It is truly a great thing to see that the day of willing devotion
to the noblest ideals is not yet gone from the life of our people.
Suffering and death are faced without repining, and men say farewell to
the promise of their youth ungrudgingly, feeling that the investment
for the sake of the future of the world is worth the cost which
they are paying. To the greatest life and death are very simple
alternatives, lying easily to either hand, accepted without complaining.
One day I was going through a tent of suffering men just after a big
"stunt." It was a day of much and great agony for those who were in
actual bodily pain and for those of us who had to try to help them to
endure it. I saw two men carried in and laid on beds side by side with
each other. One was obviously very severely wounded. The other was
swathed in bandages over his head and down over his face, apparently
blinded. For a moment I hesitated, thinking it might be better to come
back when, perhaps, the agonies of the one might be somewhat abated.
But I put my hesitation aside. I found that the two men were brothers
who, fighting in the same trench, had been struck down by the same
shell. Late that evening an ambulance came for me as a man was dying,
and I found it was the soldier I had spoken to earlier in the day.
The camp lay beautifully still, for the clouds were heavy and the stars
were veiled. I stepped into the tent, into the breathing dark. The beds
were swathed in shadow, only one red lamp hanging from a central post.
They had brought the brothers quite closely together, and the man with
the bandaged eyes had a hand of the other in his own. The dying man
took mine in a grip of ice.
"Padre," he whispered, "I am going home. And I wanted you to come again
to me. Write tenderly to my people. This will break their hearts. And
pray that my brother may be spared." There is no ritual for a moment
like that. One could but ask Him who was broken also for others to be
near this broken man whose body was pierced unto dying for the sake
of those he loved. We whispered together there a few lines of "Jesus,
Lover of My Soul," and a verse of the immortally wonderful "Lead,
Kindly Light." And then he put his arm about my neck and drew me closer.
"I tried to do what was right," said he. "O Christ, receive my soul.
Have mercy upon me." I heard a man near me, in the dark, say "Amen."
And I knew the fellows were not sleeping. They were lying there, in
their own pain, thinking of him who was passing that night into the
great beyond. Then I said, very quietly, the last verse of the hymn he
had whispered:
So long Thy power hath blessed me, sure it still
Will lead me on,
O'er moor and fen, o'er crag and torrent, till
The night is gone,
And with the morn those angel faces smile
Which I have loved long since and lost a while.
The silence lay between us for a little, till the dying man asked,
"What o'clock is it?" And I told him.
"I'm so sorry for disturbing you so late," said he.
"Good-bye, padre, till we meet again." And with a sigh he passed away.
I heard a quiet step near me, and I looked around, with the dead man
in my arms. I should not have been astonished if I had seen the very
Christ, with His wounds shining there, behind me, in that quiet tent,
now so terribly, infinitely still. It was only the woman with the red
cross on her breast, the angel of the sick and weary in their pain,
seeming always to us, in such a moment, the nearest we can get to
Christ, for tenderness and help. And so I laid the dead man down upon
his pillow; and had to turn immediately to the living one to comfort
him.