The Greater Love Part 7

I posted the letter, as he requested, enclosing it all, as it was blood-stained, in another envelope. I have forgiven, as he would have me do, the inconsiderate action of the girl who brought such sorrow to the supreme hour of his sacrifice. Some day, when the wounds of cruel war are healed, I may forget. And yet, reviewing it all in the light of the supernatural and the greater reward awaiting him beyond the stars, may we not believe that an all-wise, ever-merciful Father permitted this crowning sorrow of his young life that it might be but opportunity, humbly and prayerfully endured, of a soul-cleansing nature, and add l.u.s.ter to his reward of the Greater Love through eternal years!

CHAPTER VIII

THIACOURT--AERIAL DARING

"Where are you saying Ma.s.s next Sunday Chaplain?"

"In Thiacourt," I replied.

Just the shadow of a doubt flitted across the handsome face of Colonel c.u.mmings, who nevertheless promptly responded, "All right, I'll be there."

That Ma.s.s _could_ safely be said in such a veritable inferno as Thiacourt November 1st offered very reasonable room for doubt. Located but a single kilometer from the front line trench, its ruins were sh.e.l.led by day, and air bombed by night, with daring Fokers and Taubes finding rare sport in spraying its main street with machine gun fire.

The gallant boys of the 55th Infantry, nine hundred of whom came from Chicago, were then bravely holding that death-swept point; and I was determined to bring them the consolation and strength of Religion in their supreme need.

Dawn was breaking that Sunday morning when I rode through Bouillonville.

Leading north from this village the road leaves the shelter of a friendly hill and plunges boldly across the open plain. Our Batteries were firing constantly from every available angle of the hills, and the enemy's spirited reply made very heavy the din of gun fire. In all directions, on roadside, field and hill, geysers were rising, and yawning yellow craters forming from the impact of bursting sh.e.l.ls.

It was seldom I urged "Jip" out of a canter. This morning, however, things were different. The road through the open plain lay full in view and range of eagle-eyed enemy snipers.

Across the pommel of the saddle, in front, was fastened a bag of oats; and behind, my Ma.s.s kit. Tightly I strapped on my steel helmet, with gas mask tied at "alert."

Leaving the shelter of the hill I leaned forward and spoke to "Jip."

"Allez! Allez! Mon pet.i.t cheval!" Right bravely he responded. With ears back, and raven mane and tail streaming to the breeze, he fairly hurled himself forward across the death-swept plain. His speed and courage stood between me and eternity.

It is not easy for even the best sniper to hit such a fast moving horse.

At a point two hundred yards to the right of us burst a huge sh.e.l.l. To just the slightest degree "Jip" trembled, but with never a break of his even flying stride. "Thank G.o.d!" was my heartfelt prayer as we reached the ruined mill at Thiacourt.

Quickly dismounting I led "Jip" deep into the rear of a building whose front was shot away.

O how I hugged and patted that brave little horse; and from the manner he pawed the ground and rubbed his nose against my side I felt he fairly thrilled with the pride of his race with death. For your sake, my brave little "Jip," I will never be unkind to a horse as long as I live.

Rewarding him with an extra ration of oats, and leaving him secure from gas, I proceeded forward on foot.

Shrapnel was bursting all about, and its sharp, sizzling echo, against walls still standing, made maddening din.

Dodging from building to building up the deserted front street I reached a point opposite the Hotel de Ville in time to see the front of a building one hundred yards to the left blown completely out by a bursting sh.e.l.l. The church was but a heap of smoking ruins.

In the courtyard of a large building, that a few days before was headquarters of the German staff, I was welcomed by boys of the 55th Infantry. It was a platoon in command of Lieutenant Coughlan of Mobile, Alabama.

This gallant young man, nephew of Capt. Coughlan who sailed with Dewey into Manila Bay, was every inch a hero. Just the day before he had held a front sector against terrible odds when the platoon on his right had fallen back under heavy gas attack with its commander mortally wounded.

In this encounter Coughlan was badly ga.s.sed himself, and could not speak above a whisper. "I know the Latin, and can serve your Ma.s.s all right, Chaplain, if you can stand for my whispers."

An altar was improvised out of a richly carved sideboard standing in the courtyard. After a goodly number had gone to Confession, a crowd of some two hundred a.s.sembled for the Ma.s.s. At this moment Colonel c.u.mmings, true to his word that he would be on hand, strode into the yard.

The boys knelt around, wearing their steel helmets, and with masks at "alert." My vestments consisted simply of a stole worn over my ca.s.sock.

Helmet and mask lay easily within reach at one side. The firing, meanwhile, was terrific--high explosive sh.e.l.ls shrieking overhead and bursting on every side. Rifle and machine-gun bullets added their shrill tenor notes to the orchestral wail of gun fire.

I had prepared a sermon, but, amid such din, I, for a moment, questioned the possibility and even propriety of delivering it. I decided in the affirmative, and raised my voice in challenge to the wild clamor of death.

As I looked upon the battle-stained faces before me, I felt how pleasing it all must have been in the sight of Him who feared not Death of old, and who said on the hills of Galilee: "Greater love than this no man has, that he give up his life for his friends."

Ma.s.s over, the boys quickly disappeared into neighboring dugouts.

Colonel c.u.mmings was greatly pleased with it all, remarking, "As soon as you began Ma.s.s, Chaplain, the gun fire seemed to ease a bit, and a comparative zone of quiet prevailed where we were gathered."

"I shall know after this, Colonel," I laughingly replied, "what is bringing you to Ma.s.s--to get into a zone of quiet!" Permit me to add here, however that the good Colonel needed no urging to attend Ma.s.s. I never met a better Christian overseas nor a more gallant loyal comrade than Colonel c.u.mmings.

The remaining hours of that day were spent in ministering to the living and burying the dead. Along that battle swept front the Chaplain was always gladly welcomed and his divine Message reverently received. Death in its thousand ghastly forms, ever impending, ever threatening, impressed with serious religious thought the consciousness of even the most careless. In direct proportion to the coming and going of danger was the ebb and flow of the tide spiritual. "Haven't you noticed, Chaplain, an improvement in my language of late? I sure have been trying to cut out swearing." Often would some officer or enlisted man--of any or no church members.h.i.+p--so remark, and who had hitherto been p.r.o.ne to sins of the tongue.

On such occasions two thoughts would come to me--the reflection of Tertullian that "The soul of man is by nature religious;" and the admonition of Ecclesiastes 7:40, "Remember thy last end and thou shalt never sin." Far into that All Saints night I heard Confessions, and was edified with the large number who approached Holy Communion All Souls morning.

In burial work, we always made it a point, where it was at all possible, to bury the enemy dead as reverently as our own. We would gather their poor sh.e.l.l-torn bodies, often in advanced stages of decomposition, and place them in graves on sheltered hillsides, safe from gun fire, carefully a.s.sembling in Musette bags their belongings, which we would forward to the Prisoner of War Department. One day, while so a.s.sembling the scattered remains of four dead Germans, evidently killed by the same sh.e.l.l, one of our boys of the 34th Infantry, Sam Volkel by name, who before the war lived in my old parish at Harvey, pa.s.sed by. This good boy's parents had been born in Germany. When he saw the reverent care we were giving those four of the enemy dead, he came up to me and with tears streaming down his smoke and dust-covered face exclaimed, "Father, G.o.d bless you."

"De mortuis nil nisi bonum" is a principle of conduct dating back to Him who of old declared burial of the dead a corporal work of mercy. It is the mark, neither of the Christian individual nor nation, to disrespect a body nor desecrate its resting place. The fact that in life it was tenanted by the soul of an enemy is no justification for dishonoring it; for He who is Infinite Truth and Justice declares "Love thy enemy; do good to those who hate you, and bless those who persecute you." This, of course, is not the way of the world; but _is_ the way of Him whose standards of living must guide our lives, and whose will to reward or punish us shall prevail through Eternity.

We had now been many weeks at the extreme front on minimum ration of all things bearing on bodily comfort or mental relaxation. Water was but a word, a memory, cherished dream of him who wrote "The Old Oaken Bucket."

If we could but find enough of the chlorinated drug store kind to nourish our canteen, we were prepared to dispense with the common, or laundry serving, variety.

In the eternal fitness of things, there came now into being an Army inst.i.tution, officially known as the Delousing Station. It appears to have been named in memory of a certain small wingless insect. There was an appeal to it that at once caught the popular fancy of the soldiers, always itching for novelty, and it became the most frequented of watering places. It was a thoroughly democratic affair, officers and enlisted men freely approving and patronizing it, under the undenying impulse, no doubt, of a common human need. It little mattered that its location was usually the wreckage of some wind-swept barn; or that its furniture consisted of a barrel of water jauntily poised on the rafters; the spectacle of Buddie, bar of soap in hand, sporting and splas.h.i.+ng in the limpid stream of that miniature Niagara, offered wealth of theme for the inspired artist, poet, and writer of commercial advertising.

I greatly wonder that the hallowed memory of this loving inst.i.tution has so far escaped the popular fancy as to be left "unwept, unhonored and unsung." That it _was_ inspirational might be shown from the case of a boy of the 64th Infantry changing the words of the popular song, "They go wild, simply wild, over me," to "They _run_ wild, simply wild, over me."

Huts designed to offer any manner of mental relaxation, reading, music, and the like, were necessarily many miles to the rear. No sound but gun fire was ever to be heard. No matin bugle call of Reveille to rouse, nor plaintive note of Taps to "mend the ravelled sleeve of care." No regimental band to "soothe the savage breast," nor lead to the charge in the way it is described in books of history.

No lights to show from dugout or trench, not even on motor cars or cycles das.h.i.+ng along treacherous roads and trails. If mess and water carts could be kept in touch with advanced posts, the mail and welfare supply trucks could be dispensed with.

Days and weeks would pa.s.s without so much as sight of a letter, newspaper, book, or word from the rear of any kind. Such times were like living in the bottom of a well, glimpses of the sky overhead, but all around you, dark, foul, and deathly.

Amid such surroundings our chief pleasure and relaxation was often the sky. Reclining in the soft yielding mud we could watch the canvas of the heavens, stretched from horizon to horizon, in panoramic splendor.

Whether it was the hour of the "powerful king of day rejoicing in the east," the mid-day brooding calm, or when "Night folds her starry curtains round," the ever-changing, ever-beautiful pictures of cloudland lulled to rest our fancies sweet as music which

"Gentler on the spirit lies Than tired eyelids upon tired eyes."

How thrilled we were when cloudland became of a sudden peopled with armed men! When that azure blue became an ocean, with s.h.i.+ps of the air scudding in and out of cloudy coves, around billowy headlands, "zuming,"

spiraling, volplaning, maneuvering for position to hurl broadsides of death.

It was all, as it were, a tournament staged for our amus.e.m.e.nt. Herald of its beginning would be a splash of white against the blue above the German lines. Faintly, then with steadily increased volume in tone, would come to our ears the unmistakable high tenor engine trum of a Foker plane.

[Ill.u.s.tration: THE WOUNDED WERE CARRIED TO THE NEAREST SHELTER.]

All eyes would intently watch its approach. It was coming over to deal death or destruction of some sort, possibly to attack our anch.o.r.ed observing balloon, just to the rear.

Seconds as well as minutes count in such an adventure, and quicker than the eye can count them, puffy b.a.l.l.s of white appear above, below and all around on the on-rus.h.i.+ng Foker; they are the shrapnel bursts of our vigilant anti-aircraft guns that have now opened briskly from every hill and forest.