A Padre in France

by George A. Birmingham

I happened one day to fall into conversation with a private, a young man in very worn and even tattered clothes. He had been “up against it” somewhere on the Somme front, and had not yet been served out with fresh kit. The mud of the ground over which he had been fighting was thickly caked on most parts of his clothing, and he was endeavouring to scrape it off with the blade of a penknife. He smiled at me in a particularly friendly way when I greeted him, and we dropped into a conversation which lasted for quite a long time. He showed me, rather shyly, a pocket edition of Herodotus which he had carried about in his pocket and had read at intervals during the time he was fighting on the Somme.

A private who quotes Latin in the waggon of a troop train. A battered soldier who reads Greek for his own pleasure in the trenches, is more surprising still. The Baron Bradwardwine took Livy into battle with him. But there must be ten men who can read Livy for every one who can tackle Herodotus without a dictionary.

A piano is an essential part of the equipment of a recreation hut in France. The soldier loves to make music, and it is surprising how many soldiers can make music of a sort. Pity is wasted on inanimate things. Otherwise one’s heart’s sympathy would go out to those pianos. It would be a dreadful thing for an instrument of feeling to have “Irish Eyes,” “The Only Girl in the World,” and “Home Fires,” played on it every day and all day long. I am not, I am often thankful for it, acutely musical. But there have been times in Y.M.C.A. huts when I felt I should shriek if I heard the tune of “Home Fires” again.

I was playing chess one afternoon with a man who was beating me. I became so much absorbed in the game that I actually ceased to hear the piano. Then, after a while I heard it again, played in quite an unusual manner. The player had got beyond “Irish Eyes” and the rest of those tunes. He was playing, with the tenderest feeling, one of Chopin’s Nocturnes. He asked me afterwards if I could by any means borrow for him a volume of Beethoven, one which contained the “Waldstein” if possible. He confessed that he could not play the “Waldstein” without the score. He was an elderly man, elderly compared to most of those round him. He was in the R.E., a sapper. There must be scores of musicians of taste and culture in the army. I wonder if there was another employed in laying out roads behind the Somme front.

I gained a reputation, wholly undeserved, as a chess player while I was in that camp, and I was generally able to put up some sort of fight against my opponents even if they beat me in the end.

But I was utterly defeated by one man, a Russian. He could speak no English and very little French. He belonged to a Canadian regiment, but how he got into it or managed to live with his comrades I do not know. He and I communicated with each other only by moving the pieces on the chess board. I suppose he was a member of the Russian Church, but on Sundays he attended the services which I conducted. He used to sit as near me as he could and I always found his places for him. He could not read English any more than he could speak it, so the Prayer Book cannot have been much use to him. But there was no priest of his own church anywhere within reach, and he was evidently a religious man. I suppose he found the Church of England service better than none at all.

There was always one difficulty about the Church of England services in that camp. We had to trust to chance for a pianist who could play chants, responses, and hymns, and for a choir who could sing them. The choir difficulty was not serious. It was nearly always possible to get twenty volunteers who had sung in church choirs at home. But a pianist who was familiar with church music was a rare person to find. When found he had a way, very annoying to me, of getting well quickly and going back to his regiment.

I was let down rather badly once or twice by men who were anxious to play for the service, but turned out to be capable of no more than three or four hymns, played by ear, sometimes in impossible keys. I became cautious and used to question volunteers carefully beforehand. One man who offered himself seemed particularly diffident and doubtful about his ability to play what I wanted. I asked him at last whether he had ever played any instrument, organ or harmonium, at a Church of England service.

“Oh yes, sir, often,” he said. “Before the war I was assistant organist at ——.”

He named a great English cathedral, one justly famous for its music. The next Sunday and for several Sundays afterwards our music was a joy. My friend was one of those rare people who play in such a way that every one present feels compelled to sing.