Extracts from:

ANZAC Day Commemoration Committee
http://www.anzacday.org.au/

Guernsey Weekly Press and Star of Friday 28th Sept. 1917 - Staff-Capt. Dalziel (from London) gave a most interesting account of "Salvation Army work amongst the British Troops in France" at Salvation Army L'Islet Corp, Guernsey.

The Salvation Army Huts were favourite meeting places. Each Hut was under the charge of an Officer and his wife, the wife filling the place - that only women can fill - acting as mother to the boys. Each hut had a library, and meetings were conducted every Sunday evening. To give an idea of the work done at these huts, six or seven thousand meals were supplied per day at one hut and the officer's wife fried on a daily average over two thousand eggs.

Salvation Army chaplains and workers gave without restraint or condition. They would hold religious services, pray with the soldiers, and counsel them. Without criticism or condemnation, they would also do their best to keep them out of bars, brothels and gambling halls.

The Salvation Army women did their part too. By the last year of the war, the Salvation Army was operating nearly five hundred hostels or rest centres, with more than eight hundred officers in the field.

Their work did not go unnoticed at the highest level. When the terrible conflict was finally over, King George V personally dictated a letter to General Bramwell Booth in which he said:

"By its work of love and mercy, in both peace and war, the Salvation Army has become honoured and endeared in the hearts of the nations of the world."