Soldier Silhouettes on Our Front
r the icy roads, on the top of a little knoll stood a lone sentinel agains
er of the beautiful as well as a driver of a truck, I was lost
me, whose home is in the West. "Looks for all
both lost in silent appreciation of the scene b
ough the semi-darkne
ad learned that it doesn't pay to waste time in answering
a sentry had caught us unawares, lost in the afterglow, a
ding there in the middle of that French road, with his gun raised against the
hierry, with the marines. The boys called him "Doc," an
ld go out in the night and see how the boys were getting along. He walked cautiously alon
goes
the secret
e you! This is a darned weird place to-night.
out in No Man's Land. "Wh
hink
where. If I've seen one, I've seen
made themselves heroes forever in the Bois du Belleau. He will never forget the sound of that boy sentry's voice when he said, "Gee, Doc, I'm glad it's you"; nor will he forget the looks of th
vivid until time dies, until the "spring
'til the crow
of the Kings are
'til the hil
ngs of the s
scenes and moments li
ished discussing the dangers of the coming weeks, and he had told us that his major had said to him, "If fifteen per cent of us come out alive, I shall be glad," and after we had drifted back to the old college days, and home and babies, and after he had shown us a picture of his wife and his kiddies, it became
le of his face as that set look came back and once a
another with a group of a dozen men in a front-line trench; another with several officers in an officers' dugout; another with a battery outfit who were "On Call," expecting orders to send over a fe
d you do it
ooked lonely, and I walked up and said: 'How'd yo
e!' h
n together. It was 'Jesus, Lover of My Soul,' and neither of us can sing much, but as I look back on it, it was the sweetest music that I ever had a part in making. The only thing I didn't do was tak
lone one-man congregation as to
art when we were through, 'God ble
ediction than that, old ma
gs of home and church and the Christ, giving him a new hold on the bigger, better things, bringing the Christ out to him there on that road, that silhouette is mine t
eader of the chaplains, Bishop Brent, through the Y. M. C. A., and the Salvation Army, and the Knights of Columbus, your boy has his chance, whatever creed, or race, or church, to worship his God as he wishes; and not one miss
," of whom I have spoken in this chapter before
they
estants and non-believers there, he said: "Now, any
ead and wine. Two Jews knelt with the others, several Roman Catholics, and men of all Protestant deno
s own way and as nearly as possible at his own alt
ickness as the young corporal whom I had taken with me from another town sang "The Rosary." I have never heard it sung with more tenderness, nor have I heard it sung in more beautiful voice. That young lad was singing his heart out to those other boys. He had not been up front himself as yet, for he was in a base port attending to his duties, which were just as important as those up front, but it was hard for him to see it that way. So he loved and respected these other lads who had, to his way of thinking, been more fortunate
ning to that fine understanding of those who count the beads of the rosary and those who do not. I had seen so many examples
t, to try to find a rosary for this sick Catholic boy, and after several hours' search he found a peasant woman whom he made understand the emergency of the situation, and he got the loan of the rosary and took it back through five miles of mud to the bedside of that Catholic lad, and comforted him with the feel of it in his fev
r with two Knights of Columbus secretaries and one father-Chaplain Davis-all of whom say freely and eager
ay I was here, when I had no place to take my boys for mass, a secre
ecretary interpreter, in a Y. M. C. A. hut, has been told far and wide, but it is only illustrative
ith which the Catholic priest kissed the hand of the Protestant French chaplain when the two had agreed that, after all, there was one common God for a common, suffering nation of people, and that this war would break all church barriers
ame regiment. Then came that terrible morning at Verdun, when the French Protestant chaplain, the friend of the Catholic priest, had been killed while trying to bring in a wounded Catholic boy from No Man's Land. On the day of this Protestant chaplain's funeral the Catholic priest stood in God's Acre with bared head, and spoke as tender and as
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