"And immediately He talked with them, and saith unto them, 'Be of good cheer; it is I; be not afraid.'" —THE GOSPEL ACCORDING TO MAKK, chap, vi: 50. "And His raiment was white as snow." —THE GOSPEL ACCORDING TO MATTHEW, chap. xvii: 2.
"The Battle of Mons, which saved the British Army from annihilation, was, for the most of those who fought with the angels, a sepulchre. They saved the British Army, but they saved it at fearful cost. No 'great host' withdrew from that field of destruction; the great host strewed the ground with their bodies. Only a remnant of those who stood in the actual furnace of Mons escaped with their lives ... Let those who mourn, take encouragement from these stories of visions on the battlefield, quietly and with a child's confidence, cultivate within themselves a waiting, receptive and desiring spirit. Let them empty themselves of prejudice and self.... Let them detach themselves more and more from the obsessions of worldly life. Serenity is the path by which the thoughts of God travel to us; and Faith is the invitation which brings them to the table of our souls."
Strange tales reached us in the trenches. Rumours raced up and down that three-hundred-mile line from Switzerland to the sea. We knew neither the source of them nor the truth of them. They came quickly, and they went quickly. Yet somehow I remember the very hour when George Casey turned to me with a queer look in his blue eyes, and asked if I had seen the Friend of the Wounded.
And then he told me all he knew. After many a hot engagement a man in white had been seen bending over the wounded. Snipers sniped at him. Shells fell all around. Nothing had power to touch him. He was either heroic beyond all heroes, or he was something greater still. This mysterious one, whom the French called The Comrade in White, seemed to be everywhere at once. At Nancy, in the Argonne, at Soissons and Ypres, everywhere men were talking of him with hushed voices.
But some laughed and said the trenches were telling on men's nerves. I, who was often reckless enough in my talk, exclaimed that for me seeing was believing, and that I didn't expect any help but an enemy's knife if I was found lying out there wounded.
It was the next day that things got lively on this bit of the front. Our big guns roared from sunrise to sunset, and began again in the morning. At noon we got word to take the trenches in front of us. They were two hundred yards away, and we weren't well started till we knew that the big guns had failed in their work of preparation. It needed a stout heart to go on, but not a man wavered. We had advanced one hundred and fifty yards when we found it was no good. Our Captain called to us to take cover, and just then I was shot through both legs. By God's mercy I fell into a hole of some sort. I suppose I fainted, for when I opened my eyes I was all alone. The pain was horrible, but I didn't dare to move lest the enemy should see me, for they were only fifty yards away, and I did not expect mercy. I was glad when the twilight came. There were men in my own company who would run any risk in the darkness if they thought a comrade was still alive.
The night fell, and soon I heard a step, not stealthy, as I expected, but quiet and firm, as if neither darkness nor death could check those untroubled feet. So little did I guess what was coming that, even when I saw the gleam of white in the darkness, I thought it was a peasant in a white smock, or perhaps a woman deranged. Suddenly, with a little shiver of joy or of fear, I don't know which, I guessed that it was The Comrade in White. And at that very moment the enemy's rifles began to shoot. The bullets could scarcely miss such a target, for he flung out his arms as though in entreaty, and then drew them hack till he stood like one of those wayside crosses that we saw so often as we marched through France. And he spoke. The words sounded familiar, but all I remember was the beginning. "If thou hadst known," and the ending, "but now they are hid from thine eyes." And then he stooped and gathered me into his arms—me, the biggest man in the regiment—and carried me as if I had been a child.
I must have fainted again, for I woke to consciousness in a little cave by a stream, and The Comrade in White was washing my wounds and binding them up. It seems foolish to say it, for I was in terrible pain, but I was happier at that moment than ever I remember to have been in all my life before. I can't explain it, but it seemed as if all my days I had been waiting for this without knowing it. As long as that hand touched me and those eyes pitied me, I did not seem to care any more about sickness or health, about life or death. And while he swiftly removed every trace of blood and mire I felt as if my whole nature were being washed, as if all the grime and soil of sin were going, and as if I were once more a little child.
I suppose I slept, for when I awoke this feeling was gone. I was a man, and I wanted to know what I could do for my friend to help him or to serve him. He was looking towards the stream, and his hands were clasped in prayer; and then I saw that he too had been wounded. I could see, as it were, a shot-wound in his hand, and as he prayed a drop of blood gathered and fell to the ground. I cried out. I could not help it, for that wound of his seemed to me a more awful thing than any that bitter war had shown me. "You are wounded too," I said faintly. Perhaps he heard me, perhaps it was the look on my face, but he answered gently, "This is an old wound, but it has troubled me of late." And then I noticed sorrowfully that the same cruel mark was on his feet. You will wonder that I did not know sooner. I wonder myself. But it was only when I saw His feet that I knew Him.
"The Living Christ"—I had heard the Chaplain speak of Him a few weeks before, but now I knew that He had come to me—to me who had put Him out of my life in the hot fever of my youth. I was longing to speak and to thank Him, but no words came. And then He rose swiftly and said, "Lie here to-day by the water. I will come for you tomorrow. I have work for you to do, and you will do it for me."
In a moment He was gone. And while I wait for Him I write this down that I may not lose the memory of it. I feel weak and lonely and my pain to-morrow.
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