CHAPTER LXV
ANZIN AND MONCHY BRETON
The Fifty-first “took over” from us and we went to Anzin. Here it was much quieter and the battalion prepared to rest. I took charge of the village church, for I was the only chaplain in the area. The first day I swept it out and dusted the altar and sanctuary rail. The next morning I said Mass, and after Mass a little sanctuary lamp twinkled softly before the altar. The Guest had come!
There was a beautiful statue of Our Lady in the church, and as it was her month I decorated it as well as I could. A long walk by the Scarpe River, which flowed its narrow though very pretty way through Anzin, brought me to the grounds of what had once been a very fine country residence, now terribly battered from shell-fire. The road that led to it sloped up from the river, and as I walked along it, this beautiful May day, from the dark recesses of the trees came the repeated solitary call of the cuckoo. I stopped to listen. The whole countryside seemed very quiet and peaceful, save for the faint rumble, from far away, of our guns.
Though the grounds were pitted in different places with old shell-holes, many flowers grew in the garden. I picked some white lilacs, although the season for these was now growing late, and a large bunch of Parma violets. It was very quiet and still there in the old French garden, but I could hear German shells whining through the air and dropping in a little village not very far away.
Somewhere along the line battles were being fought, and I supposed the British were losing ground and that many men were being taken prisoners. Up to this time we Canadians had not lost any men as prisoners and had given no ground except a mile in depth near Neuville-Vitasse when we found ourselves placed in a very dangerous position by the general retreat of British troops, which in some places was more than twenty miles in depth.
Towards the end of May good news came to us. We were going back to rest. And it was to be a long rest, among green fields, far from the sound of the guns and the sights of the battlefield.
It was Saturday when we arrived in our rest billets after a long march through a peaceful countryside. My battalions were scattered in four different villages and I was very busy Saturday afternoon arranging for Masses. Up to this time our rest billets had been always in mining towns or districts, but now we had come to one of the most beautiful countrysides I had ever seen. Open, unfenced farmlands stretched before us, while here and there clumps of ancient wide-spreading trees, almost hiding from view the little white-walled, red-roofed houses beneath them, rose as dark-green islands in a light-green sea. The memory of that Saturday afternoon is very vivid with me yet. It had been a warm day and the long, dusty march had been most fatiguing. I was finding some difficulty in arranging hours for Masses, and towards three o’clock I dismounted from my bicycle, sat by the roadside and wiped my forehead. Everything was intensely quiet; a Sabbath-day stillness was over all the land. It seemed more like a beautiful dream than a reality. For months I had been in the gruesome atmosphere of war, gazing on broken villages, torn roads and ruined farmlands, walking always in danger and “in the shadow of death” through a country utterly desolate, and foully marred by the ingenuity of men. Now my eye was being filled with the beauty of all things around me, of the wonderful things of God.
I picked a wild flower of a variety that grew in profusion along the roadside. It was about one-third the size of a morning-glory and somewhat similar in shape. It was white, and so delicate that it seemed almost transparent. As I gazed on its wonderful formation, my mind dwelt on God and all the beautiful things He had created; then my thoughts were of the soul and then of my men. Presently the plan of my sermon for the following day was mentally outlined.
It was twelve o’clock Saturday night when I finished my work.