A STORY FROM THE FRENCH FRONT

New Zealand Tablet, 9 November 1916, Page 7

A STORY FROM THE FRENCH FRONT

The following beautiful story is told by a distinguished. chaplain, Pere Louis Lenoir, S.J., attached to the French Colonial troops in the French Army. Pore Lenoir has been decorated with the Cross of the Legion of Honor, and the official notification states; ‘ From the commencement of operations he has daily excited the admiration of both privates and officers by his courage and self-sacrifice. At every fight he has been the first to bring succour to the wounded, spending himself without distinction in the service of all, whether it was a question of fulfilling his ministry or of lending aid to the stretcher-bearers. lie was wounded by a shell on February 5, 1915, at the moment when he was carrying one of the wounded to the dressing-station.’ In this story he relates his personal experiences amongst the soldiers. . The story itself is remarkable for two things: it shows the extraordinary power of frequent Holy Communion to enable the receivers to overcome the bad habits of a lifetime, and the little less power of personal influence and example for good on the lives of the most depraved and the outcast. Tne story has been translated from the French by Father P. J. Gannon, S.J., and has appeared in Studies, from which we take it. —Frederic without doubt, though his comgrades knew him only by the shortened form from across /the Straits of Dover —had nothing British about him. V He was a Montmartre apache, in all the purity of the race, without crossing of any kind ; six feet in height, lean, sinewy; skin tanned in smoky dens, dark eyes sunken into sockets hollowed out by nights of crime, and gleaming still more dark and sinister under the jetblack hair which came down low upon the forehead, the

better to conceal the expression a face quite beardless in spite of his twenty-eight years ; lips purpled by alcohol and pursed out perpetually round the stump of an extinguished cigarette; sloping shoulders, arms with the muscles of an athlete, and as a commencement of every gesture a peculiar movement of the right hand, with fingers clenched, suggestive of ‘ weasand-slitting.’ * When he reached the Front in December his neighbors instinctively fought shy of him : all the more so as they learned, before he had been two hours in the squad, of his former association with Bonnot, and of his three latest condemnationsone for theft and two for murder. The morning of his arrival cartridges were distributed. Fred took his from the N.C.0., and said, in the accent of the slums A moment! till I put these aside for the generals.’ All heard him, but no one smiled. In our colonial infantry regiment with glorious traditions, in which the officers loved their men, took an interest in them, lived their lives, and in the hour of danger only ordered them to follow, anti-mili-tary plots were unknown, and Fred’s words merely shocked. The squad at this time was under the command of the youngest memberPetit-Pierre, or the ‘ Kid,’ as he was called before he got his stripes. Of his father, mother, or infancy this Petit-Pierre knew just nothing. His recollections did not carry him back past a voyage to America, in his seventh year, with a company of musicians, of which as violinist ‘ child-prodigy ’ he constituted the ‘ star turn.’ From that time on he had travelled the world, the grand nni/idc bo called it, meaning the music-halls of great cities. In August, 1914, he was eighteen years old and penniless—for if he earned much he spent still more —with a charming blonde countenance which had involved him in numberless romantic adventures. The latest of these had left him a ‘ heart-ache,’ which, more than any idea of patriotism, had prompted him to enlist for the term of the war. I made his acquaintance at the beginning of winter, in the trenches of M . As regards religion, his mind was an unwritten page, He did not even know the name of our Lord, and could not recall ever having heard it. lie had certainly seen a crucifix, but it was, he thought, an instrument for threatening naughty children with suspension ! Yet God was divinely good to this poor soul, to which no one had ever endeavored to convey a ray of truth. In a few days grace enlightened it entirely. Refined by his art, perhaps also by unknown hereditary instincts, Petit-Pierre experienced a positive delight in hearing explained the marvellous harmonies of Catholicism. The Incarnation, the Redemption, the Holy Eucharist, the Blessed Virgin — all were new vistas that satisfied at length the aspirations of his beautiful nature. Baptism was not long in coming. I administered it to him amid the ruins of M—— on the morning of a day that opened threateningly. TfiSTT, taking a small Host from the pyx, I gave him that God, Who, though near to him, had remained unknown during eighteen years. I admit I awaited with a certain curiosity the first words he would utter after his first colloquy with Jesus in the Sacrament, the first thought suggested by this First Communion. When the moment came for him to go back to his post, ho reopened his eyes, and embracing me affectionately, said: Father, I’ll bring them all to you.’ From that first hour when he received his Ideal Friend, Petit-PieVre felt the need and duty of revealing Him to others. Those who, like myself, have had the signal happiness of assisting, during the war, at the redemption of the souls of soldiers, and, in many cases, at a sanctification almost breathlessly rapid, will have noticed that every convert, however selfish or shy he may have been, became, from the moment of his first contact with the Body of Christ, a hearth radiating out divine life, an apostle. Two days later the ‘ Kid ’ brought me three comrades ; ‘ You’ll help them, Father, a little, won’t you They’re like I was, and know mighty little about the good God.’

. Quit© naturally also a transformation took place in his character, but it was gradual and even slow. Before arriving at the steadiness and strength of a Christian, his sensitive nature had to undergo bitter trials. The habits of a lifetime were there, the reputation he had with his companions, the counter-attacks of the demon, furious at this beautiful conquest of grace. Against all this Petit-Pierre had quickly discovered one preservative. Every day, wherever we might be, he asked for the Holy Eucharist. Several times when in camp I found him in the morning roaming around near his billet. Flying from dangerous surroundings, where he feared to be dragged down again, he had tramped to and fro throughout the cold winter nights reciting his beads. When I appeared his face would light up. ‘Ah! I am going to receive Him!’ And when I blamed him in spite of it all, he would reply: ‘Don’t be uneasy, Father; as long as 1 have my daily Communion the rest will take care of itself. Besides, lam so happy to offer up a little sacrifice to Jesus in expiation for the past, as the purchaseprice of purity.’ Grace sustained him visibly. By its aid he resisted all raillery, silently at first and awkwardly, but soon with an almost, reckless gaiety. Dreamer and artist by disposition, he was inclined to be nervous, sensitive, timid of danger or hardship; yet he shrank from no task, and was always preoccupied how he might do a service to others—especially to those who mocked him. To overcome his fear he volunteered for all sorts of patrol duty : at the parapet he looked steadily through the loop-hole defying the muskets pointed at him, and hardly thirty yards away. A lucky little attack on a German outpost, in which he killed three ‘Bodies’ anti saved the life of his N.C.0., enabled him to win the respect of his comrades, and, one morning in December, when I brought him Communion, he said to me radiantly: To-day I have a little present for our Lord,’ and showed me his sleeves with the red stripes. ‘ I mean to consecrate my squad to Him, and I promise to win all my men for Him.’ Doubtless that was why our Lord led Fred to PetitPierre’s squad some eight days after his appointment as corporal. The corporal had shuddered at the shameful words of the newcomer. As leader of the squad he saw at a, glance the gravity of the case and the infallible consequences of a denunciation, which others would immediately have deemed obligatory. As an apostle he perceived a much more lofty manner of fulfilling his duty—by saving a soul for God and giving a soldier to France. He acted therefore, as if he had heard nothing. But when night was come and they were on sentry duty at the parapet, he approached Fred quietly, his heart beating quickly under his corporal’s tunic, his lips breathing fervent prayers, as he knew this first attempt must win or lose all. He began by teaching him a good trick for masking the loop-hole in the parapet while firing. Then leaning their elbows on the sacks of earth they'talked in low tones on various topicsthe Germans who were on the watch beyond them, and whose coughing could bo heard, the recent attacks, the war in general—to curse it indeed, but also to recognise that a man had to defend himself and his own. Fred, distrustful at first, expanded little by little. And the conversation came round naturally and amicably to his unfortunate little jest of the morning. Fred was again on his guard. But the boy’s voice was so gentle and sympathetic that it touched whatever better fibres still vibrated in the man’s heart, and he was quite moved. He expressed regret for the words, ‘ especially as they have caused you pain, my lad.’ ) Petit-Pierre continued his work of zeal on the succeeding days with energy and tact. But he had a difficult subject to deal with ; the apache held out. When Pierre spoke to me about him, I said, ‘ Bring him along to me.’ ‘l’ll try, Father,’ he replied; ‘but as he is at present, you will make no hand of him. No one save only the Bon Jesus can change him.’ I did pot know at the moment that Ins words were so true.

Christmas was at hand; It was the opportunity of our dreams. Petit-Pierre promised to entice Fred to the Midnight Mass, for which we had made • preparations in a half-ruined farm-house near the trenches. Alas! Fred, too, had organised his Christmas celebrations, in his dug-out three yards underground. He spent the whole night there dead-drunk. A month later Fred, to please his young friend, agreed at length to go with him to the church. This was at C ,in the chapel with windows broken by the shells and holy-water font shamefully defiled by some sacrilegious Germans, but where the Blessed Virgin took her revenge by bringing back to her Sou so many souls of our colonials. On this Sunday morning nave, aisles, choir, even behind the altar, every nook and cranny, was filled in advance, and waves of late arrivals pressed round the door. Fred, who had never crossed the threshold of a church for fifteen years, felt very out of place. Overlooking the crowd by reason of his tall stature, he saw hundreds of ‘ Porpoises ’ doing what he thought unworthy of a man—-praying. After a time, influenced by the atmosphere of piety and recollection, he strove to recall some snatches ol prayer. Meanwhile the hymns, / ifie, /non Dtcu, ( redo , .1 ve, .-I re .1 lona, were sung, and he fancied he had heard them before, had sung (hem even himself. With the old airs there came back to him some of the sentiments they had formerly awakened, an indefinite something that sprang from recesses, ah, what deep recesses! of memory. The refrains rose in strength and harmony. The dee)) notes of the reservists mingled with the voices, almost childlike, of the little 1915 voices that shrilled like clarions summoning to the charge. In this united cry of many breasts there rose so strong an act of faith, so ardent a supplication, that Fred thought he felt a tear gathering on the eyelid. With the back of his right hand, the hand of the dagger, he wiped it away in haste and shame. 1 he bell at the Damme non sum Diynus was rung. After my own Communion I turned to say a few words to this body of men condemned to death. We were to return to the trenches the following day. , Of those listening to me how many, before the following Sunday, would have answered the summons of the Master and Judge on High. At least fifty if there were no attack, two hundred or five hundred if there were. And how many of them in the press of duties would have further time for religious exercises. Yet the vast majority wished to be reconciled with God, the rest were nearly disposed, and had they not the right and the duty in their imminent danger to strengthen their soul with the Divine Viaticum ? Therefore after commenting on the Gospel of the day, which told of the predilection of the Good Shepherd for the lost sheep, I called on them to make an act of contrition, an act of desire to i etui n to the fold, and a promise of confession when it should be possible. Finally, as always, I gave them the general absolution. f hen followed what a friend called the charge to the rails. Petit-Pierre, with hands folded on his kepi, white with mud, came in his turn, not venturing to look at Fred, but doubtless praying very hard for him. Fied hesitated. lie turned round. Some comrades did not stir; but they were not acquaintances of his. His heart began beating quickly. Why ? He could not well tell. Something drew him to the place where the priest had said to go, where almost all the rest were going, where Petit-Pierre was going with so much joy and beauty on his face. ‘ After all,’ he reasoned it was he himself who told me the story of this drama— ‘ that costs nothing and is something which will put me right with the good God.’ Thereupon with his long, determined stride he came forward. When Fred, after taking all possible care to regulate his movements on those of his neighbors, had deceived Communion and had. returned to his place beside Pierre, some infinitely sweet sensation took possession of his heart, a feeling of love, the only true love he had ever known. It seemed to him that the whole past was vanishing, and that a new life was beginning. He kept telling-himself; ‘Now . that you have gone tp

Communion, you must go to confession as you. promised.’ -, ■ After the Mass Petit-Pierre led Fred out, and in the porch, his eyes moist with tears of joy, he pressed his, hand and said: It was grand of you, Fred, to do that.’ The other looked round at the neighbors, and then, while replacing the kepi on his head, replied with a voice half-broken and almost ashamed: ‘Yes, yes, I think I’m changed.’ But the struggle lasted yet another twenty-four hours. Then finally, some minutes before our departure, he came to me, made his cutthroat gesture, gave the military salute, and said: ‘ Monsieur I’Aumonier, I would like to go to confession. It was a scene quite divine. Grace was there, working visibly and giving to this criminal, just led to capitulate, the repentance and generosity of a saint. When he stood up from confession, he drew out from under his tunic a thick pocket-book. Simply and naturally he tore up two photographs, and on the beardless face of the apache, where already the lines of hate were softening, I saw a smile—the first. ‘ I’m done with them,’ he said energetically. In recompense I gave him the most holy Body of our Lord. This time he received it in full realisation, with the ardent faith of the neophyte, and departed radiant. Before the farmhouse the ‘ fall-in ’ was sounding. Fred, when passing by Petit-Pierre, jerked out in a whisper: ‘The lost sheep has been found and washed. It has done me no end of good.’ The march took place in silence during the night. When day dawned it was clear to both sides that neither meditated an attack. Then pipes were lit and chatting began, that interminable chatting of the trenches'which has always the two same subjects— present war and past pleasures. At the first dirty jest all listened for Fred to go one better. But he said nothing. * They tried, to draw him. You’re out this time, chums,’ he said ; ‘ you knew one Fred before, you know another now.’ He spoke the truth. From that morning in the chapel Fred was quite changed. Conduct, discipline, language, interests, everything was unrecognisably changed by the violent determination of an extraordinary will. But as he still mistrusted this will of his, he never quitted the corporal. For whole hours they talked together: 1 In years I’m an old hand compared with you, but in religious matters I’m your raw conscript.’ And Petit-Pierre instructed him. His first lesson was on daily Communion, and henceforth I had every day —or at least on every occasion when circumstances allowed—to open the pyx on passing their way. I had suggested to Pierre to teach Fred some acts of thanksgiving. ‘ I think not, Father; the good Jesus will teach him better than I. But he trained him to make a particular examination every evening on the conduct of the day, which they did in common, reciting also their Rosary together, offering it frequently for the gift of perseverance. They finished with this prayer ‘lf in the future we are likely to turn out bad, grant that we be slain now.’ At first Fred shied at this addition ; but when the other had explained and urged it, he recollected himself a little and, making the Sign of the Cross, murmured an assenting ‘yes.’ At the same time that he moulded the Christian, Petit-Pierre tried also to form the soldier. And Fred quickly took to his trade. I knew it by his Communions. He was as insistent as the other on receiving daily, ‘ because,’ as he said, ‘ it’s that which gives strength to do my duty as a soldier.’ The transformation was beneficial for the whole squad. The two of them were enough to give a new tone to conversation and improve in more or less degree the conduct of all. Indeed Fred did not absorb Pierre so much as to make him forget his promise to Jesus in the Eucharist: ‘I will win all my men for Him.’ ( Soon there only remained two to gain over. Fred said : ‘ Those fellows belong to my class, I’ll take charge of them.’ But he went to work with loud words. There were violent discussions and amusing arguments,

the more vehement the more they were illogical. He made no headway; and then, with a Christian instinct that took me quite by surprise, he lit on the idea of ‘ giving np things for the sake of the souls he wished to save. For several weeks he ceased smoking, he who had always carried a ‘ fag ’ between his lips, and what was perhaps a greater mortification still, he abandoned his rations of tafia to his comrades. One morning in May (we had by this time quitted the M sector for the entrenched field-fortress of B —) we received orders to hold ourselves ready that evening, as information gathered from prisoners indicated a hostile' attack at 6 p.m. The weather was appalling. A fine, penetrating rain had fallen continuously for three days, and the communication trenches were full of water. For quite a mile we had to flounder through sticky mud in which we sank up to the waist. Stumbling at every step men were soon covered literally from head to foot with white marl. The preceding night several had fallen in so deeply that they had to be dug out by a gang armed with shovels. Others wounded by shell splinters had sunk in the deep mud and had been drowned. I found one such. Nothing on the greasy surface revealed his presence; but my foot struck against his body. He had doubtless fallen shortly before my arrival. On the shapeless mass I sought out some appearance of flesh to apply the holy oils. As always, for months back, in this position the smell from the corpses gripped us by the throat. Moi e than 2000 German or French dead lay decomposing there, up to the very trenches. It was not possible to remove them without drawing the fire of the machine guns; nor was it possible to dig into the soil anywhere, necessary as this was, without driving the spades into corpses, and all along the trenches one struck against putrifying bodies and broken skulls. ' When I reached the squad at last, I found the two inseparables side by side in mud up to the calf of the leg with their head sheltering under a piece of tentcloth. Fred was polishing his musket, and caressed it affectionately. Can it be they are about to come on ? Now I begin to live.’ Because he was going to risk death for his country, this recent libertine and antimilitarist commenced to live ! As for Petit-Pierre, on the back of an old and rainsoaked envelope he was writing out the words of a song. ‘ Listen, Father, and give me frankly your advice.’ Then he began singing the words to the music of an infamous song. ‘ Mon 'petit, you could have chosen a worthier air.’ ‘ But, Father, it’s.really a fine air, and all know it, and they will have good words instead of vile ones for the future.’ His verses, which he hoped to send to the Bulletin des Armees, recounted the glories of the Colonial Regiment No . I only recall two lines of the chorus—--1 Though we must perish to the last. We’ll never let the Boches past.’ Communion that day was peculiarly fervent in view of the attack. ‘ They can come now,’ said Fred, as ho put on his kepL • At mid-day, well in advance therefore of the hour mentioned, a terrible explosion destroyed our first line. Three German mines went off, burying half a section i and leaving a gap of which the enemy hoped to profit. At the same moment a shower of shells rained down on our trenches. But instantaneously, even before the order to charge could be given by the other side, the ‘ Porpoises ’- had sprung over the parapet and leaped into the gap. From their lips, as they rushed forward to death, had risen spontaneously the strains of the ‘ Marseillaise,’ which was soon taken up by all the rest. • In front, five metres away, the German rifles crackled; their machine-guns swept the top of our trenches, and searching our lines in all directions with {heir hissing spray of bullets, they mowed our reinforcements down. But the noise of the bullets and the cries of the dying were merged in the din of the shells. The revolver cannon moaned at point blank range, the heavy 105 snored, then burst like thunder, throwing up

columns of earth and black smoke, while the 75 whistled angrily above our heads, and, with a terrible precision, exploded in front of us not more than thirty yards from the lines they curtained with their fire. By this it was impossible to see. A dark cloud that scorched and choked and poisoned covered the redoubt.. Into this sudden darkness the bursting of handgrenades threw lurid gleams that lighted up a monstrous heap of sprawling forms and broken bayonets, of men felling one another with clubbed muskets and even with kicks. To complete the horror, shells bursting on the dead bespattered the living with fragments of human flesh, sometimes far decayed. Yet from the vortex of the charnel pit, above this concert of death, rose clear, vibrant, rhythmic, the strains of the * Marseillaise.’ Petit-Pierre, at the moment of the explosion, had been caught under a mass of crumbling earth. When, after the first moment of stupefaction, he could disengage himself, he picked up his rifle, and ran forward to the breach, quite distressed not to have been the first to enter it. Alas ! the gun had been buried in mud and now refused to fire. The commander of the company was there and Pierre turned to him : ‘ Lieutenant, my rifle won’t work.’ He wept like a child. But one was soon found which would work. He gave a cry of joy, and, to sustain the chorus, which was growing fainter as, one by one, the heroes fell, he took up again, in his ringing tones, not a note trembling, the words Le jour de gloire est arrive. ... A shell burst and stretched him motionless on the ground. I thought him dead. But no, only a wound in the head, not too deep. He had lost consciousness, but his life would be saved. Only, alas !it was necessary to pass him on to the stretcher-bearers, then to ambulances, and then to the rear for some time. In the confusion caused by the explosion ‘Fred had escaped my notice ; but others had seen him. He was superbly brave and spirited. At this game of hand-to-hand fighting he was already a master. A comrade told me of a remark of his made just as a shower of 77 .shells with the circle of aluminium round their fusesburst over the breach where they were fighting. ‘ What luck ! There’s the making of some rings in these!’ Then, quite calmly, using two cartridges, he picked a still glowing fuse, and put it into his pocket. A few days later, as the colonel reviewed the regiment, the lieutenant slopped in front of Fred and said: Here is a fearless soldier.’ His name was read out in honor before the regiment. And one morning he came to me, carrying himself more erect than ever: ‘M. TAumonier,’ said he; ‘take this.’ Thenwith the throat-cutting gesture as usual —he held out the Croix de Guerre. ‘ You will bless it for me, and pin it on my breast. Then I’ll go to Communion and you’ll pray to God that I may be always worthy to wear it.’ Later in the day he detached from the ribbon a few green and red threads and enclosed them in a letter to Petit-Pierre with the words ; 1 I have dedicated my cross this morning to the Bon- Bleu; I now offer this to you, because, after Him, I owe it all to you.’ The same letter had a postcript: ‘ Get better soon ; since you have left I feel that things go less well with me.’ It was true. The fervor, unstained by the presence of his zealous friend, diminished very perceptibly. He came still sometimes to bring me letters, unopened, and bearing the Paris post-mark. ‘ Take them,’ he would say; ‘I recognise the ' hand-writing, and do not wish to read them. Do what you like with them.’ But soon, under one pretext or another, his Communions became less frequent. The particular ' examination had ceased since the day of the attack. He commenced to smoke and drink again, saying; “ What’s the good of my giving up things, when those fellows won’t change?’ He had a talk with me occasionally but the enthusiasm of the preceding weeks was wanting, and the keen desire to improve. He suffered from the lack of the evening chats and .prayers with his friend. Almost every day a letter came from Petit-Pierre. I deeply regret new that I did not keep a copy of these

letters which Fred always gave me to read, the revelation of a most touching and most Christian friendship: I have only some short scraps. Pierre, tenderly cared for by the Sisters in the hospital, is rendered almost unhappy by the thought of the contrast between his comforts and Fred’s hardships in the trenches, where he would prefer to be eating bully-beef with his friend than in hospital feeding on fowl. He sends what little presents he can manage. When convalescent he takes his violin and, as his playing creates quite a sensation in the town, he earns a fair sum of money, which all goes in tobacco and trench delicacies for the pals ‘ fighting down there for France.’ At times the letters reveal an anxiety that Fred is not sticking to his resolutions too well. He says nothing about Communion in his answers, and Petit-Pierre grows afraid. In July we were sent to rest in an interesting little town that did not lack distractions— too edifying—for soldiers cut off for nearly a year from civilisation. Unhappily, too, in a. regiment quartered near us, Fred found two former acquaintances of Montmartre. Having for some time abstained from the Source of Strength, he had not the moral courage to tell them of his change of life. They dragged him off to celebrate their reunion and to ‘ wet ’ the Croix du Guerre, though they sneered at the decoration, and all it stood for. When at length he left the bar half drunk, he was entirely theirs. They led him farther and farther, until the whole work of Pierre was undone. Warned by his friends I tried to win back the poor sheep, lost again among the thorns. But it was in vain. Comrades whom he had helped to convert also tried their hands on him— equally in vain. Human respect, the re-taste of dissipation, shame of himself had suddenly thrown far from God this nature violent rather than energetic. From day to day I awaited the return of his friend, who alone could reconstruct, stone by stone, the edifice he had before erected so skilfully. He did not come back till the month of August. Immediately he returned to his old squad, and at the first glance, he measured the extent of the disaster, only dimly discernible in Fred’s letter and mine. From that moment Petit-Pierre’s soul, which I found as good and holy as ever, was given up to anxious prayer. Yet a fortnight passed without result. I’m afraid I’ll not succeed,’ he said to me in deep distress; ‘ he has resisted grace too much.’ ‘ Pierre,’ I said to him one day, ‘do you remember how Fred started a course of self-denial when he wished to save souls? Practise some mortification now in his behalf.’ This was a real light for one so generous. Henceforth, - young though he was and frail, he was on the look-out for the ugliest jobs and hardest tasks going. He was as anxious to expose himself to the autumn sun as others to escape it. He reduced his food and his sleep. He found it possible even to dock something of the ordinary mess fare. I had to interfere to moderate his ardour; but the heart of our Lord had been touched. We were nearing September 25, a date we had felt for some time was destined to add glory to our arms, but also to thin our ranks. Our regiment restored to its former sector of M-—-, found itself divided between first-line trenches, repose trenches, and its bivouac. In certain companies men had time to prepare their souls. In that fortnight I had the consolation, one. of the greatest of my life, to distribute 5000 Communions. But the company of our two friends was less fortunate. It could not be got together by day, and so I determined to collect it and two neighboring companies for a Mass by night. Early the same day Petit-Pierre made a supreme effort. His conversation was as tactful and persuasive as beforeand as successful. Fred, at whose door grace had never ceased knocking, was overcome at length, and bursting into tears, he opened up his heart to his friend. He told him of all his back-sliding, reminded him of a remark in one of his letters where Pierre had spoken of his * hunger for Communion,’ and added: ‘I, too, was hungry for it, and weak. It was that which was wanting to me. Never had I understood so well that I cannot do without it.’ In

( the afternoon lie paid me a visit; the return of the prodigal was complete and final. That evening, when the shelling - slackened, we erected an altar in a narrow pass at the foot of the valley, where the whole regiment would march past on its way to death. The side of the valley, behind which German sentries were watching, formed the background. On the right, the newly-filled grave of one of our bravest, a volunteer of seventeen years of age, recalled the great sacrifices which France had already made. On the left, trenches and dug-outs recalled the indescribable sufferings of a year, which we would not, could not, face again. The altar was mounted on a little chance table, which during the fight Avould support the maps and plans of the Staff. Over it as solitary ornament, our Sacred Heart banner fluttered in the night air. A lantern lit. up the missal, and on the rest of the scene the moon shed her pale rays. About the altar, in the pass, were grouped all the men of the companies present. The nearness of the enemy forbade hymns, and the only sounds audible were the prayers of (he priest and the booming of the guns. Shells passed whistling', not much above our heads, to burst farther on. At the moment for Communion all together pressed about the altar, begging on bended knees the Bread of the Strong. Officers and privates, on equal footing in this act of prayer as in the duty of sacrifice, were mingled without distinction of rank, or any other order than that which to-morrow might lay them side by side in death. After Communion I read aloud the prayers appropriate to the moment, not. forgetting to conclude with Petit-Pierre’s sublime act of dedication : ‘I promise, dear God, to be always faithful: but if Thou foreseest that I may hereafter break my promise and exchange Heaven for Hell, I beg Thou wilt take me now.’ When Mass was finished—it was 9 p.m.—while the others went off to take some rest before the terrible days to come, the two friends, overcome with emotion, came up, hand-in-hand, to the altar, which I was folding up. ‘With the Bon Jesus,’ said Petit-Pierre, said Fred, ‘it’s to Heaven I’m going. And it’s better so. M. I’Aumonier : I’m not the stuff to make a steadfast Christian. I have prayed God to take me now.’ At 9.15 a.m. on September 25, under an intense artillery fire, the first wave of attack rose over the parapet. The younger and more eager rushed forward. Halt cried an officer. ‘ln line there ofi the right!’ Under a hail of shells the line reformed, and set forward in step as if on parade. Petit-Pierre had put Fred on his left. They had not advanced more than about fifty yards when the machine-gun fire, which enfiladed ns, caught the boy in the stomach and laid him out like a log. ‘Fred!’ he cried, ‘. . . Omy Jesus! ... And to think I won’t even see the victory! . . . Fred, embrace me ! . . . Now go, do your duty, and oh, I beg you to try and rejoin me up there near - the good Jesus.’ lifter a parting embrace, Fred, with rage in his heart, ran forward to take his place in the wave of men that mounted steadily. The first German trenches, destroyed by our artillery, were reached and passed. But the enemy had time to pull himself together. Bullets whistled all along the ridge, and soon the mad struggle with grenades began. Fred found himself at the head of the squad. ‘Forward! Forward!’ he repeated furiously. But at the very moment when he had his right hand drawn back, in a movement that redeemed the gestures of the past, to hurl his grenade, a bullet pierced his breast. He stumbled, tried to stand up again, then slipped down on the parapet. When a neighbor ran up to bandage him, he said, ‘ Leave me. I’m done for ; but I’m going to Heaven.’ Then, raising himself up on his wrists, he murmured, ‘ After all, France is surely worth it’; and finally, seizing his helmet, he waved it, and cried out, ‘ Comrades, forward ! Vive la France!’ Then he fell backward in a stream of blood. I like to think that at the same moment PetitPierre breathed his last, and that, pnited in life, in. death they were not divided.