On Sundays he would appear in
our midst dragging a folding harmonium and hold Church Parade, leading
the hymns in his twittering bird-like voice.
Then the spinster ladies of his old parish of Thorpington Parva gave him
a Ford car, and with this he scoured back areas for provisions and
threaded his tin buggy in and out of columns of dusty infantry and
clattering ammunition limbers, spectacles gleaming, cap slightly awry,
while his batman (a wag) perched precariously a-top of a rocking pile of
biscuit tins, cigarette cases and boxes of tinned fruit, and shouted
after the fashion of railway porters, "By your leave! Fags for the
firin' line. Way for the Woodbine Express."
But if we saw a lot of the Padre it was the Antrims who looked upon him
as their special property. They were line infantry, of the type which
gets most of the work and none of the Press notices, a hard-bitten,
unregenerate crowd, who cared not a whit whether Belgium bled or not,
but loved fighting for its own sake and put their faith in bayonet and
butt. And wherever these Antrims went thither went the Padre also, his
harmonium and his Woodbines.
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