No, he had not been in “danger of immediate death,” and since he claimed with great pride that he had always “done his duty,” obeyed all orders as his oath demanded, he had, of course, always done his best to aggravate “the consequences of the offense,” rather than to reduce them. The only “extenuating circumstance” he cited was that he had tried to “avoid unnecessary hardships as much as possible” in carrying out his work, and, quite apart from the question of whether this was true, and also apart from the fact that if it was, it would hardly have been enough to constitute extenuating
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