The Nenana daily news., 1918-12-05
RED GROSS AIDS FRENCH REFUGEES
 RETURNING HOME

to Faux, Nancy, Belleau and the rest, places now part of American history.
 They are coming back to ruins of villages and houses demolished by German or American artillery. to live in cellars and in the shelter of tottering walls until they can re- build their homes and their return is a pitiful spectacle.
 Sometimes they find no home at all. Never do they find any furni- ture. Often they find no food and then the American Red Cross steps in and helps them. The woman who can dig out her stove from a heap of dirt and plaster and patch it up again so that it will burn counts herself inordinately lucky. One woman found remaining of all her household goods just one big salt cellar. Forks are worth their weight in gold, and feather bed is prized above rubies. Five thousand, five hundred blankets the Red Cross shipped out to returning refugees in single week
 The people in the Aisne will not be able to spend the winter in their own villages. The villages on the banks of the little Marne are too utterly battered by shells to afford human hibtations during the winter weather. While days were warm and skies blue, their owners could find some tiny corner or other to live in, but the rain and mud and chilly damp of a French winter drove them back to their temporary homes in the uninvaded provinces to wait for spring.
 : One purpose in sending them home so quickly was to harvest the wheat crops but there was no food, so the Red Cross established canteens in many villages and served two meals day free to those too poor to pay while others paid small sums. Forty carloads of food were sent to the Marne and the .Aisne in a single month. A grocery store has been opened in Chateau Thierry which al ready Is a busy town again, though the walls of its houses have been shattered and torn by shells. To keep lntruders out the residents scrawl on their homes in chalk Pro prietOr returned" or House occu- pied"
 Rolling stores on trucks tour thru the villages in the valleys of the Disc and Aisne to supply the re- turning refugees with food. cloth ing and household utensils. De- mands come for coffee mills, scrub ping brushes, pails, knives, forks, spoons and pots for the people talk ing up housekeeping again as liter ally all that they left behind them when they fled has been destroyed or carried away to Germany.
 To Amiens the refugees are re- turning, and they find the Red Cross ready to receive them There is a big building in Amiens that was a boys school in those half-forgotten days when the ity was not under shell fire. It belongs to the Red Cross -ow, and its class rooms are turned into strange uses. There is big ''salle de reception" where the returning refugees are sorted out and their needs ascertained. i There is a canteen that serves two 1
 
 hot, nourishing meals day. There is long dormitory with beds for l the weary ones who come back to ] find empty rooms and roofless ] houses. There are two dispensaries, i and dispensary doctors find much l to do ina country where people live precarious, hand-to-mouth existences. !
 The Red Cross workers furnish clothing to the shivering shabby people. warm flannel shirts and un- : derwear, stockings and shoes and ! sabots. Twelve thousand garments went out from Paris in a single day. ! Il