The Coo-ee Reciter: Humorous, Pathetic, Dramatic, Dialect, Recitations & ReadingsVarious
General
The Coo-ee Reciter: Humorous, Pathetic, Dramatic, Dialect, Recitations & Readings
Various
Literature -- Collections; Recitations
Following the pipers marches a small armed party. It would have been the
firing party, but volleys are not fired over soldiers' graves in time of
war. Then the chaplain, in his robes, preceding the corpse of General
Wauchope (who had fallen at the head of his men), borne on a stretcher.
One of the bearers is of the dead man's kin--a promising young Highland
officer. Then come the several regiments of the Brigade, the Black Watch
leading. The men march with arms reversed, stately, erect, stern, grim.
They lift their feet high for the regulation step of the slow, funeral
march. But observe that even in their grim sternness these men are
quivering with an emotion which they cannot control--an emotion which
passes out in magnetic waves from their ranks to those of their comrade
spectators of England and Ireland, and brings tears to the eyes and
choking sobs to the throats of the strong and the brave. "Talk not of
grief till thou hast seen the tears of warlike men!" The Highland
Brigade is burying its dead.
In a separate grave, at the head of a long, shallow trench, the body of
General Wauchope is laid, in sight of and facing the foe. The chaplain
advances, and the solemn service for the dead is recited in a clear and
markedly Scotch voice, while all bow their heads and either listen or
ponder. A grief-stricken kinsman's quivering hand drops earth upon the
body at the words, "Ashes to ashes, dust to dust," and the grave of the
General is quickly filled in. There, beside the trench, already lie the
corpses of fifty officers and men. They had been carried to the burial
place earlier in the day. There, at the end nearer to the General's
grave, the officers are laid. Beside them their comrades of minor rank
in life, all brought to a worldly level by the hand of death, are placed
in the trench. It is an excavation only about three feet deep, but it is
twelve feet wide, and the dead men are put feet to feet in two parallel
rows, twenty-five on each side. They are fully attired, just as they
were brought in from the battlefield, and each is wrapped in his
blanket. The sporan is turned over on to the dead face, and the kilt
thrown back, the rigid limbs showing bare and scarred in the unfilled
trench. The Highland Brigade is burying its dead.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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