A PRIEST'S HEROISM.

New Zealand Tablet, 27 February 1919, Page 29

A PRIEST'S HEROISM.

Mr. D. Thomas Curfcih in his recent* war book, The Edge of the Quicksands, thus describes the heroic death an Italian priest bravely. while Padua was ; being bombarded from.; the sky: ' ; •-;:'.- "I moved on to where a building, just opposite the church had been hit so that the back had crumbled in completely, while the \ front seemed ready to fall if a good-sized splinter were pulled but from, one of the prop beams. Beneath the wreckage a man was pinned, face downward, the weight on his legs and spine.; The agony which he suffered almost drove him mad, and his shrieks cut me like saws and knives. A fireman was about to attempt to crawl through to him with a glass of water, when a priest came across from the church,, took the glass of water, explained that he was going to crawl through to give the last rites to the doomed man, and turned majestically with a motion, for a few onlookers to step back, which we did, until the sparks from the crackling dome fell upon us. We watched the priest crawl amid the wreckage until he could extend the water to the lips, of (the sufferer then we saw him hold up the crucifix. - We saw no more. There was a grinding crash, the building toppled and became the tomb of the priest and the man for whom he had risked his life."