Faith in the trenches

From a letter published under the heading ‘The religion of the ordinary soldier’, The Spectator, 23 December 1916: During a discharge of gas at the beginning of July along our front, one of the cylinders was displaced by the near bursting of an enemy shell. It turned the nozzle round, and the gas began to pour into our own trench. One of my lads, who was acting as orderly, heard from the communication trench that something was happening and ran into the front line… He ran forward unprotected, tugged at the cylinder, and pointed its nozzle outwards again before he fell unconscious. He died a few minutes afterwards. Those who saw it told me it was a quite spontaneous action. This boy would have told you that if his name was on a shell, it was no use running away. But what is this but ‘He saved others, himself he could not save’? This Christian instinct of self-sacrifice is a part of the manhood of thousands of our ordinary soldiers.