BISHOP AND PADRE.

Taranaki Daily News, 31 May 1917, Page 8

BISHOP AND PADRE.

_„_ DR. CLEARYi IN, KHAKI , ' > ■ fC'3 . his Weriences IN THE- ; I 1 „ TRENCHES, ' is V' ,• •• 1. ' ' ■ ■■- • is SOME NARROW'SHAVES "'*""] sr --.... - ; p . ,-, ' •' ' - 7 ". 1- (•'Privatei Pupuke" iri^lAuckland^St'ar): is Many years ago Mark' Twain, touring * inland Australia, found himself- tfellows traveller with a young priesfc So imn pressed was he with! the personality and * intellectuality of the* priest, that he pre- :" sumed to prophesy, and his iwrit|teri '• prophecy that the priest would one day e surely be a wise and learned bishop has 4 come to pass. But neither prophet mor v priest dreamed that, despite ill health n and physical disabilities, the Bishop B > .would change the garb of cleric for that n of a soldier, or that he would live for : " week.<t at a time an the trenches'; spend- ; 3 ing days under murderous shell fire and IS experiencing the full rigors of a) winter e on the Western front. Yet this and r - more his Lordship, Dr. Cleary, Bishop of ?• Auckland, has done. I met tho Bishop I a day or two ago, fresh 1 from his expertenccs in the trenches. It is mighty well h he looks in khaki. And, better still, it ' is well he looks physically. One can '* hardly credit that a short time ago, after critical operations, his life was ' despaired of. His medical advisers still impress upon him that he must .go slow, Bud to go slow is foreign to Bishop deary's nature. Arrived in England last August, he was told by General " Richardson that in all tho United Kingdom there was only one Roman Catholic _ chaplain at work amongst New Zealand ' forces. ' Forthwith the bishop had his ' motor car sent across from Ireland, and ''% for months he worked as padre, dividing -his time between two camps and a hos" ;, pitol. Then he went to France, and £ took up duty with a New Zealand Brigade that had been for a considerable time without a chaplain. d e TWO NARROW ESCAPES. "" g There has been nothing cursory about e the bshop's acquaintance wtih the con--3 ditions of active service. On one oecaII sion he spend 32 days on end in the front e line, at a point where Fritz shelled our . position daily, and. sometimes strafed it j{ fiercely. The left leg of the Bishop's t strides was neatly patched when I saw e him; the patch marked tho flying pasp sago of a shell fragment. And his "tin . hat" is dented with the stamp of shrape nol. Yes, the bishop has been well in

0 the thick of it. He is still somewhat 1 ftard of Jiearing, as the result of slight j concussion sustained in one particularly j hot corner ho was in, but otherwise lie j is none the worse for his experience. l His most serious complaint is that when j he went hack from the trenches into j billets the rats made such a din at ; night-time that he could not sleep! [. The bishop is a natural student, there- ] fore a natural observer. Ask him what impressed him most, and, if he has the ) time what a- tale lie has to tell! Not I of the ordinary things the ordinary fel- , low tells 1 you about. But just what I "got" him. The things ho saw as he . went into the trenches; the quaint signs . and quaint directions along the communiI cation trenches and how the peasants . were tilling the land, often under fire, j right up to our own support lines. How . ho was impressed with, the sights and sounds overhead, and what the effect of these noises was on bird life. His | observations on these aspects alone . would almost fill a book. And the ' mechanism of guns? As he says, how many people know what a trench mor- | tar really is, or how the Stokes gun is I worked? What a story there is in the [ construction, and the effect, of a "whizbang," a "Minnewerfer," a "num-fat," or | an "eight." Then there is the romance \ of the high explosive, the effect of amint 01, and tlie tragedy of chlorine, tear, gas, , and other brands of Boating poison. All \ these things has \ the bishop studied. [ Small wonder that the is brim full of in- , foresting talk, . i . ...,'. • [ IN NO MAN'S LAND. "' ~ ' ! 'And the distinguished padre was out i in No Man's Land. He does not care to i elaborate on the ghastly sights he saw , there, amongst the acres of British and ; German dead. For ghastly it is. Just i one incident he quoted. A colonial ; (not a New Zealander), returning ) wounded across No Man's Land, failed [ to get quite through our own lines of > wire entanglements. (Have you bothers ri to read about the wiring our boys i have to do, often in the teeth of a dead- , v'y fire? Or are you ttfo much interested I in the possibilities of the Great Northern '. Steeplechase, or the price of butter, to 5 rare Well, the bishop, when he returns. i will explain to you the construction of ■ a double apron fence, a "knife rest," a "gooseberry," and a few other of our [ little wire entanglements). But I have ; been digressing. This unlucky chap • crawled back through our wires, almost i 1o safety, and was killed as he pushed ; against the very last strand. I SEEING THE JOB THROUGH. ' The bishop is full of admiration of ; the New Zealand soldier. And I am • pleased, if surprised, to find that he ; thinks the world of the Maori as a 1 lighter. Brave! Brave was not the I name for it. Too dashing, too non- : chalant of risk, was the only faylt the ! bishop had to find with' the dusky war--1 rior now engaged in often perilous pion- ' cer work. All his days in the trenches • the padre spent with his men. And ' vastly did the men appreciate it. Ho ■ was present throughout the longest and ' heaviest bombardment of our lines that i took place while he was in France. An f officer was killed right beside him, ■ «s was a stretcher bearer close by, and tho bishop was twice knocked over by shells bursting within a few feet of him. But ho came through without a serious bruise. ' . "The spirit of our boys was truly won- . derful," ho said. "Often I would ask the ' men were they not keen to home? Always the answer would be: "Keen, rather, but —and here is tho point—'we want to ,see this job through first,'"