A Story of Friendship

During the first World War, a soldier in the trenches saw his friend out in no-man's land -- the ground between our trenches and those of the enemy -- stumble and fall in a hail of bullets. He said to the officer, "May I go, Sir, and bring him in?"

But the officer refused. "No one can live out there," he said. "I will only lose you as well."

Disobeying the order, the man went to try to save his friend, for they had been like David and Jonathan throughout the entire war. Somehow, he got his friend on his shoulder and carried him back to the trenches, but he himself lay mortally wounded, and his friend was dead.

The officer was angry. "I told you not to go," he said. "Now I have lost both of you."

With his dying breath, the man said, "But of course it was worth it, Sir."

"Worth it?" asked the officer in disbelief. "How could it be? Your friend is dead, and you are mortally wounded."

The boy shrank from the reproach, but, looking up at his officer's face, he said, "It was worth it, Sir, because when I got to him, he said, 'I knew you'd come.'"

from a plaque I saw in Linda R.'s bathroom