“Felt Dawn”
We were sitting on the beach at Mira. Just a lovely Cape Breton moonlight night. The youngsters were singing and telling yarns. One kid recited McCrae’s great poem, “In Flanders Fields,” and one of the boys who had been “over there” asked us if we knew what McCrae meant when he wrote the phrase, “Felt Dawn.” Nobody seemed to be entirely clear on the question, and we asked our friend, the veteran, to describe it for us. Here are his words:
A cold, drizzly rain that is eating through your khaki into your very heart.
A sea of mud—black, slimy, sticky, stinking mud.
The duck boards floating in ooze.
Your feet wet and heavy, and your toes squichy.
Not a sound of any kind.
The nearest human ten yards away—just around “the bay.”
Darkness supreme. Not even an enemy flare.
You strain your eyes over the parapet to the barbwire.
Your battalion’s life depends on your keeping awake.
Oh, the strain! Oh, the funk that is trying to grip your very soul!
Would to God something would happen! This eternal watching is fearful.
Then a rustle in the grass; a wave of movement first like the ripple you hear when a stone is “skipped” on a quiet pond; then an extra chill in the air: then a glow to the east—’Tis Dawn.
You let loose your “clip” and you fire like mad towards the Hun. Other sentries fire, and the salvo to dawn gets the whole line. Thousands of men all along the front start a strafe—a crazy, aimless strafe—which lasts for only minutes. Then, as if some great unseen General had whispered a command, men regain their “morale,” and the rifle fire quietens, and dies away.
The sun struggles up.
A bird on a shattered stump whistles, “Coo, Coo.”
Your blood warms again. You have “felt dawn.” Another day has had its birth. The rations will soon be up. Relief is coming. The war is still on, and the bird has showed you that, after all, it is better to smile than to worry.
God is still in command!
Notes
1. Killed in action or died of wounds.