on and no
one came. The next day a bomb dropped
near me and wounded me again. There was
no water and the flies were terrible.”
I made some little murmur of sympathy
and he took hold of my hand and gripped
it with all his dying strength. “It’s
all right now, sister, I found Jesus
out there.” There was no time to talk
further. The truck was starting and I
had to say goodbye. But I shall never
forget the light in his eyes or his
dying testimony.108
Salvationist care extended to the civilian population
as well.
Helen Purviance wrote of her brother who worked
with the ambulance service.
He and others were evacuating
wounded soldiers and civilians out of a town being shelled.
Among those on his truck was a young boy of about eight or
nine.
She wrote:
Just before my brother left me I gave
him a flower, so he gave it to the
little fellow. “He didn’t groan once,”
he told me afterward, “and nearly one
whole side of his face was shot away. I
put him in my ambulance and took him to
the nearest hospital, but when I got
there he was dead. Closely pressed to
108
Holbrook, World War I, 6.
72
his baby face was the crushed
flower.”109
The care provided by the Salvation Army women did not
end with death.
In some cases, they conducted burial
services and in others, they assisted chaplains by singing
hymns during the ceremony.
The women accompanied one
chaplain to the top of a hill where twenty-five men were
being buried in a trench.
After the short service and a
few hymns, the women were close to breaking. Alice
McAllister recalled: “It was a heartbreaking sight.
We
found it difficult to keep back the tears.” When the
chaplain then asked them to pray over the grave of a German
soldier, Alice was struck by the realization that “all were
the children of God no matter how wrong we may be.”110
Military units also used Salvation Army huts as temporary
mortuaries for men who had been killed on the line.
Even
during their free time, the Salvationists would walk to
nearby American graves and ensure they were tidy.
Others
went the extra yard and took pictures of the graves and,
finding the address of the relatives, would send the
picture with a short note describing the grave’s location.
The Salvationists felt that this would give comfort to
109
Purviance, Doughgirl, 4.
73
those at home that the grave was being cared for by
American women.111
On Decoration Day (Memorial Day) in 1918, ceremonies
were held at American cemeteries throughout France in which
the Salvation Army played a major role.
Evangeline Booth
sent an American flag to France for every American grave.
Prior to the ceremonies, Salvationists cleared away mud and
debris from the graves and restored mounds that had been
washed away by rain.
They fixed crosses that had become
dilapidated and cleared away dead flowers.
They then
gathered red poppies, white “snowballs,” and blue “bachelor
buttons.” The lassies arranged the flowers in red, white,
and blue bouquets in vases made from whatever was handy
such as food tins.
Every grave received an American flag
and the same caring treatment.
One Decoration Day ceremony
was conducted while an air battle raged overhead.
In some
of the larger cemeteries, there were bands and dignitaries.
In one, Salvation Army Colonel William Barker placed
flowers on the grave of Quentin Roosevelt, the former
110
111
McAllister, Diary
Purviance, Doughgirl, 4.
74
president’s youngest son, who was killed in an air
battle.112
With so much death and destruction, the military
constantly worried about the safety of the Salvationists,
especially the “lassies.” Despite their continuous
proximity to the front only one Salvationist died, a Major
Barnes, and he from pneumonia during the influenza
epidemic.
The military considered it luck but the
Salvationists considered it an act of God.
close calls, however.
There were some
German shells and shrapnel
constituted the most common danger.
The women conducted
their business sometimes as close as the secondary trench
lines but always within the range of enemy artillery.
The
men worked in the front lines, in no-man’s land, and even
in the assaults.
Salvationists tell countless stories
where pieces of shrapnel landed at their feet or tore up
tables and chairs they had just been using.
In one
incident, after the military commander in Ansauville
ordered the girls out because of the danger, a Salvation
Army staff-captain went to retrieve their belongings.
He
looked in horror at their canteen: the walls and roof were
112
Booth and Hill, 178-185.
75
full of shell holes; shrapnel had punctured tins of sugar
and flour and peppered the furniture.113 Also common were
stories of shells exploding in places just vacated by the
Salvationists.
All these incidents added to their feeling
that God was watching over them.
The Salvationists did not go unscathed--there were
wounds.
Many were minor including “doughnut wrist,” which
afflicted Helen Purviance due to the huge numbers of
doughnuts she produced.
serious.
Others’ wounds were far more
At St.-Firmin, a Salvation Army major helped a
soldier who was wounded outside his door by a gas shell.
The gas lingering on the man affected the major over a
period of time.
A few hours after the incident, he noticed
his hands were very red as he served cocoa to the troops.
The next day, as he took food to the men in the trenches,
his eyes became so affected he had to seek medical
attention.
Over the next few days he was treated several
times for his eyes and throat.
The skin on his hands began
to crack and sting, and the flesh came off his neck and
other parts of his body.114 Another male Salvationist,
Ensign Floyd Burdick, husband to “Ma” Burdick, was shot in
113
Ibid., 199.
76
the arm though not by the Germans but by a nervous French
soldier.
Burdick officially became the Salvation Army’s
first war casualty.115
Some of the Salvation Army men and women sustained
minor wounds by shrapnel, but they did not seek medical
attention, for they feared they would have to leave their
soldiers.
pain.
They simply treated themselves and endured the
In another incident, Louise Holbrook and Violet
McAllister were helping carry wounded men into a large
dugout during an artillery barrage.
Just as they got the
last man in they heard another shell coming.
They made for
the dugout but got jammed in the door as the shell
exploded.
Louise was buried to her waist and Violet was
hit so hard in the head that her helmet was dented.
Both
women lived and, surprisingly, were not seriously hurt.
Louise limped for several weeks and Violet suffered a
severe headache.116
The experiences of the women in the hospitals and
casualty clearing stations touched the women deeply.
Their
poignant stories involving the wounded and dying reveal not
Ibid., 158; Salvation Army, “Behind the Lines in the Argonne Forest,”
War Service Herald, October 1918, 11. Microfilm.
115 Allison Coe, letter, excerpted in The War Cry, June 1918, 16.
Microfilm.
116 Holbrook, World War I, 5-6.
114
77
only the emotional attachment they felt for “their
doughboys,” but also the affection the doughboys had for
them.
The personal risks the women took on a daily basis
to help the men only intensified that affection. The bond
between the soldiers and the Salvationists established in
the frontlines would later significantly impact the
evolution of the Salvation Army.
78
CHAPTER VI
THE SALVATION ARMY IN WORLD WAR I:
THE END OF THE WAR AND
METAMORPHOSIS
With all the newspaper and magazine articles that
regaled the public with stories of the Salvation Army women
on the front, one might have come away with the notion that
they were everywhere.
In fact, there were only 250
Salvationists on active duty in France as compared to ten
thousand YMCA workers.
Of those Salvationists, 109 were
women.117
Unlike the “lassies,” who were normally restricted to
the rear trench lines, male Salvationists could, and did,
operate in the primary trenches and even in no-man’s land.
The men could not offer the wide range of services found in
the rear areas nor could they compete with the women’s
“doughnut ministry,” but they did find ways to help the
soldiers.
117
Gavin, 230.
79
One Salvationist officer, Ensign Fred Anderson, lived
and worked in a dugout from which he could see the German
lines only a few hundred yards away.
served as his washtub.
A nearby shell hole
Anderson would often show visitors
his trophies: a bible and songbooks with shrapnel deeply
imbedded in them.
Ham and egg sandwiches were his
specialty and the soldiers consumed hundreds in a day.
To
keep up with the demand, Anderson had to make frequent
trips into the countryside to find eggs, often taking
doughboy volunteers with him.
On one such foray, he and
some soldiers were returning to the trenches with a load of
eggs and were coming up on a work party when German
artillery opened up on them.
The first shell wounded
several workers and Anderson’s volunteers dropped their
eggs and ran for cover.
Anderson, however, ran to the
injured men and, despite a continuing rain of shells,
applied first aid to the wounded and tended to them until
they were evacuated.118
Some Salvation Army dugouts were deep in the earth and
extended under the actual front lines.
Inside, soldiers
could listen to a victrola, read magazines, and play chess
Helen Purviance, The Salvation Army and the War Work Merger: An
Illustrated Lecture, Box 69/18, Salvation Army Archives, Alexandria,
118
80
or checkers.
Baked goods were available only when supplies
could be brought up from the “lassies” in the rear, but one
could always count on coffee and cocoa.
In the darkest
hours of the night, Salvationist men would crawl through
connecting trenches only three feet deep to the most
forward positions to personally deliver the precious
beverages.
During these tense journeys, care had to be
taken to keep noise to a minimum, for any loud sound would
invite immediate German fire.119
Other Salvationist men worked in more mobile
conditions.
One operated a “rolling kitchen” in which he
would make pancakes and coffee for soldiers he came across
in his travels.
He would be gone for weeks, only returning
to replenish his supplies.
Another became a “Santa Claus,”
visiting hospitals with a large bag slung over his shoulder
filled with clothes and personal items for gas victims.
Gas casualties usually lost everything when their uniforms
were torn off them and disposed of.120
Salvationist men also operated ambulances, seventyseven in all.
Even delivery trucks augmented the ambulance
fleet during major battles.
Virginia, 12.
119 Young, Personal notes, 7.
Helen Purviance wrote of one
81
group of drivers, unshaven and hollow-eyed, who worked for
four days and nights ferrying the wounded between field
dressing stations and hospitals with blood dripping through
the cracks in the floorboards.
Salvationist men also
worked as stretcher-bearers, taking the wounded out of noman’s land.
One Salvation Army officer described it:
We were called up for work- work which
taxed us to the limit of our physical
powers. The transporting of wounded men
is stern graft [sic], and to say that
it requires muscular power and plenty
of nerve is to use mild terms. Think of
carrying on a canvas stretcher a man
whose limbs have been shattered, who
weighs from 160 to 210 pounds and to
whom every jar spells agony! That is no
enviable task.121
Major Atkins, otherwise known as La Petit Major, a
nickname given to him by the doughboys, is perhaps the best
example of what the male Salvation Army officer brought to
the American soldiers.
A smallish, fifty-three year old,
Atkins worked with the 26th Infantry Regiment.
welcome at first.
He was not
But after he converted an unusually
brutal man who had been condemned for murder, battalion
commander Major Theodore Roosevelt, eldest son of the
former president, made Atkins part of the unit.
120
Ibid., 7-8.
Atkins
82
accompanied the unit in all of its engagements.
Going
“over the top” numerous times, he delivered supplies and
helped bring in the wounded from no-man’s land, sometimes
under machine-gun fire.
His calmness under fire was such
that many men would crouch around him confident that no
harm would come to them as long as he was near.
He was at
the side of Captain Archie Roosevelt, the former
president’s third son, when Roosevelt was wounded.
In one
incident, as Atkins was crawling over the top, a lieutenant
shouted, “Go back, Major, you haven’t even a pistol!”
Atkins replied, “I have no hesitancy in laying down my life
if it will help or encourage anyone else to live in a
better or cleaner way.”
Atkins was a true Salvationist.122
The Salvationists lived among the soldiers, enduring
the same harsh conditions, working longer hours than the
soldiers, and eating the same food.
They often ate with
the men at army field kitchens and the soldiers insisted
that the Salvationists go to the head of the line.123 This
demonstrated the esteem in which the doughboys held the
Allison Coe, “Salvation Section at the Front,” War Service Herald,
August 1918, 11. Microfilm; Purviance, Illustrated Lecture, 22.
122 Booth and Hill, 100-105.
123 Miles, 6.
121
83
Salvationists, for there is no greater honor a soldier can
bestow than to give up his place in the chow line.
The actions of the Salvation Army in World War I
brought it the acceptance of the American public, but it
was an action taken by the United States Army that
officially moved the Salvationists from a fringe sect to a
mainstream religious order.
On September 12, 1917, the
United States Staff Judge Advocate declared the Salvation
Army a denomination of the Christian Church “with its own
distinct legal existence, creed, doctrines, discipline,
ministers, and members.”124 This act accomplished two
things: it made all Salvation Army officers in the United
States exempt from the draft and it made them eligible to
become commissioned U.S. Army chaplains.125 The army
eventually accepted five Salvationists as chaplains: Ensign
Harry Kline, John Allan, Ernest Holz, Norman Marshall, and
J. A. Ryan.
Kline was the first official Salvationist
chaplain and, in fact, already in an army uniform for he
was also the appointed chaplain of a Nebraska National
Guard unit.
124
125
He went with them when they were called to
McKinley, 124.
Marshall, Great Old Army, 165-166.
84
duty in France and became an officer upon receiving his
U.S. Army commission.
World War I was not the first instance in which the
Salvation Army tended to the spiritual needs of the U.S.
Army; Staff-Captain John Milsaps traveled with the American
army to the Philippines during the Spanish-American War.
He served in a semi-official role and was given free reign
to work with the soldiers by the U.S. Army commander, Major
General Wesley Merritt (Merritt also served as a cavalry
commander during the American Civil War).
Interestingly,
Kline was a soldier in the Philippines and worked for
Milsaps there along with seven others.
After his return to
the United States, Kline became a Salvation Army officer.126
John Allan, another of the chaplains, proved to be an
exceptional leader and administrator and soon found himself
in a headquarters slot for the chaplain corps.
One of his
most challenging assignments consisted of assigning 137 new
chaplains to their military units in one day.
While it
might seem a mundane task it actually required great
thought and skill, because Allan had to consider such
126
Ibid., 167.
85
diverse factors as religion, cultural and social
background, and ethnicity.127
The services provided to the American doughboys by the
men and women of the Salvation Army required funding.
Very
little of the money came from the government; most of it
had to come from private sources.
When Evangeline Booth
borrowed the seed money for the Salvationist war effort,
she did so with the confidence that the American public
would eventually respond.
She could not have foreseen how
correct she had been. In 1918, Booth initiated a drive to
collect a sum of one million dollars.
It seemed an
astronomical amount, especially for an organization that
normally funded itself through coins tossed in tambourines.
But the American public had come to know the Salvation Army
and its important work through newspapers, magazines, and
especially letters sent home from soldiers in France.
Instead of one million dollars, the Salvation Army took in
well over three million.
Older officers who had weathered
the persecution of the late nineteenth century, not that
long distant, were amazed.128
Paul Marshall, Forest Park, Illinois, to Robert Marshall, Copperas
Cove, Texas, June 1, 2002.
128 McKinley, 127.
127
86
The official Salvation Army attitude towards the war
reflected its international nature. The General, Bramwell
Booth, insisted that the word “enemy” never be used when
referring to the Central Powers (this same attitude was
carried over into World War II as well).
The General
constantly wrote about the suffering on all sides, and
would often recount anecdotes that emphasized the humanity
and compassion of all the combatants.
One told the story
of a German who tended to a French soldier struck in the
forehead.
The Germans were retreating, but the German
soldier laid the wounded Frenchman in a trench so he would
be safe from the shells.
Another story brought tears to
the General’s eyes:
“Poor devil! Unnerved by shell shock,”
was the comment passed as a wounded
German was being carried by on a
stretcher sobbing as if his heart would
break. It was not, however, the roar of
the artillery and the bursting of high
explosives that had unnerved him, but
the self-sacrifice of a Dublin Fusilier
who, in succoring him, lost his own
life. At the hospital the German
related that the Irishman undid the
field dressing which he had wrapped
round his own wound, and applied it to
the German who appeared to be in danger
of bleeding to death. Before the two
men were discovered by a British
stretcher party the Dublin Fusilier had
passed away. He had developed blood
poisoning through the exposed wound.
87
The German, upon hearing the news,
broke down and wept bitterly.129
Booth expressed his view on war and the “enemy” in a
holiday address:
Let me entreat my dear people
everywhere to put away from them all
hatred and uncharitableness at this
time. Let us remember that God has made
of one flesh all nations, and that He
has loved us all alike. The passion and
horrors of war are just as powerless to
alter this as to change the nature of
God Himself. Our great business,
therefore, is to bless all, to serve
all, to love all.130
The American branch of the Salvation Army had always
possessed an independent spirit.
After all, it had added
an eagle to the Salvation Army insignia, the only country
to alter the emblem.
This independence also manifested
itself in the American Salvationist attitude concerning the
“enemy,” an attitude that proved to be much different from
that of the General.
Throughout the war the American
Salvationists exhibited the same patriotic fervor of their
fellow citizens.
“Ma” Burdick exhorted the soldiers going
into the frontlines, “Boys, you are all my sons. Remember
what is expected of Americans.
Don’t yield an inch. Face
Bramwell Booth, “Sympathy on the Stricken Fields,” Social News, July
1917, 2. Microfilm.
129
88
your duty like the men you are.”131 Another Salvationist
said enthusiastically, “You just ought to see those boys of
ours lay down a barrage!”132 Griselda Rapson wrote an entry
in her diary on December 2, 1918: “My what a sight it was
to see these boys marching by all day in battle formation
into Germany.
The stars and stripes flying at the head of
the march.”133 Even Evangeline Booth, daughter of the
founder and born in England, chose not to adhere totally to
the official view and her writing often took on a distinct
American patriotic tone.
The idea of Evangeline taking a
different viewpoint from that of her brother and leader,
Bramwell Booth, did not surprise anyone.
Evangeline and
her brother, Ballington, himself a former American National
Commander, had many differences in opinion with Bramwell.
With American troops flooding into France and the
Germans failing in their last offensive, the war eventually
drew to a close.
Helga Ramsay wrote:
We heard rumors that the war was ending
soon, but we did not know for sure.
Then the news came that the Armistice
would take place November 11, 1918 at
11 o’clock in the morning. The boys
were still skeptical, but on November
Bramwell Booth, “The Salvation Army and the War Scourge,” Social
News, February 1916. 3. Microfilm.
131 Ford, “Salvation Army Women Eager to Serve,” 5.
132 Salvation Army, “Behind the Lines in Argonne Forest,” 10.
133 Rapson, Diary.
130
89
10th the news was confirmed and they
kept on shelling all night and the
morning of the 11th. They wanted to use
up all their ammunition, we were told.
It was a very trying time. The boys who
were not on duty sang, played the piano
and danced, but we just wondered what
would happen before 11 o’clock. At the
hour stated, all became so deathly
still we felt we could not believe it
was true. Then I heard one fellow say,
“Let’s go to sleep.”134
When the guns fell silent on November 11, 1918, Salvation
Army girls walked across no-man’s land to the German
trenches.
The Germans were left speechless as the lassies
gave them trays full of doughnuts.
As far as the American
Salvation Army was concerned the Germans were back in the
fold.
The end of the war did not bring the cessation of
Salvation Army activities in Europe or on the home front.
Salvationist men and women accompanied occupation troops to
Germany to provide the familiar services to the doughboys
stationed there and to help the German people.
Salvationists helped care for the wounded of all the
belligerents, helped in the repatriation of prisoners of
war, and opened centers for refugees.
Occupation duty was
not uneventful; Mary Young describes one event that took
place on August 25, 1919, in Coblenz:
134
Ramsay, Personal Notes.
90
There was a lot of excitement about
9:30 p.m. Several shots were fired and
a German was wounded. The streets were
cleared and guards posted on patrol.
Seven Germans and a Colonel were
arrested. I suppose the Colonel refused
to halt.135
Another incident involving Salvationist Helga Ramsay,
on duty in Germany, reveals just how fragile the situation
remained after the war:
The Germans had not signed the Peace
Treaty yet, and when that time came,
refused to sign. One evening, instead
of Taps, we heard “First Call.” The
boys rushed out, thinking they would
get instructions to parade before
General Pershing, as had been rumored.
Instead, they were informed they were
to pack up and leave at midnight to set
up lines and start the war again. One
boy came in, his face pale as death,
and I asked him what was wrong. He
answered, “I hope the first shell that
comes over hits me.” Then he explained
what was to happen at midnight. This
was 10 p.m.136
The troops left and set up positions in a nearby forest.
Ramsay refused to leave her canteen.
The next morning, a
Salvation Army truck delivered coffee cake to the canteen.
Ramsay and the driver drove around the woods until they
located the soldiers and distributed their baked goods.
Mary Young, Diary, Box 218/10, Salvation Army Archives, Alexandria,
Virginia.
136 Ramsay, Personal notes, 12-13.
135
91
Even on board ship on their way home to America after their
duty in France and Germany, the “lassies” were once again
elbow deep in doughnut dough.
The Captain of their ship,
having heard so much about the Salvation Army doughnuts,
asked the women to make up a batch for his crew.
Never
turning down a chance to provide for the men, the women
took over the galley and made their now famous delicacy.
137
Meanwhile, in the United States, hostels were erected near
debarkation points.
Discharged men could utilize Salvation
Army employment services where, according to policy,
enlisted men were given preference.138
Sometimes improvised services became permanent
features.
Salvation Army Colonel Edward Parker suggested
to Helen Purviance, now in the states helping the War
Drive, that she and some of the other girls meet the troops
who were coming home.
Purviance asked, “What shall we do?
We don’t want to meet the troops and stand there and look
at them.” Parker replied, “It’s up to you. Figure out
something.”139 A few days later, the women heard whistles
blowing and knew that troopships were coming into the
Ibid., 14.
Salvation Army, The Salvation Army in World War I, 6; idem, War
Service Report of the Salvation Army 1917-1919, 5-9.
139 Purviance, Diary.
137
138
92
harbor.
They jumped in a cab and, armed with two hundred
dollars someone had donated, made for the piers.
Along the
way they bought out a newsstand so the soldiers could have
a newspaper to greet them.
to do more.
Still, the women felt they had
At the piers they noticed a Western Union boy
with pads of telegram blanks.
They all got a handful and
offered to send telegrams home to the soldiers’ families
announcing their arrival.
The women spent hours in a cold
building that afternoon and evening retyping hundreds of
telegrams, for many of the soldiers had not written very
legibly.
But the telegrams went out that night,
compliments of the Salvation Army.
The next morning, the
Salvation Army was flooded with telegrammed responses
thanking them for their thoughtfulness.
By the time Helen
returned to France, the Salvation Army had twenty-five
secretaries writing out telegrams.140
In some cases the Salvation Army responded to problems
caused by American soldiers.
In American towns near army
camps, prostitution had become a problem.
A federal
government agency in Des Moines, Iowa, asked for the
Salvationists’ help in dealing with young girls, some as
140
Ibid.
93
young as fourteen, who “were being led into an immoral life
because of the soldiers.” The Salvation Army tasked a
twenty-four year old officer to open a refuge for the
girls.
She made arrangements for some to return home to
families and secured more respectable work for others.
Her
success prompted the opening of homes near other army
camps.141
All of these services required more and more money and
Booth again decided to appeal to the American public.
In
May 1919, she opened the “Home Service Fund,” a national
combined-services campaign with the dizzying goal of
thirteen million dollars.
Booth launched the campaign at
Madison Square Garden with the help of Vice President
Thomas Marshall, New York Governor Al Smith, and a host of
other dignitaries.
achieved success.
Like her first appeal, this one
With this infusion of funds, Booth
intended to pay off mortgages, build new facilities and
fund all American Salvation Army operations except corps.142
When one compares the thirteen million dollars raised
in 1919 to the paltry sums raised by the Salvation Army
just prior to the war, it is clear that the nation
141
142
Booth and Hill, 283.
McKinley, 128.
94
experienced a fundamental societal change as far as the
Salvationists were concerned.
It is also clear that this
change was due to the Salvation Army’s actions in World War
I.
One editorial described this change:
It hasn’t been so very long ago that it
was somewhat the fashion to shrug the
shoulders and smile tolerantly when the
Salvation Army was mentioned. Because
of some of the organization’s so-called
sensational methods, such as its openair meetings, a great many persons in
every community were disposed to look
down upon the Salvation Army as an
institution of doubtful good. We hear
and see nothing of the sort in these
days. A great change has taken place.143
The editorial attributed this change to the actions of the
Salvation Army men and women in the trenches of France.
More importantly, it expressed the public sentiment that
the Salvation Army now had a place in America in times of
peace as well.
The returning soldiers expressed it in
simpler terms:
Before I went overseas I used to laugh
at the Salvation Army services on the
street here but Edward J. Doize will
never ridicule the Salvation Army
again, and if I could afford to do it I
wouldn’t stand back on dropping a $10
“The Pulse of the Press,” excerpted editorial from the Dayton, Ohio,
Herald, War Service Herald, February 1919, 2.
143
95
bill in a tambourine every time I saw
one extended for money.144
There is just one more thing I wish to
speak of, and that is the little old
Salvation Army. You will never see me,
nor any of the other boys over here,
laugh at their street services in the
future, and if I see anyone else doing
that little thing that person is due
for a busted head!145
These were just a few of a multitude of letters and
editorials all trumpeting the same idea--the Salvation Army
would no longer be the object of ridicule.
The doughboys
had finally come to understand the Salvation Army, and
through the doughboys, so had the American public.
In recognition of Evangeline Booth’s and the Salvation
Army’s service to America, Booth was awarded the
Distinguished Service Medal by President Wilson.
“Ma”
Burdick received the French Croix de Guerre and a citation
from General Pershing.
Mae Morton, Griselda Rapson, and
Cora Van Norden received U.S. Army Certificates for
Exceptionally Meritorious and Conspicuous Services.146
The war was over and the Salvation Army was entering
uncharted territory.
For almost forty years the Salvation
“The Pulse of the Press,” excerpted letter from a New Orleans
newspaper, War Service Herald, February 1919, 4.
145 Letter excerpted in The Mess Kit, 8.
146 Gavin, 277.
144
96
Army had toiled in the neediest places in America.
They
endured persecution and personal hardship; they were
ignored if not ridiculed; and they struggled to keep
themselves financially afloat to do God’s work.
But now,
in less than three years, everything had changed.
Certainly many Salvationists wondered what the future held
in store for them.
97
CHAPTER VII
THE YEARS BETWEEN THE WARS AND WORLD WAR II
The period between the world wars was an unfamiliar
but welcome one for the Salvation Army.
It was unfamiliar
due to the public support they now received and welcome
because new programs could be launched due to that new
support. Salvationist social programs expanded at a rapid
rate. Older officers, tried by the persecutions of the late
1800s, marveled at the degree of acceptance the Salvation
Army enjoyed.
Officers were even invited to join civic
clubs such as the Rotary and Kiwanis.
During the early
1920s, when a period of religious revivalism swept through
regions of America, Salvation Army Captain Rheba Crawford
drew huge crowds to her open-air meetings.
She was not
only a charismatic speaker but quite beautiful as well.
She won the heart of reporter Walter Winchell who was
instrumental in making her the model for the “doll” in
Damon Runyon’s short story “The Idyll of Miss Sarah
98
Browne,” and, later, Frank Loesser’s musical, Guys and
Dolls.147
While the 1920s became a golden era for the American
Salvation Army, it also became a period of great change and
crisis for the international Salvation Army.
The crisis
centered on the office of General, held by Bramwell Booth,
and the subject of succession.
The Salvation Army charter
gave the General the power to appoint his or her successor.
Many commissioners believed Bramwell had chosen his
daughter, Catherine, as the next leader and they found the
idea disturbing.
Catherine was a fine Salvationist but
senior officers felt she would carry on her father’s
autocratic style and they felt a change was in order.
Much
of the rumbling against Bramwell Booth came from America.
Some of the discontent was due to the American
predisposition to democracy, and many American officers
viewed the Salvation leadership as a monarchy that had to
go.
Others were supporters of Evangeline Booth who hoped
that a move to elections would give her a chance to become
General, something that would not happen if Bramwell chose
a successor.
147
Bramwell Booth was eventually deposed in a
McKinley, 135.
99
meeting of Salvation Army commissioners on January 16,
1929.
Bramwell tried to fight the action in the British
law courts but failed.
Evangeline, too, failed in her bid
for power, for Commissioner Higgins became the Salvation
Army’s third General.
Evangeline may not have come away
with the prize she sought, but she did gain the adulation
of the American Salvation Army, who hailed her as the hero
of reform.148
The post war years also saw the changing of the guard
as the Salvationist pioneers died off to be replaced by a
new breed.
Among those promoted to glory were: Eliza
Shirley, who had begun the Army’s work in America, Emma
Westbrook, who had landed in New York with George Railton,
Major Milsaps, the first Salvationist to minister to the
U.S. Army, and Joe the Turk.
Because of its newfound place in American society, the
Salvation Army began to recruit from higher social classes
and the highly educated, and some of its older officers
feared that these new soldiers and officers would prove to
lack the endurance and zeal required to carry on the Army’s
mission.
148
These fears proved groundless, but the Great War
Ibid., 153-161.
100
had not changed the life of an officer--hardship was still
a constant companion.
While the Salvation Army took in
large sums to finance social programs, the corps that were
the churches of the Army, still had to finance themselves.
Poverty still stalked many of these corps.
In one case, a
young female officer sent to Saratoga, New York, found the
corps penniless; making the young officer penniless as
well.
When a soldier of the corps died, the officer had to
find an undertaker willing to bury the deceased for the few
dollars the sale of her few possessions had brought.
In
other corps, officers had to subsist on whatever food their
paltry salaries could buy, such as stale bakery goods.
Much of this hardship was finally alleviated by the
inclusion of the Salvation Army corps in the Community
Chest program.149
Despite obstacles facing established corps, new ones
were still being formed.
In California, Masasuke
Kobayashi, a Presbyterian minister, arranged a series of
revival meetings for Salvation Army Colonel Gunpei
Yamamuro, the founder of the Salvation Army in Japan.
Considered Japan’s Christian statesman, Yamamuro had been
decorated twice by the Emperor.
Yamamuro’s effect on the
101
Japanese in California stunned Kobayashi--in two weeks 842
Japanese-Americans were converted.
His success prompted
Kobayashi to become a Salvation Army officer and open the
first Japanese-American corps in San Francisco.
Later,
corps were established in Los Angeles, Fresno, and
Stockton.
Kobayashi’s successes in California were hard-
won, for a Japanese to live the life of a Christian in many
cases meant the severing of family ties.
To live the life
of a Salvationist with its unique brand of evangelism took
even more courage and sacrifice.150
The period between the end of World War I and the
Depression held great promise for the Salvation Army in
America.
Their position as an institution in American
culture was secure and their ranks were swelling with
soldiers and officers drawn from all levels in American
society.
Even democracy had won out in the higher reaches
of Salvation Army leadership.
The future seemed boundless.
In October 1929, the stock market crashed.
When
America fell into the Great Depression, the Salvation Army
faced a great challenge; the Army’s soul was the working
class--its social programs and even its evangelism centered
149
150
Ibid., 145-146.
Ibid., 129-130.
102
on the poor.
But much of the Army’s finances came from
this class as well, and the resultant financial distress
came just at the time when the Army’s services were needed
most.
The Army found itself strained almost to the
breaking point.
Many officers were again thrust back
into poverty; some received no salary at all.
The
Depression also changed the way much of the public
perceived the Army. Before 1929, the social programs went
hand-in-hand with evangelism; after the crash many viewed
the Army as just another charity to be used.
Historian
Edward McKinley writes that many of the newly poor, the
middle class now out of work and bewildered, turned their
resentment against the institutions providing relief.
He
cites as an example a passage from John Steinbeck’s, The
Grapes of Wrath:
“If a body’s ever took charity, it
makes a burn that don’t come out….Las’
winter; an’ we was a starvin’- me an’
Pa an’ the little fellas. An’ it was arainin’. Fella tol’ us to go to the
Salvation Army.” Her eyes grew fierce.
“We was hungry- they made us crawl for
our dinner. They took our dignity.
They- I hate ‘em!”…Her voice was fierce
and hoarse. “I hate ‘em,” she said. “I
ain’t never seen my man beat before,
but them- them Salvation Army done it
to ‘im.”151
151
Ibid., 164.
103
One of the Salvation Army’s greatest skills has been its
ability to read situations and devise a plan of action to
deal with it.
Realizing the change in the nature of the
people requiring its services, the Army went to great
lengths to ease the humiliation that charity caused for
some.
It even set up the Confidential Counselor’s Bureau
that allowed people to apply for aid discretely.152
During the Great Depression, the Salvation Army also
saw the loss of its commander, Evangeline Booth.
Her
election to the office of General in September 1934 ended
an era.
She had been at the helm during its great
metamorphosis and, to the American public, she had been the
symbol of the Army.
As the world coped with the Depression, new
totalitarian regimes emerged in Europe and Japan.
Salvation Army was always a step ahead of America.
The
They
were in Europe during World War I long before the
doughboys, and they were in conflict with Hitler long
before World War II.
In 1937, Hitler decreed that the
Salvation Army could not wear uniforms or collect money.
Evangeline Booth, now General, wrote him asking:
152
Ibid., 165-166.
104
“If we cannot wear uniforms, what in
heaven’s name are we to wear? If we
cannot collect money, how can we get
funds for our work? As I think you
over, I have not decided whether you
are a dunce or a devil. Let me remind
you, sir, of the size and influence of
the Salvation Army.” The Fuhrer quickly
conceded.153
The U.S. Army rekindled its relationship with the
Salvation Army in 1940 when Major General William Wilson,
commander of Schofield Barracks in Hawaii, requested that
the Salvation Army establish a presence near his facility.
Major and Mrs. Holbrook answered the call.
Both
Salvationists had served in France during the First World
War so the work was not new to them.
When the Holbrooks
met with General Wilson, Wilson took one look at Louise
Holbrook and exclaimed, “I remember you! You practically
saved my life.” Wilson had been a young infantryman in
France in 1918 and had happened by Louise’s Salvation Army
hut when he had been in extreme need of food.
The general
gave the Holbrooks everything they needed.154
The Red Shield Club established by the Holbrooks in
Hawaii was not intended to support an army at war, but
after the Japanese attack on December 7, 1941, the
153
154
Chesham, 217.
Paul Marshall, Great Old army, 185-186.
105
Holbrooks found themselves doing round-the-clock war work
once again. That same day, Harry Okomura, a JapaneseAmerican and representative of the Federal Security
Administration, asked Louise to set up a canteen to feed
all the people
that had been called up to respond to the emergency.
She
wrote:
No one expects a resident of Oahu to
hurry. It’s against all precedent. But
I will vouch for the fact that in half
an hour’s time that man had secured the
new, and hitherto unused, fire hall;
had got an electrician to turn on the
lights, and had connected up the
electrical stove. On Sunday, mind you!
In an hour’s time I was standing over a
big table up to my elbows in doughnut
batter, my mind fairly whirling as I
tried to plan as I worked.”155
Salvation Army efforts in World War II were less
dramatic than those during the Great War.
By the 1940s,
social programs had become so extensive there was a
shortage of officers.
The bulk of the requests for
chaplains by the uniformed services could not be filled,
though thirty-two did serve in that capacity.
Salvation
Army Colonel John Allan, a chaplain in the First World War,
was recalled by the U.S. Army and assigned to the Chief of
155
Ibid., 188-189.
106
Chaplains Staff, though he later resigned to fill an
important Salvation Army position.156
Many military camps in America did have Salvation Army
canteens nearby and when Congress declared war, the
Salvationists were ready.
President Roosevelt, however,
determined that there would be no repeat of the type of
services provided to the troops such as had occurred in
World War I.
The Red Cross became the only organization
authorized to service the troops overseas.
In fact, he did
not want the other organizations doing war work in the
United States either.
The reasons for this are unclear.
The President did mention the competition and confusion
between service organizations at the outset of World War I,
but when these organizations began operations in Europe,
they did so with a surprising degree of cooperation.
With
the help of John D. Rockefeller, who acted as intermediary,
Roosevelt relented and did allow the Salvation Army and
other organizations, such as the YMCA, to join together
under one umbrella group designated the United Service
Organization (USO) established in February 1941.
During
the war, the Salvation Army operated 219 Red Shield Clubs,
156
Ibid., 190.
107
canteens, and other establishments in addition to the 200
USO clubs assigned to it.
Except for a few traveling USO
shows, the USO confined its activities to the United States
and Hawaii.157
The Red Cross may have had a monopoly on providing for
the troops overseas but stateside they often came in second
place in the eyes of the soldiers.
This is effectively
demonstrated by a single episode in which Salvation Army
Captain Arthur Marshall, operating a mobile canteen, drove
onto a military installation near Philadelphia in early
1942.
A Red Cross canteen truck was already present so
Marshall turned his truck around to leave.
But the
soldiers, seeing the Salvation Army canteen, deserted the
Red Cross and crowded around Marshall’s vehicle.
The
soldiers all knew that whereas the Red Cross charged for
their canteen items, the Salvation Army did not.158
Roosevelt did not stop the international Salvation
Army from assisting in the war effort; Salvation Army
officers and soldiers from Great Britain and elsewhere
operated mobile canteens that serviced all the allied
soldiers.
157
The Salvation Army landed at Normandy the first
Ibid., 187.
108
day and supported troops at the front through the end of
the war.
Unlike their World War I counterparts, these
canteens were six-ton vehicles with kitchens, libraries,
record players and movie projectors.
Some American
Salvationists, assigned to Great Britain by the Salvation
Army, worked in canteens that provided for American
bases.159
Many young Salvation Army officers in America were
deeply affected by their 4D (minister) exemption status.
They were fit, capable of serving in the armed forces, and
had as much patriotic fervor as the next man.
Because of
Roosevelt’s directive concerning overseas service, officers
could not repeat the frontline service that had occurred
during World War I.
The only way to be directly involved
was to become a chaplain with the armed forces, but
Salvation Army regulations restricted those slots for
officers thirty-five years and older.
In several cases,
young officers resigned their commissions to join the
military.
Two lieutenants serving with Captain Marshall
did just that.
Marshall, too, wanted to join the military
and become a navy pilot.
His uncle, Norman Marshall, one
Arthur Marshall, interview by author, phone, Copperas Cove, Texas, 5
July 2002.
158
109
of the five Salvation Army chaplains in the U.S. Army
during World War I, dissuaded him, arguing that Arthur had
been trained as a Salvation Army officer and was needed
where he was.
He accepted his uncle’s reasoning but
regretted it each time someone asked him why a healthy
young man such as himself was not in the military.160
Perhaps the most interesting story to come out of this
era is the saga of Japanese-American Salvation Army
Officers.
These officers experienced hostility and
violence not seen since the late 1800s.
Even some white
brother officers got caught up in the early war hysteria
and suspected them of spying.
Yamamuro’s standing in Japan
and the decorations bestowed upon him by the Emperor now
caused great apprehension.
Feeling betrayed and confused,
several Japanese-American officers resigned or took leaves
of absence.
In March 1942, all Japanese on the West Coast
were moved to inland internment camps.
Despite all of
this, some Japanese officers continued their work.
Officers from nearby corps visited them in the camps and
159
160
Paul Marshall, Great Old Army, 185-193; McKinley, 174-175.
Arthur Marshall, interview, 5 July 2002.
110
supported them in any way possible.
Some sympathetic camp
commanders gave these Japanese Salvationists a great deal
of freedom.161
The achievements of the Salvation Army during the
Second World War did not capture the public eye the way
they had during the Great War; they did not have to.
Before the second war began, the Salvation Army had already
secured its place in American society and culture.
World
War I had been the defining moment for the Salvation Army
in America; public acceptance and, perhaps more
importantly, increased financial support verified it.
That it eventually became perceived as just another charity
and not the evangelical crusade it truly was would help it
in its rise in an increasingly secular America.
161
McKinley., 225-227.
111
CHAPTER VIII
CONCLUSION
Since George Railton’s arrival in New York in 1880,
the Salvation Army has consistently provided for those in
need.
The Army now operates a multitude of programs: from
addiction recovery and prison inmate rehabilitation to
hotels for the homeless and housing for the elderly.
They
have been on the scene at every disaster since the 1889
Johnstown Flood.
In any emergency situation from floods to
hurricanes to tornadoes one can find the uniformed officers
of the Salvation Army.
Within an hour of the September 11th
terrorist attacks, two hundred uniformed Salvation Army
officers were moving to the three disaster sites.
They
provided “coffee, hot meals, changes of clothes, words of
comfort, and an occasional prayer.” They also distributed
American flags to drape over the caskets of fallen
policemen and teddy bears to the children of the victims
and even handed out VapoRub for rescuers to apply to their
112
facemasks to overcome the stench of death and burning
debris.162
The Salvation Army is America’s most popular charity,
and has been for almost a decade.
It took in well over a
billion dollars in contributions in the year 2000.
It
leads all other charities in “flow-through,” the amount of
money that is applied to programs from contributions.
It
remains dedicated to the principles laid down by its
founder, William Booth; salaries still remain low.
The
American National Commander receives less than $30,000 a
year compared to the almost half a million dollar salary of
the head of the Red Cross.
The Salvation Army, however, is
perceived by the majority of the American public to be just
another social-services agency like the Red Cross and
Goodwill Industries.
It is this perception that led to a
recent attack on the Army for its stand against
commissioning homosexual officers.
Few realize that the
Army is a Protestant Church and its officers, ministers.
The ban on gays has been based on biblical interpretation
on sex outside marriage, not social bias.
One can point to
John Sedgwick and Loch Adamson, “Calling in the Troops,” Worth,
November 2001, 100.
162
113
many Army programs that administer to homosexuals to prove
the point.163
The biggest crisis the Salvation Army faces today is
not one of finances or acceptance but of identity.
Even in
William Booth's day there were two wings in the Army, the
religious wing and the social service wing.
The increasing
secularization of America has strained the coexistence of
these wings.
The Salvation Army trains its officers as
evangelists, and then puts them into positions where
demands for social programs predominate.
As early as the
1920s spiritual programs were irrelevant to the Army's
economic survival.
the Army does.
Social programs now drive everything
Indeed, Salvation Army recruiting is based
on being part of the "helping profession." Most of the
American public would prefer the Army had no religious
affiliation. The Army would certainly make more money if
that were the case.
Social programs offer personal rewards
that are easier to obtain and are tangible; one can count
how many are fed, clothed, or housed but it is much more
difficult to quantify the spiritually saved. There is also
greater public acceptance when religion is relegated to the
163
Ibid., 98.
114
back seat.
Probably eighty percent of a corps officer's
workload involves social programs.
There is a constant
pull in that direction, and it takes a strong officer to
resist it.
After all, social programs generate funds.
The
Army itself adds to this dilemma by equating success with
corps earnings and numbers of social programs.
Army
officers are constantly creating new programs and
increasing the scope of others.
Social programs have
always been a tool to bring people to the spiritual side;
Booth’s “soup, soap, and salvation.” But recent surveys
show that the soup and soap is leading to little salvation;
social programs are not bringing souls into the corps to be
saved.
What is the answer?
abandon evangelism.
Almost all officers refuse to
It is still the heart of the Army.
Some fear that letting God become secondary would lead them
into decline like other formerly religion based entities
such as the YMCA and the Volunteers of America (founded by
a Booth).
The Salvation Army has acknowledged this crisis
and is taking steps to ensure its revivalist roots remain
intact.
Officers' Counsels (retreats) are held twice a
year so officers can maintain their evangelical edge.
Moreover, contracts that compromise Army beliefs, no matter
115
how lucrative, are refused.
One officer expressed their
uncertainty this way: "It may be incorrect to assume our
emphasis should be on religion.
churches to see to that need.
There are already many
We must ask ourselves if it
is the will of God that causes us to move in this
direction."164
As the Salvation Army continues to move into the new
millennium it will do so unsure of its direction but clear
in its mission.
Since 1865, the Army has striven to bring
people to God by tending to their needs. It will continue
to do so.
It is America's number one charity because it is
so selfless.
As long as the Salvation Army enlists
ordinary people to accomplish extraordinary things there
will always be a Salvation Army.
Captain Elliott, interview, 3 November 1998; Major Hall, interview, 3
November 1998; Captain Ware, interview, 12 November 1998; Sergeant
Perry, interview, 3 November 1998.
164