Strange Premonition in a Dream»
THE YPRES TIMES
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Long months he lay in hospitals, and then they sent him home, for there was
nothing the medical men could do. His parents met him as he landed, and did not
recognize him until he called them by name. They said little, for what was there
to say, but took him home with them.
Danny Dick lost his laugh in that German prison camp. But at times his eyes
will light, and the hint of a smile soften his drawn features, and that is when he
watches rabbits at play or a pretty fawn in the wood at the back of his father's home.
Strangers are never allowed to see him, but strangers are rare in that quiet dale,
and no one is ever allowed to mention the war in his hearing. You can talk of the
first wild geese going north, of the trout that jump in the Elm Pool, of the funny
bear cubs on the back wood lot, but never mention a trench or a German. Danny
helps his father with the hoeing and does chores about the farm, but his strength
has waned, and his release is not far off.
He does not suffer much in body," said his mother when last I saw him, "for
it is just a gradual weakening; but his tortured mind has never found relief."
Why," I said, he never said anything about it to me. I thought he seemed
cheerful, interested in things."
It is one of his best days," she answered. There are other days when he
will sit and tremble, with fear livid in his eyes. I have to stay with him then,
talking to him, but he never seems to know what I say. Then there are nights, so
many of them, when he cannot sleep. He turns and turns and turns, and there has
never been a night we have not heard him sighing, long, shuddering sighs,
sometimes a moan. His father goes to him and speaks gently, and often he will
fall asleep again like a little boy who has -been frightened."
They are simple, kindly farmer folk, the salt of the earth. Danny Dick is their
only son-but I have never heard them say a harsh word against the Germans or
anyone. And they love to have one whom they can trust to wander through the
birch grove with their boy and talk to him about the birds and the shy-eyed, peeping
wood folk. Danny Dick loves .them all, knows their habits, their nests, their
burrows, their hiding-places. He can tell you where the robins will build, where
to find the first violets.
It is a beautiful diversion for him, and makes pleasant many hours that would
otherwise be weary. And there are so many weary hours for the prisoner who
cannot escape.
WHILE serving with an infantry battalion in Belgium during the war, I
was one of a trio of company quartermaster-sergeants involved in what
was regarded by a colleague as a warning- dream.
The incident took place during heavy fighting in the Passchendaele-Ypres
Sector, and, of course, it was the duty of each quartermaster to see that the
rations reached his own company near Zonnebeke.
Owing to the heavy and persistent shell-fire, and in order to preserve life, it
was ordered that one quartermaster should take up the rations for the three
companies—"A," B and C." For the purpose of this narrative, I will
describe the respective quartermasters by these letters.
