The Somme River rises above St. Quentin, near the Belgian border, in northern France, and flows into the English Channel. In what was once a rich farming area near the river, the astounding scene took place.
Before the war, this man was an irreligious man. He had attended some evangelistic meetings once but did not become a Christian. After entering the war he was shipped to France. As he was crossing an open field, shrapnel struck him down. His fellow soldiers left him as they deemed him dead.
“I could hear the battle,” he related, “and the humming of bullets was all about me. I saw that I was bleeding and hoped that a corpsman would find me. But night came without one person coming near by the bit of a hollow where I fell.
“The next morning I was very weak from the loss of blood and from hunger. I had a little food in my knapsack but was unable to turn over or to unbuckle my straps to get it. I realized that I was lying in my own blood. I was helpless and giving myself up to die.
“Five days later, the medical corpsmen were out in the field searching for any one who could possibly still have life in him. I saw them come closer and closer. I tried to call to them, but they were too far away to hear my weak voice.
“Closer and closer they came. Finally, after what seemed an eternity, one of them stopped, cupped his hand to his ear, and heard my plea for help. After administering some first aid, he called to a companion to get a stretcher. When the two of them started to take me off, I asked them to look around and see if they could see what had saved my life. Puzzled and thinking I was delirious, they started on with their task.
“Wait,” I cried, “at least look at the evidence of what has happened.” After seeing those ten definite objects of proof that I had miraculously been preserved from starvation, we made our way to the mobile army surgical hospital.
“In the portable hospital tent, I had time to reflect back on the astounding way in which that God I had rejected in those evangelistic meetings had not rejected me. I gave my heart to Him and vowed to go back home, look up the people who held the meetings, and allow them to help me become a real bonafide Christian.
“My testimony of God’s stunning battlefield protection was confirmed by the two medics so that no one would miss out on the power of it all through doubt or disbelief.
“You see, when I could not turn over or unbuckle my strap with my one free arm so that I could eat the meager provisions of my K-rations, the Lord interceded.
“Lying there the morning after my being wounded, I first thought I was having a hallucination, because standing near the very tip of the five fingers of my one free hand was a real, live hen!
“What’s more, the hen laid an egg right then and there!”
“I broke the egg, cupping most of its contents in one half of the shell, and swallowed it. It was not much, but it was enough to keep me alive until the next day.
“What’s even more wonderful is the fact that this same hen that I saw walk slowly away after laying that first egg came back to almost the very same spot the next day to lay another egg.
“The hen came from a nearby shelled farm house, an orderly told me later. But it came five days in a row. And the corspmen saw the ten halves of the five eggs broken by my body.”
By W.A. Spicer from the book The Hand that Intervenes, 33–35.