Book: Soldier Silhouettes on our Front

W >> William L. Stidger >> Soldier Silhouettes on our Front




What was the difference? He had gotten a letter.

[Illustration: What was the difference? He had gotten a letter.]

Then there is the Silhouette of Physical Suffering. Hundreds of these
sombre silhouettes stand out against a lurid background of fire and
blood. One only I quote because it has a fringe of hope.

The boy's back was broken. It had been broken by a shell concussion.
There were no visible signs of a wound on his body anywhere, the
doctors told me in the hospital. He did not know it as yet. He
thought it was his leg that was hurt. They asked me to tell him, as
gently as I could. It was a hard task to give a man.

He was lying on a raised bed so that, when I went up to it, it came up
to my neck almost, and when I talked with the lad I could look straight
into his eyes. Those eyes I shall never forget, they were so fearless,
so brave, and yet so full of weariness and suffering.

I took his hand and said: "Boy, I am a preacher." For once I didn't
say anything about being a secretary. I just told him I was a preacher.

He said: "I am so glad you have come. I just wanted to see a real,
honest-to-goodness preacher." He forced a smile to accompany this
sentence.

"Well, I'm all of that, and proud of it," I replied, smiling back into
his brave eyes.

"I'm so tired. I try to be brave, but I've been lying here for three
months now, and my leg doesn't seem to get any better. It pains all
the time until I think I'll die with the agony of it. I never sleep
only when they give me something. But I try hard to be brave."

"You are brave!" I said to him. "They all tell me that, the doctors
and nurses."

"They are so good to me." he said in low tones so that I had to bend to
hear them. "But my leg; they don't seem to be able to help me."

Then I told him as gently as I could that it was not his leg, that it
was his back, and that he would likely not get well. Then I tried to
tell him of the room in his Father's house that was ready for him when
he was ready to accept it, and of what a glorious welcome there was
there.

He reached out for my hand in the semi-darkness of that evening. I can
feel his hand-clasp yet. I didn't know what to say, but a phrase that
had lingered in my mind from an old story came to the rescue.

"Don't you want the Christ to help you bear your pain?" I asked him.

"That is just what I do want," he said simply. "That was why I was so
glad you came--an honest-to-goodness preacher," and he smiled again, so
bravely, in spite of his suffering, and in spite of the news that I had
just broken to him.

Then we prayed. I stood beside his bed holding his hand and praying.
The room was full of other wounded boys, but in the twilight I doubt if
a lad there knew what we were doing. I spoke low, just so he could
hear, and the Master knew what was in my heart without hearing.

When I was through I felt a pressure of his hand, and he said: "Now I
feel stronger. He is helping me bear my burden. Thank you for coming,
and"--then he paused for words "and--thank you for bringing Him."

Yes, there is suffering in France, suffering among our soldiers, too,
but suffering that is glorified by courage.




X

SOLDIER SILHOUETTES

One night down near the front lines as we drove the great truck slowly
over the icy roads, on the top of a little knoll stood a lone sentinel
against a background of snow, and that is a silhouette that I shall
never forget.

Another night there was a beautiful afterglow, and being a lover of the
beautiful as well as a driver of a truck, I was lost in the wonder of
the crimson flush against the western hills.

"Makes me homesick," said the big man beside me, whose home is in the
West. "Looks for all the world like one of our Arizona afterglows."

"It is beautiful," I replied, and then we were both lost in silent
appreciation of the scene before us, when suddenly we were startled
witless.

"Halt!" rang out through the semi-darkness. "Who goes there?"

"Y. M. C. A." we shot back as quick as lightning, for we had learned
that it doesn't pay to waste time in answering a sentinel's challenge
down within sound of the German guns.

"Pass on, friends," was the grinning reply. That rascal of a sentry
had caught us unawares, lost in the afterglow, and he was tickled over
having startled us into astonishment.

But even though he did give us a scare, I am sure that the picture of
him standing there in the middle of that French road, with his gun
raised against the afterglow, will be one of the outstanding
silhouettes of the memories of France.

Then there was the old Scotch dominie down at Chateau-Thierry, with the
marines. The boys called him "Doc," and loved him, for he had been
with them for eight months.

One night, in the midst of the hottest fighting in June, the old
secretary thought he would go out in the night and see how the boys
were getting along. He walked cautiously along the edge of the woods
when suddenly the word "Halt!" shot out in low but distinct tones.

"Who goes there?"

"A friend," the secretary replied.

"Oh, it's you, is it, Doc? Gee, I'm glad to see you! This is a darned
weird place to-night. Every time the wind blows I think it's a Boche."

There was a slight noise out in No Man's Land. "What's that, Doc, a
Boche?"

"I think not."

"You can't tell, Doc; they're everywhere. If I've seen one, I've seen
ten thousand to-night on this watch."

That old gray-haired secretary will never forget that night when he
walked among the men in the trenches with his little gifts and his word
of cheer, that memorable night before the Americans 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 the boy as he stood there in the
darkness, the guardian of America's hopes and homes, nor will he forget
the firm, warm clasp of the lad's hands as he walked away to greet
others of his comrades.

These are Soldier Silhouettes that remain vivid until time dies, until
the "springs of the seas run dust," as Markham says:

"Forget it not 'til the crowns are crumbled;
'Til the swords of the Kings are rent with rust;
Forget it not 'til the hills lie humbled;
And the springs of the seas run dust."


No, we do not forget scenes and moments like these in our lives.

Then there is the silhouette of the profile of the captain of a certain
American machine-gun company who, in March, marched with his men into
the Somme line. He was an old football-player back in the States, and
we were having a last dinner together in Paris, a group of college men.
After dinner, when we had finished 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 strangely
quiet in the room, and suddenly he turned his face from us, with just
the profile showing against the light of the window, and exclaimed: "My
God, fellows, for a half-hour you have made me forget that there is a
war, and I have been back on the old campus again playing football, and
back with my babies."

Then his jaw set, and I shall never forget the profile of his face as
that set look came back and once again he became the captain of a
machine-gun company.

Then there was the lone church service that my friend Clarke held one
evening at a crossroads of France. He had held seven services that
Sunday, one in a machine-gun company's dugout, with six men; 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 few shells; another
with several men out in No Man's Land, on the sunny side of an old
upturned mass of tree roots; one in a listening-post, and finally this
service with a lone sentry at a crossroads.

"But how did you do it?" I asked.

"I just saw him there," Clarke replied, "and he looked lonely, and I
walked up and said: 'How'd you like to have me read a little out of the
Book?'

"'Fine!' he said.

"Then I prayed with him, standing there at the crossroads, and I asked
him if he didn't want to pray. He was a church boy back home, and he
prayed as fine a prayer as ever I heard. Then we sang a hymn 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 take up a collection.
Outside of that, it was just as if we had gone through a regular church
service at home. I even preached a little to him. No, not just
preached, but talked to him about the Master."

"Did you even go so far with your lone one-man congregation as to have
a benediction?" I asked him.

"No, I just said what was in my heart when we were through, 'God bless
and keep you, boy,' and went on."

"I never heard a finer benediction than that, old man," I replied with
feeling.

And the silhouette of that one Y. M. C. A. secretary holding a
religious service with a lone sentry of a Sunday evening, bringing back
to the lad's memory sacred things 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 to keep forever
close to my heart. I shall see that and shall smile in my soul over it
when eternity calls, and shall thank God for its sweetening influence
in my life.

And so this comfort may come to the mothers and fathers of America,
that through the various agencies of the American army, through General
Pershing's intense interest in righteous things, through that
Lincoln-like Christian leader 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 misses this opportunity, even the
lonely sentinel on the road. And the glorious thing about it is that
boys who never before thought of going to church at home, crowd the
huts on Sundays and for the good-night prayers on week-days.

Just before the battle of Chateau-Thierry, "Doc," of whom I have spoken
in this chapter before, said: "Boys, do you want a communion service?"

"Yes," they shouted.

Knowing that there were Catholics and Jews and Protestants and
non-believers there, he said: "Now, anybody who doesn't want to take
communion may leave."

Not a single man left. Out of one hundred or more men only two did not
kneel to take of the sacred bread and wine. Two Jews knelt with the
others, several Roman Catholics, and men of all Protestant
denominations. Half of them were dead before another sunrise came
around, but they had had their service.

Every man has his opportunity to worship God in his own way and as
nearly as possible at his own altars in France. There was the story of
"The Rosary."

It was Hospital Hut Number ----, and half a thousand boys from the
front, wounded in every conceivable way, were sitting there in the hut
in a Sunday-evening service. Many of them had crutches beside them;
others canes. Some of them, had their heads bandaged; others of them
carried their arms in slings. Some of them had lost legs, and some of
them had no arms left. Their eager faces were lighted with a strange
light, such as is not seen on land or sea, and on most of those faces,
unashamed, ran over pale cheeks the tears of homesickness 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 than he, because they had seen actual
fighting. He respected them because of their wounds, and he wanted to
help them. So he lifted that rich, sweet, sympathetic tenor voice
until the great hut rang with the old, old song, and hearts were melted
everywhere. I saw, back in the audience, a group of nurses with bowed
heads. They knew what the rosary meant to those who suffer and die in
the Catholic faith. They, too, had memories of that beautiful song. A
group of officers, including a major, all wounded, listened with heads
bowed.

As I sat on the crude stage and saw the effects of his magical voice on
this crowd I got to thinking of what this war is meaning to that fine
understanding of those who count the beads of the rosary and those who
do not. I had seen so many examples of fine fraternal fellowship
between Catholic and Protestant that I felt that I ought to put it down
in some permanent form.

There is a true story of one of our Y. M. C. A. secretaries who was
called to the bedside of a dying Catholic boy. There was no priest
available, and the boy wanted a rosary so badly. In his half-delirium
he begged for a rosary. This young Protestant Y. M. C. A. secretary
started out for a French village, five miles away, on foot, 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 fevered hands and the hope of
it in his fevered soul. When I heard this story it stirred me to the
very fountain depths, but I have seen so much of this fine spirit of
service in the Y. M. C. A. since then that I have come to know that as
far as the Y. M. C. A. is concerned all barriers of church narrowness
are entirely swept away.

I have had most delightful comradeship since I have been in France in
one great area as religious director with two Knights of Columbus
secretaries and one father--Chaplain Davis--all of whom say freely and
eagerly: "We have never had anything but the finest spirit of
co-operation and friendship from the Y. M. C. A."

"Why," added Chaplain Davis, a Catholic priest, "why, the first Sunday
I was here, when I had no place to take my boys for mass, a secretary
came to me and offered me the hut. It has always been that way."

The story of the French priest who confessed a dying Catholic boy
through a Y. M. C. A. Protestant secretary interpreter, in a Y. M. C.
A. hut, has been told far and wide, but it is only illustrative of the
broadening lines of Catholicism and the wider fraternal relations of
all professed Christians.

The marvellous story that my friend, the French chaplain, tells of
being marooned in a shell-hole at Verdun for several days with a
Catholic priest, and of their discussion of religion and life there
under shell-fire, and the tenderness with 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 down, and that out of it would come a new spirit in the
Catholic church, a new brotherhood for all. That was an impressive
indication of the thing that is sweeping France to-day in church
circles, and that will sweep America after the war.

Then there is that other story of the Catholic priest who had been in
the same regiment with a French Protestant chaplain, each of whom
deeply respected the other because of the unflinching bravery that each
had displayed under intense shell-fire, and of the great love that each
had seen the other show in two years of constant warfare in the same
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 sincere a
eulogy as ever a man spoke over the grave of a dear friend, spoke with
the tears in his eyes most of the time. Church lines were forgotten
here. It was a prophetic scene, this, where a Catholic priest spoke at
the funeral of a Protestant chaplain. It was prophetic of that new
church brotherhood that is to come after the war is over.




XI

SKY SILHOUETTES

They are the lights, the lights of war. Sometimes they are just the
stars shining out that makes the wounded soldier out in No Man's Land
look up, in spite of shell-fire and thunder, in spite of wounds and
death, in spite of loneliness and heartache, in spite of mud and rain,
to exclaim, as Donald Hankey tells us in a most wonderful chapter of "A
Student in Arms": "God! God everywhere, and underneath are the
everlasting arms!"

Sometimes the Sky Silhouettes number among their own just a moonlight
night with a crescent moon sailing quietly and serenely over the
horizon in the east, while great guns belch fire in the west, a fire
that seems to shame the timid moon itself.

Sometimes they are search-lights cleaving the sky over a great city
like Paris, or along the front lines, or gleaming from an air-ship.

Sometimes they are signal-lights flashing out of the darkness from a
patrolling plane overhead, or a blazing trail of fire as a patrol falls
to its death in a battle by night.

Sometimes they are signal-lights flashing from an observation balloon
anchored in the darkness over the trenches to guard the troops from
dangers in the air.

Sometimes they are the flashes, the fleet, swallow-like flashes, of an
enemy plane caught in the burning, blazing path of a search-light, and
then hounded by it to its death.

Sometimes they are signals flashed from the top of a cruiser on the
high seas across the storm-tossed waters to a little destroyer, which
flashes back its answer, and then in turn flashes a message of light to
one of the convoying planes overhead in the dim dusk of early evening.

Sometimes these Sky Silhouettes are the range-finders that poise in the
air for a few seconds, guiding the air patrols home, and sometimes they
are just the varied, interesting, gleaming, flashing "Lights of War."




XII

THE LIGHTS OF WAR

One's introduction into the war zone and into war-zone cities and
villages, and one's visits "down the line" to the front by night, will
always be filled with the thrill of the unusual because of the Lights
of War. Where lights used to be, there are no lights now, and where
they were not seen before the war, they are radiant and rampant now.

The first place that an American traveller notices this absence of
lights is on the boat crossing over the Atlantic. From the first night
out of New York the boats travel without a single light showing. Every
light inside of the boat is covered with a heavy black crape, and the
port-holes and windows are so scrupulously and carefully chained down
that the average open-air fiend from California or elsewhere feels that
he will suffocate before morning comes, and even in the bitterest of
winter weather I have known some fresh-air fiends to prefer the deck of
the ship, with all of its bitter winds and cold, to the inside of a
cabin with no windows open. I stood on the deck of an ocean liner
"Somewhere on the Atlantic" a few months ago as the great ship was
ploughing its zigzag course through the black waters, dodging
submarines. There was not a star in the sky. There was not a light on
the boat. Absolutely the only lights that one saw was when he leaned
over the railing and saw the splash of innumerable phosphorescent
organisms breaking against the boat. I have seen the like of it only
once before, and this was on the Pacific down at Asilomar one evening,
when the waves were running fire with phosphorescence. It was a
beautiful sight there and on the Atlantic too.


IT WAS MIDNIGHT

On this particular night, as far as one could see, this brilliant
organic light illuminated the sea like the hands of my luminous
wrist-watch were made brilliant by phosphorescence. I noticed this and
looked down at my watch to see what time it was. It was midnight.

As I looked, my friend, who was standing beside me on the deck, said:
"The last order is that no wrist-watches that are luminous may be
exposed on the decks at night. That order came along with the order
forbidding smoking on the decks at night. The Germans can sight the
light of a cigar a long distance through their periscopes."

I smiled to myself, for it was my first introduction to the romantic
part that lights and the lack o' lights is playing in this great World
War. Then my friend continued his observations as we stood there on
the aft deck watching the white waves break, glorious with
phosphorescence. He said: "What a topsyturvy world it is. Three years
ago if a great ship like this had dared to cross the Atlantic without a
single light showing, it would have horrified the entire world, and
that ship captain would have been called to trial by every country that
sails the seas. He would have been adjudged insane. But now every
ship sails the seas with no navigation-lights showing."


IN WAR COUNTRY

But when one gets his real introduction into the lights o' war is when
he gets into the war country. It is eight o'clock in a great French
city. This French city has been known the world over for its brilliant
lights. It has been known for its gayly lighted boulevards, and indeed
this might apply to one of three or four French cities. Light was the
one scintillating characteristic of this great city. The first night
that one finds himself here he feels as though he were wandering about
in a country village at home. No arc-lights shine. The window-lights
are all extinguished. The few lights on the great boulevards are so
dimmed that their luminosity is about that of a healthy firefly in June
back home. One gropes his way about, feeling ahead of him and
navigating cautiously, even the main boulevards.

The first time I walked down the streets of this great city at night I
had the same feeling that I had on the Atlantic. I was sailing without
lights, on an unknown course, and I felt every minute that I would bump
into some unseen human craft, as indeed I did, both a feminine craft
and a male craft. I also had the feeling that in this particular city,
in the darkness I might be submarined by a city human U-boat, which
would slip up behind me. After having my second trip here I still have
that feeling as I walk the streets; the unlighted streets of this city,
and especially the side-streets, by night.


FRENCH CITY DURING RAID

But the one time when you catch the very heart and soul of the lights
o' war is when you happen to drop into a French city while the Boches
are making a raid overhead. I have had this experience in towns and
villages and cities. At the signal of the siren the lights of the
entire city suddenly snuff out, and the city or town or village is in
total darkness. Candles may be lighted and are lighted, but on the
whole one either walks the dark streets flashing his electric "Ever
Ready," or huddled up in a subway or in a cellar, or in a hallway
listening to the barrage of defense guns and to the bombs dropping,
watches and listens and waits in total darkness, and while he waits he
isn't certain half the time whether the noise he hears is the dropping
of German bombs or the beating of his own heart. Both make entirely
too much noise for peace and comfort.

As one approaches the front-line cities and towns he learns something
more about the lights o' war. It is dark. He is in a little town and
must go to another town nearer the front lines. He is standing at the
depot (gare). No lights are visible save here and there an absolutely
necessary red or green light, which is veiled dimly. His train pulls
silently in. There is not a single light on it from one end to the
other. It creeps in like a great snake. There is nobody to tell you
whether this is your train or not, but you take a chance and climb into
a compartment which is pitch-dark.


HEARS AMERICAN VOICE

You have a ticket that calls for first-class military compartment, but
you climbed into the first open door you saw, and didn't know and
didn't care whether it was first, second, third, or tenth class just so
you got on your way. Your eyes soon became accustomed to the darkness
and you discerned two or three forms in the seat opposite you. You
wondered if they were French, Italians, Belgians, English, Australians,
Canadians, Moroccans, Algerians, or Americans. It was too dark to see,
but suddenly you heard a familiar voice saying, "Gosh, I wish I was
back in little ole New York," and you made a grab in the darkness for
that lad's hand.

Copyright (c) 2007. knowncrafts.net. All rights reserved.