: Soldier Silhouettes on Our Front by Stidger William L William Le Roy Gillespie Jessie Illustrator - World War 1914-1918 Personal narratives; World War 1914-1918 War work Young Men's Christian Associations World War I

@FreeBooksTue 06 Jun, 2023

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SILHOUETTES OF SONG

The great transport was cutting its sturdy way through three dangers: the submarine zone, a terrific storm beating from the west against its prow, and a night as dark as Erebus because of the storm, with no lights showing.

I had the midnight-to-four-o'clock-in-the-morning "watch" and on this night I was on the "aft fire-control." Below me on the aft gun-deck, as the rain pounded, the wind howled, and the ship lurched to and fro, I could see the bulky forms of the boy gunners. There were two to each gun, two standing by, with telephone pieces to their ears, and six sleeping on the deck, ready for any emergency. The greatcoats made them look like gaunt men of the sea as they huddled against their guns, watching, waiting. I wondered what they could see in that impenetrable darkness, if a U-boat could even survive in that storm; but Uncle Sam never sleeps in these days, and this transport was especially worth watching, for it carried a precious cargo of wounded officers and men back to the homeland, west bound.

For an hour I had heard no sound from the boys on the gun-deck below me. When I was on watch in the daylight I knew them to be just a great crowd of fine, buoyant, happy American lads, full of pranks and play and laughter, but they were strangely silent to-night as the ship ploughed through the storm. The storm seemed to have made men of them. They were just boys, but American boys in these days become men overnight, and acquit themselves like men.

I watched their silent forms below me with a great feeling of wonderment and pride. The ship lurched as it swung in its zigzag course. Then suddenly I heard a sweet sound coming from one of the boys below me. I think that it was big, raw-boned "Montana" who started it. It was low at first and, with the storm and the vibrations of the ship, I could not catch the words. The music was strangely familiar to me. Then the boy on the port gun beside "Montana" took the old hymn up, and then the two reserve gunners who were standing by, and then the gunners on the starboard side, and I caught the old words of:

"Jesus, Saviour, pilot me Over life's tempestuous sea; Unknown waves before me roll Hiding rock and treacherous shoal; Chart and compass came from Thee; Jesus, Saviour, pilot me."

Above the creaking and the vibrations of the great ship, above the beating of the storm, the gunners on the deck below, all unconsciously, in that storm-tossed night were singing the old hymn of their memories, and I think that I never heard that wonderful hymn when it sounded sweeter to me than it did then, as the second verse came sweetly from the lips and hearts of those gunners:

"As a mother stills her child Thou canst hush the ocean wild; Boistrous waves obey Thy will When Thou sayst to them, 'Be still.' Wondrous Sovereign of the sea, Jesus, Saviour, pilot me."

If you do not believe this because you have been told so often by magazine correspondents, who see only the surface things, that all the boys sing is ragtime, let Bishop McConnell, of the Methodist Episcopal Church, tell you of that Sunday evening when, at the invitation of General Byng, he addressed, under the auspices of the Y. M. C. A., a great regiment of the Scottish Guards. That night, in a shell-destroyed stone theatre, he spoke to them on "How Men Die." In a week from that night more than two-thirds of them had been killed. When Bishop McConnell asked them what they would like to sing, this great crowd of sturdy, bare-kneed soldiers of democracy, who had borne the brunt of battle for three years, asked for "O God, Our Help in Ages Past."

Yes, I know that the boys sing the rag-time, but this must not be the only side of the picture. They sing the old hymns, too, and memories of nights "down the line," when I have heard them in small groups and in great crowds singing the old, old hymns of the church, have burned their silhouettes into my memory never to die.

One night I remember being stopped by a sentry at "Dead Man's Curve," because the Boche was shelling the curve that night, and we had to stop until he "laid off," as the sentry told us. Between shells there was a great stillness on the white road that lay like a silver thread under the moonlight. The shattered stone buildings, with a great cathedral tower standing like a gaunt ghost above the ruins, were tragically beautiful under that mellow light. One almost forgot there was war under the charm of that scene until "plunk! plunk! plunk!" the big shells fell from time to time. But the thing that impressed me most that waiting hour was not the beauty of the village under the moonlight, but the fact that the lone sentry who had stopped us, and who amid the shelling stood silently, was unconsciously singing an old hymn of the church, "Rock of Ages, Cleft for Me." I got down from my truck and walked over to where he was standing.

"Great old hymn, isn't it, lad?"

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