VII “Now the Day is Over”
Achicourt is a little village about a mile out of Arras. It has two churches, one Roman Catholic, the other, Lutheran. The former church has been utterly destroyed by German shells, and will have to be rebuilt from the foundations. The Lutheran church was less prominently placed, and its four walls are still standing. Its humility has saved it, but, as by fire. All its windows are gone, and its walls are torn and scarred by fragments of shells. Most of its slates have been destroyed and the rain pours through the roof. But, on dry days, and until the Battle of Arras, it was a beloved little place for services. It stood, however, at a corner of the village Square, and the Square was destroyed by hundreds of exploding shells on Easter Sunday. As I passed it in the afternoon of that day, and saw how it had suffered, my heart grew sad within me.
Often it had sheltered us at worship, and many of our most sacred memories will, for ever, cling like ivy to its walls. The door was smashed in, the vestibule torn into strips as by lightning. The pews were strewn on the floor with their backs broken; even the frames of the windows had been blown out. There was a little portable organ that we had used with our hymns, and it lay mutilated on the floor like a slaughtered child. The floor was white with plaster, as when a sharp frost has brought low the cherry blossom. Never again, I thought, should I gather my men for worship within its humble, hospitable walls. One more of the beautiful and sacred things of life had perished in this all-devouring war. Only the fields remained, and there all my future services must be held.
But “fears may be liars” and so mine proved. I had reckoned without the man in khaki—that master of fate whose head “beneath the bludgeonings of chance, is bloody but unbowed.” In a week he had cleared the Square of its dead—mules and men—filled in its craters, and cleared away the debris that blocked the roads. He was even removing the fallen houses in order to mend the roads with their bricks and stones; and he had thrown together all the scraps of iron for salvage. There I found, lying side by side, the burned tin-soldiers of the children; officers’ revolvers which, being loaded, had exploded in the heat; bayonets and rifle-barrels of the men; broken sewing machines of the women. He had taken in hand, too, the little church. Sacking was spread across the windows; the remnants of the little organ were carefully placed under the pulpit where they lay like the body of a saint beneath an altar; the floor was swept of its fallen plaster. The pews were repaired and placed in order again, and a new door was made. Even timber was brought for a new vestibule. The wood was rough and unpainted—Tommy had to use what he could get—but it served. The twisted railings were drawn away from the entrance, and, on the following Sunday, we were back in our old sanctuary. We felt that it was more sacred than ever. These are the deeds of our fighting-man that make us love him so much, and these are the acts of kindness and common sense that make us admire our commanders. Both officers and men have the heart of a lion in the hour of battle, the gentleness of a lamb when it is over. Whatever their circumstances, they cannot cease to be gentlemen, nor forget the fathers that begat them.
Let him who doubts the future of England come hither. He will see the past through the present, and the future through both. Tommy’s eyes are the crystal gazing-glasses in which he will discern the future. Tommy is living history and the prophecy of the future made flesh. The pessimists have not seen Tommy here, and that is why they are what they are. “Age cannot wither nor custom stale” his infinite freshness and resource. He is a sword that the rust of time cannot corrode, nor the might of an enemy break, and he will be found flashing wherever there are wrongs to right and weak to be defended. On Easter Sunday he was calmly enduring the horror of the German bombardment and the explosions of his own dump of shells. On Easter Monday he was driving the Germans at the point of his bayonet, or accepting their surrender at the doors of their dug-outs! On Easter Tuesday and Wednesday he was repairing a little French chapel for worship. Take him which day you will, and you will find him mighty hard to match. To me he is the king of men, and his genius, cheerfulness and resourcefulness beyond the range of explanations.
After some weeks of fighting we had come to our last Sunday in Achicourt, and were gathered for the evening service. The chapel was jammed with officers and men, but not all my flock was there. There was Rifleman Gibson absent. He was carrying his beloved Lewis gun in an attack when a bullet struck him, and he died, as his comrades report, with a smile upon his face. Before going into the battle he had given me his father’s address and thanked me for the spiritual help he had received at the services. It was his farewell to me, and his father now has the penciled words. And Rifleman Stone was absent, too. He was but a boy, and beautiful with youth and goodness. His comrades loved him as David loved Jonathan, with a love passing the love of women. Every day, they told me in their grief, he knelt in the trench to say his prayers and to read his Bible. One night after praying he laid him down and slept. He had often sung the evening hymn:
“Jesus protects; my fears, be gone!
What can the Rock of Ages move?
Safe in Thy arm I lay me down,
Thy everlasting arms of love.
“While Thou art intimately nigh,
Who, then, shall violate my rest?
Sin, earth, and hell I now defy;
I lean upon my Saviour’s breast.
“Me for Thine own Thou lov’st to take,
In time and in eternity,
Thou never, never wilt forsake
A helpless soul that trusts in Thee.”
And as he slept, God took him from the misery of this world—took him without waking him. His broken-hearted comrades gathered together his broken body, and a friend, a Congregational preacher, who, though over military age, was serving in the ranks, read the burial service over him. Lance-corporal Gilbert James was missing, too—he whom I had known to lose his breakfast to attend a service in a cold, dirty, old barn. And many others were absent whose departure to the Land beyond our mortal reach was to us like the putting out of stars.
We were leaving the Arras front and we sang a hymn for those who had taken our places:
“O Lord of Hosts, Whose mighty arm
In safety keeps ’mid war’s alarm,
Protect our comrades at the Front
Who bear of war the bitter brunt.
And in the hour of danger spread
Thy sheltering wings above each head,
“In battle’s harsh and dreadful hour,
Make bare Thine arm of sovereign power,
And fight for them who fight for Thee,
And give to justice, victory.
O in the hour of danger spread
Thy sheltering wings above each head.
“If by the way they wounded lie,
O listen to their plaintive cry;
And rest them on Thy loving breast,
O Thou on Whom the cross was pressed;
And in the hour of danger shed
Thy glorious radiance o’er each head.
“When pestilence at noonday wastes,
And death in triumph onward hastes,
O Saviour Christ, remember Nain,
And give us our beloved again.
In every ward of sickness tread,
And lay Thy hand upon each head.
“O Friend and Comforter divine,
Who makest light at midnight shine,
Give consolation to the sad
Who in the days of peace were glad.
And in the hour of sorrow spread
Thy wings above each drooping head.
Amen.”
I had to find a new voice to start it, for our little organ had been destroyed by a shell, and our precentor was lying in a grave beside his Medical Aid Post at Guemappe. When, on Good Friday, we had sung the hymn before, the regiment returned from rest billets to the line, he had started the tune. His love for music was second only to that of risking his life for the wounded. In one of his letters given me to censor, he had written, “How nice it will be to be back in my old place in the choir.” But he was destined not to go back. His path was onward and upward, and his place was in the heavenly choir. I had seen it in his large, tender blue eyes. There was in them an expression as if he had seen “the land that is very far off.” I felt that he was chosen as a sacrifice—that the seal of God was on his forehead.
Still, we had to sing, though his voice was silent. So we sang—several tunes, for hymns seemed all our spirits needed. What need was there for a sermon when we had hymns? We left the rag-time type of hymn and sang the real deep things that come from men’s hearts, and ever after are taken up by their fellows to express their deepest aspirations and experiences. The ruined chapel vibrated with music, and men, I am told, stood in the street to listen while “Jesus, Lover of my Soul,” “Rock of Ages,” “When I Survey the Wondrous Cross” and “The Sands of Time are Sinking” told of the faith and love that lift up the heart. We also sang “Abide with Me.” After hearing us sing it one night, a Roman Catholic officer in the regiment, a Canadian and one of the bravest, most beloved men that ever walked, told me that he was a great-grandson of the author. He is in hospital now with severe wounds, but his men were present.
“Couldn’t we take up a collection for the repair of the chapel when peace comes?” whispered a rifleman; “it would be a sort of thanksgiving for the good times we have had in it, and for the kindness of the congregation in giving us the use of it so freely.”
I put the suggestion to the men and they voted for it with enthusiasm. Two of them went round with their caps and out of their shallow purses the big-hearted fellows gave over 100 francs. In the name of the men I presented the full caps to a lady of the congregation who was present, and she was moved to tears. The time was quickly passing, so I mounted the pulpit and told them of words spoken after the earth’s first great trouble, when the black wings of death had cast their shadow over every home: “And God said, I do set my bow in the cloud, and it shall be for a token of a covenant between me and the earth. And it shall come to pass, when I bring a cloud over the earth, that the bow shall be seen in the cloud.”
“God,” I said, “has made a covenant with man, for man is His neighbor and subject; and there must be an understanding between them, if there is to be peace and happiness. Man must know God’s will or he will grieve Him and there will be discord and pain. Also, man must know God’s intentions concerning him, and something of His ways, or else he will live in fear and dread of the Almighty One in whose power he lies. There were no books and parchment in the first days, so God took the sky for His parchment, and dipping His fingers in the most lovely of colors, wrote out His covenant with man. He spread it out between earth and heaven so that man might look up and see it without obstruction, and so that He Himself might look down on it and remember His agreement. ‘The bow,’ He said, ‘shall be in the cloud; and I will look upon it, that I may remember the everlasting covenant.’”
“When you draw up a covenant with a neighbor, you look well at it and then give it to your attorney, who puts it away in the darkness of the safe. But it is taken out at intervals for fresh examination. And the rainbow-covenant was put away behind the clouds, to be brought out again from time to time to bring comfort and strength to man by its appearance. The rainbow is only half seen by man. The lower half of its circle is lost in the earth. It exists, but unseen. And the full circle of God’s beautiful covenant with man has never appeared to our eyes. A full half is lost in the unapprehending darkness of man’s mind. The full purpose of God is not realized. His plans are too vast and glorious for the intellect or imagination to span; but half the rainbow is seen and it is enough. Seeing half we can take the rest on trust. In the covenant we are assured that we shall never be given darkness without light, winter without summer, seedtime without harvest, death without birth, sorrow without joy, or a thick cloud without a rainbow. He binds Himself not to give evil without good, or to bring tears without laughter. “I do set My bow in the cloud; and it shall come to pass when I bring a cloud over the earth, that the bow shall be seen in the cloud.”
“A rainbow is made up of rain and sunshine and life is woven of the same stuff—tears and laughter. The most glorious sunshine is incapable of a rainbow without the co-operation of the dark trailing clouds; and it is impossible for the human character to reach its ripest maturity and beauty on joy alone. Sorrow is as beneficent and necessary as joy. There are untutored natives who dread the rainbow. They believe that it is a serpent that rises out of the pools to devour men; and there are unbelieving men in cultured lands who dread adversity no less. They do not believe that God ‘brings the cloud.’ The rainbow is their refutation and it is written across the sky for all to see. On the other hand, there are unbelieving men who see only the cloud and are blind to the sunshine. To them life is one long tragedy. It is an immense futility. They regard man as a mere cork in the sea, thrown about by blind, deaf, unintelligible natural forces void of purpose; active indeed but ungoverned. Human life to them is a black cloud driven through immensity by the winds of unintelligent fate. It has no meaning and its darkness is the deeper because they cannot call a halt and disperse it into nothingness. Like Job’s wife they would say ‘Curse God and die,’ yet they cannot die. But Job, as he sits on the dunghill, looks up at the rainbow and finds a truer philosophy. ‘What?’ says he, ‘shall we receive good at the hand of God, and shall we not receive evil?’ Under the rainbow’s arch there are fruitful fields and beautiful gardens for where the rainbow hangs in air there is sunshine and there is rain—the parents of fruitfulness. And to whom God gives in equal measure joy and sorrow there is beauty and fruitfulness of heart and life. His promise to ‘every living creature’ is that He will never send the cloud without the sunshine and, what is not less gracious, He will never send the sunshine without the cloud. When by day the Israelites tramped the fiery desert He led them by a pillar of cloud, and they marched in its shade; and in the blackness of night He threw in the sky a pillar of sunshine; and they walked through the gloom in its light.
“In these terrible days of war when our hearts begin to fail us and dark doubts cloud the mind, let us look at the Covenant God has made with us. He has set it in rainbow colors across the sky, that ‘he who runs may read’ and ‘the wayfaring man though a fool may not err.’ God has flung his rainbow over the trench and the grave; over the Garden of Gethsemane; over the Cross on Calvary. It is over the tomb in the Arimathean’s Garden; and over Olivet, as Christ ascends to heaven. We are born under the rainbow, live under it, die under it. At the last we shall find it over the throne of Judgment. Water and blood flowed from Christ’s side; and life and death, joy and pain, light and darkness, summer and winter, peace and war come forth from God.
“Let us take life as it comes with obedient wills and grateful hearts. The bee finds honey in the thistle as well as in the rose, and ‘where the bee sucks there suck I,’ for He who guides the bee guides me. Only in loving obedience to God shall we find true wisdom. It is not so much what we are given as how we take it that matters. To be humble nothing may be so sweet as sorrow; and to the proud nothing may be so bitter as pleasure. Let us leave God to mix the ingredients of our life, for ‘all things work together for good to them that love God.’ It is all in the covenant written by God’s fingers in the colors of the rainbow, and whenever He brings it from beyond the clouds, let us look at it with reverent eyes, and ponder its promise. Then shall we be able to say, with Wordsworth,
‘My heart leaps up when I behold
A rainbow in the sky.’”
After I had finished speaking we sang, at the request of one of the sergeants, the hymn commencing
“The Day Thou gavest Lord is ended,
The darkness falls at Thy behest.”
And beautiful indeed was the singing of it.
The Benediction followed. Just as I was ending it an impulse came to me, and I yielded to its importunity. “Before we part and before we leave Achicourt which has meant so much to us of joy and sorrow,” I said, “let us sing a kiddies’ hymn. We still shelter in our hearts a little child. Though we have grown moustaches and some of us gray hairs, the child that we once were, never quite dies. Let us have a hymn for the boy within us who never grows up and never dies.” Then I read out verse by verse, for it was not in their books:
“Now the day is over,
Night is drawing nigh,
Shadows of the evening
Steal across the sky.
“Jesus, give the weary
Calm and sweet repose;
With Thy tenderest blessing
May their eyelids close.
“Grant to little children
Visions bright of Thee;
Guarding the sailors tossing
On the angry sea.
“Comfort every sufferer
Watching late in pain;
Those who plan some evil
From their sin restrain.
“When the morning wakens,
Then may I arise
Pure and fresh, and sinless
In Thy holy eyes.”
I have witnessed many moving sights in my time and heard much deep and thrilling music; but I have never been so deeply moved by anything as by the rich, deep voices of these gallant men and boys who, after winning the Battle of Arras, had come into this ruined church and were singing this beautiful kiddies’ hymn as their last farewell.
The collection the boys had taken up had been so heavy that we carried it to the French lady’s house for her. As we entered her home she said in her simple way, as her eyes grew radiant with gratitude, “I like the English soldiers.” It was the voice of France. And she was worthy to speak for France. For two-and-a-half years her house had stood within a mile of the German trenches, and but a few hundred yards from our own firing line. Yet she and her mother had never left it. She introduced me to her mother, who had lived in London, and spoke English. Then she brought in coffee. I had noticed a most remarkable thing about the house. There was not a piece of glass broken, nor a mark of war on the walls. It was the only house I have seen, either in Achicourt or Arras, upon which the war has not laid its monstrous and bloody finger. “How is it,” I asked the mother, “that your house has not been touched?” Her eyes shone and a sweet smile lit up her face. “It is the will of God,” she said simply. “Shells have fallen a little short of us and a little beyond us. They have passed within a yard of the house, and we have heard the rushing of the wind as they passed, but they have not touched us. When the village has been bombarded we have gone down into the cellar as was but discretion and duty, but we have had the conviction all along that we should be spared, and we refused to leave the house. We do not know God’s purpose but we believe that it is God’s will to spare us.” I leave the fact to speak for itself and offer no explanation. Skeptics will say the house was spared by accident; but they would not have stayed there two-and-a-half years trusting to such an accident. These two women, without a man in the house, stayed on the very confines of hell with its hourly suspense and danger for nearly three years, because they believed it was God’s will and that, though they walked through the fiery furnace heated seven times hotter than it was wont to be heated, He would not allow so much as a hair of their heads to be singed. And not a hair was singed. They were women in whom faith burned like a bright pillar of fire. One caught its light, and felt its heat. I have met patriots and heroes and know their quality when I see them and come near them. These were “the real thing.” Faith in God and faith in their country were interwoven in their spirits like sun and shower in a rainbow. They were of the same breed as the Maid of France, and like her, with their white banner bearing the device of the Cross, they withstood and defied the might and terror of the invader. They believed it was God’s will they should stay, to “Be still and know that I am God.” Their experience was expressed by the Psalmist centuries ago: “God is our refuge and strength, a very present help in trouble. Therefore will not we fear, though the earth be removed, and though the mountains be carried into the midst of the sea. Though the waters thereof roar and be troubled, though the mountains shake with the swellings thereof... Come behold the works of the Lord, what desolations He hath made in the earth. He maketh wars to cease unto the end of the earth; He breaketh the bow, and cutteth the spear in sunder; He burneth the chariot in the fire.... The Lord of Hosts is with us; the God of Jacob is our refuge.”
Such was the faith of these two women, and their courage few men have approached. It is a practical matter, and after comparing it with the skeptic’s theory of accident and coincidence and remembering his probable haste in seeking a place not so liable to untoward accidents, I accept the explanation of the women. Their house was spared and not a hair of their heads injured because “it was God’s will.” If it is not the correct theory, it ought to be. Otherwise falsehood is more sustaining than truth, and inspires nobler conduct.
The day was now over. A new chapter of life had been written, and in the morning, we left behind us this village of precious memories, and marched out again into the unknown.