in khaki,
like the other officers of the battalion to which he is attached, save
that he wears the Roman collar and black patches on his shoulder
straps. His equipment or kit is usually heavy. It contains the stone
for the altar, the vestments, the sacred vessels, the candles, the
crucifix, and other requisites for the Mass. On his person he always
carries the Holy Oils and the Viaticum for the last sacrament of all,
when the soul of the mortally wounded soldier is about to take flight
into the eternal.

Services are held in all sorts of places and on every possible
occasion. Lieutenant C. Mowlan, medical officer to the 1st Irish
Fusiliers, writes:--"We have Mass out in the open, and it is most
gratifying to see the long line of men waiting for confession, and at
Mass the devotion with which they attend, and tell the beads of our
Blessed Lady, a devotion so dear for many reasons, historical as well
as devotional, to the heart of the Catholic Irishman. A large crowd
attended Communion." A door laid upon two trestles or a packing-case
often serves as an altar, with the two burning candles, and a few
hastily gathered evergreens for decorations. Mass is frequently
celebrated in the very early hours of the morning before the dawn
begins to creep into the sky. And a strange and wonderful spectacle it
is! Black darkness, save for the two candles; the priest offering up
the Sacrifice at the rudely improvised altar; the soldiers, each with
his rifle, and weighed down with his kit and ammunition, grimed with
the mud of the trenches and the smoke of battle, kneeling in a circle
round the light. They receive the final Blessing with bowed heads,
then, crossing themselves, they stand up for the last Gospel, their
haggard and unshaven faces all aglow with religious exaltation.

But perhaps the most moving and inspiring scene of all is that of
giving the General Absolution to a battalion ordered to advance
immediately into action. Father Peal, S.J., of the Connaught Rangers,
enables us vividly to see it in the mind's eye. The regiment were in
billets in Bethune when one winter's morning at three o'clock they
received instructions to make an attack. Before the men left, Father
Peal got the Colonel's permission to speak to them. They were drawn up
in a large square behind a secular school, called "College de Jeunes
Filles," when their chaplain, mounting the steps of the porch, thus
addressed them in the dark: "Rangers, once again at th