CHAPTER LXXIV
NO MAN’S LAND AGAIN
I was billeted in a little hut with the billeting officer. It was a very tiny hut, with two berths in it, one above the other. As I was on leave when the battalion came to Ecoivres, no provision had been made for me, so I was obliged to share the billeting officer’s hut which he so kindly offered. He was a genial companion, but he used to sit up very late at night puzzling over a chess-board. He was playing a game of chess with a partner who was actually residing in England, and every night, after great puzzling over the board, he was obliged to write the result of his efforts to his partner in England. One evening—I suppose it was his partner’s turn to play and it was for this reason that his chess-board was idle—he took his Bible from his table and said, naively: “Now, Padre, I won’t try to change your views, and you won’t try to change mine, but just take your Bible, and I will read certain passages from mine, and you will read the same passages from yours.”
I could not help smiling, as I reached for my Bible, at the thought of the billeting officer not wishing to change my views, for these words had just come to my mind: “Upon this rock I will build My Church.”
I can’t recall the texts he picked out and asked me to read from my Bible, but I remember that each one seemed contrary to the teachings of the Catholic Church on the subject treated. As every one familiar with the Douai-Rheims version of the Bible knows, there are little notes on texts that might be disputed, giving the true meaning and also reference to other texts which would prove the teaching. Glancing at the footnote, I would give the true interpretation and then refer the amateur exegete to the other texts. In a little while he closed his Bible. “Why, Padre,” he exclaimed, “you know the whole Bible by heart!”
“Well,” I said modestly, as I suppressed a desire to smile, “I don’t think I know it by heart, but you know it is my business to teach the truths that are in it,”—but I did not mention the foot-notes!
The following morning the billeting officer came hurriedly into the room. “Padre,” he said, “we are leaving here tomorrow night for the trenches. We’re taking over the line in front of Monchy.”
For just a second or two a peculiar numbness seemed to spread through every nerve in my body: it was nothing new, however, for years before, when a boy at the public school, after the teacher had opened the drawer in her desk and removed a black, snakelike piece of leather, and had said quietly: “Bennie Murdoch, come up here,” this strange numbness had come over me together with a slight contraction of the muscles of the throat.
But it quickly passed, and after I had swallowed once or twice to make sure of my throat, I said the obvious thing: “Well, that means another move!”
Going into the trenches was not the only hard piece of work I had to do. A very difficult task was before me, though I did not know it till I went up to the mess for lunch. Three or four letters were lying near my plate. One envelope was much larger than the others and bore in the upper left-hand corner the words “Assembly Chamber, State of New York, Albany” and beneath, was the address of Joseph V. McKee, 890 East 176th St., New York City, the brother of one of my “Canadians” who was an American by birth, and had lived all his life in the United States. There were many such, in the Third Brigade—Private McKee was in the Fifteenth Battalion. I knew him well and he was one of my very best Catholics.
I opened the letter and began to read it, and as I did I felt that I was turning sick. The letter contained a request that I please notify Private McKee that his mother had departed this life.
After lunch I left on foot for Anzin, for I had learned that the Fifteenth Battalion was quartered there. It was a distance of only three miles, yet it was one of the hardest journeys I ever made in France. Life at the front was very hard for these lads, but it was always brightened by the hope of finally seeing the dear ones at home. It had not been very long before, that Private McKee had spoken to me of his mother. One of the loveliest things in this world is the love of a good man for his mother. Every step was bringing me nearer the lad, and I so dreaded the thought of telling him! My head began to pain, and I went back in memory to the first time I was called on to break sorrowful news. I had been a priest just a little over a year when one night the telephone bell rang, and a trembling voice told me one of my men had been killed by a falling log. There were fifteen men in the small railway station where the voice was coming from; they were only about two hundred yards from the house where lived the widow of the man that was killed, and I was six miles away. Yet not one would break the terrible news. I was implored to come.
I shall never forget that night. A full moon was throwing its light over all the white land, darkened here and there by a clump of green, white-patched trees, but the thought of what I had to do had numbed me to all sense of beauty. And as I drove along even the horse seemed to feel what terrible work had to be done, for once he actually stopped in the road and I had difficulty in starting him; yet I could see no reason for his having stopped.
As I walked along, dreading all the time what was before me, I noticed that the soldiers who were quartered along the road wore the purple patch of the Fifth Division. They were artillerymen. Then a sign on a door of a shell-torn house told me that an R. C. chaplain dwelt within. I inferred that it was Father McPherson, the Fifth Divisional Artillery chaplain, one of the holiest priests in France; often I had seen him kneeling down in a dugout or some poor billet reading his Breviary.
I knocked on the door and was shown up to Father McPherson’s room, and the sight of his pleasant kindly face did me good. I told him of the task I had to perform. He spoke sympathetically and invited me to call in on my return and have tea with him.
After leaving Father McPherson, the thought of what I had to do did not weigh so heavily. Perhaps it was that the prayers of the good priest I had just left followed me.
They told me at the Fifteenth Battalion orderly room that Private McKee was quarantined,—the “flu” was now becoming quite prevalent among the men. I found him sitting in a bell tent, one of a group pitched in a large garden of a chateau. I called him, and when he came we walked up and down a long garden path under the trees while I broke as gently as I could the terrible news I had for him.
He took it well—took it bravely and quietly like the good soldier he was, with great submission to the holy will of God, like the good Catholic his dear mother had brought him up to be. I talked with him a little while, and when I left I asked Our Lady of the Seven Dolors to stay with the lad and to comfort him.