NEW FRIENDS
Shortly after the young soldier left there was another knock on my
door, and as I stood up to go to open it I heard outside the voice of
a man speaking as if to a child. When I opened the door, there stood
a kilted officer over six feet in height, with the pleasant face of a
boy. He was accompanied by a billy-goat, the mascot of the battalion.
The officer greeted me warmly and then looked at the goat, saying:
“Shake hands, Billy, shake hands with the new Padre.” So Billy and I
shook hands, or rather, I shook Billy’s raised hoof.
In the afternoon I took a walk along the Valley of the Dead. Away
in the distance I noticed a large balloon far up in the air and,
seemingly, two men standing in the large basket attached to it. It was
the first time I had ever seen a balloon and I was a little surprised
to find that it was not round, but shaped like a sausage. It was a
greyish-khaki color.
The sun was just setting far away behind the broken trees when I walked
back from Neuville St. Vaast; the sky was pink with here and there a
pencil of red clouds. Along the skyline flew three homing airplanes.
As I turned to see if any more planes were coming, I noticed the large
balloon being hauled slowly down towards the earth.
When I entered my little billet, I found the young soldier at work
putting up a stove that he had found and patched with a piece of tin.
I asked him what the great balloon was doing up in the air. He told me
that it was an observation balloon, and that the two men in the aerial
car were observing with field-glasses what was going on behind Fritz’s
line. The airplanes that I had seen wending their way against the
winter skyline were scout planes that had been patrolling the sky for
hours. “Now,” he said, “they are going home to roost.”
Before the stove was finished the Third Brigade interpreter--the men
always called the interpreter “the interrupter”--came to visit me. He
was the first Catholic I had met since coming to the Sixteenth. He
seemed very friendly and kind. The badge of his office was a sphinx.
It was Napoleon who designed this badge for interpreters--I suppose to
remind them that although they would learn much that was occurring,
it was part of their office not to divulge it. The interpreter’s work
was made very hard at times by the good peasants of France. Sometimes,
while marching through a rich farmland, a soldier lad would “annex” a
hen, or a head of cabbage, or some grapes, or apples, etc.; then the
irate owner would seek the interpreter and oblige him to conduct him or
her before the proper military authorities, where compensation would be
demanded from the government.
The cook also came in to see me; he, too, was a Catholic and seemed
to be a lad full of energy. I was surprised to learn that in private
life he was a tailor. Before he left, he made arrangements for going to
confession. Then, by some strange association of ideas, I asked him if
his stove still smoked. It was going much better now, he said.
That evening after dinner as I sat wiping my eyes with my handkerchief,
when it was not being applied to my nose--for besides giving real
warmth, the new stove emitted a quantity of smoke--an officer knocked
and came in, followed by two soldiers carrying his bed-roll. I had
been expecting him, for in the mess just before dinner I had heard the
officers planning the allotment of sleeping space for the night. A
number had been sleeping in their bed-rolls on the floor of the mess;
and now two or three other officers were coming back from leave. I
had heard an officer say: “We’ll put ‘Wild Bill’ with the Padre.” The
others had agreed to this.
I had been wondering who “Wild Bill” was. I did not think the officers
were playing a practical joke on me, for I had always found officers
most respectful to the priesthood. But now “Wild Bill” had entered, and
as I looked through the slight smoke-screen, my eyes rested on one of
the gentlest-mannered men I have ever met. Without being in the least
effeminate, he came quietly over and shook hands. I understood now why
they called him “Wild Bill” for I recalled that at college one of the
slowest moving lads I had ever met, had been rechristened “Lightning.”
I felt grateful to the other officers who had billeted “Wild Bill” with
me.
He slept in his bed-roll on the floor, after he had spread a rubber
ground sheet over it. Gradually the room became sufficiently warm to
sleep in. The soldier had found some coal. And as the smoke died away
I fell asleep and did not awake until morning.