George Orwell's humanity is on display in the following passage from "Looking Back on the Spanish War" (1943), reprinted in A Collection of Essays (Harvest, 1981), pp. 193-194:
Early one morning another man and I had gone out to snipe at the
Fascists in the trenches outside Huesca. Their line and ours here
lay three hundred yards apart, at which range our aged rifles would
not shoot accurately, but by sneaking out to a spot about a hundred
yards from the Fascist trench you might, if you were lucky, get a
shot at someone through a gap in the parapet. Unfortunately the
ground between was a flat beet field with no cover except a few
ditches, and it was necessary to go out while it was still-dark and
return soon after dawn, before the light became too good. This time
no Fascists appeared, and we stayed too long and were caught by the
dawn. We were in a ditch, but behind us were two hundred yards of
flat ground with hardly enough cover for a rabbit. We were still
trying to nerve ourselves to make a dash for it when there was an
uproar and a blowing of whistles in the Fascist trench. Some of our
aeroplanes were coming over. At this moment, a man presumably
carrying a message to an officer, jumped out of the trench and ran
along the top of the parapet in full view. He was half-dressed and
was holding up his trousers with both hands as he ran. I refrained
from shooting at him. It is true that I am a poor shot and unlikely
to hit a running man at a hundred yards, and also that I was
thinking chiefly about getting back to our trench while the
Fascists had their attention fixed on the aeroplanes. Still, I did
not shoot partly because of that detail about the trousers. I had
come here to shoot at âFascistsâ; but a man who is holding up his
trousers isn't a Fascist, he is visibly a fellow-creature,
similar to yourself, and you don't feel like shooting at him.
Isn't there a scene in Homage to Catalonia in which the same or a similar fascist is caught with his pants down at the latrine when all hell breaks loose? In death and as in defecation, all distinctions dissolve to reveal us as indigent mortals made of dust and about to return to dust.