Work in a Church Army Hut.

Waiapu Church Gazette, Volume IX, Issue 14, 1 August 1918, Page 105

Work m a Church Army Hut.

A chaplain is quite helpless m the winter, unless he can get some sort of place to hold services m, a Church Army hut for preference, or some sort of room or barn that can be roughly seated for services and entertainments, and if possible warmed and lighted for the men to come m at night to write their letters, etc. If you are lucky and have influence with the powers that be, you may perhaps be fortunate enough to have one or more Church Army huts allotted to you. Then the fun starts. These huts are bought by the Church Army m Prance, and come by rail m sections. At last they arrive at railhead, usually when you least expect them; and they then have to be carted to the site selected, perhaps five to ten miles. By the time you have levelled and drained the ground, and after many labours got the hut erected and ready for use, precious days have gone by. Stores and coffee urns, cups and fuel, woodbines and biscuits, then haunt you like a nightmare, for they have all to be brought from a distance, and transport on the muddy winter roads is difficult and hard to come by. If you once start this sort of thing, you must see it through to the bitter end at all costs. A cup of tea or coffee, really hot and sweet, and food, a few cakes or biscuits, are small things m themselves, but for men who have been enduring all the miseries of the mud and shelling m the trenches they are everything. Poor lads ! one is repaid a thousand times for any little worry or trouble by their very evident enjoyment. And if through lack of supplies or want of transport, or one 's own lack of foresight, you are "sold out" early m the day, their looks of bitter disappointment — they rarely grmnble or complain — are almost more than you can bear. lam more than ever convinced that this is a very real part of the chaiplain's work, or rather the Church's work, for he m his official position stands to the men as the measure of the Church's care for them. Quite m the early days at Gxantham, when the new Army was m

its birth pangs, I realised this truth, and after two and a-half years I am. more than ever convinced of- it. Nevile Talbbt, m his little book, "Religion at the Front," says there is something wrong with the Padre's position m the Army, with his uniform and salutes and officer's status, and all that they mean. He says he cannot picture our Lord as such, and that we should find him as a regimental stretcher-bearer. lam sure he is right, but I think I could see Him, too, working m one of these huts. What a- hut that would be ! Would to -God we could make some of ours like it.