OCR Text |
Show Wears Gas Mask Over Cook Stove By ROY S. DURSTINE. Paris. Some day the story, of what American women have done over here in France will be written. People will hear, then, about the women who are cooking and baking for the American Amer-ican boys with their helmets and gas masks on the shelf, next the baking powder can. They will learn of the casual heroines who see nothing remarkable re-markable in making hot chocolate in shacks where the rain and the snow come in on them through fresh shell holes in the roof. One of the women people will hear about will be Mrs. Clara Simmons. She is as close to the front line here as any woman is permitted to go. . For many days, during the active fighting just over the hill from her, she was the only woman in the entire area. That didn't bother her at all. The boys wanted hot chocolate, and she could make it. So there you are. And there she was. She is a little bit of America, of American womanhood, dropped right down in the middle of the fighting zone. She looks more like home to the boys than anything in the world, except a letter. She has no picturesque pic-turesque ideas about carrying culture and uplift to the . soldiers. She's there to work for them. She works with a huge mixing bowl full of pulverized chocolate, and seven i or eight open cans of condensed milk on the table. On the rickety stove where the old fireplace used to be, a great kettle of hot water is simmering. simmer-ing. She stirs and pours, and pours and stirs, till the air of the little shack is as fragrant as that of a candy store at home. A convoy of camions rumbles past her door. They are almost at the end of their journey. German territory Isn't half a dozen kilometers away. Mrs. Simmons knows that, of course, but she hums, under her breath, at her work. Even before the hot chocolate is quite ready, the boys begin to arrive. They come in tin hats with gas masks hanging at their sides. Her own helmet hel-met and mask are on the shelf behind her. "Hot chocolate ready?" the first one asks. "All ready." she says, as' she stirs it with her long spoon. She fills one of the tin cups from the mantelpiece. "Um-m-m !" says the youngster. "That's good and thick. Give us a package of cookies." He takes his tin cup and his cookies to an empty packing box in the corner, cor-ner, sits down,' and feasts slowly and luxuriously. Another boy is at the board that serves as a counter. Gives the Home Touch. Some of the boys stop to gossip, when the edge is taken off their thirsts and hungers. "Remember Bill Johnson?" they ask Mrs. Simmons. She does. He was the boy who always took three cups of chocolate. "Fie won't any more for awhile," they tell her. "Stopped one in the leg last night. "Oh, that's too bad !" she says, just the way she would say It at home if she heard that Johnnie had the measles. That's the thing about Mrs. Simmons Sim-mons and such women. She brings to the boys a constant reminder of the women they have left behind, of their mothers and their sisters and their wives. She talks in the most casual American way about things that are neither casual nor American. After the last of her soldiers has put on his tin hat and gone down the hill into the valleys from which they start for their outposts, she begins be-gins talking very simply about her work. "There is not a mother or wife or sister of any one of these boys who wouldn't give all she has to be where I am today," she says. "Just think what a privilege it is to talk to them, and to see that they are well and happy, and that their dollies are whole. Women, you know, worry most about their uncertainties.-- If 1 could only toll the people who are worrying about these. boys how husky and cheerful their youngsters arei J lint's what would make them happy. Every time I get tired, I just think how many thousands of women would be the happiest persons on earth If they could be where I am. Oh, It's great !" |