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Home Service of the Red Cross Lends a Helping Hand

By W. Frank Persons
Director-General of Civilian Relief, American Red Cross

A MARYLAND boy discharged from the Army after developing tuberculosis returned to his home to get well. A Red Cross Home Service worker who knew her business talked with the family physician and called on the family with a tactful offer of assistance. Fortunately little aid was needed. The people were intelligent and already knew something of the nature, treatment, and prevention of the disease. The boy was having good care and the other members of the family were being protected.

It remained only to help with information about the War Risk Insurance Law and the filling out of the application for compensation. But the ex-soldier and his mother were somewhat surprised and affected by the friendly yet restrained and sensible manifestation of interest in him after he had supposed he was all done with the glory of service and. was only a sick and forgotten civilian. "It is these things you are doing for us that make us want to fight harder than ever," said the lad to the Home Service visitor as she left, with several new friends to her credit.

Here in a word is what the Red Cross is trying to do through the Home Service Section of each of its thousands of Chapters for every disabled soldier or sailor who leaves the service in need of any advice or help. It is trying to make these boys 'want to fight harder than ever'. But now they are fighting a new battle; a long, hard fight for themselves, for their physical, mental, and economic recovery, for their own future of self-support and usefulness to the community.

Home Service is buttressing their morale through constant, quiet effort to remove every occasion for worry about their home affairs. Does it work? Ask the men. "I want to extend my sincere thanks to you," wrote one of them, "for going to aid my wife and child whom I asked you to help last week. I can soldier better now." Another, on the way to camp, stopped at the Red Cross Office in an eastern city and said, "I want to tell you what it means to me to know that if my mother should be lonely or sick, or if anything should happen to her you will be there to stand by her and set things right." These and hundreds of other letters make us believe that those also serve who help the families of soldiers and sailors in quiet villages and crowded cities all over America.

MORE THAN MONEY RELIEF

Home Service means least of all giving money relief. The Government has generously provided for financial assistance to dependent relatives. The Red Cross does not hesitate to supplement the Government allowances in cases of special need and is often able to tide over a criticial -sic- period by a timely loan until the Government money arrives. But first and foremost Home Service means just what the name implies.

It never intrudes itself on the family, but in suitable ways, through group meetings, posters, letters to soldiers, makes known that it is always ready on call to respond to the least intimation of need. In every camp, on every transport, and with the various commands in France there is a Red Cross representative whose sole duty it is to mingle with our soldiers in man-to-man fashion and place the whole machinery of the Home Service organization at the disposal of all who are concerned about family affairs in which any outside friend can be of assistance.

CONTACT BETWEEN MAN AND FAMILY

For instance, if the Associate Field Director finds that Private Johnson of Iowa is worrying over a letter from home, he writes at once to the Home Service Section of the man's county or town and suitable aid is immediately forthcoming. Likewise when the soldier is in the hospital another Red Cross representative is on duty to write letters home telling of the patient's progress toward recovery and establishing such direct contact between the man and his family and the local Red Cross workers as will enable the whole procedure of assistance to be set in motion.

After the Government has contributed to the soldier's rehabilitation all its resources of treatment, vocational training, and placement service, he must go back to his civilian life in his own community and make his own way, basing a structure of self-support upon the foundation of a just pension which will not be reduced no matter how much he is able to supplement it. For thousands of men, perhaps for all resourceful returned soldiers and sailors who take advantage of their opportunities, no further assistance will be needed. Many, however, will require friendly, sympathetic oversight and encouragement to carry them through the first critical months until they have found themselves in their new lives. In this follow-up work a distant and impersonal Government bureau is at a disadvantage. Here is a great opportunity for the right community agency, for friends who really under- stand the need, for a big brother or sister close at hand and intimately aware of the man's every-day problems and difficulties.