World War, 1914-1918 -- Personal narratives, American
On such occasions two thoughts would come to me--the reflection of
Tertullian that "The soul of man is by nature religious;" and the
admonition of Ecclesiastes 7:40, "Remember thy last end and thou shalt
never sin." Far into that All Saints night I heard Confessions, and was
edified with the large number who approached Holy Communion All Souls
morning.
In burial work, we always made it a point, where it was at all possible,
to bury the enemy dead as reverently as our own. We would gather their
poor shell-torn bodies, often in advanced stages of decomposition, and
place them in graves on sheltered hillsides, safe from gun fire,
carefully assembling in Musette bags their belongings, which we would
forward to the Prisoner of War Department. One day, while so assembling
the scattered remains of four dead Germans, evidently killed by the same
shell, one of our boys of the 34th Infantry, Sam Volkel by name, who
before the war lived in my old parish at Harvey, passed by. This good
boy's parents had been born in Germany. When he saw the reverent care we
were giving those four of the enemy dead, he came up to me and with
tears streaming down his smoke and dust-covered face exclaimed,
"Father, God bless you."
"De mortuis nil nisi bonum" is a principle of conduct dating back to Him
who of old declared burial of the dead a corporal work of mercy. It is
the mark, neither of the Christian individual nor nation, to disrespect
a body nor desecrate its resting place. The fact that in life it was
tenanted by the soul of an enemy is no justification for dishonoring it;
for He who is Infinite Truth and Justice declares "Love thy enemy; do
good to those who hate you, and bless those who persecute you." This, of
course, is not the way of the world; but _is_ the way of Him whose
standards of living must guide our lives, and whose will to reward or
punish us shall prevail through Eternity.
We had now been many weeks at the extreme front on minimum ration of all
things bearing on bodily comfort or mental relaxation. Water was but a
word, a memory, cherished dream of him who wrote "The Old Oaken Bucket."
If we could but find enough of the chlorinated drug store kind to
nourish our canteen, we were prepared to dispense with the common, or
laundry serving, variety.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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