1880s–1963
Margaret Sheldon was a Salvation Army officer who volunteered to serve with the American Expeditionary Forces (AEF) in France during World War I. Born in the 1880s, she was already a committed Salvation Army worker when the United States entered the war in April 1917.
In September 1917, Sheldon was among the first group of Salvation Army women dispatched to France under the command of Colonel William S. Barker. She sailed from New York and arrived in Bordeaux before making her way to the AEF training areas in northeastern France.
Margaret and her colleague Helen Purviance are widely credited with inventing the practice of frying donuts for American soldiers at the front — an improvisation that became one of the most iconic images of American service in the Great War. Working out of cramped, often dangerous Salvation Army “huts” near the front lines, they fried donuts in soldiers’ helmets and served them alongside coffee, cocoa, and spiritual encouragement.
Sheldon served continuously from September 1917 through at least January 1919, witnessing the full arc of American involvement: the training period in Lorraine, the crises of the German Spring Offensive, the great Allied counteroffensives of summer 1918, the Meuse-Argonne Offensive, the Armistice, and the beginning of the occupation of Germany. Her diary — published on this blog — is one of the most detailed first-person accounts of Salvation Army work in WWI.
After the war, Sheldon continued her work with the Salvation Army. She passed away in 1963. Her diary survived through family collections and has been transcribed and published on this blog to preserve her remarkable eyewitness account of the war.
Diary of a World War I Donut Girl 