"Water!" they cried. "Water! For Christ's sake, water!"
There was no water, except at a well in Longueval, under the fire of
German snipers, who picked off our men when they crawled down like
wild dogs with their tongues lolling out. There was one German officer
there in a shell-hole not far from the well, who sat with his revolver
handy, and he was a dead shot.
But he did not shoot the padre. Something in the face and figure of
that chaplain, his disregard of the bullets snapping about him, the
upright, fearless way in which he crossed that way of death, held back
the trigger-finger of the German officer and he let him pass. He
passed many times, untouched by bullets or machine-gun fire, and he
went into bad places, pits of horror, carrying hot tea, which he made
from the well water for men in agony.
XVII
During these battles I saw thousands of German prisoners, and studied
their types and physiognomy, and, by permission of Intelligence
officers, spoke with many of them in their barbed-wire cages or on the
field of battle when they came along under escort.
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