The Great War began during the summer of 1914, and it was nearly three more years before America sent her boys to fight in Europe. Congress declared war on Germany on April 6, 1917. Although women were not allowed to serve as soldiers in the United States military, thousands of women joined the cause in Europe anyway.
It was not the first time that American women were involved in military conflict. Fifty years before World War I broke out, the Civil War created the opportunity for women to become nurses. The new European conflict swung wide the door for women to become involved. Between 1917 and 1919, more than 22,000 women were recruited by the American Red Cross to join the U.S. Army as nurses. Nearly half of them served near the Western Front. There were an additional 1,500 who served with the U.S. Navy. The primary difference between the nurses of the Civil War and those serving during World War I was that the latter were already professionally trained.
A Specific Type of Woman
But it wasn’t just the American Red Cross that recruited women to serve during the war. Other private charity organizations, like the Knights of Columbus, the Jewish Welfare Board, the YMCA, and The Salvation Army, launched efforts to recruit women. The YMCA issued pamphlets informing potential recruits that their service would be needed in “its Canteens overseas.” The type of women desired was more specific.
“The women selected for overseas’ service should be the choicest spirits among the women of America,” the pamphlet noted. “They should be women of social gifts and graces, of established Christian character, of sound health capable of enduring constant strain. They should believe with all their souls in the cause of the United States and her Allies. They should possess quiet, undiscourageable enthusiasm, and above all should have the capacity of bringing cheer and comfort to men in the face of the great realities involved in devotion even unto death to a great cause.”
Although volunteering for such service would cost approximately $2,000 (about $50,000 today), thousands signed up to volunteer. Ultimately, nearly 3,500 “Y girls” found their way into Europe, primarily France. The “Canteens” the women ran provided a bit of the American homefront to the soldiers. They served hot chocolate and fudge sundaes. In June of 1919, Ethel Ash, who was sent to France and was one of the last “Y girls” to leave Europe after the war concluded, told her family how the soldiers “grin with tears in their eyes when they see [the ice cream] coming and come back every day of their pass.”
A More American Treat
It was another treat, however, that Ash and many of the female YMCA and Salvation Army volunteers would become known for. In October of 1917, a few months after the first troops of the American Expeditionary Force arrived in France, Salvation Army volunteers Margaret Sheldon and Helen Purviance came up with an idea of how to further boost the spirits of the American soldiers. They would surprise them with a true American treat: doughnuts.
The ladies garnered as much baking supplies as they could. They mixed together flour, sugar, baking powder, salt, eggs and milk, and then using empty wine bottles and shell casings as rolling pins, they rolled the dough. From there, they placed an oil-filled helmet over a fire, and placed the circular rolls of dough inside. Once fried thoroughly, they dusted the doughnuts with powdered sugar and handed them out by the hundreds to soldiers. Being only a few miles from the trenches in eastern France, there were plenty of soldiers excited to receive a taste of home.
“Well can you think of two women cooking, in one day, 2,500 doughnuts, eight dozen cupcakes, fifty pies, 800 pan cakes and 255 gallons of cocoa, and one other girl serving it,” Purviance wrote in a letter home. “That is a day’s work.”
Salvation Army volunteers traveled overseas to set up service huts located in abandoned buildings near the front lines where they could serve baked goods. Public Domain
Purviance and Sheldon had created a phenomenon in the war-torn country of France. The women were called “Donut Lassies,” and their new morale-boosting initiative spread across the front lines. Soon, other women volunteers with The Salvation Army, as well as the YMCA, began baking doughnuts for the troops. It seemed fitting that the American soldiers who had been termed “Doughboys” were getting their fill of doughnuts.
“Can you imagine hot doughnuts, and pie and all that sort of stuff?” one soldier wrote in a letter home. “Served by might good looking girls, too.”
The women baked goods for the soldiers, hosted parties when they could, and continued their other duties, such as conducting church services, praying for soldiers, mending clothes, and helping them write letters home. By the end of the war, about a year after Sheldon and Purviance’s doughnut surprise, the women of these mobile canteens, dubbed “clubmobiles,” were known for their many morale-boosting efforts, but it was their breakfast pastry creations that brought them the most fame. Along with “Donut Lassies,” they were also called “Donut Dollies” and “Donut Girls.” It is estimated that at the height of their collective doughnut production, the “Donut Lassies” were serving 9,000 doughnuts daily.
Even when there weren’t enough baking supplies available, the Dollies made do. In March 1919, about four months after the armistice was signed, Ash wrote home about her day working in the “Doughnut Canteen.” She wrote to her family that “we made five hundred doughnuts and put on parties at Rampont and Dugny [French communes]. Now you know my experience in making doughnuts is mostly second handed but, honest, considering we didn’t use an egg nor any milk they weren’t so bad and now we are making the best doughnuts in France. … Mother, you would even be proud of them.”
The Lassies Honored
World War I poster featuring The Salvation Army, which made doughnuts for soldiers in Europe. Public Domain
With the war over and the peace signed in the summer of 1919, the volunteers and the soldiers were back home. Interestingly, the “Donut Dollies” are credited with popularizing the doughnut back in America. It indeed helped that they had established a large customer base before returning home.
The doughnut craze continued and, in 1938, the Salvation Army of Chicago established the first Friday of June as National Donut Day in honor of the “Donut Lassies.” During World War II, the Korean War, and the Vietnam War, the “Donut Dollies” returned to the war zone to help boost the morale of America’s soldiers, serving as many as 20,000 doughnuts a day while performing their many other necessary duties.
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Dustin Bass
Author
Dustin Bass is an author and co-host of The Sons of History podcast. He also writes two weekly series for The Epoch Times: Profiles in History and This Week in History.
