“There was to be an attack the next morning in the gray hours before
the sun was up, when Father Brady reached the wooded country between
Soissons and Château-Thierry where his Leathernecks crouched under
the Hun bombardments. He crawled and stumbled along the lines to hear
confessions from his warriors. Hard-bitten old-timers who had not
seen the interior of a church in years bared their souls and went
light-hearted into the hell that followed the opening barrage.
“Reaching the final outpost, the young priest spied a shallow trench
from which a sentry peeped. In spite of warnings he slipped out among
the shadows and wormed his way forward and rolled into the ditch. He
heard the confession as he and the outpost lay side by side looking
up at the stars, and as he crept back to cover he knew that he had
never granted absolution in stranger places. He has said mass for the
faithful with his altar cloth on the shattered stump of a tree during
the last lull before the attack.
“Friend and foe alike received the sacrament from the young Catholic
priest. His enmity for the Germans ceased when he went among the young
wounded Bavarians left on the field and gave them the last consolation
of the church. Often he bent over young Germans, scarcely able to speak
as they groped for their rosaries, and left them facing death more
bravely.
“One of his most dangerous tasks was the burial of the dead, which must
be done at night, and frequently under shell fire. It is work that must
be done in the open, for digging is almost impossible where the woods
fill the soil with interlacing roots. It was on such a mission that
personal tragedy touched him. Making his way to the crest of a hill,
where he had been told a man lay dead, he found the face of one of his
closest friends turned up to the moonlight.
“In spite of the horrors he has witnessed and the sorrows he has
shared, those who have met Father Brady recently say he is unchanged.
Many men would have shrunk from his work, much of which was done alone
with no comrade to speak a steadying word. Yet his spirit is still
buoyant and his mind is unoppressed.”