Serving the Doughboy: Letters of a YMCA Worker in France, 1918-1919

Mary Frances Willard, a public-school principal from Chicago, was one of thousands of American women who served as welfare workers for U.S. troops in France during World War I. During the war's final months, she operated a canteen and post exchange in Troyes, attended to convalescing servicemen, arranged their burials and wrote letters to their families.

After the Armistice, she headed canteen operations in Le Mans for hundreds of thousands of returning servicemen in embarkation camps. In ...