ame to hold a
confirmation for us at Divion. There were forty candidates, nearly all
of them being presented by chaplains of the 1st Brigade. It was a
solemn service and made a deep impression upon the men. The hymns were
sung very heartily, and the Bishop gave a most helpful address. I
remember specially one young fellow called Vaughan Groves, who came to
me for the preparation. He was a small, rather delicate young lad
about nineteen years of age, and was a runner for the 2nd Brigade. He
had a fine open face and had the distinction of having won the M.M.
and bar. To have won these honours as a Brigade runner was a mark of
rare courage. I felt the deepest admiration for the boy, who was the
only son of a widowed mother in Canada. He never touched liquor and
had lived a perfectly straight life, and his was just the type of
character which found scope for great deeds in the war. After the (p. 235)
confirmation I lost sight of him, until some months afterwards when,
as I was going through Arras one night, I looked into a cellar near
the 2nd Brigade Headquarters, and seeing a number of men in there,
went down to have a talk. I found they were the Brigade runners, and
so I at once asked for my young friend. They told me that he had been
wounded in the arm and when he came to the dressing station, finding
there a man who was dying from loss of blood, had at once offered his
own blood for transfusion into the veins of the sufferer. So much had
to be taken from him that the boy got very weak and had to be sent
back to England to recuperate. The men added that it was just the
thing that little Vaughan would do. He was the finest, cleanest little
chap, they said, that they had ever met. It was always delightful to
hear such testimony from men to the innate power of human goodness. I
have never seen or heard of Vaughan Groves since, but I hope that some
one may read this book who will be able to tell me how and where he
is.

I was not sorry when our rest was over. There was more time to get
home-sick when we were out of the line. If we had to be in the war at
all, the happiest place was at the front. So when on January 23rd I
left Bruay for Bracquemont, I did so with little regret. My billet at
Bracquemont was the same which I had occupied in the previous
September, and it seemed quite like home. Once more our men held the
trenches on Hill 70 and the battalions in the back area were billeted
in Mazingarbe, Le Brebris, and Sains