26 Notes for WWI research: Louis Sheehan

26  Notes for WWI research: Louis Sheehan

The writer has just come from visiting a group of a dozen British and American military hospitals in one French town, with from one to four thousand patients in each, where at this moment the trains are arriving in almost a steady stream, bearing the wounded from the front in the great drive in Flanders. He has stood by the operating tables and passed down those long, unending rows of cots. Some of these tragic hospital wards are filled with men, every one of whom is blinded for life by poison gas or shrapnel. They, like all the other wounded, are brave and cheerful, but it will take great courage to maintain this cheer, groping a long lifetime in the dark. One man counted 151 trains of twenty cars each, or 3,000 carriages, filled with German wounded passing back in a steady stream through Belgium. Behind all the active fronts these train loads of wounded are daily bearing their burden of suffering humanity. The cities and towns of Europe are filled with limping or crippled or wounded men today.

Opposite the writer at the ship's table sat a young man with the lower part of his face carried away. His chin and jaw were gone, yet he must live on for a lifetime deformed. Another young fellow had spent seven long weary months in training. The moment his regiment reached the front it was ordered immediately into action. He sprang to the top of the trench, but never got over it. He fell back wounded. Within three days he was back in England again, but with only one leg. Seven months of training, five minutes in action, then crippled for life! The writer saw one young fellow whose face was left contorted by shrapnel, which had carried away one eye and the bridge of his nose. He was a quiet, earnest Christian. He said, "Of course, they cannot send me back again into the line or compel me to go with only one eye, but I am going just the same. I am going to give all that I have left to the country and the cause." [4]

Hear that young soldier of France, Alfred Casalis, a brilliant student of philosophy and theology, a Student Volunteer for the African mission field, as he writes home to his father and mother at the age of nineteen: "I volunteered of course. I know with an unalterable knowledge and with an unconquerable confidence that the foundation of my faith is unshakeable, it rests upon the Rock. I shall fight with a good conscience and without fear (I hope), certainly without hate. I feel myself filled with an illimitable hope. You can have no idea of the peace in which I live. On the march I sing inwardly. I listen to the music that is slumbering inside me. The Master's call is always ringing loudly in my ears. I am not afraid of death. I have made the sacrifice of my life. I know that to die is to begin to live." And the last sentence of the unfinished letter written before the charge in which he fell, "The attack cannot but succeed. There will be some wounded, some killed, but we shall go forward and far—" In the other pocket of his coat, at the end of his will were the words, "'I have fought the good fight, I have finished my course, I have kept the faith.' And I would that all my friends, all those who are every moment with me, and whose hearts beat with mine, should repeat the word of our hope, 'Because I live, ye shall live also.'" [5]

Professor Gilbert Murray, of Oxford, writes thus of the sacrifice of the men for us: "As for me personally, there is one thought that is always with me—the thought that other men are dying for me, better men, younger, with more hope in their lives, many of whom I have taught and loved. The orthodox Christian will be familiar with the thought of One who loved you dying for you. I would like to say that now I seem to be familiar with the feeling that something innocent, something great, something that loved me, is dying, and is dying daily for me. That is the sort of community we now are—a community in which one man dies for his brother."

Yes, these boys are making the great sacrifice for us. With 5,000,000 who have already been killed, with 10,000,000 of our own sons enrolled. as subject to their call to the colors when needed, with hundreds of American army camps at home and in France already crowded with men, what sacrifice can we make for them? How can we surround their lives with the best influences of home, that they may come back to us even better men than when they went away?

We have seen the terrible ordeal to which they will be subjected at the front, the temptations to which they are exposed in France, in the training schools, and the base camps; we have seen something of the havoc which demoralizing forces have already wrought in other armies in the camps of the prodigals, and we have seen the deadly dangers and perils, both physical and moral, which the soldier must face. We have spoken of the enormous sums voted to carry on a great war of destruction. Is there not a yet more urgent need that we should supply the great constructive forces for fortifying the physical and moral manhood of our nation? Two organizations have been recognized by our own and the other allied governments in the war zone—the one bearing the symbol of the red cross for the wounded, and the other the red triangle for the fighting men.

The nation has already generously responded to the needs of the wounded even before the first battle was fought, giving more in one week than any other nation in a year for the same purpose. And not a dollar too much has been given for this great cause. But we shall soon have several millions of fighting men under arms. What are we to do for these men? We have already seen that they present a threefold need. There is the physical need of these millions who will soon be training, fighting, and suffering. Only the men at the front know what it really is. There are the mental and social requirements of men who must have recreation, healthy amusement and occupation. There is also the moral and spiritual need of men who will face the greatest temptations of their lives, when they will be farthest from the help of home and friends, while old standards seem to be submerged or swept away "for the period of the war."

We have already seen that the building that bears the red triangle of the Y M C A at the front is at once the soldier's club, his home, his church where his own denomination holds its services, his school, his place of rest, his recreation center, his bank and postoffice where he writes his letters, his friend in need that stands by him at the last and meets his relatives who are called to his bedside in the hospital. If there is anything which safeguards the physical, social, and moral health of the men who are dying for us, can we do less than provide it for them? While billions are being spent for destruction, must we not at least invest an infinitesimal fraction of one per cent of our expenditure, in construction, in that which is the greatest asset of any nation—its moral manhood? Can we not provide a home away from home for our own sons and the other boys with them whose parents may be too poor to do so?

Here is a unique contribution which America can also make to her hard pressed allies who have been exhausted by three terrible years of fighting. Britain has already set us a wonderful example and will not need our help. But there is France to which we owe so much and whose war weary soldiers sorely need just such centers for recreation and rebuilding. General Petain, the Commander in Chief, and the French authorities have asked for the help of our Movement in their camps. General Pershing, after surveying the field, has declared that the greatest service which America can immediately render France, even before our own men can reach the trenches in large numbers, is to extend the welfare work of the Y M C A to the entire French Army. Can we do less than this for the nation that gave all that Washington asked in our own hour of crisis? Then there is Italy, with all her deep need and great possibilities. What can we do to minister to the wants of her great army?