Soldiers' Home

“ The Army Temperance Association, the Soldiers' Christian Association, the Soldiers' Homes provided by the churches, and other uplifting organisations have found that they were working on soil to some extent prepared. The soldier has responded readily to the appeals made, and the Soldiers' Homes have become as popular as the canteens, and often more so. A Soldiers' Home in a camp has meant at once a change for the better. The senior officers have recognised this fact, and have gladly welcomed every Christian effort on behalf of their men. ”

“ There is much confidence in the multitude when they are justly dealt by, and every soldier fights well under the guidance of a soldiers’ friend.
Soldiers’ Homes. In the United States, are homes of a permanent character established by the general government for the benefit of old soldiers, or men who were disabled in the military service of their country. The “Soldiers’ Home,” which is situated about 31⁄2 miles from the Capitol of Washington, was founded in compliance with provisions of act of Congress dated March 3, 1851. ”

“ Home it is to these far-called soldiers of freedom, who pay the sterner price of the world's redemption. It holds them to their yesterdays; it grips them with their past. By its tables they sit and think and write; about its fire they talk and muse. In the atmosphere of its manly decency they breathe deeply and are purified; and the fellowship of those other soldiers who wear the red triangle makes them fit and strong in their hearts. ”

“ At any hour of the day or night a squad of soldiers knock at your door suddenly, with no warning. They search your house from top to bottom, often spending three hours over the undertaking. They look into every drawer, take down all the clothes from the hooks in the closets, look under the carpets, behind the bookcases, shake out all the soiled clothes in the laundry bag, pull out everything from under the kitchen sink, read every scrap of paper in your drawer and in your waste-paper basket—it's incredible. ”

“ It is impossible to calculate the vast influences for good that have been flowing from this hut to the thousands of men who pass through it. The aim of the young Scotch minister who is the leader has been to make it for all the men "a home away from home." The life in the army, with its irksome toil, daily drill, cold and wet and mud, the horror of battle and the pain of wounds, is all for the moment forgotten as the men enter the place. ”

“ The multiplicity of duties in the charge of the household affairs of such an institution, with the uncertain assistance to be found in such a place, may be better imagined than told. Under her satisfactory management the Vicksburg Home acquired an enviable reputation, and was the favorite stopping-place on the river. The great difficulty in conducting a Soldiers' Home in time of war, as every one knows who has been connected with one, is to keep it neat and clean, to have the floors, the tables, the beds sufficiently respectable to remind the soldier of the home he has left. ”

“ Huskisson and Darroll, of the South African General Mission, succeeded in requisitioning for the purposes of a Soldiers' Home, and excellent work is being done in it, though necessarily on a small scale. Here, at seven o'clock in the morning, my first service was held and was gracious in its influence as well as cheering, by reason of the numbers present, including not a few whose faces had grown familiar to me in the homeland long, long ago. Amid the stir and strain of actual war we sang of a "day of rest and gladness"; and turned our thoughts to the Saviour who knows each man "by name." ”

“ Let us rather pass into the 'glory-room' of the Soldiers' Home at the close of the evening Service. There is never a Sunday night without conversions. And they call it the glory-room because
'Heaven comes down their souls to greet,
And glory crowns the mercy-seat.'
Ex-Sergeant-Major Moss is in charge, and as frequent references will be made to him in the following narratives, we may as well sketch him now. A man of medium height, thick set, strength in every line of his face and figure, eyes that look kindly upon you and yet pierce you through and through. ”

“ The land was purchased by the Federal Government through the Soldiers' Home Trust Fund in 1851 to establish a home for invalid and disabled soldiers of the U.S. Army, the first such attempt to provide for members of the regular army. ”

“ As I walked down the line of troops when I took official leave, my old soldiers broke the bounds of discipline by shouting: "May God give you a long life! and may you meet your family in good health at home!" ”

“ It had in 1908–1909 180 instructors, 1900 students, and a library of 25,000 volumes and pamphlets. Just outside the city is the State Soldiers’ Home, where provision is also made for the wives and widows of soldiers; in 1908 it contained 553 men and 700 women. ”

“ The old well still marks the spot. The home was weather-boarded with rough planks running straight up and down. It had four large rooms to the front, conveniently furnished with cots, etc., for the accommodation of any soldiers who were sick or wounded and unable to continue their journey. ”

“ We have already seen that the building that bears the red triangle of the Y M C A at the front is at once the soldier's club, his home, his church where his own denomination holds its services, his school, his place of rest, his recreation center, his bank and postoffice where he writes his letters, his friend in need that stands by him at the last and meets his relatives who are called to his bedside in the hospital. If there is anything which safeguards the physical, social, and moral health of the men who are dying for us, can we do less than provide it for them? ”

“ Here they were in sight of home in many cases, yet outside of its comforts to a large extent; soldiers, yet out of danger; bidding their friends a tender adieu to-day, because they are to leave them—perhaps forever—to-morrow. But the morrow comes, and finds them still in camp. Yes, there were soldiers who bade their friends a long good-by in the morning, and started for camp expecting that very noon or afternoon to leave for the tented field, but who at night returned again to spend a few hours more at the homestead, as the departure of the regiment had been unexpectedly deferred. ”

“ It isn’t a big city, nor did it have a very big regiment to send to the front, nor very many soldiers to fight European battles, so I suppose I am borrowing trouble unnecessarily. Anyhow before we start, as the saying is, let us ring the doorbell and see if anyone is at home. ”

“ To realize what a hut means to the men in such a place, we must understand the unnatural situation created by the conditions of war. Here are multitudes of men far from home, shut out from the society of all good women, taken away from their church and its surroundings, weary and wet with marching and drilling, often lonely and dejected, in an atmosphere of profanity and obscenity in the cheerless barrack rooms, and tempted by the animal passions which are always loosed in war-time. ”

“ O God, our help in ages past,
⁠Our hope for years to come,
Our shelter from the stormy blast,
⁠And our eternal home. ”

“ Many other thousands enlisted for the Red Cross Home Defense work and in its offices or as home visitors gave advice, aid, comfort to the families of soldiers and sailors, helped them to meet their problems, material, financial, spiritual, and procured for them, when necessary, professional advice and assistance, thus aiding morale at the front by upholding that of the family at home. ”

“ Every Tuesday, Thursday, and Saturday a physician goes from the home in Washington to New York, taking charge of those who are too sick or too crippled to care for themselves; while the relief agents procure for the sick soldier the half-price ticket to which he is entitled, or else give him one, and such articles of clothing as are needful to send him in comfort to his own home.
I must not fail to speak in this connection of another beautiful ministry,—the home for soldiers' wives and mothers. A soldier is like other human beings. ”

“ Englishmen and Frenchmen, when from time to time they are relieved from their grim duties in the trenches, go home. The soldiers from other countries on the firing line cannot go home; there is no home to go to! They go to Paris. Many of them do not return from Paris as efficient soldiers as they were when they went there.
Our American soldiers must have a home in France—somewhere to rest, somewhere to find a friendly atmosphere, somewhere to go for recreation and wholesome amusement. ”

“ One day we looked, and there in our street were half a dozen French soldiers, with bloody heads and arms, limping along between Boche guards on their way to the hospital. All our people rose like a great wave and swept towards them. The guards reversed their rifles and began clubbing with their butt ends—clubbing the old women who tried to toss food to the prisoners, clubbing the little children who stretched out handfuls of chocolate, clubbing the white-haired men who thrust cigarettes into the pockets of the torn, stained French uniforms. ”

“ He has accumulated over two thousand five hundred volumes of well selected historical, biographical and religious works. The soldiers in the different hospitals have the free use of the library, which is open daily. The [Pg 240] room is nicely furnished, and the pictures hanging on the walls give it a cheerful, home-look, and the soldiers come there by the score. It is an excellent arrangement. Thanks to the benevolent hearts and hands that have provided such a luxury for the soldier.
An hour’s walk through the contraband camp was amusing and instructive. ”

“ The soldier cannot live by bread alone, nor by the tea and coffee of a Y M C A counter; he needs God, and the friendship of good women, and the spirit of home which they carry with them.
The hundred men who are working in these thirty British huts are worthy of note. A score of them are clergymen, who have resigned their churches for the period of the war. Many others are well-known ministers, laymen, or professors who have come over for a period of several months of service. ”

“ This building is the home of the pensioned soldiers of France. It was enough to make one sick at the idea of war, to look upon the mangled bodies of these old soldiers. Men with arms and no legs: others had legs but no arms: some with canes and crutches, and some wheeling themselves about in little hand-carts. ”

“ With 5,000,000 who have already been killed, with 10,000,000 of our own sons enrolled. as subject to their call to the colors when needed, with hundreds of American army camps at home and in France already crowded with men, what sacrifice can we make for them? How can we surround their lives with the best influences of home, that they may come back to us even better men than when they went away? ”

“ You can hardly realize what it means to sit down in a homelike place, to get a hot cup of tea served on a white tablecloth. This is the only home these boys will see in France, and they will either come here or go to the red light resorts. I wish I could tell the men of America what their boys will face here, what they will suffer, what temptations will assail them. The best equipment you can give them is not good enough, for the people at home little realize to what a life their boys are coming, and what hardships will face them here in France. ”

“ It is doubtful whether our soldiers would be maintained if there were not pacific people at home who like to fancy themselves soldiers. War, like other dramatic spectacles, might possibly cease for want of a "public." ”

“ Keeping to the high ground, there is to the south of this church an open Place, and beyond it there are some large barracks, where, on the other side of a low wall may be seen the elaborately prepared steeple-chase for training soldiers to be able to surmount every conceivable form of obstacle. ”

“ Somehow Crouy people make themselves small, move over to the edge, and make the necessary room. There are seventy soldiers sleeping on straw in the big hall which was before the war used for a concert-room or for amateur theatricals; two hundred are housed in what is left of the old salles de garde of the ruined castle, old guard-rooms which after five hundred years see themselves again filled with French fighting-men; every barn-loft is filled with them; every empty shed has a thick layer of straw on the ground and twenty to thirty men encamped ”

“ MacWilliams always ended the evening's entertainment with this chorus, no matter how many times it had been sung previously, and seemed to regard it with much the same veneration that the true Briton feels for his national anthem.
The words of the chorus were:
"He never cares to wander from his own fireside, He never cares to wander or to roam. With his babies on his knee, He's as happy as can be, For there's no place like Home, Sweet Home." ”

“ How dear the memory of the old home is to the helpless soldier, as he moans on his hard bed, and cannot sleep for the pain—how he thinks if he could only be there, and they who are always in his thoughts could minister to his wants, that health and strength would soon flow back into his chilled frame. ”

“ No Christian homes brightened the way. The houses, stormed by shot and shell, were deserted, only as our men on duty along the lines used them for a shelter against the inclement weather.
My riding-habit seemed to attract considerable attention from its novelty, being a striped bed-tick, thick and of great service in my work, and a black hat which I had worn in my hospital rounds. Soldiers laughed and stared at us as we rode along, but unheedingly we were enjoying the fresh morning air, and the exhilaration of a horseback ride. ”

“ Well, you might think so old and so historical a place would be putting on airs, but it takes as kindly to domestic life as a new frame-house, and I am never tired of looking over into the yard at the frowsy soldiers' wives hanging out clothes, and the unkempt children playing among the burdocks, and chickens and cats, and the soldiers themselves carrying about the officers' boots, or sawing wood and picking up chips to boil the teakettle. ”