Evening Republican, Volume 19, Number 33, Rensselaer, Jasper County, 8 February 1915 — BROTHERS IN MISERY [ARTICLE]

BROTHERS IN MISERY

COMRAOEBHIP OF WOUNDED ON THE (BATTLEFIELD.

Letter Written to Hie Fiancee by Dying French Officer Reveals Triumph of the Finer Feelings of Humanity.

A letter, which is among the most moving documents written since the beginning of the war, has been received by a young American woman in Paris. It was written by her fiance, a French cavalry officer, as he lay dying in Flanders, and with the letter she received the news of his death. narrating how he was wounded in the chest during a cavalry charge and temporarily lost conscious-' ness, the writer goes on: “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 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 th6y were trying to help me, and when I was fully conscious again the German gave me 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 ea&e, 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 suppose 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.” The letter ends with a reference to the failing light and the roar of guns. It was found at the dead officer’s side by a Red Cross file and forwarded to his fiancee.