The Soul of the Soldier

I. The Swan at Ypres II. The Roadmakers III. The Glamour of the Front IV. A White Handkerchief V. The Songs Our Soldiers Sing VI. Easter Sunday VII. "Now the Day is Over" VIII. Sons of the Motherland IX. The Terror by Night X. "Eton Boys Never Duck!" XI. "Missing" XII. "It Must be Sunday" XIII. Our Tommies Never Fail Us XIV. The Cross at Neuve Chapelle XV. The Children of Our Dead XVI. A Funeral under Fire XVII. A Soldier's Calvary XVIII. The Hospital Train XIX. After Winter, Spring

We had just marched from one part of the Front to another and by a round-about way. Each morning the Quartermaster and "the billeting party" went on before, and each evening we slept in a village that was strange to us. Each of the men carried on his back a pack and equipment weighing about eighty or ninety pounds. Through sleet and blizzard and, for the most part, through open, exposed country, we continued our march without a day of rest. By the fifth evening we reached the village where we were to have three or four weeks of rest and training before entering the trenches for the spring offensive. We had unpacked and were sitting at dinner when a telegram came announcing that all previous plans were canceled, and that at dawn we must take to the road again. Something unexpected had happened, good or ill, we knew not which, and we had to enter the line in front of Arras. For three days more we marched. Daily the sound of the guns came nearer, and the men were tired and footsore. They were also deeply disappointed of the long rest to which they had been looking forward after a winter in the trenches at Neuve Chapelle. Yet they marched cheerily enough. "It's the War!" they said one to another and, true to their own philosophy, "packed up their troubles in their old kit bags and smiled." When any man faltered a bit, as if about to fall out by the way, the others cheered him on by singing "Old Soldiers never die" to the tune of the old Sunday school hymn, "Kind words can never die." Sometimes an officer would shoulder a man's rifle to the end of the march, or until he felt better. In eight unbroken days of marching we covered ninety-eight miles and finally arrived at a camp of huts within a day's march of the trenches we are to occupy. Here, where our huts stand like islands in a sea of mud, we are, unless suddenly needed, to take a few days' rest.

*THE CROSS AT NEUVE CHAPELLE*

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.

Next to seeing wounded men on the roads at the front, I think the saddest sight is that of dying horses and mules. Last winter they had to stand, with little cover, exposed to the bitter blasts. It was impossible to keep them clean or dry, for the roads were churned into liquid mud and both mules and drivers were plastered with it from head to foot. To make things worse there was a shortage of fodder; and horses waste away rapidly under ill-feeding. Before the fine weather had given them a chance to recover weight and strength, the Battle of Arras began, and every living beast of burden, as well as every motor-engine, was strained to its utmost. The mule is magnificent for war, and our battles have been won as much by mules as men. Haig could rely on one as much as on the other. The mule will eat anything, endure anything, and, when understood and humored by its driver, will do anything. It works until it falls dead by the roadside. In the spring, hundreds died in harness. In fact, few die except in harness. They die facing the foe, dragging rations along shell-swept roads to the men in the trenches.

Achicourt is a little village about a mile out of Arras. It has two churches, one Roman Catholic, the other, Lutheran. The former church has been utterly destroyed by German shells, and will have to be rebuilt from the foundations. The Lutheran church was less prominently placed, and its four walls are still standing. Its humility has saved it, but, as by fire. All its windows are gone, and its walls are torn and scarred by fragments of shells. Most of its slates have been destroyed and the rain pours through the roof. But, on dry days, and until the Battle of Arras, it was a beloved little place for services. It stood, however, at a corner of the village Square, and the Square was destroyed by hundreds of exploding shells on Easter Sunday. As I passed it in the afternoon of that day, and saw how it had suffered, my heart grew sad within me.

I have witnessed many moving sights in my time and heard much deep and thrilling music; but I have never been so deeply moved by anything as by the rich, deep voices of these gallant men and boys who, after winning the Battle of Arras, had come into this ruined church and were singing this beautiful kiddies' hymn as their last farewell.

On Easter Monday, in the Battle of Arras, I saw two sights such as I shall never forget. One revealed the kind and forgiving spirit of our men, the other their unflinching courage. After burying three non-commissioned officers who had been killed the day before, I reached the Advanced Dressing Station near which our regiment was "standing to" in a support trench. Other regiments of our Division were carrying out the attack and, with small loss, had taken the enemy lines. The German trenches had been blotted out by our shells but their deep dug-outs, with machine-guns at their mouths, remained untouched, and it was almost impossible for our soldiers to discover them until they got within a few yards of the entrances.