A WEIRD CEREMONIAL.

Dominion, Volume 8, Issue 2428, 6 April 1915, Page 6

A WEIRD CEREMONIAL.

BURIAL SERVICE UNDER FIRE. The countless human episodes and incidents of this war should provide the novelist of the future with a rich store of material. What could •be more solemnly moving, for example, than the story of a burial service conducted under fire, the dramatic touch coming from the fact that it was tho electric pocket lamp of the chaplain, directed on his Prayer Book, which brought down the enemy's fire and served as a target. Yet this incident happened in France recently—an actual event of the war Five men of a British regiment had been killed during the day, and they were buried the same night in a garden. British soldiers _ carried their comrades to the graveside, and a British chaplain intoned the beautiful Church of England service for the dead. During the burial service he switched on his eleotric pocket lamp for a moment or so. The instant he did so German snipers began to fire at the graveside party. A British officer thus relaxes what ensued:—"lt was my first time under fire," he said; "by a graveside a weird experience, but interesting, very. Two or three officers and about ten men stood around the graves, and only one, so far as I could 6ee, moved a muscle during the firing. He bent his head once, almost involuntarily. One can quite understand these chaps, who have been out since the beginning of tho war, and going Homo on furlough soon, not wishing to be sniped at_ the last moment, and I was surprised at the coolness of overyone around the grave. "The chaplain told/me afterwards that some of the bullets had been very near us. I have often wondered what are the feelings of men under fire. Mine were these. I thought, that the ■buzz of the bullet as it passed was very much like the buzz of the bee, and I wondered vaguely whether one would pass through me and the officer who standing just behind the chaplain—l wondered whether I should stop it entirely or whether it would pass through both of us, we being in fine. I had no other thoughts than these at all."