Marty's thoughts

Far from the Madding Crowd.

A young English shepherd goes to war carrying a battered copy of Far from the Madding Crowd. At home he had admired Gabriel Oak because Oak was patient, dependable, and willing to search for anything entrusted to him. In France, however, the soldier loses his faith. He watches men treated not as souls but as numbers—flocks driven forward by generals who never enter the field.

Then, after an attack, he hears a wounded German calling from between the trenches.

His officer orders him to remain where he is.

But the former shepherd cannot listen to a creature crying alone in the darkness.

He crawls into no-man’s-land and discovers that the German soldier also knows Hardy’s book. Perhaps the German speaks Gabriel Oak’s name. In that instant, the enemy ceases to be part of a hostile army. He becomes the lost sheep.

The Englishman carries him back—not because his faith has returned, but because the heart of the shepherd has survived.

Only afterward does he understand:

Faith had not abandoned him.
Faith was the thing that sent him back for one lost man when the whole madding crowd commanded him to leave the man behind.