CHAPTER XXXI
AN UNEXPECTED TURNING
It was now November. The days were passing very quickly for I was kept busy; convoys were coming daily. Passchendael was being fought. I had to visit the D. I.’s and S. I.’s very often, for many were being admitted. One morning I stopped just long enough to prepare an Australian for death. He had been wounded through the throat and could not swallow, so that it was impossible for me to give him Holy Communion. I absolved him and anointed him quickly, then I told him I must pass on as I had many more to visit. It was almost impossible for him to speak, and he did so with great pain, but as he gave me his hand and his dying eyes looked at me, he made a great effort. “Cheerio,” he whispered. Truly these wonderful lads were not downhearted!
During the month of November thousands of patients passed through the hospital. Everybody was working extremely hard. Sometimes during the night, convoys arrived. The anaesthetist, who sat next me at mess, told me that he was beginning to feel that he could not continue very much longer; for days he had been giving chloroform almost steadily, as there were very many operations. We were both longing for a little lull in the work so that we might get a few hours’ rest.
There were many places where the officers of the hospitals used to go. There was “The Blue Cat” at Paris Plage, a famous seaside resort about three miles from Etaples, where they went to have tea and bathe in the sea. There was the village of Frencq, where a little old lady kept a small coffee house and made omelettes that were famous. Then there were two officers’ clubs and an officers’ circulating library at Etaples. I had been to the library at different times while at the base. There was a large reading-room exceptionally well lighted, for it was a part of an old studio. Tea was served every afternoon from 3:30 to 6:00 o’clock, at which a number of old English officers assembled. It was very amusing to listen to them relating past experiences, in which often a good dinner was not forgotten. They treated the soldier-waiter as if he were one of their own personal servants, calling him often; and although there was but one syllable in his name (it was Brown) they managed to twist the last letter into a rather complaining inflection. I watched Brown a number of times, and although he came “on the double” and stood head erect, looking at his nose, as all good butlers do, still I thought I detected on more than one occasion a merry light in his bright brown eyes, and he seemed to be exerting a little extra will power in keeping his lips composed.
Then one day there came a lull in the rush of work, and being advised by one of the officers to take a little recreation, I obeyed.
I recall that afternoon particularly. I went to the officers’ circulating library, which was at the rear of the town hall, where I passed the afternoon very pleasantly looking through a delightfully illustrated edition of “Our Sentimental Garden,” by Agnes and Egerton Castle, whose home I had visited while at Bramshott. The quarto volume contained many drawings of their pretty garden from different angles. It was very restful sitting in the quaint old studio, through the great windowed wall of which streamed the autumn sunlight.
Towards five o’clock tea was served by my old friend, the butler humorist. Then as the sun went quietly down into the sea, far out, I walked back to No. 7, feeling very much benefited by my visit, meeting hundreds of soldiers, nurses and civilians on the way.
It was dusk when I entered my little burlap hut. I lit the lamp, and as I did, the light flashed over an open letter on my newspaper-covered desk. All the feeling of exhilaration which had cheered my return walk left me suddenly, and an overwhelming, foreboding cloud came over my spirits; for the letter said: “Please come quickly, Padre, there is one of your men dying in Ward 3, bed 17.” It was signed by the adjutant of No. 1 hospital, and the hour of the day was marked on the letter. It had been sent at 2:30. It was now 6:00 p. m. I turned down the lamp and went quickly out of the little hut praying, as I ran up the road, that the lad might be still alive. I walked down the ward, not noticing the friendly faces that turned to greet me, as was their custom. The red screens were around the bed. I moved them gently and stood quietly by the lad’s bed. An orderly moved a little to one side.
“He’s dead, sir,” said the orderly. “Died just a minute ago.”
I put on my purple stole, gave the lad conditional absolution and anointed him conditionally. Then I stood for a long while looking on his still white face, wishing with all my heart that I had not left the hospital that day. Then the orderly made a little movement and I turned and went down the aisle of the ward, repressing a great desire to burst into tears; it was the first time, through my neglect, that I had ever missed a call to the dying. In passing I talked to a few patients, but there seemed to be a strange numbness in my brain, so that I did not follow the words spoken by the occupants of different beds where I stopped; one or two ceased speaking and looked at me keenly.
Just as I was about to leave the ward little Sister Daughney came in. She stopped and spoke to me, and her words were as sweetest music to my ear.
“Ah, Father,” she said—Sister was from Ireland—“I sent for you this afternoon for the lad who has just died. He would have been glad to see you, Father, although there was no need; for he said he had been anointed and prepared for death just six hours before up in the C. C. S.”
I looked at the little sister talking so quietly and in such a matter-of-fact way: while thundering in my ears was the desire to break forth into a great Te Deum Laudamus. She spoke to me of two or three new patients who might develop more serious symptoms, then passed on to other duties, whilst I went up the lane to my little marquee chapel to kneel before the tabernacle and make known to God my fervent gratitude. And so, after all, I had passed a very pleasant day.