When I got there, I saw he was crying, sobbing.
“I am not a kid,” he said; “I am a man. I’m forty-one. You told me to
write to my mother. Read that,” he said, throwing down a letter; and
this is what I read:
“My dear Mother,
“It’s seven years since I wrote you last. I’ve done my best to
break your heart and to turn your hair grey. I’ve lived a bad
life, but it’s come to an end. I have given my heart to God. I
won’t ask you to believe me, or to forgive me. I deserve
neither. But I ask for a bit of time that I may prove my
sincerity.
“Your boy still,
“Jack.”
“Shall I put a bit at the bottom for a postscript?” I asked. “But first
of all, let us pray.”
We got on our knees, and I said, “You begin.”
“I’m not used to it,” he replied.
“Begin; never mind how. Did you ever pray?”
“Yes,” he said; “I prayed as a child.”
“Start with that, then—He loves cradle faith.”
It took him some time, but presently he began with his mother’s prayer,
“Jesus, tender Shepherd, hear me.” When he got to the third line there
was a big lump in his throat and one in mine, and then he gave me a dig
with his elbow and said, “You’ll have to finish”—and I finished.
I put my postscript to that letter. “God has saved him,” I wrote.
“Believe him. Write and tell him you forgive him.”
And when that mother got that she knew that giving out note-paper was
religion.
* * * * *
I was in a cemetery just behind the lines, walking among the graves of
our dear lads who have fallen, and weeping for those at home who weep
over graves that they will never see. There I found an old soldier who
had been to the woods and had cut a big bundle of box trimmings. He was
setting a little border of box round the graves.
“But,” I said to him, “they won’t strike. It’s not the right time of
year—and the ground’s too dry.”
“I know, sir,” he said, “but it will look as if somebody cares.”
God’s jewels lie deep, and if you will dig deep enough you will find
them—so I took the trouble to dig a little deeper. I said, “Nobody will
see them here.”
“Yes, sir, the angels will. You taught me to think like this in one of
the meetings in the huts, and since I can’t do any more in the
fight”—for he was disabled—“I am putting in my time caring for the
boys’ graves, and if the wives and mothers don’t see them—well”—and his
face lit up with a radiance that I can’t put into words—“the angels
will, sir.”
* * * * *
I have had your boys say to me, “Gipsy, does it mean Blighty, or does it
mean West?” I have had to say to some of them, “It doesn’t mean
Blighty.”
A sister took me to see one dear fellow. He was blown up by a mine, both
his legs and his arm were broken.
“I was lying out there, after the mine blew up, for twenty-four hours,
and I was half buried,” he told me.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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