CHAPTER XVI
THE BATTALION IS BROKEN UP
We were not in England three weeks when orders came for a draft of men to reinforce a battalion that had suffered severe losses at the front. In a few days one hundred and fifty men left for France. We thought at the time that reinforcements would soon come to us from Canada, but not much more than a week passed till we were called on for another draft. This time the order was that three hundred and fifty men be sent to the Eighty-seventh Battalion.
This second order came as a shock to us all. Many of the officers had been in the battalion for almost a year; they had watched it grow strong and numerous and had helped to form, the thing most essential in a battalion, an “esprit de corps.” I had never thought of going to the front except as a unit. The idea of our being broken up had never entered my mind, but before Christmas came our battalion had lost its identity as the One Hundred and Thirty-second Battalion, and the majority of the men had gone to join different units at the front. It was impossible for me to be with all my men, as there were no two drafts in the same brigade; still, I thought that I might be permitted to go as chaplain to the brigade in which was the largest number of my men, so I obtained permission to go to London to explain matters to the senior chaplain. He was very kind, but he said I must await my turn; there were other chaplains whose battalions had undergone the same process of annihilation as had mine. These must go first; work would be found for me in England till my turn would come to go to the front.
I returned to Bramshott Camp a somewhat wiser man as to the workings of things military. But as I sat in the cold first class compartment, with my feet on a stone hot water-bottle (seemingly this is the only way they heat the cars in England) my mind was busy with many things. One was that I never should have offered my services as chaplain had I foreseen the catastrophe which had befallen us. I had counted on being with my men till the last. Before leaving for overseas many of the mothers of the lads had come to me and had told me what a great consolation it was to them to have the assurance that a Catholic priest would be with their sons. Now I was not going with them; still, I had been convinced that the lads would be well cared for spiritually.
At Bramshott I became assistant for a time to the camp chaplain, Father John Knox.