THE DIFFERENT DISPENSERS
The Thirteenth and Fifteenth Battalions were at Anzin, a small village
about three kilometers distant from Ecurie Wood. There was a little
brick church here with a great hole through the base of its tower. I
used to go down there on my bicycle early Sunday mornings and hear
confessions while Father Pickett, of the First Divisional Artillery,
said Mass for my lads. Then I would ride back to Ecurie Wood and say
Mass at half-past ten for the Fourteenth and Sixteenth. There were
now three other priests quartered at Ecurie Wood and these would hear
confessions during my Mass. In the evenings the priests would assemble
in my hut--for, it seemed, I had the best billet in the area--and talk
over many things. It was not often so many chaplains were together,
and I, for one, enjoyed these pleasant evenings in the little hut
before the blazing fire. It was a very dangerous area, however; shells
were dropping all over the camp and there was great loss of life. One
morning on awakening from a very sound sleep a shell came shrieking
through the air, then the deafening explosion as it struck just outside
my hut. I waited, scarcely breathing, for the next, but no more came.
When I was dressed, I stepped off the distance from my hut to where the
shell had struck. It was just thirteen steps. They were beginning to
come very near!
Those gatherings of chaplains in my corrugated iron hut there on the
Western Front were unique. I often used to think of it in the evenings
as we talked, or when some chaplain read excerpts from a Canadian paper
that had come from home. It was this--that while we talked away so
casually about the ordinary daily affairs of the world, in the pocket
of every one present dwelt humbly Our Eucharistic Lord in his little
home, the ciborium.
One afternoon while I was sitting in my hut, alternately reading my
book and looking into the fire, a knock sounded on the door and a
young officer walked in, smiling broadly. He was a lieutenant in the
artillery. I had known him when he was a little boy and I was in senior
philosophy at college. I had not seen him for ten years till I met him
at the front. After we had talked for a while, he asked me if he could
go to confession.
I put on my purple stole and sat down on the large general service
wagon seat, while he knelt down on the earth floor--over which at times
I saw worms moving--and he began his little tale. Often, in our old
college days, when I was walking slowly on the track of the athletic
field he had come running up quickly behind me, given me a punch on
the back, and then had skipped ahead of me, smiling pleasantly as he
waited for me to catch up to him. Now he knelt humbly on the earth
and confessed his sins, and I, with all the powers of the priesthood,
absolved him!
It was with great joy in my heart that I arranged my little portable
altar on a box, spread out the clean white corporal and gave him Holy
Communion.
After I had closed the altar and the young lieutenant had finished his
thanksgiving, we sat on the seat. He was the first to speak. “Father,”
he said, “these are strange times we are living in.”
I agreed with him, and among other things thought of the shell that had
dropped just thirteen steps from where we sat; but he was not thinking
of shells.
“Three weeks ago,” he said, “I was in Rome on leave, and on Easter
Sunday all the Catholic officers in the city had permission to assist
at Mass in the Sistine Chapel and receive Holy Communion from the
hand of Pope Benedict XV, amidst great splendor and solemnity. Today,
kneeling on the earth, I received Our Lord in this little corrugated
iron hut on the Western Front!”
I did not speak for awhile; some strange emotion held me silent as I
visualized the two scenes. Easter in Rome, in one of the most beautiful
chapels in the world, the Pope in the richest vestments, assisted by
many priests, giving Holy Communion. Then, a small, dark hut, with not
even a window in it, and no covering over the clay floor, the priest in
a wrinkled khaki uniform and heavy trench boots, his only vestment a
small white stole worn over his tunic--yet, in each case Jesus had come
to the young officer!