Edgefield advertiser. [volume] (Edgefield, S.C.) 1836-current, 1918-10-30
Miss Watson Of Ridge Spring
Writes Of Life as Y. w. c.
A. Hostess in F rench
Coast EoWn.

Nothing brings the war more vivid
ly home to us than to read the letters
from our own South Carolina boys
who are over in France, but few of
us realize that we have some South
Carolina women over there, too, who
nre forming the second line of de-
fense, for it is very seldom we ever
hear of them and to read their letters
is rare privilege.
Miss Sarah P. Watson, daughter of
Col. R. B. Watson of Ridge Spring,
and recently one of the faculty of
Coker college, is one of these patriot
ic women who volunteered her ser
vices to the Y. w. c. A. for overseas
service. She received great COM
pliment of being accepted and sent
overseas at once, though she had had
no previous Y. W. C. A. training. AS
teacher of history at Coker, how
ever, she had taken an active interest
in the Y. w. C. A. work there and
was very successful in her association
and influence with girls. Miss Watson
had been educated at Greenville Wo-
mans college and at Hollins lnsti-
tute where the morale among the
girls is at it's highest. Later, after a
few years teaching in the county
schools of this STATE she went to New
York and took a Master of Arts de-
gree at Columbia University, special
izing in history Afterwards she
taught at her alma mater at Green
Vile and was teaching at Coker COL
lege until she went to France last
spring.
In France Miss Watson has been
acting as hostess for a group of Sig
nal Corps girls at a lovely town on
the coast of France. Her duties are
various and she writes most amusing
ly and cheerily of the difficulties Of
French housekeeping, finding and
keeping both house and servants. But
she also gives many pathetic and
heart touching instances of our boys
over there, as the first extract from
her letter shows
yesterday l went to the Ameri-
can cemetery to take some flowers for
boy that stopped me on the street
one day and asked if l would buy
some flowers and take out there for
his friends grave. The place is kept
very nicely, there is caretaker there.
There are wooden crosses at the
graves with the boys name, company
and date of death. In one case there
was a marble cross, with the inscrip-
ton, Erected by his comrades. The
French decorate their graves with
wreathes and other designs of arti-
fetal flowers. l had difficulty per-
suading the caretaker to remove these
to the side of the grave and let me
put the four pots of daisies that
little French boy and / had carried.
"There were men working the road
all the way out there, others clean
ing out ditches-it is just off one of
the main roads-and 1 was impressed,
as 1 am more forcibly every day, that
war isn't some romantic, exciting
time, as you may think from reading
the papers, but it is endless, hard, dis
agreeable routine. Especially trying
is it on these men and boys who have
to do menial tasks-peel potatoes,
sweep roads, dig graves the Off
GERS who have all the monotony Of
work, all of them far removed from
the scene of action, and with nothing
stirring to keep up their spirits, but
their own vision of the cause and
the realization that the first line,
while it is more thrilling, is no more
valuable in attaining results: in fact,
is dependent for results on the back
line"
Elsewhere Miss Watson says:
"You see it is most difficult to cook
for Is people on stove about 25
inches square, and also to have lunch
at IL for one girl, for five at IL, and
for the rest at one. Now I have al
ways scorned people who talked con-.
tinuously of food and servants, and
now 1 am worse than any. can talk
of nothing else. and scarcely think
of anything else. In between seeing
to the house here and making ar
rangements for the new one | play
ragtime for the girls to sing and
dance. Never let me hear, when l
come home, Long, Long, Trail" or
missouri Waltz" or Mother Mach