AN INTERRUPTED WEDDING.

New Zealand Mail, Issue 1263, 14 May 1896, Page 12

AN INTERRUPTED WEDDING.

The horrors aro never more deeply felt than in a single concrete example—such an example as the following, furnished by Mr Archibald Forbes in his " Memories of War and Peace." Tho occurrence took place during the Franco-German war, while several war correspondents were at riaarbriicken :

Within two miles of the little town lay a whole French army corps, which any day might overwhelm tho town and its slender garrison. So wo lived, a little detachment of us, in an hotel on tho outskirts, ready for a judicious bolt. At this hotel there arrived one morning a young German girl who was engaged, we learned, to a sergeant of the gallant Hohenzollerns. She had come, it seemed, to say farewell to her sweetheart before tho fighting should begin and he should march away, mayhap never to return.

Somo of the livelier spirits among ui conceived tho idea that the pair should get married before the farewell should bo said. Both were willing. The bridegroom's officer gave him leave on condition that should tho alarm sound he was to join his company immediately. All was in readiness, and the clergyman was ju-st about to join the couple in holy matrimony, when the sound of a bugle broke the stillness. It was the alarm ! The bridegroom hurriedly embraced the bride, buckled on his accoutrements, and darted off to the place of rendezvous. In ten minutes more the combat wa3 in fuil intensity; the French had carried the heights overhanging the town, and were pouring down upon it their artillery and mitrailleuse fire.

Our hotel was right in the line of the lire, and soon became exceedingly disagreeable qu triers. We got the woman down in I he cellar, and waited for events. A shell crashed into the kitchen, bursi; aside the cooking-'tove, and blew the wedding breakfast, wh'oh was still being kepi hot, into what, an American colleague calit-d " everlasting smash." It was too hot to -;'..y I here, and everybody ma) ce ivred trategicdly to the rear. A 11 w days Inter whs fought, cl we to S larbiu ken, the desperate bittlj of Spicbere.n, in which die bridegroom's regiment took a leading part. The day after i ue haii In ) was wandering over the field helping t,. relieve the wou ided, and gazing shuddering!)' on tho heaps of the deal. Suddenly 1 came on our bridegroom, in a sitting p< si tire, with his back resting agtin.'i, a .stum;). He iva.i dead, with a" budet through his throat.