I opened the letter and began to read it, and as I did I felt that I was turning sick. The letter contained a request that I please notify Private McKee that his mother had departed this life.
After lunch I left on foot for Anzin, for I had learned that the Fifteenth Battalion was quartered there. It was a distance of only three miles, yet it was one of the hardest journeys I ever made in France. Life at the front was very hard for these lads, but it was always brightened by the hope of finally seeing the dear ones at home. It had not been very long before, that Private McKee had spoken to me of his mother. One of the loveliest things in this world is the love of a good man for his mother. Every step was bringing me nearer the lad, and I so dreaded the thought of telling him! My head began to pain, and I went back in memory to the first time I was called on to break sorrowful news. I had been a priest just a little over a year when one night the telephone bell rang, and a trembling voice told me one of my men had been killed by a falling log. There were fifteen men in the small railway station where the voice was coming from; they were only about two hundred yards from the house where lived the widow of the man that was killed, and I was six miles away. Yet not one would break the terrible news. I was implored to come.
I shall never forget that night. A full moon was throwing its light over all the white land, darkened here and there by a clump of green, white-patched trees, but the thought of what I had to do had numbed me to all sense of beauty. And as I drove along even the horse seemed to feel what terrible work had to be done, for once he actually stopped in the road and I had difficulty in starting him; yet I could see no reason for his having stopped.
As I walked along, dreading all the time what was before me, I noticed that the soldiers who were quartered along the road wore the purple patch of the Fifth Division. They were artillerymen. Then a sign on a door of a shell-torn house told me that an R. C. chaplain dwelt within. I inferred that it was Father McPherson, the Fifth Divisional Artillery chaplain, one of the holiest priests in France; often I had seen him kneeling down in a dugout or some poor billet reading his Breviary.
I knocked on the door and was shown up to Father McPherson’s room, and the sight of his pleasant kindly face did me good. I told him of the task I had to perform. He spoke sympathetically and invited me to call in on my return and have tea with him.
After leaving Father McPherson, the thought of what I had to do did not weigh so heavily. Perhaps it was that the prayers of the good priest I had just left followed me.
They told me at the Fifteenth Battalion orderly room that Private McKee was quarantined,—the “flu” was now becoming quite prevalent among the men. I found him sitting in a bell tent, one of a group pitched in a large garden of a chateau. I called him, and when he came we walked up and down a long garden path under the trees while I broke as gently as I could the terrible news I had for him.
He took it well—took it bravely and quietly like the good soldier he was, with great submission to the holy will of God, like the good Catholic his dear mother had brought him up to be. I talked with him a little while, and when I left I asked Our Lady of the Seven Dolors to stay with the lad and to comfort him.
Chapter LXXV
No Man’s Land
The following day we took over the line just before Monchy. The quartermaster, transport officer and I had a nice little mess at Berneville, near Arras. I was billeted with the curé of Berneville and he proved a friendly old man. His old sister was housekeeper for him. She was very kind, and George received many cups of hot coffee.