The Soul of the Soldier: Sketches from the Western Battle-FrontTiplady, Thomas
History
The Soul of the Soldier: Sketches from the Western Battle-Front
Tiplady, Thomas
World War, 1914-1918 -- Personal narratives, English
I first saw it on a November afternoon when the sun was sinking under
heavy banks of cloud, and it bent my mind back to the scene as it must
have been on the first Good Friday, when the sun died with its dying
Lord, and darkness crept up the hill of Calvary and covered Him with its
funeral pall to hide His dying agonies from the curious eyes of
unbelieving men. I had had tea in a dug-out, and it was dark when I
left. Machine-guns were sweeping No Man’s Land to brush back enemies
that might be creeping towards us through the long grass; and the air
was filled with a million clear, cracking sounds. Star-shells rose and
fell and their brilliant lights lit up the silent form on the cross.
For three years, night and day, Christ has been standing there in the
midst of our soldiers, with arms outstretched in blessing. They have
looked up at Him through the clear starlight of a frosty night; and they
have seen His pale face by the silver rays of the moon as she has sailed
her course through the heavens. In the gloom of a stormy night they
have seen the dark outline, and caught a passing glimpse of Christ’s
effigy by the flare of the star-shells. What must have been the
thoughts of the sentries in the listening posts as all night long they
have gazed at the cross; or of the officers as they have passed down the
trench to see that all was well; or of some private sleeping in the
trench and, being awakened by the cold, taking a few steps to restore
blood-circulation? Deep thoughts, I imagine, much too deep for words of
theirs or mine.
And when the Battle of Neuve Chapelle was raging and the wounded, whose
blood was turning red the grass, looked up at Him, what thoughts must
have been theirs then? Did they not feel that He was their big Brother
and remember that blood had flowed from Him as from them; that pain had
racked Him as it racked them; and that He thought of His mother and of
Nazareth as they thought of their mother and the little cottage they
were never to see again? When their throats became parched and their
lips swollen with thirst did they not remember how He, too, had cried
for a drink; and, most of all, did they not call to mind the fact that
He might have saved Himself, as they might, if He had cared more for His
own happiness than for the world’s? As their spirits passed out through
the wounds in their bodies would they not ask Him to remember them as
their now homeless souls knocked at the gate of His Kingdom? He had
stood by them all through the long and bloody battle while hurricanes of
shells swept over and around Him. I do not wonder that the men at the
Front flock to the Lord’s Supper to commemorate His death. They will
not go without it. If the Sacrament be not provided, they ask for it.
At home there was never such a demand for it as exists at the Front.
There is a mystic sympathy between the trench and the Cross, between the
soldier and his Saviour.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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