[From The Hartford Courant, Jan. 14, 1915.]
_To the Editor of The Courant:_
_I have read nothing more tender and moving than the subjoined letter
found by a Red Cross agent at the side of a dead officer and forwarded
to the person to whom it was addressed. The writer was a French
cavalry officer engaged to a young American girl in Paris. It was
written as he lay dying from wounds received in a cavalry charge. Let
it speak for itself._
_E.P.P._
There are two other men lying near me, and I do not think there is
much hope for them either. One is an officer of a Scottish regiment
and the other a private in the Uhlans. They were struck down after me,
and when I came to myself, I found them bending over me, rendering
first aid.
The Britisher was pouring water down my throat from his flask, while
the German was endeavoring to stanch my wound with an antiseptic
preparation served out to them by their medical corps. The Highlander
had one of his legs shattered, and the German had several pieces of
shrapnel buried in his side.
In spite of their own sufferings they were trying to help me, and when
I was fully conscious again the German gave us a morphia injection and
took one himself. His medical corps had also provided him with the
injection and the needle, together with printed instructions for its
use.
After the injection, feeling wonderfully at ease, we spoke of the
lives we had lived before the war. We all spoke English, and we talked
of the women we had left at home. Both the German and the Britisher
had only been married a year....
I wondered, and I supposed the others did, why we had fought each
other at all. I looked at the Highlander, who was falling to sleep,
exhausted, and in spite of his drawn face and mud-stained uniform, he
looked the embodiment of freedom. Then I thought of the Tricolor of
France and all that France had done for liberty. Then I watched the
German, who had ceased to speak. He had taken a Prayer Book from his
knapsack and was trying to read a service for soldiers wounded in
battle.
And ... while I watched him, I realized what we were fighting for....
He was dying in vain, while the Britisher and myself, by our deaths,
would probably contribute something toward the cause of civilization
and peace.
[The letter ends with a reference to the failing light and the roar of
guns.]
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