Page:Poems Cromwell.djvu/129

 casual photograph is strangely symbolic and recalls One who said, "Take, eat; this is my body broken for you." Gladys and Dorothea Cromwell broke the bread of their bodies and poured out the wine of their spirits that others might live.

When the war drew an inerasable line across all lives, the two girls began to prepare themselves. They spent their summer months in a hospital: they learned to run a motor; they took canteen-efficiency lessons; they held themselves aloof from the over-heated speech of excitement, but their hearts burned within them. The world as they saw it demanded of them an heroic resolve.

In January, 1918, the two sisters, having rolled in the Canteen Service of the Bed Cross, sailed for France and were stationed at Chalons. For eight months they worked under fire on long day or night shifts; their free time was filled with volunteer outside service; they slept in "caves" or under trees in a field; they suffered from the exhaustion that is so acute to those who have never known physical labor; yet no one suspected until the end came that for many months they had believed their work a failure, and their efforts futile. The Chalonais called them "The Saints"; during dull evenings, the poilus, who adored the "Twin An-