Chapter IX
The Panel of Silk
The following Sunday, when all my Catholic soldiers were assembled at Mass in the church of the town where we were encamped, I spoke of what had transpired during our journey from Valcartier. During the week I had thought out a plan, and I had bought a few packages of blank visiting cards and a number of lead pencils. I had cut the pencils in two and had put a part in every pew, also a blank card for every person that would sit in the pew. In the course of my little talk I spoke of how fine a thing it would be if they could take the pledge, given in such a way, however, that they might be free to take the rum served in the trenches, which, under those circumstances, could be considered medicine. Those who would take the pledge would write their names on the blank cards; the cards would be gathered up after Mass; the names would be typewritten on a panel of silk; the silk, bearing the names, would be used as a lining for my little portable altar, and whenever Mass would be said, a special remembrance would be made for the lads who had taken the pledge.
When we gathered up the cards after Mass they numbered almost two hundred. They were typed on the panel of silk, and the panel of silk, with the names, still rests in the little altar. All through the war they have been remembered. Many of those names appear elsewhere on small white crosses “where poppies grow,” so that now they are no longer mentioned in the memento of the living; but there is another part of the Mass when they are remembered—with “those who have gone before us, signed with the sign of faith, and who rest in the sleep of peace.”