A hundred years ago today, December 20, 1914, the Chicago Tribune carried this photo of a prayer book from the pocket of a German soldier. When struck by a piece of shrapnel, the soldier had the good fortune of having the shrapnel embed itself in the book, saving his life.
It’s not unheard of for objects in a pocket to stop a bullet. And its not unheard of for it to be a religious book. For example, in 2014, this bus driver was saved by the Bible in his pocket. And when I worked at Radio Shack in the 1980’s, we had proudly taped to the counter a clipping of a man holding the Radio Shack calculator that had saved his life by stopping a bullet.
What makes this photo remarkable is revealed by looking closely at the text on the right side. It’s not mentioned at all in the article, but the text on the right is clearly Hebrew. If this anonymous German soldier survived the First World War, it’s extremely unlikely that he survived the second. Instead, he was probably killed by the country for which he fought.
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