THE COMRADE IN WHITE

Taihape Daily Times, Volume 7, Issue 263, 27 July 1915, Page 3

THE COMRADE IN WHITE

WHAT A WOUNDED SOLDIER SAW. This mystical tale from the trenches is taken from Life and Work, the Church of Scotland magazine. No writer's name is given:— The Friend of the Wounded. ".Strange tales reached us in the trenches. Rumours raced up and clown that 300-mile line from Switerland to the sea. We knew neither the source of thin nor the truth of them. They carat quickly, and they went quickly. Yet somehow I remember the very hour when George Casey turned to me with a queer look in his blue eyes, and asked if I had seen the Friend of the Wounded.

"And then he told me all lie knew After many a hot engagement a man in white had been seen bending over the wounded. Snipers sniped at him. Shells fell all around. Nothing had power to touch him. lie was either heroic, beyond all heroes, or lie was something greater still'. This mysterious one, whom the French called The Comrade in White, seemed to be everywhere at once. At Nancy, in the Argonne, at Soissons, and at Yprc, everywhere men were talking of him with hushed voices.

"But some laughed and said the trenches were telling on men's nerve?. I, who was often reckless enough in my talk, exclaimed that for me seeing was believing, and that I didn't expect any help but a German knife if I was found lying out there wounded. '' I was Shot.'' "It was the next day that tilings got lively on this bit of the front. Our big guns roared from sunrise to sunset, and began again in the morning. At noon we got word to take the trenches in front of us. They were 200 yards away, and we wern't well started till we knew that the big guns had failed in their work of preparation. It needed a stout heart to go on* but not a man wavered. We had advanced 150 yards wehn we found it was no good. Our captain called to us to take cover. and just then I was shot through both legs.

"By God's mercy 1 fell into a hole of some sort. I suppose I fainted, for when I opened my eyes I was all alone. The pain was horrible, but I didn't dare to move lest the Germans should see me, for they were only fifty yards away, and I did not expect mercy. I wts glad'when the twilight came. There were men in my own company who would run the risk in the darkness if they thought a comrade was still alive.

"The niglit fell, and soon I hoard a •step, not stealthy, as I expected. 1»cjuiet and firm, as if neither darkness nor death could cheek those untroubled feet. So little did I guess what was coming that, even when I saw the gleam of white in the darkness, I thought it was a peasant in a white smock, or perhaps a woman deranged. Suddenly, with a little shiver, of joy or of fear, I don't know which, I guessed that it was the Comrade in White. And at that very moment the German rifles began to shoot.

"The bullets couAl scarcely miss

such a target, for he flung out his arms a though in entreaty, and then drew them back till he stood like one of those wayside crosses that -we saw so often i's we marched through France. And he spoke. The words sounded f;:mI'/.ar, but all I remember was the beginning. 'lf thou had Stknown,' and the ending, 'but now they are hid from thine eves.' And then he stooped and o-athered me into his arms —me. the biggest men in the regiment —and carried me af if I had been a child. "I Must Have Fainted."

"I. must have fainted again, for I woke to consciousness in a little cave by a stream, and the Comrade in White was washing my wounds and binding them up. It seems foolish to say it. for I was in terrible pain, but I was happier at that moment than ever I remember to have been in ail my life before. I can't explain it, but my life seemed as if a.il my days 1 had beer, waiting for this without knowing it. As long as that hand touched me and those eyes pitied me I did not seem to care any more about sickness or health, about life or death. Ami while he swiftly removed every trace of blood and mire I felt as if my whole nature were being washed, as if all the grime and soil of sin were going, ami as if I were, once more a little child. "He, Too, Had Been Wounded."

"I suppose I slept, for when I awoke, this feeling had gone. I was a man, and I wanted to know what I could do for my friend to help him or to serve him. He was looking towards the stream, and his hands were elbsped in prayer; and then I saw that lie, too, had been wounded. I could see as■ it were a shot-wound in his hand gathered and foil to the ground. I cried out. I could not help it, for that wound of his seemed to me a more awful thing than any that bitter war had shown

"You are. wounded, too,'*'" I saW, faintly. Perhaps he heard me, perhaps it was the look on my face, but he answered gently, 'This is an. old wound, but it has troubled mo of late.' And then I noticed sorrowfully that the same cruel mark was on his feet. You will wonder tiiat I did not know sooner. I wonder myself. But it was only when I saw His feet that I knew Him. "He Will Come Tor Me To-Morrow." " 'The Living Christ* —I had heard the chaplain say it a few weeks before, but now I knevi that He had com* to me—to me who had put Him out of my life in the hot. fever of my youth. I was longing to speak and to thar.k Him, but no words came. And then lie rose swiftly, and said, 'Lie here to-day by the water; I will) come for you tomorrow. I have work for you to do, and von will do it for Me.'

"In a moment He was gene. .And while T. wait for Him I write this down that I may not lose the memory of it. I feel weak and lonely, and my

pain increases, but T have His promise I know that He \vil? come- for no to morrow.''