The following morning while at breakfast a letter from headquarters was given to me by the waiter. I opened it quickly: It read, “Capt. the Rev. R. M. Crochetiere was killed in action April 2nd, near Bailleulmont.” This place was just a little to the south of Arras. Not a year before he had sung the great open-air Mass at Witley Camp when the Catholic soldiers had been consecrated to the Sacred Heart. Just yesterday he had gone home to the Sacred Heart to receive the reward of his stewardship. I sat back from the breakfast table and wondered who would be next. Then I went down to the convent.
Almost every morning I went down to the convent, for there was a lovely garden there where I could walk up and down under the trees and read my Breviary. Often as I passed through the court before the main building, on my way to the garden, I paused before a beautiful statue of the Sacred Heart of Jesus. The base of the statue was surrounded by a wide circle of green lawn, bordering which was a fringe of forget-me-nots, planted very likely by the good Sisters as a symbol of their devotion to the Sacred Heart. Every morning the children whom the Sisters taught before they went away came to the convent and asked a young woman—a kind of lay-Sister who came daily to do some work about the building—when the Sisters were coming back. “Very soon, perhaps—tomorrow, perhaps.” And the little ones would stay through the morning and play till they were tired; then they would sit on the low benches and sing in their sweet childish voices the beautiful hymns that the Sisters had taught them.
The presence of the sky-blue, yellow-centered forget-me-nots always brought to my mind the love of the Sisters for the Sacred Heart; the sound of the children’s voices in the morning always brought to my mind the love of the children for the Sisters.
Just beyond the convent, on the other side of the Scarpe River, which here was only about six feet wide, was a group of Nissen huts that had up to a few weeks before been used as a Casualty Clearing Station, but at the beginning of the German advance the patients and staff had been removed. Now it was being used by a Field Ambulance for dressing wounds or some emergency operation of casualties from the Arras front. Father Whiteside, an English chaplain, was on duty here, though usually he called me when any of my Canadian lads came in. Across the road from the Field Ambulance was a large military cemetery where regiments of weary soldiers rested softly, each under the shadow of a little white cross.
It was the following Sunday afternoon that I had my first burials in this cemetery. At two o’clock a procession of soldiers, mostly kilted laddies from the Thirteenth, came slowly up the long aisle of the cemetery: in the lead, following the pipe band that played the “Flowers of the Forest,” walked nine groups of six men, each carrying shoulder high, one of their late comrades who had answered bravely the last call. One was an officer, the young knight who had passed his vigil in New Plymouth cave. While leading his men out of the Ronville caves he had been mortally wounded, passing away a few hours afterwards. Of the dead, only Captain Waud and the young soldier from the Thirteenth whom I had anointed in the cave, were Catholics.
And often as I passed through the court before the main building of the convent and paused to look at the sweet forget-me-nots fringing the lawn around the base of the statue of the Sacred Heart, I recalled the two who, among others, had remembered their Creator, and I felt now they were not forgotten: “Turn to Me and I will turn to thee,” had said the Lord.
Chapter LX
The Sheehans
We waited at Agnez-lez-Duisans a few days longer, but “old Fritz” did not strike on the Arras front, though all the world knows that he continued to gain elsewhere. Two or three times during the week, Father Sheehan went up to Arras with a quantity of provisions to two Poor Clare Sisters who lived on in the basement of their ruined convent in order to pay court to their King.
In the evening we were kept busy hearing confessions and giving Holy Communion to soldiers in the parish church. One evening when we had heard the confessions of all the men present, I stepped into the sacristy to say a word to Father Sheehan, who was just going out to give Holy Communion.
“Ah, Father!” he said in his gentle, friendly manner, “I am glad you came in. Will you please go down there to Pat and tell him not to go to Communion now. You see, Father, he was there this morning, and he’s such a pious lad that when he sees the others going to the rails, he might forget that he was there this morning and go up again.”