16 Notes for WWI research: Louis Sheehan 16

16 Notes for WWI research: Louis Sheehan

After nine hours of hard drill, the men swung cheerfully down the hillside into the village street. Now they have lined up, and with ravenous appetites are waiting for the evening meal. We are almost as hungry as they, and are glad to share the meal with them. Here on the table are huge piles of good home-made bread. It is almost the first white bread we have seen after months of brown war bread in England and France. Here are heaping plates of good pork and beans, tinned salmon, plenty of fried potatoes, and piping hot coffee. This is followed by a delicious pudding, as good as the men would have had in their own homes. Well fed, well clothed, well equipped, sleeping under Uncle Sam's warm blankets, on comfortable "Gold Medal" cots, our boys are well cared for.

In another village, at the close of the day, the Colonel commanding two battalions of the infantry called the men together in the open square of the market place, and after a band concert invited us to address the troops on the moral issues of the war. The next day almost the same program was repeated, and at noon in an open field on a grassy hillside the Major of another battalion marched out his men for a similar lecture. Every commanding officer seemed eager to arrange for meetings, to summon the men, and to back up the messages given to them. Not only have General Pershing, General Sibert, and the Colonels commanding the various regiments, met us half way in every plan for the welfare of the troops; but they have taken the initiative in insisting that every provision should be made for the physical, mental, and moral occupation and safeguarding of the men.

Probably more men are led astray in the war zone when they go on leave than at any other time, in reaction from the deadly monotony of camp life, or the inferno of the trenches. London and Paris are the chief centers of danger. In London, just before sailing for the States, we visited the finely equipped American "Eagle" Hut in the Strand. It would be difficult to devise a more homelike or attractive place for soldiers. In addition to sleeping accommodations for several hundred men, the lounge and recreation rooms, the big fireplaces and comfortable chairs suggested the equipment of an up-to-date club, in marked contrast to the surroundings of a cheerless soldiers' barracks.