III
_The Name of Jesus_
There are two periods in a soldier's life when he is especially alert to
the appeal of religion. One, as we have seen, is just after enlisting;
the other is after he has been wounded. A clearing station is the first
resting-place he has. He has had a terrible shaking, seen his chum
killed perhaps, taken part in savagery let loose. He is often all broken
up, seeking again for a foundation. The difficulty is that his stay is
so short, as a rule only a few days. Our record patient was poor Burke,
an Irishman from an Irish regiment. He had been wounded when out with a
wiring party which scattered under machine-gun fire. He crawled into a
Jack Johnson hole and lay there out of sight of either side, between the
trenches, for eight days and eight nights. He had a little biscuit and a
water bottle, nothing more. Shells screamed overhead or burst near, and
bullets whistled backwards and forwards over the shell-hole. There were
dead men near in all stages of decay. When he was discovered by a patrol
he had lain there for over two hundred hours, and he was not insane.
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