REHERREY
April 28th, 1918
Went over Saturday to St. Pol where Companies L and M are in support positions and passed the night with Merle-Smith and his Lieutenants, Carroll, Baker, Givens and Knowles. The village church is pretty badly wrecked, parts of the walls and most of the roof being tumbled down in crumbled ruins. One shell went through just in front of the altar, but the roof above the altar is fairly well intact. I had doubts as to whether I could use it for services, but Cornelius Fitzpatrick and Frank Eustace offered to have it cleaned up and put in shape for me by next morning. When I arrived to say Mass I was delighted at the transformation they had effected. The half ruined reredos of the altar was a mass of bloom with big branches of blossoms which they had cut from the fruit trees in the garden. It is one of the pictures of the war that I shall long carry in my mind.
One of the men told me that Joyce Kilmer had been out here on his duties as Sergeant of the Intelligence Section to map out the ground with a view to its defence if attacked. As his party was leaving the ruined walls he said, “I never like to leave a church without saying a prayer,” and they all knelt down among the broken fragments under the empty vault and said a silent prayer—a beautiful thought of a true poet and man of God.