CROIX-MARE
March 18th, 1918
I buried a soldier of the 117th Signal Battalion in Croix-Mare today with unusual honors. Private Wilkerson had been killed in action and as he was a Catholic Major Garrett had asked me to perform the ceremony. The French were most kind in participating, but that is no new thing. Colonel Dussauge always has his Chasseurs take part with us in funerals, though it is a distraction to me to see them trying to accommodate their short choppy gait (“like soldiers in the Movies” according to Bandsman McGregor) to the air of a Dead March. I said to the Colonel: “There is one thing your men can’t do.” “What is that?” “Walk to a funeral march.” “Thank you for the compliment, Monsieur l’Aumonier.” The Curé, too, always came to our funerals. And we had a fine grizzled old Oblate Division Chaplain who has been in all the French wars from Madagascar to Tonquin. The Government tried to put him out of France when the law against Religious was passed, but he refused to go, saying he would live his life in France if he had to live it in jail. I met a number of these religious in the army, most of them returned from exile to offer their lives in defense of their country. If the French Government puts them out after the war is over they will deserve the scorn and enmity of mankind as a rotten set of ingrates.
At the grave we found we had other spectators. I saw General Menoher and General Lenihan with a short spare-built civilian whom I took for a reporter. He had a French gas mask with a long tape, which hung down between his legs like a Highlander’s sporran. There were Moving Picture cameras too, which seemed to spell a Presence. I whispered to the old Curé that his picture would be put on the screen in every town in America, at which he was, I could see, somewhat shocked and altogether pleased. After the ceremony a number of the Signal Battalion took advantage of the opportunity to go to confession; and I was standing by the side of a truck performing my pious duties when General Lenihan approached with the slim reporter. They did not intrude, so I missed my chance of making the acquaintance of the energetic Newton W. Baker, Secretary of War of the United States.