THE DEATHLESS ARMY.

Shannon News, 14 November 1922, Page 2

THE DEATHLESS ARMY.

A PSYCHICAL EXPERIENCE

Dinant-Sur-Meusc.

I have never taken any particular interest in psychical phenomena; I have never had the smallest belief in what is called Spiritualism; what I am now going to relate I set down merely as an extraordinary experience which I do not attempt to explain, even to myself.. From Boulogue we had journeyed through some of the bloodiest battlefields of North-Eastern France; we had seen the rubble-heaps which were once comfortable homos in the flourishing town of Albert ; we had gazed upon the shattered trepstumps, the broken ditches, the fields abandoned to rpsh and nettle, the whole abomination of desolation which marks the fighting -ground of the Somme. We had looked out upon that vast city of the dead, the British cemetery at Camiers; all along the railway Hue we had sefen enclosure after enclosure (looking strangely green and well tended amid the chaos of the-ruined country around) where stand "the crosses, row on row.” \ Therefore I will allow that niy piind was perhaps more attuned to things of the spirit than to the ordinary, everyday happening's of the world we live in.

' The two wings of our hotel were in ruins, but the central part had been made fairly habitable. As we sat at our uot over-luxurious dinner I congratulated the landlord on his fluent English speech. < 1 Ah, ’’ lie replied, “what wonder that I have learnt a little—though. in : deed, but little —of your tongue during the years that your brave army occupied our town. What thousands upon thousands of your splendid men have passed through this street —and passed, alas! too often to their death.” I was very, very tired that night, and the instant my head was on the pillow I fell asleep. For hours I slept like a log! then, all of a sudden, in a single instant of time I was wide awake. No drowsiness —no dazed feeling of “Where am I? such as one usually experiences in a strange place. I was as alert and as fully awake as I am at this moment. “What is it? I sat up in bed.

Through the open window there came the tramp-tramp-tramp of innumerable feet, the clank of accoutrements, the creaking of leather, the unmistakable sounds which accompany the movement of a vast body of men.

For some moments I listened —then I got up, went slowly to the window and looked out. It was a clear night; up and down in front of tho hotel stretched the long white road. Empty —absolute empty.

- The sound of the passing of a great army ceased, and through the dead silence that followed, with a loud, metallic ring the clock on the mantelpiece struck three.