From city homes—from country homes we came;
From mother's love and father's gift we came,
A wind most terrible blew o'er earth's seas;
It waved a smouldering ash, and blazed up war;
The smoke and heat of that great Hell drew us,
And from our lives we came to live, to live.
From sluggish routine, sluggish wrong we came.
From heedless walks, from ageing rust we came
--we called it life.
'Twas not! We came to live.
Out of the profound, profound we'll come, out, up;
Out of the deep we'll come, not from the shallows.
H. H. V. CROSS,
London Rifle Brigade.
'A Young Soldier's De Profundis.’
At the gate of a ruined farm in our sector in Flanders is a little chapel to 'Our Lady of Deliverance.' It is seventy years old. The brickwork at one corner is broken down by shell-fire, but the ancient picture above the altar, and the altar also, are intact.
What was the idea of the ancient proprietor in building this chapel at his gate? for most of the wayside sanctuaries hereabout are dedicated to our Saviour. It was a large farm-house, evidently the property of some wealthy farmer. It must have survived the Franco-German War of 1870; but it has not survived this, for the huge grange is a mass of ruins. Perhaps the shrine is a recognition of deliverance during the first war. Although it stands amid ruin to-day, the chapel is prophetic of a deliverance which is in process of being worked out.
Near it there is a battery of field-guns, and in rear of it a battery of 'heavies'; in fact, all around there are guns, guns, and more guns!
They were hurling an avalanche of shells into the Hun lines when I passed on a Sunday afternoon to conduct a service at a post in the second line. What a horror of sound!
The Huns began to reply, and they sent nothing over but high explosives. 'Crump, crump, crump,' went the shells as they exploded, raising clouds of dust and smoke, but fortunately missing all our batteries. To be comparatively safe it was necessary for me to go by a way which avoided all the targets the German gunners were aiming at. As though despairing of getting our guns the Germans began to belabour our trenches with minenwerfers, and soon the crash of mortars began to mingle with the noise of our howitzers, field-guns, and machine-guns.
Thank God it did not last long. In ten minutes' intense bombardment in a large sector like this hundreds of projectiles are launched in the air. But we had the last word in this duel, and when it died down we were not done. A flight of our aeroplanes droned overhead. They were going over for the usual afternoon 'strafe.' There is some danger to pedestrians from fragments of anti-aeroplane shells, for the Germans ceaselessly bombard our 'planes, usually without any luck. They go right over the German lines, probably carrying bombs for some depot or ammunition dump. When they have passed, a different, a solitary aeroplane appears. The 'flight' was of battle-planes. This one is for spotting purposes, and a single battery begins to fire in its direction.
The intense bombardment therefore gives place to a deliberate slow firing of shell after shell in obedience to the observer above. They are trying to get some special object, and 'registering' their shots for future guidance.
At night-time this little sanctuary of Our Lady of Deliverance becomes the centre of a scene which might be taken from some drama of the underworld. Huge ammunition motor-lorries dash past with a reverberation which makes the ruined walls tremble. They are delivering stores of shell (largely made by the women of England) for the daily consumption of the guns. Our Lady of Deliverance has many disciples among both English and French women in these days; daughters of deliverance we might call them.
Then very often at night-time the gun positions are changed, and by immense efforts great howitzers are hauled into new pits. The Army Service Corps must deliver its goods also by the light of the moon, and from the front glide past the motor-ambulances with wounded and sick. They are protected by a mesh of expanded steel, for they go right into the zone of fire.
In this way deliverance is worked out for unhappy Flanders. Amid thunderous roar of cannon, the rising and falling of star-shells, rockets, and flares, of all colours and meanings, and the ceaseless rattle of machine-guns, Our Lady of Deliverance is thrusting forth the flail of retribution and the banner of freedom.
It is no sacrilege to ascribe our slow and sure pressure on the enemy to higher and divine powers, even if we acknowledge, for our sins, that the backward sweep of the awful flail smites us also. This would be the last thought to the inhabitants of these war-stricken areas. To begin with, they are a deeply religious people, and their religion gives them hope and faith for the future. The Germans have destroyed their church but not their faith. They have removed the altar from the ruins of their once beautiful church to a neighbouring farm-house, and there they pray to Notre Dame de Délivrance.
The same spirit is seen in the neighbouring towns and villages. In such churches as are left standing you usually see the Union Jack and the Tricolour at each side of the chancel, and always the statue of St. Jeanne D'Arc is prominent, decorated, sometimes illuminated, and ever the object of many devotions. It is this spirit which possesses the women of France. Yet religion here to-day manifests itself in masculine types, and even the Maid of Orleans is portrayed in the garb of a soldier and with a drawn sword.
It is the effigy of Christ which is usually seen in wayside sanctuaries, and they are not usually dedicated to Notre Dame. This is natural enough in such a virile country as Northern France. The women, however, are doing their share in working out the deliverance. Near this very sanctuary you may see women and girls on the top of the haystacks building them up. A soldier on leave is usually seen tossing the stooks up, and boys drive the big Flemish horses in the lumbering old fashioned wains, but all the rest is the work of the women, even to harrowing the fields. The harvest is being got in right up to the guns, and the soldiers are not allowed to harm crops or traverse fields. The heavy traffic on roads by guns and army transport has necessitated a good deal of reconstruction. The boys and the old men are doing it. How the women can stay on and attend to the little shops in the villages at the front is a mystery to us, for these shops and houses are being steadily demolished by gunfire.
During one of our heavy bombardments recently I went into a little shop to make a small purchase. The building alongside had been shelled the previous week and had to be abandoned. The girl behind the counter was obviously nervous, and she said to me in broken English, 'Too much bombardment I do not like.' 'Tout Anglais,' I replied. Immediately she brightened up wonderfully. 'Très bon pour les Allemands,' she said, and went about her work singing.
A curious note amid this quaint Flemish environment of red brick and tiles, interspersed with trees and grass of a greenness unknown to Australia, is produced by the London motor-buses. They rush past with a roar, filled with Tommies singing, 'Keep the home-fires burning.'
From one end of the line to the other every man has his job. There are snipers, machine-gunners, trench-mortar men, bombers, signallers, pigeon-men. This last suggests the pigeon service. Men who know pigeons are chosen for this work, and they like it. In the stress and strain of battle 'wireless' and 'wire' may break down, so pigeons are trained by a daily service of duplicate messages. They have their regular flights, and there is a constant service of cages being brought up to the lines by motor-bike, and flights of pigeons returning to their lots at stated times. We see the German birds flying back too, so that man, beast, and bird have all been drawn into this great war. They get very wise too, and the older pigeons fly low along the hedges and by the avenues of poplar-trees to avoid gunfire. The pigeon-man follows the commander into battle as well as the telephonist.
But most useful and enthusiastic of all are the observers. 'O. Pip' observers' post is a place the enemy is always seeking to discover and 'knock out.' But they are cleverly hidden. The other day, however, one of our men fell by his enthusiasm. He was directing gunfire on an enemy battery, and by and by he got it. When the Hun gun position was hit he forgot for a moment how precarious a foothold he had in his eyrie in the spreading branches of a tree. 'We've got it!' he cried, standing up and waving his hands. He fell out of his perch and broke his leg. He is now rejoicing in a hospital. We must not forget the wonderful work of the miners. They drive tunnels and construct weird 'bomb-proofs' and other works, thus contributing their share to the coming deliverance in which everybody at the Front firmly believes.
Yes, that little chapel is a parable and a prophecy. Itself intact amid the ruins, it reminds us that although we ourselves are imperfect instruments, our cause is good, and the day is surely coming when these farm-houses and churches will be rebuilt in this beautiful countryside and prosperity and peace will rule. Every gun-shot expresses our faith and what we suffer in the price we pay for freedom and security which shall be ours and for many long years our children's.
In the quiet days they brought their offering of flowers to this shrine. To-day we bring our howitzers drawn by huge traction engines, our field-guns, our mortars, our machine-guns, our rifles, and these are our offerings.
More: from distant lands many thousands of miles across the ocean men have come. Nay, they have been sent. They have been given up by their women, for they are husbands, fathers, sons, and brothers. These men, greater than they know themselves to be, are the living offerings at this shrine, given to the cause of Notre Dame de Délivrance.