With his head high and his feet light upon the earth, he returned to the R. A. M. C. Hospital, where he found Harry Hobbs, with his handbag and a letter from his O. C.
“Take a few days off,” said the O. C. “We all sympathise with you. We miss you and shall be glad to see you, but take a few days now for yourself.”
Barry was greatly touched, but he had only one desire now, and that was to return to his unit. His batman brought him also an order from the Assistant Director of Chaplain Service bidding him report at the earliest moment.
At Headquarters he learned that the A. D. C. S. had been in Boulogne, but had gone to Etaples, some thirty or forty miles distant, to visit the large hospitals there. He determined that to-morrow he would go to Etaples and report, after which he would proceed to his battalion.
That evening, he visited the men in the hospital, coming upon many Canadians whose joy in seeing a chaplain from their own country touched Barry to the heart. He took their messages which he promised to transmit to their folks at home, and left with them something of the serene and exultant peace that filled his own soul.
From Ewen Innes and others of the Wapiti draft, he learned something of his father's work and place in their battalion. Soldiers are not eloquent in speech, but mostly in silence. Their words halted when they came to speak of their sergeant major's soldierly qualities,--for his father had become the sergeant major of the battalion--his patience, his skill, his courage.
“He knew his job, sir,” said one of them. “He was always onto it.”
“It was his care of his men that we thought most of,” said Ewen, who continued to relate incidents that had come under his own observation of this characteristic, tears the while flowing down his cheeks.
“He never thought of himself, sir. It was our comfort first. He was far more than our sergeant major. He watched us like a father; that's what he did.”
As Barry listened to the soldiers telling of his father in broken words, and with flowing tears, he almost wondered at them for their tears and wondered at himself that he had none. Tears seemed to be so much out of place in telling such a tale as that.
The train for Etaples leaving at an unearthly hour in the morning, Barry went to take farewell of the V. A. D. the night before.