One wet night on the Somme I got lost in "Happy Valley" and could not find my regiment. Seeing a light in a tent, I made for it. It was a pioneers' tent, but they invited me to come in out of the storm and stay the night. They were at supper and had only a small supply of bully-beef, biscuits and strong tea; but they insisted on me sharing what they had. I was dripping with rain, and they gave me one of their blankets. One of them gave me a box to sleep on, while he shared his chum's. Some lost privates came in later wet to the skin, and the pioneers gave them all the eatables left over from supper, and shared out their blankets and clothes. It was pure Christianity--whatever creeds they may think they believe. And it is the glamour of the Front. England feels cold and dull after it. Kindness and comradeship pervade the air in France. You feel that everyone is a friend and brother. It will be pretty hard for chaplains to go back to their churches. They have been spoiled by too much kindness. How can they go back to the cold atmosphere of criticism and narrow judgments which prevail in so many churches--that is, unless the war has brought changes there also? And after preaching to dying men who listen as it their destiny depended upon their hearing, how can they go back to pulpits where large numbers in the congregations regard their messages as of less importance than dinner, and as merely supplying material for an exercise in more or less kindly criticism during the discussion of that meal?
The glamour of the services at the Front! How the scenes are photographed on my heart! As a congregation sits in a church at home how stolid its features often are--how dull its eyes! One glance around and the preacher's heart sinks within him and his inspiration flies away. Nothing is expected of him, and nothing particularly desired. People have come by force of habit, and not of need. But how the eyes of the soldiers in France glow and burn; how their features speak, and make the preacher speak in reply! Who could help being eloquent there! Such faces would make the dumb speak. One can see the effect of his words as plainly in their expressions as he can see the effect of wind on a cornfield. Every emotion from humor to concern leaps from the heart to the face as the subject touches them at, first this point of their life, then at that. The men's eyes are unforgettable. Months afterwards they come vividly to mind, and one is back again answering the questions they silently ask, and seeing the look of content or gratitude that takes the place of the perplexed or troubled expression. Eyes are said to be the windows of the soul, and as I have spoken I have seen men's souls looking out. At home the windows are darkened and there seemed to be no souls behind the panes. The dwellers within the houses are busy with other matters, and will not come to the windows. The preacher feels like an organ-grinder in the street--those who hear do not heed nor come to the windows of the soul. In France there is a soul looking out at every window; and the preacher sings--for his words grow rhythmic--to his listeners of the love of God and of the love of women and children which make sweet this vale of tears and light man on his lone way beyond the grave.
One Sunday in hospital, when we heard the singing of a hymn in the ward below, a young officer, in the next bed, turned to me and said: "Why doesn't the chaplain hold a service for us? Why does he only hold them for the Tommies? We need them and want them, just as much as the Tommies. We are officers but we are also men." I passed the word to the chaplain, and he was a joyful man when in the evening he gave us a service and the officers of the next ward asked the orderlies to carry them in.
There is the same naturalness and spirit of fellowship between members of various churches. Many lasting friendships have been formed between chaplains of differing communions. There has been no change of creed but something greater, a change of spirit. They have been touched by the common spirit, and have lived and worked in free and happy fellowship. On my last Sunday in a hospital in France, the chaplain, a canon of the Church of England, invited me to read the lesson at the morning parade service, and to administer the wine at Holy Communion. This I did; and a colonel who was present stayed behind to express to us both the pleasure which had been given to him by the sight of Anglican and Methodist churchmen serving together at the Lord's Table.
To a chaplain not a little of the glamour of the Front is found in this warm fellowship between men of differing creeds and varying religious communions. We have not knocked down our garden walls but we have taken off the cut glass that had been cemented on them by our fathers; and now we can lean over and talk to our neighbors. We have already found that our neighbors are human beings, and quite normal. The chief difference between us seems to be that while one has an obsession for roses the other has an obsession for dahlias. On pansies, sweet peas and chrysanthemums we seem equally keen and exchange plants. A Roman Catholic officer who had been appointed to the Ulster Division told me that though he was received coldly at first, he had not been with the Division more than a few weeks when every officer in his regiment, and every soldier in his company, accepted him as cordially as if he were a Protestant. He was from Dublin and they from Belfast, but they did not allow it to make any difference, and feelings of the warmest loyalty and friendship sprang up. His Tommies would fight to the death by his side, as readily as around any Ulsterman; and he was just as popular in the officers' mess. When, he said, it passed the Irish Guards or any other Roman Catholic regiment, his regiment would sing some provoking song about "hanging the Pope with a good strong rope," and the Dublin regiment would reply with some song equally obnoxious and defiant; but whereas, in peace time, the songs would have caused a free fight to the accompaniment of bloodshed, now it caused nothing worse than laughter. The songs were just a bit of teasing such as every regiment likes to regale another with--perhaps, too, a common memory of the dear country they have left behind. The men of Belfast and the men of Dublin have learned to respect and value one another. They know that in a scrap with the enemy they can count on one another to the last drop of blood, for, whether from North or South, the Irish are "bonnie fighters." Of such are the miracles at the Front.
Most of all, perhaps, the glamour of the Front is found in the nobility to which common men rise. An artillery officer told me that he had in his battery a soldier who seemed utterly worthless. He was dirty in all his ways, and unreliable in character. In despair they made him sanitary orderly, that is, the scavenger whose duty it was to remove all refuse. One night the officer wanted a man to go on a perilous errand and there were few men available. Instantly this lad volunteered. The officer looked at him in amazement, and with a reverence born on the instant. "No," he thought, "I will not let him go and get killed. I'll go myself." He told the lad so, and disappointment was plainly written on his features.
"But, you'll let me come with you, sir?" he replied.
"Why should two risk their lives," asked the officer, "when one can do the job?"
"But you might get wounded, sir," was the quick response; and they went together.
An Irish officer told me of one man who seemed bad from top to toe. All the others had some redeeming feature but this man appeared not to possess any. He used the filthiest language and was dirty in his habits and dress. He was drunken and stole the officers' whisky out of the mess. He was unchaste and had been in the hospital with venereal disease; and neither as man nor soldier was there anything good to say of him. The regiment was sent to France, and in due time took its place in the trenches; and then appeared in this man something that had never risen to the surface before. Wherever there were wounded and dying men he proved himself to be the noblest man in the regiment. When a man fell in No Man's Land, he was over the parapet in the twinkling of an eye to bring him in. No barrage could keep him away from the wounded. It was a sort of passion with him that nothing could restrain. To save others he risked his life scores of times. In rest-billets he would revert to some of his evil ways, but in the trenches he was the Greatheart of the regiment and, though he did not receive it, he earned the Victoria Cross over and over again. There is a glamour at the Front that holds the heart with an irresistible grip. In the light of War's deathly fires the hearts of men are revealed and the black sheep often get their chance. Life is intense and deep and men are drawn together by a common peril. They find the things that unite and forget the things that separate.