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Wounded Heroes of France: Often

Often impatient to rejoin his comrades.

Return to the front!. . . This is the almost invariable ending of the history of our wounded soldier of the fourth year of the War. Return to the front! Never will the heroism required for the acceptance of such a duty be sufficiently admired! After three years of fatigue, privations, of unheard-of dangers, after one or several wounds which brought him within an inch of death, this man who has for long months felt the sweetness, the care, the calm of a comfortable hospital; has had a taste of the charms of family life once more; has little by little turned his thought away from the horrors of war, now he is sent back to the depot, from which he knows that before long he will be called again to the front! And he submits, resigns himself: what do I say? Often impatient of inaction, of the little rules which annoy his independent temper, he asks to go in advance of the call, to rejoin as a volunteer and without further delay his comrades of Champagne, Lorraine, Flanders or Picardy. He reenters his regiment as the traveler reenters his own country, and his only sadness is to find that during his absence so many old comrades have fallen, so many newcomers have filled the gaps. But the welcome of the survivors warms his heart.

He goes into the trenches at night.

Although it is night--for only at night do they go into the trenches--the sky is ploughed with illuminating fireworks, with projections and projectiles, of various kinds which bursting sow quick flashes of light, and a death often as prompt. In a maze of narrow and complicated paths our friend advances without knowing where and feeling his way: nearer and nearer he approaches to enemies whose sleepless hate growls menacingly below his feet in the ground, around him on the earth, above him in the sky filled with sinister gleams. He goes his way without enthusiasm, but without hesitation, without boasting, but without fear, knowing by long experience what peril he runs, but offering himself calmly to his formidable destiny, ready to answer: "Present!" if God and his country demand his life.

There are no heroes in past history so grand.

What hero in all the centuries of history attains to the grandeur of our hero? Who ever defended, in a war so terrible, a cause so important to the future of the world? Who has striven so hard, suffered so much, so often passed through death? To prove himself equal to his high mission, he has had to rid himself of all egoism, renounce lucre and vain honors, sacrifice family joys; many times he has known the worst extremes of weariness, thirst, hunger and cold; he equals and surpasses in austerity the severest of monks; he practices an obedience and humility that monasteries and Thebaides know nothing of, constantly ready to expose himself, as soon as he receives the order, to a terrible and invisible death. No one ever more completely obeyed the counsels of Christ: "If you will be perfect, leave your father and mother, your wife, forsake your possessions, renounce yourself, take up your cross and follow Me."