It is this spirit of man's thoughtfulness for his brother, man's
tenderness with man, that reassures me when I ask, "How will this
stupendous man-hunt affect the heart of the race?" And the fighter is
not unaware of the question. Indeed, he asks it himself. I heard a
young major who was saying a farewell to a group of his friends at a
church banquet in a Canadian city say,
"I go away determined, God helping me, to do my hardest duty; to render
my country and the empire an enthusiastic and utmost service; and to
carry myself so that when I come back, if I come back, _little children
will run to me as confidently as they do now_."
What is the spirit of the trenches? It is the spirit of service that
has no interrogation points. One night a shriek of agony came ringing
back to our line from a listening-post in No Man's Land. A chaplain
was "up," a Roman Catholic. He crawled down the shallow communicating
trench to the wounded soldier, found him with a foot smashed by a
grenade, unconscious, and bleeding to death. He stanched the flow of
blood as best he could, and somehow got the man back. And then, after
the stretcher party had carried the "casualty" to the dressing-station,
and while they waited for the ambulance, he prayed with the lad. A few
days later he said to me, "I didn't think a Catholic's prayer would
hurt a Protestant boy." And it was a Protestant padre, we are told, who
ministered to the dying Major Redmond on a battle-field of Flanders.
There is no "grousing" in the trenches. I heard no complaints from men
who were straining their vital forces to the utmost. It is great to
hear them when they come out, though! How they do vent their spleen
upon springs that are a bit uneven, these fellows who have been
wallowing in mud and ice for days without a word in their misery!
A runner came in one morning after thirty-six hours of continuous duty.
He was chilled to the bone, and one foot was in bad shape. He had
neither overcoat nor blankets; his entire equipment had been buried
by the shelling incident to a raid. We leaned him against the great
tea-boiler, and while he stood there warming his body we poured hot
drinks into his stomach. Turning away for a moment, I was startled by
a clatter behind me. There he was, his cup on the floor; he was dead
asleep on his feet.
I have seen lads fall asleep on the rough boards of a Y. M. C. A.
hut, with only the nondescript materials for covers that we could
hastily throw over them. Not even the noises of great batteries, and of
hundreds of soldiers passing in and out, disturbed them in the least.
Not a whimper, not a whisper of rebellion, came from them. Oh, I do not
believe that I shall ever again complain about any hardship without
despising myself. What a task we at home have, to be worthy of them!
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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