Last Sunday had been an off-day--a day of cloudless summer beauty.
Tired men had slept; tidy men had washed their clothes; restless men
had wandered at ease about the countryside, careless of the guns which
grumbled everlastingly a few miles away. There had been impromptu
Church Parades for each denomination, in the corner of a wood which was
part of the demesne of a shell-torn château.
It is a sadly transformed wood. The open space before the château,
once a smooth expanse of tennis-lawn, is now a dusty picketing-ground
for transport mules, destitute of a single blade of grass. The
ornamental lake is full of broken bottles and empty jam-tins. The
pagoda-like summer house, so inevitable to French château gardens, is
a quartermaster's store. Half the trees have been cut down for fuel.
Still, the July sun streams very pleasantly through the remainder, and
the Psalms of David float up from beneath their shade quite as sweetly
as they usually do from the neighborhood of the precentor's desk in the
kirk at home--perhaps sweeter.
The wood itself is a _point d'appui_, or fortified post. One has to
take precautions, even two or three miles behind the main firing line.
A series of trenches zigzags in and out among the trees, and barbed
wire is interlaced with the undergrowth. In the farthermost corner
lies an improvised cemetery. Some of the inscriptions on the little
wooden crosses are only three days old. Merely to read a few of these
touches the imagination and stirs the blood. Here you may see the names
of English Tommies and Highland Jocks, side by side with their Canadian
kith and kin. A little apart lie more graves, surmounted by epitaphs
written in strange characters, such as few white men can read. These
are the Indian troops. There they lie, side by side--the mute wastage
of war, but a living testimony, even in their last sleep, to the
breadth and unity of the British Empire. The great, machine-made Empire
of Germany can show no such graves: when her soldiers die, they sleep
alone.
The Church of England service had come last of all. Late in the
afternoon a youthful and red-faced chaplain had arrived on a bicycle,
to find a party of officers and men lying in the shade of a broad
oak waiting for him. (They were a small party: naturally, the great
majority of the regiment are what the identity-discs call "Pres" or
"R.C.")
"Sorry to be late, sir," he said to the senior officer, saluting. "This
is my sixth sh--service to-day, and I have come seven miles for it."
He mopped his brow cheerfully; and having produced innumerable
hymn-books from a saddle-bag and set his congregation in array, read
them the service, in a particularly pleasing and well-modulated voice.
After that he preached a modest and manly little sermon, containing
references which carried Bobby Little, for one, back across the Channel
to other scenes and other company. After the sermon came a hymn, sung
with great vigor. Tommy loves singing hymns--when he happens to know
and like the tune.
"I know you chaps like hymns," said the padre, when they had finished.
"Let's have another before you go. What do you want?"
A most unlikely-looking person suggested "Abide with Me." When it
was over, and the party, standing as rigid as their own rifles, had
sung "God Save the King," the preacher announced awkwardly--almost
apologetically--
"If any of you would like to--er--communicate, I shall be very glad.
May not have another opportunity for some time, you know. I think over
there"--he indicated a quiet corner of the wood, not far from the
little cemetery--"would be a good place."
He pronounced the benediction, and then, after further recurrence to
his saddle-bag, retired to his improvised sanctuary. Here, with a
ration-box for altar, and strands of barbed wire for choir-stalls, he
made his simple preparations.
Half a dozen of the men, and all the officers, followed him. That was
just a week ago.
* * * * *
Captain Wagstaffe broke the silence at last.
"It's a rotten business, war," he said pensively--"when you come to
think of it. Hallo, there goes the first star-shell! Come along, Bobby!"
Dusk had fallen. From the German trenches a thin luminous thread
stole up into the darkening sky, leaned over, drooped, and burst
into dazzling brilliance over the British parapet. Simultaneously a
desultory rifle fire crackled down the lines. The night's work had
begun.
(Ian Hay relates innumerable stories, each filled with absorbing human
emotions. Among them are: "The Conversion of Private M'Slattery;"
"Shooting Straight;" "Deeds of Darkness;" "The Gathering of the
Eagles;" "The Battle of the Slag-Heaps," all of which are the
narratives of a trained novelist direct from the battlefield.)