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Little Things. U.S. fighting men know that perhaps the greatest service being performed by the Red Cross is the one that seems the humblest—keeping up the morale of lonely men, whose homesickness is notorious. Said Red Cross Worker How ard Barr in Washington last week: "American soldiers were literally stunned when they saw Africa for the first time. . . . They thought they would find burning sands and blazing sun. . . . Instead they found intense cold . . . completely modern cities . . . Arabs and other natives who were unlike anything they had ever seen. . . . For the first time they really felt as though they were far away from home."
In the maintenance of morale, the Red Cross has discovered it is the little things that count—the piano set up in an old auto showroom in Algiers, the county-fair smell of hamburgers rising amid the Oriental smells of New Delhi, the Wild West movies in the jungles of New Caledonia. Morale, too, means keeping in touch with home. Has the sergeant's baby been born? The Red Cross will find out. Did the Corporal forget his sister's birthday? The Red Cross will send a message.
Vociferous gripers, U.S. service men gripe not about the Red Cross. The word they have for it: swell. Summed up one private in England last week: "It's wonderful just to have an American girl to talk to." And U.S. service men know that the Red Badge of Courage may sometimes take the shape of a cross.