For a long time I sat there thinking of the letter I held in my hand, and then of other letters that had come to me from time to time. And I thought how many women there must be over the world bearing great sorrows, but the eyes of the world were not focused on these! They were on the battalions that had marched away to the war while flags fluttered and bands played and people cheered. They watched the papers for accounts of great deeds of arms. But whenever I read such letters my thoughts would go back to the roads over which the soldiers had marched so bravely away, and I would see figures leaning over gates, white handkerchiefs held to eyes that had strained down the white dusty road over which their soldier sons or husbands had marched away. They would go back into silent rooms where so many little things would remind them of their men. Then, as the days would pass, to many would come words to chill the heart and make homes desolate: “Killed in Action.” Whenever I wrote to these poor mothers or wives, I would see a great lonely hill, on which stood a cross whereon was nailed a scourged, thorn-crowned Figure whose eyes rested with great pity on one who stood below—the Mater Dolorosa. It was on her feast, the Feast of the Seven Dolors, that the bishop had decided I should go to the war, and perhaps it was she who helped me to write the letters of sympathy that brought comfort to so many sorrowful hearts. With the ten-dollar bill I bought comforts for the men.
Chapter LXXIV
No Man’s Land Again
I was billeted in a little hut with the billeting officer. It was a very tiny hut, with two berths in it, one above the other. As I was on leave when the battalion came to Ecoivres, no provision had been made for me, so I was obliged to share the billeting officer’s hut which he so kindly offered. He was a genial companion, but he used to sit up very late at night puzzling over a chess-board. He was playing a game of chess with a partner who was actually residing in England, and every night, after great puzzling over the board, he was obliged to write the result of his efforts to his partner in England. One evening—I suppose it was his partner’s turn to play and it was for this reason that his chess-board was idle—he took his Bible from his table and said, naively: “Now, Padre, I won’t try to change your views, and you won’t try to change mine, but just take your Bible, and I will read certain passages from mine, and you will read the same passages from yours.”
I could not help smiling, as I reached for my Bible, at the thought of the billeting officer not wishing to change my views, for these words had just come to my mind: “Upon this rock I will build My Church.”
I can’t recall the texts he picked out and asked me to read from my Bible, but I remember that each one seemed contrary to the teachings of the Catholic Church on the subject treated. As every one familiar with the Douai-Rheims version of the Bible knows, there are little notes on texts that might be disputed, giving the true meaning and also reference to other texts which would prove the teaching. Glancing at the footnote, I would give the true interpretation and then refer the amateur exegete to the other texts. In a little while he closed his Bible. “Why, Padre,” he exclaimed, “you know the whole Bible by heart!”
“Well,” I said modestly, as I suppressed a desire to smile, “I don’t think I know it by heart, but you know it is my business to teach the truths that are in it,”—but I did not mention the foot-notes!
The following morning the billeting officer came hurriedly into the room. “Padre,” he said, “we are leaving here tomorrow night for the trenches. We’re taking over the line in front of Monchy.”
For just a second or two a peculiar numbness seemed to spread through every nerve in my body: it was nothing new, however, for years before, when a boy at the public school, after the teacher had opened the drawer in her desk and removed a black, snakelike piece of leather, and had said quietly: “Bennie Murdoch, come up here,” this strange numbness had come over me together with a slight contraction of the muscles of the throat.
But it quickly passed, and after I had swallowed once or twice to make sure of my throat, I said the obvious thing: “Well, that means another move!”
Going into the trenches was not the only hard piece of work I had to do. A very difficult task was before me, though I did not know it till I went up to the mess for lunch. Three or four letters were lying near my plate. One envelope was much larger than the others and bore in the upper left-hand corner the words “Assembly Chamber, State of New York, Albany” and beneath, was the address of Joseph V. McKee, 890 East 176th St., New York City, the brother of one of my “Canadians” who was an American by birth, and had lived all his life in the United States. There were many such, in the Third Brigade—Private McKee was in the Fifteenth Battalion. I knew him well and he was one of my very best Catholics.