One day I was going through a tent of suffering men just after a big "stunt." It was a day of much and great agony for those who were in actual bodily pain and for those of us who had to try to help them to endure it. I saw two men carried in and laid on beds side by side with each other. One was obviously very severely wounded. The other was swathed in bandages over his head and down over his face, apparently blinded. For a moment I hesitated, thinking it might be better to come back when, perhaps, the agonies of the one might be somewhat abated. But I put my hesitation aside. I found that the two men were brothers who, fighting in the same trench, had been struck down by the same shell. Late that evening an ambulance came for me as a man was dying, and I found it was the soldier I had spoken to earlier in the day.
The camp lay beautifully still, for the clouds were heavy and the stars were veiled. I stepped into the tent, into the breathing dark. The beds were swathed in shadow, only one red lamp hanging from a central post.
They had brought the brothers quite closely together, and the man with the bandaged eyes had a hand of the other in his own. The dying man took mine in a grip of ice.
"Padre," he whispered, "I am going home. And I wanted you to come again to me. Write tenderly to my people. This will break their hearts. And pray that my brother may be spared." There is no ritual for a moment like that. One could but ask Him who was broken also for others to be near this broken man whose body was pierced unto dying for the sake of those he loved. We whispered together there a few lines of "Jesus, Lover of My Soul," and a verse of the immortally wonderful "Lead, Kindly Light." And then he put his arm about my neck and drew me closer.
"I tried to do what was right," said he. "O Christ, receive my soul. Have mercy upon me." I heard a man near me, in the dark, say "Amen." And I knew the fellows were not sleeping. They were lying there, in their own pain, thinking of him who was passing that night into the great beyond. Then I said, very quietly, the last verse of the hymn he had whispered:
So long Thy power hath blessed me, sure it still
Will lead me on,
O'er moor and fen, o'er crag and torrent, till
The night is gone,
And with the morn those angel faces smile
Which I have loved long since and lost a while.
The silence lay between us for a little, till the dying man asked, "What o'clock is it?" And I told him.
"I'm so sorry for disturbing you so late," said he.
"Good-bye, padre, till we meet again." And with a sigh he passed away.