Priests in the firing line

RIESTS IN TH
1 FIRING LINE

^J

RENE GAELL

H

■ ■■'": ■"'--...-■-.■,—• ^-"i^nan-^^nTt^ir-?:^^

PRIESTS IN THE FIRING LINE

Photo: Topical.]

Wounded Warriors decorated at the Invalided.

PRIESTS IN THE
FIRING LINE

BY

RENE GAELL

TRANSLATED BY

H. HAMILTON GIBBS and MADAME BERTON

WITH EIGHT ILLUSTRATIONS

LONGMANS, GREEN AND CO
39 PATERNOSTER ROW, LONDON

FOURTH AVENUE & 30th STREET, NEW YORK

BOMBAY, CALCUTTA, AND MADRAS

I9l6

All rights reserved

CONTENTS

CHAPTER

I.

II.

III.

IV.
V.
VI.
VII.
VIII.
IX.
X.
XI.
XII.
XIII.
XIV.
XV.
XVI.
XVII.
XVIII.
XIX.

PAGE

The Call to Duty '

The Story of the Wounded Man .... 10

A Soldier's Deathbed l9

The Priests are there 3°

Mass under Shell-fire 43

Suffering that Smiles 57

Three Heroes 69

Absolution before the Battle 87

The Blood of Priests 98

Types of Wounded Men II2

How they Die I26

The Medal J38

A Breton 1S2

The Confession on the Parapet . . . . 167

A Cheerful Set i8j

Number 127 *98

A Mass for the Enemy 209

«lAM BRINGING YOU THE BLESSED SACRAMENT " 225

The Last Blessing 235

LIST OF ILLUSTRATIONS

FACING PAGE

Wounded Warriors decorated at the Invalides

Frontispiece

Celebration of the Mass in Excavation made by

Explosion of a Mine under German Trench

and captured by the French i

" The Last Post " 24

Celebrating Mass at Dawn behind the Trenches . 52

High Mass at the Front 94

Good Friday at the Front 178

Blessing the Tomb of a Soldier in a Cemetery at

the Front 207

Mass in a Trench 230

PRIESTS IN THE FIRING
LINE

CHAPTER I

THE CALL TO DUTY

" It's no joke, this time," said my old friend the
General.

These words were uttered on the evening of the
International Congress at Lourdes.

Hearts and voices were raised in prayer.

I, too, was rilled with the thought of a peace
which seemed as though it could have no end.

But the General was filled with quite other
thoughts. " No," he said, with that fine strength
which is capable of facing the saddest emergencies
and of stilling the fever which the thought of the
dreaded future sends rushing to the brain. "No,
it's no joke this time. . . . War is upon us."

And he began to explain the international
complications, the appalling pride of Germany
faced by two alternatives, to expand or to perish.

He showed me the uselessness of diplomacy —

B

2 PRIESTS IN THE FIRING LINE

the treachery of international peace-parties —
the rush of events towards the inevitable yet
outrageous catastrophe.

In a week or perhaps less, millions of men would
receive marching orders, and Europe would be
bathed in blood.

Five days later, I left a deserted Lourdes. I
read on the cover of my military certificate my
destination for the first time . . . my destination
. . . my orders to rejoin my unit . . . and that
simple piece of paper suddenly spoke to me with
formidable eloquence.

I was a soldier, and this time it was " no joke."
I was going to light. The citizen in me shuddered,
as every one shuddered in those first terrible
hours whose emotion still prolongs itself and is not
likely to end soon.

But the priest in me felt bigger, more human.
To every one who asked if I were going too, I
replied, " Yes, but not to kill — to heal, to succour,
to absolve."

I felt those tear-filled eyes gaze wistfully at me,
and that in passing, I left behind me a feeling
of trust, of comfort.

A mother, whose five sons were going to the
front, and who was seated near me in the train,
said in a strong voice, but with the tears streaming
down her cheeks : ' They have scattered priests

THE CALL TO DUTY 3

in all the regiments. You will be everywhere. . . .
It is God's revenge ! "

How much anguish has been soothed, how many
sacrifices have been accepted more bravely, at the
thought, " they will be there."

It was at the headquarters of a certain division
of the Medical Service, during the first days of
mobilisation.

There, as everywhere, feverish preparation was
going on — a tumultuous activity. Through the
big town, the first regiment passed on their way
to the firing line.

How the fine fellows were acclaimed, how they
were embraced !

There were a thousand of us already, and we
were the first to be called up. Half of us were
priests, and our clerical garb attracted a lot of
sympathy. The love of our country and the
love of God so long separated were now as one.
It is no longer time to scoff or to be indifferent to
religion. People now wrung us by the hand, and
came close up to us.

An officer came up to us and before that
enormous assembly of men, said : " Gentlemen, I
should like to embrace each one of you in the
name of every mother in France. ... If only
you knew how they count on you, those women,
and how they bless you for what you are going to

4 PRIESTS IN THE FIRING LINE

be to their sons. We don't know the words that
bring strength and healing, and we are ignorant
of the prayers that solace the last agony . . . but
you. . . ." And at the words, he wept, without
attempting to hide his feelings. He already
realised the immensity of the sacrifice, and the
powerlessness of man to bring consolation to those
struck down in their first manhood.

No, it was no longer " a joke " this time, and
every one felt it and showed it by their respectful
looks and manner.

The others, those millions of men on their way
to the front, were starting for the unknown.

We, on the other hand, knew well what lay
before us ... we should have to succour the
wounded and throw wide the Gates of Heaven
for them to enter in — we should have to dress
their wounds and arouse courage in those crushed,
by the burden too heavy for mere flesh and blood
to bear.

Never had we felt such apostles . . . never had
our hearts dilated with such brotherly feeling.

"Attention!"

Instantly there was dead silence. In imagina-
tion we saw nothing but those far-off battlefields.

Our names were called, and we were allotted
our several tasks. First the stretcher-bearers.
There was a long list of these, and in two hours

THE CALL TO DUTY 5

they were to set out for the front, to pick up the
wounded in the firing line.

From time to time the officer broke the
monotony of the roll-call by trenchant remarks
— such as one makes on those occasions when
one has accepted one's share of sacrifice simply
because it's one's duty to do so.

" You will be just as exposed as those who are
fighting. The enemy will fire on the ambulances ;
and the Red Cross on your armlets and on the
buildings will not protect you from German
bullets.,,

The list was growing longer. In their turn men
of thirty and forty received the badges of their
devotedness.

" There are many of you who will never come
back. Your courage will only be the finer. They
may kill you, but you will not be able to kill.
Your sole duty is to love suffering in spite of
everything, no matter how mutilated the being
may be who falls across your path, and who cries
for pity."

" Even the Boches ? "

The officer smiled, then said almost regretfully :
" Even the Boches."

Amongst us there was a hum of dissent.

" I quite understand," said the officer, "but
when you remember that your duty is that of

6 PRIESTS IN THE FIRING LINE

heroism without thought of revenge — just pure
heroism, that of apostles who are made of the
stuff martyrs are made of. . . ."

He who had protested, and who happened to be
standing next to me, was a dear old friend of mine,
one of those valiant souls who fear nothing and
nobody. He was a fine, soldierly priest.

He was among the number of those who were
off to the front, and his face had lit up when he
heard his name called.

" Thank Heaven ! I was so afraid of being
left behind."

To be left behind was a kind of disgrace we
felt . . . and we old territorials who were to be
sent to the hospitals in the west, felt it badly.

The Abbe Duroy was already living it all in
spirit. His eyes saw the near future and his heart
beat with joy at the thought of his great work.
He was going down to the terrible " la-bas," to
anguish unspeakable and to death, and in his
person, I thought I saw all the priests of France
going towards the frontiers, invested with the
divine mission of opening the gates to eternal life
to those who were quitting this poor mortal life.

When we had separated, in order to pack our
traps, Duroy took me apart.

11 You are jealous," he said.

" Why not ? "

THE CALL TO DUTY 7

" I understand. After all this new life is part
of our very being. Do you think though that
it was necessary to be mobilised in order to do
what we are doing ? For twenty years, always, we
have been patriots . . . soldiers who blessed and
upheld.' '

There was a bugle call. It was the first signal
for departure. He held out his hand . . . our
eyes met and spoke the same great thought, the
same great fear.

I was the weaker man, and the question which
wrung my heart, escaped to my lips.

" When shall we meet again ? "

He, proud and stern at the thought of danger,
repeated my words.

" Shall we meet again ? "

Then he broke the short silence. " To die like
that, and only thirty. . . . I'm afraid I don't
deserve such a grace."

Then becoming the true soldier he always was,
he struck me on the shoulder and said —

" I've an idea, old friend. I'll write to you
from ' la-bas,' as often as I can . . . and from
the impressions you get, joined to mine, I'm sure
you'll be able to write some touching pages.
I am your War Correspondent."

He embraced me, and I felt that his promise
was one of those which are kept.

8 PRIESTS IN THE FIRING LINE

He at the front, I in a hospital, both with
different risks to run, occupied with the same
tasks ... it was indeed a tempting offer.

And that is why I am writing this book. It
will contain nothing but the truth, written amid
suffering and blood.

I was made orderly in a hospital which could
be reached neither by German shells nor by their
Taubes.

Notwithstanding, I learned great though terrible
lessons from sufferings endured for a sublime
cause.

Sometimes, as I write, I find on my hands
traces of the blood which has flowed from the
wounds I have been dressing for hours at a
time.

My white apron, now become my uniform, is
red in places, and in this corner of the ward where
our children sleep or groan, I feel at times the
appalling horrors of war. I share the sufferings
of the others.

A boy of nineteen, whose left arm had been
shattered, said one evening, when I was endeavour-
ing to bring peace and resignation to his heart :
" All the same, its jolly nice to be taken care of
by you, in our wretchedness."

And when I tried to make him say precisely in
what the " jolly niceness" consisted, he drew me

THE CALL TO DUTY 9

close to him like a winning child and whispered :
" It's because you love us."

To love them. It is our task, our duty, our one
passionate desire. Every one accords them
human kindness, we lavish on them divine charity.

An old campaigner in Morocco, whose shattered
fingers had been amputated, called out the other
day in the ward : "I don't care if I am a bit
damaged, so long as one has a priest to look after
one, that's all right."

At the present moment, twenty thousand
French priests are tending the wounded. More
than ever God is watching over our homeland.

CHAPTER II

THE STORY OF THE WOUNDED MAN

It was night-time, and I could hear the hours
striking, hours which would have been long if I
had not had beside me moaning and groaning,
suffering to be consoled. We had had to wait
for them for a fortnight, but there they were now,
filling the great dormitories of a school which had
been turned into a military hospital, where we
had joined our post in the war. They suffer in
silence, or when in the throes of a hideous night-
mare, they scream and groan with the torture
their mutilated bodies wrings from them.

I went up to a bed over which the lamp shed
a subdued light. There lay a young fellow of
about twenty, awakened by the intensity of his
suffering. I had seen him but a short time before
on his stretcher, a poor broken thing, his eyes
staring, with the horrors of his dreadful journey
still pictured in them.

What appalling scenes had I read in them.
All the horrors of war had become present to me.

THE STORY OF THE WOUNDED MAN n

Stretched out motionless on his stretcher, he
looked like a corpse, whose eyes had not been
properly closed, indifferent to all around him.
Then, when we had lifted him, and with such care,
he began to scream and cry out. A doctor should
have dressed his wounds at the front, but they had
not been done for four days. On being lifted up,
his shattered leg, cramped and asleep, gave him
excruciating pain, and his whole body writhed
as though it had been on the rack.

I had noticed this young Marseillais, with his
child's face among all the other wounded men,
and I had been attracted by his youth and his
sufferings.

I went up to his bed. I leant over him, and
said with the instinctive gentleness which com-
passion inspires one with : " You are suffering,
my child ? "

Without answering, he withdrew his burning
hand from mine, and put his arm round my neck.

" Father," he said, in a weak voice, " Father,
am I going to die ? "

What answer could I make ? I didn't know ;
besides, even when one is sure, one can't say it
out brutally like that.

Then the poor boy guessed I had misunderstood
him, and his proud, brave soul wished to keep the
glory of the soldier, who has braved danger without

12 PRIESTS IN THE FIRING LINE

flinching. Now he defied death and found strength
to smile.

" Oh ! I'm not a bit afraid, but I wanted to
ask you. . . ."

He stopped and began to cry. He drew me
still closer to him. He was no coward, this young
trooper. One felt it instinctively. I knew that
this lad who had lived through the bloody epopee,
was not to be approached by maddening fear.
His heart was stamped with virility. A month's
campaign had made of him an old soldier, who
had gone through tragic adventures.

" No, I'm not afraid. I've seen so many die
all around me, that I don't care a scrap whether
I live or die. But. . . . It's my mother, I'm
thinking of. If I die, she won't understand, and
it will kill her too."

Little by little the sighs and moans had ceased
in the darkened ward. Only his solemn words
broke the silence. Everything else faded away
at the meeting of the two beings, at that supreme
moment, more than mere men, the soldier and the
priest, to whom France has confided the guarding
of her frontiers and the treasure of her ideal.

Then, knowing how nature rebounds, and
trusting to the hardy stock from which he sprang t
I dared to assure him that he was not mortally
wounded.

THE STORY OF THE WOUNDED MAN 13

" No, my child, you won't die, you are too
young to die." A sceptical smile stopped
me.

" And what about those others ' la-bas ' ? "

All the same, I don't believe that we shall not
be able to save the poor, mangled body. The
head doctor, whose diagnosis is never wrong,
said only a little while ago that he would save
him.

" I tell you, you will recover."

The poor fellow looked at me, and this time
believed me. He raised himself a little, made the
sign of the cross, and whispered —

" You must pray for me."

He closed his eyes in prayer, and I could
no longer see him, for the tears in my own.
To comfort him, I placed my hand on his
breast.

He winced. " Forgive me, father, I've had a
bullet through there too."

Not only had he a shattered leg, but a bullet
had gone through his breast, and another had
gone just above his heart.

His shirt was red with blood which had oozed
through the dressings. Somehow it did not
occur to me to think of his great suffering. He
seemed more like a martyr broken on the wheel,
with a halo round his head. This young boy,

14 PRIESTS IN THE FIRING LINE

who knew how to suffer so well, must have fought
magnificently.

And I thought as I raised my hand to bless him :
" How fine he is ! "

Four medals hung round his neck, and he held
them out for me to kiss them.

They tasted of blood, and I still have the strange
taste on my lips of those medals which had lain
over the wound, which bled above his heart.

" That one, the biggest, was given me by a
priest down there in the ambulance, which was an
old farm once, and whose walls are riddled with
shells. What a night it was ! and what an amount
of blood there was about ! "

My young Marseillais writhed, not with the
pain from his wounds, but with the fearful remem-
brance of that night. The horror of that super-
human agony took possession of his mind. I
wanted him to sleep, but words poured from his
lips, in his fever. It was useless to try to stop
him, so I let him tell me his sad tale.

" We had been fighting all day long, and felt
death stalking beside us all day too. It was like a
frightful tempest, like hell let loose. Bullets fell
round us like hail, and I saw my comrades fall
at my side cut in half or blown into bits by shell
fire. They uttered no cries, they were wiped out
instantaneously. But the others . . . those who

THE STORY OF THE WOUNDED MAN 15

were still alive. ... I can tell you it was enough
to make your blood run cold. It was enough to
make one go raving mad."

He stopped to drink a little. I thought he was
exhausted with the effort of recalling the awful
scene.

" Try to rest now, my child. You shall tell
me the rest to-morrow."

But he would not listen to me. Up to now, it
was the man who had been speaking, now
suddenly the soldier awoke, the lover of his
country, the French trooper fascinated by the
glory of it all.

" It was so sad, yet so fine. War may kill you,
but it makes you drunk ; in spite of everything
one had to laugh. I don't know what makes
one laugh at such times. . . . Something great
and splendid passes before one's eyes. . . . There
is danger, but there is excitement, and it's that
which attracts us. . . . The captain was standing,
we were lying down. From time to time he
would say : ' It's all right, boys. . . . We're
making a fine mess of the Huns ! Can you hear
the 75 's singing ? '

" So well were they singing that, over there,
helmets were falling like nuts which one shells
when they're ripe. Their voices shook the ground,
and each of their cries went to our hearts and made

16 PRIESTS IN THE FIRING LINE

them beat the higher. Then we sprang up to
rush forward, and then we flung ourselves down
again flat, as above us the bullets whistled in their
thousands.' '

He squeezed my hand tighter then, as if to
drive home the truth of his story.

" You see, it was fine in spite of everything.
Even when a bullet laid you low. ... It hap-
pened to me about six o'clock, just as the captain
fell, shouting ' Forward, men, and at them with
the bayonets ! ' We went forward to the
attack. In front of us we saw nothing but the
flames from the cannons . . . our ears were
deafened with the cry of the shells. I took ten
steps. We were walking in flames. It was red
everywhere, as far as one could see. Suddenly
a thunderbolt burst in the middle of us. ... I
fell near a comrade, brought down at the same
time as I was.

" It was the chaplain of the division, a reservist,
aged twenty-eight, who called out to me, laugh-
ing : ' You've got it in the leg, old man, I've got
it in my shoulder ! '

" He was drenched with blood, and still he
went on joking. Then, suddenly, he became
serious, and he began speaking like a priest
speaks to the dying.

" ' Now, my children, make an act of contrition.

THE STORY OF THE WOUNDED MAN 17

Repeat after me with your whole heart, 'My
God, I am sorry for my sins ; forgive me ! '

" I can see him now, half raised on his elbow ;
his unwounded hand was raised, while the poor
fellow blessed us all, as we prayed God to have
mercy on those who would never rise again.

" I saw him again in the field hospital, half an
hour later. He was breathing with difficulty,
but he kept on smiling. It was then that he gave
me his medal.

" He died, with his rosary in his hands, and I
looked at him for a long time when he had
breathed his last. His face was like an angel's,
and the blood went on flowing. . . .

" I remember that the doctor stopped at this
moment, and bent over him. Then standing
upright he called the other orderlies round and
pointed to the dead man :

" ' There's a man who knew how to die finely.
The poor devils who die before us so often, are
sometimes sorry for themselves. This poor
fellow has had no thought but for others for the
last two hours. Look at him, he is still smiling.' '

The wounded boy stopped, his heart was
torn at the thought of his friend. He too forgot
his suffering in thinking of the priest whose
absolution had strengthened and consoled him in
his torture. I gave him something to drink ; he

c

18 PRIESTS IN THE FIRING LINE

kissed his medals, especially the big one, his
precious legacy, and went off to sleep without
dreaming that he had told me a sublime story.

There were twenty-four like him in the ward,
and seeing them stretched out there overcome by
pain, I told myself that the humblest among them,
the most illiterate peasant even, had his share of
glory, and that they were all transfigured by the
halo round their heads.

Somehow, that first evening in the wards, I
felt that I too had my share of courage and of
usefulness.

Down there, in the firing line, they had found
wherewith to feed their pride ; here, the young
heroes would be able to unburden their souls.
At the front they had seen the living France.
In this hospital, perhaps, they would come face
to face with God, forgotten, misunderstood,
abandoned — God who is so good to those who
fall in battle.

A letter from Duroy, come from the thick of
it all, convinced me that God had wished His
priests to be side by side with His soldiers.

My dear old friend, Duroy, described to me his
baptism of fire.

CHAPTER III

a soldier's deathbed

On this letter from the priest, who had seen the
gigantic battle, there was mud and blood. I
don't know what mud nor whose blood stained
it, but it seemed to me that an entire and sorrow-
ful poem could be read in these dark stains. They
bore the marks of the defended ground, the proofs
of the frightful sacrifice by whose price hardly-
won victory is bought.

" This time, my dear friend, I am at the post
of honour and of danger. It is admirable and
terrible. One may die there, and that enchants
one. Classed as non-combatants, we are sent into
the thick of shell-fire, destined to pick up the
victims, we are officially fired on by the Prussians.

" Everything that is fine, human and generous
attracts the fury of these wild beasts who have
been let loose. They shoot every one, they
destroy the ambulances, and pour grape shot on
the Red Cross.

" So that it is to danger as well as to devotedness
19

20 PRIESTS IN THE FIRING LINE

that we are invited, and it is to me an unspeakable

joy.

" I'd like to make you understand the extent of
this joy, the thrilling pride I felt last evening when
my unit were setting out to pick up the wounded,
in the firing line, hardly a hundred yards behind
our infantry who were attacking.

" The major gave us his recommendations and
the last orders. He was struck at seeing so many
budding moustaches, and beards.

" ' Heavens ! I only see priests to the fore ! '

" ' Priests to the fore ! ' That is indeed our
motto. Our comrades say we are rash. All the
same, they are as rash as we are. They go to the
bloody business laughing, we go praying. There is
danger for all of us, but the joy of devoting one-
self, makes one defy it.

" Still, without boasting, I own that one has to
have pluck and self-control to go, carrying a
stretcher, into that hell.

" Often you hear the wounded say that a
soldier feels daring and sure of himself as long as
he has his gun under his arm ; once that's gone
he loses his balance and his fine courage wavers.

" So that, to us priests who never have a gun,
and who are flesh and blood like them, you can
judge how sometimes our flesh creeps. But we
go ahead just the same ... we go ahead because

A SOLDIER'S DEATHBED 21

its the finest thing to do. Besides, ' la-bas ' the
poor fellows await us, moaning, crying or in their
last agony. . . .

" They wait for the stretcher-bearer ; they hope
for a priest. To what magnificent repentances
have I given absolution ! It seems as though one
saw them go straight to heaven, so sure is one
that God accepts sacrifice and rewards it. . . ."

My friend Duroy, like a truly brave man, has
every kind of courage, great and small, that which
one must have to brave death, and that other,
which I admire, to write to his friends, between
two expeditions to the battlefield.

That first letter gave me his general impressions,
like a picture of the whole of the greatness of the
task to which priests are vowed in this tragic
time.

Others have reached me, scrawled in haste with
a blunt pencil. Half sheets, torn, dirty, stained,
brought me an echo of the great epopee in tele-
graphese from which I have gathered together
words which I should like to have engraved on a
golden casket.

" It is evening, night has fallen. Step by step,
the moving wall, the living frontier of breasts,
has gained ground on the pushed-back invader.
Every yard of conquered ground has cost masses
of human lives. It is another red-letter day

22 PRIESTS IN THE FIRING LINE

written in the pages of history with floods of
blood.

" The battle is still going on, and terrible
aerolites, which explode with the noise of thunder,
pass overhead.

" On all sides are corpses and soldiers lying
down. Some drag themselves along, and crawl
on their knees, on their elbows, to seek some sort
of hiding-place. Others lie there and turn and
twist themselves about in useless, desperate
endeavour. Sometimes voices wrung with pain
are abruptly silenced in the middle of a terrible,
half-finished shriek. It is a bullet or a piece of
shrapnel which, with that cruel irony of uncon-
scious things, puts an end to an already maimed
existence.

"In front, the fight goes on, without pity,
relentless, furious, — the day's conflict which goes
on beneath the stars/' From the midst of the
frightful noise which maddens the brain, and
makes the strongest hearts tremble, Duroy
writes that one must have heard it in order to
compass its full horror. " By the side of it, the
noise of thunder is but the faint beating of the
drums.

" On the tracks of death, which has moved
further away, comes charity, pity which consoles,
devotion which restores. Here come the stretcher-

A SOLDIER'S DEATHBED 23

bearers, who range over the field of battle and
gather up those who still breathe.

" Here and there, lights gleam in the darkness,
and each one brings hope. From the depths of
the darkness, eyes follow them suppliantly, and
voices call to them.

"It is help that comes, humanity that passes,
charity that bends down, over motionless suffering.

" Now that the tempest is muffled, the voices on
the battlefield are clearer and more despairing.

"It is a sad concert of cries for help. Here,
come here ! . . . carry me. My legs are broken
. . . my chest is riddled. I'm bleeding to death ! ' ;
The harvest of death hastens on. Often, beneath
the glimmer of a lantern, a hand is raised above
a drooping head. A gentle murmur is heard
above the far-off moan of the cannons, and of
the nearer cries of the suffering.

It is a priest who cures the soul before picking
up the body. The Abbe Duroy is filled with the
desire of saving souls. He has no other thought
at such a time. With one of his fellow-priests,
he has already picked up a number of wounded,
and they have returned, with an empty litter,
to load it up again with a new and sorrowful
burden, when a cry which predominates over the
others, stops them, while they listen to hear from
whence it comes.

24 PRIESTS IN THE FIRING LINE

It is further on, on a slope, near a hedge.
Quite near them, they hear another cry from a
ditch by the roadside.

" Take me away."

They put down the stretcher.
1 You pick up this one," said the other priest ;
"I'll go and see to the other."

Duroy looks for the wounded man in the
ditch. Poor wretch ! his shoulder has been
shattered, and his arm is nearly severed.

" Shall I give you absolution, my poor child ?
I'm a priest."

The poor fellow, exhausted, replies, " Yes,"
with a sign of his head.

" Don't tire yourself ; I will recite the act of
contrition for you."

Another soul reconciled ; another who will
die, and shortly, for he swoons, and his face,
utterly bloodless, becomes that of a corpse.
Suddenly the priest, who is trying to lift up the
dying soldier, starts, and stands up. Two shots
have been fired quite near, over by the mound
where his comrade has gone to help the poor
wretch who was calling so loudly for help.

" Help ! "

It is the voice of his companion, and the
voice is that of one who suffers, who has been
struck down.

A SOLDIER'S DEATHBED 25

Duroy rushes towards the hedge. A vague,
but poignant fear oppresses his heart when he
arrives. No one is standing, but by the light
of the overturned lantern, he sees his friend,
stretched on his back, his arms behind him.

In front of him is a wounded German bran-
dishing a still smoking revolver.

The priest had fallen on his uu. ' *i
charity, killed by this broken-legged brute, whose
savage hatred still burnt brightly. The German
officer had fired his revolver at a peaceful Red
Cross soldier.

" Then/' Duroy wrote, " a wild rage took
possession of me at this abominable murder, and I
too understood at that moment the horrible night-
mare of seeing red. I wanted to save my friend,
struck down in so cowardly a way by the German
assassin. It was useless ; two bullets through
the heart had struck him down, and the terrible
cry I had heard was almost a voice from beyond
the grave.

" Then, seeing that that life had escaped me,
an irresistible feeling of vengeance shook me to
the soul. This thought forced itself into my
mind, ' the man is a robber, and mine is a legiti-
mate case of defence.' I picked up a gun at the
end of which was, sharp and fatal, a bayonet, and
I sprang towards the decorated ruffian.

26 PRIESTS IN THE FIRING LINE

"The coward began to yell, but with fright
this time, putting his hands above his head as
their soldiers do when they give themselves up to
our troopers. And it was pitiful, and unheard-of,
I assure you, to see the terror of the ignoble
brute, threatened with death.

" I stopped myself in front of him, and another
strength than mine unlocked the grip of my hands,
and the gun fell to the ground. The priest in me
overcame the man, and the voice of my priesthood
protested violently in my heart. * You are not
here to right, and you have no right to kill even
the man who has massacred your brother. Your
sole duty here is to do good. One cannot put an
end to the wounded, even criminals. Leave to
others the war which is their task. Yours is to
pick up and to succour the wounded without
knowing whether he deserves your forbearance
or anger.' I did right, did I not ? Several
stretcher-bearers, attracted by the shots, came
running up. They too guessed what had hap-
pened, and three of them threw themselves on to
the Prussian, who began to moan from the pain
of the wound which his effort had reopened."

But Duroy stood in front of him, and defended
with all his strength the murderer of his friend.

" No, you shall not do that ; you have no
right to."

A SOLDIER'S DEATHBED 27

And the others recognised that the priest was
right.

His conscience imposed the rule of humanity.
The sanctity of his priesthood overcame their
doubts and appeased their desire for vengeance.
They felt that the voice of charity proclaimed the
true moral law.

" It is not our business to administer justice."

The doctor who was at the head of their
detachment came up to them. He looked with
disgust on the assassin. However, he bent over
him, verified the horrible wounds which had
broken his bones, then addressing the two men,
he said —

" Take him away."

Duroy, helped by several of his comrades, put
the body of his friend on to a litter, and went
off across the field of death, reciting the " De
Profundis."

All night long, these valiant fellows went over
hill and dale, for fear of missing even one wounded
man.

But, each time he went back to the ambulance,
my friend made a pious visit to his fellow-priest,
in order to draw from the sight of the great
sacrifice a renewal of courage for the terrible
work.

Then, in the morning, when these good workers,

28 PRIESTS IN THE FIRING LINE

tired out, stretched themselves out on the straw
to snatch a little necessary sleep, Duroy went
off to dig a grave in a little orchard which the
battle had left untouched, and which was green
and flower-decked. There, surrounded by a few
stretcher-bearers, he recited the prayers which
escort the dead on their last journey.

A few words from his account told me of the
last act of the tragedy. But through those brief
phrases, put down in haste on bad paper, I saw
the drama and I understood the tragic grandeur
of it.

I was moved to tears when I read this last
page of the letter —

" It was a Sunday. We put up the altar over
the grave, in this quiet garden. Several wounded
men had dragged themselves there in order to
pray and meditate. I said Mass for the dead
and the living ... for the present and the
future ... so that the war may be a glorious
one, and for peace in the near future. I had a
sorrowful heart, but it was full of hope. The
Blood of God was mixed with the blood of the
priest-martyr. Nothing was wanting to the
sacrifice : neither the willing victim, nor the
pardon which his soul had desired and which my
lips had pronounced.

" In the distance, with the daylight, the

A SOLDIER'S DEATHBED 29

formidable voice of the guns grew louder and yet
more loud. But one would have said that in the
troubled air from whence rained death, hovered
the picture of Christian priesthood and the grace
of victory besought for by the priests of France."

CHAPTER IV

THE PRIESTS ARE THERE

There was, with us priests of forty and over,
kept in hospitals a long way from the front, a
painful feeling which made us pass through hours
of vexation, almost of humiliation.

"The others are 'la-bas,' and risk their lives.
At the front, they will be in peril, and will pass
through dangerous hours which call for devotion
and prepare for sacrifice."

In these times of virile courage, when the first
dream of everyone is to give oneself madly, to
remain far from the fighting line seemed a loss of
one's manhood. To remain behind seemed to us
almost synonymous with hiding ourselves away.

The first train of wounded gave us back
assurance and self-respect. Before these bruised
beings, these youths cut down in their prime, we
understood the other form of valour, and the
sight of so many hideous wounds gave us the
assurance that we too should have our share in
the work of war.

30

THE PRIESTS ARE THERE 31

One man convinced us of this, and his fine,
apostolic ardour rilled us with the certainty that
kindness to those suffering horribly equals and
sometimes surpasses heroism.

One of the admirable characteristics of this
campaign was the co-operation of the two great
consolers of humanity : the priest and the doctor.

Our head doctor had left, voluntarily, an
immense practice where he was the saviour of
despaired-of cases.

He was imbued with vigorous strength aided by
immense talent, and whose professional boldness
bore the mark of unruffled knowledge always on
its guard against dangerous impulses.

He believed in his priesthood and all his efforts
were directed to the more perfect fulfilment of
it. His soul was united to ours, and he knew
that we understood the generosity of it, and
delicate sentiments which can appreciate fine
feelings to their full. A feeling of brotherliness
had established itself between him and us. He
knew that he could ask anything of us, for he
knew our desires, and never doubted of our good
will always ready for work, night and day.

He wanted priests to serve him, and it was a
security for him. He had the assurance that we
should finish his task. Our care would continue
the work of his medical intervention. He called

32 PRIESTS IN THE FIRING LINE

us " my innrmarians " with a solicitude in which
was a streak of pride. In the operating theatre,
which had been a school, now transformed, he
wished the Crucifix to remain. And when
grumblers remarked that neutrals might object to
it, he said — he who is not a practising Catholic —

" I don't know what you mean."

And the Crucifix remained. The symbol of
divine suffering, it looks down on human suffering.
More than one wounded man whom we have laid
on that table of suffering sent forth a cry of faith
to it as the chloroform began to work in his brain.

What an amount of blood we have seen shed,
and which was in the main, that of the great
sacrifice of " la-bas " continued beneath our eyes.

Those diminished members, those hewn
flanks, those cut-off fingers, how they conjured
up the bloody vision of the shambles, and gave
us the illusion of being witnesses of the massacres,
necessary for the living triumph of our country.

Men of peace, we had our share in the tragic
horrors, but Christian thoughts and the comfort
they bring with them, softened the cruel emotions
which they awoke in our breasts.

Those men, whose life might ebb away in a
rebound of the compromised organism, were in
our hands. And whatever one might do, the
priest at certain times, completes the infirmarian,

THE PRIESTS ARE THERE 33

and through the human task the divine offices
assert themselves.

The little Marseillais of whom I have spoken
was gloomy for a few days. His big wound had
been more painful, and he had had a relapse,
which had exasperated him.

The poor lad no longer had that gaiety of
the first days, and which with all French soldiers
asserts itself more than ever as the pain grows
worse. It is a way we have of defying suffering,
one of the admirable forms of the fine streaks
which every man has in him and which he shows
in hours of uneasiness, of peril and of trial.

It lasts sometimes ! but a young man,
wounded as our young friend was, cannot see for
long, without dismay, his shattered leg, and in
consequence his life in danger.

He laughed at his pain, and humbugged us,
showing his courage. And we admired him,
thinking: "What wonderful resources our fine
race has, if a being cut down in his splendid
youth can accept thus, the sacrifice after having
defied death in so downright a manner."

The lad was sad. He watched the doctor's
hands while they examined the wound and
found fresh tender places. He tried to read the
thoughts and opinion of the doctor in his eyes
. . . perhaps, who could tell, his doom.

D

34 PRIESTS IN THE FIRING LINE

The head doctor knew the danger of letting
the patient know too much about himself — the
madness of despair. He was, to a certain extent,
unmoved by the dangers of the complications,
which he discovered. But he, too, was a Father,
and having suffered in his affections, allowed his
tender pity to be seen.

He frowned slightly, almost imperceptibly, but
it was enough to make the poor boy uneasy, for
he had hoped in vain for a reassuring word . Then,
his fear and extreme anguish was revealed in the
following words —

" It's very bad, Doctor. I'm done for this
time, eh ? "

The Major began to laugh. " Hold your tongue,
you little fool. At your age, is one ever done for ?
It's quite certain that you won't be able to walk
in two days, but we'll put you straight, my lad,
never fear."

And as the wounded boy remained pensive,
he insisted, and pretended to be quite certain.

" Such a sore ! You'll see how jolly you'll be
when I've performed a small operation on you."

" Oh," wailed the poor fellow, " you're going
to operate on me ? "

" I shall jolly well have to, if I'm to send you
back whole to your mother."

" When will you do it, Major? "

THE PRIESTS ARE THERE 35

" Presently, my young friend. It'll be over in
five minutes."

He patted him on the cheek. " Hurry up and
laugh ! "

And he awoke in the boy's soul the courage he
knew to be there.

" You're not afraid, by any chance ? "

The youth sat up. "I? Good Lord, no. Who
told you I was afraid ? "

The musketeer revealed himself in the young
trooper, who for more than a month had behaved
heroically under fire.

As we followed in the doctor's wake, we heard
our young Marseillais still protesting and saying
to his comrades —

" Pah ! funky, Good Lord, I don't know what
funk is ! "

When it was no longer necessary for the doctor
to hide his anxiety, he said in a low tone —

" Poor chap, if only it isn't too late."

These words rilled us with sorrow, we weren't
used to these tragic things. Our hearts were
wrung, and we wanted to comfort our little friend
with hopeful words, and to say to him —

" Don't be afraid, we are by your side, and our
prayers will give you strength."

But already a note of gaiety rang through our
sadness.

36 PRIESTS IN THE FIRING LINE

In front of the operating theatre, a big chatter-
box of a Zouave was gesticulating and amusing
a jeering audience by his droll remarks.

" Oh no ! I won't be put to sleep. I'd rather
die first, than be laid out on the table, like a
corpse."

This fellow went by no other name but that of
his wound. For two days he had been called
" Bullet in the back." Besides, that's why he
walked bent double.

The Major took him gently by the arm.
" Come along, my lad."

But he drew back and tried to impose his
conditions.

" No chloroform, then, please, Doctor. You
must do it just as I am ..."

" I shall do what is necessary, my friend. It's
not your business."

The Zouave, who didn't agree to that, made a
gesture.

" I beg your pardon, my skin's my own, and
my carcase too, I suppose."

The table stood there, draped in white, and
looked like some nightmarish beast standing up
on its thin hind legs.

When the Zouave saw it, he stopped on the
threshold, and let fall a bad swear- word, which he
covered up by adding hastily, in perfect taste —

THE PRIESTS ARE THERE 37

" Ah ! none of that for me, thanks."

He was pulled and pushed about, like one
condemned to death, and his despairing protests
only met with shouts of laughter from the other
room. Pity would have been misplaced, for the
wound was not a dangerous one, and would leave
no evil results.

" Come, now, you great noodle," said the Major,
'* you don't want to remain all your life like that,
with German lead in your loins ? "

That sufficed to encourage the good man, and
he vented his spleen on the Boches then.

" The . . . ! at any rate try to put me straight
so that I can go back and give them a jolly good
licking ..."

Then he undressed bravely, and as they were
about to help him on to the table, he said —

" Leave me alone; hang it all, I'm still capable
of hopping on to the perch."

A few minutes later, he was reduced to silence
and lay motionless. The bullet had gone in a
long way, to the left of the spinal cord. The
doctor's hand, that clever surgeon's hand, which
seemed to be gifted with sight, felt about in the
blood, and did not mistake the trail. The metal
rang against the forceps, but refused to budge, like
a hunted beast defends itself in its lair.

An adjutant whispered to us. " If you want

38 PRIESTS IN THE FIRING LINE

to know if the bullet is coming out, look at the
chief's face, not at his fingers."

In truth, so long as the projectile resisted, his
face revealed the anxiety of his thoughts and the
talent which rights every obstacle. There was
silence round the table. Each one of us seemed
to share in his preoccupation and to feel the
resistance.

Suddenly his features relaxed their tension.
His eyes spoke before his lips. He had got it.
His forceps brought it out, red and twisted.

" There it is, the pig ! "

As the Zouave heard the remark, in his semi-con-
sciousness, he muttered between his pallid lips —

" Ah— ah— the dirty brute."

We carried him off to his bed, where doubtless
the pain of the deep incision made him dream
that he had got a whole shell in his back from a
Boche cannon.

All the same, the German rubbish was no
longer in his body. It lay on a table beside
him, waiting the moment when it would hang as
a charm from his girdle, when he returned to the
front to settle his account with the Germans.

The same stretcher brought in the young
Marseillais, whose turn it was now.

One of us went up to him. " Courage, little
one, courage."

THE PRIESTS ARE THERE 39

He'd got plenty of it. He'd got himself well in
hand. The valiant soul of him had mastered the
tortured body. He showed me the four medals
hanging round his neck. They were covered with
drops of sweat.

" Father, you will send them to my mother, if
I don't come to again."

He smiled resignedly, as he looked at the
operating table.

It is there that one feels profoundly the im-
mense sacrifice of the mothers, whose anguish at
knowing that their sons are in danger is doubled
by the torture of uncertainty.

" How is he wounded ? How to get at the truth ?
If, picked up alive on the battlefield, he should
die, far away from me, without my having seen
him again ! "

The young fellow went off quickly, and the
surgeon's business began. There were crushed
bones which had to be removed one by one, an
artery to be careful of, possible haemorrhage which
would be fatal. We anxiously followed the phases
of the operation. Sometimes the body would
give a jerk, there would be a suffocating sigh
beneath the mask ; then there would be a glimpse
of the livid face down which the sweat trickled.

The removal of the crushed bones made us
shudder. We guessed what pain this new, but

40 PRIESTS IN THE FIRING LINE

necessary, wound would give, when he came to.
Tears of emotion rose to our eyes.

The doctor went on unmoved, with his work.
Sometimes he made a short remark, which re-
vealed his well-controlled impatience, and above
all his regret at having to cut away living flesh
and the crushed thigh-bone.

We looked in vain for a sign of hope on his face.
Does one ever know if there is hope for those
wounded who have been left for days and days
without the most indispensable attention ?

The doctor who was giving the chloroform broke
the painful silence.

" The heart's not going. I'm afraid he'll
collapse."

We looked at one another. Supposing he were
going to die, in this way, while our priestly hands
and lips possess the grace of imparting the last
absolution.

One of us spoke our thought. " Would it not
be well to give him absolution ? "

The head doctor did not hesitate. " I think
it would be wise to do so, Father."

Then we witnessed that beautiful and magnifi-
cent spectacle. Eternal faith, which goes beyond
the horizon of our poor human knowledge, took
the place for a moment of human science, which
doubts its own powers.

THE PRIESTS ARE THERE 41

The priest approached, and the learned doctor
moved aside. For one moment, one forgot the
failing body, to think of the soul which entreats.

Bent over the bloodless face, the priest called
down, in a broken voice, the mercy of God, the
greatness of the sacrifice and the grace of con-
trition. Then with his hand which made the
sign of redemption, he confirmed and completed
the virtue of the all-powerful words his lips had
pronounced.

The divine task being accomplished, he moved
away and made room for the scientist who can
still heal.

Our chief worked his " miracle " ; the lad did
not die in our arms. For two whole days we
watched by him in his weakness, often during
those anxious hours we looked for signs of the
turning-point.

Our lad lived. He took the great step. His
hardy youth, aided by his determination to get
over his illness, conquered. We got to love him
still more, for he cost us many an anxious moment,
and his life was precious because we feared to
lose him. Four days later, he wrote to his mother,
that he had felt death very near, when on the
operating table, as he had in the trenches. But
he finished, with the following beautiful sentence,
in which he evoked, with the danger he had run,

42 PRIESTS IN THE FIRING LINE

the beautiful confidence which had remained in
his soul till the end.

" I am saved, my dear mother, thanks to the
surgeon who looked after me. Besides, you know,
even at that terrible hour, I wasn't afraid — the
priests were there ..."

CHAPTER V

MASS UNDER SHELL-FIRE

I could not understand, I who had not the joy
of being at the front, by what miracle of courage
Duroy could write me so faithfully his impressions
of the war. Every fortnight, or about that, a
letter in a filthy envelope, which I loved to look at
for a long time before opening it, arrived for me.

It was the messenger from the mysterious
" la-bas " where they walk without faltering, and
where they suffer with the smile which irradiates
hearts, in love with the ideal.

" Never," wrote my brave friend, " had I known
till now, the sovereign beauty of a priest's life.
He is to be found in the thick of the fight, and he
drinks in from the burning lips of the wounded
and dying, sentiments which sing like the notes of
a clarion in the heart of a Frenchman. Would
you believe, my dear friend, that these poor
fellows want to die, without leaving around them
any sad memories, any melancholy or regretful
thoughts ?

43

44 PRIESTS IN THE EIRING LINE

" A young workman, whom I picked up outside
a trench, whose chest had been crushed by a
bursting shell, said these disconcerting words to
me, as I leant over him to see if he were still alive :
' You may look, old chap — one keeps on smiling
till the end . . .' And indeed, the dying man
smiled ten minutes before he made his exit into
eternity.

" He had the astounding courage to add : ' Leave
me here, don't pick me up. My body and those
of my comrades will make such a high barricade
that the Germans won't be able to climb over it.'

" And I, whose eyes were blinded with tears, I
had to overcome the violent emotion which
threatened to overwhelm me, to tell this fine
young Frenchman that I was a priest, and that
he could tell me the secrets of his soul.

"He went on smiling. His glorious courage
triumphed over his pain. His sublime soul
survived his almost annihilated body, gave to
his countenance the aspect of an unfamiliar life,
more powerful than the other, and that death
seemed to respect. He murmured —

" ' I went to Communion this morning under
shell-fire. So that I am ready to go now — the
priest told us so.'

"I bent over him, and pressed my lips to the
martyr's forehead. With that brotherly kiss

MASS UNDER SHELL-FIRE 45

warm upon him, he ceased to suffer, and set out
for the other world.

" Oh ! that Mass under shell-fire ! what an echo
of happiness and pride did the words of the dying
soldier awake in my mind ! It was I who had
said it, and it was I who had promised heaven, in
the Name of God, to all those who made their
halting-place of hope and faith around the altar.
I shall never live through such glorious hours
again. I am sending you a few poor notes. Give
to them the resounding sonorousness of the far-
away cannonade, the voice of battle, the majestic
music of the batteries, thundering all together.
Relate in touching words that feast-day, such
as you will never see but which you can imagine,
because all French hearts possess the intuition
of this tragic grandeur and of these glorious
emotions."

On this woof which seemed to me to be
woven with gold and light, woof of glory and
rays of light, I reconstructed the real scene. By
dint of re-reading these eloquent words, and the
short phrases which seemed to evoke superhuman
beauty, I too saw that grandiose Mass and heard
the formidable music which accompanied its
Credo. ... It is six o'clock in the morning.
The rosy dawn reveals the fantastic ruins, among
which the steeples, wounded to death, seem

46 PRIESTS IN THE FIRING LINE

to weep, steeples like enormous spectres of sorrow
and horror. One would say that they were
looking out in the distance, following with their
long shadow the barbarians put to flight by our
regiments. All round about is the devastation
of the villages and fields, the misery and suffering
which ascends from earth, under the growing
light of the dawning day. A heavy silence hovers
over the immense sadness of the ravaged fields.

But suddenly, at the bend of the forest, hacked
down by yesterday's battle, a movement of life
shows itself ; of human life, which arrives in
hurrying shoals. They are the blue trousers of
our foot-soldiers who march along singing. It is
the inexhaustible youth of France which flocks
here to fill the vacant places, the yawning gaps
hollowed out of the living wall. They are the
sturdy flesh of the robust body, which of itself,
repairs the wounds of the giant, so often struck
but never dejected.

Here are our troopers. Only to see their
" kepis " makes the countryside less mournful.
The ruins are less lamentable, and the sunrise more
golden. They are there : they pass by, scattering
in their wake strength and confidence which makes
one certain that France is marching to victory.

What a picture, that march past of our soldiers
in the glory of the rising sun ! They are the

MASS UNDER SHELL-FIRE 47

same colour as the ground, covered with mud,
booted with red clay. They have been sleeping
in the black holes of the trenches, with empty
stomachs, their feet in water, having, in the midst
of the darkness, no other light but the hope of
victory. And it is in this ray of light that they
have seen the beauty of living and the grandeur
of dying.

There they are, and it seems as though the
profaned sun quivers with joy.

Victors the night before by their patience, they
pursue victory during the coming day. These
beings with their stained cloaks, with their faces
bristling with bushy beards, with shoes that splash
along the road, weighted with the trampled earth :
these foot-soldiers, so dirty as to frighten one,
pass on their way like a legendary excursion in
search of glory.

Then they break out into Gallic songs which
rise in the air like the song of the larks.

"William's head,

We'll have it, we'll have it !
William's head,
We'll break it."

An enemy aeroplane rushes up in full flight,
and flies above them. The bird of prey which
was watching them, described great circles far
up in the sky. A cry is raised and is carried on by
a thousand voices : " Fire a volley at the cuckoo ! "

48 PRIESTS IN THE EIRING LINE

The cannons rose up, all together, with the same
bound, in the direction of the vulture, and with
a crackling which rends the silence of the clear
morning, a volley of balls riddles the raider in the
sky, which wobbles, head first ; then, its wings
broken, falls in a far-off valley whilst an immense
cry of joy hails its fall.

" They aren't dangerous, the dirty drones,
only they stain the sky," remarked a sergeant.

But to that boyish remark the voices of " la-
bas " reply, the voices of the Germans, who do
not know how to laugh and always growl. The
aviator's signal had been understood. The
Bodies' cannons grow angry and spit out their
shells. They fall to left, to right, everywhere ;
a few kepis lower themselves and bodies sink
down. But the marching troops advance in the
magnificent order of a regiment which is rushing
to its duty.

All of a sudden, the Colonel's sword cleaves
the slight mist which rises from the slope. It is
the order to halt, and all obeying it, remain
motionless and follow with their eyes death,
which is passing overhead, and whch they mock
at with scoffing looks.

" Let them growl," said the Colonel, pointing
with a disdainful gesture at the terrible horizon —
"let 'em bellow — we are going to hear Mass."

MASS UNDER SHELL-FIRE 49

Duroy is there. He follows the column in his
capacity of stretcher-bearer.

"A priest of good-will/' demands the Colonel.

My valiant friend comes forward.

" Present."

A church, still standing to the left, a white
church, almost new, whose ogive enlivens the
countryside with its shining, untouched walls.

" Who wants to hear Mass ? " asked the
superior officer.

" I— I— I."

Arms are raised, hands are waved.

" All right, all of you. We want to ask God
to make us braver, and to give us the heart to
fell them like monkeys."

A thrill of joy went through the ranks. And
from the moment that joy is in French hearts,
of course those others " las-bas " must hurl steel
and blood on the dreams of our troopers.

Three stray shells pierce the slope and mow
down half a section. Two men are killed and
nine are wounded. What does it matter ! The
regiment has just invaded the too small church ;
the others remain outside, and through the great
open door look at the altar, where two wretchedly
small candles are burning. A seminarist has
installed himself at the harmonium, and with
his fine tenor voice intones the hymn of hope and

E

50 PRIESTS IN THE FIRING LINE

peace, which has become the war-hymn of all
these young fellows who have not forgotten the
so-oft sung tune —

"Nous voulons Dieu dans notre armee,
Afin que nos jeunes soldats,
En defendant la France aimee,
Soient des heros dans les combats."

It is a fine and striking sight to see this regi-
ment which has received its baptism of blood
singing out its faith, beneath the vaults of the
church, where the priest-soldier is imploring
Christ's mercy for so many men alive to-day,
who will be dead to-morrow. Outside there is
the uproar of shells falling in the dawn and
hurling themselves in rage on an enemy who has
for an instant laid down his arms, and made a
truce.

The foot soldiers don't budge. The thunder-
bolts bursting around them seem to have lost
their annihilating strength and their horror.
Sacrilegious Germany, who profanes weakness
and fires on Christian churches, is powerless to
disturb the prayers of these men, who feel,
hovering over the future, the covenant between
heaven and the mother country.

And Duroy, whose trousers come below the
soiled lace of the alb, recites, accompanied by the
music of the cannons, the prayer for peace.

But everyone knows that it must be bought

MASS UNDER SHELL-FIRE 51

with sacrifice. Victory is a sublime thing which
we must pay for with holocausts and voluntary
sufferings.

That is why the soldiers hear Mass so tran-
quilly, with an heroic smile, beneath the volley
of shells.

Meanwhile, the far-off hubbub diminishes.
The silence of the quiet countryside again enfolds
the church, where twelve hundred motionless men
listen to one of their comrades speaking to them
of the ancient Christian faith whose sweetness
reawakens in their transfigured souls.

Magic words sound in their ears, sing in their
souls, touch the harmonious fibres of their hearts.

" War has made us grow ; face to face with
death hourly, we feel the beauty of sacrifice, and
we understand the sense of our magnificent duty.
God, who asks of us to suffer and die, gives us
with the ordeal the superhuman joy of having
been chosen as heroes of liberty and martyrs of
outraged rights.

''The fields, reddened by our blood, will imbibe
the ruddy seed of battle, an eternal seed of victory
and redemption. Between the bullet which kills
and heaven opened, there is no halting-place for
the stricken soldier whose life is done. Go
towards death for France, with a prayer on your
lips and faith in your hearts. To fall for one's

52 PRIESTS IN THE FIRING LINE

country is not to die ; it is to take eternal life by
assault."

And Duroy, whose burning words whet their
courage and arouse energy, lances the heroic
challenge by Deroulede into their midst :

" En avant ! tant pis pour qui tombe.
La mort n'est rien, vive la tombe
Si le pays en sort vivant:
En avant ! "

" En avant ! " This one word makes them hold
up their heads. The desire to go " la-bas," where
one dies, makes their hearts beat and their eyes
sparkle. To-night, there will be, quite near the
church, on the line of defence tightened against the
invader, a regiment whose terrible pluck will terrify
the Germans decimated by a legendary charge.

In the meantime, our troopers are singing the
Credo, and shells have begun to rain down on
the road, on the deserted orchards. The din of
battle mingles hollowly with the quiet harmony.
The voices of war affirm the Christian beliefs,
which mouths proclaim, and give them a definite
and sovereign meaning.

" I believe in the resurrection of the body, this
body which near by is crushed, mangled, torn,
quivering, hacked to pieces. I believe in the life
everlasting, to which bursting shells, bullets and
bayonets open the splendid portals, and reveal
the beauty that endures."

MASS UNDER SHELL-FIRE 53

And Mass goes on, in the midst of the clicking
of rosaries, for many of these men have them again
at the bottom of their pockets, just as they have
revived their consoling faith whose all-powerful
help assists them in that hour when courage must
go beyond ordinary limits.

It is over. The priest-soldier has just given a
big blessing. The halt near the Good God is
over, and the march to battle begins again.
Belts are buckled on. Knapsacks are adjusted.
Rifles are shouldered. The noise of jolted
bayonets rings like a prelude to the charge. The
thought of war has taken hold of the soldiers,
who for weeks have lived in the thought of it.
But their energy is redoubled. The sign of the
cross is on their foreheads and breasts like in-
visible armour, which later on bullets may pierce
without lessening its resistance.

Forward ! After God, the country. Never
did troopers set out so calmly to meet death.
From the altar-steps, Duroy waves them a last
farewell, a salute of faith, which emboldens ;
and of hope, for whate'er betide.

Suddenly there is a crash of thunder on the
sanctuary roof. The shaken wall totters, and
stones rain down from the arches, from the
broken ogive, struck down by the malignity of
the barbarians whose far-off hatred continues

54 PRIESTS IN THE FIRING LINE

untiringly its wicked work against peaceful
churches.

Outside, the roaring of the shells which shriek
in the tempest, and " la-bas " the thunder of the
batteries let loose in the surrounding country.
There is a rush to the door, and one hears voices
exclaim —

" No, no, I can't die like that "

The walls of the choir are shaken and oscillate
before they fall. Duroy, still wearing the chasuble,
remains before the altar, and waits quietly, till
all shall have left the church. A lieutenant runs
up to him, and points out the danger he is threat-
ened with, then, seeing his obstinacy, wants to
force him to come away ; but he still refuses to
move.

" No, it is my duty."

" What," protests the officer, " our duty is not
to allow ourselves to be buried alive beneath these
walls."

The priest points to the tabernacle. " I must
save the Blessed Sacrament."

The priest turns round to take the consecrated
Hosts. The back of the sanctuary gives way,
and a beam falls. But neither the altar nor the
priest are touched. It won't be for long though,
the roof is sagging, and the framework is giving
way. It is the affair of a few minutes now. From

MASS UNDER SHELL-FIRE 55

the door, fifty voices call out : " Save yourself,
Father, save yourself ! Heavens I M

No, he does not want to save himself. His
priestly courage tells him that he ought to remain
there, and that soldierly courage will support the
heroism of the priesthood.

An enormous stone falls at his feet and makes
him totter. The lieutenant, who had remained a
little behind him, rushed forward to drag him
from the rubbish, thinking him dead or wounded.
But Duroy is on his feet, trying, in vain this time,
to reach the tabernacle buried in the midst of
heaps of broken fragments.

Then was seen this unpublished scene, worthy
of embellishing a page of our history of the war ;
ten soldiers rush up to help the priest to withdraw
the ciborium.

" Wait a bit, Father, well give you a hand to
get the Bon Dieu out of that."

The vigorous efforts of their strong navvies'
arms, so used to digging trenches, push away the
new stones of the church which is now in ruins.
And when Duroy, trembling this time from
emotion, withdraws the Blessed Sacrament and
carries it away, the fine workers of the divine
rescue kneel down, bent beneath the crumbling
vault, fearless of death, suspended but a few yards
above them. Then, when the pious task is done,

56 PRIESTS IN THE FIRING LINE

and the lieutenant wants to make them go out-
side, one of them, smiling, shows him the breech
of the shell which has fallen on to the altar steps.
From his tunic he tears a bunch of carnations
which he had gathered a little while before in an
abandoned garden. Quietly he places them in
the vase formed by the broken projectile.

" Excuse me, mon lieutenant, for two minutes,
while I put this in front of the Blessed Virgin.
It will be in memory of the regiment."

CHAPTER VI

SUFFERING THAT SMILES

" It's enough to make one laugh and cry," said
a poor little devil, ingenuously to me. His leg,
horribly fractured, kept him for a long time
among us.

These wounded soldiers gave us without know-
ing it, noble lessons in courage and heroism. To
them, suffering is like bullets ; you must keep
them if they can't be extracted.

French gaiety, and playing the fool are the order
of the day. In our wards, with their wide ranks
of beds all alike, bursts of laughter alternate with
moans, wrung from the suffering patients by the
hand of the doctor who is dressing their wounds.
The involuntary cry of suffering revived is heard
through the hilarious echoes. And the sick man
joins in, rallies his damaged carcase, and laughs
at himself, so as not to give his comrades the joy
of having the first laugh. He takes the offensive,
as one of our Bordelais used to say saucily. This
fellow had had the comical idea of looking at

57

58 PRIESTS IN THE FIRING LINE

himself in the glass each time they tended him.
Then to cheat the pain he let himself go,
and administered to himself all the puns in the
vocabulary of a trooper.

" Now, old fellow, what grimaces you make.
Ah ! shut up, will you, you beast. You look like
a Boche confronted with Rosalie." Rosalie was
the name given by our foot soldiers to the terrible
Lebel bayonet.

During this fooling, the others, lying in wait
for an opportunity of snapping their fingers at
their comrade, could find nothing to say, and
contented themselves with admiring him. Be-
sides, our Bordelais foresaw everything, over-
whelmed himself with pleasantries, and conjured
up in his imaginations all the fooleries that could
possibly arise in the brains of his cunning com-
panions.

" You wouldn't believe what an idiot you look,
twisted up like a whale. Don't you know that
the others have to put up with as much or
worse ? " When he saw the stopper of the bottle
of tincture of iodine arrive on the scene, that
liquid fire, each drop of which burns the flesh
to the quick, he shouted out orders as though
he were on the battlefield, in order to hide the
torture.

" Attention, you fellows, we are going to charge.

SUFFERING THAT SMILES 59

Keep on, for goodness' sake, and keep your
heads screwed on straight. No excitement, and
above all lunge 'em through the stomach, so
that the bayonet will go slap in and come out
quicker."

Then, when his wound quivered at the touch of
the antiseptic, he would shout in a voice of thunder,
" Forward ! bayonets, spit all those blackguards
for me ! " Then he would imitate all those
awful cries made in a charge, the panting chests
under the stress of butchering, the roaring of men
fighting in close combat, in the awful carnage and
in the fearful transport of the fray.

It made us laugh, and the pain evaporated in
gaiety. Sometimes, the sweat burst out on his
forehead, and tears forced themselves into his
eyes. Once the dressing over, the brave boy
allowed his exhausted body to sink back. But
here, as well as " la-bas," he had faced suffering
without flinching, and when I approached his
bed, to say a few friendly words, he would take my
hand gently, to thank me for the compassion I
had shown him.

" What's it matter, Father, here one must do
one's duty as well as when one is fighting."

His duty ! I never could hear that word
without emotion. He understood, that lad, that
to suffer far away from the battle-field, was the

6o PRIESTS IN THE EIRING LINE

mission of continued sacrifice, the prolonging of
valour, and the crowning of heroism.

Sometimes, on the days when high spirits
failed him, because he had had a bad night,
spent in the nightmare of undermining fever, he
would ask me to help him through those painful
moments, and to hearten him up.

" I haven't courage to play the fool to-day,
but I don't want to scream. Will you remain
by me, and say a little prayer, while they dress
me?"

On those days I gave him my hand to hold,
and he would grip it with the whole strength of
his muscles. Between the priest and the wounded
soldier there was a kind of exchange of resigna-
tion and courage. But he never made it up to
himself, for those bad moments, when the bandage
being fixed and the sitting over, the Major went off
to see to his neighbour, a German prisoner who had
received a splinter from a '75 in his ankle. Every
morning the doctor examined the horrible wound
and repeated, as though doubtful of curing it, —

" I must really take that bit of steel out."

"Ah, Major," my Bordelais would say jokingly,
" leave him that in his paw. He is so mighty
glad to have bagged something of ours ! "

And the head doctor would scold him in a
fatherly way, smiling —

SUFFERING THAT SMILES 61

" Will you leave him alone, you little monster ? "

And he would insist with that spirit of devilry
of the Southerner whose pleasantries are never
spiteful —

" Besides, nothing proves that it's a bit of iron
he's got in there. Perhaps it's only a cathedral,
which he wants to take off with him to the Kaiser."

The Boche had at the time only one anxiety,
to get his lungs in trim so as to be able to bellow
like a bull. Ah ! I can assure you that he had
no self -consciousness ! Every morning, he would
give us an entertainment of vocal music loud
enough to smash all the windows. During the
process, the Prussian, to whom the other wounded
men paid the most delicate attentions, almost
spoiling him at times, had a most extraordinary
success, which seemed to make him more furious
even than his wound.

It was useless for the doctor to advise them to
be more careful, the wounded men took their re-
venge for all the lead and steel with which their
members were crammed.

A musician in a bed opposite his, never failed
to remark at his first roar —

" Don't interrupt, gentlemen, it is a bit from
Wagner."

And the concert would proceed. The urchins
of troopers would imitate his yells, mimic his

62 PRIESTS IN THE FIRING LINE

gestures and his voice. Then the kind-hearted
fellows would throw him cigarettes, whch he
invariably caught in the air, in spite of the torture
of the dressing, which provoked such atrocious
suffering. Then, surrounded by that gaiety,
which he knew was free from any hatred, the poor
Boche would finish by laughing through his tears.
But where French larking towards him showed
itself in its most mischievous way, was when
the Bordelais took it into his head to teach him
to speak French.

This idea came to him one day when the
Prussian was twisting and turning on his bed,
tortured with a more violent bout of suffering.
He was giving utterance to unintelligible words,
and was roaring like a wild beast caught in a trap.
In his most serious manner, our cunning lad
began to speak in signs, and his mimicry was so
expressive, his looks conveyed his thoughts so
well, that the Boche, interested in his grimaces,
couldn't take his eyes off him.

" Old chap, one must never yell about nothing.
Whether one shouts or screams, there are words
to do it in. So, as your paw gives you gip, don't
haggle over it, you must bellow as though you
had six riflemen at your heels, ' Oh, la, la ! ' "

An eloquent gesture accompanied this theory,
and the German, mesmerised by the persuasive

SUFFERING THAT SMILES 63

lesson, repeated with the solemnity of a professor
from beyond the Rhine, the exclamation which
expresses, with us, every kind of pain.

" Very good," said the Bordelais, " when you've
got a bit better accent, you'll be able to get yourself
made a spy in Paris. Now, that's not all ; to
complete it you must add, ' I'm better, I'm much
better ! '"

By dint of hearing that phrase pronounced, the
Boche, a good parrot, finished by taking it in.
At the end of a quarter of an hour, he repeated it,
with such throaty efforts that showed evident
good will, and which convinced him that it was
the most perfect expression of acute suffering.

Perhaps he imagined that it was a way of making
the doctors pity him, and of making them acknow-
ledge that his cries were justified.

The next day, when the head doctor arrived
on the scene to give him his daily dressing, there
was a hilarious time for the wounded in number
two ward.

Hardly had the doctor touched the wound,
than the Boche gramophone pulled out his big
stops, and gave full play to his lungs : " Oh, la
la ! oh, la la ! " Then seeing that this had no
effect, he gave vent to the second phrase which he
embellished with his German accent, " Za fa mieux
— za fa pocoup mieux ! "

64 PRIESTS IN THE FIRING LINE

" That's a good thing," remarked the doctor,
who did not dream that it was a joke ; " only
you needn't yell it so loud."

But the Boche went on rolling his wild eyes,
and twisting his wretched broken leg, and wishing
to be well understood, repeated in ear splitting
tones the phrase which he thought to be the
faithful expression of his suffering.

" Za fa mieux — za fa pocoup mieux ! "

"Well, then," said the Major impatiently,
" since it is so much better, it isn't worth while
breaking the drum of our ears with your roaring."

In the ward the others were laughing. Only
the Bordelais, who already regretted having made
game of such suffering so close to him, remained
sad, he who had produced the harmless comedy.
The mischief was after all only a piece of mischief,
and even less grave, since the German could not
suffer from it, as he had no suspicion of it.

Well, I shall never forget the heartbroken ex-
pression that saddened his face when he called
me to him with a quiet gesture.

" You see," he said in a low voice, " how wrong
it was of me to do that ! "

I tried in vain to comfort him.

" I tell you it isn't fine at all to mock at
those who surfer, specially when they are one's
enemies."

SUFFERING THAT SMILES 65

I should have liked to have hugged the brave-
hearted fellow, when I heard words of such deli-
cate and exquisite pity. His neighbour had not
suffered from this uncomprehended and hence
ineffectual teasing. All the same, my French
soldier boy judged himself with severity and re-
gretted having let himself be carried away by a
harmless piece of mischief.

Not content with regretting it, he wanted to
make up for it by giving the poor Boche a proof
of friendship. He desired to show him that his
suffering, and that of his stricken enemy brought
them together, and placed them in the ranks, on
an equal footing, of that common family in which
each member has no other name but that of
wretchedness shared. He held his little purse
out to me.

" Take fivepence out of that, please, and have
a bottle of wine bought for the poor devil."

He had tears in his eyes, this good little trooper
of ours, whose charming action revealed the
beautiful generosity of his race, the admirable
tenderness which prevails in the heart of French-
men, who are never really happy till they have
loved.

And whilst the radiant Prussian, his face lit
up with a rather whimsical smile, drank the wine
of reconciliation, I thought of our wounded on the

F

66 PRIESTS IN THE FIRING LINE

other side, and of their gaolers with their brutal
faces. I thought of those letters from women,
found in the pockets of some of our prisoners
of war; of those monstrous phrases written
by the vixens from Germany, counselling their
husbands to massacre our soldiers on the battle-
field.

The Boche was petted just as the others
were. No dainty was offered to the others of
which he did not have his share. He was to
us a sacred object, the conquered, the victim,
the powerless, weakness succoured, misfortune
respected.

One of our troopers, drawn by chance from the
ranks, blamed himself for having made fun of
him, without even hurting him, because he was
a disarmed enemy.

" Za f a pocoup mieux," reiterated the wounded
man, as he sipped the French wine.

And those words, awkwardly pronounced by
the unconscious lips, revealed the superiority of
the French race over the barbarians. Yes, surely
it was a good deal better than in his own country,
where the Huns, not content with shooting our
wounded who are at their last gasp, give orders
that their own men, who are deemed incurable,
should be left to die, because it is useless to tend
them, and because it costs too much.

SUFFERING THAT SMtLES 67

Christian pity, charity inspired by faith, human
virtues which the thought of God renders divine,
sublime brotherhood which turns help to the
suffering into a sweet task, and makes of heroic
devotedness a duty, it is in France that all these
beauties spring up again and flower in the warmth
of love.

They had known and felt heavenly kindness
around them, these wounded men, whom the
priestly stretcher-bearers had picked up " la-bas,"
beneath the tempest of shells.

And how good it was, and how proud we were
to hear them recount the prowess of our brothers
in the priesthood, who had faced death for the
sake of human life, while others sacrificed their
youth for their country !

Those whom we surrounded with our care, and
especially the young Bordelais, gave the right
note of what passed down there, of all those
heroes whom the war had raised up, of those
who fight for others, among whom priests ranked
gloriously.

" As for me," he used to say, " it was a stretcher-
bearer, without a moustache, like you, who picked
me up under fire, amid the hell of a frightful
artillery action.

" They had not told him to do it ... the
medical service is not obliged to take mad risks

68 PRIESTS IN THE FIRING LINE

. . . under shrapnel fire . . . the head doctor
reproached him, and I heard him say —

" ' My poor abbe, you are losing your head . . .
you have risked being killed a hundred times.'

"The young seminarist replied simply : ' That
is how I understand my duty in the war.' '

CHAPTER VII

THREE HEROES

Duroy's diary used to reach me from the most
wonderfully zig-zag journeys through France,
containing admirable news, announcing the mag-
nificent hopes which rise to Heaven from our
country of France.

" I am like a harvester of fine ears of corn,
hurried in the task, so that there is not even time
to gather them into a sheaf. Take the lot, dig
among my treasure : everything is fine and great ;
one would say that the thunders of battle shake
the skies, which open wide their portals. God
smiles upon us, and the faith reawakened, born
again, French faith, at the present moment,
inspires greater deeds than our legendary epopees."

When I read these words among others which
extol our lofty heroism, I could never prevent
myself from an emotion drawn from the deepest
sources of Christian greatness.

In striking at France, in dealing her their

formidable blows, in bruising her, the Prussian

69

70 PRIESTS IN THE FIRING LINE

cannons have caused to gush forth, dazzling and
dominating, the divine, slumbering idea. Charle-
magne, Saint Louis, Joan of Arc must be holding
out their arms to it, from above, and must be
thrilling with joy at the sight of sacrifices so
nobly borne which will be its splendid baptism.

It is "la-bas," at some unknown spot on the
living frontier. It is a warfare which never ceases,
the bloody endeavour kept up by the superhuman
courage of our soldiers who have taken as their
device the hackneyed motto whose eloquence
maintains itself by actions which defy description.

The chances of war have led my friend in front
of a line of trenches taken and retaken four times.
He is working heroically at his task of succouring
and consoling. Work is not wanting. Bodies
strew the terrible field, in thousands. Cries of
pain, sighs from shattered throats, the death
rattle of those in their last agony, who are render-
ing up their life in delirium. Arms raised in
appeal and despairing signs which call.

They go forth, these good Samaritans, across
the red harvest-field, visiting these remains of
humanity, living tatters, either motionless in a
death-faint or who are twisted up by their frightful
contractions.

The priest lives in anguish which lasts for hours,
and is augmented by the number of victims

THREE HEROES 71

afforded to his pity. He sees a human soul in
each mutilated body, and the mystery of salvation
proposes itself to his uneasy mind.

He would like to go up to those who are dying,
whose life trembles in the balance. But in face
of the immense task, he feels the extent of his
powerlessness. He must pick him up before con-
soling him ; place him on a stretcher before
absolving him. Scarcely is it possible to bend
towards a head whose eyes are closed, to whisper
the words of contrition, to raise his arm, and to
forgive in God's name.

" If you knew how I suffer," wrote Duroy, " at
not being able to multiply myself as one ought to
be able to do. All the same, I'm confident that
God only expects a thought sent out to Him,
in order to efface sins and to receive with open
arms these souls of goodwill. So that, across the
immense field of resigned suffering, of generous
expiation, I stretch forth my hand which the
priesthood has hallowed, and I cry out to my
Maker, ' Deign to accept these infinite sufferings,
these tortured bodies, these distressed hearts.
Have mercy on these young men who have done
a manly work. Have pity on our soldiers, since
to fight for Your kingdom of France is to fight
for You!'"

They go off through the fields ploughed,

72 PRIESTS IN THE FIRING LINE

hacked up into quagmires, picking up corpses
sometimes, in their anxiety to assist all those still
breathing, even those whose minutes are counted.

Over there, propped up against a tree, is a
wounded man who is patiently mopping up the
blood from an open wound in his left breast. He
utters no cries, makes no despairing signs for help ;
he is not one of those poor wretches who dread the
thought of solitude and of being abandoned. His
face is resigned, strangely calm, almost impassive.
His features reveal the stoic energy of one who
accepts the frightful ordeal and who deliberately
drains the cup of sorrow.

When two stretcher-bearers come up to him,
the soldier smiles with his pallid lips, with his
eyes, in which are still reflected the lightning-
glance of courage, whose brilliance has not been
quenched. His valour has only taken another
form. A little while ago it took that of activity
which carries along the body, over which he was
master. Now, it is concentrated in the higher
effort which masters the tortures of a murdered
body.

" What's the matter with you, my poor
fellow ? "

The wounded man does not answer this question
inspired by brotherly pity. He raises himself a
little, and shows with his right hand, the only

THREE HEROES 73

one he can move, the horrible mess which calls
for immediate attention.

" See to the others first ; there's no need to
worry about me."

The stretcher-bearers insist on picking him up.

" Now, now, leave it to us. You need looking
after just as much as the others."

But he insisted, and his voice all at once be-
came imperious.

" Take those first. You can come back for me
later on."

The ambulance-men went off shrugging their
shoulders, and one of them growled —

" Since he insists, it is useless to carry him off
by force. We'll come back for him presently."

And the other can't help observing : " Well, he's
obstinate if you like."

An hour later, when Duroy's detachment passed
by the slope where the wounded man lay, the
priest went up to him.

" We are going to carry you off, my friend."

Then, suddenly, an exclamation of surprise
and pain escaped him.

" What, it's you who are wounded ? "

And he bent over the friend whom he had
recognised, and opened his tunic.

"LWhere are you wounded ? My God . . .
it's awful ! . . ."

74 PRIESTS IN THE FIRING LINE

He looked more at the man's face than at his
wound, and wondered if at this time and place,
where so many unexpected things baffle one's
reason, his eyes did not deceive him and if it
were indeed the cure from the parish adjoining
his, the gentle confrere, whom he finds exhausted
leaning against that tree, perhaps wounded to
death.

The other priest forestalls his question, dispels
his doubts.

" Yes, it is I, but I am not worth much —
besides, it doesn't matter, I must not go back —
it would spoil it all."

At these strange words, Duroy felt surge up
in his heart a great anguish caused by regret for
his friend in danger, but stronger than that even
was his feeling of boundless admiration which
rejoiced his soul.

" Come now," went on the dying man, whose
voice held a strange boldness. " You are not
going to be astonished that a priest, that all of
us, can look death in the face, or can even desire
it."

While he was speaking, the stretcher-bearer
was asking himself how it came about that he
found his friend here, whose age ranked him
among the classes who had not yet gone to the
front.

THREE HEROES 75

And this time, too, the wounded man forestalled
his question.

" I went off because it had to be, in order to be
a priest such as we all are nowadays ; to preach
my last sermon, which I had long prepared, but
which I had not thought to preach so soon."

He added, laughing, a soldier right to the end.
" It will probably be the best of them all I "

Then, whilst Duroy tried hopelessly to staunch
the wound which had played havoc with the thorax,
the sergeant told him his sublime story simply.

In the garrison town where he had been
mobilised, one of his parishioners, a younger man,
had told him he was going off to the firing line.
The man was the father of a family with five
children and a sixth coming.

The priest, weak on the chest, had been given
a job which prevented him from any risk of being
sent off.

An idea came to him, which rapidly took the
form of an obstinate resolve, to take the soldier's
place and give him his. It was possible to do so,
in spite of the difficulties. The father of the
family was a malingerer, and was in ill health.
For two days the abbe multiplied his endeavours
and finished by succeeding.

" My fine fellow remained behind : I came
away, and here I am ! "

76 PRIESTS IN THE FIRING LINE

It was the end of his story, and he who had
sacrificed himself refused to acknowledge its
magnificent eloquence.

He had still the lovely smile of joy in his eyes,
but Duroy, beside him, remained stupefied, almost
overcome by the beauty of this tranquil heroism.

The sergeant added, to cut short the inevitable
expressions of praise, with which he did not wish
his sacrifice to be spoilt —

" Now, my dear friend, I'm going to confess
myself, for I feel I'd better hurry up."

Duroy thus finished his letter, which brought
me the following trait, which will figure among
the innumerable pages in our golden book.

' I was able to administer Extreme Unction
to my dear friend, who made all the responses.
Then I had to go further on, borne on the flood
of our daily tasks. I don't know if he still lives.
But I pray for him as though he were dead. God
accepts such abnegation to the end."

France needs much, or even more than that
of her soldiers, the blood of her priests, so that
she may triumph and be born again. But what
a seed of fecundity is the blood of our soldiers,
regenerated by Christian thoughts, which gives
to their valour a definite meaning of complete
heroism. Jeerers and scoffers in civil life, these
children of a race, whose virtue has not yet

THREE HEROES 77

diminished, go of themselves to those who baptised
them, when the troubling hour of danger has
rung. They go to confession, to Holy Communion,
then they don't hide their faith under a bushel.
They put into practice, and without delay, the
splendid flight towards death which it inspires.
Battalions are transformed into sacred phalanxes ;
in the breast of each trooper beats wildly the
heart of a paladin.

" Left leg broken in two places ; chest pierced
by two bullets; not dying," — for all the caprices
of projectiles are not mortal — "but gravely
wounded ; the affair of long weeks ; ' ' that is the
report on the two riflemen whom I wash and dress
every day.

And this is the strange, disconcerting way in
which they were hit. They told me all about
it themselves.

" You'll see that it is just the story for a

priest ' '

I will allow Brigeois to speak, while Planteau
smokes his pipe and interlards the story with
his growlings : " Oh, my bally old leg."

" On the 6th of September, we were having
a terribly hot time on the Marne. It appears
that Joffre found that we had played the lame
dog long enough, and that it was time to do like
everybody else, and to go ahead.

78 PRIESTS IN THE FIRING LINE

" You can guess that we others knew jolly
little about the big battle. All the same, in our
little corner, we saw that the Boches bit the dust
and lay in the fields longer than live men would.
They had even to be carted away in truck-loads,
and nothing could awaken them again, not even
the pointed snout of Rosalie. One morning,
while we were rubbing our sides, stiffened by four
hours' wait in the rain, Planteau said to me :

"'I say, old chap, I think we are going to get
something for our cold.'

" I answered, ' What a fool you are to have
such gloomy ideas like that, you know quite well
that there are draughts all round our carcases ;
bullets always turn aside when they come near us/

" ' I know what I'm talking about,' he replied.
1 The battalion is ordered to defend the village
whose belfry is sticking up at the left of the wood.
And you know that we're not known by any
number but by the motto which I don't know
which general has stuck on to us, " Go ahead
or burst." To-day, there will not be any choice :
first we shall go ahead, then we shall burst.'

" ' Well ? ' I said to Planteau.

" 'If it's Major Dargis who is going to open the
ball, we certainly shan't need to think about
our evening soup, because, old chap, it isn't in
the Marne that we shall cook it.'

THREE HEROES 79

" Well, it was just as this chap here said. It
was Dargis who was to do the trick. It was no
good funking it.

" ' Oh, well, then,' he said to me, ' we're done
for.'

" ' Done for/ as he said to me, ' and you might
add, squandered/

" At first, the thought of seeing ourselves with
our skins turned inside out, that worried us a bit.
We were stuck down there in front of our bowl of
coffee, just as foolish, so to say, as a Boche before
an empty bottle of champagne. Then, all of a
sudden, Plant eau gave me a smack across the
shoulder-blades.

" ' Look here, old chap, we're not going to face
it like that ? '

" ' Like what ? ' said I.

" ' Like chitterlings, to be sure ; like calves going
to the slaughter.'

" ' Oh, well, how do you want to go, then ?

" * We must,' he said, ' go decently.' And if
you'd believe me, well, not later than at once,
that is to say immediately, we went off to make
our confession to the sergeant-cure, and to make
him sign a passport with the date of the return.
Would it be all right ?

" ' To be sure it would be all right.'

"'Only, I told him, what about our prayers,

80 PRIESTS IN THE FIRING LINE

'tis a jolly long time since we scattered 'em
round.'

" At first Planteau remained as dry as a gun-
shot, but it would have taken a lot more to put
him out — the beast.

" ' You silly ass ! Of course, prayers are useful
in civil life, but at present one must do as one can.
One learnt the theory, well, once upon a time.
Do you remember any of it ? Now then, do you
think you can say any of it, you blighter ? All the
same, it doesn't prevent you from sticking plums
into those gentlemen " la-bas." Well, prayers,
it's the same thing. The Bon Dieu knows that
one must take things easy. He knows, the good
God ! I promise He'll dispense us from our
prayers, for once.'

" What answer could I make to that ? I was
screwed down tight.

"'Well, is that all right ? ' asked Planteau
again.

" ' Course it is. Now we must buck up and do
the trick, it isn't the day for marking time.'

" It happened, that in the section alongside ours,
there was a priest reservist, who used to preach
a sort of well-tuned little sermon, something in
this style :

" ' Children, we're going to get it hot, presently,
and three-quarters of us won't turn up for the

THREE HEROES 81

roll-call. We must set out in our Sunday best,
with our souls furbished up along all the seams.
We may come out of it, but we mustn't count on
doing so. A bullet or a bit of shrapnel, and then
the jump over the wall of life. And it's not a
question of firing a broadside with the devil.
That's good enough for the Boches. We've got to
arrive in front of the Good God with our arms
flying, with our buttons shining, and our knapsack
full of orders.'

" There must be no shilly-shallying. We'd gone
in search of him, this little cure. It was Planteau
who spoke up.

" ' Excuse me, Father, can we have two words
with you, each one alone and in turn, because
you see '

" I should think he did see. He took hold ot
him by the shoulder.

" ' Chuck yourself down there, on your knees,
old fellow, and speak low, so that the others don'1
hear anything.'

"Planteau, who doesn't like mannerisms, said
squirming —

" ' Well, what does it matter if they do hear ? '

" He soon put himself straight, and I too after
him.

" ' Now,' said the cure, ' you can go, boys and
if you are picked up on the way, I can assure you

G

82 PRIESTS IN THE FIRING LINE

that you won't take long to go from here up
above. You will be received like volunteers,
and you will have won the prize . . .'

"Two hours later, there was an appalling
drubbing, a mixture of horses, of men, of cannons,
a salad of uniforms and pointed helmets. It
rained lead, it hailed steel, death fell all round
about. Our battalion was horribly smashed up.
Our comrades watched their heads rolling about
on the field, and ran after their legs, cut in four.
Planteau and I kept a whole skin whilst aiming
at the Boches. Heavens, the heads we broke
that day ; one could have built a country house
with them.

"We two thought we were doing nothing out
of the ordinary, when Major Dargis came upon
us and let forth this compliment.

" ' As to you, my lads, you are fine fellows, I
will have you mentioned in the orders of the
day.'

" Well, after all, we hadn't done anything very
remarkable. We did our job as smiters, neither
more nor less. It wasn't, however, the opinion of
our leader, who whispered in our ears —

"'I want you to be fully worthy of the dis-
tinction I'm going to ask for you. I've got a
job, for which I must have men who will be
ready for any emergency. You're not afraid ? '

THREE HEROES 83

" I replied, ' Oh, that's all right ! '

" Planteau, who has always the vocabulary of
a gentleman, began to yell these words (I must
tell you he yelled because of a shell which was
bursting ten yards off) —

" ' Oh, Major, you shall see/

" ' Well, then/ said Dargis, 'go and climb that
hillock where the big cross is. From there you'll
be able to see where the Boche guns are. Look
with all your eyes and then come back and tell
me/

" Planteau replied simply : ' But what if we are
cut in two before we get there, or on our way
back ? '

"The Major began to laugh, and said as he
went away —

" 'Oh, well, you'll send me the bits I '

" And off we went — Lord ! what a job.

' ' When the Prussians saw us climb up there
they fired at us for all they were worth. Bullets
and so forth. You can imagine that it put them
out badly to see us climb up that wretched
hillock, because besides the guns, the cannons
hurled plums at us I Cannons, just for us two !
Planteau shook with laughter.

" ' Well, old chap, we are evidently worth some-
thing, since they aim a battery of 77's at our
heels/

84 PRIESTS IN THE FIRING LINE

" ' To be sure,' I said to him, ' they take us for
Pere Joffre, doubtless.'

" When we get to the top Planteau stuck
himself behind the cross, and gave orders.

" ' Now, we've got to light up, and spy out the
land.'

" But suddenly, he raised his eyes to the Christ,
and knelt down. I did the same, without knowing
it, because I always obeyed the beggar, who is
sharper than I am. And then, would you believe,
the fellow began to pray, but it was a prayer of
his own inventing, to the Bon Dieu, who looked
as though He were looking at us only at the time.
Oh, it wasn't a long one, it was something like
this—

" ' Oh my God, the cure of the company told
us that you died for us all a long time ago. Well,
if it please you, we can do the same for you.
Only if we pop now, or even a little further on,
you must not leave us in the lurch, but give us
an honourable mention in the order of the day,
in your regiment. Now we're going to work for
the Major.'

"We got up, we looked about. The Boche
battery was to the left of the wood.

" ' That's all right, we can do a bunk.'

" But just as he said that, pum, pum, pum !
a shell fell right in front of the cross and landed

THREE HEROES 85

us each a lump in our legs. There we were with
our feet in the air.

" ' You're not dead ? ' asked Planteau.

" ' I don't think so, old fellow. What about
you?'

" ' Me ? ' said he, ' I'll let you know presently.'

" And I saw him go off, dragging himself
along.

" I remained behind. My paw was done for.
It weighed a thousand kilograms, but I said to
myself — •

" ' Since he's got away we've done some good.
If only he'll get through.'

" He did get through. He apprized the Major.
A battery of 75 's came galloping up, and in a
quarter of an hour, the wood was ours.

Brigeois added with a sigh —

" And in spite of our good will, we have missed
the gathering up above."

But Planteau, who had finished his pipe,
deigned to speak in his turn.

" Shut up with that, you silly fool. If we've
missed heaven this time, it explains itself. We
weren't in the class called up."

My two wounded men began to laugh. They
had just done an almost superhuman act of
bravery, had contributed, these modest fellows, to
the great victory, had drawn upon the divine

86 PRIESTS IN THE FIRING LINE

strength which made them heroically rash. They
forgot to notice it.

But while they refill their pipes, and speak of
other things, I admire them tremendously, and
love them as one loves beings of beauty, of valour
and of virtue, whose courage triumphs over brute
strength and saves one's country.

CHAPTER VIII

ABSOLUTION BEFORE THE BATTLE

One must not imagine that the wards of our
hospitals are dismally sad, and that our wounded
men keep either on their faces or in their souls
the traces of the frightful tasks they have accom-
plished. I have already spoken of joyous suffering,
of that fine temper which defies pain and gives
its beautiful quality of magnificent swaggering to
the courage of a Frenchman.

Here, as " la-bas," they suffer heroically, and
it happens that the heartiest bursts of laughter
come from the lungs of those oppressed by
fever.

Our hospitals in which those wounded in the
war are tended, sum up the whole combatant
army. There are infantrymen, cavalrymen,
artillerymen, and Turcos, Zouaves and Senegalese
sharpshooters, fraternising at the end of one day
like old acquaintances. Each one of them had
lived through the epopee, had lived in the black
hole of the trenches, had tramped the fields and

87

SS PRIESTS IN THE FIRING LINE

the woods, had passed days and weeks without
stretching out their limbs elsewhere than on the
bare ground or on the grass by the roadside.
War, with its adventures, was around us, and
Napoleon's growlers are not one whit finer or
more worthy of admiration, although they put in
a longer time with their adventures.

One could lean over any couch, and find a
witness of the war, an actor in that frightful
drama from which all the bad memories had
evaporated.

" It seems as though it had been a dream,"
they declared.

I have never found one who owed a grudge to
the bad times they had been through, or who
regretted the past, whose hours had been some-
times dark and always tragic. The war raised
the level of courage to an extraordinary height.
The humblest peasant, the commonest workman,
described his many encounters with death in the
ordinary tone of one telling customary stories.
Here was a linesman, aged twenty-two, whose
left foot was broken in three places. Hardly was
he in bed before he began to chatter as though
just back from leave. I asked him, from a
curiosity that was never sated :

" Were you a long time at the front ? "

" Since the 7th of August."

ABSOLUTION BEFORE THE BATTLE 89

" And you've been in the thick of it since
then ? "

" Pretty nearly. The regiment rested for four
days."

So he had been in the thick of war for months,
in the constant uncertainty for the morrow,
and even more for the following hours. Shells,
bullets, shrapnel, storms of iron and lead hurled
themselves upon him, killed thousands of men,
each day beside him. He had run appalling
risks.

In ordinary times, a man who found himself
in such danger for five minutes would keep the
memory of these frightful moments and the
picture of his fright all his life.

My trooper never thought about it. He had
known the defeat in Belgium, the retreat towards
Paris, the hard fighting on the Marne, the chasing of
the Prussians right to the north of France, always
marching, always shooting on dark nights, and
rainy days. Then, with an ardour sharpened by
the hope of a now certain victory, though a hard
one, which would take some winning, he flung
himself in pursuit of the invader, put to flight in
his turn.

And this cool boy, this country lad with his
sluggish emotions, showed me a so patriotic and
radiant a joy that in listening to him, I felt

90 PRIESTS IN THE FIRING LINE

prouder of France. He laughed with all his heart,
this valiant boy from Champagne, in describing
the magisterial drubbings administered to the
Boches. In this body, thinned down by unheard-
of fatigue, by privation and the rude ordeal of
war, the valiant soul triumphed in its joy, stronger
than all the brutality of the rough life of a soldier.

When I asked him if the thought of his family
had not saddened him during those terrible days,
he made this admirable answer.

" My father, my mother, and my sisters were
mobilised with me. Whilst I was fighting, they
loved me all the more, and were praying for me.
It is one way of fighting for one's country."

These words threw light on one phase, and not
the least noble one, of the drama which we are
living through.

Whilst our dear ones stem the tide of the bar-
baric flood, victoriously, they have the certain
help of more powerful love which accompanies
them, and the efficacious prop of prayers which
support them. That is what one does not speak
enough about, and yet it plays a magnificent
part in those hours in which the certainty of
conquering cannot prevent the anguish of daily
expectation, prayer. If prayer does not occupy
an official place and a preponderating one in the
military regulations, it is certain that each soldier

ABSOLUTION BEFORE THE BATTLE 91

makes up for this sad omission by a personal
effort, and by the alacrity of his own initiative.

" Nowhere else have I seen so many medals
and rosaries," said a politician to me on his
return from the front. " Never had I thought
there was so much faith in the soul of the French
people." And he added, with a look of moved
respect, he who, like so many others, had pro-
claimed the intangibility of lay principles,
" When I saw them pray like little first com-
municants, I understood that it was from prayer
that they drew their finest courage."

The God who had been hidden from them in
their childhood, they had found Him again
miraculously at the same hour when they felt,
by instinct, that their country could do nothing
without Him. And with the enthusiasm of young
neophytes, they stretched out their arms to Him,
as to a superior power, without whom human
strength remains unavailing and sterile.

My peasant from Champagne — any trooper,
drawn by chance, from among the millions of our
fighting men — gave me the comforting assurance
of it.

In war time, one would sooner go without bread
than without prayer, and when one has heard
Mass, one fights with an irresistible spirit. Mass
for the army. You should have heard our

92 PRIESTS IN THE FIRING LINE

wounded men describe these solemn mysteries
performed by a priest in blue trousers, on the
borders of forests or in a field dug up into bloody
trenches. When they speak of it, they see it
again, and their whole soul quivers with emotion
in recalling these memories of their campaign.
And it is not only Mass that puts them in the
presence of God, it is the sacrament of penance
which does so too, this passport for the Great
Beyond which makes them bend low beneath
those brotherly hands, raised to bless and pardon.

My wounded man from Dixmude lived through
one of these splendid hours recently, and he gave
me the moving details of it all. The story is
imbued with superhuman grandeur, and whilst
he described the scene to me, I reflected that no
other historic episode in our Christian annals
could surpass it in heroic beauty.

The infantry regiment had just arrived in
position. It was in reserve behind a little wood,
six kilometers behind the firing line. In an hour
the last order would be given. In their turn, these
three thousand men would be hurling themselves
on the enemy's front and would receive, under
the volley of shells, their baptism of blood. For
many of them, it was the last halt in their lives.
The cannon which roared seemed already to
sound the roll-call of death. And in the silence of

ABSOLUTION BEFORE THE BATTLE 93

recollection, which hovered above these young
men, dedicated to sacrifice, one seemed to hear
the clumsy beating of the wings of fate. It was
not that courage was weakened. But, instinc-
tively, the mind turns back upon itself in the
feeling of uncertainty, that preoccupation which
takes hold of the bravest. " Where shall I be
in an hour, and what shall I be ? — a mangled
worm or a corpse ? "

The colonel knew his men, knew by experience
that it is dangerous to those who need all their
energy for the greatest of sacrifices to give way
to undermining thoughts. To those imaginations,
who are menaced by melancholy thoughts, a
powerful diversion is necessary, a sight which
will impress them, and at the same time will
give them the maximum of confidence and
bravery.

He called the standard-bearer, a young second-
lieutenant, without a moustache, who three
weeks before had been singing Mass in his village
church.

The officer, his eyes aglow, advanced, the staff
proudly borne against his breast, shaking the
colours fringed with gold, which trembled in the
gentle breeze whispering over the plain. Quite
near there was a mound, which seemed to offer
itself as a pulpit, a pedestal or an altar. With a

94 PRIESTS IN THE FIRING LINE

sign, the colonel points out the place, and the
lieutenant who has understood, climbs the slope,
slowly, with the recollection with which he had
in times gone by carried the monstrance. It
was already a festival for the regiment to see,
framed in bayonets, the sacred emblem which
floated in the air, in the hands of a man to whom
God had entrusted His omnipotence.

" Father," said the Colonel, M those who sur-
round you are believers. They know that the
next hours do not belong to them, and that soon
a certain number of them will perhaps be lying
on these fields, where a grave will be dug for them.
Tell them that there is another life, other hopes
after death, a reward for those who are brave.
Do your duty as a priest 1 " Then, speaking to
his men : " All those among you who wish to die
as Christians, close up round the flag."

A movement of the mass of human beings drew
the ranks closer, and grouped together the
soldiers, gaitered, girded, accoutred, their haver-
sacks on their backs.

Not one was lacking. They were all there,
their eyes raised, fixed towards the two living
realities raised on the hillock and which towered
above them. They listened to that manly voice
speak to them of eternity, of the great truths
which rise above human fears, of things so lofty

ABSOLUTION BEFORE THE BATTLE 95

and so solemn, so sweet and consoling, that even
the voice of the cannons screaming death are but
far-off echoes, dream- voices almost unnoticed.

The gestures of the priest caress the folds of
the flag, and his appeals harmonise with the
tricoloured silk whose nutterings seemed like the
breathings of a troubled breast. One felt that
courage flooded these hearts, poured out as from
a generous source, from the living emblems which
exalt sacrifice and make it resplendent with
definitive beauty. From his eminence, the second
lieutenant greeted the living, and blessed those
who were to die.

Then the Colonel, in his commanding voice,
announced to his companies : " Now for the
absolution ! "

By instinct, and without having to be told,
these men uncovered as one man. For the order
has come down from on high, and it is their faith
which they obey and no longer man's commands.

" File off in sections ! "

The defile began. Kneeling on the grass, each
group in its turn received absolution, then got
up. And it lasted for half an hour, in the silence
of which the emotion of so many souls dilated
by this new baptism, trembled.

And as they passed, one sign alone enwrapped
their bodies, agitated the hands ready for such

96 PRIESTS IN THE FIRING LINE

terrible deeds : the sign of the cross. The
troopers, strengthened by the absolution, became
instantly the warriors whom the battle was
calling. To the left, the battalions massed and
formed up in order of marching, ready to depart
as soon as each company had received the sacra-
ment. And when the last of these brave men
had bowed his head before the hand of the
priest, still standing before his flag which he had
raised like a cross, the Colonel, his sword pointing
towards the plain where the appeased voice of
thunder rumbled, commanded in his fine im-
passioned voice :

" Forward ! "

The column moved on. The hour had struck.
The fight which roared beyond, called new lives
to the sacrifice and to immolation in the supreme
endeavour of resistance. At the head, floated
the flag, whose tricolour wing was stretched to
the formidable " la-bas," and seemed to fly before
those whom she urged along. One could hear
nothing else throughout the countryside but the
noise of muffled tramping, of the clinking of
bayonets on the cartridge-boxes, and the murmur
of remarks passed in a low voice.

Suddenly, an enemy shell whistled over the
regiment, alighted in a deserted field, exploded
in hollowing out the earth. Then with one same

ABSOLUTION BEFORE THE BATTLE 97

sign, the troopers raised their arms towards this
first messenger of death.

Then, disdainful, rash, superb, these young
soldiers of twenty-two with their pure hearts
and transfigured souls answered back with a
magnificent burst of laughter, the laughter of
children, in defiance of the barbarians, and went
off to die as Christians, as Frenchmen.

CHAPTER IX

THE BLOOD OF PRIESTS

That which I had feared and dreaded, though
refusing to believe that such sorrow should
darken the calm days at the hospital, the appre-
hension which had haunted me like a sad pre-
sentiment, had become realised ; poor Duroy had
been wounded. To tell the truth, when the news
reached me, I thanked God that it wasn't worse.
This brave fellow, whose fearlessness I knew so
well, might have been killed on the battlefield.
I'm certain that he desired that reward, the
beautiful setting forth of a true hero whose life
had been directed towards so glorious an end.

" I am wounded," he wrote, "but almost slightly,
just enough to have seen the blood flow, and to
have proved that it is red. Again, you may
thank God that it is the left arm. For if the
Boches had rendered my right arm useless, what
a face you would have made, my poor chronicler !
However, my good hand is left to me, and un-
fortunately plenty of leisure in which to write

93

THE BLOOD OF PRIESTS 99

you long letters, in which you will be able to dish
up thrilling actualities for your readers. One of
these days you will receive pages and pages of
stuff, written in the deuce of a hurry. This time,
I send you the assurance of my joy, thrilling and
stirring, without any vanity, but proud and grate-
ful to the beast who made a hole in me. I, too,
suffer in the flesh for my country, whose majesty
I have seen face to face. Yes, they pretend that
those who tend the wounded are not exposed in
any way and are funkers — now I know what
answer to make to these calumnies.

"The watchword of the Germans is this, and
I had it from the lips of one of their wounded men :
1 Fire first of all on the field hospitals/ Yester-
day, there was a great distribution of prizes ! I
picked up two, but the one in my leg doesn't
count. As to my arm, why — that was a better
shot ! Only, the bullet did not remain there.
Your friend's always the same, he never could
keep anything ! I've also got a gash in my hip
but I should finish by feeding you up, if I were
to describe to you all the presents that I've
received from the loyal soldiers of the Kaiser."

Poor Duroy ! He joked, but beneath the play-
ful tone of his letter, I could guess at the gravity
of his wound. Then, too, there was nothing
about the circumstances in which he had got his

too PRIESTS IN THE FIRING LINE

wounds. Nothing ! that meant that he had gone
out in search of them in one of those acts of
bravery which make those say, who judge from
a merely human point of view : " He was im-
prudent ! " I, on the contrary, thought, " He is
magnificent ; " otherwise, had he been struck by
chance, in one of those circumstances which hide
merit, or take away from the glory, he would have
told me straight out.

Three days later, a letter came from the front
speaking of him, written by some one else. His
comrade, a priest too, told me what I already
knew so well. Duroy owed his wounds to an act
of devotedness, to his splendidly rash courage, to
the fine swaggering of his valour. He had fallen
through having put in practice the noble device,
engraved in his priestly soul, and which he had
made his unalterable rule : " Priests should be
right in front and among the first to face
death."

It was because he was right in front, and the
first, that he was now lying in an ambulance, the
prey to the sharp pains of severe wounds, which
might cost him his life.

It was in watching by him at night, that his
confrere wrote this letter to me, in which sadness
is brightened by admiration. But uneasiness
peeped out of each page, and the sincerity of the

THE BLOOD OF PRIESTS 101

account filled my heart with heavy apprehensions
and vague anguish.

That day, the doctor-major of the ambulances
had gathered his men together to ask of them a
fresh sacrifice.

There were near the enemy trenches, hardly
fifty yards away, over twenty wounded men, who
had been lying there since the evening before.
The Germans were watching them, and had their
eye on the stretcher-bearers, whom they knew
to be charitable and courageous enough to go
out and pick them up. These poor wretches
were sad hostages, kept in sight by the wild
beasts; they count on our pity to draw us on
in this way. They were sure that we should
not leave our brothers to perish and they waited
for us.

The doctor lowered his voice, which was broken
with emotion and trembled with indignation :
" They are waiting for us, to do for us."

At these magic words, he looked fixedly at his
men, standing motionless in front of him. Not
one had stirred. He went on, with a smile caused
by his pride.

"It is a task which I can't and won't impose
on you. Our duty does not go so far as that.
Besides, I've no right to waste your precious
lives. Still "

102 PRIESTS IN THE FIRING LINE

He stopped again, frightened by the im-
portance of the sacrifice, for which his words
might inspire the desire.

" Still, if there are any among you ? "

They did not allow him to finish ; there were
thirty-eight of them ; thirty-eight arms were
raised and thirty-eight voices were blended in
one, the heroic voice of bravery and of accepted
death.

"II..."

The doctor looked at them fixedly for a few
seconds, silently. The light of pride irradiated
his face, a joy stronger and more luminous than
the shadow of death, hovering over that little
group of men, in which not a single one was
inferior to the others in valour. For he knew
that this word decided their fate, and that of
these men sent into danger, not half would
return. He went up nearer to them to show the
real brotherliness that united him to his stretcher-
bearers. Then softly, almost tenderly, he said :
" That's right — I thank you all. I counted on
you to do it."

But he wished to explain his idea, to give his
reasons for the determination he had just taken,
so that each one of those brave men might go
to the sacrifice with a clear consciousness that
an imperious need demanded this immolation.

THE BLOOD OF PRIESTS 103

But still, he knew that words were vain and
comments useless, guessing that all had already
understood.

" My friends, all those who suffer have a right
to our help and our pity, cost what it may. They
have a right to our toil, to our night-watches, to
our efforts, to our self-sacrifice. All the wounded
are the creditors of France, and it is us whom she
has chosen to pay the sacred debt of gratitude.
She counts on us every day, but she counts doubly
on us when her victims are exposed to the
cruelty of the executioners. Struck down in the
fight, our brothers over there must not expire
in humiliating captivity, and worse still, in torture,
inflicted by their calculated barbarity on these
disarmed, these powerless, these conquered men.
If they must die, they must not die twice of
German bullets and of the bestial hatred which
finishes off the dying.

"That is why I ask for your supreme devoted-
ness. Besides, it is a challenge of their cowardice
and our valour and our pride. They would like to
be able to say : ' Frenchmen abandon theirwounded
when they see above them the muzzles of our guns,
and our mitrailleuses/ That they shall not say.
These brutes must, from the bottom of their holes,
be forced to admire us. It is perhaps folly on my
part, but it is fine folly. No I I'm not mad,

104 PRIESTS IN THE FIRING LINE

since you have thought as I have. Our minds
agree with our hearts, and our consciences tell us
that we have done well."

A thrill ran through the ranks, a thrill of
splendid emotion, but one also of impatience. Not
a word, not even a " yes." Words would not
have expressed the greatness of the sentiment,
which made these souls thrill. Only their looks
spoke, and what they said at that minute not
human tongue could ever construe.

The Major came nearer still : "I want twenty
men."

This time a voice protested : " Only twenty ?
Why not all ? "

The doctor explained, rather embarrassed by
this claim, which he had foreseen.

" I can't expose you all — sacrifice you all."

"But," said the voice indignantly, "what
about the others, those who will have to stay
behind ? "

There was another silence. He who spoke
expressed the thought of all.

" All the same ..." objected the doctor.

He did not finish his objections. He felt in that
heroic minute the urgency of imposing his will,
as commanding officer ; the imperious necessity
of putting a stop to this impatient manhood,
ready to dash madly along in the race to death.

THE BLOOD OF PRIESTS 105

And he gave these orders : "I have spoken ;
twenty, not one more ! "

Again, all hands were held up as in defiance.

Coldly his features became severe, in order to
hide the emotion, which made him tremble, the
Major ordered —

" The twenty youngest, step forward ! "

The sorting out was done automatically by
order of the mobilisation, and when Duroy
advanced, carried away by his desires and the
certainty that he could not be among those who
remained behind, the doctor, having counted,
dismissed him with a sign.

" I've got my right number. Duroy, go back
into the ranks."

The priest took a few paces back, and became
very pale. He opened his mouth to protest, but his
sense of discipline kept back the words on his lips.

The twenty chosen were already separated
from the others, who looked at them in con-
sternation, and devoured them with eyes filled
with such envy, that one guessed that they were
jealous and humbled.

" You are all tough, all strong, and fit for the
job ? " said the Major.

All heads were bent in assent, but from the side
of those who had not been chosen a protest burst
forth.

io6 PRIESTS IN THE FIRING LINE

" No, Major, not all."

' Who called out ? " said the Major.

" I," said Duroy, coming forward.

" Why ? "

" Because I know there's one among the twenty
who can't run and can hardly stand."

" Which one ? "

Duroy pointed with his finger to the second
stretcher-bearer in the first line.

" That one — Leroux 1 "

Duroy went up to him. " Look, my dear fellow,
you know perfectly well that you can't go ' la-bas ' ;
that one of your legs is done for by the blow you
got the other day — by your wound."

Leroux tried to humbug him.

" Get out, you joker." Then laughing heartily
he said, " The fact is, Major, he wants to take
my place."

But the latter, standing right in front of him,
demanded :

" Are you wounded ? Good Heavens, and you
wouldn't have said anything about it ! Since
when ? "

It was Duroy who answered : " Three days
ago, Major ; it's a piece of shrapnel in the left calf,
and he wouldn't let it be dressed. Make him walk
a few paces, and you'll see that he limps and is
suffering, I'm sure."

THE BLOOD OF PRIESTS 107

Leroux stood up very straight, his eyes burning.
Then in a hard passionate voice he said —

" Do I look like a liar, by any chance ? "

The doctor looked at him silently, and all the
men made a circle round this soldier, aged twenty-
seven, who had by this reply raised himself to
the height of the most famous warriors in the
Great Army. A tender emotion wrung all hearts
in the presence of this heroic liar, who for three
days had hidden his wound and wanted to go
on all the same.

The doctor held out his hand to him, and hiding
his admiration under a commonplace phrase, he
drew him to one side.

" You've done enough, my lad, I order you to
go to the field hospital to be looked after."

And as the young stretcher-bearer did not budge,
saddened now, almost confused and disconsolate
at seeing his dream slipping away, the Major said
to him —

" Come now, you must leave something to the
others."

Then addressing Duroy, who wished to explain
what he had done : " Yes, my friend, I under-
stand, you are worthy of one another."

The priest placed his hand on the other's
shoulder.

" You are not angry with me?"

108 PRIESTS IN THE FIRING LINE

Leroux did not reply, but he leant towards the
man who had just taken his place, and with one
accord the two men embraced, because their souls
were alike.

A few minutes later, the company went forward.
The roar of battle, subsided for an instant, made
the ground tremble, and beat time to their hurried
steps. Around them already there was a hail-
storm of lead and steel. And these twenty men,
setting out through the hurricane of death, were
superb to see in their smiling calmness.

At a run they got to the top of a hillock which
separated them from the level, and crossed the
line of sharpshooters, in their hiding-places in
the thickets. Five hundred yards away on the
left, rose the terrible wall of earth, from whence
the enemy's guns spat forth bullets by thousands.

The doctor ordered the stretcher-bearers to
take shelter behind a small ridge of earth, which
hid the zone exposed to the enemy's lire, in which
all those who dashed through ran the risk of
never returning.

The twenty men, impatient to be off, waited,
palpitatingly, for the order to advance, to begin
their risky task.

"No," called out the Major, "it's mad what
we are going to do. I have not the right to send
you to the slaughter."

THE BLOOD OF PRIESTS 109

But the brave fellows, their faces glued to the
ground, called out all together :

" We risk as much in retiring as in advancing."

Duroy said the words which settled the Major.

" The wounded men await us — those in the
trenches and the others ! "

They started off and skirted the hillock. The
infernal conflict increased, and still louder than
the tempest of the firing of volleys were the cries
of the victims, which came up to them. Then,
hearing the appeal of these lives in danger, the
stretcher-bearers set out at a run. The Red
Crosses beflowered the field of slaughter. And
their action was so fine, their boldness so magnifi-
cent and so striking, that the Germans turned aside
their guns from these voluntarily unarmed men.

They went quietly and unmoved, in the midst
of the carnage, about their sublime business,
without a shudder, without a look in the direction
of danger. Now, from every point rained the
deadly sightless bullets, which formed about them
a network, each mesh of which bore death.

The tempest raged on, immense, whistling,
furious — and still standing among the fallen bodies,
the twenty stretcher-bearers, greater than all,
seemed to conjure up in the eyes of the combatants
the image of that immortal and invulnerable
thing : bravery defying the most frightful dangers.

no PRIESTS IN THE FIRING LINE

Sometimes, from the depths of that hell, cries
broke forth, bearing to these magnificent heroes,
the homage of the righting men.

" Bravo, stretcher-bearers ! "

Their unheard-of boldness stupefied the soldiers,
in the thick of the fight, and drew forth the ardent
admiration of these men, drunk with the butchery,
who were hurling themselves the one against the
other, in monstrous blows. The sight of that
bravery astonished their hatred, and forced it
to bless charity.

And still, beneath the atrocious firing, the
messengers of pity raised up the wounded, then
carried them, without, haste to the shelter prepared
for them. Still three more to bring in !

Duroy rushed towards the farthest off. In
his unarmed hands hung a rosary. In the midst
of the danger which surrounded him, the tranquil
soul of the priest prayed. He bent over his
brother in distress, stretched out towards him
succouring and consoling arms. But suddenly,
he who bent down to enfold the head of the dying
man, fell inert, then a few seconds later, the body
itself sunk down on to the ground, struck with
impotency at the moment of the last effort.

And yet, though overcome by the pain which
had struck him down, he gathered himself up, and
with his right arm raised in the midst of the fight,

THE BLOOD OF PRIESTS in

he traced the sign of absolution over his dying
comrade.

Then, having accomplished his task to the end,
he disappeared in the blood-stained grass.

Thus was my friend Duroy wounded, a priest of
France, struck down on the field of honour and
honourably mentioned in army dispatches.

CHAPTER X

TYPES OF WOUNDED MEN

It was a Sunday. Showers drenched the court-
yards and the shrubberies in our park. A tinge
of sadness hovered over our wards, and one
would have thought that the minds of the wounded
were benumbed.

We should not see, that afternoon, strings of
lamed men hopping along in a crowd towards the
cloisters, which they have baptised " the front."
There, on fine days, bullets do not rain down, nor
shells hail upon them. Our combatants are over-
whelmed there with cigarettes and biscuits only.
They are like a troop of usurers there, who know
how to put a value on the least detail of their
wounds.

The scarves were wider and the bandages more
visible, more to the fore.

As to the crutches, they held up by dozens,
hanging legs, which wave up and down like the
shin-bones of a Punch and Judy on wires. There
is so much " go " in this pack of wretchedness,

TYPES OF WOUNDED MEN 113

so much of picturesque in this group of men, tried
by fire, that one could laugh at it heartily, with-
out constraint, nor risk of saddening the actors in
this little saraband. They themselves would take
off, with grimaces and comical positions, their
crippled ways.

They were there of all regiments and of all
countries, drawn up against the walls, not beggars
by any means, but heedful of the packets, whose
coverings gape, and pour forth little presents.
Each one would set about telling his story and
describing the tragic moment when the pro-
jectile found him, in order to annihilate him.
There was no false sentiment about these brave
fellows ; one would have said that they were
describing a dream or repeating the adventure
of some hero in an old story.

And one heard, for example, such words as
the following, which reveal the soul of the race, in
the depths of its bravery.

A lady, who had two sons fighting, asked a
little foot-soldier, with a bashful countenance, who
looked at the long file of visitors with an indifferent
air, where he had been wounded.

" At Montmirail, madame."

" Did many die around you ? "

" Oh, heaps."

" And you were not frightened ? "

1

H4 PRIESTS IN THE FIRING LINE

" There was not time to be."

Then this taciturn fellow became chatty and
described the skirmish, the charge with bayonets,
the rush on to the Boches who were fleeing. He
became animated and lived over again the most
tragic moment in his existence.

" But, when we got to the crest of the hill, the
German cannons began to pepper us. It was
hailing all over the place, and my comrades were
falling like puppets. I saw one, near me, cut in
two by a bursting shell "

The lady, horrified by this very simple de-
scription of so horrible an incident, interrupted
the story-teller.

" Good Heavens ! it is appalling 1 And you,
what did you do during this time ? "

Then the young soldier, astonished at such a
question, looked at her ingenuously, with no
thought of his sublimeness, and said —

" What did we do ? Oh, well, we waited for
our turn."

Now, in the well-being of recovered tranquillity,
and the pleasantness of a happy convalescence,
our good fellow, like the rest of them, awaited his
turn, to get the tobacco which generous hands
were distributing.

But to-day, the rain had stopped the finest
flights of our convalescents. Some weeks ago,

TYPES OF WOUNDED MEN 115

these gallant fellows did not sulk even under fire.
Watered so often by shrapnel, without bending
their backbone beneath their deadly squalls, now
they are almost mollycoddles, so much so that a
big Parisian, whose legs are done for, makes fun
of his companions and of himself. " And to say,
you owls, that before the Boches, we marched
all the same, without dragging our feet."

In the noisy wards, there was the jolly bright-
ness of a full house ; even the most suffering were
infected by the good humour, and from their
beds, where painful wounds would nail them for
a long time, they followed without losing a detail,
the evolutions of the convalescents.

There was the Senegalese, Amadou, with his
great head like an orang-outang, which he swings
about like a bear begging for a nut. Mischievous
and greedy, always ready to appeal to the powerful
authority of the corporal on guard when the
horse-play seemed to him to go a little too far, the
one idea in his noddle, with its primitive brain, was
to call out to the visitors, and to hold out huge
paws, with the shameless gestures of a beggar,
absolutely devoid of all sense of self-respect. He
had, too, the manner which attracts attention and
provokes generosity. A monkey and a buffoon,
with the soul of a nigger, whose sole preoccupation
was to obtain anything, he soon acquired good

n6 PRIESTS IN THE FIRING LINE

manners and possessed ideas of gallantry, which
flattered the ladies and appealed to their kindness.
He had his little formula, always the same,
childish and native, which never failed, and with
it a smile, invariably.

" Bonzou, Matame, tu vas ti bien, toi ! . . ."

Naturally, the lady would approach him and
reply laughingly to this courteous advance.

It was then that our diplomat would unmask
his batteries and ask with confidence the question.

" Toi y as ti apporte cigarettes ? Thou have
brought me cigarettes ? "

His two hands like claws moved restlessly
about, and the setting into motion of his crooked
fingers explained the real reason of his exuberant
politeness.

The asked-for cigarettes would fall in sufficient
numbers to satisfy an ordinary wounded man.
But, instead of the usual thanks which would be
appropriate, Amadou would protest, looking at
what he had just received with a disgusted air.

" Na, na, na ! not good ; give more, thou."

And this lame creature, as agile as a tiger-cat
in spite of his broken leg, would clutch hold of
furs, would cling to pockets, would hunt in muffs,
would make a prey of the visitors, here to be rifled,
and would empty their bags to the bottom, unless
the iniirmarian did not keep him in order.

TYPES OF WOUNDED MEN 117

And his grimaces, so natural, his clownish con-
tortions made the joy of the little girls, who at
first kept at a respectful distance, on seeing that
face of ebony with its white shining teeth ; but
gradually approached with confidence and put
their little white hands in his black, wrinkled
paws.

And that makes me remember the pretty
lesson which a mother knew how to give her little
daughter, who refused with a slight disgust to
have her pretty fingers stroked by the black man.

" I wish you to shake hands with him. He,
too, is a French soldier, and he has shed his blood
in our defence."

Poor Amadou ! poor, big child, who made every-
one laugh who approached him, it is true that he,
too, was a soldier of France. Far away, in the
bush, in his village lost among the African forests,
he once knew the country, which knows how to
bestow brotherly love on men. He saw with his
wonderstruck eyes, the tricolour wave, this flag
which he found again on the frontiers, waving
above the bloody firing, and which made to live
and breathe in his sight that mysterious France
which he loves without knowing why, as one loves
a lovely dream made of sweetness and of light.

For he has known the hardships of war, and
for us, without owing us anything, he fell beneath

u8 PRIESTS IN THE FIRING LINE

the tempest of fire, keeping for our country a
veneration of love, stronger than his instincts,
and more lasting than his superstitions.

In this strange brain, where the thoughts are
not like ours, an urgent idea, like that which made
us all come forward to face the invader, forced
itself on him, irresistible, overwhelming. France
was in danger ; our arms and lives belonged to
her ; let us go and fight so that she may triumph.

" Toi y as ti apporte cigarettes ! ' ' I should think
that they have brought cigarettes, indeed, and
sweets with which to fill your big fingers, and toys
to amuse you with, and even flowers from our
gardens. . . . Poor old comrade ! if your skin
was black and ours white, there was something
in us which was the same colour — our blood.
And yours, and your brother's, mixed with the
blood of rich and poor, of gentle and simple, yours
which I have seen flow, has baptised you a
Frenchman for ever.

We had several men from Senegal or Guinea,
grievously wounded, and who seemed to find it
natural to have taken part in the great sacrifice
and to have had their bodies mutilated, in de-
fending our national honour.

They were not vain of it, never made a parade
of their devotedness. They knew nothing of the
pride or intoxication of glory. They fought as

TYPES OF WOUNDED MEN 119

one plays a game, and many died without a com-
plaint being made to tarnish the serene beauty
of their agony.

One of them revealed to me, thus, the feeling,
which moves them all, when they fight for France.

While I was asking him if he did not regret his
own country and the mortal risks he had run for
us, Keita, a superb lad from Konakry, made his
ivory teeth shine in a brilliant smile.

" France is my father, mother, village, all."

One day, the fine fellow showed me a letter
from his adjutant, who had remained at Dakar,
to form the new black troops destined to reach
France the following summer.

The reading of it made me understand what
they are worth, those " niggers," and just what
one can expect of devotedness, of sacrifice and
heroism from them.

The subaltern gave his old soldier news of his
company, with a charming simplicity and a visible
desire to show the affection he had for his valiant
sharp-shooters. He said it was they who had
been fighting in the Cameroons and in Togo-
land. " These countries are ours now," said he.
Then he added, " The Company may be proud
of this conquest. They behaved admirably and
half of them are dead ; but it is to their valour,
that we owe this victory."

120 PRIESTS IN THE FIRING LINE

And the adjutant cited this trait which ought
to figure among the feats of the war, which are
daily offered to our admiration. An English
officer, whom they had never seen, had just taken
over the command of the detachment. At the
end of half an hour he fell, mortally wounded.
Of the decimated troops, there remained only
fourteen standing, and the enemy were advancing
in numbers. They might have fled in search of
shelter, in a retreat whose necessity seemed
absolute, and leave lying there the dying captain,
no longer capable of leading them.

But no ! the fourteen Senegalese organised a
resistance in front of their dying captain, making
a living protection for him with their breasts,
resolved to allow themselves to be killed in the
fulfilment of their sublime duty, right to the
end.

And they all died, impassive beneath the bullets,
firing their last cartridges, breaking their guns
over the heads of the enemy, whose masses
submerged them.

Then, the task done, and resistance become
impossible, the survivors formed a wall round
him who, though fallen, still represented the
country for which quietly, stoically, they were
giving their life. And when the last discharge
felled them, they fell all together, raising above

TYPES OF WOUNDED MEN 121

the body of the captain a tomb of quivering flesh,
a fearful and magnificent mausoleum.

Keita, who knew that fine story in all its details,
and wore the letter which recounts the splendid
adventure over his heart, thrilled with emotion,
when we complimented him on the valour of his
friends. And he said jovially, simply with the
gesture of a child and a radiant smile of joy —

" They good, over there, here, it good too ;
when me go soon break Boche heads." Besides,
his adjutant had strongly recommended him to
do so.

" You are a good shot, Keita, and you will be
able to do for a good many, if you're careful."

The pupil would not forget his lesson, I'm sure,
and I pity the German who finds himself at the
muzzle of his gun, when soon our leather-skinned
friend will be back again at the front.

Meanwhile he plays dominoes, and cheats boldly,
with two bronze statues, who answer, in the third
regiment of Algerian sharp-shooters, to the names,
with a truly oriental flavour, of Braim-Hansour
and Ammar-Meli.

These, who were only wounded in the hand,
might, like others, go about the wards and amuse
themselves by visiting their comrades. They had
good feet and good hands, strong calves and
muscles which projectiles had left whole. Thev

122 PRIESTS IN THE FIRING LINE

were condemned, however, to remaining where
they were, for it was not enough to be strong
enough to walk about the hospital, one must
besides wear breeches. And our two fellows were
wanting in that accessory, sufficient but necessary
for being respectable, elsewhere than in bed.

By order of the head doctor, Braim and Ammar
had to remain between the sheets for three long
days, for having gone out into the park without
permission. They were locked up as one locks
up people who cannot be confined to the cells,
punished as one punishes the sick in military
hospitals.

At the next ray of sun, these two prisoners
chained by the elementary social decencies of
life, and riveted to their mattresses by order of
the chief, had to content themselves with follow-
ing through the window, the movements of their
more reasonable and more enlightened comrades.

Or, forced to be philosophical, they might seek
in the spectacle of the scene inside, a remedy for
their passing melancholy.

Truly fortune favoured them. The wounded
man opposite them, a river porter on the quay at
Tunis, with the face of a brigand, took upon him-
self, in spite of his shattered thigh-bone, to pro-
vide them with comical or tragic distractions.

Abidah had the face of a clown, which he could

TYPES OF WOUNDED MEN 123

dislocate at pleasure, and which he made undergo
astonishing and hideous transformations. The
attention of the gallery would excite his clownish
vanity, and the bursts of laughter from the
audience, would make him discover inexhaustible
resources of grotesqueness. On this occasion,
the Tunisian was in a good temper, which is not
always the case — especially when the hour for
dressing his wound has struck. This savage
detested being attended to, and instead of blaming
the Boches, he would attribute the increase of
the pain to the doctor who tended him. Hence
this scene : the house-surgeon charged with looking
after the broken leg, touches the wound with
iodine ; then such j limpings, yells, protestations.
" If you don't stop, you, you'll see."
The house-surgeon jokes, banteringly.
" What shall I see ? "

Abidah, who had found it necessary to ex-
postulate, but this time in a gloomy manner,
seized his fork and brandished it with so menacing
a way that the staff of innrmarians judged it
prudent to step back, while the other threatened —
" You'll get that in your belly, if you hurt me."
This sort of thing frequently occurred, and what
means could one take to punish him ? One couldn't
illtreat a poor wretch whose leg was crushed,
however quarrelsome, and almost an apache.

124 PRIESTS IN THE EIRING LINE

It was on such occasions that we intervened by
our patience, our gentleness, our charity. Abidah
had become transformed already. A priest-
innrmarian who had charge of him, had made
himself loved almost, by this brute with his
furious rages. From him the enraged man would
accept anything, and through him, the Bedouin
without culture, understood the necessity of
suffering, when one must, in order to get well
quicker.

He did not preach at him and lost no time in
advising him to be resigned. He contented
himself by responding to his boorishness by an
increase of attentions and gentleness. And the
Tunisian slowly took in the kindness which sur-
rounded him as one breathes healthy air without
noticing it. It is, perhaps, the trade of a knife-
grinder, and the apostleship would be a long one,
doubtless, but although it fell slowly, the good
seed would keep nevertheless its germs of fruit-
fulness.

Then, too, our friend liked his task and would
not have given it up to any one else for anything
in the world. He explained, too, ingeniously,
the reason for the joy he feels in devoting so many
hours to this ungrateful task.

" In that way," he said, " I am well in tune
with the war on the barbarians. Only, whilst

TYPES OF WOUNDED MEN 125

at the front our soldiers shoot them, I make a
virtue of civilising them. Later on, if he gets
back to his quays at Tunis, I wager that our
savage will rind in his wicked heart a tender
memory, when near him, he will see the cassock
of some French priest."

CHAPTER XI

HOW THEY DIE

News reached me after many long days of waiting
and uneasiness, from my friend Duroy, wounded
in the war, under the circumstances I have
already recounted.

News, but not about him. Just six lines to
say that he is getting on well, and that he is
ashamed of being in a good bed, with white
sheets, when so many others lie on trusses of
straw, when they have any.

" The Boches have above all wounded my self-
love. There is nothing more humiliating than
to remain immovable when others go madly
ahead. I am jealous of my comrades who run
about, see danger, are in the thick of it all, and
die in full activity."

If my friend had not, at the time, whole legs,

my comrade had excellent eyes, and he saw beside

him comforting heroism. In that hospital, at

the front, where the badly wounded are sheltered,

one witnessed fine acts, and sublime feats, which

126

HOW THEY DIE 127

are the prolongation of warlike heroism and gives
to it a definite meaning.

There flourished magnificent virtues, and in
the tranquillity of repose, too often broken by
pain, blossomed forth the noblest acts of
generosity.

Those who were heroes on the battlefield, con-
tinued to be heroes now. When one is brave,
one's heart finds everywhere the occasion for
showing one's valour, and the bullet which is
working about in one's flesh has never broken
the resistance of strong souls. Duroy described
to me the fine devotedness of a wounded priest,
nearly in his last agony, and who seeing himself
about to die, was a priest to the end, a sublime
apostle, who shortened his life to bring God to
a soul who had lost Him for many a long year.

The hospital ward was dreary, almost silent
and funereal, with its two long rows of beds, in
which a too lively suffering prevents drowsiness
and suppresses sleep.

Around these forlorn couches, little hope re-
mained and the wounded men made for themselves
no illusions. They knew that the least wounded,
those who may be saved perhaps, have been sent
off to some far-off town in the middle of France,
to those parts which the noise of war will never
disturb.

128 PRIESTS IN THE FIRING LINE

With the instinct of suffering beings, whose
uneasy thoughts turn back upon themselves in
the preoccupation about their ills, these great
victims thought : "If they nurse us here, quite
near the place where we fell, we must be very ill."

And they felt ill too. Their faces spoke it ;
and their features, thinner already after a week,
revealed an upheaval of the organism, a rapid
fight with life, which could not hold out in these
devastated bodies.

There, one did not know how to laugh, or rather
one could not. In each one, it was the expiation
which continued ; the redemption of the Mother
Country, which was achieving itself.

Providence does not only exact bloodshed in
torrents for the tremendous redemption of nations.
It demands also that, shed drop by drop from open
wounds, and which will flow for a long time.
Sometimes in silence of resigned or sullen suffering,
a cry would be raised, heartrending, which would
end in wailing, and die away in sighs. There
would be low moans almost like the death rattle.
And to complete this horrible picture of war, the
far-off bellowing of the cannons which howled of
death.

That hospital at the front was another lugu-
brious corner of the battlefield. And who
was to know, besides, if soon some German

HOW THEY DIE 129

commander, annoyed by the peaceful sight of
the Red Cross waving through his field-glasses —
who was to know, since the sight of human pity
excites indefatigable rage — if they would not
make this hospital the object of their murderous
delirium ?

In any case the poor fellows, who were suffering,
lived with the nightmare of it still, and whilst
the others, happier than they, only heard in dreams
the fury of the fight, these are thrilled with the
growling of the thunder, close by.

They suffered and were saddened. A lassitude
almost as wearing as the pain of the wounds,
overwhelmed their souls. That which they desired
above all things and for which they thirsted, was
to rest in some peaceful spot, far away from the war,
which no longer tempted their powerless youth.

In front of the enemy, for days at a time, they
had seen death face to face and had looked upon
it with that fine smile of defiance which light up,
when they are fighting, the faces of our admirable
French troopers. * ' La-bas ' ' death is beautiful and
seductive in its sublime horrors. Towards it,
our young warriors go forth singing, and their
dream of magnificent madness is to receive its
kiss and to go off to sleep in its arms.

Here, death has not the same aspect, it has lost
its halo of glory. Even its name is changed.

K

130 PRIESTS IN THE FIRING LINE

In the ardent rush of battle, it calls itself a
bullet through the heart ; a bursting shell through
the breast, a quick short-cut to eternity. It
hastens from the red horizon, in great onslaughts,
and its pale countenance is lit up with the brilliant
reflections of victory. Here, it slinks slyly about,
stifling its steps, which come from the shadows —
stretching out its long, terrible arms above its
disarmed prey, powerless to ward it off by a
vigorous effort or by a wave of the hand even.

" La-bas " it hovers above the field of honour.
Here it lies in wait for its victims, in front of each
bed in the hospital. And that is why these
desperately wounded men feel their courage ooze
away and their bravery totter.

All the same, devoted care is not wanting
to them, and attentive pity watches over their
misery. There is all round them smiling kindness,
to compensate for the barbaric brutality which
has made of them lamentable human wrecks.
They have more than brothers to console them,
they have sisters, women's hearts which cherish
them, even before knowing them, and who wear
themselves out in tenderness so as to give them
hope, or to shed rays of light on their agony.
For if coming death, whose clammy touch they
already feel, is more fearful and menacing with its
mysterious face and its implacable grin of

HOW THEY DIE 131

defiance, these soldiers, recollected in their
suffering, do not turn away their gaze. And know-
ing that they must die in obscure solitude, they
have still the valour to accept the inevitable
sacrifice like Christians. God visits them and
speaks to them, for they have merited the highest
graces. He speaks above all to those who have
forgotten Him for so long.

He who is moaning at the end of the ward was
just baptised, and that's about all ; then drifting
along on the tide of life, he had never given a
thought to the fact that he had a soul, and that
in the other world there is a Judge who demands
His dues. Yesterday, he was railing against
religion and was blaspheming. To-day, he is
thinking of the near future, and wishes to ensure
his departure for the next world. The blood,
which he has shed in the great cause, has re-
baptised him as a child of God beneath the gaze
of his country, which is fighting for justice sake.

" Sister, I should like to see a priest."

A priest I The nun looks at him while she tries
to keep back her tears. The unheard-of sufferings
which she has witnessed and tended have never
shaken her valiant heart. And now a great
anguish seizes hold of her and moves her at the
sight of this soul's distress.

A priest! They are "la-bas" the priests, both

132 PRIESTS IN THE FIRING LINE

chaplains and soldiers, all doing their task, all
occupied in the urgent business of battle, which
requires their infinite devotion.

This evening, certainly ; presently, perhaps,
some of them will come in, since now by divine
permission they are all over the place, during the
war. A priest will come — but when ? And this
poor fellow, like so many of the others among the
thirty wounded in the big ward, may die so easily
before they return.

The sister leaned over the dying man, and spoke
of contrition, helped him to repent, awakened his
conscience in which she saw confidence and good
will spring up. And yet, the good woman cannot
stifle her regrets and sobbed aloud —

" My God ! no priest for these poor dying
children."

The man in the next bed, who heard her cry,
called her.

" Sister — a priest — there is one over there at
the bottom of the ward."

" A priest ? there is a priest here ? "

" Yes, but so ill — so ill — his two legs are
crushed and, besides, he has something the matter
with his chest too — and his shoulder as well — we
fell together, near enough to touch one another.
It was he who gave me absolution ..."

And he pointed with the only finger which

HOW THEY DIE 133

remains to his whole arm, to the place occupied
by the abbe, right at the end of the ward.

The nun rushed towards the young abb6, who
did not see her coming. In front of his bed, she
stopped, hesitating, and murmured —

" My God ! it is this man ! "

And her two arms fall back, showing by the
gesture her immense deception.

" It is this man."

Hope, ardently cherished, died.

Poor little priest ! He had been in a swoon
ever since his arrival this morning. It had been
impossible to put life into this body, with its
corpse-like face. Not dead, but so near the end !
A little while back, the doctor who examined him
hurriedly, pointed to the pool of blood, in which
he was drenched.

" There is nothing to be done. It's all over."

And these words still resounded in the ears
of the sister, whose last hope had just been
extinguished, before that motionless body.

Nothing more to be done ! And the other who
awaited help, and would not get it !

Then, stronger than her fears, and trusting
to the impossible, which sometimes happens by a
miracle from God, she went close up to the priest
whose features were all relaxed.

" Father — Father— — "

134 PRIESTS IN THE FIRING LINE

What divine power God sometimes gives at
certain hours — at the voice of imploring faith !
The dying eyes opened, and hearing that voice
the wounded man, almost dead, felt the last
spark of his ebbing life flicker up. He did not
speak, but all the strength of his mind was con-
centrated at that moment in the clearness of his
glance.

The nun, understanding that his moments were
numbered, and knowing that all is possible, even
a superhuman effort to the priest, the guardian of
divine power, the good sister who had regained
her courage in the tragic moment, dared to trans-
mit to the dying man the request of the other
dying man.

" Over there, a poor fellow is dying, and begs
for absolution."

In a whisper, the priest-soldier murmured, so
low that one had to guess at the word which
accepted the sublime task, on the threshold of
eternity.

M Carry me there "

Four infirmarians took up the bed, and slowly,
to avoid jolting, which would hasten the end,
carried the consoler towards him who waited.
Again, the eyes closed, and the sister asked herself
in her horrible uneasiness, whether it was not a
corpse which passed or not, to the astonishment

HOW THEY DIE 135

of the great, silent ward. They reached the bed
of him who called for help.

" There," ordered the nun. " Put their heads
close to one another — gently, don't jolt him."

Then, again, the priest opened his eyes, and in
an almost strong voice, and looking towards his
comrade, he said —

" Come close up, my lad — let us be quick —
there's no time to lose "

The infirmarian went a little way off, and the
confession began. There was a whispering of
voices, words which slipped between the exhausted
lips. Both hastened ; death, counting the seconds,
hovered over them both. On their pale faces a
few fugitive impressions passed, and then came a
glow from some invisible fire. Then the absolution.

The priest recollected himself in the solemnity
of his ministrations. The remains of life which
animated him rose from the depths of the soul
which was tottering in his annihilated body. He
tried to rise, with an effort, so as to raise his hand
in benediction over the penitent. But his hand
remained inert, it was already paralysed, rendered
useless by the last swoon, which paralyses the
limbs. Then, with a supplicating glance, the
priest called the nun.

" Sister, you must raise my arm, and help me
to finish my task."

136 PRIESTS IN THE FIRING LINE

The wounded men, touched with emotion, raised
themselves in their beds, to see a sight which they
had never seen before — this superhuman beauty,
which the hideous war had created.

The innrmarians, struck by the grandeur of
the divine act, had knelt down. And they all
gazed at these two dying men, so fine that their
souls alone seemed to live and to act in this drama,
which unfolded itself between earth and heaven.

Piously, with her two trembling hands, the
sister took the priest's arm and raised it towards
the dying man who was praying.

" Dominus noster Jesus Christus te ab-
solvat ..."

The voice ceased in the pitiful mouth. But an
act of will mastered the fatal weakness, and the
words slipped from the apostle's lips, imperceptible
words which were poured forth in a last effort.

" Ego te absolvo a peccatis tuis, in nomine
Patris et Filii et Spiritus Sancti."

Then, a silence. The nun looked at them both
and they seemed paler to her, through her tears.

She waited a few seconds longer, then, feeling
the arm was heavier and the flesh colder, she
understood that all was over ; the act of the
highest devotion, and life.

Two sighs, mingled, which form but one, an-
nounced to the kneeling woman the end of these

HOW THEY DIE 137

two lives, which had finished together. At the
same moment the priest and he whom he had just
saved, expired. In the distance, the incessant
roar of battle went on. One would have said that
all the great, lugubrious voices of the war were
ringing the majestic death-knell for them.

The nun brushed away her tears. The beauty
of their end banished the sadness of mourning.
As they have obeyed the orders of their superior
officers, so the two soldiers have gone together
as such, when the Master called them.

Then wishing to affirm their brotherly love by
a definite sign, she joined their hands together
by the gentle chains of her rosary.

But, by one of those mysterious contrasts which
Christian hope explains, in that ward where every
heart was moved with keen emotion, now it was
the infirmarians who wept and the nun who
smiled.

CHAPTER XII

THE MEDAL

It was a sad morning, after a night disturbed by
cruel nightmares ; a morning in a hospital heavy
with slumber which could not stifle the moanings.
Forty bodies stretched out which had been over-
come momentarily by the sharp suffering of in-
terminable hours — bodies exhausted and weighed
down.

Arms were stretched out over the sheets, in
white bandages, spotted with blood, and stained
by the deep wounds, at which infection gnawed.
Heads swathed in bandages which made one guess
at broken skulls which exposed the brains, as we
had so often seen.

Swellings in the bed-clothes revealed the
protecting apparatus for broken limbs, to which
any contact with the sheets is an insupportable
burden.

On all their faces was the trace of unassuaged
pain, the hectic flush of fever which burns and
ravages the organism.

138

THE MEDAL 139

Duroy came to in the middle of silence ; and
the dawn of day showed him the full horror of
this wretchedness.

He had known them for a long time now. He
had seen worse still ; heaps of flesh cut into bits
by projectiles, gaping wounds which drenched his
hands with blood. He had known all these horrors
and had felt his heart revolt at the sight.

He had lived for weeks among the panting
wounded ; and with the dead. But " la-bas,"
it was the fine exultation of devotion in the midst
of activity, expended with the ardent desire of
being charitable, and of uniting the self-denial
of the priest to the courage of the soldier.

That had been the endeavour, dreamed of by
every soul who gives itself to noble causes and who
multiplies his generous efforts in a still greater
sacrifice.

There he had been a stretcher-bearer, that is
to say, a man of initiative, a valiant man who
tastes and enjoys the virile joy of danger which
confronts him, and which he desires to be still
more terrible, all the time.

Here, Duroy was nothing more than a wounded
man, condemned to supineness, harder than all
risks, undermining, distressing, discouraging.

On this particular morning, my friend was more
melancholy than ever ; and, still more than from

140 PRIESTS IN THE FIRING LINE

his wound, he was suffering from anguish increased
by uncertainty. " How many days and weeks
will it take for me to get well and become what I
was before ? "

From the neighbouring church, the seven-
o'clock Mass bell was ringing. He had not even
that consolation. He was a prisoner, whom the
pain of a serious wound reminded at each moment
that the time of his captivity would be long, and
that his patience would undergo cruel trials.
Even the thoughts of his friend, so far away,
could not easily reach him in his solitude, fenced
in, in the zone of the armies and almost at the
front.

He thought sorrowfully of those he loved, since
now he could no longer do anything else.

Oh ! those cruel hours through which the
wounded must live ; the bitter thought of feeling
oneself useless, and of not being able to give
one's country anything else than the cheery
acceptance of one's suffering.

Little by little the hospital would awaken and
become noisy with the daily coming and going.
First it was the arrival of the infirmarians with
coffee ; the noise, almost clatter, of the morning's
duties. Then there was the sadness of the moans
of those in torture, which began again, and of
those who dreaded the advent of the doctors,

THE MEDAL 141

who would feel their wounds, press them, widen
them, cauterise them.

Already were the instruments laid out in rows
on the table, with their queer, alarmingly shaped,
twisted blades, with beaks and claws.

Then the doctors would come in, in their white
coats, their hands gloved in indiarubber.

And Duroy would prepare to undergo his daily
dressing and force himself to endure it silently,
courageously. He would put his pride into
suffering without a moan, in forcing back the cry
so often wrung from one by the tortured and
rebellious flesh. Even there, and there above all,
did he wish to give an example and to show people
that one can suffer greatly, without the will
giving signs of weakness.

But what then could be the matter with the head
doctor to make him pass his bed to-day, without
saying a word to him ? Ordinarily, he would
hold out his hand to him, would encourage him
with an affectionate word, would treat him like
a friend. What could such a silence mean ?

He saw him at the bottom of the ward, chatting
with the adjutant. From time to time he would
look at him and shake his head as though he
were the cause of their preoccupation.

Elsewhere, all that would pass unperceived.
But to a sick man, no detail is indifferent, and the

142 PRIESTS IN THE FIRING LINE

entire life of his mind is confined to the narrow
circle to which his illness chains him. Ordinarily,
it was with him that they would begin their rounds.
On this occasion, they seemed to forget him on
purpose. And that vexed him a little. " What
have they got against me?" However, at the
end of half an hour the doctor came to the priest's
bedside. As usual he was smiling, but to-day,
it was a graver, more mysterious smile.

" Well, my dear abbe, how did you pass the
night ? "

" Not badly, Major."

" A little feverish ? "

" I don't think so."

The surgeon smiled again, and his expression
mystified the sick man still more.

" That's a good thing, my friend ; for to-day I
want you to be in good spirits, because you've
got some hard work to do."

Hard work 1 What an odd remark ! If he
had not been so wide awake, Duroy would cer-
tainly have thought he had heard it in a moment
of delirium. But no ! he was quite calm, and
his astonished gaze silently questioned the doctor,
who added —

" A famous job, my friend, but one which will
not tire you too much, I hope. Farewell for the
present."

THE MEDAL 143

And off he went, without any more explanations.

When the dressings were finished in the ward,
the doctor nodded significantly to the abbe.
And he went on talking to the adjutant in a low
tone, the latter nodding his head in approval.

An hour passed, and my friend had almost
forgotten the astonishment which the inexplicable
attitude of the head doctor had caused him.
The monotonous daily life began again in the
ward. The wounded men chatted among them-
selves or moaned painfully in the grip of that
obstinate and wearing companion — awakened
pain. Then there was a commotion near the
open door.

A head doctor with five stripes entered, followed
by the head surgeon. The latter was looking
very happy, but a little moved. He pointed to
my friend's bed, and soon he was surrounded by
decorated officers.

" Abbe Duroy, stretcher-bearer of the

section 1 " said the head doctor.

The visitor held out his hand to the abbe, who
raised himself a little so as to receive more
worthily the sympathetic homage of a superior
officer. The latter questioned the wounded man,
asked him where and how he had been wounded ;
he wished to hear the exact circumstances, and
took a great interest in the details of it all. The

144 PRIESTS IN THE FIRING LINE

priest dwelt on the difficulties of saving the
wounded under the flying bullets. He recounted
it all simply, in a very impersonal manner, like
a witness who had not himself been mixed up in
the drama, nor had run any risks. And he
finished with these regretful words about his
companions, who, less fortunate than he, had
fallen mortally wounded.

" They did their duty right up to the end."

The head doctor looked at the Major, then he
said, very softly —

'* They are all the same ; they only think of
others."

" And what did you do while your comrades
were devoting themselves ? "

" I did what they did."

" Only that ? "

" Just that."

" Nothing more ? "

" No."

There was a short silence during which the
superior officer kept turning and twisting a small
red leather casket about in his fingers.

" Do you know, monsieur l'abbe, a stretcher-
bearer who said to his companions, hesitating
before a more pressing danger, ' Come on, my
friends, it is neither the moment for stopping or
turning back ! ' "

THE MEDAL 145

It was Duroy's turn to smile.

" Any one would have said that, at such a
moment.' '

" Do you remember that this same stretcher-
bearer, exposed to the terrible fire from the
enemy trenches, drew himself erect in face of the
Germans, and by the authority of his gestures,
when pointing to the wounded, decided them to
turn aside their deadly lire from the stretcher-
bearers ? "

Duroy blushed and looked uneasy. He who
had defied death, and had forced it back by the
strength of his daring courage, felt shy and non-
plussed, while listening to that voice which re-
called the heroism of his superhuman act to him.

" Yes, I understand," continued the head
doctor. " You looked at the others, and it is the
remembrance of their courage which remains in
your mind. Only one has been left out from the
homage of your admiration ; that was natural.
Happily your superior officers have a better
memory than you have."

Then, slowly, in the midst of the astonished
silence of the whole ward, he took out of the red
leather casket that which seems to hold within
its glittering circle the smile of a country, grateful
to those who have served and defended it even unto
death. And from that military medal, the sight of

146 PRIESTS IN THE FIRING LINE

which makes the hearts of our soldiers thrill more
than the bursting shells or the horrible thunder
of war ; from the symbol in which a hero sees
himself in a true light, as in a magic mirror,
burst forth in rays of light the generous grandeur
of France, heedful of paying in glory for the blood
shed by her sons.

Duroy saw it glitter in the hands of his officer,
saw it approach his breast, and saw it pinned
there, the golden dream, on his woollen vest,
where other medals testified to his confidence in
Our Lady, to protect and defend.

" In the name of the Commander-in-Chief, the
military medal is conferred on the soldier-
stretcher-bearer, Duroy, for his fine conduct and
for his bravery in saving the wounded under the
enemy's fire."

But his joy is saddened with regret, which comes
to him at the thought that his absent companions
were as courageous as he was, and will not receive
the reward, which they had deserved for a similar
display of courage.

M Doctor, what about the others ? "

The head doctor conquered his emotion, then
squeezing his hand tighter, and steadying his
trembling voice, he said —

" The others — there are no others — they are
all dead."

THE MEDAL 147

Then, at that moment, Duroy as never before,
understood the danger he had run, the immensity
of the peril from which he alone had escaped. He
saw again the frightful hour, when his tremendous
will mastered his horrified heart. He heard again
the thunder-claps of death, and quailed with a
fright, which he felt for the first time.

" My God ! " he muttered aloud, " I did not
know that it was so easy to be courageous.' '

And it was still in a sort of dream, in which the
words seemed to acquire a sonorousness of a far-
off echo, that he heard the Major proclaim the
heroism of priests on the battlefield.

" At the present moment, more than five
hundred priests are proposed for the military
medal or the legion of honour. Combatants or
stretcher-bearers, in the trenches as well as in
the field-hospitals, they are admirable everywhere,
and give a magnificent example to all around them.
In this war, in which all is greater, more terrible,
more generous than ever before, they had to have
their share and represent God in a war in which
right and justice are united in order to crush error
and barbarity."

Duroy had got himself in hand again, and he
thanked the doctor with a smile — this doctor
whose kindness for the wounded showed itself
in so delicate and paternal a way.

148 PRIESTS IN THE FIRING LINE

" To-day, you will have a real festal dinner,
with flowers, cake and champagne, in honour of
your little cure ! "

Then he bade him a farewell full of touching
solicitude, and recommended him to be prudent ;
to hasten, by his patience, the perhaps lengthy
cure; to remember that he must return, one day,
to the front, then further off, pushed back almost
to the invader's country.

" Alas ! my friend, there as here, the wounded
will not be wanting, and we shall need tough
non-commissioned officers to form our men.
For," added he, "I was quite forgetting to tell
you that you have been made a corporal. And
you will not remain that for long."

The doctors went off with him. As they went
along they continued praising the newly decorated
man, and included with him all his confreres, every-
where remarkable for their bravery in the war.

Duroy described this touching scene in twenty
words. The details of it were given to me by a
mutual friend later on. My valiant comrade, of
whom I am so proud and a little jealous, contented
himself with expressing his joy at having been
able to contribute to the golden account book of
the French clergy.

" One more decoration is a gem added to the
radiant crown of the Church, and, to-day, it is I

THE MEDAL 149

whom France has chosen to make this offering,
beflowered with my blood. For a long time, the
Church has lacked the renewal of that aureole,
that magnificent ornament of honour and bravery.
In all times, she has had her martyrs and apostles,
her conquerors and heroes. Now she has to
complete her guard of honour, her troopers of
1914-1915."

A few days later, the head doctor brought
Duroy the official list, which contained the names
of the priests killed by the enemy, cited in the
order of the day, decorated for their fine conduct
in the war. An incomplete but how eloquent a
list !

On glancing over this page destined to be
placed in the golden book, he felt a thrill of bravery
run through it, a great harmonious wave of
patriotic courage come from past centuries, from
the far-away periods of history. And they were
the same voices that spoke, it was the same
ardent clarion call, which had sprung up from the
hearts of the priest-soldiers, the same boldness
in the sight of death, the same blood always
offered up without counting. With pride, the
priest read the list, lengthened each day by the
indefatigable young cures, harvesters of glory,
whose hands, blackened by gunpowder, rest from
their heroic labours, in the supreme gesture of

150 PRIESTS IN THE FIRING LINE

absolutions given to the soldiers, their brothers.
Officers, non-coms., soldiers, they were superb,
foolhardy, madly brave, winning, gentle as great
friends, gay as " mousquetaires."

And when Duroy, closing these pages, which
the names of unknown confreres rendered illus-
trious, saw a doctor approach his bed to congratu-
late him, he spoke to him of the admirable part
played by the cures of France in those dramas,
where a heroism of superhuman beauty is re-
vealed.

The doctor was one of those who know how to
understand events, and are penetrated by their
profound lessons. He, too, knew the high deeds
of the French clergy, and had felt a lasting
emotion from its perusal. More than an emotion,
the upsetting of his way of thinking about the
Church and her apostles.

"Ah 1 Father," he said to my friend, "I, too,
have misjudged religion, and have not known
priests. When war broke out I did not dream
for a single instant that I should meet you,
speak to you, undergo the influence of your
example, and bless the law which made you
soldiers. Now, I own that, thanks to you, I have
seen God hovering over our armies and His all-
powerful hand leading them slowly, by the road
of sacrifice and expiation, to a final victory."

THE MEDAL 151

Duroy smiled. He accepted that sincere
homage for all the clergy under arms to-day.

And yet, his loyal soul wished to proclaim the
merit of others, the heroism of all Frenchmen
united in a splendid outburst of courage — a
collective heroism made up of all personal acts
of bravery, without distinction either of beliefs
or professions.

" It is the heart of the country which acts at
this moment, through the arms of all her children.' '

But the Major wished to specify the homage,
to make it more absolute for those whom he had
the more greatly admired.

"Yes, Father, I know it; we are all brave,
generous and great in these magnificent hours ;
but you priests are among the best, the most
valiant of us all."

And, as the abbe wanted to protest, he said :

" Now, you don't know anything about it.
What I say there is what one of our generals
on the staff declared. Good Lord ! when it's a
case of judging of his soldiers, acknowledge, all
the same, that he knows better than you do."

CHAPTER XIII

A BRETON

One day, at four o'clock in the morning, there
was at the hospital an extraordinary signal for
action, which awoke the staff, and made them
get up in a hurry. From barracks and rooms,
the innrmarians rushed precipitately, their eyes
blinking from the sudden awakening whilst they
were fast asleep.

The corridors were lighted up, and in the wards,
the wounded men, especially those who had but
lately come there, looked as though they had
awakened from a nightmare. This hubbub in
the middle of the night had perhaps made them
dream of an alarm, and the so recent memory
of nocturnal surprises came back to disturb their
minds for an instant, overworked during so many
days by the terrible watches in the trenches.

Outside, the motor-ambulances were hooting.
Stretchers were being got ready, stifled moans
were heard behind the curtains.

It was new suffering which was arriving for us,
152

A BRETON 153

wretchedness and pain. It was another convoy
of wounded, who had paid dearly for the re-
taking of a few mole-hills — advances of fifty
yards, which we regard as insignificant, and which
are so many victories.

We ought, however, to be accustomed to these
painful sights, which the unpacking of these poor
human wrecks, panting and pitiful, so frequently
repeated, offers us. All the same, a feeling of
anguish would seize us each time, and I know
nothing more painful than the sight, in the pale
light of the lanterns, of those outstretched bodies
which one had to raise so gently, so as not to ex-
asperate the wounds with which their flesh was
riddled.

They were for the most part Bretons, who had
come from the Somme, where, like so many others,
they had held the line, and had borne the brunt
with an endurance more admirable even than the
activity of our legendary offensives.

There were four in the first ambulance, four
stretcher cases, that is to say badly lamed ones.
When we opened the doors not one of them spoke.
It seemed as though they were asleep or dead.
But their eyes were wide open, but such quiet
eyes, holding no impatience in them. They were
waiting. Patience had become to them a virtue
of every day and in all circumstances.

154 PRIESTS IN THE FIRING LINE

" Well, comrades ! you must be horribly tired."

A cheerful voice, and certainly one not belonging
to a dying man, replied, revealing a stupefying
good humour —

" One is a good deal better off in this than in
the trenches, I can tell you I "

" That man's a philosopher ! " remarked one of
the infirmarians who was helping me to unload
these four jolly fellows.

We began with the one who had answered us,
and he began at once to play the fool.

" Go ahead, my friends, lift out my old carcase,
and if you hurt me, you may be sure I shan't yell.
I'm not a little girl ! "

Ah ! the brave boy, the fine Frenchman, that
Breton was ! His wound was appalling. An
exploding bullet had laid open his forearm.
Presently when we should dress his gangrenous
wound, we should see a gaping hole, an opening
through which we could put three fingers, a wide
breach in the limb traversed by only two tendons,
which have withstood destruction.

And this badly wounded man, who certainly
had never had the habit, and especially at such a
moment, the desire of showing off, this man of
thirty-six made a joke of his pain, and found
amusing epithets with which to describe the
Bodies, who have crippled him for life. And in

A BRETON 155

spite of everything, his gaiety was so catching
that we laughed heartily while we were carrying
him in. He had just explained how it came
about that, being wounded in the arm, he had
travelled on a stretcher.

" It's because those vile brutes chucked another
lump of lead at my right flank."

And off he started about the Germans, at
whom he railed in his lusty way, without anger,
in the calm, singing voice of a peasant from
Finistere.

" Oh, I shall see them again, one day or another ;
we shall meet again. All this has been taken into
account, and must be settled up."

It was more than probable that he would never
see them again, and that for him, the war was
over. But, the idea had taken root in that
obstinate head, the idea which keeps a soldier
still standing and forces him on ; revenge for the
harm that has been done. And it was in con-
tinuing to jeer at the Boches that our new boarder,
Michel Kergourlay, made his entrance into ward
number three.

This man was the father of rive children. He
had been fighting for two months without stopping,
rilled with anxiety for his own life, and for that of
his wife and bairns, which was much more poignant .
He was neither discouraged, nor demoralised.

156 PRIESTS IN THE FIRING LINE

On the contrary, he brought with him, from
those rabbit-holes where our sublime army fights
obscurely, a strength of endurance, a reserve of
courage which the ordeal had doubled. And
they were all the same. Not one complained or
rebelled. The idea which governed anxiety, over-
came discouragement, cooled impatience, was the
same which inspired the magnificent watchword
" to hold on to the end."

And they had " held on " these Bretons, with
a valiant obstinacy which caused their territorial
regiment to be mentioned in the order of the day.

Kergourlay described the last fight to me, the
last great morning of his life as a warrior. This
tiller of the soil struck the true note of real
patriotism ; and the story of their last charge,
in which moreover a priest played the leading
part, was a page which must not be allowed to
perish.

My Breton and I began by not being friends at
all. Even truth obliges me to own that from the
first day he awoke in me a most pronounced
antipathy. Not that, as one might imagine,
because of any argument, or, at the least, a
spontaneous misunderstanding between him, a
layman, and me, a priest, or for any religious
reason. On principle, but for quite a different
reason, Kergourlay sulked with me, and even

A BRETON 157

went so far as to employ hard epithets, because
he had suspected me, not without cause, of laugh-
ing at his Christian faith.

We had just landed him in front of his bed,
and like all those who had forgotten the delight
of tranquil repose, and the voluptuousness of
white sheets, the fine fellow had given himself up
to my care. I tore off his tunic after having cut
it away in places so as to free his bad arm. As
to his trousers, they were grey and shining with
hard clay. The material had disappeared be-
neath the coating of wet earth which had dried
on the way. Think of it ! After having existed
for sixty days in the muddy trenches, in the
sticky, slimy water, after having sojourned in the
midst of these swamps, ceaselessly diluted with
fresh rain, after having lived for two months in
that, hardly leaving at all those holes which wild
beasts would have deemed uninhabitable !

Must not our French race, lovers of light and
of exploits in the full light of day, have seized
unanimously, fully, the sense of the new kind of
heroism !

Only by seeing this man so frightfully, so
inexpressibly dirty, did I understand better than
ever the meaning of this war of ferocious patience,
of audacious tenacity ! the heroism of these fine
" poilus," descendants of our famous musketeers,

158 PRIESTS IN THE FIRING LINE

whose dream it was to die clean and beautiful —
who now fall beneath the bullets of the Prussians,
already half-buried in the mud of their fortresses.
But what a symbol, too, this mud from the
defended country, these particles of earth, stuck to
the flanks of its defenders — earth of our country,
which clothes with sacred covering those who
fight for her, and go forth to die, with a fragment
of France to cover them, to protect them, to
serve them as a winding sheet. It was thus that
I saw my Breton, and without his guessing it, I
admired him, the impassive Celt, who gave himself
up to our care and, docile as a child, allowed
himself to be undressed.

Anxiety for his small belongings worried him
quite as much and more than his wounds. I
fumbled in his pockets, and one by one, took out
from them the odd, useless, strange objects with
which they were filled.

The pockets of a soldier at war are the most
extraordinary jumble imaginable.

In them he carries everything that is dear to
him and that he wishes to keep, in spite of every-
thing, even when wounded or even dead. Knife,
chocolate, letters, cartridges, folding fork, tobacco,
washball, fragments of shell — all that was spread
out on his bed, and my lad stroked them, and
gently put them in order, as though he were

A BRETON 159

stirring up with these objects, all his tragic
memories.

" Look in my tunic again, to the right, there is
something more."

I plunged my hand again in the opening hemmed
with mud which crumbled as I did so, and right
at the bottom, entangled, but whole and un-
broken, I drew out a rosary of hard beads strung
on to a rusty chain.

A rather mischievous idea came into my head.

" What do you do with that, my lad ? "

And perhaps beneath my moustache, a smile
made itself visible, which was certainly not a
mocking one, but my Breton considered it cer-
tainly as disrespectful, since abruptly, insolently,
and taking me assuredly for someone else, he
took me up in these terms —

" What I do with that, you stupid fool, that's
not your affair, and those who won't be pleased,
can tell me so."

At that moment, another pain than that of his
wound clouded his face. With an abrupt gesture
he laid his rosary well in sight on the coverlet,
and in the same tone that he would have used to
tell the Boches to halt — unanswerable : " It never
left me in war, and it isn't here that I'll let it go."

" Stupid fool ! " I think that never did a
bad-sounding epithet seem so agreeable as that

160 PRIESTS IN THE FIRING LINE

which my friend Kergourlay shot forth at me that
morning, point blank.

At first I did not want to disillusion him ; I
wanted to see how far his faith went.

It was useless for me to redouble my attentions,
and care for the Breton ; from that moment he
suspected me, and showed me, without any
circumspection, the antipathy with which I had
inspired him. In the afternoon I was bold enough
to ask him in an aggressive way, what he meant
to do with his rosary.

" But, in short, do you want to sleep with it ? "

This time he replied by calling me one of those
names which are at present reserved for the
Germans, and for which one employs a synonym,
even in cookery books. And Kergourlay turned
his head away in a rage, so as not to behold
the miscreant, which I seemed to be, any
longer.

I had no longer the courage to play such a
shabby part, and, taking him by the hand, I
said —

" Old friend, I was only teasing you when I
made fun of your rosary. I am a cure, in spite
of my moustache, and we shall be the best of
friends/'

His face lit up, and he shouted with laughter.

" Oh, that's better, I must say. Only, you

A BRETON 161

must own that if I called you bad names, you
jolly well deserved them I "

From that minute I devoted myself to assuag-
ing his pain, and in the evening, seated by his
bedside, I listened to the fine recital of what he
had seen and suffered.

As to him, all the toil of war, all its perilous
enterprises, its deadly risks, and unforeseen terrors
were framed in one village only, one of those
spots ten times lost, ten times regained, in which
the most tragic days of his life were spent. An
obscure combatant, he did his duty to the last,
between a little wood and a cemetery. It was
there that he saw, like so many of his fellow
soldiers, how the cures of France spread around
them the flame of heroism which dares all dangers
and induces victory.

It was the last day, two hours before the terrible
blow which smashed the arm of my new friend.
At dawn, the order had reached the captain to
dislodge at all costs an enemy battalion, which
never ceased peppering our trenches. Cost what
it might, they had to get from under cover, hurl
themselves with their bayonets on the enemy,
surprise him with the suddenness of the attack,
and do for the demoralised Boches on the spot.
The men had closed up round their officer,
clutching their weapons, ready to spring. One

M

1 62 PRIESTS IN THE FIRING LINE

of them said laughingly, " We're done for,
captain/'

The captain replied in the same way : " The
lieutenants and I are, that's certain, as they
always begin with us. As to you other fellows,
I wouldn't give a halfpenny for your hides."

A murmur of hilarity ran the length of the
trench. Those men, sick of doing nothing, were
intoxicated with the thought of moving about
a bit, of making an advance, of running, of
being brave in face of the enemy and in the face
of death.

The order was given, and they all, like a force
let loose, sprang up the bank, and the dance
began.

It was terrible. On both sides it was one of
those massacres in which the adversaries spit out
their hatred, tear at one another, and strangle
one another ; too close together to shoot or to
run one another through.

This lasted twenty atrocious minutes. There
were hardly any wounded ; most of them were
dead, hacked into pieces, trampled to death on the
ground, soaked with blood. Once again had the
French bayonet opened a breach in the German
wall, and the heroism of our men had beaten the
way to a glorious halting-place. The Boches
went back into their holes to prepare for a

A BRETON 163

renewed attack, whilst their guns, even with the
ground, swept it, and rendered it untenable, so
that it had to be abandoned.

Not one officer remained of the company. As
the captain had said half an hour before, it was a
settled thing for them.

One commander alone remained to that
little troop of forty whole men ; a little
sergeant of twenty-five, a priest, the cure of the
company.

Around him, his arm was bleeding without his
seeming to notice it, confident in his tried courage,
the soldiers grouped themselves. They looked
for courage in his eyes ; they counted upon his
words to give them the necessary energy for
completing their formidable task. For they knew
that soon the others, " la-bas," would return to
avenge their loss, and that they must again climb
the tragic slope, and repulse them victoriously, so
that this trench, a fragment of France, should not
fall into their hands.

The priest sergeant was quite a little man, with
a timid air, in spite of all that he had seen and
done. He was one of those in whom the gentle-
ness of the priesthood is most apparent.

And yet, the forty " poilus " who surrounded
him, knew that he was more of a commander by
his soul than by his rank. And these big children,

1 64 PRIESTS IN THE FIRING LINE

covered with mud, stained with blood, smiled on
him with joy, as strong men smile at the fulness
of courage which they admire and which subjugates
them.

" Sergeant, while we're about it, we must get
out of the mire, and give them a last pounding."

The abbe looked at them, and silently questioned
them. Some of them looked sulky. Their nerves
were still quivering from the fight, and their flesh
shuddering from the frightful encounter. It was
at them that the priest looked fixedly. Then, in
a voice which seemed strange in his small child's
mouth, and whose jeering tone revealed an old
stager in war, he said, " Great Scott ! one would
think that there were some among you who are
funking it ! "

He went up to four or five men who looked as
though they did not want to quit the trench,
simply because they were dog-tired, and certainly
not because they were afraid.

" Well, then— what is it ? Is it funk or what ? "

" It's not that," grumbled a Breton, " I dunno
what it is."

The young sergeant smiled as he looked at them.

" I know what's the matter with you. You
don't care a hang about death, what's bothering
you is what comes afterwards. It's the fear of
not going to it properly — it's the fear of not

A BRETON 165

knowing where you'll wake up on the other
side."

They held their tongues, and their silence gave
the answer.

" Ah, that's what troubling you. Well, my
men, you may thank God that I'm still alive to
set you on the right road to the great halting-
place.

" Now, my children, go down on your knees
and say the act of contrition. Let each one pour
forth his sins into the hands of the great Com-
mander who is here, who is looking at you. I
give you a minute to demand and to obtain the
pardon which will send you to heaven, as
straight and as quick as a bullet."

There was silence, moving, sublime, during
which grimy hands made the sign of the cross
on the breasts which were to be so shortly
shattered.

Then, erect, the priest absolved these men who
were so soon to die. Then, as soon as they had
all risen, their eyes aflame with a new bravery,
and which one felt was invincible, the sergeant
commanded in a low tone —

" Now, out you go, there's only one order ;
take the trench, and after that, the roll-call —
up above ! "

And with his thin hand, he pointed to heaven.

166 PRIESTS IN THE FIRING LINE

A prodigious rush, a terrible flight, a formidable
spring through the hail of bullets and bayonets
with which the German line bristled. Thirty
men were killed. The sergeant was the first of
all. But the trench was taken.

CHAPTER XIV

THE CONFESSION ON THE PARAPET

A very animated gossiping had grouped six
wounded men round the bed of my Breton,
Kergourlay. These jolly fellows had almost for-
gotten the tragic life led by them for so many
months, and they would speak of the terrible
days through which they had lived, with the same
serenity with which they recalled, in order to dis-
tract themselves, the terrifying episodes of the
strangest story of adventures. I listened to them.
They had, in order to describe the war, such vivid
words that they seemed to reproduce the situations
with the fidelity of photography — and to depict
them in their living colours.

It seemed to me, while listening to them, that
I was witnessing unreal scenes, conceived by some
imagination, creative of the fantastic and fabulous.

Each one of these jolly fellows recalled his
souvenirs and became by turns picturesque and
touching.

Glory triumphed and displayed itself to these

167

1 68 PRIESTS IN THE FIRING LINE

lads whom death had grazed so often. And from
those brave young men with their heroic souls
I learned the history of what will be, later on,
the great epopee of nations. I listened to them
speaking of their Christian faith, revived or
resuscitated. And priests, religion, fine inspira-
tions were mixed up so intimately with the prowess
of war, that my wounded naturally made an
eloquent vindication of our cure-soldiers, those
fine musketeers who imposed respect and enforced
admiration.

Around Kergourlay, stretched out on his bed,
the gossiping became more lively. The playing
cards were scattered about on the neighbouring
bed, and with his pipe in his mouth, and with an
important gesture his neighbour, Le Noc, was
telling in a simple manner this story which made
one laugh and cry.

" My dear fellows, I didn't do anything more
startling than you others, but one evening, the
Boches used quite a hundred kilograms of iron
and lead on my solitary carcase, alone."

A young fellow, class 14, cut him short.

" That was the evening of the 7th of December.
I believe you, old man. I was there."

The first speaker, Le Noc, hastily took up the
thread of his discourse again.

" Precisely, he was there, and it was in ' the

CONFESSION ON THE PARAPET 169

rabbit-hole/ and I'll chuck my pipe out of the
window if I exaggerate by one word."

Then he looked at me, flattered by my attention.

" Ah, Father, this will please you, because it's
about a cure, not a funker, and who knew his trade
jolly well.

" That evening, the Boches bore us an ill-will
which surpassed the average. They hurled nuts
weighing fifty kilograms at us, so that one would
have said they didn't know what to do with them.

" We others were singing away in our dark
holes. There was Sergeant Ristoulet, who made
us roar with laughter at his gascon jokes and
words, which he alone manages to find. When the
thunder-bolts made too much row, he would hit
the roof of the trench, crying out : ' Really, you
up there, you mustn't make such a beastly row.
There are some fellows who want to sleep on the
ground-floor.'

" Then, when they smacked at the embankment
of the trench, which was half beaten in, Ristoulet
would put on an angry expression.

" ' By heavens ! there are some bad-manners
about in this world. For goodness' sake don't
bang the doors so loudly that it shakes all the
fixtures . . .'

"This quaint sergeant never stopped. There
or in open country he always found something

170 PRIESTS IN THE FIRING LINE

to say. That trench, it was almost a box at the
Vaudeville. Only, there were no cushions, and
besides, the water came up to the middle of our
calves. But, after all, one can't have every-
thing . . .

" Everyone was so jolly in it ; it was in laughing
like madmen that we awaited the hour when
1 Pere ' Joffre would permit us to poke our snouts
out and to look about a little to see if the sky
was still in the same place.

" It's true that we giggled in our bear's den, and
yet, sometimes, there would pass through one's
heart a kind of draught, which froze it. It wasn't
absolutely funk, but something which seemed to
bear a family resemblance to it ... we weren't
frightened, if you will, but it was as though, at
those times, someone behind us called out : ' All
the same, you'd be safer anywhere else but
here.'

" Then, when that little feeling had hold of you,
the ' marmites ' of the Boches made the devil
of a row, and the men, smothered with splinters,
looked more than twice dead. What would you ?
It appears that everyone goes through it.

"That evening, it was my turn. It was a
Saturday ; the rain was streaming down from
above, as though specially charged with filling
our bathing-tubs. All my past filed off before me.

CONFESSION ON THE PARAPET 171

I had a sort of cinema in my pate, which made me
see different views of my village : father, mother,
my sisters, a heap of people who never stopped
crying, and repeating the same thing over and
over again : ' Where is our son now ? Alive
or dead, prisoner or wounded V

" It was no use my crying out inside me, ' that's
enough, I don't want to see any more 1 ' the
machine kept going on, and the more I shut my
eyes the clearer it was.

" And with all that, a voice kept calling out at
the back of my noddle. ' Poor old chap ! it
doesn't matter what you do, you'll never escape.
There are Bodies all round and you'll all clink,
every man jack of you I ' Ah ! I can assure it
wasn't pleasant. I couldn't laugh. I had a
lump of lead in my swallow. The fellows, who
saw quite well what was up, took it out of me and
said : ' Oh I so it's your week to be funky I ' I
can tell you I had a blue funk on me !

" Besides, worse than the worry, which gave
me thoughts blacker than Chinese ink, I had
arrears of old tom-fooleries on my conscience —
like an entangled brushwood. And through all
that, death seemed more beastly and more
horrible. For I must tell you that we weren't
always giggling and fooling in our trenches —
and when one is forced to keep silence, a whole

172 PRIESTS IN THE FIRING LINE

heap of sad thoughts crop up, about things one
thought one had forgotten.

" One knows that one isn't an animal, and that
a man's end is not at all the end, but the beginning
of other things.

" It was that, particularly, which upset me
that famous evening. My conscience kept on
chattering : ' The moment has come, my lad,
for pulling yourself together and for giving me
a clean up ! '

" I was quite keen to do it, but how to manage
it ? One can get into mischief alone, quite well,
but to get out of it, there must be two of us, me
and the cure. And where was the second to be
found ? There had been one in our den, as it
happens, some days back. But, poor devil, he
was far away now, very ill certainly, perhaps dead,
seeing that a splinter of a shell had wounded him
in the stomach. All that was very true, but it
didn't console me a bit. The more worried I was
the more I had a wild desire to confess myself.
Alongside us, in the other trench, there was also
a cure ; we knew one another very well, for we
had just missed being bagged by a patrol of
Uhlans the pair of us. But, for the time being,
we were separated by thirty yards of ground,
more difficult to get across than the distance from
Quimper to Paris.

CONFESSION ON THE PARAPET 173

" I kept thinking of him, of how to manage to
see him, of the ways of getting to him without
being spotted, because I told myself : ' If you've
got to be killed first, it's not worth while putting
your nose outside.'

"And you'd never guess how much the idea
tormented me. It worried me so that the fellows
thought I was like a death's head at the feast, and
amused themselves by jeering at me in a most
unpleasant way.

" ' Le Noc has got a stiff neck ! "

"Or else they would tease me unmercifully.
1 Call his nurse then, and tell her to bring him a
jug of cider and pancakes of buckwheat.' They
said so many things that time, that I was in a
furious rage. But the angrier I got, the more
did those barbarians make fun of me. At last
the sergeant thrust a flat hand on my shoulder,
and with an air of selling me at a reduced price, he
said : ' Old fellow, if it's because you want a
little fresh air, don't be shy ; go and take a little
stroll on the balcony, and see what kind of weather
it is.' I looked at him without laughing and
demanded : ' Is it true ? Do you mean it ? '

" ' Right-oh. It's time to find out what those
others in front of us are up to. If they make a
hole in your skin or in someone else's, it's all the
same to me.'

174 PRIESTS IN THE FIRING LINE

"Oh, I can tell you I didn't wait long. I
snatched up my things, and I said to them —

" 'Good-night, my friends, for the present, and
there's my address. If I don't come back, you
may be sure that there's been a smash up. Neither
wounded, nor prisoner, nor missing. There'll be
no doubt about it ; have me put down as dead,
without any fuss.'

"One gets so used to that kind of thing, that
my pals, when they saw me get out of the hole,
didn't even dream of seeing me cut in four, or
riddled like a sieve, or disembowelled. My best
friend wrung me by the hand, and said —

" ' Go ahead, old chap, and without wishing you
ill, if that must happen to you, I'll try to get hold
of your boots, because mine drink up more
water in five minutes than I drink wine in five
weeks.'

' ' I grunted as I gripped him by the hand —

" ' That's all right. You may as well take the
feet with them. That will save you the trouble
of unlacing them ! '

" Well, there I was on the parapet. The fog was
so thick that one could have cut it with a knife ;
but one would think that those devils of Boches
have candles in their eyes . . . because I hadn't
gone three steps, when a dozen bullets whizzed
round my ears. I, who had become quite jolly,

CONFESSION ON THE PARAPET 175

merely through breathing a little fresh air, I made
this reflection —

" ' If you remain still, stuck there like a tele-
graph pole, they'll knock you into pulp/

" So I got down flat on my belly, in the mud and
water, and I began to crawl at the rate of fifty
metres an hour, at the most. And, by gum, I can
tell you it's no joke to play the snail, under the
circumstances. So much so, that when I came
to a barrier, I almost felt inclined to turn back.
The disgusting trench gave me the impression of
being a magnificent room, compared to the filthy
muck in which I was dabbling like a badly brought
up duck. I'll bet my comrades would have given
their heads to have been able to see me stuck
in the mud ! . . . My lor ! And then, in spite
of my wretchedness, at each yard I gained, I
said to myself : ' You're making headway, damn
it all ! Only to be going to confession in this
manner, will earn you half of your absolution.'

" I spent a good twenty minutes in getting past
the two poles which barred the entrance to the
field. Three bullets caressed my skin, without
going through. They may have thought that
they would catch cold in passing through my
carcase, which was colder than the bottom of a
well.

" At last, I got to the edge of the trench, and

176 PRIESTS IN THE FIRING LINE

I was just going to run the risk of putting my
head over the parapet, when I saw a great
shadow rise up, which had jumped up like a
Jack in the box.

" ' Just you wait a bit/ it said to me, ' my good
fellow, and I'll teach you to make us visits without
being announced ! '

" And I saw him raise his bayonet with which
to run me through.

" ' Hullo ! ' I said very softly, ' you'd better
see if you're not taking me for some one else, first.'

" Then the shadow began to giggle and even
to shake with laughter.

" It's you, Le Noc ? '

' ' ' Good Lord ! who else do you think it would
be, at such an hour ? And you, you are really
Maranson ? '

" ' I rather think so,' replied the shadow.

" ' Maranson, the cure ? '

" ' There aren't twoMaransons in the battalion.'

" ' Then,' I said to him, ' my good Maranson, it's
not a case of putting it off for long. Confess me
quickly, so that I can get it off my chest as soon
as possible. I'm coming down ..."

" 'Hold your tongue! you're all right where
you are.'

" ' Where I am, flat on my tummy ? '

" ' One does as one can,' said he kindly. ' Now,

CONFESSION ON THE PARAPET 177

go ahead ! I'll dispense you from the Confiteor
. . . lump 'em together, and begin with the
biggest

" ' Well, you see, old fellow — Father, that is
to say — its years and years . . .'

" ' I tell you to do what you can without bother-
ing if its years or centuries. Besides, look here,
I'll drag it all out myself.'

" I only had ' yeses ' and ' noes ' to answer.
And, in proportion as the business advanced, each
time I came out with one of my sins, it seemed
to me as though a splinter of a shell had been taken
out of my chest.

"The Boche cannons were bellowing horribly
overhead, but I didn't hear them. Only one
sound filled my ears and my heart, that of the
low voice of the abbe, who was saying to me :
' My boy, it was fine of you to do that. Now it
would be very astounding if you were to be afraid.
You are vaccinated against the microbe of funk.
God is with you, and He is a jolly sight stronger
than William. Try not to lose Him again, now
that you've hold of Him. And then, you know,
death is not any more dangerous than an empty
cartridge. A bullet which would knock you on
the head would be neither more nor less than a
first-class ticket to Paradise.' He gave me his
blessing, and then we embraced one another.

N

178 PRIESTS IN THE FIRING LINE

" ' And now,' he said, ' you are going to crawl
back to fulfil your mission. If you don't get
back, well, we know where we shall meet again.'

" I went off backwards, on my elbows, and I was
so happy that I chuckled quietly to myself and
made all kinds of ridiculous remarks. ' Don't
be afraid, my boy, if by chance a bullet were to
get you. I'll guarantee that you will not do your-
self much harm in falling, since you are already on
the ground. Only, you must not remain there,
all the same.' I had a mission entrusted to me,
and they did not let me out to crawl along the
embankment just to get plugged by a bullet or
so. ' Down there, in our hole, the others are
waiting for me, and who knows ? perhaps that
beggar is already dreaming of the pleasure of
pushing his old feet into my new waders.'

' ' In front of me, a hundred yards away, was
the Boche trench, and when I listened attentively
I heard hollow movements and a noise of iron
clinking which was suspicious.

" In our own trenches, the men were easy in their
minds, and counted on me, and suddenly in think-
ing of that, my blood began to run cold . . .

" ' Idiot ! ' I said to myself. ' Will you wake
up and do your duty ? '

"Then off I went, always on my stomach, in the
direction of the German trench. Well, I can tell

CONFESSION ON THE PARAPET 179

you it was just in time. Hardly had I got round
a big oak-tree when I saw, facing me, black
shadows gliding along on four paws, towards my
trench, towards my pals, towards the ditch, which
was then one of the barriers of France . . . Ah !
it didn't last long. I sprang up, I jumped a heap
of stones, I bounded towards our molehill, yelling
for all I was worth, so as to be sure that they
would be warned before the attack.

" ' Hi ! sergeant, hullo, comrades, attention,
the Boches are coming ! '

" You can imagine that, me alone, standing in
the dark, what a target I must have been to those
damned Prussians. There was nothing else to
be done . . . Bang — bang — to right, to left, all
over the place. It was the moment for recalling
the sermon of my abbe, I can assure you. ' A
bullet is a first-class ticket for Paradise.' All
the time I was running, I expected it, that
ticket, and at every step, I said to myself : ' Pro-
vided that the others hear me . . .' and I kept
on calling out, until I felt a formidable blow on
my right shoulder . . . and then in my mouth,
something warm, and which had not a first-rate
taste. I fell two yards from the trench . . . My
ears buzzed with the noise of the storm, through
which I heard the gun-shots which burst forth in
tens and hundreds. And then, at the end of I

180 PRIESTS IN THE FIRING LINE

don't know how long, I felt that they were carry-
ing me down into the trench, and then an idiotic
thing happened. I was breathing behind just
as much as I was in front ... I should have said
at that moment, that I had my mouth in my back.
I opened my eyes ; there were four of them round
me and the sergeant said : ' He's certainly had
a bullet through his lung.' And my friend, who
I suppose, still had his eyes on my waders, repeated
again and again to those who were looking at me :
' Poor devil, assuredly he's done for.' And it
was always at my feet he looked."

Le Noc having finished, without the least bit of
bragging, the story of his fine adventure, burst
out laughing, never dreaming that like so many
others, he was simply one of those young heroes
whom our golden books will never mention.

" Ah ! my hat ! " cried he, " but what a face
my pal must have made when he saw me go off
with my waders."

Then, seeing that his story had greatly interested
me, because of the religious note which gave it its
value and its heroic turn :

" And then you know, Father, if I had not had
the idea of going to confession, what on earth
would the section in the trenches have taken for
its cold ? "

CHAPTER XV

A CHEERFUL SET

" Where do you come from ? "
" From Perthes-les-Hurlus."
" Things are all right over there ? "
Heads were raised, and also the head and
shoulders of some of them, to look over the side
of the stretcher.

" How are things going ? " said a great red-
headed chap from the Pas-de-Calais ; " well, we
took three hundred yards in three days."

We looked questioningly at him to see if he
spoke seriously or in jest. No, he was not joking,
and the others with their eyes reddened with
night-watches in the man-hunt, confirmed by
their testimony what their comrade had just
announced.

Then, these wounded men with wide bandages,
with enormous splints which revealed horrible
fractures, began to tell us the last news of the war,
in the m idst of which they had been living for the
last five months.

i82 PRIESTS IN THE FIRING LINE

They had been travelling for two nights and a
day. Their wounds were infected frightfully,
dirty, even gangrened. Presently, in spite of
being accustomed to such things, we should have
a shiver of disgust, the natural feeling of horror, on
uncovering their decomposed flesh. These valiant
fellows, who ought to have been overcome by
fatigue, had but one thought ; to assure us of
the truth and to proclaim the invincible vitality
of our country, who awaits in the sublime serenity
of her faith the certain hour of victory.

They kept on speaking even while we were
carrying them off to the repose which their
broken bodies were calling out for.

And when we undressed them — hacking their
tunics into bits, and cutting away their vests,
buried in their wounds — the desire for describing
how things were going " la-bas " was stronger
than their pain, and they kept on assuring us that
all was well ; that we had got them, this time,
and the hour of deliverance was at hand.

It was not that they were feverishly elated,
nor was it a mania with them to appear greater
than nature. But in those hearts, never clouded
over by discouragement, there was the obstinate
will to believe, to hope, to reveal France just as
she is.

" No, they won't get any further, now ! "

A CHEERFUL SET 183

They wanted to sleep ; they couldn't. So
many memories possessed them and assailed them
in their tumultuous rush. Many of them had had
no news for months. Their dangerous life still
had hold of them ; they could not banish from
their minds the thought of war and their hatred
for the Boches.

Then the head doctor came into the ward.
He was walking quickly.

His searching eyes soon perceived the new
patients. He stooped over them, examined their
wounds, took note of their state. He was gay,
reassuring, paternal ; he found the right word
with which to comfort and to console. The
authority which emanates from him, the assur-
ance of his judgment, were a first dressing, so to
say, and the best. One could hear through the
wards the reassuring words which he spoke in
his clear voice.

" Why, yes, my dear fellow, you'll get well.
It'll take time, but we'll put your leg right. This
broken arm ? Hm ! it's very well broken ; it'll
mend all by itself, nicely."

He scattered on his way, hope and confidence,
and when he had gone, those who had been
tormented by uncertainty and pain expressed
aloud their happiness at being reassured.

"He's fine, the Major . . . He's like a Father."

i84 PRIESTS IN THE FIRING LINE

It was a joy to see these good fellows laughing
heartily, and tasting to the full the ecstasy of
being alive, after having lived for months in the
dreadful neighbourhood of death. To laugh, to
swagger, to joke without any anxiety, was in-
variably their admirable state of mind. This
war had made Frenchmen of them again. The
blood of battle had awakened their vigour and
had rejuvenated the race, as it had made their
faith blossom forth anew. There was a zouave
who had arrived with a dragging leg, caused by
a bullet which had gone deep into the calf. He
was suffering from the wound and its consequences,
a partial paralysis, which made his foot waggle
up and down " like an empty nose-bag."

What vexed him particularly was to think that
he had a bit of German trash in his skin. " Boche
steel, which is nothing else, perhaps, than cast-
iron." He had never done feeling the muscles
and fingering the place where the projectile was.

" It isn't because it hurts, but because it's
humiliating to drag that muck about inside one."

It became a sort of obsession with him, which
pursued him like a stupid nightmare. From the
first day, he implored the doctor to take it out
of him as quickly as possible, but there were others
round about whose need to be operated on was
more urgent. My zouave spent hours in prowling

A CHEERFUL SET 185

about in the ward, where the wounds were dressed,
or in the corridor on to which the Major's room
opened. He would lie in wait for him, put himself
in evidence when the doctor appeared, and would
await the opportunity, so often missed, of having
" two words with him, with regard to this affair."

At the end of a few days he grew impatient,
then exasperated. When he would return to the
ward, his head hanging, he would be greeted by
a storm of ridiculous pleasantries.

He would hit himself on the leg, curse it with
rage and make it responsible for his vexation.

" Why don't you spit it out, the filthy lump
of stuff ? Aren't you ashamed of keeping it in
your hide ? "

His rudely tried patience could hold out no
longer. One guessed that he had got hold of an
idea, and that an obstinate resolve had taken
root in his brain.

" As it's like that, we'll see if we can't manage
the job all alone."

That evening he went off to bed early, after
having as usual sworn at his poor swollen leg,
and admonished the German bullet as though it
could hear him.

" I tell you that you shan't remain for long in
my carcase ; you've jolly well got to come out,
or I'll know the reason why ! "

1 86 PRIESTS IN THE FIRING LINE

I was on duty, and about eleven o'clock, when
making the round, I saw my zouave gesticulating
while the others were asleep and snoring. A
moonbeam lit up hi^ bed, on which, seated and
preoccupied, the poor fellow was energetically
probing his wound and seeming to make cabalistic
signs over it.

Was he a sorcerer, and did he think that by
these ridiculous signs he would weave a spell ?

I went up to him, meaning to make him lie
down, and to counsel him to leave his wound in
peace as he risked poisoning it. But — what was
this ? It was not merely signs, which he was
making with so much attention, that he did not
see me approach the bed. In his hand, the queer
fellow held his big pocket-knife, which had been
through the campaign with him, and had opened
innumerable tins of " singes." And the old
notched blade, twisted and rusty, was digging
away at his calf, and as I reached his bed, had
just cut a lump out of the live flesh, from which
the blood was streaming, soaking the sheets.

I saw the zouave dig his fingers into the widened
opening, and hunt about wildly for the object
which had caused him so many humiliations —
the Boche bullet, which he had determined to
get out at all costs.

Where were you, oh ye rigid principles of

A CHEERFUL SET 187

aseptics i Severe lessons by which an infir-
marian's brains are haunted daily — terrifying
theories of contaminated wounds, infected by the
use of instruments imperfectly sterilised. " To
touch a wound with fingers not sufficiently
washed is to risk making it difficult of healing
and perhaps impossible."

Well ! well ! an old blade which this very even-
ing had cut a slice of meat, and fingers, sticky
with blacking and grease, those were the sterilised
instruments of my surgeon, who stoically extracted
for himself a bullet which had entered to the
depth of three centimetres into the thickness of
his muscles.

I thought of stopping him— why ? the operation
was too advanced and the danger would not be
lessened if he finished or put off his job. I was
content to merely look at him, and without
worrying myself further about the risk of infection,
which threatened that healthy flesh, I observed
my soldier's face. It was expressionless. There
was not a trace of impatience or of suffering on it.
The young devil, instead of making me uneasy,
touched me. His energy was uncommonly like
heroism. The keen pain of it didn't touch his
heart. In that hospital ward, and in the strange
and hidden deed which he was engaged in, the
zouave was the brave being that he was " la-bas "

188 PRIESTS IN THE FIRING LINE

— the valiant fellow who endured pain without a
murmur and could contemplate his blood flowing
from a long open wound, made by his own hands,
without frowning.

It was a touching sight. Indeed, no ! I would
not stop him for anything. It is always so line
to see a man in the grip of pain who accepts and
bears it with the fine disdain of quiet strength.
Besides he is more than quiet, he is a madcap,
and always a zouave. For the tenth time he
thrust his thumb into the gaping wound and
muttered :

" Perhaps if I were to enlarge the button-
hole ..."

At any rate it would not come out. The
operator raised his head, and puffed a bit. The
light from the moon shone on his forehead and
showed the beads of sweat on it, which he
wiped away with the cuff of his sleeve, as a
workman does when he prepares to make a fresh
start.

Never had he had a more willing energy in his
French soul, even at the time of those furious
charges, and terrible attacks where the entire
manhood is occupied in the deadly onrush. With
his left hand he grasped the mangled calf, with a
pressure which one guessed must be terrific ; with
his blood-stained fingers he hunted with rage for

A CHEERFUL SET 189

the German fugitive, who seemed to be defend-
ing itself like a wild beast in the depths of its
lair.

A few seconds longer, then a jerk of the whole
body, and a radiant smile of triumph lit up the
streaming face, Then with a gesture of triumph,
he brandished a little red object, shapeless.

" Ah, you filthy old thing ! I knew quite well
that I'd have the last word ! "

But he pronounced the triumphal words at
the top of his voice, as one shouts a victory.
His neighbours wakened with a start, raised their
heads, and with blinking eyes demanded to know
what these words meant, which the other kept
repeating in his noisy joy.

" I've got it, the jade ! "

A wounded man towards the middle of the
ward, muttered in a bad-tempered way : " What
have you got hold of, you fool ? "

" Why, my bullet, of course ; the German bullet
which had buried itself in my paw."

And it became then quite an event. He had
spoken for such a time about his famous bullet,
that it had become celebrated.

" It's the truth, no humbug, you've got it out ? "

" I believe you, my boy, there it is— and not
twisted — quite new, ready to serve again."

The event was spread. Heavy sleepers opened

igo PRIESTS IN THE FIRING LINE

their eyes, and in their turn were informed of
what had caused this nocturnal clamour.

" It's the zouave. It appears that he has
pulled out his bullet."

An ugly fellow hopped out of bed. " Good
for you, old chap. I must see it."

Four or five surrounded the zouave-surgeon,
who now was advertising himself loudly.

" With my knife, my good fellows — one needs
some stomach ! Look at it, it nearly got to the
bone — it's more than an incision, it's a hole made
by a ' marmite.' "

Admiration filled them all. Amadou, the
Senegalese, half sitting up, ended by understanding
the importance of the event, and celebrated in
his own way the exploit of his comrade.

" Thou have got bullet out with knife, thou not
frighten — thou good for cut the throat of Bodies. "

And he broke out into a loud, child's laugh, one
of those piercing laughs of a mirthful gamin.
I had to threaten them, to make all those jolly
lads cuddle themselves under their eider-down
quilts again, because the zouave, who felt his
popularity on the increase, kept on telling again
and again the story of his adventure. For the
twentieth time, he recommenced the story which
the others listened to religiously.

" I said to myself, said I, since the doctors

A CHEERFUL SET 191

don't want to take any notice of it, it's little me
who must manage the business all alone. Then I
took my knife and I rummaged about in the meat."

Needless to add, that my zouave didn't sleep,
and that once the excitement of his glorification
was appeased, he howled like a thief, on account
of the gaping and bleeding wound, which would
not let him rest.

When the doctor heard of it next day he was
wild.

" But, you fool, you may have poisoned your
wound horribly."

" Oh, well," said the zouave, " could I have
anything more filthy than that horror which a
Boche had touched with his paws ? "

Moreover, he was perfectly and quickly healed,
and his blood, stronger than the microbes, gave
him new flesh in about a fortnight.

" And you see, in that way I got out of taking
chloroform," he would say to those who came to
make him recount his prowess.

You should see them, our wounded men, when
one spoke of putting them off to sleep. The fear
of the mask, and of that disgusting odour which
suffocates one, made them prefer a double suffer-
ing to the heavy slumber, sometimes broken by
painful awakenings, and the beginning of which
is a sort of stifling anguish.

192 PRIESTS IN THE FIRING LINE

Meyer, a man from Saint-Die, red as a live ember
and as jolly as a man from Bordeaux, arrived
four months ago, with a femoral artery in a pitiful
state.

A great big note of interrogation was to be
seen on the Major's face, when for the first time
we stretched this bloodless body on the operating
table. He was one of the dangerously wounded
men, about whom one can ask oneself if they
will see the morrow dawn. At three different
times in the night, he greatly alarmed the doctor
on duty.

" Another haemorrhage, and then doubtless
hell die.'

And his comrades looked at him with involun-
tarily sad glances, which they give to those who
are going to die.

In order to save that life, which depended on
the thin tissues of the damaged artery, the doctor
had put forth all his energy, aided by his science
and stimulated by the desire of saving a human
life. For the unknown man, who was dear to
him, as a soldier, a victim, and father of a family,
he called on all the magnificent reserves of a talent
which possesses infinite resources. He held between
his hands the fragile existence of this man, with
his exhausted veins, and whose last drops of blood
might flow from between his fingers, taking with

A CHEERFUL SET 193

them the last hope of saving him. Once again,
the master triumphed. Pallid, bloodless, weak-
ened, thin as a skeleton, Meyer was put back into
his bed with more chances of living than of
dying.

Vital energy came back to him slowly, and at
the end of a month, this ghost had gone out for
the first time into the courtyard of the hospital,
carried on a stretcher, still pale, without any
strength, but definitely saved. Then, later, he
could get about on crutches, the leg still shrivelled
up, but not at all painful. And the happy lad,
having recovered his gaiety, divided his leisure
between two occupations — that of collecting
views of his bombarded town, and in playing
wildly on the harmonica.
One day the Major met him.
" My dear fellow, your leg ought not to be
bent now ; stretch out that paw for me ! You'll
become anchylosed."

The other declared that it was impossible.
"I'd like to, if I could, Major. I ask nothing
better, but it's stuck."
" What do you mean, ' stuck ' ? "
And it was indeed as he said. In the accen-
tuated bend formed by the joint of the hip-bone,
the skin of the thigh and that of the abdomen
had become welded together. A fine example

o

194 PRIESTS IN THE FIRING LINE

of human grafting, in which nature had only too
well, and unfortunately, succeeded. Our infirm
man was no longer one but by accident.

" Well, my friend, we'll soon unstick that, so
that you may walk like every one else. Only, as
there is a good deal to cut, well have to put you
off to sleep."

" Oh, no thanks, then ! I don't mind being cut,
but to be chloroformed, I couldn't stand it."

The doctor looked at him gently, with that
fatherly look which the wounded, threatened
with an operation, know so well.

" But, if, my dear lad, I assure you that it
will make you suffer horribly ? "

All the evening Meyer was sad. He had the
pip — he was like a bear with a sore ear. No
accordion, no harmonica. One would have said
he had the chloroform under his nose.

Next morning, at half -past eight, the call for
the condemned came. An innrmarian came to
invite him graciously.

" Meyer for the billiard-table ! "

He got up, took his crutches, and went off
bravely, saluted, followed by mocking exclama-
tions from his neighbours.

" A good journey, old chap, good appetite ! "

" Don't have any bad dreams ! "

" You'll give us a taste out of your mug ! "

A CHEERFUL SET 195

" And try not to suck in all the chloroform, so
as to leave a little for us."

The doctors and his assistants were there, all
in white, looking like ancient Druids dressed for
their human sacrifices. The head doctor was
making his ablutions. The preparer was steri-
lising the last forceps in the blue flame of the
alcohol. The head of the sterilisers was unrolling
his compresses, and in the middle of this im-
pressive sight, the victim bravely made his entry.

" I've brought you my carcase ! "

They undressed him. He had in his hand a
cardboard box.

"What are you doing with that, old fellow!
You don't want any baggage here."

" Yes, I do. I want it."

Then he looked at the indiarubber mask, and
with a determined gesture, he said —

"As to you, little one, don't put yourself out
for me ; I know you only too well, but you won't
shut my jaw to-day."

The doctor, charged with giving chloroform to
the patients, took hold of the mask and said
jokingly :

" Now, then, my lad, hurry up and let me stick
this over your beak."

Meyer resisted, and this time without laughing.
" I tell you that I won't have it "

196 PRIESTS IN THE FIRING LINE

" My good lad," interposed the head doctor,
" I want you to have it."

" But, Major, there's no need for that machine
to prevent me from crying out and kicking. I've
got something better than that."

" You've got something better ? "

Then he caught hold of his little cardboard
box, opened it, and waved his harmonica about,
as though it were an unanswerable argument.

" My munis, Major. There's nothing like it to
keep me good. I only ask you to let me play it
as much as I like, as loud as I feel inclined to.
Instead of howling, I'll put all my wind into this.
If you hear a single cry, or if I make the least
movement, you can stick the mask on, but at
least let me have a chance of trying. And then,
after all, it doesn't often happen that you perform
operations like that.'

" All right," said the doctor, who was interested
and touched by the affair. " Only, I warn you,
that it will be painful."

As the other climbed on to the table, he said —
" Oh, painful ! nothing like as painful as a German
1 marmite.' "

A wide gash was made in his flesh. They had
to tear, to readjust, to sew it up again. Meyer
responded to the sharp pain by a redoubling of
staccato notes, by a rain of choruses, valses,

A CHEERFUL SET 197

polkas, melodies. For an entire half-hour, the
ward was filled with tunes, with fantastic ritour-
nelles, which sounded as though they were being
played by a person possessed.

The blood flowed, the muscles quivered, the
needle went in and out. The valiant fellow,
without getting out of tune or time, thus defied
during thirty minutes, the pain in his body, and
laughed at pain.

Those who were passing at the time, outside
the operating theatre, stopped at the door, and,
rather astonished at hearing such weird music,
began to laugh, saying —

" Oh, well, they're not having such a bad time
of it in there."

They were not having such a bad time of it,
but they were suffering as our modern musketeers
know how to suffer, with the pride of Gallic valour
and the heroic beauty of glory tinged with blood.

CHAPTER XVI

NUMBER 127

He had a family, a fiancee, above all a mother,
who had said to him when leaving, with that
heroism of women that tears do not diminish :

" Do your duty ; I offer you to God, who will
protect you ; and to France, who calls you."

He came to us in one of those convoys which
make women weep, and men tremble with pity.

He belonged to the 43rd regiment of Infantry,
which had fought so magnificently in the trenches
at Perthes, and deserved from the Commander-
in-Chief these words of praise, which should be
engraven on marble : " You have surpassed the
soldiers of Napoleon."

He had come from Beausejour, a name full of
light and grace, and one which will recall in history
the memory of so savage and frightful a war,
that a shudder will pass over the souls of those
who learn about its bloody episodes.

His first words, when he stretched himself out

on the bed of agony, was to excuse himself for

198

NUMBER 127 199

needing so much attention. "I'm going to give
you so much trouble.' '

And when a Red Cross infirmarian began to
dress his wound, this musketeer of twenty-two
years of age, whose soul was superbly French,
said to him, smiling : "I'm not clean ; you must
excuse me ; I can't touch my wound without
fainting."

We had seen so many of these mangled bodies,
pierced through and mutilated by all the caprices
of shells, that one might have thought that we
should feel no emotion at the sight of flesh in
rags and crushed bones.

And yet, when we uncovered his wound, there
was a movement of repulsion and horror among
us. All the lower part of the vertebral column
was broken to pieces, mangled . . . there was a
gaping wound in the loins, a gangrenous spreading
which blackened the right side of this poor,
hideous body and made it look like a decomposed
corpse.

And, by contrast, there was his fine face with
its proud energetic features, and black eyes
with their youthful expression, joining the grace
of a child to the virility of a man, who knows how
to will and command. A pale forehead, over-
shadowed by dark hair. Candour, grace and
strength were stamped on his countenance. There

200 PRIESTS IN THE FIRING LINE

was a man of whom a mother might well be proud
and for whom life was beginning, full of great
hopes and lovely dreams. He smiled, victorious
over pain, and despising the ironical caress of
death which lightly brushed his heart with its
slower beats. When the doctors tried to reassure
him, with that false certainty, which no conviction
could render eloquent, he had a resigned expression
which seemed to say : "I know quite well that
you are doing your best to reassure me, but
it is useless. I feel the pangs of death, and my
breath going."

He answered simply, so as to express his grati-
tude for the solicitude with which they surrounded
him.

" Yes, I hope to get better soon, since you give
me hope."

But on his part it was an heroic lie, a way of
thanking them, a delicate manner of sharing an
illusion, which he did not believe in, so that the
others might be tranquillised.

When quiet had been restored in the ward, he
unburdened his heart to the infirmarian, watching
by his bedside. Then, he confided to her his
last wishes, the last recommendations of one who
wishes to wrest from the oblivion of the grave
messages, which will later on be the greatest
treasure of the beloved ones.

NUMBER 127 201

His mother, he spoke gently of her to the
innrmarian, seated by his side.

" You will write to her after my death, and when
my invaded town is delivered."

For this terrible sorrow was added to the
sadness of seeing himself die. The vandals had
occupied his town for five months, and many
weeks would pass by before his mother and his
sweetheart could weep for his death.

Never had I heard anything more touching
or more comforting, than the last recommendations
of this young martyr of the war, who was dying
obscurely beneath our eyes.

Thousands like him have disappeared from this
world, as valiant, as greatly heroic, in their
sacrifice, as our young trooper, whose death
awakened in us fresh emotions. But for us, he
resumed, in the smile which brightened his last
hours, all the energy, all the serene pride of our
soldiers who had already fallen in order to form
the insuperable barrier against which the invader
is exhausted and broken.

He spoke to us of his sanguine faith, of his
hope in another life, of supernatural thoughts,
which came from the depths of his soul to his
lips.

" I shall die for France, and the sacrifice of our
lives will give her back her youth and glory."

202 PRIESTS IN THE FIRING LINE

Then the remembrance of his sweetheart flamed
up in his heart.

" She is there in my little notebook. I give
it to you, madame, you will keep it, and if some
day, you are able to write to her, you will tell her
that I died like a Christian."

It was the same story of young love cut short,
always the same, and which makes one always
weep.

Only to hear that dying voice evoke the thought
of the friend chosen amongst all others ; only to
think of what the announcement of her shattered
dreams will be to her, moved us almost to tears.
He did not weep. But beneath those closed eye-
lids, a whole panorama extended itself — the
horizon of his countryside, doubly loved, the
home of his family, and that other which would
never be created. A young girl appeared at
her window, and looked down into the street
in which the Prussians were passing by. Those
are they who are killing the soldiers of France,
fathers and fiances. Where was hers ? Where
could her thoughts follow him on that immense
battle-front, where thousands of men were falling
each day ? Was he alive, a prisoner, or buried in
a hole where no one will ever recognise him again ?
And the young girl looked at the assassins who
were passing, at the plunderers of quiet houses,

NUMBER 127 203

at the murderers of the wounded, at those who
shoot at field-hospitals. " Where is he ? and if
only I might find his body so as to weep over it."

It was doubtless this sorrow, seen in a dream,
which awakened him from his nightmare. His
eyes opened and rested on the white apron of the
infirmarian, marked with a little Red Cross. She
had never left him. This unknown sufferer had
become dear to her motherly heart. He guessed
that he could count on her sympathy.

" Tell me, madame, since I am going to die, will
they keep my body so as to give it to my people,
when the war is over ? "

When he had been assured that it would be
done, he still smiled. Then his soldier's heart
turned again to the thoughts which most pre-
occupied his mind.

" What news have you of the war ? Tell me if
we have advanced still more. Don't you think
that soon there will be the final victory ? How
fine it is to fight for France."

There was a moment's silence, then he said :
" You will console my mother, you will tell her
that I died without regret, with the joy of knowing
that I was useful and brave, right up to the end —
now please call the chaplain."

An hour later, in the silent ward, in the midst
of all the wounded, who were for the most part

204 PRIESTS IN THE FIRING LINE

touched and recollected, he of whom the whole
hospital thought sorrowfully, since he was going
to die, received the Blessed Sacrament.

He was only a soldier, young, unknown, one of
the innumerable victims of the bloody hecatomb,
the wounded man from Beausejour, yesterday
ignored, forgotten to-morrow. And yet, to see
him brave death so courageously, with a smile on
his lips, to know him to be a soldier who had kept
his faith intact up to the end, as he had kept his
country's orders — to see him gather together his
remaining strength in order to greet his Master,
was for all of us a magnificent lesson in courage
and a comforting example.

Others in the ward had died of the same thing,
killed by wounds not less cruel, victims too of
that war, so full of painful surprises and poignant
emotions.

They had died after a vainly attempted opera-
tion or in a swoon, which prostrates one and takes
away, before death, the feeling of the terrifying
chasm and the terrors of drawing the last breath.
This lad was dying in full consciousness, his eyes
fixed with confidence on the near future. He saw
his end approaching, and at the age of twenty-six,
he behaved as one of those brave old warriors
accustomed to fighting, who defied with their
ironical and proud aspect, the most terrible

NUMBER 127 205

reality which is given to man to catch a glimpse
of here below. It was five o'clock, and I had spent
long hours beside him. A slight rattling in the
throat half-opened his bloodless lips and his
heavy eyelids closed themselves to the last rays
of the setting sun, which bathed his bed in its
warm, living light. I spoke to him of the things
which are not of this world, and I felt that my
words sank into the depths of his soul.

" Yes, you will pray for me to-morrow — for me,
whether alive or dead, it is my last desire."

Then to the infirmarian who stood there in
silence, at the foot of the bed with the calm of a
mother, who feels more than we do the sorrow of
separation, and knows the ideal way of suffering for
and with others —

" Madame, you will stay beside me until the
end ? "

Night came on, and his weakness increased.
Not a cry, not a sound was to be heard in the ward.
The wounded who had, they too, been so near to
death, understood its majesty, its sadness. There
were ten or twelve of us assembled round his bed,
touching with respect his cold hands which
Extreme Unction had sanctified. An impressive
solemnness, a consoling serenity surrounded the
last moments of this soldier, who seemed to us
to be the summary of all the sacrifices and of all

206 PRIESTS IN THE FIRING LINE

the similar deaths with which the days of this
war were saddened.

The next morning we found him still alive.
There was not a tremor in his half-decomposed
body ; life remained in it only by the exertion of
sheer will power.

He still smiled and spoke. His eyes sought
mine, and he recognised me.

" Ah ! " he said, " you have just been praying
for me."

Yes, we had been praying for him. All the
priests had recommended to God this expiring
life.

By his side was she who had adopted him so
tenderly, and who was taking the place of his
mother, so far away, who could ignore for many a
long day that her son had paid, like so many
others, the glorious ransom for their country.
She murmured to him —

" Offer your life up for France."

His features lit up and his lips pronounced with
a great effort —

" Yes, for France."

And he died quietly, far from the terrible
music of the cannons, in this peaceful ward,
where the mindful wounded crept about on tip-
toe, so as to respect the last moments of the
unknown one, in whom each one recognised the

Photo: Topical.}

Blessing the Tomb of a Soldier in a Cemetery at
the Front.

NUMBER 127 207

features of a companion fallen in the same cause
as they had themselves.

They carried him to the mortuary, and from
thence to the military hospital for the post-
mortem and interment.

Many ignore his name. To his comrades, he
was and remained Number 127, one who arrived
in the evening, and died forty-eight hours after.
His end did not receive the homage of tears shed
by sorrowing eyes. Soldiers don't cry for one
another, and their manly regrets don't show
themselves by external demonstrations.

But the memory of this passer-by, who stopped
beside them on his last painful halt, remained
in their hearts and touched them sincerely. The
next day, I met six of them, their arms in a sling,
with limping legs, all wounded — who were follow-
ing the strongest among them, laden with a heavy
wreath.

The kind fellows had collected thirty francs, in
order to offer to their fallen comrade this touching
token of their loyal thoughts. And they were on
their way to place it on the coffin, to berlower the
grave, so that the cross which marked the place
might be embellished with the symbol of love.

I met them as I was going out of the park.

" We are going to follow our comrade," said
one of them.

2o8 PRIESTS IN THE FIRING LINE

Another said simply, " We must love one
another."

The youngest remarked with a melancholy
air —

" Him to-day, and perhaps us to-morrow."

One day soon, his mother and his sweetheart
will hear of his death and of the kindness with
which it was surrounded. They will be told that
it was peaceful, and that the coffin of their loved
one was borne and accompanied by our proud
young infantrymen. Then, surely, joy will
penetrate their immense sorrow, and one of those
thoughts which flash through the sadness of our
hearts will come to them. " A priest blessed him,
friends loved him ; a mother consoled him."

CHAPTER XVII

A MASS FOR THE ENEMY

I've had no letters from Duroy for a long time,
and I guessed that his state was grave, graver than
his letters had made me aware of. All the same,
although I was uneasy, I did not despair of him.
He himself in giving me news, penned by another
hand, reassured me, and was himself convinced
that he would get better.

He still joked, and I could read between the
lines of his determination to live and to conquer
his ills. I also read, with emotion, of his persistent
desire to keep his promise to me of sending me
news from ' ' la-bas ! ' ' And he continued collecting
for me episodes in which heroism rivalled moral
greatness. On this occasion, it was an infirmarian,
now his secretary, who recounted to me on his
behalf the strange and moving story which a
wounded priest, who was in the same hospital
being treated, had told him.

It was in the Argonne, in that forest line, where

each tree becomes a rampart, and each mound

of earth, a bastion.

209 p

2to PRIESTS IN THE FIRING LINE

There, as elsewhere, the cure-soldiers spent
themselves valiantly, and gave to their comrades,
with the example of an untiring courage, the
comfort of an apostolate, which made God radiate
on the clear horizon of our already victorious
country.

The abbe, who was put out of action by a
bullet through his left leg, had lived for months
that life in which a man loses all other ideas than
that of facing danger, and, above all, of serving
the cause which alone occupies the energies of
his soul and absorbs his life. One day he went off
by himself to re victual an advanced post, which
they thought had been separated from the regi-
ment by the intense firing which was raking the
lines of communication. He accomplished this
act of boldness for the sake of one of the company,
for one of those blind sectarians who remain in
this war, like a dead tree in the midst of the
verdure of a living forest. He harboured an
intense hatred of priests in his heart, a hatred
sown in his heart, as a child, by some wretched
sower of evil seeds. When the others prayed or
went to Communion, revictualled with hope,
by the chaplain, who had gone down into the
trench, he would stand up and smoke his pipe.

One morning the lieutenant came down into
the rat-hole, with a sad look on his face —

A MASS FOR THE ENEMY 211

94 My lads, the four men whom I posted last
night near the charcoal burner's hut are separated
from us by the falling ' marmites ' and by shells
which are sweeping the track. They are admirable,
those fellows. I have just been looking at them
from the top of the oak-tree. They are holding
on tight, and all four of them are shooting at the
Boches as though they were a whole company.
Only, if it goes on, they'll die of hunger. And
you know that one can't do the work when one
has an empty belly."

The " poilus " looked at one another. They
understood the indirect invitation to bring a
very problematic succour to the men. Many of
them thought : " For the colours — to take a
trench — for the honour of carrying out an order,
yes, one would go ahead ; but for this, for those
fellows who are risking their skins a trifle more
than we are — Oh, well . . . what's it matter ? to
bust up to-day or to-morrow ? "

And they remained silent. The priest-hater
risked a remark.

" I'd rather have my carcase staved in in an
attack and die defending myself, thanks."

The others agreed with this, and added — " If
we were in their place, we'd tighten our waist-
belts, and wait."

The abbe said nothing. He did not smile like

212 PRIESTS IN THE FIRING LINE

the others, but he was not sad like those who
deplore useless deaths.

But a beautiful light shone in his eyes. He had
seen what the others had not seen, and had felt
what his companions had never felt ; brave fellows
who are suffering and whose lives may be pro-
longed by a superhuman action.

" Will you allow me to try and take them some-
thing to eat, sir ? "

A discharge of grape-shot from the enemy guns
which swept the glade and felled the trees, gave
these words an impressive meaning. The officer
raised his hand to the parapet where the
shells were bursting and his gesture said all that
his lips did not say. The men, at the first signal
of the squall, had taken cover in the dug-out,
their haversacks over their heads. The priest
had remained standing, and was smiling, this
time, for the offer which he had just made proved
that death, far or near, did not count to him. He
finished what he was saying with the absolute
calm of a man from whose soul all fear is banished.

" They have as much right to live as we have,
since they are fighting and are our brothers in
danger."

A murmur from the men greeted these words
of simple bravery, and the abbe interrupted it by
this explanation, which looked almost like an

A MASS FOR THE ENEMY 213

excuse for the initiative by which his comrades
might have been humbled.

" I have no one belonging to me, so that if I
fall . . ."

And he looked at that one among them who had
least love for his fellows, having less faith and
hope. He looked at him, and his eyes said gently
to him —

" My words have not been eloquent enough to
convince you. I will try by my actions."

Half an hour later, he went off, his haversack
laden with bread and jam for the four isolated
men — food and cartridges, for their bravery may
have made them forget their hunger.

He crept through the grass ; he crawled along
weighed down with his heavy load ; he felt the
winds of death blow across his face a hundred
times. And then when he got there, he took the
place of a comrade with a hole through the chest,
who said to him —

" Ah ! I knew that my medal would bring me
luck. Hear my confession, old chap, and prepare
me for the last halting-place."

Under fire, in the atrocious hell of shells plough-
ing up the ground around them, he made the
fourth, and the others, elated by his courage,
recommenced, alongside him, to kill off the servers
of the German battery.

214 PRIESTS IN THE FIRING LINE

When night came on, the men in the trench
saw four shadows coming down towards them,
dragging quietly after them, in the narrow passage,
the corpse of their comrade, who had died while
the priest, who had brought him more than bread,
had given him absolution. When they had taken
their places in their dark retreat, the abbe felt
a hand on his shoulder, and a face approach
his. And he heard a voice which he recognised
almost before hearing it speak.

" I understood your lesson, comrade, and to-
morrow, if I'm still here, I want you to make a
Christian of me."

To-morrow ! Three hours after, the unbeliever,
struck down by a bit of shell which had broken
his spine, died blessing God and the priest who had
won his heart in showing him what human bravery,
made divine by faith, can do. He died with the
flame of hope in his eyes, the reflection of the
Beatific Vision, in the sight of which the glorious
martyrs to a holy cause, rejoice.

It was this priest who had come to the hospital
where Duroy was still nursing his wound, with
untiring patience.

Like my friend, this brave undaunted priest
had defied death a hundred times. Like him,
and without seeking it, he had acquired the
renown of a hero, uniting in himself a strong

A MASS FOR THE ENEMY 215

Christian virtue to the beauty of French bravery.
Both of them had taken as their motto and had
inscribed in their hearts those proud words which
Duroy had had inscribed on the colours of the
Society of Catholic Youths, " Toujours combattus
— parfois battus — jamais abattus."

" Always righting — sometimes beaten — never
cast down."

And now the chances of war, and of Providence,
had brought together to fraternise in a common
desire of sacrifice and glory, these two priests.
The new friend described to the stretcher-bearer,
more badly wounded than he, fine, rash actions,
superhuman actions, simply accomplished. And
Duroy, listening to his stories, thought that they
deserved to live and to help to increase the pride
of Catholics in the indomitable phalanxes which
the Christian priesthood forms in this terrible
war.

The Abbe Marny was a sergeant in a line regi-
ment. Since then he has become a second
lieutenant, but that is a detail which has nothing
whatever to do with his story, he says :

His section was on the outposts and watched
the left bank of the river, which separated them
from the enemy. It was the darkness of night
there, with a bar of light where the rapidly
flowing water reflected the light, diffused over the

216 PRIESTS IN THE FIRING LINE

surrounding country. One kept on the alert in
silence. One's eyes, bothered by the moving
shadows, kept themselves fixed on the slope and
on the trees, which seemed to move.

Death was there, in front of them unforeseen,
mysterious. In all the thickets in front of them,
invisible guns were pointed towards their breasts,
and the anguish of uncertainty was sinister and
cruel, the unnerving expectation of bullets, which
will make a hole in one, without it being possible
to foresee from which corner of the thicket they
will burst forth.

One waited, and each one knew that it was a
tragic hour. A painful atmosphere hovered in
the tranquil air. Our troopers, whom nothing
moved so much as these dark night-watches,
mumbled in low tones, and clutched their cart-
ridge-boxes nervously.

" If only one could know what is happening on
the other side ! "

Behind them, three kilometres away, the 75 s
were stretched out on their gun-carriages, ready
to let loose the terrible hurricane of their deadly
fire.

There was confidence in their souls, in spite
of all, and when they would begin to sing their
song of destruction, our soldiers would feel the
protection of these big friends, with their bronze

A MASS FOR THE ENEMY 217

hearts. Then there would be fighting ; the onrush
which urges a man on towards the defensive, the
letting loose of all their manly strength in endea-
vour. That would be fighting like Frenchmen, the
onrush, the movement, the action in which the
entire being vibrates and throws into the fight the
entirety of its multiplied forces. One dream alone
was in their minds, to fight, to strike, to crush.
But for the moment, the orders were to wait,
with one's feet in the mud, to be on the qui vive,
to master one's quivering nerves, and one's
protesting courage.

An hour passed, and still silence reigned.
Hardly could those ears, trained for so many
weeks to perceive the most imperceptible sounds,
distinguish, like a vague murmur, the underground
digging, the cunning work, which the Germans
accomplish in the innermost recesses of our land
of France.

What were they doing, and what bad business
were they preparing, in their trenches, those
indefatigable wild beasts ? What surprise had
they in store for the enemy who keeps them back,
and whose hold they seek wildly to slacken ?

We had to know, to find out their plan, to
discover their hypocritical manoeuvres, which
might cost the life of the entire regiment. We had
to see the dark business, to discover the mystery

218 PRIESTS IN THE FIRING LINE

But how ? The Captain asked himself who could
cross the deadly line — the strip of ground and the
moving barrier, so perilous, of the river, whose
precipitous waves struck the opposite bank.
The Abbe Marny went up to him and the following
heroic dialogue took place between the sergeant
and his officer.

" Captain, you want some one ..."

" Yes, but a man who is worth two or even ten."

The priest remained modest in his desire for
new bravery.

" If you think that I . . ."

The officer was touched, but he understood
with the fears of those who know the price of
a life, that such an act of generosity cannot be
accepted like an ordinary offer.

" My poor friend, it is an extremely dangerous
undertaking."

"Hike danger."

" There is the river to cross."

" I know how to swim."

" It requires prudence and tried patience."

" I will know how to wait."

The Captain then guessed that he had found his
man, a man worth ten.

" And there is a good chance of remaining in
it . . ."

Then, seeing that the Captain feared for his

A MASS FOR THE ENEMY 219

life, Marny relieved him of his last fear, which kept
the "yes" on the tip of his tongue, and he said
proudly with a smile which made his sacrifice still
more fine —

"lam ready to die."

A few seconds passed, during which the Captain
sought to read in the sergeant's eyes the decision
which does away with doubt.

" Then, you may go, Father, and may God
guard you ..."

His adventure was one which all heroes ac-
complish simply, naively, sublimely. The em-
bankment was crossed, the river too, in spite
of its treacherous current, the enemy's territory
right up to the edge of his trenches . . . But, there
commenced the tragic part of the story and the
poignant drama with which the priest's soul
trembled with horror.

Ten paces away, the enemy's sentinel was
standing, facing the bank held by the French.
The man had heard and seen nothing. Fifty yards
behind him, a slight rustling noise revealed the
work which was being prepared, the terraces
raised in haste to shelter the mitrailleuses. Marny
had marked that. He might retire now and
regain the French lines, from whence it would
be possible to telephone to the battery of artillery,
which would be able to smash the new redoubt

220 PRIESTS IN THE FIRING LINE

to atoms and allow our soldiers to advance two
kilometres — an enormous success, a victory over
which France might rejoice and triumph, in two
days' time.

But what of that man who was over there . . .
watching ... he had seen and heard nothing
. . . what if he hears and sees ? A branch of
dead wood which might snap, and the alarm would
be given, the troops at arms, he himself a marked
man, the business spoilt, the fine effort rendered
useless.

Hidden in the shadows, riveted to the ground,
he thought of these things. It is so horrible to
kill in cold blood, to kill that man who was
not on his guard, and who was doing his duty
too, the painful duty which war imposed on
him . . .

Doubtless, it was equitable and just. Besides
they had no scruples, the barbarians, who massacre
defenceless beings. And then too, two enemies
who might meet in those hours when one's country
demands one to defend it, ought to hurl themselves
on one another and try to destroy one another.
All the worse for the one who was the least fore-
warned or armed.

It was not the mere fact of killing that moved
him so. He had often killed his man from the
trench, or in encounters or attacks. But it was

A MASS FOR THE ENEMY 221

the thought of killing this particular man before
him, who was enjoying in his own way, the
pleasantness of the peaceful hour, and the joy
of being alive.

But it is not the heart nor pity that speaks at
such a time. It is France which implores,
beseeches, and commands. It is also the voice
of fraternity, which orders us "to strike those
who wish to strike us." His brothers were wait-
ing down there for the safety which he ought to
bring, the news which would permit them to take
a little more of that ground of ours which they
have profaned and violated. He must be some-
thing more than a man — a soldier ! the gun which
fires and the bullet which kills.

And even the hand which strangles, if one had
to make use of these means, so that the night-
watchman may speak no more and may be for
ever incapable of harm.

That was why the Abbe Marny went nearer to
the impassive man, who did not hear the bold
prowler approach him, bringing with him so
silently, death.

There was a bound from the grass — two hands
clasped the throat of the German sentinel — bones
cracked, a stifled rattle in the throat, the quiver-
ing corpse pressed down into the grass, a bayonet
which pierced his breast and passed through his

222 PRIESTS IN THE FIRING LINE

heart, so that never again should this witness
awaken.

It was over. His hands had shed the blood
of this man, calmly. But in his soul, the voice of
his conscience, proud of the soldier who had saved
his company, was singing . . . Half an hour later,
our cannons had swept away the bandits' den,
had opened the way for the charge of our infantry,
who wrote that night, with the sharp point of
their "fourchette," a glorious and immortal page.
We had gained a strategic point, had hurled back
the invading hordes, had delivered a piece of
ground, and had proclaimed once again that the
French army does not know how to retire.

That was what the Abbe Marny described to
Duroy, who listened to him with the tears in his
eyes, without another thought of his terrible
wound, which exasperated and tortured him day
in day out. He had forgotten to suffer for an
hour, or rather, the fine feat of arms of his new
comrade had quieted the violent pains of his
wound. It is thanks to his delicate foresight,
that I have been able to relate this new deed,
with which to grace our pages.

But this act of heroism had its epilogue. And it
was he who wished to underline its grandeur. At
the end of the letter, written for him, he wished
to add the following in his own handwriting

A MASS FOR THE ENEMY 223

" Yesterday, in spite of his bad leg, Marny got up
at six o'clock, and I saw him drag himself out of
the ward. I asked him the reason of this im-
prudence. He simply said : 'I'm going to pray.'
On his return, he was joyous with that deep
joy which does not prevent one's face showing
physical pain. He was suffering, but he was
happy. It is a state of soul that I have known
for a long time. There are some kinds of happi-
ness which German projectiles, even those that
kill, can never destroy in us.

"The abbe sat down near my bed, with his
leg stretched out.

" 'My dear fellow, I've just been praying for
a dead man I '

" ' For only one ? '

" ' Yes I for the one I strangled in Argonne. His
death did not weigh on my conscience. I'm a
soldier, he was the enemy. I killed him, it was
my duty, but when my hands held him by the
throat, I felt the horror of sending thus brutally
a soul into the next world, and I asked God for
him, forgiveness and heaven, where men no longer
know how to detest nor how to curse. And this
morning I went off to fulfil my vow. He has
had his Mass, poor fellow, and now I am content ;
I have paid my debt/

' ' Marny smiled . His heart was no longer heavy.

224 PRIESTS IN THE FIRING LINE

And I, looking at him, did not know which to
admire the more in him, his soldierly courage or
his priestly virtue, which, even in those hours
when vengeance impetuously urges us on, knew
how to pray with the grace of former knights, for
his executioners."

CHAPTER XVIII

" I AM BRINGING YOU THE BLESSED SACRAMENT "

In the convoy of wounded that we had received
that day, was a young adjutant, who had at once
attracted our attention and awakened our sym-
pathy. He had come from a field hospital at the
front, and on getting out of the train we had
learned in a short conversation that his company
had been in the hands of the Germans, for some
days.

The following day he had any number of
visitors. He was gay, in spite of his wound — a
bullet had passed through his calf — full of high
spirits, after his four months of war. He was
surrounded. He was able to give us real news,
for which all Frenchmen, in those tragic hours,
hungered. He had lived a lively life in the medical
service ; had passed nights and days in the
trenches ; had organised first aid parties, and had
seen the war in its frightful, yet sublime, horrors.

Many times in that campaign, which he meant
to go back to, once his wound was healed, this

225 Q

226 PRIESTS IN THE FIRING LINE

young doctor had penetrated to the depths of
the soldier's soul, and had known the fine senti-
ments which had awakened in the hearts of our
" poilus," so patient in their magnificent calm.

In listening to him we felt how good it was to
learn from the mouth of an eye-witness the prowess
of our defenders. It enabled us to keep alive the
admiration which becomes weakened in those who
are not at the front after a long period of waiting.
Often, in the course of conversation, he would
describe the tragic and painful business with
which the medical service was occupied at the
front. He described the devoted undertakings,
the heroic deeds done by stretcher-bearers, and
doctors, as much exposed to the firing as the
combatants. He stated precisely the part which
priests had played in the heroic work, and the
stories of this witness were a more definite acknow-
ledgment of their proud self-sacrifice, and of the
grandeur of their apostolate.

Among so many memories, there was one which
I remember more especially for its impressive
bravery and its Gallic swagger, which ranks it
among the best in the interminable list of fine
deeds done.

" It was a Sunday, in one of the trenches in
the north. For a fortnight, our soldiers had been
splashing about in the muddy water of the trench

THE BLESSED SACRAMENT 227

— stuck there by order, condemned to that
immobility which is a hundred times worse than
any dangerous attack, such as an onrush towards
certain death, but which one braves in the light
of day.

" Every morning/' said the adjutant, " when
I went down into these holes for my daily visit,
having risked being shot by the Germans in front
of us, I lost the idea of danger in pitying these
poor interred devils. The thought of the danger
I had run, was drowned in pity. Ah ! What a
vile business they make us go through with,
those disgusting knaves, those soldiers of darkness
to whom the light of day is as insupportable as it
is to the birds of night. We, who like to meet
our enemy face to face, who love fine, heroic
charges, which excite the courage, and which
makes a French soldier so fine, even when he falls
and dies, we are obliged to crawl on our bellies,
and to double on the enemy like foxes, so as to
hunt him down — we have to lie down on our
ground so as to defend it, to protect it with our
breasts, with our limbs, with our whole body, so
as to keep each clod of earth inviolate."

The little doctor was fine when he described
the strange forms of the new warlike heroism — ■
the war of moles ! But how soon his disdain of
this grovelling form of war disappeared in his

228 PRIESTS IN THE FIRING LINE

enthusiasm for the astonishing, magnificent
patience of our indomitable " poilus," who
accepted the humiliating life in the trenches, so
as to prepare a victory which would astonish the
world.

And he would laugh heartily, suddenly become
proud of the fabulous feats of valour of which
he had been a witness. His face was lit up with
the reflection of French glory, when he recounted
the following story, in which a picturesque and
joyous swagger is united to the grandeur of
heroic thoughts.

" On that particular Sunday, an undermining
sadness overshadowed the dreary horizon, and
clouded our souls. It was cold, and the frozen
greyness of the sky seemed to bind our hearts —
to render them incapable of harbouring a cheerful
thought. We couldn't laugh. Too many corpses
lay beside us — too many of our comrades had been
cut down the evening before in a murderous
attack, which we had repulsed, but at what a
cost ! We had had to bury them in the side of
the trenches, so that when we fired, our chests
were leaning against their tombs in a lugubrious
embrace. They were speaking too loud, our poor
dead comrades, on that dreary morning, and we,
as though listening to them, kept that involuntary
silence which mourning imposes.

THE BLESSED SACRAMENT 229

" Sunday, and nothing to buck us up, nor to
make us forget the bloody ground on which we
stood ; no one to awaken in us the echo of great
hopes, which stimulate dejected courage.

"Occasionally, a joke rose to unsmiling lips and
died there, like a flame blown out by the wind.

"The officers looked at one another, and asked
themselves mutely what could be done to cheer
us up. Suddenly a joyful salutation made all
heads turn together to the slope behind. A
soldier cried out —

"'Good Lord, hell get a hole through him, if
he's not careful.'

" Arms were stretched out towards the new-
comer, who had braved death. Arms, held out
with gestures which betrayed the immense
danger to which the traveller in this deadly
zone had been exposed.

"He, standing up, serving as a target to the
German guns, smiled at us with a fine friendly
smile. Then we heard these words. ' Good day,
children. I have brought you the Blessed Sacra-
ment ! ' He had his two hands crossed over his
breast, and the shower of bullets made the skirts
of his cassock float about, as a big wind would
have done.

"He was so fine that chaplain, bearing the
Blessed Eucharist, that the fear of seeing him

230 PRIESTS IN THE FIRING LINE

fall left us in the admiration with which we were
filled for him.

" Slowly he came down to us. A splendid calm
transfigured his features. He brought to us
that which men cannot give : the Presence of
Christ and the consolation of His all-powerful
protection. That is why, when he had set foot
in the trench, all, even those who thought them-
selves unbelievers, bowed themselves before God,
who had come through him to visit us abandoned
ones. But the majority had knelt down because
the Real Presence had touched their souls, and
had awakened the fulness of their faith, which
had been veiled so long.

" Silently, the priest went towards a little table,
made of a few rough planks. He spread out a
corporal and placed the ciborium on it. Then he
turned to us.

" 'My friends, I have brought you Holy Com-
munion, because some of you asked me to. The
Master has come to visit you, the Invincible
Chief, He who loves France, protects her soldiers,
and gives victory. He is the safeguard and the
Life, so powerful that death, caressing a thousand
times my body, becomes H1' " altar ; death, which
roars, reaps and kills, has not even breathed on
it. Come, my dear friends, and welcome God,
who comes to you, the God of our country who

THE BLESSED SACRAMENT 231

will bless your black holes, and make of them, if
you die, tombs of resurrection and glory.'

"He turned to the Blessed Sacrament, and
with his two hands on the trench altar adored
in silence. All those behind knelt. Alone, the
sentinel on the embankment remained standing,
but his proud gesture, his hand clutching the
steel, told eloquently that he too carried arms
and was in the presence of God who had gone down
into the shadows to bless and reassure hearts, in
the grip of anguish. Ten men, officers, non-
coms., and soldiers, received Communion in this
new catacomb. Round them the others thought
of divine things and prayed. Above, thundered
unceasingly the lugubrious knell, the crash of
our heavy artillery, and the laughing voice of
our 75 's.

" And the chaplain, having turned round again,
said these words which brought confidence back
to us and hope so lately vanishing : ' The bells
of war are ringing for the blessing.'

" He raised the ciborium. The great sign of the
cross traced in the darkness seemed to scatter
light in the obscure grotto and the faces of the
fighting men were transfigured.

"Some smiled; others were radiant with the
serene joy which had just dawned in their hearts.
The melancholy and dark thoughts of the

232 PRIESTS IN THE FIRING LINE

preceding hour had been dispersed, annihilated
in the fire of bravery which the Host had lighted
in their generous souls.

" The unceasing refrain of battle which, a short
time before, had filled them with the sad idea of a
death without beauty, sang now the song which
carries one away, which generates victory.

" 'Now they may come ! ' exclaimed a soldier
from the South. No one laughed at him. He
expressed the feelings of them all, and in pro-
claiming the imperious strength of refound courage
seemed to continue and finish the prayer of
thanksgiving.

"Another rose, his arms stretched towards the
light.

" ' When we go to meet the Boches '

"He did not finish. A cry from the sentinel
made them raise their heads and pick up their guns.

' ' ' They are coming ! '

' ' On the slope of the trench the crackling of the
mitrailleuse tore through the air, and sounded the
passionate and hurried note of war to the knife.
There was a rush to their posts, but without
disorder. Each one climbed up the parapet
and took his dangerous position, with the dis-
concerting calm which is one of the first virtues
in war. As they passed each received the blessing
of the priest, who raised the ciborium above them

THE BLESSED SACRAMENT 233

and spoke words as they rushed to death, which
reassure believers and inflame martyrs.

" ' Benedictio Dei Omnipotentis '

" Then, when the last of them had sprung up
the parapet, the chaplain laid down the Blessed
Sacrament and awaited in prayer the end of the
battle. Thunderbolts were being hurled above
his head. The horrible fight brought to him the
echoes of the butchery. The bullets, in striking
the slope in front, threw up around the Host,
a shower of earth, of water and of blood.

"And the priest prayed to God. 'My God !
You have promised victory to those who fight
for justice's sake. Give to their arms sovereign
power, and receive into your Paradise those who,
at the present moment, fall and die for the
cause of eternal equity, and for the violation of
blessed liberty.'

" It lasted for thirty minutes. Little by little
the volleys of grape shot went further away, the
firing became more desultory. Voices could be
heard near the trenches, confused murmurs, in
which the words of those who had been spared
by the enemy bullets were mingled with the
plaints of the wounded.

"A sergeant appeared on the scene the first.

'Father, we've given them a good dosing this

time.'

Q2

234 PRIESTS IN THE FIRING LINE

"The chaplain looked up and saw the bleeding
bodies which they were bringing down. He went
to them quickly to bring help to the souls ready
to leave the failing body, but the sergeant stopped
him.

° * No, not here. It's too dangerous.'

" They carried the dying, the victims, the living
youth of an hour back, down into the dug-outs.
There they were ; limbs broken, mouths bleeding,
breasts gaping.

" In the midst of this horrible display of slashed
bodies, the ciborium shone still, the God of
Calvary remained there to accept the voluntary
offering of the expiatory sacrifices. And one saw
a spectacle of superhuman beauty in that trench.
Wounded men, their heads hanging, their sight
veiled, who suddenly opened their eyes and turned
them towards the Blessed Sacrament. Dying
men were there who gathered up all that re-
mained to them of life, to salute at the moment
of their last sigh, the Master who had excited
their courage and wished to brighten their end by
the ideal dawn of a supreme victory."

CHAPTER XIX

THE LAST BLESSING

" My dear Friend, — I have just been taken to

the hospital at R . It is far from the front,

outside the danger-zone, in a little village. I
don't suppose that I shall get to know its views
or its steeples very soon. I am tired and sad —
almost discouraged. My wound, which seemed
for some days to be better, has now become worse
and painful. You know what such wounds are
like, because you have tended similar ones —
fractures of the hip. The surgeons are not easy
in their minds about it, as they are when it's an
arm or a leg. If needs be, infected limbs can be
cut off. One is incomplete, but one can still
live. As to me, it's another matter. I am suffer-
ing, of course, but much more from inaction than
from pain. And for the first time, solitude has
hollowed out around my heart an immense
empty space, which makes my head swim ... It
is not the joy of possessing my military medal
that will fill it. There remains to me, in my long

235

236 PRIESTS IN THE FIRING LINE

days and my sleepless nights, the supreme joy
of knowing that I have done a little good, that
I have done my duty, and that I can still give
good example by my resignation. I force myself
to remain visibly a priest, to show forth the
grandeur of the priesthood in my suffering. And
yet, no ! I lied just now, in telling you I was
discouraged ; all those who are discouraged are
unhappy, and I can't be that. I feel in my soul
the reflection of all the acts of heroism of my
brethren. I listen to the concert of admiration
which proclaims the magnificent devotion, the
courage, the proud valour of the twenty thousand
priests, occupied in fortifying souls, by fighting
for the future greatness of immortal France.

"And I gather up around me, among my com-
panions in suffering, tokens of gratitude which rise
from their hearts towards the priest, whose
untiring charity has succoured them. ' Our lieu-
tenant, a cur6, gave us Holy Communion.' ' It
was my sergeant who gave me absolution. ' ' With-
out the Mass, which our chaplain said for us, I
should have kicked the bucket.' 'The corporal
made us say the Rosary before the attack.'

" They were always there, the good fellows, to
arouse their energy and revive their diminished
bravery.

" When I received the Holy Viaticum, yesterday,

THE LAST BLESSING 237

the whole ward kept silence, and nearly all made
the sign of the cross. Some of them prayed.
The greater number imagined themselves back
again in their childhood, when they were choir-
boys, and the Host seemed to them to be beautiful
and adorable as in those days.

" When the priest had gone away, my neighbour,
an old territorial, who has three bullets in his
stomach, made me this remark, touching in its
roughness : ' So, then, there's only some for
you. The others are not dogs, all the same.'

"He, too, this ' poilu ' of forty, wanted God,
and he was jealous and vexed that He had passed
by him without stopping.

" I must leave you, dear old friend. The thought
of you, and of all those whom I love, softens my
sad hours. Nurse your wounded men with
tenderness. To sow sweet charity in their hearts
is to prepare a harvest of faith. We have never
been such apostles, such teachers of the gospel.
And, going about as you are, or lying down as I
am, living or dead, the priest in this war dominates
the soldier, as religion dominates the country.
But has not Providence given us some splendid
hours ?

" Don't believe in the sadness of which I spoke.
I am joyful ... I love my lot. I owe all that I
know about the war — its perils, its pains — to it.

238 PRIESTS IN THE FIRING LINE

It would be far finer to die of one's wounds than
to die stupidly in one's bed, carried off by fever
or pneumonia. Adieu, my good friend. Write
to me soon, if you can, I have serious reasons
for wishing your answer to reach me quickly.

" Your old friend,

"DUROY."

I had hardly understood and felt all the emotion
and anguish of this letter, when I received a stun-
ning telegram which did away with my doubts
and confirmed my fears : " Abbe Duroy died in
hospital R ."

That " serious reason," which he had for my
reply, was because my poor friend felt himself
dying when he wrote those last dear lines. Tears
rose from the depths of my heart to my eyes, as
I read the fatal news — sorrowful tears, jealous
almost.

His death did not call up to my mind the sad
end of a life which had been beautiful, courageous
and fruitful ; nor even that bitter regret which
presses on you before a hardly closed grave.
" Another apostle gone — a source of energy which
has dried up — a beautiful light which illumined
the way which has gone out."

Now the sorrow which I felt for my friend,

THE LAST BLESSING 239

killed in the war, disappeared in the passionate
admiration with which this hero of thirty inspired
me. He had died as he had wished, in full
strength, in full activity, killed by the enemy,
more than a soldier, a sublime worker of charity,
almost a martyr.

France had given him the kiss of glory and had
just paid him its debt. But another glory,
greater and more lasting, rose from the soil near
the frontiers, impregnated with his blood. The
priest had seen his fine dream more gloriously
fulfilled than he had dared to hope for. For it is
the supreme grace for heroes to see that Heaven
accepts their sacrifice completely, and their
voluntary immolation.

Then the memory of the first days came back
to me, of that meeting, when, both of us still
soldiers, we exchanged words which expressed
the highest thoughts of our thrilled souls. The
words were engraven in my mind. I re-read them,
I heard them, and his voice sounded in my ears
and gave me the almost physical impression of a
will dictated by one who is about to die.

I had asked him, " When shall we meet again ? "
He had replied, smiling, " Shall we ever meet
again ? " Then, with a start of pride which frees
a heart of preoccupations, unworthy of its courage,

240 PRIESTS IN THE FIRING LINE

with, above all, the ardour of great souls who
aspire to give themselves without counting, he
had added :

" To die like that, and only thirty — I am afraid
of not deserving such a grace."

His career had finished in the full realisation
of his cherished idea. His agony and his last
breath had been the crowning desire of his life.
In praying for him, I did not know if to say the
De Profundis or to intone the Magnificat.

I regretted his life, and rejoiced in his death.

For his blood, mixed with that of other victims,
was destined to the necessary work, to the ex-
piation demanded by Providence and surely
already accepted, for the new baptism of Catholic
France. I asked for the details of his death and
of his last hours. It was in the morning, in the
middle of the tumult which makes a hospital
noisy at the time for waking up.

His neighbour, who had learnt to love him,
seeing him motionless, said, " Are you still asleep,
Duroy ? "

He did not answer, but tried to raise his white
hand, which fell back inert on the quilt.

Then, among all those sufferers, in the midst
of pain in which each one, preoccupied with his
own, remains almost indifferent to that of others,

THE LAST BLESSING 241

stupor spread. Some few before him had died
before their eyes, without provoking on their part
anything but an indifferent regret, a word of pity,
in which one guessed the fear of a similar fate.

But before the agony of the priest, whom they
had loved, understanding that for each one of
them it was the loss of a friend, there was through
the whole ward, a moving silence.

Some of them raised themselves painfully on
their bed of misery to see him for the last time,
to speak to him with their eloquent glances, to
thank him for having consoled them in their
sorrows. The house surgeon, informed by the
infirmarian, hurried to his side, examined his
wound. When he raised his head again, his
expression revealed the sad truth.

A sudden haemorrhage had reopened the horrible
wound, and a pool of blood flooded the sheets and
reddened half the bed. The doctor wanted to try
to staunch it, but Duroy shook his head slightly.
His face grew paler and one could see the life
ebbing from his features.

The whole ward was palpitating. Wet eyes
watched for the coming of death, and followed
with their anguished glances the melancholy
phases of that end, for which brotherly hearts
were already weeping. An injection of caffeine
gave him back the use of his muscles, for an

242 PRIESTS IN THE FIRING LINE

instant, and the priest, wishing to use this last
scrap of his waning strength, raised himself and
asked the doctor to support him. The doctor
obeyed, understanding the grandeur of his last
desire. Then the dying man raised his right
hand, stained with the blood which had gushed
from his veins, and slowly traced the sign of
blessing over his brothers in sacrifice. Then,
having done his duty to the end, and crowned his
mission on this earth by this divine farewell, he
fell back dead.

In the neighbouring wards one could hear the
sound of voices. Clamour joined to moans and
to the laughing of those to whom a little strength
had given back hope, the noise of footsteps, filled
the hospital.

In the midst of indifferent passers-by, who
hardly uncovered as the corpse was carried along,
Duroy was borne by four infirmarians to the
mortuary.

And whilst they took off the sheets, soaked with
blood, and removed the last traces of the dead
man, the wounded continued to regret the death
of the " little cure," who had given his life for
them. For several among them had been picked
up by him in the battle in which the priest, greater
than death, had received to save them the wound
which had killed him.

THE LAST BLESSING 243

A wooden cross marks the place where my
friend lies. His family, who mourn deeply for him,
has respected the last desire of the sublime priest
who wished to remain a soldier unto Eternity.

After the war we shall claim his coffin from the
cemetery, and in a pilgrimage of sorrowful
memories, we shall bear it to a little hill in the
Argonne, cut up by the huge holes made by the
shells.

Guided by one of his wounded, we shall find the
furrow where the three bullets struck the priest,
sower of life and of love. And there in that place,
more ours than ever, we shall place him with pride,
with respect and tenderness.

It is his sacred wish : "I wish my body to be
at the front, so that it may become an almost
living portion of the soil of our frontiers."

It was a sublime idea, and it resumed in a sen-
tence, which comes from the depths of eternity,
the mission which the heroic and saintly little
cures of France have undertaken :

" To love our country, for God's sake, even
beyond death."

THE END

PRINTED IN GREAT BRITAIN BY
ILLI AM CLOWES AND SONS, LIMITED,
BECCLES

GAEL1-, RENE.

Priests in the firing line.

BQX
1797

era-