Saturday Weather good nothing much doing this morning This afternoon we played the M.T. [Motor Transport] and won 2-0 (soccer) it was a good game Am well
The week’s summary: The week passed good the weather was very spring like thru’out Last year this time we were in Action at the mud position. Played lots of ball this week
The 13th Brigade Diarist notes something unusual today: “Pigramge [sic] of a few of the R.C.s in the brigade to Lourdes” guided by Major the Rev. Donald McPherson, the Roman Catholic Chaplain of the 5th Canadian Divisional Artillery. (1) Lourdes of course has been a site of pilgrimage for Roman Catholics since the middle of the nineteenth century when a local peasant girl, later canonized as Saint Bernadette Soubirous, claimed the Virgin Mary appeared to her a number of times. Many miraculous cures have been attributed to the waters of a spring there.
From Belgium to Lourdes is some 700 miles (1200 km) southwest across France to the foothills of the Pyrenees.
Jack McTague described Fr MacPherson as a “hustler;” it must have taken some hustling to get the army to agree to such an expedition, especially when arrangements for transportation back to Britain and eventual demobilization have begun in earnest. On the other hand, since an ongoing concern of Canadian top brass is to keep soldiers out of trouble, what better option than a religious pilgrimage?
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The portrait of Donald McPherson belongs to the family of Jack McTague and is made available by his great-nephew Timothy McTague.
(1) War Diary of the 13th Brigade, Canadian Field Artillery. Vol. 27: 3. April 5, 1919. Library and Archives of Canada.
Copyright 2019. See “More about this project.”
Percy's War 