To die a priest. To die as a soldier in the
attack, marching to the assault in full sacerdotal garb,
perhaps in the act of granting an absolution; to shed my
blood for the Church, for France, for her Allies, for all
those who carry in their hearts the same ideal I do, and for
the others also, that they may know the joy of belief ...
how beautiful that is, how beautiful that is!
Catholics, Protestants, Jews, priests, ministers and rabbis, that is
what they write. It is a belittling, a profanation, that, in spite of
myself, I have separated and differentiated among them. For down
there, in the bloody mud of the trenches, they are one body which
lives together and dies together.
There was a little Breton who, on the Battle field of the Marne, was
shot in the chest. The death agony at once set in, and in his agony he
asked for a crucifix. No priest happened to be on the spot, there was
only a Jewish rabbi. The rabbi ran to get the crucifix, he brought it
to the lips of the dying man, and he, in his turn, was killed!...
In a little barrack in the hollow of one of the depressions at Verdun
lived together a priest, a minister and a rabbi. We often saw the
place. On the evening after a frightful battle, they were all three in
the charnel house where the dead bodies are brought.
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