The Sorrow of it All

THE following brave and touching letter gives us an insight into the fearful sorrows that fill thousands of hearts and homes in these days. It is a Colonel writing about the death of his son, killed at the Front. His age eighteen and a half — beloved by all.
“Thanks for your letter of kind and loving sympathy the news of my brave Gordon’s death was indeed a very sad blow to myself and to both my girls. I had centered so many of my highest hopes on that dear lad, and they are all now scattered to the winds. Thank F―, too, for her kind sympathy... Your dear letter has touched me much. Yes, I feel sure my dear― was one of God’s chosen ones. His Grannie, in writing about him before she knew of his death, wrote of him as a ‘Christian soldier,’ and his cousin also wrote of his standing up for his religion, and that G― always reminded her of the prayer, ‘not being ashamed to own and confess the faith of Christ crucified,’ and being His faithful soldier and servant unto his life’s end. I wrote to the boy on matters near my heart often, and I noticed that he seemed determined, though quite a boy, to play his part for Christ like a man, and from all I can hear and learn the dear lad did so….
“I know how high-minded and straightforward my boy was, pure in thought and word and deed, and so reverent, and before he left to join his regiment he asked his Grannie to come with him and to kneel together at the Lord’s Table. He would not have done so at his age unless Christ and His religion had not been a great reality to him. R — S―, too, wrote so nicely about him. R― loved the lad. His boyfriends wrote, too, of his high-mindedness; others that ‘he had no guile,’ and ‘one writes: ‘the very best boy I have ever met.’ He was only eighteen and a half, and it is hard, ever so hard, to have lost him, but such a comfort to me to know the above about him; to think of him as being with Christ in the Paradise of God, and the welcome that awaited him there from darling E―and his brother E―.
“You will have had particulars from Mrs. S― of the lad’s gallant death, leading the men under him in a bayonet charge against the Germans, who had broken through the line in front. He charged their maxims evidently, and fell with a line of men on each side of him, on the spot where the maxims had been, shot through the head. The regiment, though successful in the charge, lost seven officers, killed and wounded, and one hundred and forty men in that charge, which took place at five p.m. on Sunday, 20th September. He was picked up dead next morning, and buried by the roadside near where he fell with two other officers, and a funeral service was read over the spot where these three gallant heroes lie buried.
“The officer who wrote to Miss S― said: ‘We could do no more.’ So ends the tragedy of his young and beautiful life, so dear to me and mine. He wrote the day before his death: ‘Well, I am not shot yet. There is a fearful scrap going on. I am well dug into the ground.’ Also saying he had lost everything, and had only the kit he stood up in and a waterproof sheet. He hoped the letter would reach home, and sent his love to the whole family, and signed his name. It was thoughtful of the dear boy, thinking of all this while a battle was raging and he in the trenches. Next day his call came.
“I am perhaps writing too much of my own sorrow when so many thousands of others are just as sad, for there is mourning for dear ones all over the world now.
“And for yourself. The anxiety must be great. Your R―at the war, and I fancy C―must be, too. We can but pray for all our dear ones and that God in His great mercy will bring all safely back to those who love and care for them. My K― has left for some spot to fight the Germans. His wife and her two bairn’s have gone home. N― ‘s husband, T― H— has also left, I think, for the Persian Gulf, and has probably already been in action.”