“The other day I had the privilege of visiting a town that is being very heavily bombarded by the Germans. Before the war it must have been very beautiful; in fact, I understand that it was one of the prettiest places in this part of France. It is very near to the German lines, and has suffered heavily. . . . The same feeling came over me that I experience every time I enter one of these battered places. It is difficult to describe, but there is a sense of desolation and a sinister feeling in the air. It is as if death is peering out at you from every battered window and broken wall, and waiting his chance of pouncing upon you and claiming you for his victim.”
So wrote Robert Penfold in 1917, one of the many thoughts and perceptive comments in the letters he wrote for the Canadian War Cry between 1915 and 1917, while he was The Salvation Army’s first military chaplain in World War I. Sent from the bases in Great Britain and from the battlefields of France, Penfold not only describes the various duties of a military chaplain, but offers intimate descriptions of the Canadian trenches at Vimy Ridge and his thoughts on the war itself. Penfold was a gifted writer, and his letters are as profitable to read today as they must have been more than a hundred years ago. Retrieved as a complete collection, they offer a valuable contribution to Canada’s war memoirs and to an understanding of The Salvation Army’s role in the ‘Great War’ of 1914-18
