THE MOST TERRIBLE DAY
On Sunday I could not have a church parade, but I said Mass in a bell
tent near the Canal du Nord. That morning I joined the First Field
Ambulance in a little village not very far from Cambrai. I think the
name of the village was Raillencourt. As I approached its outskirts, I
saw that it was under fire. Shell after shell was whistling over from
the enemy lines, bursting in black clouds of smoke and yellow clouds of
gas that mingled with red clouds of dust rising from the ruined brick
buildings. No traffic was coming along the road. I must walk alone
into the village. My will said, Go! yet every nerve in my body seemed
to rebel; my feet were heavy as lead and it seemed an effort for me
to lift them from the ground. I was now very tired from the work of
the past week. Almost sick with fear, I continued to advance. It was
a strange experience; my feet kept going heavily forwards while the
rest of me seemed to be trying to hold them back. I felt that that hurt
dazed look which I had seen so often in the eyes of the men was in my
own eyes.
I remember going down the little street of the village bewildered and
almost stupefied while shells crashed into buildings and the sickening
fumes of gas poisoned the air. Then, suddenly, I saw what I was in
search of--a little red cross on a white background, floating from a
window of a small house.
I entered the yard; a ruined field-kitchen lay in a lake of porridge,
and nearby, where they had carried him to die, was the cook.
I found the cellar filled with wounded men with whom the doctors were
very busy. My old friend Captain O’Shea was here and two other Catholic
doctors. I stayed in the cellar two days. Those were horrible hours.
I could not be relieved, as Father O’Reilly of the Second Brigade
had been wounded a day or two before I came to the cellar. It was his
troops who were now in action. My own were back in reserve. While I
worked, Canon Scott, an Anglican chaplain who had been in the war since
the beginning, was brought in wounded.
It was a miracle that we were not struck. At different times during the
day the Germans shelled the little house heavily; many shells dropped
in the garden just outside the windows of the cellar. The nauseating
fumes from the gas shells penetrated into the cellar and often we
worked with our gas masks on.
At two o’clock Tuesday morning word came that my brigade was going over
the top near Haynecourt. As soon as it was daylight, I left to join my
troops. I found the Second or Third Field Ambulance, which was clearing
that day at a cross-road near Cambrai. I could see the city from where
we worked. I was very busy all day. At times the German airplanes
swooped low over us and swept our wounded with their machine-guns. One
poor fellow near me was riddled with bullets and I had just time enough
to prepare him for death.
Towards three o’clock I felt something was wrong. Wounded from the
Fourteenth and Sixteenth were no longer coming in. The men of the
Fifteenth were in reserve just behind where I worked. Seeing this, I
started forward. The shell-fire was intense, but I prayed the Blessed
Virgin to see me through. I met a soldier from the Sixteenth who showed
me where the soldiers were, but he advised me not to go any farther.
I’m afraid I was too worried about my men at the moment to heed advice
of this kind.
I found a number of them in a cutting of a railway, together with a lot
of other troops. The battle was not going well; many members of the
Fourteenth, cut off, had been taken prisoners. The young officer did
not know where the rest were. I stayed with them, crouching in little
holes in the side of the sunken road, and read my Breviary while the
clay scattered by bursting shells fell on its open pages.
Presently, I joined a party of stretcher-bearers going out upon the
field. The shelling was terrible as we passed down the cutting of the
railroad. I was now getting among machine-gunners of the Third Division
who had their guns set up in the side of the cutting.
The stretcher-bearers had no sooner reached the field, than the
Germans, seeing them, commenced firing with small shells at point-blank
range over open sights.
Three of the stretcher-bearers went down, two of them mortally wounded.
I ran quickly to them and began to anoint one of them. The other
bearers ran to points of safety and I was alone on the field. Those
were the most terrible minutes of my life. I knew the enemy could
see me and was firing at me for shells were crashing all about me.
Terrified, I crouched flat on my stomach until I finished anointing the
lad, who passed away before I had done my work. Then I rolled over and
lay still, as if I were dead; a little later, I crawled from shell hole
to shell hole, off the field.
When the roll was called that night seventy-one men out of six hundred
answered. We had lost many prisoners.
I could not find my battalion to march out with them. I had not eaten
any food all day and it was now six o’clock. I had gone through the
most terrible day of my life, and I was utterly dispirited. I had
never before felt so strangely. Of course, we had had many engagements
during the past week, and constantly I had been looking on men mangled
and broken and torn; and, besides I had eaten scarcely anything. I
seemed to be moving in a world that was all upset; somehow, suddenly,
everything had gone wrong with the allies! I bumped along till finally
I came to the dugout that had been occupied by the medical officer
of the Fourteenth. He had gone, but he had left behind a white bag,
resembling in size and shape an ordinary pillow-slip, half filled with
sugar. I thought of taking it along with me, but I left it. As I moved
on dazedly, suddenly I remembered I had seen the Fifteenth back in
reserve. I had come through them in the morning on my way up to the
Fourteenth. I would go to them and ask for something to eat. How I
missed George! George would have had a breakfast for me in the morning,
and would have found me in the evening.
Headquarters of the Fifteenth were in a cellar, and a kind-hearted
kilted laddie guided me to the door. I was greeted very kindly, and
in a little while the waiter placed on the table some white bread and
margarine and a plate of cold beef.
“I’m sorry,” said Major Girvin, O. C., of the Fifteenth Battalion,
“that we have no sugar, Padre.”
I then remembered the bag of sugar I had seen in the medical officer’s
hut. If I had only brought it, I could have given it to the Fifteenth
Battalion! I did not mind the lack of sugar in the tea. And I was not
bothered that most of the smoke from the improvised fire-place was
floating out over the cellar instead of rising through the chimney. But
I began to feel my spirits revive with the kindly talk of the officers.
They seemed pleased that I had dropped in on them. The Fifteenth was
the one battalion of the brigade that had no chaplain. They used to say
jokingly that they were so good that they did not need a chaplain.
I related my experiences of the day to the officers. They were
sympathetic, for they had had many similar ones.
I stayed with them for an hour or two till the Twenty-sixth Battalion
came to relieve them. The officer who took over from us was an old
friend, and one of the very best Catholics of the old One Hundred and
Thirty-Second Battalion. I was delighted to see Captain Barry and we
talked for a long time in the cellar.