Then he continued slowly, “On the Somme, a few hours before I was badly
wounded”—he put his hand in his pocket and drew out a little crucifix—“I
picked up that little crucifix and I put it in my pack, and when I got
to hospital I found that little crucifix on my table. One of the nurses
or the orderlies had put it there, thinking I was a Catholic. But I know
I’m not, sir. I am _nothing_. I have been looking at this little
crucifix so often since I was wounded, and I look at it till my eyes
fill with tears, because it reminds me of what He did for me—not this
little bit of metal, but what it means.”
I said, “Have you ever prayed?”
He replied, “No, sir. I’ve wept over this little crucifix—is that
prayer?”
“That’s prayer of the best sort,” I said. “Every tear contained volumes
you could not utter, and God read every word. He knows all about it.”
I pulled out a little khaki Testament. “Would you like it?” I said.
“Would you read it?”
He answered, “Yes,” and signed the decision in the cover.
When I shook hands with him there was a light in his eyes. Have you ever
seen the light break over the cliff-tops of some high mountain peak?
Have you ever watched the sun kiss a landscape into beauty? Have you
ever seen the earth dance with gladness as the sun bathed it with
radiance and warmth? Oh, it’s a great sight; but there’s no sight like
seeing the light from Calvary kiss a human face as it fills the heart
with the assurance of Divine forgiveness.
* * * * *
One hundred and fifty-two thousand cups of tea and coffee are given away
monthly at one railway-station. I once happened to be at a
railway-station on the main lines of communication. There are women
working there, women of position and means, working at their own
expense. I have seen rough fellows go up to a British woman behind a
counter—the first time they have seen a British woman for months—and I
have heard them say, “Madam, will you shake hands with me?” I saw an
Australian do that. He got her hand—and his was like a leg of mutton—and
he thought of his mother and his home-folk. He forgot his tea. It was a
benediction to have that woman there.
Well, on this occasion two of these ladies said to me, “Gipsy, we’re
having a relief train pass through to-morrow, and one comes through up
and one comes through down.”
“I’ll be there,” I said.
The train that was coming from the front we could hear before we could
see it. And it wasn’t the engine that we heard, because that came so
slowly, but I could hear the boys singing as they came round the curve,
“Blighty, Blighty is the place for me.”
We served them with tea and coffee, French bread a yard long, and
candles and matches and “Woodbines,” and then we got that crowd
off—still singing “Blighty.”
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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