“That is the General of the district with the Commandant,” whispers Maier in my ear.
The service is brief and simple. The Lutheran pastor, in black cap and white bands, delivers a short address, reads a few passages from the Scriptures, and engages in prayer. Then the bearers take up their bitter burden and pass down the aisle. One green wreath lies on top of the coffin; it falls off, and I stoop down and replace it. As we reach the door Maier is once more at my ear. “That wreath is from the Grand Duchess of Baden!”
As we pass down the steps the band is playing somewhere in front, softly and sorrowfully, then there is a few minutes’ silence while the procession passes into the avenue leading to the cemetery. Here and there are a few desolate-looking civilians. Now comes the sound of drums; something between a distant thunder-roll and the heavy dropping of rain in a thunder shower. Chopin’s “Marche Funèbre.” I have never heard it played in a more fitting environment. The dark-grey body of German soldiery winds among the trees, which throw up gaunt, leafless branches agonizingly against a dull grey sky.
How illogical is war! I have seen a hundred men—as many as are here assembled for the burial of one—huddled into what was practically one common grave! Surely we are not come forth entirely to bury the dead with ceremony; but to persuade ourselves, to prove as convincingly as may be, that the ancient courtesies, the old kindlinesses, are not entirely dead and buried!
As the music passes into the lyric movement of the march I see wistfulness in the faces of some of the veteran warriors; regretfulness in the very stoop of their shoulders. There is something moving at all times even in the formal and ceremonial grief of man; it is accentuated when he is clothed in the full panoply of war.
A short service over the grave, then the firing-party throw their three volleys into the air, as if making noisy question as to the scheme of things at the unanswering heavens. The brasses seem to make mournful reply that no answer has indeed been vouchsafed. Then, the body being lowered into the grave, each of us casts upon it three shovelfuls of earth, making the sign of the Cross or saluting the military dead according to our creed and conception. And so we leave the poor dust, till it be disturbed by music more insistent and clamorous than the clarions of men!
THE CATHOLIC PRIEST.
A French soldier who has died in hospital is also being interred, and, though it is bitterly cold, we all wait until the cortège has arrived, and the burial service—in this case performed by the Catholic priest—has been carried out. As we return through the avenue we overtake the sad, solitary figure of a widow in sombre black leading a boy of six or seven by the hand. Both figures are suggestive of refinement, both faces are pale, and that of the mother is grief-stricken. As we pass I am so near that I almost brush them. I turn and look back at the boy, whose face is full of beauty. The insistent gaze of an enemy officer seems to frighten him, and he shrinks closer to his mother’s side.