It was late in the fall of 1916, in the Somme, during the War. The Canadian Army in junction with one of the French Army Corps at its right had gone over the top and brilliantly carried an enemy’s strong position, two miles deep. The inevitable counter attack had been repulsed and, although the shelling was still vicious, one felt that the show was over for that day. The wounded were streaming out of the communication trenches towards the rear. A few dead bodies were lying about in small groups.
I was passing along quickly, following a sunken road, when I noticed a swarthy Canadian soldier on the ground, apparently dying of his wounds.
I happened to be glancing towards him when he looked up, saw me, and, making a sign of the hand, called out clearly, “Nipi.” I recognized the word at once and stopped in amazement. The man was a full-blooded Cree Indian. He must have volunteered somewhere in Northern Canada, gone overseas, fought, and was now dying all alone in the mud of the Somme.
He did not seem to be able to speak a word of English.
I knelt beside him and put my water bottle to his lips. Meanwhile I racked my brain for the few words of Cree I still knew. When he had finished drinking I began slowly to tell him, one by one, all the words I remembered. I said in Cree, “lake, fire, bear, moose, tent, axe, canoe.” What else, I do not recall. Dozens of Cree words—one after the other. Then I named in Indian, all the northern places I knew from Labrador to Yukon.
As soon as the Cree warrior heard my first words, he caught hold of my hands with both of his own and held on to them like a drowning man. He looked at me with a startled face, then his expression changed little by little. He was far gone then but he could still hear and understand the words of his native tongue. A far away look came into his dying eyes, his features relaxed and a smile hovered on his lips. He had forgotten the battlefield. His thoughts were away, far away, in some part of the Canadian wilderness which he and I knew.
It was all over in a few seconds. He opened his mouth as if he wanted to say something and then his soul went West; suddenly, without a flutter, straight to the Happy Hunting Grounds of his ancestors.