Chapter 20

"CARRY ON"



The next day but one they carried the Pilot to his grave in the little plot outside the walled cemetery on the outskirts of the city of Albert. It had been arranged that only a small guard should follow to the grave. But this plan was changed. Sergeant Mackay, who was the only sergeant left after consulting "the boys," came to Major Bayne.

"The boys feel bad, sir," he said, "that they can't go with the Pilot, excuse me, sir, the chaplain."

"Do they?" said the major. "We want to avoid congestion in the streets, and besides we don't want to expose the men. They are still shelling the city, you know."

"I know, sir," replied the sergeant. "The boys have heard the shells before, sir. And there's not so many of them that they will crowd the streets much."

"Let them go, sergeant," said the major, and Sergeant Mackay went back with the word to the men. "And I want you to look like soldiers," said the sergeant, "for remember we are following a soldier to his grave."

And look like soldiers they did with every button and bayonet shining, as they had never shone for battalion inspection.

They had passed through an experience which had left them dazed; they had marched deliberately into the mouth of hell and had come back stunned by what they had seen and heard, incapable of emotion. So they thought, till they learned that the Pilot had been killed. Then they knew that grief was still possible to them. With their grief mingled a kind of inexplicable wrath at the manner of his death.

"If it had been the O. C. now, or any one else but Fatty Matthews," said Sergeant Mackay in disgust, expressing the general opinion. "It is an awful waste."

Under the figure of the Virgin and Child, leaning out in pity and appeal over the shattered city, through marching battalions "going in" and "coming out," the little pitiful remnant made its way, the band leading, the Brigade and Divisional Headquarters Staffs bringing up in the rear. The service was brief and simple, a brother chaplain reading at the major's suggestion the Psalm which Barry had read at his last Parade Service with the battalion.

At the conclusion of the service, the divisional commander stepped forward and said,

"May I offer the officers and men of this battalion my respectful sympathy with them in the loss of their chaplain? During these last weeks, I had come to know him well. Captain Dunbar was a chaplain in his brigade. He was more. He was a gallant officer, a brave soldier, a loyal-hearted Canadian. The morale of this division is higher to-day because he has been with us. He did his duty to his country, to his comrades, to his God. What more can we ask than this, for ourselves and for our