An Irish Chaplain in the First World War
Reposted from Costing Not Less Than Everything - for Remembrance Day “Prayer…..more than anything else consoles me. And every fellow is the same. So the war has been the cause of making us all an army of saints.” “On the lonely, dark road-side…..lit up now and then by flashes from our own or German flares, rose to Heaven the voices of 800 men singing that glorious hymn, ‘Hail, Queen of Heaven.’ There were no ribald jests or courage buoyed up by alcohol; none of the fanciful pictures which imagination conjures up of soldiers going to a desperate charge. No, there were brave hearts without fear, only hoping that God would bring them through, and if the end came – well it was only a little shortening of the allotted span. Every man had his rosary beads out, reciting the prayers in response to Father Gleeson, just as if at the Confraternity at home, instead of having to face death in a thousand hideous forces the following morning.” Words of Father Gleeson’s ...