A Padre in France by George A. Birmingham

Author:George A. Birmingham [Birmingham, George A.]
Language: eng
Format: epub
Publisher: manybooks.net

CHAPTER XI

ANOTHER JOURNEY

"'Tis but in vain for soldiers to complain. " That jingle occurs over and over again in Wolfe Tone's autobiography. It contains his philosophy of life. I learned to appreciate the wisdom of it before I had been a week in the army. I said it over and over to myself. If I had kept a diary I should have written it as often as Wolfe Tone did. I had need of all its consolation when the time came for me to leave H.

One evening--I was particularly busy at the moment in the Y.S.C.--an orderly summoned me to the chaplain's office to answer a telephone call. I learned that orders had come through for my removal from H. to B. I had twenty-four hours' notice. That is more than most men get, double as much as an officer gets who is sent up the line. Yet I felt irritated. I am getting old and I hate being hustled. Also I felt quite sure that there was no need for any kind of hurry.

As it appeared in the end I might just as well have had three or four more days quietly at H. and started comfortably. I arrived at my destination, a little breathless, to find I was not wanted for a week. My new senior chaplain was greatly surprised to see me. My predecessor had not given up the post I was to fill. There was nothing for me to do and nowhere for me to go. I spent several days, most unprofitably, in B. which I might have spent usefully in H. But this is the way things are done in the army, sometimes; in the Chaplains' Department generally. And " 'Tis but in vain for soldiers to complain."

I fully expected to make a bad start on my new journey. Having been fussed I was irritable. I had spent a long day trying to do twenty things in a space of time which would barely have sufficed for ten of them. I had been engaged in an intermittent struggle with various authorities for permission to take my servant with me, a matter which my colonel arranged for me in the end.

I was in the worst possible mood when I reached the station from which I had to start--a large shed, very dimly lit, designed for goods traffic, not for passengers. Oddly enough I began to recover my temper the moment I entered the station. I became aware that the whole business of the starting of this great supply train was almost perfectly organised, so well organised that it ran more smoothly, with less noise and agitation, than goes to the nightly starting of the Irish mail from Euston.

The train itself, immensely long, was drawn up the whole length of the station and reached out for a distance unknown to me into the darkness beyond the station. There were passenger coaches and horse waggons. Every waggon was plainly labelled with the number of men to go in it and the name of the unit to which they belonged.

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