CHAPTER LXIII
THE DIFFERENT DISPENSERS
The Thirteenth and Fifteenth Battalions were at Anzin, a small village about three kilometers distant from Ecurie Wood. There was a little brick church here with a great hole through the base of its tower. I used to go down there on my bicycle early Sunday mornings and hear confessions while Father Pickett, of the First Divisional Artillery, said Mass for my lads. Then I would ride back to Ecurie Wood and say Mass at half-past ten for the Fourteenth and Sixteenth. There were now three other priests quartered at Ecurie Wood and these would hear confessions during my Mass. In the evenings the priests would assemble in my hut—for, it seemed, I had the best billet in the area—and talk over many things. It was not often so many chaplains were together, and I, for one, enjoyed these pleasant evenings in the little hut before the blazing fire. It was a very dangerous area, however; shells were dropping all over the camp and there was great loss of life. One morning on awakening from a very sound sleep a shell came shrieking through the air, then the deafening explosion as it struck just outside my hut. I waited, scarcely breathing, for the next, but no more came. When I was dressed, I stepped off the distance from my hut to where the shell had struck. It was just thirteen steps. They were beginning to come very near!
Those gatherings of chaplains in my corrugated iron hut there on the Western Front were unique. I often used to think of it in the evenings as we talked, or when some chaplain read excerpts from a Canadian paper that had come from home. It was this—that while we talked away so casually about the ordinary daily affairs of the world, in the pocket of every one present dwelt humbly Our Eucharistic Lord in his little home, the ciborium.
One afternoon while I was sitting in my hut, alternately reading my book and looking into the fire, a knock sounded on the door and a young officer walked in, smiling broadly. He was a lieutenant in the artillery. I had known him when he was a little boy and I was in senior philosophy at college. I had not seen him for ten years till I met him at the front. After we had talked for a while, he asked me if he could go to confession.
I put on my purple stole and sat down on the large general service wagon seat, while he knelt down on the earth floor—over which at times I saw worms moving—and he began his little tale. Often, in our old college days, when I was walking slowly on the track of the athletic field he had come running up quickly behind me, given me a punch on the back, and then had skipped ahead of me, smiling pleasantly as he waited for me to catch up to him. Now he knelt humbly on the earth and confessed his sins, and I, with all the powers of the priesthood, absolved him!
It was with great joy in my heart that I arranged my little portable altar on a box, spread out the clean white corporal and gave him Holy Communion.
After I had closed the altar and the young lieutenant had finished his thanksgiving, we sat on the seat. He was the first to speak. “Father,” he said, “these are strange times we are living in.”
I agreed with him, and among other things thought of the shell that had dropped just thirteen steps from where we sat; but he was not thinking of shells.
“Three weeks ago,” he said, “I was in Rome on leave, and on Easter Sunday all the Catholic officers in the city had permission to assist at Mass in the Sistine Chapel and receive Holy Communion from the hand of Pope Benedict XV, amidst great splendor and solemnity. Today, kneeling on the earth, I received Our Lord in this little corrugated iron hut on the Western Front!”
I did not speak for awhile; some strange emotion held me silent as I visualized the two scenes. Easter in Rome, in one of the most beautiful chapels in the world, the Pope in the richest vestments, assisted by many priests, giving Holy Communion. Then, a small, dark hut, with not even a window in it, and no covering over the clay floor, the priest in a wrinkled khaki uniform and heavy trench boots, his only vestment a small white stole worn over his tunic—yet, in each case Jesus had come to the young officer!