At a cross-road at the bottom of a hill, on the way to a gun-position
we once had, stood a Calvary--one of those wayside altars, so
frequently met in France, with pollarded trees surrounding it and an
image of Christ in His agony. Pious peasants on their journey to
market or as they worked in the fields, had been accustomed to raise
their eyes to it and cross themselves. It had comforted them with the
knowledge of protection. The road leading back from it and up the
hill was gleaming white--a direct enfilade for the Hun, and always
under observation. He kept guns trained on it; at odd intervals, any
hour during the day or night, he would sweep it with shell-fire. The
woods in the vicinity were blasted and blackened. It was the season
for leaves and flowers, but there was no greenness. Whatever of
vegetation had not been uprooted and buried, had been poisoned by
gas. The atmosphere was vile with the odour of decaying flesh. In the
early morning, if you passed by the Calvary, there was always some
fresh tragedy. The newly dead lay sprawled out against its steps, as
though they had dragged themselves there in their last moments. If you
looked along the road, all the glazed eyes seemed to stare towards
it. “Lord, remember me when thou comest into thy Kingdom,” they seemed
to say. The wooden Christ gazed down on them from His cross, with a
suffering which two thousand years ago he had shared. The terrible
pity of His silence seemed to be telling them that they had become one
with Him in their final sacrifice. They hadn't lived His life--far
from it; unknowingly they had died His death. That's a part of the
glory of the trenches, that a man who has not been good, can crucify
himself and hang beside Christ in the end. One wonders in what
pleasant places those weary souls find rest.
There was a second Calvary--a heap of ruins. Nothing of the altar or
trees, by which it had been surrounded, was left. The first time I
passed it, I saw a foot protruding. The man might be wounded; I
climbed up to examine and pulled aside the debris. Beneath it I found,
like that of one three weeks dead, the naked body of the Christ. The
exploding shell had wrenched it from its cross. Aslant the face, with
gratuitous blasphemy, the crown of thorns was tilted.
These two Calvaries picture for me the part that Christ is playing in
the present war. He survives in the noble self-effacement of the men.
He is re-crucified in the defilements that are wrought upon their
bodies.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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