Notes for WWI research: Louis Sheehan 25

Notes for WWI research: Louis Sheehan 25  

Who was responsible for these outrages, and how long will the world permit them to continue?

Whichever way we turn, whether we survey the number of killed, wounded, or prisoners, the cost of the conflict, or the suffering of the devastated nations, we realize that the war means sacrifice. It is difficult for us at home in America to appreciate the spirit in which the men in this great struggle in Europe are fighting, and the sacrifices they are making. In all these months in many lands, the writer has not heard from the lips of a single soldier who had actually seen service at the front, words of hatred or of boasting. Quietly and often with sadness most of these men are going forward to face death.

Here is a letter from a young officer who fell on that fatal first day of July on the Somme.

"I never felt more confident or cheerful in my life before, and would not miss the attack for anything on earth. Every officer and man is more happy and cheerful than I have ever seen them. My idea in writing this letter is in case I am one of the 'costs' and get killed. I have been looking at the stars, and thinking what an immense distance they are away. What an insignificant thing the loss of, say, forty years of life is compared with them! It seems scarcely worth talking about. Well, good-bye, you darlings. Try not to worry about it, and remember that we shall meet again really quite soon. This letter is going to be posted if …"

A friend of the writer, a young chaplain whom he met recently at the front, went out to find his brother's mangled body on the battlefield. The boy who fell was the son of the Bishop of Winchester, and one of the finest spirits in Oxford. Canon Scott Holland writes:

"The attack had failed. There was never any hope of its succeeding, for the machine guns of the Germans were still in full play, with their fire unimpaired. The body had to lie where it had fallen. Only, his brother could not endure to let it lie unhonoured. He found some shattered Somersets, who begged him to go no further. But he heard a voice within him bidding him risk it, and the call of the blood drove him on. Creeping out of the far end of the trench, as dusk fell, he crawled through the grass on hands and knees, in spite of shells and snipers, dropping flat on the ground as the flares shot up from the German trenches. At last he found what he sought. He could stroke with his hand the fair young head that he knew so well; he could feel for the pocket-book and prayer-book, the badge and the whistle. He could breathe a prayer of benediction and then crawl back on his perilous way in the night."

Notes for WWI research: Louis Sheehan 25