XXXIX
France April 22, 1918
You would hardly believe our peaceful state of mind unless you could drop in on us for an hour. You, in America, are evidently very worked up about us, and picture us as in desperate conditions. Don't worry, we've got our tails up and are happy as sand-boys. There's nothing of the grimly set faces about our attitude such as you imagine. We're too confident to be grim; war is actually, from our point of view, a gigantic lark. It must sound silly to you, I know, but I love to hear the screaming of the shells in the darkness and the baying of the guns. It's like a pack of wolves being chased through the night by bloodhounds.
I hadn't been back two days before they got the rumour at the wagon-lines that I was wounded—a little previous, I thought it. I call that wishing a blighty on me.
I've just come back from a trip across one of our old battlefields. We're in the Hun support-trenches, behind us is his Front line, then No Man's Land with its craters and graves, and behind that the Front line from which we jumped off. You can trace everything plainly and follow the entire attack by the broken wire and blown-in dug-outs. We're still filled with amused contempt for the Hun on our part of the Front.
We were discussing chaplains the other day—the way some of them have failed us in this war. One of the officers told a story of Grannie M., one of our First Division majors. A chaplain, who never went farther than the wagon-lines, was always saying how much he'd like to see the Front. Grannie called his bluff and took him for a trip into one of the warmest spots. The chaplain kept dodging and crouching every time a shell fell within a hundred yards. Each time Grannie, standing quietly silent, waited for him to get up and renew the journey. At last the chaplain flopped into a shell-hole and refused to come out. Grannie, who is a big man and well over six foot, grinned down at him despisingly. “Priest,” he said, “if I thought I had half the pull with Christ that you say you have, not all the shells in France would make me lie as flat as that.” Later another chaplain came to that brigade. No one would give him house-room. He went off and slept where he could; he never came near the officers, but he haunted the men at the forward guns. When the brigade moved out to another sector, he procured an old skate of a horse and trailed along at the rear of the line of march like a hungry dog. The new Front proved to be a warm one; there were many casualties, but the chaplain was always on his job, especially when the shells were falling. From somewhere he got the money to start a canteen for the men, which he ran himself. When no one else had cigarettes, he could supply them. At last even the officers had to come to him. He finished up by being the most popular chaplain the brigade had ever had, honoured by everyone from the colonel down. There are your two types of army chaplains: the one who plays the game, the other who issues season tickets to heaven, but is afraid of travelling on them himself.