The booklet entitled "Soldiers of the Wooden 
 Cross” by Charles.H. ^JBrent, Senior Staff Chaplain 
 of the A-ffTFl, “Has Veen published by the General 
 War-Time Commission of the Churches for distribu¬ 
 tion to the mothers, fathers, relatives and 
 friends of the soldiers and sailors who have made 
 the supreme sacrifice during the war. They are 
 offered to the denominational war-time commissions 
 with their own imprint at the rate of $5.00 per 
 hundred with the hope that orders will be sent. 
 
General War-Time Commission of the Churches 
 (Federal Council of the Churches of Christ in America) 
 105 East Twenty-second Street 
 New York 
 
Soldiers of the 
 Wooden Cross 
 
 By 
 
 Charles H. Brent 
 
 Senior Staff Chaplain of the A. E. F. 
 
 Address delivered at the Memorial Services 
 held with the 
 
 305th , 506th and 307th Infantry Regiments 
 Chateau Villain , January 5, 1919 
 
“I feel how weak and fruitless must he 
 any words of mine which should at - 
 tempt to beguile you from the grief of 
 a loss so overwhelming. I pray that 
 our Heavenly Father may assuage 
 the anguish of your bereavement and 
 leave you only the cherished memory 
 of the loved and lost, and the solemn 
 pride that must be yours to have laid 
 so costly a sacrifice upon the Altar 
 of Freedom.”— A . Lincoln. 
 
Soldiers of the "Wooden Cross 
 
 lips of a British war poet, before they 
 ^ j were hushed in death by the battle’s 
 stern lullaby, were stung into song in 
 an immortal sonnet: 
 
 “ If 1 should die, think only this of me: 
 
 There is some corner of a foreign field 
 That is forever England .” 
 
 ^ Rupert Brooke here gives the keynote of 
 the soldiers who have earned by the supreme 
 sacrifice the highest and proudest of all decora¬ 
 tions, the Wooden Cross. Medals that adorn 
 the uniform tell of courage and endurance and 
 heroism that braved the worst for the cause. 
 Their wearers live to hear the acclaim of their 
 comrades. But there is another decoration, 
 the commonest even though the most distin¬ 
 guished—the Wooden Cross—that is awarded 
 only to the men who have done the greatest 
 thing that man — yes, even God—can do. 
 
“Greater love hath no man than this, that he 
 lay down his life for his friends.” 
 
 IJ Now that “grinvvisaged war has smoothed his 
 wrinkled front,” we gather to pay simple homage 
 to our comrades who have the supreme d.istin- 
 guishment of the Wooden Cross. Yonder they 
 lie, along that front where, with face to the foe, 
 they counted not their lives dear unto them¬ 
 selves but bore the standard of liberty onward. 
 Above their graves rise the sheltering arms of 
 the roughhewn Cross than which no fitter monu¬ 
 ment ever reared its form over mortal remains. 
 
 Q Our comrades they were. Our comrades 
 they are. Death was powerless in the face of 
 their bold daring to rob us of them or them of 
 us. They are separated now from us, not by 
 the gaping gulf of time but by a veil so thin that 
 at times we almost see their figures through its 
 waving folds. They live—live gloriously in the 
 land of far distances. Death stripped them of 
 nothing essential. In the permanent society 
 of the world beyond this they think and speak 
 
Digitized by the Internet Archive 
 in 2019 with funding from 
 Columbia University Libraries 
 
 https://archive.org/details/soldiersofwoodenOObren 
 
and see and love. They are what they were, ex¬ 
 cept so far as the river of death has washed away 
 the dust of earth and left them cleaner and bet¬ 
 ter by reason of this, their last great adventure. 
 They keep pace with us and we must keep pace 
 with them. 
 
 “ One Army of the living Qod, 
 
 To His command we bow; 
 
 Part of the host has crossed the flood, 
 
 And part is crossing now.” 
 
 CJ We cannot rehearse the story of each one’s 
 going as he went over the top to meet the foe 
 and found his rendezvous with death on shell- 
 scarred slope or battered hill, or in some flaming 
 town or maze of tangled wire. The same daunt¬ 
 less spirit moved them, one and all. There was 
 something dearer than life. To it they gave 
 themselves and their all, and won the decoration 
 of the Wooden Cross. Here, for instance, is a 
 Chaplain whose unstudied cry, as the finger of 
 death touched him, was: “ Father, I thank Thee 
 for this affliction.” Not that he courted pain 
 as in itself a blessing, but as an opportunity to 
 
show God and men that he was able in all things 
 to be a super-victor. Now it is not a Chaplain 
 but a doughboy that is smitten. “Buddy,” says 
 his comrade who holds him while his life rushes 
 out in a crimson flood, “ Buddy, have you any 
 message for the folks at home?” “Yes,” is the 
 prompt reply of the dying Galahad, “Tell them 
 I went as clean as I came.” Again, look at that 
 stiff, silent body, much of the glory of its splen¬ 
 did manhood still lingering behind as though 
 loath to abandon the well-knit form. Death in 
 him is not ugly nor repulsive. His left hand still 
 clutches the bosom of his shirt which he tore 
 aside in order that his right hand might hold 
 through death his crucifix, the symbol of his 
 faith. He, though dead, speaketh: 
 
 “ Nothing in my hand 1 bring 
 Simply to Thy Cross 1 cling.” 
 
 These men and a myriad more are calling to 
 us, calling to us and bidding us to carry on. If 
 we would still hold to their comradeship we 
 must display in life the spirit they displayed in 
 death. We must live for the things for which 
 
they died. They “went West” beyond the sun. 
 Soon in another sense shall we, please God, go 
 West—west across the sea—to that dear land, 
 America, that is impatient for the pressure of 
 our feet. We must make ourselves fit to meet, 
 
 with unshamed brow, wife, sweetheart, sister, 
 mother. Our going may not be to lower our 
 
 sense of service and look for any reward except 
 opportunity to serve again and better. Patiot- 
 ism finds in war only a starting point for peace. 
 That which we have achieved by victory we 
 must weave into the fabric of the new world 
 and the new age. The Wooden Cross of our 
 dead comrades is for them a glorious decoration. 
 For us it is the banner of our life that is to be. 
 It challenges us to hold more precious than 
 mortal life ideals of honor, justice and righteous¬ 
 ness. After all, the Cross that redeemed the 
 world was a wooden cross, too, was it not ? It 
 was no toy nor pretty bauble, but a thing of 
 nails and pain and death—and yet a thing of 
 glory. According to its pattern we shape our 
 
 own cross. 
 
The Abbott Press, N. Y.