In Flanders Fields And Other Poems [39]
A hundred nursing Sisters in caps and veils stood in line,
and then proceeded in ambulances to the cemetery, where they lined up again.
Seventy-five of the personnel from the Hospital acted as escort,
and six Sergeants bore the coffin from the gates to the grave.
The firing party was in its place. Then followed the chief mourners,
Colonel Elder and Sir Bertrand Dawson; and in their due order,
the rank and file of No. 3 with their officers; the rank and file
of No. 14 with their officers; all officers from the Base,
with Major-General Wilberforce and the Deputy Directors to complete.
It was a springtime day, and those who have passed all those winters
in France and in Flanders will know how lovely the springtime may be.
So we may leave him, "on this sunny slope, facing the sunset and the sea."
These are the words used by one of the nurses in a letter to a friend, --
those women from whom no heart is hid. She also adds: "The nurses lamented
that he became unconscious so quickly they could not tell him
how much they cared. To the funeral all came as we did,
because we loved him so."
At first there was the hush of grief and the silence of sudden shock.
Then there was an outbreak of eulogy, of appraisement, and sorrow.
No attempt shall be made to reproduce it here; but one or two voices
may be recorded in so far as in disjointed words they speak for all.
Stephen Leacock, for those who write, tells of his high vitality
and splendid vigour -- his career of honour and marked distinction --
his life filled with honourable endeavour and instinct with
the sense of duty -- a sane and equable temperament -- whatever he did,
filled with sure purpose and swift conviction.
Dr. A. D. Blackader, acting Dean of the Medical Faculty of McGill University,
himself speaking from out of the shadow, thus appraises his worth:
"As a teacher, trusted and beloved; as a colleague, sincere and cordial;
as a physician, faithful, cheerful, kind. An unkind word he never uttered."
Oskar Klotz, himself a student, testifies that the relationship
was essentially one of master and pupil. From the head of
his first department at McGill, Professor, now Colonel, Adami,
comes the weighty phrase, that he was sound in diagnosis;
as a teacher inspiring; that few could rise to his high level of service.
There is yet a deeper aspect of this character with which we are concerned;
but I shrink from making the exposition, fearing lest
with my heavy literary tread I might destroy more than I should discover.
When one stands by the holy place wherein dwells a dead friend's soul --
the word would slip out at last -- it becomes him to take off the shoes
from off his feet. But fortunately the dilemma does not arise.
The task has already been performed by one who by God has been endowed
with the religious sense, and by nature enriched with the gift of expression;
one who in his high calling has long been acquainted with the grief of others,
and is now himself a man of sorrow, having seen with understanding eyes,
These great days range like tides,
And leave our dead on every shore.
On February 14th, 1918, a Memorial Service was held
in the Royal Victoria College. Principal Sir William Peterson presided.
John Macnaughton gave the address in his own lovely and inimitable words,
to commemorate one whom he lamented, "so young and strong,
in the prime of life, in the full ripeness of his fine powers,
his season of fruit and flower bearing. He never lost the simple faith
of his childhood. He was so sure about the main things, the vast things,
the indispensable things, of which all formulated faiths
are but a more or less stammering expression, that he was content
with the rough embodiment in which his ancestors had laboured
to bring those great realities to bear as beneficent and propulsive forces
upon their own and their children's minds and consciences.
His instinctive faith sufficed him."
To his own students John McCrae once quoted the legend from a picture,
to him "the most suggestive picture