The White Comrade, and Other Poems

by Katherine Hale

Then France, and sudden springtime bourgeoning.
Oh, bourgeoning indeed with ardent hopes!
I cannot tell you what that change was like:
I wish that words were colours, or were notes,
Then I would go past red to violet tones
To give you back that vibrancy of air,
That selfless, sacrificing, vital mood,
That almost jocund feeling of rebound
Towards the fight for liberty and right
That animated France those first spring days.
The year was young, and in the lovely land
New life was waking ardent, eager-eyed.
The very air called welcome, and we left
Homesickness far behind. We summoned mirth
And whistled down those roads all poplar lined.
We laughed at mud that April winds would dry,
And in that grey square Market Place at ...
Where we marched past the staff and gave salute
There was baptized a new affinity,
Young Canada with France and England blent.
I tell you hearts beat faster, hopes rode high,
The air was lighter, keener, there was joy,
Great joy in our swift entrance to the fight
That closed about us fast those April days.
I think that never in its hottest hour
Was love so lovely or life so supreme
As in the sudden days of leaf and bud,
Of bird song, and that quickening of the heart
That heralds Great Adventure to the soul.
There was the night we marched on Neuve Chapelle:
Thousands of shadows in a shadow host.
Beyond lay German legions, and that zone
Invisible, illusive, moving on
That men have called "The Front."
Fancy your heart
Moving with other shadows all that night,
Knowing yourself not flesh at all, but one—
One pulse-beat in the world's great heart of flame.
Perhaps a whistling youth on days of sun,
One among shadows on this night of nights,
Moving with other shadows all night long.
One leaving little loves far, far behind,
One pressing on with thousands of his kind
To answer that great question life had asked
Each one upon his hilltop back at home.

We three marched near together through old France,
Together trenched those days at Neuve Chapelle,
And saw the heavens part and fires descend,
And felt the roar of such a cannonade
As all the world of battles had not known.
The French lay close beside us, and near them
The lithe, brown men from India—heroes they.
We felt like children just discarding toys
In face of those whose souls had long known war,
Whose spirits flashed like rapiers in the face
Of the Great Danger. They were men indeed
Whom it was good to look upon and know,
And in those nights they learned of us to say,
When German flares lit up the evening skies,
"Behold the Northern Lights!" St. Julien came,
And that wild night in which old Edward fell.
Those hours are hard to speak about at all.
They went by like a flash in which we moved
As one man altogether, and the hours
Flared up to heaven like a burning torch.

Nigel and I, one night just after Ypres,
Were struggling with our ancient college-French
Talking, or stumbling into talk, with one
Called René Paule, from an adjacent trench,
Who had been wounded in an early fight.
And he with eloquence and poetry
Like all his vivid race, made haste to tell
Of a strange rumor we had heard before,
How in the depths of plain unvarnished hell
Quivering with anguish so he could not move
And waiting for the stretcher-bearers' call,
He suddenly felt healing, cool and sweet,
As you might feel a fan on a hot day
Swayed by an unseen hand. And softly then
Closing his eyes on blessed, stealing sleep
He felt a touch, and looking up beheld
The kindest, sweetest eyes in all the world.
It was a Comrade in the khaki brown,
His face was tired, but the eyes were keen
And tender as a dewy flower at dawn.
And René, feeling once again the pain,
Grasped the hand tight, and looked into the eyes
For succor, and they held him there, serene,
And slowly, slowly conquered the strong pain.
And René saw the khaki melt away
Until the Comrade seemed all wrapt in white
As though sheer light had woven a robe for him,
And his strong eyes gleamed like an azure flame,
And he held René through the bitter night,
Until the stretcher-bearers came at dawn.
"So the White Comrade often comes, my friends,"
He said to us, and smiling, mused awhile.
"These fields are not so difficult in death;
Whether we live or die it all seems one.
He has come back to us because we die
As He did, long ago, for love of man."

Often we talked of Edward, and he seemed
To march beside us down the bright French roads.
We moved into the firing line once more.
So close the German lines, there only lay
An orchard, in the loveliness of May,
Between us and the armies of the Huns.

Sometimes I think that Festubert will hold
Rank equal with St. Julien, for those
Who lived through its abandonment of fire.
It was the Gunners' day. We had to shell
Those trenches that were fortresses indeed,
And pouring hell's own native thunder out.
The orchard lay between us, and it seemed
We simply had to take that place by storm.
They tried to ditch us with their hedge of wire;
We plunged and made for gaps, and all the while
They rained on us artillery fire, until
Ear drums were stilled and nerves quite ceased to work;
Machine gun, shrapnel, rifle-fire as one
Kept up the deadly dance of death. And we
Dashed at them, through that dance, till hand to hand
We cleared our orchard, or they say we did.
It was the Gunners' Day. I know that much.
Some of the fun I missed, for at the height,
Just when is lost completely every thought
Of one's own entity, or reason why
It is not, after all, good sport to die
In such a whirlwind of emotion,—then,
Out of a little puff of air it came,
The one shot meant for me.
I fell inert
And sank into unconsciousness, till one
Dragging me off made torture of my wound,
Then left me under some small spreading shrubs.
Surely one needed shelter from the sun
And hottest air that ever poured on pain.
I longed for water, looked for human aid,
But no one came. Only the roar of guns
And a far distant sound that meant the play
Of men in action, that and drilling pain
Met in a hideous duet of war.
I called to Nigel with my aching mind
And knew it was in vain. Again I called
To youth, and to some Force in other worlds
That might put me to death or ease my pain.
A thousand swords were running through my brain,
The blood thumped like an engine in my head.
If I should faint the Comrade White might come!

Only in dreams, in dying dreams of pain
He comes, I thought. Or else it is quite vain
To trust such fairy tales as René told.
Oh, for a glass of water! It was noon
And o'er the grassy plain the sleepy hum
Of insects, moving in a drowsy swoon,
Sang to me through my pain, as if they were
A near vibration of the guns of war.

"War, war, O hot and hideous and hard,
The ways you lead, the deaths you make one die!
I have died fifty times this noon!" So ran
The anguished brain within me, on and on,
All the long way of quivering mortal woe.
The world was gone. I, swooning, felt it go,
Was at the point of nothingness, when there,
Moving across the grass on hands and knees,
I saw a brown-clad figure crawling slow
As if he were a part of the hot plain,
And wondered if I'd last until he came.

Never that troop of angels in the air
At Mons showed brighter wings or lovelier light
Than the worn khaki of that Comrade dear.
I felt him bind my wounds with tender touch,
And at his touch the ghosts of pain escaped.
I saw him smile above me, and I swooned
For joy of waking up not all alone.
I begged "Stay with me till they come!" and then
Looked up into his face for the first time
And saw it was old Edward who had died
At Julien. We left him lying there
White in the moonlight as we all rushed on.
We buried him, Edward the loved and brave,
And now I stared through pain and saw his face.
I saw his eyes, shining and lit with love:
The old eyes, staunch and loyal as they were
All through our youth together, and these days
Of the great camaraderie of war.

"Edward," I murmured, and he only smiled
And waved across the grass right at the guns
Whose thunder sounded fainter in my ears.
"How did you come?" I asked him, as I held
Tight to his hand, that big brown hand of his.
Oh, it was good to die and have him back!
For I had died. That was quite clear to me.
He only said, "The pain will go, old chap!"
Just the same voice, with the accustomed burr
Of his Scotch father sounding through its tones.
And we sat silent in the burning noon.

Then in the distance two small figures moved,
A third behind them, and I knew the boys
Bearing the stretchers were quite close at hand,
And Edward waved them so they came on fast.
To have him leave me! That were a new death
And something told me that he could not stay.