Margaret Vandercook - The Camp Fire Girls in Glorious France

One afternoon in March, the windows of an old French farmhouse stood open, the curtains blowing in the breeze like white flags of truce, while from indoors came the murmur of a number of voices, girls’ voices, gay and animated and speaking in English, not French.

The next moment there was a brief silence; afterwards one of them began singing, with an odd foreign accent, a song strange to hear in this French countryside, the song of an American camp fire:

A murmur of applause, and then a group of girls in Camp Fire costumes stepped out of the house and into the front yard. The March afternoon was unusually warm with a flood of pale sunshine covering the landscape, the sky was a delicate blue, the clouds changing into fantastic shapes. Beyond, the open country was showing little patches of green in the upturned fields; on the branches of a few newly planted fruit trees were tiny buds.

“I want to congratulate you, Bettina, on your original Camp Fire song,” one of the girls declared. She had dark hair with red lights in it, a slightly tanned skin, a little slender figure, as forceful and erect as a young boy’s. Indeed both in her appearance and manner Mary Gilchrist gave one the impression at this time in her life that she possessed certain qualities of mind and character which are not supposed to be essentially feminine.

Bettina Graham, who was a tall, fair girl, older than her companion, smiled.

“It is good of you, Gill, to congratulate me, when I realize that you were longing to be outdoors and at work during all our Camp Fire ceremony. If there was any value in my song it was due to Yvonne’s singing.”

Standing close beside the two American girls was a young French girl who apparently had not heard their conversation. Her expression was troubled, there was a frown between her brows. It was as if she were listening, straining her ears for the sounds of battle which had been resounding through France for almost four years.

It was now the memorable spring of the year before the last desperate German drive and the final victory of the Allies.

Slipping her arm through Yvonne Fleury’s, Bettina Graham made an effort to distract her attention.

“Try not to be unhappy, Yvonne. Even if the Germans are winning an unexpected success in Flanders, surely you cannot think they will ever reach the valleys of the Marne and Aisne a second time! I don’t believe our work of reconstruction will go for nothing. Of course it is hard for you to be compelled to give up your brother after so brief a time together when for so long you had supposed him killed. Yet he has scarcely had opportunity to have rejoined his regiment at the front, since he was first to report at Soissons. We must do our best to continue our efforts here at our farmhouse on the Aisne until his return. Surely the war cannot last much longer!”

At this instant Bettina’s conversation was interrupted.

“Behold a sight to banish all gloom!” exclaimed Mary Gilchrist, pointing over toward a field which adjoined the farmhouse yard.

There in truth was an amazing spectacle to be seen in a quiet French countryside!

Mounted upon an American tractor, which was ploughing vigorously through the earth, was an elderly American woman. She was wearing the usual blue blouse of the French peasant made slightly longer and showing underneath an unmistakable pair of full trousers of the same material. Upon her head was a large straw hat, tied under her chin with a bright red ribbon.

Forgetting their anxieties the three girls laughed in chorus.

“Count upon Miss Patricia Lord’s doing and saying exactly what she pleases at any time or place,” Mary Gilchrist continued. “As it happens I promised Miss Patricia to run our tractor over that particular field some time this afternoon, as soon as our Camp Fire ceremony closed. But you see she has preferred not to wait for me. In regard to her present costume, I heard Mrs. Burton say to Miss Patricia the other day that such a costume was not to be endured, France having already suffered enough without being compelled to behold Miss Patricia looking as she does at present. She even suggested that the influence of our Camp Fire organization in this neighborhood might be affected if Miss Patricia persisted in wearing so ridiculous an outfit. Yet observe Miss Patricia! Recently she has been acting as if she intended to plow and sow every acre in the devastated regions of France within the next few weeks, as if actually she were racing with fate. I don’t believe the German army itself will be able to stop her, certainly not for long. But I must go to fulfill my promise.”

Concluding her speech, Mary Gilchrist left her two companions, and at the same time the two girls turned to greet a newcomer.

She was a woman between thirty and forty years of age, slender, with brilliant blue eyes and dark hair; seated in a wheeled chair she was evidently recovering from a serious illness. About her there was a look of extreme delicacy, nevertheless her expression was gay, almost challenging.

“Do please let me get out of this absurd chair at once,” she demanded of the two girls who had charge of her. “After a little more of this I shall feel like a mummy! I am just as well as I ever was before that small piece of German shell chose me for its victim and turned Aunt Patricia into a true prophet of evil. How persistently she did object to my journey into southern France! But what an exquisite afternoon! I think one never appreciates the true value of sunshine until one has been shut away from it. And how peaceful the French country about us seems! Surely the Germans will never again overrun this portion of France!”

To understand the present scene, one must know that a number of months before, Mrs. Richard Burton, the famous American actress, had arrived in one of the devastated districts of France near the river Aisne, bringing with her a group of American Camp Fire girls to help with the restoration work and also to originate the first Camp Fire organization among young French girls. Accompanying them was Miss Patricia Lord, an American spinster of great wealth. 1 1 See “The Camp Fire Girls on the Field of Honor.”

At the end of her speech, the Camp Fire guardian, arising from her chair, stood up a little shakily, resting her arm upon that of her niece, Peggy Webster.

The young girl was like and at the same time unlike her, as she was the daughter of Mrs. Burton’s twin sister.

At the present time Peggy was about eighteen years old, with vivid dark coloring, a short, straight nose and a firmly modeled chin.

There was a suggestion of splendid physical vitality in contrast with the older woman’s frailty. Yet the woman and girl had the same look of a determined will hidden beneath natural sweetness and gaiety.

“Perhaps it may be as well for you not to recover too promptly, Tante. We may all be driven from this area of France as soon as you are strong enough to travel. I believe there is no reason for immediate anxiety, yet recently the news from the front is not encouraging. I believe the French authorities are beginning to feel it may be as well to send the women and children back from the Marne and Aisne a second time to some place of greater security. But I agree with you, the idea seems impossible. To think of the Germans again overrunning the dear little French villages which have so recently been restored is a nightmare. Personally I won’t even consider it. Suppose the Germans are enjoying another temporary success, they will be thrust back eventually.”