“One New Zealander came and walked up and down the deck with me,” says the writer. “We had a quiet talk together. He is a devout Christian man. He told me a touching story of one of his officers who had been shot on the Peninsula.” This officer had gone out with a party of men at night to a listening post on “No Man’s Land” between the two lines of trenches. Suddenly the Turks had turned on a machine-gun and had brought down the whole lot.
The next day four of these could be seen lying in the sun, wounded, and although their comrades tried to effect a rescue, nothing could be done. Snipers kept up an incessant ger by day, and at night the enemy shelled continuously.
“Three days went by before our fellows were able to secure the ground, and by then they were all dead. Three of them had crawled close together, and the lieutenant had got in his left hand a couple of photos―one of his mother, the other probably that of his fiancée! In his right was his pocket Bible, open at the twenty-third Psalm. He had evidently been reading it to his comrades. His thumb was gripped tightly at the verse― ‘Though I pass through the valley of the shadow of death, I will fear no evil, for Thou art with me.’ It’s just what he would do. He was a fine Christian man, sir.”
A good testimony, wasn’t it?