DURING the War my two eldest sons were serving with the Forces in
Mesopotamia. One day, while occupied about my usual household duties,
there suddenly came to me the following mental vision (I can call it
nothing else): I saw my eldest boy in a half-reclining position,
quite alone, in a wild desert sort of a place with one hand stroking
his forehead in a dazed kind of a way. So vivid and clear was the
vision that I could not shake it off. Again and again it repeated
itself, always exactly the same.
At tea-time I spoke of it, and said I was afraid something had
happened to F., but they only laughed at me and said I was getting
fanciful in my old age, and so I tried to forget it.
About six weeks later (the usual time for news to get through then) I
received a letter from him and, to my great surprise, it contained
these words as near as I can remember them:
“I must tell you, mother, of a little incident that happened the
other day. I had a fancy to take my horse and go off alone for a
long-stretch gallop. When some distance from camp I suppose he must
have put his foot in a hole and stumbled; anyway he threw me. I don't
know how long I lay there but, on coming to, I discovered I had still
got the reins tight in my hand with bridle attached but, alas, there
was no horse; he had quickly made tracks for the camp, leaving me to
get there the best way I could.”
I shall always think that this accident happened just at the time my
vision appeared to me.
Then again, about three days or so before Christmas, 1918, I had
another presentiment that something was wrong. This time it was the
younger son. There suddenly came to me a vision of a hospital bed and
I found myself looking down on my boy, who appeared to be very ill. I
had not the remotest idea at the time that there was anything wrong
with either of them. But, as before, the vivid reality of it seemed
fixed on my mind. But, this time, I kept it to myself until the
arrival, in a few days, of the ominous official envelope with the
news that he was in hospital at Bagdad, seriously ill with dysentery.
He lived to return home. He then told me that, just at the time when
I had seen him in that remarkable vision, his life would not have
been worth much.