The first Friday in every June is National Donut Day in the United States. A day dedicated to donuts does sound a bit odd, but the history behind Donut Day is, in reality, worth telling.

Not long after the United States declared war on Germany during World War I in 1917, the first 14,000 troops of the American Expeditionary Force began arriving in France.

They were shocked at the conditions of Allied trenches and the realities of trench warfare. The majority of the Americans who arrived in March 1918 took their positions just in time for the the German spring offensive. With barely sufficient training for combat, these young men, like all raw soldiers in war, were not psychologically prepared for the horrors and carnage they would experience and witness. They would quickly become seasoned veterans.

On May 28, in the Somme region of France, American divisions were ordered to counter-attack a town called Cantigny. The attack was preceded by a two-hour artillery barrage. The French army provided air cover, artillery, heavy tanks and — in an especially effective tactic — teams of flamethrowers to aid the U.S. advance through the German-held village, which was quickly overrun. The Americans took 100 German prisoners by the end of that day.

History.com writes that over the next 72 hours, the Americans in Cantigny endured seven German counterattacks, maintaining control of the village despite high casualties, with 200 soldiers killed and another 200 incapacitated by German gas attacks.

By the time relief finally came, total U.S. casualties at Cantigny had reached over 1,000 and the soldiers were exhausted from the strain of continual shelling. As their commander, Col. Hanson E. Ely, remembered, they could only stagger back, hollow-eyed with sunken cheeks and if one stopped for a moment he would fall asleep.

The fighting at the Somme, as elsewhere on the Western Front, was intense, bloody and exhausting, but the Americans had clearly demonstrated to the Germans that the AEF was a force to be reckoned with.

In addition to the trenches being overcrowded with soldiers, munitions, wounded and dead, the Americans found that there also women — civilian women — with donuts.

In 1917, the Salvation Army began a mission to provide spiritual and emotional support for U.S. soldiers fighting in France during the war, about the same time the first Americans began arriving in the country.

About 250 volunteers traveled overseas and set up small huts located near the front lines where they could give soldiers clothes, supplies and, of course, baked goods, according to the U.S. World War I Centennial Commission.

Volunteers were supplied with gas masks and pistols, along with their mission to boost the morale of the new American recruits. The American soldiers in Europe in 1918 were young. In fact, most of them were teenagers as young as 17 to their early 20s. Most of them had never been more than 20 miles from their homes.

To increase the size of the U.S. military, the government had to resort to conscription after their 1 million troop recruitment target was met with only 73,000 volunteers. This meant Ensign Margaret Sheldon and adjutant Helen Purviance were faced with the near-impossible task of bringing cheer to teenage boys sent to war against their own will.

The women who served the doughnuts and coffee to the soldiers, under the same shelling and shooting as the troops, were quickly nicknamed Doughnut Lassies, but doughnuts were not the only reason the Salvation Army workers were in the front lines of the combat zones; they were there primarily to give spiritual aid and comfort to the American soldiers and their allies. They were there to be a link with home and family. And they were resourceful.

Sheldon and Purviance, who were in charge of the Doughnut Lassies, saw firsthand the extent to which a simple doughnut and a cup of coffee boosted soldiers’ morale. They also very quickly realized that serving baked goods in frontline combat zones would be difficult, considering the conditions of the huts and limited rations.

A Feb. 10, 2018, article published by Austrialian News stated that after these newly minted American soldiers were hit with 30 days straight of rain and a hailstorm of German gunfire, the officers realized hot tea and lively conversation wasn’t going to cut it.

It was Purviance who had the idea to find eggs, an ingredient that was essential if they were to cook the troops a treat and something that would give these young men a taste of home, says the News.

To make doughnuts, they needed to beg the residents of a nearby village for eggs, raid ration packs for sugar, and invent new methods of shaping these doughnuts, including using ammunition shells as rolling pins, and tin cans as cutters.

Some days were spent on their knees to be level with the oil vats they used for deep frying. Other days were spent dodging bullets to deliver these doughnuts to soldiers in the trenches.

Soon, doughnut tents were set up at posts all along the frontline and the Donut Ladies were featured in newspaper headlines and recruitment posters across the United States.

When World War I ended and the troops returned home, a new demand for this delicious holey delicacy swept the nation, says the News.

In 1938, more than 20 years later as Europe prepared to return to war, a new national holiday was declared in the U.S. called Donut Day — a commemoration and a celebration of the war effort, but there was a little more to the day than that.

In that year, reports the Salvation Army Metropolitan Division in Chicago, National Donut Day started in 1938 in Chicago as a tribute to The army Doughnut Lassies who supported our troops on the front lines during World War I. It is celebrated annually on the first Friday in June. But that year, the holiday was particularly started to help the needy during the Great Depression. It was also a way to raise funds and bring awareness to the army’s social service programs during the Great Depression.

Today, the doughnut now serves as a symbol of all the social services The Salvation Army provides to those in need. The Salvation Army still serves doughnuts, in addition to warm meals and hydration, to those in need during times of disaster.

Last year, nearly 30 million Americans received assistance from the army’s 3,600 officers, 63,000 employees and 3.4 million volunteers. Overall, the army served nearly 70 million meals to people in need.

The Salvation Army has nearly 7,800 centers of operation in almost every ZIP code in the country. The Salvation Army provides coffee and doughnuts, as well as warm meals and hydration to survivors and emergency relief workers during a disaster, such as a hurricane or earthquake — all because of two young American women, Ensign Margaret Sheldon and Adjutant Helen Purviance, who are unsung heroes of the First World War.