At the end of the first month of the Great War:August 29, 1914: an agonizing French Catholic soldier, in an infirmary bombarded by the Germans in the war front, asks a military chaplain, whom he believes to be a priest in a cassock, for a Crucifix. The chaplain was Chief Rabbi Abraham Bloch, who brings and presents to him the image of the Crucified Lord: moments later, both would be killed by an exploding shell. [For those who asked... the main eye-witness of the incident was Father Jamin, S.J., in whose arms Bloch finally expired. See, for instance, Maurice Barrès, Les diverses familles spirituelles de la France - published in English as The faith of France.]
