Date: Thu, 11 Nov 2004 09:30:09 -0500 From: Quotation of the day editor <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> To: Quotation of the day mailing list <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> Subject: Quotation of the day for November 11, 2004
Seeking protection from a salvo of screaming rockets, I had flung myself through the doorway of a ruined stone hut -- to find it already occupied by a grey-clad German paratrooper.
He was sitting on the floor, his left hand clasping a shattered stump where his right arm had been severed just below the elbow. Dark gore was grouting between his fingers and spreading in a black pool about his outthrust legs. Most dreadful was a great gash in his side from which protruded a glistening dark mass that must have been his liver.
Above this wreckage, his eyes on mine were large and luminous. When he spoke, the sound was barely louder than a whisper.
"Vasser ... Please giff ... vasser."
I had no water. My water bottle was full of issue rum, which I knew would have been the death of him.
I shook my head and then I thought, "Oh, hell, he's going anyway. What harm?" I held the water bottle to his lips and he swallowed in spasmodic gulps until I took it from him and drank deeply myself.
So, the two of us got drunk together and, in a little while, he died.
- writer Farley Mowat, recalling his service as an infantry lieutenant with the Canadian Army in Italy during the Second World War.
[qotd commemorates Remembrance Day. -eds.]
Submitted by: Terry Labach
Nov. 11, 2004
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