A chaplain's letter of condolence

"This is a sad letter I'm writing to you just to tell you what few particulars I can of the death of your brother, Harold Biss, who, as you know was one of my gunners and a very good friend of mine. Words aren't much good at a time like this, yet I'm writing in the hope that the few things I can tell you may be of some slight comfort to you & your people in your sorrow."

"Mercifully as so often happens the shock of the wounds seemed to deaden the pain and their sufferings weren't so bad as one would be inclined to fear..."

"The news has cast a great gloom over the whole battery for everybody was very fond of him... I've a very vivid memory of him which comes from a communion service I held one evening in the remains of a ruined building. Harold and another boy Horace Sadlier, son of the Bishop of Nelson, helped me to get things ready salved and arranged old boxes for seats and stuck candles in the crannies round the walls. We had a wonderful little service, one of those very perfect ones which are such a privilege when one feels in a very marked way the wonderful sense of a Presence with us, and there was a wonderful light in Harold's face as I shook hands with him at the end of the service. That's a picture which will stay with me."

"...words do seem such futile things yet I feel that those over here who are living so constantly in the presence of death have come to see it very much as it really is - not as a dreadful thing and the end of all things but just as an event in life a gateway across our path through which we must all at some time pass to the great, freer more wonderful life beyond but still no one knows better than I what a loneliness is left when one whom we love has vanished out of our sight"