“I was turning to slip away quietly, when he opened his eyes and said,
‘Whoever you are, don’t go, sir, I was only speaking to God.’ His
religion was so intimate a possession that he did not need to apologize
for knocking at the door of love with his prayer.
“Nothing could be more touching, and often at the same time funnier,
than meeting men past military age who, sometimes for the sake of
their boys serving, had slipped into the ranks, mentally folding
down a corner of their birth-certificate over the date, and salving
their consciences, as did one, who said to me, ‘I told them I was
thirty-four—but I did not say on what birthday!’ I remember one old
Scot, who could scarcely move, telling me, ‘I doot I’ll hae to get oot
o’ this, an’ awa’ hame. Thae rheumatics is no good in the trenches;
and they’re girnin’ at me again.’ Of course, he had ‘a laddie lyin’
up yonder,’ and a nephew, and ‘a guid-sister’s brither,’ and so on,
like the rest. And, of course, if it were not for these pains he would
be as good as ever he was! Some time later I met him in the rain, and
asked how he felt now. ‘Oh,’ said he, ‘I’m just fine the day. I seen my
youngest laddie gaun up, and I’d a word or twa wi’ him. I’ll be writin’
his mither the nicht aboot it. He was lookin’ grand. It was fine to get
a roar frae him in the by-gaun.’
“I called on one old woman at home, and she told me that her husband
had only the previous day, which was his birthday, gone off to France.
‘Eh,’ said she with unction, ‘he’s a good man, my man. I often think
I was a lucky woman to have sic a man. D’ye ken—he never told a lie!’
‘And yesterday was his birthday?’ I inquired. ‘And how old was he?’
‘He was fifty-eight,’ was her answer. But when I asked how this modern
rival of George Washington had got into the army with such an age, she
innocently replied, ‘Ye see, he said he was thirty-twa.’
“How these elderly men endured for any length of time all the
discomforts at the front was beyond understanding. They were, of
course, frequently caught, when youth was more able to skip nimbly out
of the way of death. The little, shell-swept graveyards at the front
got many of them very soon.