Deeds of heroism and bravery

Bravery is the beautiful, impatient gesture of the soul at its highest reach, baring its own breast to a fatal wound in its eagerness to deal a fatal blow at something it abhors.

Bravery is poetry, drama in deed instead of word. It has always been lovable and beloved.

There is distinguished valor as there is distinguished art, for there are degrees of courage as of intelligence and talent. Many people think beautiful thoughts: a few express them. Someone frames an old idea with an exquisite twist of phrase and a universal proverb results. So some one citizen expresses in one felicitous act an ideal of his people and is accepted as their national hero.

Conspicuous bravery always owes part of its success to good fortune. At the cry of a leader—or in this war at the arrival of “zero hour” on the wrist watches—a whole regiment went forward, nearly every man doing his duty with complete courage. Some heroes were dogged and unimaginative; some revealed ingenuity or invention. But to a single man fell the opportunity and the inspiration to do some extra task with a certain picturesque felicity. His unluckier companions and his generals rejoiced to celebrate him, diminishing their own prestige to enhance his. And the story of his happy thought becomes the delight of his nation, and perhaps of many nations.

There is a kind of injustice in it as there generally is in awards and preferments. Where all have forgotten selfishness and comfort and cast their lives into the furnace, it seems a pity that only a few should emerge with fame. And yet since we can no more remember all our heroes than we can call the roll of the stars in our sky, it would be a mistake to favor no one, to have no crosses of war.

The schoolboys cherish the name of Leonidas and the 300 Spartans at Thermopylæ. But they ignore the 700 Platæans who perished also, and as bravely. This is regrettable, and yet it is better to make a watchword of the name Leonidas than to forget the whole event because it is more than the brain will carry.

Fame is a lottery with a few capital prizes. The winners show perhaps no more wisdom, no more courage than all the other gamblers. In the baseball phrase they simply “luck in.” Yet they will get their names in the papers, people will boast of knowing them; prestige and[Pg viii] fortune will be theirs and oblivion will absorb the others. But if you are going to have lotteries succeed, you must offer capital prizes and pay them. And war is the lottery of lotteries.

There have always been wars and, unless hope shall triumph over experience at last, there always will be wars; and there will always be an appetite for tales of heroism. The earliest literature records them and so must the latest.

Since no man has any more lives to give for his country than our schoolteacher spy had, all heroisms are in a sense equal; for, since a man risks the only life he has, it matters little how, whether from a cave-man’s axe or a shell that shoots eighty miles.

Bravery is no new thing. It cannot be listed as one of the inventions of this war. It is matter for enough pride that there was no failure of it in quality, but rather an unheard-of versatility in it, and an unequaled quantity; for never before was there a war in which so many soldiers were engaged, or so incessantly engaged or under such hardships, or such varied dangers. To an extent unapproached hitherto, nations were mobilized en masse. For the first time they settled down at grips in continuous lines from frontier to frontier with no relaxation of vigilance or activity through long years of sun, snow, rain, and mud.

It is curious to note that in this war, innumerable hosts of brave men were dragged into glory—one might say “kicked upstairs”—by conscription.

In America we had the small Regular Army, the slightly larger and very irregular National Guard; then armies of volunteers, followed by armies recruited willy-nilly through the exemption boards. Not only did the draft compel enlistment, but the very prospect of it drove many men to volunteer before they were drawn. This is said in no derogation, for obligations vary and many a man who could not find the way to volunteer was glad to be coerced. And some of the men who volunteered at once would better have stayed at home.

Though the American Armies began in various strata, in a very short time all distinctions were abolished and everybody was “U. S.”

The glory was similarly shuffled. In the records of achievements in ground gained, prisoners taken, casualties endured, the Regular Army, the National Guard divisions and the draft divisions were rivals of such close conclusion that disputes continue as to the actual priorities. In any case the margins are narrow. Here also luck played its part, for the morale of the enemy and the ground to be taken varied enormously from day to day and from place to place.

Curiously, the most successful American hero of the war, judging by the score, was a “conscientious objector,” Sergeant York. His conscience did not lead him to the fanatic lengths of many others who defied the government and refused to obey any commands whatever; strange perverse creatures who were such lovers of liberty that they would do nothing to defend it, men who abhorred the thought of killing their fellow creatures so utterly that they would not lift a finger to put a stop to slaughter and disarm the German butchers. Sergeant York’s religious[Pg ix] scruples did not carry him so far, yet he was a reluctant and a tardy entrant into the war, and he was with difficulty persuaded to accept the immortal fame awaiting him.

Sergeant York was a straight-shooting open-living mountaineer. Yet there were city-bred heroes whose impetuosity led them to plunge into the war long before it spread to America. One of these was an actor and a dancer. Wallace McCutcheon, who pretended to British citizenship, got in at the start, and by sheer bravery and persistence rose from private to major. He would indeed have been a colonel if his second wound had caught him fifteen minutes later, for his colonel was killed then and he would have been automatically promoted.

There were sons of wealthy parents and sons of humble parents who joined the French, the Canadian or the British forces and fought in the skies, or on land or sea for years before the rest of the nation decided to follow them overseas.

This was a world war indeed, a universal struggle, and there was no race, color, condition, creed, or trade that was not represented and brilliantly represented. Clergymen, priests, waiters, polo-players, convicts, negroes, musicians, ditch-diggers, gunmen, farmers, chorusmen, gamblers—the entire list of heroes would exhaust any classification of the human race or its activities. A complete beadroll of heroes would fill a city directory, and make the most dismal reading.

The only way in which justice can be done to anybody at all, is by omitting even to mention the vast majority, and to select a few at random, like a clutch of sample red apples from an enormous harvest.

It is not feasible to attempt internationalism or non-partisanship. We must ignore the splendid heroism of other nations and leave them to the celebration of their own heroes and the neglect of ours.

Of our own there remains too great a multitude to permit a systematic selection of examples. Some are here because they had the luck to be observed by skillful observers and recorders, as many kings are remembered because their historians or poets were superior to those of other kings.

This volume, then, has all the faults of any other anthology. Yet the most imperfect anthology is better than no bouquet at all; and a bouquet is the happiest representative of a garden, as a framed canvas is the best memorial of a sunset.

In this connection, there is a quaint poem of Emily Dickinson’s; she attached it to some flowers she selected from her garden:

So it may be said of this volume: it does not contain the entire star-crowded firmament of the War of Wars, but it is “more convenient to carry in the hand.”

It would be belittling the bravery of our own men and the men of the Allies to pretend that the enemy lacked courage. The Germans and Austrians fought brilliantly, scientifically, ruthlessly. Individuals displayed the purest heroism and chivalry. But since it is impossible to catalogue everybody, I imagine that this omission, at least, will be indulgently regarded.

America entered the war late but at a time of peculiar desperation. Her appearance on the field changed the whole balance of power.

Before this time, the generalissimo, Foch, was like a gambler trying to break the bank with his last remaining gold pieces. Immediately after, he was a man with an inexhaustible supply of remittances. What would have been insane recklessness before now became good strategy, and he could at last follow out his life-motto: “Attack, attack, attack!”

On the other hand the Germans, having entered the war as cold-blooded business men, and conducted it with all the soullessness of the proverbial corporation, realized speedily that the investment was a failure and made every effort to get out as cheaply as possible.

The Allies realized that their victory would be wasted if Germany were permitted to retire with any prestige. A crushing and undeniable defeat was of the utmost importance. Hence the Americans were called upon to attack with human sledgehammers the hinges of the German defense and the strong points of rearguard action. Their losses were therefore huge for the brief time of engagement, since they ran to meet danger with an amazing fire.

Heroes sprang up, as from sown dragon’s teeth; so fast that there was no recording them. In air, on land and sea, and under the land and the sea, our men wrought so godlike well that it is pitiful to leave any of them without his meed of praise.

A word ought to be said also, for the prevented heroes, the unwilling absentees from the battle, those who ate their hearts out in America as instructors in camps, as dealers in supplies, plodders in paper work.

Of the Regular Army officers, who had dedicated their lives to valor, made bravery their profession, hardly more than one-third were even enabled to cross the sea, and a large mass of the small portion that got across was never permitted to come within earshot of the fighting line. War has no bitterer cruelties than the fate of such men.

There were National Guard men and officers, too, who had given a large part of their leisure to military training only to find themselves condemned to inaction. There was a vast amount of plucking by surgeons, for disabilities that had not prevented men from earning success in civil life. But trench life was so searching a test of strength that youth was almost as essential as in the prize ring.

Many of the stay-at-homes had a rightful share in the glory of the men they trained and sent as their delegates to the victory. Conspicuously[Pg xi] absent were Colonel Theodore Roosevelt, who did so much to inspire his countrymen with battle-ardor, and General Leonard Wood, who built up the whole system of officers’ training camps, advancing us incalculably along the road to preparedness.

Then there was the thwarted courage of the countless men who tried to volunteer from civil life and were refused in droves, or furnished with an almost ironical uniform to emphasize their domesticity. This was the swivel-chair army, and the badge of service was the silver chevron. At first granted as an honor, it proved so unwelcome that it had to be enforced by order.

Uniforms of a sort were worn also by Red Cross, Y. M. C. A., Knights of Columbus, Jewish Welfare Board, Salvation Army, and other semi-civilians, thousands of whom reached the battle front and many of whom displayed perfect gallantry.

Women to an extraordinary degree took part in this war. The Russian Battalion of Death was the most startling verification of the Amazonian myths, but in every country there were women unnumbered who courted danger with a superb consecration to duty.

There is no stranger or more persistent falsehood than the claim that women are less belligerent than men. It has been constantly reiterated that if women had the vote, or even the say, there would be no more wars. As if history had not abounded in women whose native ferocity or patriotism inspired them to frenzies of wrath, or self-sacrifice!

In this war as in all wars, mothers surrendered their boys with fortitude, or compelled them into the ranks. Mothers without sons to give envied their luckier sisters. Women made speeches, posters, wrote articles, poems, songs, did office work, drove ambulances, trucks, and toiled in munitions factories where danger was more unceasing than on the battle front.

The Red Cross women and their untrained aids, many of them women of noble birth or of the most delicate heritages, shared the hardships of the men. The Salvation Army women made doughnuts and pies in the front line trenches. The Y. M. C. A., the Y. W. C. A., and numerous other organizations crowded to the front. Actors and actresses faced death in order to make cheer for the soldiers about to die.

The difficulty was always to keep the throngs back from the fighting-lines rather than to whip them forward.

The fighting-line was indeed a vague term, for children were killed in their cradles in cities far distant from the battle front. Worshipers in a Paris church were killed on a Good Friday by a shot from a German cannon fired eighty miles away.

The raids by Zeppelins and aeroplanes, the planting of explosives in factories, the sowing of mines in seas, the activities of spies and saboteurs made it uncertain just where danger was. There was courage everywhere.

The variety of dangers was beyond anything hitherto recorded, and a certain supremacy in dauntlessness might be claimed by our generation;[Pg xii] for men are most easily frightened by risks they are not used to, and every month seemed to bring some new astonishment. The submarine and the flying machine had never been employed in wars before. They were as terrifying to their passengers as to their targets. They brought remote civilians and non-combatants into their field of fire by intention or indifference.

The air-raids over London and Paris and the sinking of the Lusitania and various hospital ships horrified the world. The first gas attacks added a new shudder to war. The prolonged and hideous imprisonment in the trenches where men stood to arms in icy mud kept the soul and the body on the rack. The hand grenade came again into fashion with a new deadliness. The machine-gun literally sprayed the field with bullets, mowing men down as with the scythe of death. The tanks were such a prodigy as the first elephants brought into battle. Depth bombs for submarines, land-mines, cannon on railroad tracks, trench-knives, incendiary bullets, barbed wire charged with lightning—it would be impossible to enumerate the new devices for inflicting wounds and death.

Yet science could not invent a way to frighten men out of their wits or out of their patriotism. The men in danger simply took what came and held on while the scientists in the rear devised some new defense for the new offense.

Nothing was more spectacular than the development of the air-duel and the air-battle by whole fleets of airships. The penalty for bad luck in such an encounter was to fall thousands of feet in a blazing machine. But candidates for these super-chivalrous jousts were innumerable.

Naval warfare had its novelties in frightfulness as well. Vessels were subject to destruction by a planted or a drifting mine or by a torpedo shot from an unseen submersible. The destruction of a populous ship was like the cataclysm that annihilates a city. The tortures of patrol duty, the management or the pursuit of submarines, the combats with airships, the protection of convoys, and numberless new-fangled terrors were all superimposed on the ancient dangers of seafaring.

Besides the fighting navy there was the mercantile marine charged with the transportation of incredible amounts of supplies and millions of soldiers. With these ships the submarine worked fearful havoc, filling the Seven Seas with hulks and corpses.

Yet in spite of all the surprises of science, this war, like all other wars of the past—and it is safe to say of the future—was waged upon the most ancient lines, and its battle-technic was reducible to simple terms.

A, B and C attack D, E and F. A superiority in weapons must be met by a superiority in morale or a superiority in tactics. Ability to attack and to endure attack are the proofs of fitness to survive. The victor will be the latter one to quit fighting. While the war must be won by masses of men, the quality of the mass is the algebraic total of the individual qualities.

A hero is a man plus. A coward is a man minus. A few heroes[Pg xiii] will counteract the influence of many cowards or even lend them strength enough to become heroes also.

In its individual heroes, moral, spiritual and physical, lies therefore the prosperity of a nation. It is well that a nation should keep its eye on its heroes, and reward them well, at least with fame.

This volume devoted to accounts of individual achievements is something more than picturesque. It is as important to the record as the consideration of any of the larger aspects of war. It strikes the human note, and the human note is vital in so human a thing as a war; since war gives humanity its widest and fiercest vibration from the utmost baseness to the supreme nobility.

From The Collected Poems of Rupert Brooke, Copyright, 1915, by John Lane Company.

“AND A FEW MARINES”

Eye-witness Account of the Belleau Wood Action in the Marne Salient Beginning June 6th, 1918

It has been insisted that more than their share of glory was bestowed upon the Marines for their work at Château-Thierry, other units of the A.E.F. being entitled to share the honors of those terrible but wonderful days when the barbarians were stopped. That is of course true, for the battle generally described as Château-Thierry had to do with a region, not merely a town, and it was in Belleau Wood and at Bouresches that the Marines fought so splendidly and so successfully to save Paris. Honors conferred in the early and censored dispatches have since been more properly distributed, and the various divisions—the 1st and 2d, the 3d, the 26th and the 42d—engaged at different points and at different times, have had the just recognition of the honors due them. But the distribution has not in any degree diminished the proud record of the Marines in maintaining the place of honor to which they were assigned June 6th. A very voluminous and authoritative account of the 6th Regiment, 2d Division, and its service in France was written by its commander, Brig. Gen. A. W. Catlin under the title With the Help of God and a Few Marines. In that volume one may find the authentic details of the heroic exploits of the Marines. But we are now concerned only with the incidents and events that caused the French to change the name of Belleau Wood (Bois de Belleau) to “Bois de la Brigade de Marine.”

The first spring drive of the Germans began March 21, 1918. It swept across the Somme and over the plains of Picardy irresistibly. Foch seemed unable to check the advance and there was consternation among the Allied nations, and the men in the trenches were anxious and restless. The enemy were sweeping everything before them. “With forty divisions, including some 400,000 of their best troops, and with the greatest auxiliary force of tanks, machine guns and poison gas projectiles ever mobilized,” says Gen. Catlin, “they rolled on for thirty miles in spite of enormous losses, advancing at the rate of six or eight miles a day, capturing men and guns by the wholesale, and occupying 650 square miles of territory. There were simply not enough French and British to stop them. The Allies resisted heroically, but they were forced to yield to the unanswerable argument of superior weight. And where was the American aid that the French people had been building their failing hopes upon?

“Held at Rheims and west of Soissons, the Germans thrust a U-shaped salient clear down to the Marne, its rounded apex resting on a contracted six-mile front between Château-Thierry and Dormans, but thirty-five scant miles from Paris.

“Then the harried soldiers of France arose in their might for a last grim stand. The name of the Marne was a rallying cry for them. ‘They shall not,’ they muttered between gritted teeth; and they did not pass.”

Fighting shoulder to shoulder with the French on the Marne at Château-Thierry was the 3rd Division of Regular troops who had arrived on May 31st in the nick of time in support of the French. On this occasion the 7th Machine Gun Battalion defended the bridge at Château-Thierry with the greatest heroism, suffering very heavy losses, and to them especially belongs the credit of checking the enemy’s attempt to cross the river.

To the northwest of the town lay Belleau Wood, a natural fortress which was full of Germans. Although the enemy had been checked in the attempt to cross the Marne, his position in Belleau Wood was a very strong one, constituting an excellent point of vantage for a sudden thrust against the Allied line along the river. Foch now decided to call upon American troops and the Marines of the 2nd Division were ordered up and sent into the line to capture Belleau Wood.

IN THE AMERICAN WAY

The delay occasioned by the French-American resistance at Château-Thierry gave time for the organization of the defensive strategy which culminated in the battle of Belleau Wood. It is interesting to know in connection with Château-Thierry that the Americans entered under the direction of the French. General Catlin says apropos of the Belleau Wood preparation:

“I think the French hesitated to trust us too far in this crisis. We were without tanks, gas shells, or flame projectors. We were untried in open warfare. But General Harbord begged to be allowed to tackle the job.

“The situation was acute; there seemed to be no alternative. General Harbord was given free rein, and in that moment we passed out from our French tutelage and acted as an American army fighting side by side with our hard-pressed Allies. The battle of Belleau Wood was fought by American troops, under American officers, supported by American guns, in a typically American manner. And the battle was won.”

The details of this battle in the wood are not to be given here. One or two of the facts that stand out must serve as illustrative of the whole splendid performance. The advance began with the 5th Battalion under Major Berry and the 6th Battalion under Major Holcomb holding the center, the French on the left and the 23d Infantry on the right, Sibley’s battalion supporting.

FACING THE MYSTERY

“We stood facing the dark, sullen mystery of Belleau Wood. It was a mystery, for we knew not what terrible destruction the Hun might be preparing for us within its baleful borders, nor at what moment it might be launched in all its fury against us. That the wood was strongly held we knew, and so we waited.

“No one knows how many Germans were in those woods. I have seen the estimate placed at 1,000, but there were certainly more than that. It had been impossible to get patrols into the woods, but we knew they were full of machine guns and that the enemy had trench mortars there. We captured five of their minenwerfers later. So far as we knew, there might have been any number of men in there, but we had to attack just the same, and with but a handful. Sibley and Berry had a thousand men each, but only half of these could be used for the first rush, and as Berry’s position was problematical, it was Sibley’s stupendous task to lead his 500 through the southern end of the wood clear to the eastern border if the attack was not to be a total failure. Even to a Marine it seemed hardly men enough.

“Orders had been given to begin the attack at 5 o’clock. The men knew in a general way what was expected of them and what they were up against, but I think only the officers realized the almost impossible task that lay before them. I knew, and the knowledge left me little comfort. But I had perfect confidence in the men; that never faltered. That they might break never once entered my head. They might be wiped out, I knew, but they would never break.

“It was a clear, bright day. At that season [Pg 4]of the year it did not get dark till about 8.30, so we had three hours of daylight ahead of us.

“As soon as I received the orders I got Holcomb and Sibley together at the former’s headquarters, some 500 yards back of the line.

“With map in hand, I explained the situation to them without trying to gloss over any of its difficulties, and gave them their orders. The men seemed cool, in good spirits and ready for the word to start. Some one has asked me what I said, what final word of inspiration I gave those men about to face sudden death.

“I am no speech maker. If the truth must be told, I think what I said was, ‘Give ’em Hell, boys!’ It was the sort of thing the Marine understands. And that is about what they did.

A BULLET THROUGH THE LUNG

“Just about the time Sibley’s men struck the woods a sniper’s bullet hit me in the chest. It felt exactly as though some one had struck me heavily with a sledge. It swung me clear around and toppled me over on the ground. When I tried to get up I found that my right side was paralyzed.

“Beside me stood Captain Tribot-Laspierre, that splendid fellow who stuck to me through thick and thin. He had been begging me to get back to a safer place, but I was obstinate and he never once thought of leaving me. When I fell he came out of his cover and rushed to my side. He is a little man and I am not, but he dragged me head first back to the shelter trench some twenty or twenty-five feet away. My life has been spared and I owe much to that Frenchman.

“I have heard of men getting wounded who said that it felt like a red-hot iron being jammed through them before the world turned black. None of these things happened to me. I suffered but little pain and I never for a moment lost consciousness. Nor did any thought of death occur to me, though I knew I had been hit in a vital spot. I was merely annoyed at my inability to move and carry on.

“The bullet went clean through my right lung, in at the front and out at the back, drilling a hole straight through me.

“No orders as to the adjustment of rifle sights had been given, as the range was point blank. Watches had been synchronized and no further orders were given. As the hands touched the zero hour there was a single shout, and at exactly 5 o’clock the whole line leaped up simultaneously and started forward, Berry’s 500 and Sibley’s 500, with the others in support.

“Instantly the beast in the wood bared his claws. The Boches were ready and let loose a sickening machine gun and rifle fire into the teeth of which the Marines advanced. The German artillery in the woods increased the fury of its fire, and the big guns at Belleau and Torcy, a mile and a half away, pounded our advancing lines.

“On Berry’s front there was the open wheat field, 400 yards or more wide—winter wheat, still green but tall and headed out. Other cover there was none. On Sibley’s left there was open grass land perhaps 200 yards wide; his right was close to the woods.

“Owing to the poor communications, the two battalions engaged in what were virtually independent actions, and, as I had feared, Berry got the worst end of it. He had to face that wide open space, swept by machine gun fire, with a flanking fire from the direction of Torcy.

AS SIBLEY’S MEN ADVANCED

“My eyes were on what Sibley’s men were doing, and I only knew in a general way what was happening to the battalion of the 5th. But Floyd Gibbons, the correspondent of the Chicago Tribune, was with Berry and saw it all. He was, in fact, seriously wounded himself, and has lost an eye as a result. Gibbons says that the platoons started in good order and advanced steadily into the field between clumps of woods. It was flat country with no protection of any sort except the bending wheat. The enemy opened up at once and it seemed, he says, as if the air were full of red-hot nails. The losses were terrific. Men fell on every hand there in the open, leaving great gaps in the line. Berry was wounded in the arm, but pressed on with the blood running down his sleeve.

“Into a veritable hell of hissing bullets, into that death-dealing torrent, with heads bent as though facing a March gale, the shattered lines of Marines pushed on. The headed wheat bowed and waved in that metal cloudburst like meadow grass in a summer breeze. The advancing lines wavered, and the voice of a Sergeant was heard above the uproar:

“The ripping fire grew hotter. The machine guns at the edge of the woods were now a bare hundred yards away, and the enemy gunners could scarcely miss their targets. It was more than flesh and blood could stand. Our men were forced to throw themselves flat on the ground or be annihilated, and there they remained in that terrible hail till darkness made it possible for them to withdraw to their original position.

“Berry’s men did not win that first encounter in the attack on Belleau Wood, but it was not their fault. Never did men advance more gallantly in the face of certain death; never did men deserve greater honor for valor.

“Sibley, meanwhile, was having better luck. I watched his men go in and it was one of the most beautiful sights I have ever witnessed. The battalion pivoted on its right, the left sweeping across the open ground in four waves, as steadily and correctly as though on parade. There were two companies of them, deployed in four skirmish lines, the men placed five yards apart and the waves fifteen to twenty yards behind each other.

“I say they went in as if on parade, and that is literally true. There was no yell and wild rush, but a deliberate forward march, with the lines at right dress. They walked at the regulation pace, because a man is of little use in a hand-to-hand bayonet struggle after a hundred yards dash. My hands were[Pg 6] clenched and all my muscles taut as I watched that cool, intrepid, masterful defiance of the German spite. And still there was no sign of wavering or breaking.

THE RIGHT QUALITIES THERE

“Oh, it took courage and steady nerves to do that in the face of the enemy’s machine gun fire. Men fell there in the open, but the advance kept steadily on to the woods. It was then that discipline and training counted. Their minds were concentrated not on the enemy’s fire but on the thing they had to do and the necessity for doing it right. They were listening for orders and obeying them. In this frame of mind the soldier can perhaps walk with even more coolness and determination than he can run. In any case it was an admirable exhibition of military precision and it gladdened their Colonel’s heart.

“The Marines have a war cry that they can use to advantage when there is need of it. It is a blood-curdling yell calculated to carry terror to the heart of the waiting Hun. I am told that there were wild yells in the woods that night, when the Marines charged the machine gun nests, but there was no yelling when they went in. Some one has reported that they advanced on those woods crying, ‘Remember the Lusitania!’ If they did so, I failed to hear it. Somehow that doesn’t sound like the sort of things the Marine says under the conditions. So far as I could observe not a sound was uttered throughout the length of those four lines. The men were saving their breath for what was to follow.

“I am afraid I have given but a poor picture of that splendid advance. There was nothing dashing about it like a cavalry charge, but it was one of the finest things I have ever seen men do. They were men who had never before been called upon to attack a strongly held enemy position. Before them were the [Pg 8]dense woods effectively sheltering armed and highly trained opponents of unknown strength. Within its depths the machine guns snarled and rattled and spat forth a leaden death. It was like some mythical monster belching smoke and fire from its lair. And straight against it marched the United States Marines, with heads up and the light of battle in their eyes.

“Well, they made it. They reached the woods without breaking. They had the advantage of slightly better cover than Berry’s men and the defensive positions at the lower end of the woods had not been so well organized by the Germans as those on the western side. The first wave reached the low growth at the edge of the woods and plunged in. Then the second wave followed, and the third and the fourth, and disappeared from view.”

About an hour later Catlin had the attention of a surgeon, but while he lay there gas shells began bursting nearby and they put the gas mask on him. “I never knew before how uncomfortable one of those things could be. It is hard enough for a man to breathe with a lung full of blood without having one of those smothering masks clapped over his face.” He was got to Lucy for treatment and then taken to Paris, where quarts of blood were drawn from his pleural cavity. The wonder is that he came through it at all.

IN THE BELLEAU WOOD

“The action was all in the hands of the platoon officers. Success or failure rested on their shoulders. It is not the general who wins such a battle as that, but the captain, the sergeant, the private.

“It has been called an exaggerated riot, that desperate conflict in the wood. It was hand-to-hand fighting from the first, and those Germans, hating cold steel as they do, soon learned what American muscle and determination are like. From tree to tree fought our Marines, from rock to rock, like the wild Indians of their native land. It is the sort of fighting the Marine has always gloried in. And in that fighting they beat the Germans on two points—initiative and daring, and accuracy of rifle fire. They picked the German gunners out of the trees like squirrels, and in innumerable fierce onslaughts that took place at the machine gun nests the Marines always struck the first blow and it was usually a knock-out. It was a wild, tempestuous, rough-and-tumble scrap, with no quarter asked or given. Rifles grew hot from constant firing and bayonets reeked with German gore. It was man to man, there in the dark recesses of the woods, with no gallery to cheer the gladiators, and it was the best man that won.

“The thick woods made the fighting a matter of constant ambuscades and nerve-racking surprises, but the Marines tore on. With Sibley at their head nothing could stop them. Machine gun nests whose crews held out formed little islands in the welter about which the Marine flood swept, eventually to engulf them. Some of the Germans turned and fled, abandoning their guns; others waited till caught in the rear and then threw up their hands and surrendered; some waited in huddled groups in the ravines till the gleaming-eyed devil dogs should leap upon them; some stuck to their guns till an American bullet or an American bayonet laid them low. One by one the guns were silenced or were turned in the opposite direction.

“They started in at 5 o’clock. At 6:45 the report was sent to headquarters that the machine gun fire at the lower end of the woods had been practically silenced. At 7:30 German prisoners began to come in.

“Night fell with the fighting still going on and only the flash of shooting to see by. But at 9 o’clock word came from Sibley by runner that he had got through and had attained the first objective, the eastern edge of the wood. In four hours he and his men had passed clear through the lower quarter of Belleau Wood, traversing nearly a mile, and had cleaned things up as they went. And only 500 of them started; I hesitate to mention the number that finished.

“At 10 o’clock reinforcements were sent in with orders to consolidate the position.”

THE TAKING OF BOURESCHES

In the meantime other Marines, the 96th Company of Major Holcomb’s battalion and one of Sibley’s reserve companies, were engaged with the task of ejecting the Germans from Bouresches, the town just east of the woods, as necessary to be cleared as Belleau[Pg 9] Wood itself. Holcomb’s men got to Bouresches first and went in.

“Half of this little force was under Captain Duncan and the other half under Lieutenant Robertson. The enemy’s fire, as they neared the town, was frightful, and more men fell than kept going. Duncan was shot down while coolly advancing with his pipe in his mouth. Robertson, who, by the way, was afterward shot through the neck near Soissons, led the remnant on and entered the town.

“There were probably 300 to 400 Germans in that town and the place bristled with machine guns. There were guns at the street corners, behind barricades, and even on the housetops, but the Marines kept on. They attacked those machine guns with rifle, bayonet, and grenade in their bitter struggle for a foothold. They were outnumbered when they started, and one by one they were put out of the fighting. But they kept going, taking gun after gun, until the Germans, for all their numbers and advantage of position, began to fall back. And Lieutenant Robertson took Bouresches with twenty men!

“He sent back word at 9:45 that he had got in and asked for reinforcements, but he did not wait for them. Those twenty men started in to clean up that town in the approved Marine fashion, and he was well on his way when Captain Zane’s company of Holcomb’s battalion arrived to support him. Then Engineers were sent in to help consolidate the position.

“But the town was not yet fully won. The Germans began displaying counter-activity, and the Marines sent back word that they were running short of ammunition. Lieutenant William B. Moore, the Princeton athlete, and Sergeant Major John Quick (of whom more anon) volunteered to take in a truck load. With a small crew chosen from fifty who wanted to go, they started with their precious, perilous freight, over a torn road under a terrific fire. The whole way was brilliantly lighted by enemy flares and the solitary truck offered a shining mark to the German gunners. It rolled and careened fearfully over the gullies and craters, shells shrieked and whistled over their heads and burst on every hand, and as they neared the town they drove straight into the fire of the spouting machine guns. But John Quick bears a charmed life and they got through unscathed.

“That ammunition truck saved the day at Bouresches, for after it got in, Zane’s men proceeded to clean up the town. At 11 o’clock that night the report was sent in to headquarters to the effect that the Germans had been driven out of Bouresches. At 2:30 a.m. they made an attempt to get in again, but the counter-attack was smothered by our machine gun fire.

“The next day, with the help of the Engineers, our position in the town was made secure.

GERMAN TREACHERY

“There were evidences everywhere, during this fighting, of German treachery. Those Prussians were nasty fighters. The following is quoted from the letter of a quartermaster’s sergeant who talked with a number of our wounded in the hospital:

“‘If evidence were lacking of ingrained German untrustworthiness and treachery, the following from the lips of three men, one an officer, would be ample. During the progress of a hot engagement a number of Germans, hands aloft and crying “Kamerad!” approached a platoon of Marines who, justifiedly assuming it meant surrender, waited for the Germans to come into their lines as prisoners. When about three hundred yards distant, the first line of Germans suddenly fell flat upon their faces, disclosing that they had been dragging machine guns by means of ropes attached to their belts.

“‘With these guns the rear lines immediately opened fire and nearly thirty Marines went down before, with a yell of rage, their comrades swept forward, bent upon revenge. I am happy to state that not a German survived, for those who would have really surrendered when their dastardly ruse failed were bayoneted without mercy.

“‘As stated, I talked separately with three different Marines at different times, and have no doubt of the truth of the story. When it spreads through the Corps, it will be safe to predict that the Marines will never take a prisoner.

“‘Can they be blamed? As one man remarked, “A good German is a dead German.”[Pg 10] Another said, “They are like wolves and can only hunt in packs. Get one alone, and he is easy meat.”

“‘Little of this sounds uplifting, and smacks of calloused sensibilities. But the business that brought these men to France is not a refined one. It is kill or be killed, perhaps both, and the duty of each man in the American army is to kill as many of the enemy as may be, before he, in turn, is killed.

“‘I will not deny that my nerves are tense with horror at what I have seen, and with pride at what our boys have done, even while my soul is sick with this closer view of the red monster, War.’”

The Marine brigade was cited by the French army for its work in the capture of Bouresches and Belleau Wood and the regimental colors have the Croix de Guerre with the palm; but, let it be recorded as evidence of what the Marines were that there were 518 individual citations for conspicuous valor and extraordinary heroism in action, including officers and privates.

And Captain Grenfell’s Cavalry Troops Lived Over “the Charge of the Light Brigade”

The first officer in the British Army to win the Victoria Cross in the great war was Captain Francis O. Grenfell. He gained the coveted reward on August 24, 1914, almost at the commencement of the British fighting in Belgium, it was at the time of the great battle at Mons and the perhaps more momentous retreat that followed. The gallant little English army was struggling desperately to escape from the superior force of Germans, who gave it no rest. The cavalry was ordered to charge the enemy—to delay, head off and harass him as much as possible. Foremost among the Lancers—mounted soldiers carrying lances—who were always to the front in this dangerous and difficult undertaking, was Captain Grenfell of the 9th.

The German guns caused terrible execution. The German infantry came on in dense columns—like peas thrown out of a sack, as one soldier described it. They pressed hard on the whole of the main body of the army but especially dangerous was the position of the 5th Division. To relieve this section the 9th Lancers were ordered to charge.

“Although all knew they might be going to certain death,” as the story is told by G. A. Leask, “not one of the gallant men faltered. They sang and shouted like schoolboys as their horses thundered over the ground. They treated the charge in the spirit of sport. These dashing cavalrymen, as they rode straight at the German guns, presented one of the finest sights of the whole war. There has been little opportunity to engage in cavalry charges since. Grenfell rode at the head of his men, encouraging them by his coolness. One who took part in the charge has said that he was the life and soul of the squadron, shouting the loudest, always in the front, setting an example to his comrades by his fearless riding.

“At first all went well. Few of the Lancers had fallen, and the dashing cavalrymen were looking forward to a real fight at close quarters with the German gunners, who were playing such havoc among our troops. The men were in excellent spirits, although they knew their danger.

“INTO THE JAWS OF DEATH”

“Suddenly a murderous fire from the enemy pulled them up. Grenfell’s cheery voice rose above the awful din of bursting shells, urging his men to continue the charge. They recovered, and followed their leader. Then the enemy’s fire became hotter. It was like riding into the jaws of death. Twenty concealed German machine guns rained death on the horsemen at a distance of not more than 150 yards. Even then the gallant 9th did not waver, for they were led by a hero. Standing up in the stirrups and brandishing his sword Captain Grenfell called to his men to ride straight on. They cheered and obeyed. It now seemed as though nothing could stop this wild charge. Both men and horses had become infuriated.

“Grenfell himself seemed to bear a charmed life, while all around him empty saddles told their terrible tale. He did not come through the charge unscathed, but his wounds were not serious.

“The Lancers continued to sweep forward until finally held up by the enemy’s barbed wire, cunningly concealed in the long grass. The German trap had succeeded. To proceed farther was impossible, and in order to escape total annihilation the gallant horsemen reluctantly turned their horses’ heads and rode back. Of the 9th Lancers not more than forty came out of the ordeal.

“The charge of the Lancers had failed, but it will live forever in military annals. It proved to the world that the British cavalry was as dashing and brave as in the days of old.”

GRENFELL RESCUES THE GUNS

Grenfell’s second great exploit came on the same day. It was equally daring. When the survivors of the 9th Lancers rode off the field the Captain, although not seriously wounded, was greatly in need of rest. That, however, was not yet to be. He had espied a railway embankment, and quickly made for it with the men under his charge. When they arrived at the shelter they found a number of men of the 119th Field Battery, which had been put out of action and abandoned. There was the danger of the guns being captured by the enemy and turned against the English. It had been a great day for the artillery, no less than for the cavalry.

“This battery had been in action earlier in the day with the object of delaying the German advance and relieving the terrible pressure on the harassed infantry, who were being driven back from Mons by superior forces. The 119th Battery had given and received a terrific fire. One Germany battery had been silenced by the gunners, who were afterward attacked by three of the enemy’s batteries from different directions. The unequal contest was very fierce while it lasted. All the gunners had been killed by shrapnel, and the survivors of the battery were ordered to seek safety.

“Up till now it had been found impossible to attempt the rescue of the guns. They remained exposed to the German shells and would have been captured but for the gallantry of Captain Grenfell. An officer of the 119th Battery, Lieutenant Geoffrey Blemell Pollard, who had been trying to devise means to save his guns, came to where the Lancers were resting, and put the matter before them. Would they assist him to get the guns away?”

Captain Grenfell heard the lieutenant’s request. He carefully climbed to the top of the embankment, surveyed the position, and returned. He had seen that the Germans had now captured the guns.

Grenfell determined to get the guns, regardless of the cost. He asked for volunteers and before he had done speaking two dozen Lancers had given in their names. They did not need to be told that Grenfell would lead—they had been in the charge with him and knew that he would not send others to do his work. They would have followed him anywhere.

Grenfell led his little party of troopers into the open. Bullets were flying around, shrapnel was bursting near. “He was as cool as if he was on parade,” said a corporal who took part.

He led his men right into the hurricane of shot and shell. Every few minutes they stopped for breath, then on again. Advancing at a rapid rate they reached the guns.

“So unexpected was the charge of Grenfell’s squadron that the Germans, taken by surprise, fled in panic. Grenfell gave quick directions; rapidity of action was essential, for the Germans in the rear of the guns were pouring in a rapid fire. One gun was safely man-handled out of action. Grenfell was not the man to leave a task half-finished, and, braving the shells, he galloped back to the guns. By the time he reached them some of the battery’s horses had been brought up, and Grenfell assisted to hitch them to the guns. This done, the latter were galloped off the field. Not one gun of the 119th Battery was lost, and most of the wagons were recovered.[Pg 13] Only three men were hit during the rescue operations. Thus ended one of the quickest and most gallant gun-saving exploits of the war.

“Later in the day Captain Grenfell was wounded. A bullet struck him in the thigh, and two of his fingers were injured. He was brought back from the firing-line, and an ambulance was sent for.

“While awaiting the ambulance a motor-car dashed along. ‘That’s what I want,’ said Captain Grenfell. ‘What’s the use of an ambulance to me? Take me back to the firing-line.’ He entered the motor-car and went back to fight....

“Captain Grenfell was twice invalided home, but on each occasion curtailed his rest in order to get back to the firing-line. He was killed while in command of the left section of the 9th Lancers on May 24, 1915. The Germans had broken through the line, but Grenfell held, and in the words of his Commanding Officer, Major Beale Browne, ‘saved the day.’”

Thus died one of the greatest heroes of the war, a soldier to his fingertips, a born leader, a true gentleman. His men loved him because they knew his worth. In his will he left his Victoria Cross—the most honorable decoration England bestows—to the men of his regiment, “to whom the honor of my gaining it was entirely due.”

The Church Elder and Champion Turkey-Shooter Who Killed 25 Germans and Captured a Machine Gun Battalion

Six feet tall, weighing a trifle over two hundred pounds, brawny as becomes a man whose time was divided between blacksmithing and farming, clear-cut and strong of feature, kindly of disposition but positive and resolute by the testimony of keen blue eyes and flaming red hair—that is the general description of Alvin C. York, native of the Tennessee Mountains, extraordinary hero of the Argonne Battle, and modest withal.

There is no story of the great war that reads more like an extravagant fiction; but it is thoroughly attested, its truth unquestionably established by official investigation and by the sworn statements of fellow soldiers as one of the most amazing individual achievements in the four years crowded with deeds of almost incredible heroism and daring.

In a sentence: On Oct. 8, 1918, less than a year after he joined the army, Alvin C. York, as Corporal York, Company G, 328th Infantry, 82d Division, A. E. F., during operations in the Argonne sector, killed twenty-five Germans, captured 132 prisoners, including a major and several lieutenants, and put out of commission thirty-five machine guns—and did it by his “lonesome,” subduing the machine gun battalion with his rifle and automatic pistol.

Now, the thing that gives vivid additional interest to the thrilling story is the fact that its hero was an elder of the Church of Christ and Christian Union—a sect scrupulously opposed to any kind of fighting and firm as conscientious objectors to war—and was one of the most devout and earnest members of his home church, in Pall Mall, Tennessee. And thereby hangs a romance!

He had been one of the young bucks of the region, a typical mountaineer; a dead shot with rifle or pistol; champion of the turkey-shooting matches; breezy, jovial, liberal of oath, free with the demijohn, and not averse to a fight. He was one of eleven children, having seven brothers and three sisters, and when his father (blacksmith and farmer) died in 1911, Alvin, then twenty-four years old, took on the two occupations as head of the family; the older brothers married and went away. But in hours not demanded by smithy or farm he followed the bent of his old habits for the next two or three years, when, yielding to his mother’s entreaties, he gave up drinking and settled into sobriety. The “girl [Pg 16]of all the world” urged him to join the church. So he waited a year, thinking the thing over. Convinced that it was the right course to pursue, he joined the church in 1915.

When the United States declared war and conscription came, York was second elder of his church and, naturally, pastor and congregation urged him to abide by the doctrine of the church and claim exemption as a conscientious objector. He was sorely troubled. He believed in his religion, was soulfully committed to it, but he loved his country too—and patriotism is also a religion. He refused to claim exemption, and went with the draft to Camp Gordon in Georgia, but was obviously unhappy in his divided duty. He talked many times on the subject with Captain Danforth and Major Buxton. In addition to much reasoning they cited scriptural passages from the Old and New Testaments, that convinced him there are times when the sword is the instrument of divine justice, and before the 82d Division sailed for France, the conscientious objector declared himself satisfied that he was on the right course, and gave himself wholeheartedly to the duties of the soldier.

And a good soldier he was, cheerfully, promptly obedient to orders, quick in mastering details, and distinguished by the cool, positive conduct of the self-reliant by habit and of the fearless by nature. He was made Corporal of Company G, 328th Infantry, 82d Division, a division made up of representatives of every state in the Union, hence the A. A. (All-America) in its insignia.

EARLY INTO ACTION

Over the sea went the 82d and was speedily in action, doing valorously in the Meuse-Argonne battles. And then, Oct. 8, at 6 o’clock in the morning, the 2d Battalion of the 328th, Corporal York with Company G, set off from Hill 223 with the Decauville railroad as its objective, two kilometers to the west. They had to cross a valley of several hundred yards and climb the ridges of a hill, all the time under machine gun fire from three directions. The guns from one hill had the Americans enfiladed, and Acting Sergt. Bernard Early was ordered to take two squads, and put the guns out of action. Early had sixteen men under him, one of whom was Corporal York.

They set out to climb the hill with a heavy fire from a ridge at their backs, but the density of the trees and brush permitted them to get beyond observation without loss, though bullets continued to cut through the trees as they struggled and stumbled upward through the tangle. They crossed the crest and began the descent of the opposite slope, and suddenly, on the farther side of a little stream they came upon a group of Germans, twenty to thirty in number, seated on the ground for a meal.

The Americans fired and there were a few return shots, but the majority of the surprised Germans threw down their guns and held up their hands in sign of surrender, and the others followed suit promptly, including the major in command of the battalion. They were amazed to find that their captors were American.

Sergt. Early had them line up and was just ready to take them out when, in the expressive words of a survivor, “all hell broke loose.” Machine-guns placed in “fox-holes” that had been pointed the other way were swung round, and from the slope above Early’s detachment, began a fusillade. The German prisoners at once dropped down and lay on their bellies as did some of the Americans, others seeking the shelter of trees. Six of the little detachment were killed outright. Early was shot three times through the body and Corporal Cutting and Private Muzzi were wounded. On one side of York was Private Wareing, on the other Private Dymowski, both shot to pieces, York untouched. This fire reduced the party to eight, York and seven privates. Of the latter, one was pinned behind a tree, the others were guarding the prisoners. That is the testimony of the men themselves. They did no shooting.

“ALL THE TIME I WAS A-USING MY RIFLE”

York, when he dropped at the first fire of the machine-guns, found himself in a little path by a clump of bushes; the machine-guns were peppering from a distance of less than thirty yards, cutting off the tops of the bushes about York. On his return to the United States May 22, 1919, York said to a reporter: “I sat right where I was, and it seemed as if every gunner was a-firing straight at me. All this time, though, I was a-using my rifle, and the enemy he was a feeling the effects of it. One of our boys yelled that it was impossible to get the best of the situation, but I yelled back ‘Shut up!’ I knew one American was better than ten Germans if he kept his wits.”

He had no thought of surrender and “Somehow, I knew I wouldn’t be killed.” Aiming as he used to when shooting off the heads of the turkeys, he spotted Germans in the “fox-holes,” those firing from behind trees or over logs, with deadly precision, himself lying low to have the protection of the German prisoners prostrate between him and the machine-guns. He was not the man to miss a mark at that range. One boche had the indiscretion to rise in order to fling a small bomb at the rifleman. The bomb missed its object; not so the responsive bullet. “I got him square,” said York.

“I WHIPPED OUT MY AUTOMATIC”

“I turned in time to see a Heinie Lieutenant rise up from near one of them machine-guns and with six or seven men come charging toward me with fixed bayonets. They were only twenty yards away from me when I whipped out my automatic and I potted them off one after another.” (This man York, by the way, in a contest with an automatic pistol, hit a penny match-box every shot at forty paces.)

“As soon as the Germans saw the Lieutenant drop, most of the machine-guns stopped firing and the battle sort of quieted down, but I kept on shooting until the Major with the first batch of Germans we had come across, and who was lying on his stomach to avoid being hit by his own gunners, called to me in perfect English that if I would stop shooting he would make them all surrender, so I did. Then I called all our boys, and their affidavits show they came, and we herded the Germans in front of us and started toward our lines. I walked among four German officers and had our wounded bring up the rear. The Major asked me how many men I had, and I just told him, ‘I have a-plenty.’”

On the way they stirred up several more machine-gun nests, one of which put up a fight and York felt it a regrettable necessity to “shoot a man there.” After that when a nest was flushed the Major touched him on the arm and said, “Don’t kill any more, and I’ll make them surrender.” This was done and the hill was pretty well cleared up before they got to the other side and York’s herd of prisoners numbered 132, counted and certified to by Lieutenant Joseph A. Woods, Asst. Division Inspector, as they were reported to the P. C. of the 2d Battalion, 328 Infantry, that same Oct. 8.

PROMOTED AND DECORATED

Now what should be done with a corporal who, with rifle and automatic pistol, outfought a machine-gun battalion and took 132 prisoners in addition to killing twenty-five of the enemy? First they made him a Sergeant. Then somewhat later, after his amazing story was officially examined and verified by affidavits, in the presence of all the officers of the 82d Division, Major General C. P. Summerall decorated him with the Distinguished Service Cross, and said to him: “Your conduct reflects great credit not only upon the American Army, but upon the American people. Your deeds will be recorded in the history of the Great War, and they will have an inspiration not only to your comrades but to the generations that will come after us. I wish to commend you publicly and in the presence of the officers of your division.”

Then the French, to whom valor is a thing of divine sanctity, awarded him that enviable soldier’s treasure, the Croix de Guerre, and in presenting it to him Marshal Foch, who knows right well what brave deeds are, told him that his was the greatest act of bravery and presence of mind under great stress performed by any soldier of the Allied Armies. Add to this that badge of nobility, the Congressional Medal of Honor.

But with the two crosses on his breast and the medal in prospect, Sergeant York had a light in his eyes and a hesitant smile on his lips when he spoke of a Tennessee girl, “the prettiest in the state,” that rather suggested the idea that in his opinion his proudest distinction would be when Miss Grace Williams became Mrs. Alvin York.

“I FEEL A HEAP STRONGER SPIRITUALLY”

And what could he say to the Church of Christ and Christian Union Pastor and members waiting to welcome him home to Pall Mall and into renewed fellowship? Probably what he said to the reporter who asked him a leading question. When he was drafted he had no real idea what the fighting was about. “But when I got to camp,” he said, “and my officers told me we were fighting for democracy and peace on earth and for the protection of the small nations, then I knew it was no sin to kill. In fact, I feel a heap stronger spiritually than before I went over to fight. No man could go through what I did without the help of God. I feel He gave us our great victory because we were in the right.

At a reception given York by the Tennessee Society of New York, Major General Duncan, who commanded the 82d Division, said this:

“It is a unique distinction for me to have on one side of me the Admiral who safely conducted all of our troops overseas and on the other side one of the most distinguished soldiers the world has ever produced. His deeds are of the character that will go down in history for our boys and girls to read of and admire.

“York was awarded his medals for having been the leader of a small party which brought in a large number of prisoners after he had killed twenty-five. When I heard of his feat I ordered a full investigation, which resulted in the award of the Congressional Medal. I am happy to see your society doing honor to a man who so thoroughly deserves it.

“I hope your unprecedented policy of banqueting a non-commissioned officer will be forever followed and honor done to the man who carries the gun—the man who goes over the top.”

A Vision of Inferno from which Even a Dante Would Have Shrunk——“What Hell Must Be Like”

As a rule the experience of one “caught in his own trap” is regarded with a good deal of satisfaction by human nature in general. The spectacle of anyone “hoist with his own petard” seems quite in the line of poetic justice, and there is not much sympathy with the victim. But there are instances when the merited recoil punishment is too ghastly, too appalling to permit of any other sensation than that of horror, and a French correspondent on the Somme has recorded such an instance. One detachment of the French line was under heavy and concentrated fire, and the commanding officer thought it advisable to withdraw the men to a better position, about fifty yards in the rear. The correspondent quotes the statement of the soldier left behind to watch and signal the movements of the enemy. He says:

“I fixed myself about fifteen feet up in the crotch of a big tree and seized a telephone which was connected with the nearest battery. From there I could see a German trench at the edge of a little wood, about eighty yards from the trench my comrades had vacated.

“For nearly an hour nothing happened. Occasionally I noticed heads peering from the Boche trench, trying to see into the empty trench which was hidden from them by a slight rise of the ground just before it. They would have been a splendid mark for a sniper, but I had other work this time. Suddenly a group of about forty Boches crept from the wood, rapidly followed by the best part of a company. I telephoned: ‘Enemy advancing led by a detachment of flamenwerfer,’ for I had recognized the devilish apparatus carried by the foremost group. When the latter were about eighty feet from the empty trench, they halted in a hollow just below the rise of ground, and then, with appalling suddenness, a dozen jets of white and yellow flames darted up to fall plumb into the trench. The dense smoke hid the Germans from me for a time, but, thanks to my mask, I was able to gasp information to the battery.

“A few moments later I had a glimpse of what hell must be like. Our gunners had the range to an inch, and a torrent of shells burst right among the flame-throwers, exploding the containers. Great sheets of flame shot up, one jet from a container just grazing me, burning my clothes so that my ribs were scorched rather badly. But it was impossible to escape. The ground was a sea of fire. In the midst of it the Germans, like living torches, were dying horribly. One man spun round like a top, not even trying to run away, until he fell in a pool of flame. Others rolled on the ground, but the blazing liquid ran over them everywhere, and I could smell the sickening odor of burning flesh.

“I don’t think any of the fire-throwers escaped. Their screams, heard despite the cannonade and rifle fire, seemed to continue terribly long. The company behind them was panic-stricken. As the smoke lifted, I saw them moving back to the wood, and our mitrailleuse did severe execution, spreading added slaughter over that scene of horror.

“I was nearly fainting with the fumes and the pain of my burns. The Captain sent a patrol, which found me hanging limply in the tree fork. They had trouble getting me, but luckily the Germans were too staggered to interfere.”

A Bomb Thrower and Tank Master Who “Paid His Way in Huns”

It is very hard to pick out definitely any single name and exclaim “Here is the Hero!” Not that that man would not be a hero, but that he is not the only hero, and definite naming of some seems to exclude all the rest. If this book shows anything, it shows that in the horrors of the vast conflagration—in the terrible, awe-inspiring strain of the fighting on earth and on water, and underneath, and above—practically all the millions involved proved themselves heroes. Many of them found no chance to show their valor in lone ventures, and not all of them lost the lives they were so ready to give up. But they were heroes—all of them—though no papers heralded in brave headlines their deeds of glory, and no medals shine forth the commendation of the superior officers. All we need to see is the mud-stained uniform—and that look in the eye. This book is really a dedication to the innumerable heroes we do not name—heroes to be perhaps ever nameless in human documents.

It is hard even where men were given the opportunity for individual bravery to pick them out. Official records are brief, and, in the main, the men themselves refuse to tell. But Scribner’s Magazine has uncovered one of[Pg 21] these hard-to-get heroes. He calls himself Lieutenant “Z.,” and it is only between the lines that we read of his endless sacrifice, courage, and death-defying accomplishments.

The story is taken from letters written by him in the trenches. At the very beginning of the war he had enlisted as a trooper in a newly-formed cavalry regiment. All winter they waited to be called to action. Spring came—and yet no call or need for horsemen. They therefore volunteered to dismount, and were sent to Flanders. He himself joined the “Bombing Squad.”

Bomb throwing, he soon found, is “quite a ticklish business, needing care and accuracy. A badly thrown bomb may kill one’s own men remarkably easily, and in the hands of inexperienced men I should call them good [Pg 23]allies for the Germans.” But his own efficiency speaks for itself. In some ten days the records named him as wounded, and he writes a hasty letter home to say that he is well. “My wound is only a scratch on the arm,” he complains, “and I did not show it to the doctor until our return to these billets. It is ridiculous to return me as ‘wounded.’

LIVING NINE PINS

“We went into the trenches on Saturday night last, and came out Thursday morning just before dawn. Four days and five nights practically without sleep, and being shelled by Jack Johnsons more or less the whole time. It is a one-sided game, with the odds with the artillery. We sit and hold a trench, being the nine pins while the guns roll the ball at you. You can do nothing but swear softly. No Germans actually attacked our trench, but they tried to do so on each side of us. But on Tuesday afternoon about 6.30 p.m. I got a little of my own back from them. I had just returned with a sack full of water bottles from a stream near by behind our trench, where we dodge snipers, when the call suddenly came for ‘Bomb throwers to the front’ and the rifles and machine guns started a terrific popping. I was in shirt sleeves, and just slammed on my ammunition equipment and skedaddled off with my rifle up the trench towards the racket, incited by a great eagerness to get into the thick of it.

“After a long time, as it was a long way, crouching and running and crawling I got to where I could see our men throwing bombs into the Germans. You could hear nothing for the noise, for it seemed as if every German rifle, Maxim, and big gun was turned on that spot; their shrapnel was going ‘Brrangg’ overhead and their shells going ‘Whangg’ all about. I took a few shots at the devils with my rifle, by way of resting and getting my breath, and then I got hold of a box of bombs and started to crawl and drag it up there. The box was heavy and, to my delight, another young chap, a Strathcona, came and helped me. We dragged and humped it along, over bumps and across shell holes and over our dead, until we got to the extreme point where the Germans were retreating up their trench and being bombed by our men unmercifully. There I found my own Sergeant of our bomb throwing squad, to my great relief.

“I had never thrown a live bomb in my life but soon found out, as it is quite a simple affair and they were lovely bombs for working. You could see a clump of German bayonets huddled like sheep, over their parapet top, and you chucked a bomb into it and prayed for the explosion. When it came the bayonets wavered and wabbled and then disappeared. If the bomb did not explode you waited and backed up because those plucky Germans lighted it again and threw it back. And so on and so on. I know I got 3 bombs into them fairly and squarely and heard them explode and saw the bayonets flop down. We finally got to a place at a turn in the trench, an angle, and our men, the —— something or other, were firing directly across us, excitedly of course, and they killed about 12 of our men there, two of them being of my squad and within a few feet of me, and two more were wounded. I was by that time about played out and the bombs were all exhausted, so we sat down to wait for more, and when they came I could not get up, for I had cramp in both of my legs and had to be rubbed and rubbed. That must have been about 8 p.m. But I could drag around, so I dressed two wounded men and helped to fill sand bags and pass them along until 10 p.m. I should judge. About 10.30 p.m. the only officer present told us the thing was over for the time and no more could be done, and we crawled back, as the rifles and Maxims and shrapnel and Jack Johnsons were just as busy all the time. The Sergeant and I got back to our own trench after 11 p.m. and I was more than tired. Never have I been so played out in my whole life. We lost three killed, two wounded, and another who went off his head later, out of nine, including the Sergeant, out of our bomb throwing squad. And I had not a scratch. Just a bump on the breast bone from something kicked up by a Jack Johnson. It was a bad thing for the Germans but we lost a lot of good men there.

“Our troop was 38 strong but now only 26 are left. We were in the foremost British trench of the British front here and our Troop had the post of honor. So we ought not to mind anything.”

“PAID HIS WAY IN HUNS”

Our bomb thrower was twice promoted for bravery, and finally was offered a commission in his regiment “for setting traps for Fritz when he goes a-sniping.” A bomber is called on to do a lot of work besides bombing, such as crawling about at night sniffing trouble, and likely points where Huns may be blown sky high. He would like to get a quick promotion but “at any rate,” he writes, “I can truthfully say that I have already blotted out enough Huns to pay for my scalp, if that business deal comes to the point of record. And it is a most cheerful and fortifying sensation. I would like my epitaph to read ‘He paid his way in Huns.’”

Wounds, yes, and minor disabilities, but he writes, “I don’t need my left side to throw bombs and the Lord has spared my right side for a special purpose. I have got more than my share of Huns as it is and I firmly intend to get some more. Three of us, with sufficient bombs, accounted for 46 dead Huns, 26 wounded and 22 prisoners in one single afternoon. This was a redoubt which they surrendered, after they had had enough.”

He was finally sent away to an Officers’ Training Camp and after six weeks came back to the front as first lieutenant. In the meantime, though, his regiment had been remounted and was doing patrol duty. Patrol duty did not suit Lieutenant Z. He therefore joined the Machine Gun Corps, and spent several months in a “Tank Menagerie.” At Messines Ridge he led a division of the “Rhinos” into battle. The Military Cross he won there is only small evidence to the steadfast heroism he displayed that day.

He was well acquainted with conditions by that time. His description of a battle at the Somme shows that:

“I was only fifteen hundred yards from our front line, and the place taken was on an upward slope, so all was in full sight. At the given moment, 4.45 p.m. of a lovely summer evening, up they went, ‘over the top,’ famous Celtic regiments, all together, a long and gallant line. Bayonets sparkling in the sun, up the slope they go! Behind me our massed batteries are making one great crashing roar till your temples throb and throb, and ahead of our men the very earth is heaving and moving amidst a fog of green and black and yellow and gray smoke. Now, No Man’s Land, so long a desert, is full of life and death and joy and misery. White vicious balls of shrapnel puff above; or deadly black and green ones, and below the great spouts and mushroom columns of jet-black smoke spring up like fungoid growths here and there. The shrill rat-tat of machine guns and the pop-pop-pop of rifles can be heard. On the little figures run and jump, and the bayonets gleam and sparkle, and the first line disappears into the trench ahead, and you are left to imagine what follows. Still, No Man’s Land is well populated. Wave after wave is speeding straight ahead. The ground is dotted with immovable dots, and others which can crawl. A bright magnesium star shoots up well ahead, and the batteries lift their fire without checking. The waves all surge forward and out of sight at last, and No Man’s Land is left to its misery. Then you see the stretcher-bearers out there among the great grinding ‘crumps’ and the shrapnel, calmly picking up their men, and back they come slowly. You watch one group of five. Four bearers and a mangled something which is alive. A monster spout and cloud springs up near. They swerve and crouch for a few seconds and on they come. Another black death entirely hides them from view, and you wonder. No! Here they come. So slowly and steadily through the cloud, and you say to yourself: ‘Hurry, hurry; for God’s sake run!’ But they don’t. They walk slowly and carefully with their burden, straight and the shortest way. Some win home and some do not. Other men are carrying others, and some hobble and limp and stagger by themselves. And all the while the big shells burst and the shrapnel sprays the ground.

A GO WITH A TANK

On June 6th he was given orders to lead a tank through battle. He must have had brave folks at home to write:

“When you get this, I shall have been through the mill and either all right, in hospital, or blotted out, so don’t worry. As soon as I can I will write and let you know the [Pg 26]news; if I can’t, some one else will. We hope to make a page of history, and go into it with light hearts and great confidence. This place is Bedlam, the lions about to be fed, the parrot-house at the Zoo, and a few other noisy places combined. I went through gas last night near dawn, and had no respirator (forgot it). Held my breath till I nearly burst and blew up, and made record time. Beyond a harmless whiff picked up when I exploded for air, which has made smoking less of a pleasure, no harm done.

“Good-by. I have had a long run out here, and I must not complain, and I have thoroughly enjoyed it and would repeat it, every bit of it, if it were necessary.”

“Your letter found me in hospital and was most delightful company. My trouble is not much, just a bullet through fleshy part of right forearm and a graze in the side, and I am up and about and going back to my lot in a day or two. We were an active part in the great drama of the 7th, and what with the bursting mine-earthquakes and the tempestuous bombardment, one was lucky to be left with one’s senses. I, personally, was very successful, reaching all my objectives and getting slap into the blue-gray devils, Bavarians, and blazing away like a dreadnought. Oh! The sights which were seen! Luck, good and bad, was with me, for my bus caught on fire in action just where the thing was thickest, and I ordered the whole crew out, with fire-extinguishers, to put it out. Out we went and got busy. I left my crew on the sheltered side (more or less), but my corporal, without orders, got on top, while I went to the exposed side, vociferously ordering the corporal down, and we got the blaze out between us.

“Meantime one of my crew was bowled over. We got him back inside and later he came to and is recovering. Where I was the bullets were splattering around me and hitting old ‘Squash ’em Flat’ and splashing me with fine sprays of broken metal, and there it was I got my trifling wound and scratches, but it was only bad Bavarian shooting that kept me and my corporal (who was untouched) from being turned into human sieves. After that, we carried on, and as I had finished my job to the last letter, we came on home, and I brought the old thing back safely.

SOMETHING OF A MYTH

“Our game sounds comfortable and protected, but that is a myth. It is a mystery how ever any of us got there or got back. You feel very important because you are heralded, followed and encircled by miniature geysers of earth, smoke and biff-bang! Your own infantry flees from you as if you bore the plague. A good many of our lot got into serious trouble, and quite a few faces of chums are missing to-day. The day for the British Army was a veritable howling success, and the Boche fought here with no spirit at all. They bolted like rabbits, throwing away rifles and equipment, some back to Berlin and some to us, hands up, and Kamerading. Our casualties were very light, indeed, owing to the absolutely artistic work of the artillery; and with our airmen the combination is unbeatable. These wonderful airmen! Like meteors in the sky, they swoop and fly, entirely regardless of everything but the job on hand.

“Our men fight so cheerfully and whimsically and sarcastically. There is no vestige of hate toward the Boche, only an abiding disgust and hearty contempt—a feeling as toward a mongrel who has fairly gone and got hydrophobia and must be killed to save valuable human life. We are really most jubilant over the past three days’ work, and every one is smiling and happy and cracking jokes. Gramophones are whirling at top speed, bands are playing in the camps, pipes are skirling and moaning and quickening the pulse, and the Hun is licking his wounds in silence over there to the east, in silence and afraid.”

“Beg to inform you that Lieutenant Z., Heavy Branch Machine-Gun Corps, was wounded June 7th, but remained at duty.

Its Wonderful Story Will Stand as One of the Vital Things of the War

The self-redeemed have always had the world’s sympathy—sometimes they have won the world’s acclaim. Visitors to that shrine of French honor and glory, the famous Hôtel des Invalides, may now see the battleflag of the Foreign Legion, draped between the flag of the Cuirassiers who fell at Reichshofen, and the standard borne by the Garibaldians in 1870-1871—not only draped in that honorable association, but wearing on its folds the cross of the Legion of Honor. And those who know will tell visitors that that flag was the flag of the redeemed.

It was said with shame and contempt at first that the Foreign Legion was composed of the riff-raff, scalawags and murderous upstarts of the nether world. So it was, but events proved that “there is a spirit in man” that can throw off degraded conditions and rise to the performance of nobly heroic deeds and sacrifices. This Legion, made up of renegades and social outcasts from all quarters of the globe, men beyond the pale of the law speaking a various language, tendered its services to France in 1915, was recognized by the President of the Republic, accepted by the Commander-in-Chief and admitted to the army on an equal footing with the regular regiments of the line. The pariahs became soldiers of France.

It was an extraordinarily nondescript assembly—all nationalities, all colors, from the black of the negro to the blonde of the Saxon, having but two things in common, their former outlawry and the “spirit that quickeneth,” and through the quality of that spirit they squared their debt to life,—for the Legion dissolved in the fire that met the “drive” in September, 1915, so soon after it entered the service. As one of the few survivors wrote: “War did its worst thoroughly with the Legion. We had the place of honor in the attack, and we paid for it.” Right good words.

There is all the material for an epic in the[Pg 28] glory of the Foreign Legion. A great deal has been written about it, but the best is yet to be written—some time when the war is further away, and out of its horror the things that glow will rise into clearer view. Really, it is a great thing when the reject of the social order spring from their fugitive haunts and rush to death in defense of the higher civilization. In the meantime there is the moving story, graphically yet simply told, by Legionary Morlae, a survivor, published in the Atlantic Monthly for March, 1916.

The Legion was placed in the van, and Morlae’s company formed the front line of the extreme left flank.

Infinite care had been taken with the preparations, every detail provided for, even to the extent of arming twelve men from each company with long knives and hand grenades for use in their assigned duty as “trench-cleaners”; this duty was to enter the German trenches and caves and bomb-proofs and “dispose of such of the enemy as were still hidden therein after we had stormed the trench and passed on to the other side.”

JUST BEFORE GOING INTO ACTION

“One hour before the time set for the advance, we passed the final inspection and deposited our last letters with the regimental postmaster. Those letters meant a good deal to all of us, and they were in our minds during the long wait that followed. One man suddenly began to intone the Marseillaise. Soon every man joined in singing. It was a very Anthem of Victory. We were ready, eager, and confident: for us to-morrow held but one chance—Victory.

“I had written to my friends at home. I had named the man in my company to whom I wished to leave my personal belongings. Sergeant Velte was to have my Parabellum pistol; Casey my prismatics; Birchler my [Pg 29]money-belt and contents; while Sergeant Jovert was booked for my watch and compass. Yet, in the back of my mind, I smiled at my own forethought. I knew that I should come out alive.

“I recalled to myself the numerous times that I had been in imminent peril: in the Philippines, in Mexico, and during the thirteen months of this war: I could remember time and again when men were killed on each side of me and when I escaped unscratched. Take the affair of Papoin, Joly, and Bob Scanlon. We were standing together so near that we could have clasped hands. Papoin was killed, Joly was severely wounded, and Scanlon was hit in the ankle—all by the same shell. The fragments which killed and wounded the first two passed on one side of me, while the piece of iron that hit Bob went close by my other side. Yet I was untouched! Again, take the last patrol. When I was out of cover, the Germans shot at me from a range of 10 meters—and missed! I felt certain that my day was not to-morrow.

“Just the same, I was glad that my affairs were arranged, and it gave me a sense of conscious satisfaction to think that my comrades would have something to remember me by. There is always the chance of something unforeseen happening.

“The strain was beginning to wear off. From right and left there came a steady murmur of low talk. In our own column men were beginning to chaff each other. I could distinctly hear Subiron describing in picturesque detail to Capdevielle how he, Capdevielle, would look, gracefully draped over the German barbed wire; and I could hear Capdevielle’s heated response that he would live long enough to spit upon Subiron’s grave; and I smiled to myself. The moment of depression and self-communication had passed. The men had found themselves and were beginning their usual chaffing. And yet, in all their chatter there seemed to be an unusually sharp note. The jokes all had an edge to them. References to one another’s death were common, and good wishes for one another’s partial dismemberment excited only laughter. Just behind me I heard King express the hope that if he lost an arm or a leg he would at least get the médaille militaire in exchange. By way of comfort, his chum, Dowd, remarked[Pg 30] that, whether he got the medal or not, he was very sure of getting a permit to beg on the street-corners.”

Here is a significant touch to be remembered. An hour before midnight as they passed down to the front trenches the men in the supporting trenches regarded them enviously in the darkness, demanding to know why these men should be going into battle ahead of themselves. And the answer came, “Nous sommes la Légion.” “A-a-a-a-h la Légion!” That was the satisfactory explanation. “Our right to the front rank seemed to be acknowledged. It did every man of us good.”

OVER THE TOP AT DOUBLE-QUICK

There had been heavy artillery fire through the night, increasing in intensity as the hour of the morning appointed for the attack approached. The Germans, informed by their airmen of an unusual commotion in the enemy first line, began shelling that point, and the uproar was terrific when the signal was given for the Legion to go over the top. Says Morlae:

“I felt my jaws clenching, and the man next to me looked white. It was only for a second. Then every one of us rushed at the trench-wall, each and every man struggling to be the first out of the trench. In a moment we had clambered up and out. We slid over the parapet, wormed our way through gaps in the wire, formed in line, and, at the command, moved forward at march-step straight toward the German wire.”

As they moved forward at double-quick, men fell right and left under bursting shell, and the rain of bullets from the machine guns; but through all the appalling uproar Morlae could hear the clear, high voice of his captain shouting “En avant! Vive la France!”

STEADILY ON ACROSS A WALL OF FIRE

They went steadily on, supported by the fire of the rows of “75’s,” the fire-curtain in front outlining the whole length of the enemy’s line clearly, accurately. But above them was blackness, the low-flying clouds [Pg 31]mingling with the smoke curtain; and out of that blackness “fell a trickling rain of pieces of metal, lumps of earth, knapsacks, rifles, cartridges and fragments of human flesh. The scene was horrible and terrifying. Across the wall of our own fire, poured shell after shell from the enemy, tearing through our ranks. From overhead the shrapnel seemed to come down in sheets, and from behind the stinking, blinding curtain came volleys of steel-jacketed bullets, their whine unheard and their effect almost unnoticed.... With me it was like a dream as we went on, ever on. Of a sudden our fire curtain lifted. In a moment it had ceased to bar our way and jumped like a living thing to the next line of the enemy. We could see the trenches in front of us now, quite clear of fire, but flattened almost beyond recognition. The defenders were either killed or demoralized. Calmly, almost stupidly, we parried or thrust with the bayonet at those who barred our way. Without a backward glance we leaped the ditch and went on straight forward toward the next trench, marked in glowing outline by our fire. I remember now how the men looked. Their eyes had a wild, unseeing look in them. Everybody was gazing ahead, trying to pierce the awful curtain which cut us off from all sight of the enemy. Always the black pall smoking and burning appeared ahead—just ahead of us—hiding everything we wanted to see.” And so on to the next trench ahead, what was left of it, where bayonet and gun-butt did their work speedily and then on, leaving the finishing touches to the “trench cleaners.”

Later of a sudden the German artillery in front ceased fire, and from the trench ahead the German troops “were pouring out in black masses and advancing toward us at a trot.” They thought it was a counter-attack and set themselves to meet it. But then the French artillery suddenly stopped firing and the supposed counter-attack was seen to be a surrender, the enemy coming forward in columns of four, officer leading, with hands up. As the prisoners were being escorted to the rear, the German artillery, aware of its mistake, resumed fire, viciously throwing shells among the masses of prisoners.

At last they gained the communication trench that led to their objective, the Navarin Farm. The trench was filled with dead or wounded Germans; and when they got to the final trench, it was wholly unoccupied. The French gunmen had done their work thoroughly. The men advanced into open position and dug in separately, smoked, chaffed each other, now and then made a dash to a neighbor’s hole, taking cheer in the fact that the charge was over and the object won.

But of the Legion such a pitiful few were left that it passed as a fact, surviving only as a memory; its war-sealed flag with the cross of the Legion of Honor, hanging in the Hôtel des Invalides, being the testimony of its service well done.

DARE-DEVIL FIGHTERS FROM THE PARIS SLUMS

As an addendum to this account of the final action of the Foreign Legion, brief reference to the Bataillon d’Afrique is quite appropriate. This battalion was organized by the French government in 1832 for the purpose of bringing under indefinite military discipline the city roughs, Apaches, sneak-thieves, pickpockets, swindlers, forgers and other offenders of the lower world. All the social refuse whom the authorities despaired of making useful to civil life were sent to join this battalion, which differed from the ordinary battalion consisting of 1,000 men, in having no numerical limit. It was maintained in Africa. These soldiers were young daredevils, keen, brave, daring, and veritable terrors in a fight. This was so characteristic of them that the best French officers were eager to have command of them, especially as they were devotedly obedient to their officers.

When France was forced to defend herself against Germany at the outbreak of the Great War, there were 5,000 of the Bataillon d’Afrique, 3,000 garrisoned in Tunis and 2,000 in Morocco. They were summoned to France, and the first detachment of several thousand landed at Marseilles early in August and were at once hurried north and into Belgium. One battalion was surrounded at Charleroi by a detachment of the Prussian Guards, and the situation looked very black and desperate. But that did not affect the fighting spirit of the battalion (the Joyeux) except to give it intensity. The Joyeux buried their flag that it might be in no danger of[Pg 32] falling into the hands of the enemy and, with fixed bayonets, by sheer force and will-power cut their way through the encircling guardsmen. This battalion was part of the heroic rearguard in the retreat from Belgium. At the battle of the Marne it took terrible revenge for its discomfiture by the Guards at Charleroi, when the Joyeux in their turn surrounded a regiment of the Prussian Guards, which did not cut a way out.

They gave a fine account of themselves, that is, those who had survived the earlier campaigns in the final grand offensive of the Allies.

“The place of the Joyeux is where the powder talks, face to danger. They ever give proof of a calm energy, devilish courage, attentive obedience. They fight always with a good humor. In the midst of shells and bullets, in the hardest part of the struggle, they make droll and witty remarks. And when the end comes the Joyeux know how to die nobly.”

The Conversion of the Rev. J. H. Clifford, “Y” Worker, into A Hero Among Marines

Not every one understands that a soldier of the Lord has in him the material out of which to make a very effective soldier where shot and shell play havoc. The young men of the Army, Navy and Marines who went over to France to offer their lives in defense of their country’s ideals, discovered, in the experiences of the trenches, a something that rather cheapened in their estimation the forms and didactic solemnity of conventional religion. They had learned a more intimate thing, and it is the testimony of many clergymen that the “boys” found words only too cheap where works were in order. They had no hankering for sermons. They had caught an intimate understanding from the Unknown. They did not want to be preached to.

Therein lies the secret of the affectionate familiar devotion of the men of the regiment to “Doc of the Fifth.” It is a story that has been told widely in the press, and has been requoted in numerous periodicals, but it is a delightful instance of what may be called the quiet heroisms of life.

The Rev. John H. Clifford, minister of the Baptist Church in Tucson, Arizona, felt the urge to service on the other side when the United States began sending its boys to the fighting front. He promptly tendered himself as a “Y” worker, was accepted and[Pg 33] sent abroad. His assignment carried him to the 5th Regiment of Illinois in the Vosges. He went prepared to do his duties as a minister of the Gospel and a servant of man.

He wore the blouse and tunic of the chaplain, insignia that indicated to some of the “Boys” that superior altitude of moral pretension and holier-than-thouness they were unwilling to acknowledge too cordially. So when he tried to begin his work with the men of the 5th, he was greeted by the declaration, “We don’t want any damned parsons around here,” and for two weeks they held aloof, ignoring the efforts to establish religious services.

But the Rev. John H. Clifford wasn’t a clergyman merely, he was a man—and he understood men. And this valuable asset incited a course of action destined to win the confidence and affection of those under his care. Instead, therefore, of standing on dignity and attempting to command the respect supposedly “due to the cloth,” he went to the men. He joined them in their hikes. He entered into their interests. He was ever ready to do his share and bear the equal hardships with them. They began to warm toward him, and finally, as one of the Marines put it, he was “adopted as a Leatherneck,” and he became to them “Doc”—“Doc of the Fifth.”

SO THEY MADE HIM A MARINE

Then one night the boys of the 45th Company sat reasoning together and came to the flattering conclusion that “Doc” was still a trifling distance from them in the matter of regimental distinction, and needs must be brought into more intimate harmony with them. The Marine’s Magazine tells us that they secretly removed his blouse and tunic and had the company tailor sew on Marine buttons and attach the Globe, Anchor and Eagle to his collar. When “Doc” appeared at chow with his new decorations the officers were aghast, but later General (then Colonel) Doyen authorized him to wear them and there they have remained.

“I am prouder to wear the Globe, Anchor and Eagle than I am to wear the Croix de Guerre which was given me after I had the opportunity of helping General Catlin when he was wounded,” said Dr. Clifford. “Any one of the boys would have done anything he could for the general in similar circumstances, but not everyone is awarded an emblem by the Marines themselves. A token of affection from such men as those is the greatest honor.”

IN THE THICK OF IT AT BELLEAU WOOD

He was with the 5th Regiment through that fame-winning Belleau Wood battle, and has endless stories to tell of experiences in that terrible fight, some of them amusing as an afterthought, though they were not so regarded at the time. For example, the experience when he and a stretcher bearer were crawling through the grass toward the trench where General Catlin lay seriously wounded. Shells were dropping and machine-gun bullets were slashing all about.

“Keep closer down, Doc,” was the constant admonition of the stretcher bearer, “closer down.”

“The lad didn’t realize, I guess,” Doc says, “that I was perfectly willing to get closer to the earth but my stomach prevented my doing so.”

He says of the awful days in Belleau Wood, where his life was repeatedly in danger:

“It was glorious to be with the boys there, as they saved Paris and made history. Out of the 1,600 men in the 3rd Battalion, there were only 200 left after ten days in Belleau Wood. Many a time the rosary I carried was covered with blood as one of those brave boys grasped it for the last time.” (Creed made no difference at a time like that.)

“I could relate instances of individual heroism for hours at a time. I lay by the side of Top Sergeant Grant of the 20th Company while he picked off nine Germans consecutively at 400 yards; that’s Marine Corps marksmanship for you.

“‘I’ve been doing that,’ I told him, ‘every time you squeeze the trigger.’ Later I saw him blown to pieces by a shell.

“Then there was the chap named Young who saw Major Berry wounded and threw himself in front of him as a shield from the bullets that were flying like hail. Later, when I spoke to him about his act, he merely said, ‘I’ve done nothing.’ A few days afterward when he had volunteered to perform a dangerous mission in the town of Lucy and was doing what he would probably have called ‘nothing,’ he, too, was killed by a bit of shell.

“One of the boys saved me when I was stunned by shrapnel and in my stupor started to walk toward the German line. He saw where I was headed and got Doc out of that pretty quick. Then I was paralyzed by another piece of shrapnel and was taken to a Paris hospital. But I was lucky. I was out again in five weeks and got back at the front just in time to be with my boys when the great drive opened on July 18 at Soissons.”

During that intense fighting he was again at the side of the men of the 5th to lend a hand whenever possible. One wounded Marine asked him for a smoke, which was forthcoming, but the lad was unable to take it, his hands were both shot.

“Light it for me, will you, Doc?” he said, and Doc did, although he hadn’t had any practice for more than thirty years.

Another story he tells is of a runner who, before one of the battles, asked him to lead a prayer meeting. Although somewhat astonished by the request, Doc complied and the meeting was duly held in a dugout. Later an[Pg 35] officer was questioning the runner concerning his whereabouts.

“Yes, sir,” persisted the lad, “and it was a damned good prayer meeting.”

Besides the Croix de Guerre, Dr. Clifford proudly wears the blue Cross of Lorraine, given him by an officer in that province.

Thro’ Turkish Shells and Barbed-Wired Sea They Landed at Gallipoli

Twenty transports of Australians under General Birdwood, arriving at Gallipoli. In any circumstances, landing through rough seas and narrow beaches, under defiant cliffs and then climbing those cliffs is not nerve soothing for either impatient commanders or restless soldiers. But in war time with cannon belching at you—well, it costs.

It was planned to surprise the Turks—those surprisingly straight-shooting Turks, with their infernal German guns and German officers. The men tried to hope, but it was really absurd to think the enemy would be surprised. In January the Allied troops had tried to force the Dardanelles. That had been sufficient warning. The enemy would not be caught napping only a few months later. Even the most hopeful of the men set about writing the letters which might contain their very last wishes, fears, bequests, expressions of love. Then the gloom passed and jokes and laughter came.

At about two o’clock in the morning they dropped anchor. Each man stood at parade on the decks, and each was ordered to look to his supplies—a rifle, a bayonet, 150 rounds of ammunition, three days’ rations, a first-aid kit. It was weird contemplating this stretch of the Ægean and that bit of coast so soon to be washed by blood.

Captain David Fanlon in his story of The Big Fight says: “The long procession of transports and their grim battleship escorts had stolen up in the night, a widely spread yet organized, concrete group of slowly-moving, black, gloomy monsters. Every light aboard each ship had been ordered out. Not even the pin-head flame of a cigarette might show on any deck.

“The only light we had was the faint green gleam that filtered over the smooth waters from a moon that had begun to wane and had, indeed, at this hour of three in the morning, nearly fallen behind the ragged jaw of the black cliffs.”

That moon may have been very picturesque, but the men on those boats hated it, feared it, wished it in—any place but in the heaven above them. Its beam might act as a spotlight on the surprise attack. It looked like the evil eye of the enemy.

“I wonder,” said some one, “what that old green eye of a moon is looking at back of those dark, old cliffs? I wonder if he sees the big guns drowsing and the garrisons asleep or——”

“What he’s seeing,” came a grumbling answer, “is the heathen blighters getting ready to bang hell out of us!”

THE GREAT ADVENTURE BEGINS

“And now the men had assembled on the decks as soft-footedly as they might. They had gathered in the darkness into orderly rows like big companies of phantoms. The ship’s crews worked as spectrally and nearly as silently as the lowering of ladders and the launching of the boats would permit. Small steamboats, each with a swerving tail made up of barges and small boats, panted alongside the transports and battleships. With wonderful precision and swiftness the great ships spawned hundreds on hundreds of smaller craft, thousands on thousands of men, crowding the waters with them for as far as you could make out whichever way you looked in the faint moonlight.”

Of a sudden, the moon dipped and blinked out behind the cliffs. There was a sigh of relief. “God bless that damned old moon.” A moment before there had been just enough light to see the battleships coming on slowly in the rear with the obvious purpose of covering the attack. “Then you couldn’t see a blessed thing. The green waters had turned to ink. You only knew your comrades were with you in the same boat by the press of their swaying bodies against your shoulders and your ribs.”

“Shouldn’t wonder,” whispered some one, “if we’re to surprise them after all.”

“Then suddenly out of that weird darkness, that curious silence that had been disturbed only by the rapid, half-choked panting of the steam tugs, the surge of the water against the sides of the barges, the whispers, the occasional smothered laughs—all soft sounds—there came hell—veritable hell if ever hell comes to men on earth! And it came with a tremendous roar!”

Captain Dave Fanlon was not an observer at the time. He was a participant. He gives a most thrilling account of the ghastly landing:

“There was a swift, sharp lightening of the sky back of the gaunt, black cliffs, and our boats seemed thrown out of the water, thrown up into the air by the rocking thunder of the heavy guns of the Turkish batteries behind those cliffs. The water that had been so smooth an instant before, that was, in fact, so treacherously smooth, as had been the silence, was stabbed and chopped and sent into wild spume by a great rain of shells. Blinding blasts flared as suddenly, as here and there a boat with its living load was struck and shattered. Screams and hoarse, impulsive cries began to mingle with the explosions.”

The Turks had the range as surely as if they were only ten feet away from the Australians. The English battleships began an angry, heavy retort. Whether they found their mark among the Turks or not, it seemed to make no difference. The enemy fire became more and more intense. Boat after boat was being smashed. Scores and scores of men, unable to swim, or weak swimmers, died right there.

CAUGHT IN BARBED-WIRE NETS

Most of the men struggled. They tried to throw off their encumbrances. They helped one another to get rid of their knapsacks. They let go their ammunition belts—everything but their bayonets. They knew that even if they could make the shore there would be small hope for them without the bayonets. All the time came that devilish fire from the cliffs. The shore was not far off now. They swam. They were within fifty feet of it. Then they hit against a terrible snare.

“The enemy had constructed on stakes in eight feet of water a barbed-wire entanglement along more than two miles of the beach.” Men ran their faces full tilt against the barbed wire’s fangs. They cursed and moaned. They hung on to the wire, but ducked every instant, for a scream of bullets was all around. Hundreds drowned. Hundreds were held like netted fish in the entangling wires. Many were lost in trying to get through that wire. But the attack went on. There was some space between the wire and the sea bottom. They crawled through! The enemy’s own shells smashed some of the wire. Bombing parties in battleship launches tore more sections open.

Men did get through. They lay gasping on the beach. But bullets came thicker. They rose. Officers tried to organize the torn forces. The bombardment from the forts was ceaseless. The English ships roared back with thundering fire. Machine gun fire and rifle fire from Turks, concealed in mounds of sand and the clefts of the cliffs, were tearing down the brave Australians—ever dauntless.

“The landing party was grotesque and wavering under the frightful storm. Shouts, yells, screams of pain, cries of alarm merged into a great clamor. The most heartening thing, somehow, in the darkness had become the Australian cry of ‘Coo-ee!’—sharp and musical, in which men had called themselves together into groups.

“There was no living on the beach. The only way out of that immediate hell was to charge across the sands and get into the shelter of the dunes, to fight our way to the base of the cliffs and get away from the shells of the cliffs, and to fight a way into the enemy trenches in the table-lands.”

Amidst the horror and confusion that reigned impossible deeds were performed. How it was ever done no one can tell. It was terrible. But it had to be done. Many of the English hadn’t a thing to fight with but the cold steel of their bayonets. The warships, of course, helped tremendously. The hills of sand and the stony cliffs were rent by merciless fire. You could see “the bodies of the enemies, clusters of them, spouting from the places of their concealment. Legs, arms, heads were flying wildly in the air.”

GOT THERE ANY OLD WAY

“We got up those sand ridges any old way—by digging in our bayonets like Alpine staffs, clawing with our free hands, scrambling with toe-holds and fighting up on all fours.

“We had just gained a knoll of sand and bush and taken protection behind it for a minute’s breathing when one of my men, one of those sturdy cattlemen who had made their way out of the wilderness to get into the war for civilization, went down with a bullet in his leg.

“‘Nothing much,’ he said, as I bent over him to examine the wound, ‘and don’t stop for me. Go on and come back for me later or maybe the Red Cross lads will find me. A little thing like this isn’t going to—’

“He was smiling as he talked, but suddenly his head fell back, his smile widening into a horrible grin. A bullet had taken him in the neck. He was done for.

“Of course, and luckily, there were only a few of our thousands that had been blown out of their boats and most of the lusty fighters of the landing force had their ammunition in hand. They were going after the Turks with the rifle volleys of deadly accuracy.

“Having come alive through the terrible ordeal of that shell and bullet strand of open beach, the Australians and New Zealanders were fired to the highest fighting pitch. Companies of them sang as they climbed and pushed and struggled along—sang or rather yelled snatches of all manner of songs though they didn’t sound much like songs. More like strange, sustained savage war cries.

SOME WOULDN’T “DIG IN”

At last the Turks began to give way. They were on the run. But their forts two and three miles away were still pouring their fire. The men were ordered to dig in. Despite orders, however, “hundreds of our warriors refused to stop. They charged right on through the pathways and tunnels in the cliffs. We never saw them again. Those that were not killed were captured by the Turks. We used to say in speaking of them afterward that they had ‘gone on to Constantinople.’”

The Australians had proved their mettle in this terrible adventure. Everlasting glory was theirs—soldiers so recently recruited. The soldiers, though, were not the only ones to be elevated to higher sacrifice in these soul-straining demands. “There was the work done by the Australian Army Service Corps—landing a steady procession of boats with medical and food supplies as well as ammunition, fleets on fleets of these boats from the transports and battleships moving to shore with the coolest regularity, with the waters around every one of them constantly thrashed by tons of falling shells. Scores of the boats were blown up. But the others never stopped.”

“The stretcher-bearers and the doctors we could also see working calmly among the sand dunes, ignoring snipers’ bullets as though they had been harmless flakes of snow. Slow and painful files of the wounded—those who could walk or stagger along were being guided to protected places until the coming of night might enable their removal to the hospital ships.

“As for the dead whose countless prone bodies were strewn upon the beach with curious pitiful inertness, so different from that of sleep that you know instinctively it means death—there was no use then risking live men to give the dead the attention, to award them such decencies of care and burial as were their due. This also would be the work of the night. Yes, and many a man as he worked over the graves of his fallen comrades pitched into that grave, himself become a dead man—betrayed to a sniper by the moonlight’s gleam.

The Australians had done the thing men in authority had thought it impossible to do. Lord Kitchener later declared this one of the most brilliant feats of bravery and soldiering of the war.

There were 20,000 men who landed at Gallipoli. Perhaps 1,000 of them are alive to-day.

THE KIND OF MEN THEY WERE

And here is a tribute to the men who stormed the heights that may be found in the London Times’ account of the campaign:

“The most moving part in the Gallipoli story will ever be the splendid feelings it called forth in the breasts of young Australians. To them it was no ordinary adventure in warfare. These single-minded, loyal youths had different conceptions of God. But every conception fitted into the sublime conception that this work for their race and country was God’s work. Upon the tissue of their natures, the warm affections, the cleanliness and the liberty among which they had been brought up, this fighting call in Gallipoli precipitated something that seemed to them the highest thing possible. What they knew was that they wished to go to Anzac, that they were prepared to die there, that the Australian army had become for them a sacred institution. Their hearts were touched by the death of comrades, their eyes took fire at the sight of the distinctive Australian uniform. Gallipoli proved, if it did not in itself go far to produce, a warmth and generosity in the Australian character. The difficulty experienced by the commanders was not to get men to this shell-torn place of hardship, but to keep them from it. Half the members of the Light Horse Brigades and all the drivers of artillery and ambulances had been left behind in Cairo or Alexandria, to attend to the horses. But it was impossible to keep them there. They decided amongst themselves who could be spared. Everyone wished to go, those chosen were thought lucky. They boarded transports at Alexandria, stowed away until the ships were at sea, and then reported themselves to the officers commanding. One artillery brigade lost 39 of its men in this manner. General Hamilton could never find it in his heart to send back men who came with tears in their eyes and asked for nothing better than to be given privates’ work in Anzac. There[Pg 40] were cases in which sergeants gladly forfeited stripes and pay for the chance. Men could not bear to go back to their homes and say they had not done their share at Anzac.”

UNORTHODOX BUT STANCH

“And of their discipline, which was attacked because it was sometimes unorthodox, what better can be said than what was told in the undying story of the Southland? The Southland was torpedoed by a German submarine in the Ægean Sea, when conveying the 21st Australian Infantry Battalion and part of the 23rd, 1,500 strong, from Alexandria to Mudros. They were Victorian country boys, recruited for the most part from the farms and stations of the Wimmera and the Goulburn Valley. Panic ensued among the ill-assorted crew of this converted German liner. Three of the four holds filled with water, the hatches of the hold first damaged were blown out and in the water there the Australians could see the dead bodies floating of their comrades killed by the explosion. No one thought that the ship could keep for long above water. But the soldiers stood at their stations. They waited for their turn. One went to the piano, and played favorite airs. Others, when volunteers were asked for, jumped into the water to right overturned boats. When at last all the men were off the stricken vessel, standing on half-submerged rafts, clinging to the edges of boats, swimming alongside improvised supports, volunteers were called for to stoke the ship into port, all the men within hearing offered for the hazardous task. Six officers and seventeen men climbed the rope ladders again, and with her bows under water and her stern low down, the ship was brought into Mudros and beached. It was a triumphant vindication of the discipline of Dominion troops. ‘The discipline was perfect,’ wrote Captain C. E. W. Bean, official reporter at Anzac. ‘The men turned out immediately. There had been boat drill on the voyage and the men ran straight to their proper places and lined up.’”

This praise of discipline which, though “unorthodox,” meets and never fails to meet the required end, reads quite as if it had been written of the boys of the United States’ expeditionary force.

A California Youth of Heroic Soul Who Gave His Life to England

We are constantly hearing of the hundreds of Americans who laid down their lives under the French colors. It was part of the debt we owed France. England, too, when she joined in the war for liberty, found many Americans hastening to her aid, and among the lives that were taken under her flag in the “great venture” was that of Harry Butters, a young Californian whose death in France called forth nation-wide eulogies in Great Britain.

Young Butters, after a preliminary education at San Francisco, went to England and entered Beaumont College at Windsor. There amid England’s rural charms and the spell of England’s old traditions, he learned to love the country which sheltered him.

At the outbreak of the war, Butters went back to America. He could not stay, however. There was a call to rise and to go. He went back to England and enlisted. It was as an officer of the British Army that he died.

“This American boy—and what a straight, upstanding pattern of youth and strength he was—owed us no duty and he gave us all. He gave it not impulsively nor in adventurous recklessness, but with a settled enthusiasm belonging to the ‘depth and not the tumult of the soul.’ How much he gave is worth considering. His personal endowments and opportunities were such that when he made up his mind to quit everything in his bright California and to come into the war, his choice was heroic in the fullest sense of that word.

“When he went back to America after leaving college, he was a young man of mark, framed to excel both in sport and affairs. He was very tall, supple, active, frank, and comely of face, as gay as he was good-looking. You saw by a glance at his hands that he had a born instinct for management and technique. He had been a good deal at sea. He knew all about horses and motor-cars. He was a crack shot and a fine polo-player. His business ability was shown as soon as he took over the management of his father’s estates. With this practical talent that could turn itself to anything he had other qualities. One remembers what a delightful, level, measuring glance he used to give suddenly from under his brows when he had finished rolling a cigarette and went on with his keen questioning about men and things. To talk with him was to receive a new and promising revelation of the mind of young America. Like so many of our own young soldiers in their attitude toward politics, he was not content with either of the old parties in the United States. He thought that his own generation, if it was earnest enough, might make a better hand both of social problems and world-relations. He hoped to play his part. Although he always thought of himself in a fine spirit as “an American citizen,” he wanted the United States to take a full share in the wider life of the world, and especially to work as far as possible for common ideals with the whole English-speaking race.

WARM HEARTED AND FEARLESS

“So when the news of the war came to San Francisco, he put aside as fair a prospect of wealth, success, happiness, and long life as could well open before a young man, and determined to throw in his lot with the old country and the Allies in the fight for civilization against all the armed might of lawless iniquity which had flung itself on Belgium.

“He was then twenty-two. He arrived in England in the early part of 1915 to join the British Army, and no military eye could doubt that the British Army had got a rare recruit. Harry Butters got his first commission in the 11th Royal Warwickshire Regiment. Afterward his technical faculty found more congenial scope when he transferred to the Royal Field Artillery. While training, he stayed a good deal at the rectory, Stow-on-the-Wold, Glos. The rector writes: ‘He was a warm-hearted, fearless young officer, as fine an American gentleman as ever crossed the Atlantic.’ It is much to say, but it is true.”

“His captain writes that, ‘He was with his guns, and no one could have died in a nobler way. He was one of the brightest, cheeriest boys I have ever known, and always the life and soul of the mess.... We all realized his nobility in coming to the help of another country entirely of his own free will, and understood what a big heart he had. He was loved by all.’

“He is in it to the finish, indeed, with comrades of his adoption, who have passed with him. He takes his last sleep out there with so many of the brave and true where none was braver and truer than he, and among the recollections of the great war, his name will not be forgotten. Beaumont will take care of that. In his old college we doubt not he will have his permanent memorial. In our thoughts the flags of Britain and America cover his heart with double honor. We shall never see them entwined again without thinking of him. No American can read these lines without being proud of him. No Briton can read them without feelings deeper, more moved than can be said in any words. We are grateful, as he would have liked, to his America that bred him.”

Mrs. Denis O’Sullivan, the widow of the famous Irish singer who was so eulogized by Mark Twain in his “Memoirs,” wrote to friends about the boy she affectionately called “stepson,” though there was no such tie between them:

“Do you remember in poor Synge’s ‘Riders to the Sea’—the old mother says that now her last son is drowned, she will be able to sleep o’ nights?

“The harrowing anxiety of every day in this time of war is over for me, too. On July 22, as you know, Gerard, my first stepson, was killed. And on August 31, at night, too, my last—Harry Butters—they were both as dear to me as my own—but Gerard had his own people here—he was not dependent[Pg 43] on me, while in a way, Harry had only me—his sister was six thousand miles away. I haven’t been able to say much of him these last months as he had been getting the carbon copies of my letters to you. Yet it was so often on the tip of my fingers to enlarge upon the boy—his charm, his capabilities.

“More still upon the drama of his last experiences—from the moment when he burst into Aldwych his first day in uniform, so big, so startlingly handsome—above all, so gay—a shout of ‘stepmother!’ that raised the dust in that crowded, smoky refuge where the hundreds of tired Belgians looked around in astonishment that anyone left in the world could be so fresh, so dazzling—through those months of his watch beside his guns or directing fire from his exposed shell-swept hillside—that awful moment when the enemy found the range and poured death down upon the shelter that was no shelter—when all the other officers within call took refuge there, fourteen in all, Harry, the youngest, but the one who dashed out under fire to carry what was left of one of his telephonists to the first-aid station—a poor mangled mass of humanity, still breathing and crying out, a deed that in a smaller war would have meant the Victoria Cross, but in this, only one of a thousand such daily—after it his sudden collapse from the shock—(‘No one knew it, stepmother! I managed to bluff it through!’) But his colonel had been through the same experience and backed the doctor up in sending him to the base for a few days.

“Then his June leave, luckily due anyway, brought him over to No. 7 where he could be petted and taken care of—but it was a quiet Harry—no less clear-eyed and vigorous, but so, so tired.

“Then Winston Churchill and Garvin trying to make him take three weeks’ extra leave, the boy’s refusal, his return to France, some weeks in the ammunition column, where, knowing him to be comparatively safe, I could carry an easier heart, then a hasty line: ‘Just going up to one of the batteries to replace a casualty. It’s too bad it comes while I’m in bad shape, but it can’t be helped, and it surely is what I’m here for, after all. Don’t worry any more than you can help.’

“That was August 22, only short notes after that, though he could find time to write,[Pg 44] ‘I’m going to try to get over to Gerard’s grave. If I can find some flowers I’ll decorate it for you.’

“His friend, Captain Zamora, to whom he’d given my address, could not have been with him at the last, for he had also had shell-shock and was with the ammunition column, but he wrote on the 1st of September that Harry had been with his guns the night before, when the call came, had gone in apparently the best of spirits—and the same shell killed him and his battery commander.

“It has been so beautiful this week. I’ve never seen a harvest-moon more wonderful. One can only think what a world it is—and Harry and Gerard both out of it.”

The First Canadian to Enlist Came Back with Scars of Twenty-two Wounds

Colonel Guthrie must have been born a fighter. Certainly ever since he was seventeen he showed the disposition of the warrior. His military career began with the outbreak of the South African War, when he proceeded to enlist in the Transvaal as a member of the famous Fourth Canadian Mounted Rifles. Guthrie made just one complaint about the campaign: “It ended too soon.” His adventurous spirit was not satisfied. He enlisted in the naval police. That, however, was not exactly what he wanted.

He returned to Canada in 1903. If civil pursuits were in order he would take them in the same spirit as an army campaign in the Transvaal. He studied law. When only twenty-seven he was elected a member of the legislature of New Brunswick. He was a success.

Perhaps he would have lived his life without further intensive physical experiences. The war saved him.

“It was August 4, 1914,” says the London Telegraph, “that fateful day upon which England declared war against Germany, closely following on the invasion of neutral Belgium. In a little theater up in the city of Fredericton, capital of the Province of New Brunswick, a large audience sat enjoying an interesting program. The second act had just ended. From the left wing of the stage walked the house-manager. A raised hand cut short the orchestra’s selection. Almost everybody knew what was coming. They had been expecting it for the last thirty hours. A silence fell over the entire house while nine words were pronounced by the house-manager:

“For a second—only a second—a lull fell over the audience. Then, as if prearranged, the orchestra struck up the strain of ‘God Save the King.’ From top to bottom the house was in uproar. Cheer after cheer rent the air. The audience as one stood singing the national anthem.

“Seated well up in front in the orchestra as the manager’s announcement was made was a man about forty-four years old. The audience, with the exception of this particular man, began to settle back in their chairs as the singing of ‘God Save the King’ was concluded. With a stride which was noticeably military he walked toward the rear of the theater and left the building. Less than two blocks away was a telegraph-office. The lone night operator, half dosing, jumped to his feet as the door opened, and the man who a few seconds ago had left the theater entered. He addressed a telegraph-blank to ‘Sir Sam Hughes, Canadian Minister of Militia,’ and then followed an offer to raise a company of soldiers for an overseas expedition.

HE RAISES A COMPANY

“‘Captain Percy Guthrie, Seventy-first York Infantry,’ the message which he handed the operator was signed. The first Canadian had volunteered his services to the King.

“Captain Guthrie returned at once to the theater, joined his wife, and witnessed the rest of the performance. The curtain came down, and with his wife, Captain Guthrie again headed to the telegraph-office. This time the operator was not thinking about sleep. He had just received a reply to Captain Guthrie’s telegram and was anxiously awaiting his return. The answer read: ‘Offer accepted. Proceed to recruit volunteers forthwith.’”

Guthrie raised his company and went to the front. He soon rose in rank, and at last was given command of a regiment of Scots.

Guthrie is said to possess almost a boyish exuberance of spirit, but of some things he will not jest. He will not even talk about them. Evidently the horror he has met with at the front has left a permanent impression. The following incident is told by a close friend of the Colonel’s, Charles K. Howard, representative of the Canadian Government Railway:

“On a night in the battle of Festubert the Tenth Canadians went over the trenches. The flares from the machine guns made the line as light as day. A piece of the German trenches was taken. The only injury that the Colonel at this portion of the scrap received were some tears in the legs from barbed wire entanglements, although he lost in three-quarters of an hour two-thirds of his battalion. The piece that was taken must be held until reinforcements came. These were a little slow in arriving. A captain held one end of the line while the Colonel, leading his men down the trenches, with his bombers cleared out another section. The German line began to give slowly. Step by step, they slid back around the traverses toward Givenchy. The Canadians gathered their strength and started to press forward. A brave Westphalian officer tried to hold his men and stem the tide. He stood up to his knees in mud, fighting until his last bomb was gone. The Colonel, at the head of his men, rushed upon the officer, who, weighing perhaps forty pounds less than the Colonel, was not daunted. He grasped the Colonel by both arms, holding him for a moment, and then, with the strength borne of despair, lifted him bodily into the air, holding him rigid so that he could not move.”

TAKES A MUD BATH

“The Canadians, dashing on behind, overbalanced the struggling pair, so that the Westphalian officer fell backward into the mud, with the Colonel on top. In the dark the Canadian soldiers did not know whether their leader had been killed or not. They did not take time to investigate. They rushed over the two struggling men, trampling them deeper and deeper into the mire of the trench. The Colonel found the throat of the German officer. The struggle was soon over, so that he could catch up to his men.”

During the attack on Ypres Guthrie resigned his position and asked to be sent to the Tenth. Of that engagement, Mr. Howard says:

“The Tenth had been badly battered in taking back from the woods four British guns that had been captured. The gallant Colonel Boyle, with seven machine-gun bullets in his body, had for two hours in the darkness of the night lain in a shell-hole surrounded by his men and in true Western style, with a revolver in each hand, had repelled repeated attacks. Then he was carried away to die, and Major MacLarinthe, second in command, leading the charge, was shot through the knee. After crawling forward with his men to a little clump of woods which he helped to capture he was shot through the head and killed. Major Ormand, too, fell wounded. Four officers of the thirty-one were left when it fell to the lot of Junior Lieutenant Guthrie, as he had become in order to go to the Tenth, to lead the battalion.

“During the succeeding days the fighting surged back and forth over Ypres’s hillsides, during which time the battalion suffered greatly from the gas-clouds that were let loose now and then.

“One time, when leading his men, the Colonel fell with a bayonet wound in the chin. On another occasion his nose was broken, but this did not put him out of action. He suffered from the concussion of a shell on another occasion and was knocked out for five hours. On another day he was put out of business by a gas-shell which exploded near him and he was dragged out of a ditch full of water by a British general, who forced[Pg 47] him to emit the gas by thrusting his fingers down his throat. A scar on the knee shows where the Colonel was punctured with a bayonet-point. His hand has been ripped open by a bayonet which he held while grappling with an assailant. The outcome of it was that the Canadians held the line at Ypres until reinforcements came.”

A Turk Whose Sense of Humor Made the Tommies His Friends at Gallipoli

War has its humor. Even though it appear arms locked with death, there is a laugh on the side. It is probably true, as an old soldier once said, that if there were not a funny side to war an army could never get through its hell. The British troops on the Gallipoli Peninsula did not find the situation teeming with the hilarious, but there were moments of relief from the grim monster of trench fighting. Oddly enough one of the provoking causes of much mirth, seasoned with a due amount of vexation, was a rotund Turk in whom a sense of humor and an impudent daring mingled in a way to win the regard of the Tommies fighting in the trench opposite him. He alternated between tossing a bunch of dates and hurling a bomb into the trench of the Tommies with whom he exchanged laughter daily. Some of the Australians detected in him reminders of an eccentric “publican” who dispensed beer at home. So the Turk was dubbed “Fatty” Burns, the sobriquet of the keeper of the “pub.”

A correspondent of the New York Globe tells the story as he got it from Trooper Clancy, one of the men in the trench opposite the merry Turk, at Russell’s Top, on Gallipoli, the two trenches being separated by less than twenty-five yards.

“One old topper in the trench opposite me was a fair treat,” said Clancy. “He was so. My word! Used to pop up his head above the trenches and laugh at us. Then he’d pop down again. All along our side the boys would be taking shots at him, and they never hit. Then we could hear him laugh. We got so we liked him.

“‘Don’t shoot at the old orphan,’ the boys would say. ‘He looks like “Fatty” Burns.’”

One morning the Light Horse had made a demonstration in order to keep the Turks from thinking of what was going on somewhere else. They were chased back to the trenches when they had done their part, but they left two men behind them. The sun was cruel hot, Clancy says. His rifle-barrel fair blistered his fingers. These poor chaps were lying there with their faces in the grizzling sand. The Australians could not reach them. It would have been suicide to try.

The Australians in stupefaction watched the old Turk. He had thrown aside his rifle and stood up at full length on the parapet of the trench. Anyone could have potted him at that range. Clancy doesn’t understand yet why no one did, except that they were all fond of the old blighter. “Fatty” Burns crawled into the open in a lazy sort of way and walked over to the two wounded men.

“Gave them a drink of water, he did,” said Clancy, “and wiped their lips and then lugged them over to a bit of cover so we could go out and get them after night came. We gave a cheer for old ‘Fatty’ and he laughed at us before he went back into his hole. My word! How his white teeth did shine.”

The Australians had more bully-beef than they needed. The cans got to be a nuisance. They were not permitted to refuse the stated allowance of bull each day. Until lately a British ration has been a fixed and immutable thing. One day it occurred to some one that “Fatty” Burns might like some meat. So they tossed three cans into his trench.

“There was a terrible hullaballo, when they landed,” said Clancy. “I suppose they thought[Pg 48] it was some new-fangled kind of bomb. But an hour or so later some Turk threw us a lot of fine, fresh dates. We always reckoned it was ‘Fatty’ Burns.”

Three or four days afterward “Fatty” Burns thrust head and shoulders above the trench-top again and laughed like sin. Then he threw something into Clancy’s trench.

“I just had time to get my overcoat down on it before it went off,” said he. “‘Fatty’ had scooped out the meat from one of our tins and filled it up with melinite and pieces of scrap-iron. It fair murdered my coat. I held it up above the parapet and shook it at ‘Fatty.’ He laughed until he choked.”

Though the Reports Are all Too Few Every Doctor Was a Hero

“If there be degrees of chivalry the highest award should be accorded to the medical profession,” was said in the London Times in 1916. People didn’t know whether that was meant quite seriously. Soon they found out. Medical men were figuring heavily in the casualty lists, and more and more stories were coming over of exceptional courage and devotion to duty among the doctors, nurses, and ambulance drivers. Usually, also, no one but the wounded on the fields of battle knew how to appreciate the deeds of the non-combatants. There was in general no thrill attached to the records. They were simply records of steady self-sacrifice in the face of the greatest danger.

The Times instanced a number of heroic doctors. Captain Chavasse was one of them. Utterly regardless of heavy firing he would time and again rush across the open to dress the wounded. He kept this up all through the engagement and then he himself was wounded in the side by a shell splinter. This injury he sustained while carrying an urgent case into safety, the journey being over 500 yards of shell-swept ground. Afterwards at night he took up a party of twenty volunteers, rescued three wounded men from a shell hole only twenty-five yards from the enemy trench, buried the bodies of two officers, and collected many identity discs—and these things he did although he was fired on by machine guns and bombs.

The Captain finally met his death while at such work. The official record gives only brief details: “Though severely wounded early in action, while carrying a wounded soldier to the dressing station, Chavasse refused to leave his post, and for two days he not only continued to perform his duties but also went out repeatedly under heavy fire to search for and attend the wounded who were lying out. During these searches Chavasse was practically without food, he was worn with fatigue and faint with his wound, yet he helped to carry in a number of badly wounded men, over heavy and difficult ground. It was due to his extraordinary energy and inspiring example that many wounded were rescued who would otherwise undoubtedly have succumbed to the bad weather conditions.”

“There had been many displays,” adds the London Times, “of almost superhuman courage and endurance in the war, displays which had been recognized by the bestowal of the greatest of all naval and military distinctions; but standing out prominently even amongst these proofs of highest bravery and duty was the heroism of Chavasse.”

It seemed almost as if such action became a tradition with the profession, for another hero was soon announced—Lieutenant George Allan Maling. During the heavy fighting near Fauquissart, Maling worked hard and incessantly under the unceasing shell fire. “He began his task at 6:15 in the morning, collecting and treating more than 300 men in the open and exposed to merciless fire. Throughout the whole of that day, during the evening, all through the night, without a break till eight o’clock next morning—twenty-six unbroken hours—he worked, reckless of shell and bullet. It seemed impossible that human strength could endure more. Eleven o’clock came, then a large high explosive shell burst and did dreadful havoc. It killed several of his patients, it wounded his only assistant, and it flung Maling down and temporarily stunned him. Yet no sooner did he regain consciousness than he pulled himself together and resumed his work. A second shell exploded, covering both Maling and his instruments with débris; yet even so, he had not finished—he extricated himself and continued his work single-handed.”

Captain Bobo and His Buddies Weren’t Good Enough for the Doctors

There is a reminder of the stone which the builders rejected in the story breezily told by Frank Ward O’Malley in the Red Cross Magazine for July, 1919. It records the heroism of Bobo—Captain Stephen N. Bobo, whose ancestors long ago undoubtedly spelled their name Beaubeaux. Steve was born in Memphis, Tennessee, and began early to react against southern ease. Anyway, as soon as he was graduated from college he made straight for Honduras. “Thence,” says O’Malley, “Steve went to Chile, where he started for Sidney on a trading schooner, but liked the little ship so well that he bought a controlling interest in her en route. At the Christmas Islands, Skipper Steve Bobo converted his schooner into a trader instanter—and made a little money on her. He was wrecked off Easter Island and, with five companions, had to swim seven miles to land. Skipper Bobo and four of his friends were compelled during that swim to help keep afloat betimes a sixth, whose swimming technique was poor.

“He returned to Chile aboard a passing convict ship. He made a short visit home, then was off to the interior of China, where he made a little money. In turn he went to India; to the Philippines; to Hawaii, where he bought swamp lands, parceled the property and sold it to the Chinese tara farmers, and made a little money on that; to the State of Washington on a hydro-electric venture and made a little money on that; to the San Joaquín Valley of California, and made a little money at ranching.”

Captain Bobo was resting up in April, 1917, and contemplating his next venture when [Pg 50]Uncle Sam decided that this world had not been made for Germany and advised the Kaiser of our intention to prove it. Bobo hurried to the first recruiting station. And then the San Francisco army doctors played their trick.

“THE JOLLY OLD RED CROSS”

“The way the army doctors talked to him made the young man wish ardently that instead of being a poor little anemic lad, who could do nothing but swim seven miles and sail schooners through typhoons and knock over tigers, he were one of those brawny athletes who had trained indoors on stenography, dress-goods salesmanship, and cigarettes and therefore were being uproariously welcomed into a selective service army by local draft boards.

“‘But,’ cried young Mr. Bobo in effect, ‘I’m telling the world fair that I want to go to France. And I want what I want when I want it. Now what other speedy way is there of getting to France besides the—Holy mackerel! I’ve got it! The jolly old Red Cross.’”

Bobo wondered, when he was going across, if the Red Cross would ever allow him to sneak close enough to the front “to get gassed or shot or something.”

When Bobo landed in France with the First Division he was assigned to the very humble task of serving soldiers with cocoa and sandwiches. He took up the task seriously, and did his work well, but then he got tired. Finally he got enough courage to suggest a plan to General O’Ryan.

The army doctors were constantly sending men back from the front line because of some physical defects. Steve Bobo wanted the General to give him permission to establish a “Divisional Rest Camp” and fill it with those “darn fine fellows” whom the surgeons were throwing out. “Most of those men,” he said, “are volunteers, and all of them are the best sort of fighters. Instead, then, of sending them back to the rear for reclassification, turn them over to me, sir, we’ll show you something.”

“That was done. Day by day into the Bobo ‘Divisional Rest Camp’ came the men, sad beyond measure because the surgeons had found something in their anatomical architecture which was slightly out of kilter. Daily Captain Bobo put his unpromising material through a series of setting-up exercises. Thus it was that in next to no time he had surrounded himself with a Red Cross unit of husky youngsters who, as Lieut. Colonel J. Leslie Kincaid, Judge-Advocate of the Division, since has phrased it, ‘preferred to live in that part of hell which has no fire escapes.’ By the time Captain Bobo had completed his organization he had forty-seven men in his Red Cross unit, with every man-jack in the outfit carrying papers to prove that the only reason he was not carrying a rifle was that an army surgeon had got the fool notion the man was not physically able to stand the gaff.

“Cried Captain Bobo, when all had been made ship-shape, ‘We’re set, men: Let’s up and at ’em.’ And forward went the fightingest band of Red Cross ‘invalids’ that ever slapped a German dead and then piled him into an ambulance to try to save his life. Up with the front line fighting men, the little Red Cross band found themselves in no time, and, on occasions, hundreds of yards in advance of the front line trenches, out in a sunlit No Man’s Land.”

KNEW HOW TO GET ’EM

Lieutenant-Colonel Kincaid remembers a little something about Bobo and “his Rough-necks” on a particular occasion.

“I merely want to say,” he remarked, “that in the middle of the Hindenburg show Captain Bobo said ‘Presto!’ and ten ambulances appeared from nowhere at a moment when, believe me, ambulances were needed.

“Colonel Montgomery, weeping for ambulances, thought of Captain Bobo. He gave the Red Cross man the high sign, and Captain Bobo just brushed aside a lot of flying metal and stepped close enough to Colonel Montgomery to ask the Colonel what was on his system. ‘Ambulances,’ shouted the Colonel, ‘but I don’t know where to get ’em.’ ‘I do,’ answered Captain Bobo. ‘If you’ll give me a fast car I’ll flush a whole covey of ambulances, sir.’

“Colonel Montgomery commandeered General O’Ryan’s racing car and Captain Bobo[Pg 51] climbed in. The Captain stepped on the accelerator and exploded toward Paris, a trip of 158 miles. And toward the middle of the next afternoon back came Bobo hellbent with ten ambulances in his wake. We were too busy then to ask him where he had got them, but when things had quieted down for a moment some days later we made inquiries. And we got this Bobo person’s number. Let me tell you in confidence—don’t repeat this to a soul, remember—this Bobo is an ambulance stealer. He and his gang were out and out Red Cross crooks. He had crashed into Paris, grabbed up every ambulance standing along a curb, bamboozled the drivers into believing that they were to take his orders, and had crashed out of Paris again at the head of his string of sputtering booty; and made straight for the front again at a time when I don’t know what we would have done if it hadn’t been for Captain Bobo and his ambulances.”

O’Malley takes up the story again: “Bobo and his associates had had no sleep for almost thirty-six hours.

“They were dirty, unshaven, haggard; nevertheless, they spent that night and all the next day picking up the white-faced, shattered boys who lay among the shell holes groaning with the thirst horrors which only those who have lost pints of blood know. Back to the ‘battalion aid post’ the lads were brought by Captain Bobo and his buddies, or variously to ‘first stations,’ which sometimes were within 200 yards of the front line trenches—to dressing stations, or to the main dressing station back at ‘railhead.’ And there the sufferers received attentions, which sometimes meant a merciful anesthetic and sometimes the grimy but gentle fingers of Captain Bobo on cold, white eyelids as he closed the staring eyes forever.”

Bobo and his daredevils became an institution with their division. Where danger lay, so long as there were wounded there, Bobo’s squad gloried.

“One day, the Captain and his Red Cross crew learned that if they wanted to get their ambulances out to where the wounded lay they would have to circle the toe of a wooded knoll over an open road on which rained machine gun bullets every time anything alive showed itself to the Huns concealed in the woods on the hill. But they wanted to get to the wounded.

“They started their engines and ‘stepped on ’em’ so hard that the little ambulances would bang out into the open and whiz around the marked turn joyously, while the phut-phut-phut-phut of the Hun machine guns whipped the atmosphere into ribbons and the splinters from the racing ambulances flew high in air. Then they had to come back around that open turn again, and they went out again and back, and out and back, their ambulances looking a bit worm-eaten when the day was over but the Captain and each of the other Red Cross drivers still ‘all in one piece.’”

PRETTY GOOD MEN TOO

O’Malley tells the story of two of the Captain’s drivers—Privates Freddy Schroeder and Leo Smith, both from New York City—who were engaged in their customary hilarious sport when word came to the little Red Cross band that a medical detachment was out beyond the hindside of No Man’s Land and that it had been marooned there for thirty hours without food or water. “Zipp went Red Cross rowdies Freddy and Leo in their tawney ambulances decorated with the big Red Cross—fairest of targets for a German gentleman. And this time when the drivers, their ambulances loaded with grub and water, came to an open stretch of road they got not only machine gun bullet storms but Hunnish high explosives. And as they were sailing along through the metal storm on a straight stretch of open highway, a German shell exploded just ahead of them, so close that they barely had time to come to a stop on the edge of the crater. They were about to reverse and back off to where they had come from when another shell bit the road just behind them and made another crater.

“There were Freddy Schroeder and Leo Smith on an ‘island platform’ of the road, with seemingly nothing left to do but to abandon their ambulances and crawl to safety the best they could. They didn’t do anything of the kind. Right out in the open they tugged at every sizable chunk of débris in sight and built a sort of bridge across the forward shell hole and went onward and brought welcome food and water to the marooned detachment. [Pg 53]And in their own good time they came back over their ‘bridge’ again, jumped out and built another ‘bridge’ of the same kind over the second shell hole, and about dusk, sailed victoriously to their Red Cross quarters unharmed.

“Finally there was another day that must be told of. It was the day at St. Souplet when two of the stricken residents of the little town crawled back to our lines and told the Mayor of Busigny (which had just been captured from the Huns) that many civilians, dozens of whom were wounded, were hiding in the cellars of St. Souplet. None of them dared show himself. The German patrols were still poking about the town and their machine guns were sweeping the village streets. Shells were dropping and death threatened the hidden ones in the cellars in other ways, especially in the form of gassing, the poisonous gas naturally tending to work downward to the cellars and other subterranean passages where the men, women, and children of St. Souplet lay hidden.

RESCUES A VILLAGE

“Somebody would have to do something about it. Who was always doing something or other about something? Battling Bobo and his Red Cross band!

“To dash into the streets of St. Souplet would not help much because the dash would end in a patter of lead and a bouquet of whiz-bangs that would leave nothing but a shell hole where ambulances an instant before had been. Nevertheless young Captain Bobo and his men ‘had’ to get there. The Captain called together his Red Cross band, which that day numbered only thirty-five huskies, the others being absent on other work or ill. Captain Bobo explained the situation and asked the thirty-five how many of them would care to volunteer to go into St. Souplet with him—to go up to our front line trenches in the broad light of day and beyond, on into the buildings of a town still thoroughly held by the Germans. Pause a moment, reader, and guess how many of the thirty-five Red Crossers volunteered.... Reader, you’re a wonder: you guessed the exact number the very first time!

“And so the thirty-five started forward with[Pg 54] Captain Bobo, scooting along in their ambulances parallel to the fighting lines for a little distance and then making a dash across lots to a grove which stood at an advanced spot where, up to that time, no American soldier had set his foot. And while an amazed American Army looked on, the little band made the woods and disappeared among the trees while hell cracked all around them.

“Providence and Steve Bobo were with them. In the heart of the little clump of trees they found an old road which ran through a ravine to the nearest back alleys of St. Souplet. When they had come to a place where the old road climbed out of the ravine preparatory to entering the town, Captain Bobo jumped off the leading ambulance, gave his followers the high sign, and again gathered them about him for final directions. And Bobo and his band left their ambulances in the protecting ravine and began to crawl on their bellies across the last of the fields and into the town.

“They followed by preference the backdoor route when they had wormed across the last field and straightened up to find themselves in St. Souplet. Even so it was necessary at times to make a dash for it across open streets, a dash that must be completed before the astonished German gentry at far ends of the streets could begin to pepper the thoroughfare with the machine gun bullets. Always, however, Battling Bobo and his band beat the bullets to it.

“In the black cellars of the village they rooted around. Old women lay huddled in the underground gloom; one of them, a very old lady, had been shot through both thighs three days before and, quite unattended, lay cowering in her cellar until Captain Bobo dragged her forth and carried her back to where his ambulances lay hidden. There were old men, little children, young girls for whom the horror of their nights of hiding in the Boche infested village had a terror greater even than gas and the shriek of shells. One by one Bobo and his men carried the sufferers into back yards, through the winding alleys, back of protecting buildings, and so to the wooded ravine, where the ambulances were filled with the stricken villagers of St. Souplet and the bundles of scant belongings which they hugged to their trembling bosoms. Then the[Pg 55] dash back through the grove and across the sunlit No Man’s Land to final safety—not final for the Red Cross band, for as soon as they had carried their first load of refugees behind the American lines they turned around and did it all over again, and again, and again. For four hours at one stretch they worked like beavers to save the villagers of St. Souplet, then organized a second series of trips and put in eight hours more darting to and from the town or squirming into its alleys and cellars. And Battling Bobo and his band got the villagers finally to safety without the loss of a Red Cross man, despite the fact that the ‘Jerries’ were systematically shelling the village from the first moment the Red Cross rescuers entered it until the last villager had been saved.”

There were forty-seven Red Cross men in Bobo’s band. To this day the Captain is trying to find out why only twenty of them were cited for exceptional heroism.

A Braw Hieland Laddie’s Impressions of What Happened When “We Were Over the Top Like a Lot of Dogs Let Loose”

The powerful British thrust along the Somme will take its place in history as one of the striking instances of sheer courage fighting against frightful odds and winning out. In that “push” there were hundreds of thrilling individual adventures, but it is impossible to give each man his due, so splendid was the concerted action. But a representative of the London Telegraph talked in a hospital with a Scotsman wounded at Pozieres, and this excerpt from the published article throws an illuminating gleam over the whole battle front, and one feels that Scotty was but the mouthpiece burring out the spirit of his fellows as they plunged forward:

“Eh, mon, it was hell, but it was grand. We’ve got a move on at last, and are paying the Huns out. For over a week our guns have been letting rip at them. Talk about the German guns in the early days of the war, they are not in it now. I was in the retreat from Mons, so I reckon I’ve seen some of the fighting.

“I got my packet Friday night,” he added, referring to his wounds. “We were pushed up to our front line trenches early Friday morning. Long before daybreak the guns were at it worse than ever. The noise fair drove some fellows daft, but the worst of all was waiting in the trenches for the order to charge. When that came we were over the top like a lot of dogs let loose. The ground was churned up for miles, and the front of the German trenches simply smashed to bits. We got there under cover of smoke, and fairly rolled in. I shall never forget the sight. The Germans were lying heaped up in all directions, and those who were alive showed no fight, but appeared to have gone ‘clean potty.’

“Further on we got into the supports, which had received a terrific smashing about, and it was there we had the scrap. At the last moment it seemed the Germans had rushed a crowd of chaps in, and they had hidden themselves in shell holes and were taking pot-shots at us. We rushed them with the bayonet and bombs, and some of them put up a good fight. I had one fellow in front of me, and felt myself a ‘goner,’ for I tumbled over some wire, when one of our chaps got his bayonet into him. The next second a German ‘outed’ my chum. ‘Never fear, Jock,’ he said, ‘you did the same trick for me once.’ That chap’s left a wife and six bairns away up north,” added the Scot.

Asked how he received his wounds, the Scot became somewhat bashful. “Oh, one of the Huns got in at me,” he replied. Another wounded hero, however, took up the narrative. “He fair tumbled into a hole where there was half a dozen of ’em hiding,” said the second man. “Jock comes of a fighting race, and he gave the Huns a bit for hiding.”

An Episode of the Gallipoli Campaign Typical of the Fighting

This account of a desperate engagement is brief, but it tells a wondrous story. It appeared in the London Times:

The first capture of a Turkish trench and its retention deserve special notice because this brilliant exploit fired the whole of Anzac, after fifteen weeks of monotonous trench fighting, for the great aggressive operations of August and September. The work was known as Northern Turkish Despair Trench, or Tasman Post, and it was stormed under severe fire on July 31, by a composite company of the 11th Battalion (West Australia) of General E. G. Sinclair-MacLagan’s Third Brigade, under Captain R. L. Leane. After two days a heavy counter-attack was launched by a battalion of Turks, who regained a section of the work, but were again driven out. The episode cost Anzac 300 casualties, but showed what could be done. Near the close of the series of attacks which this success began was another charge, the simple truth of which was worth accomplishing, even at the cost. It was the charge of the First and Third Light Horse Brigades, differing from the charge of the Light Brigade at Balaclava only in that it was made by horsemen who had volunteered to fight on foot, and that it succeeded in one object—that of holding large bodies of Turks who would otherwise have been used against the new British landing at Suvla Bay.

The Eighth and Tenth Regiments of the Third Brigade went out from Walker’s Ridge. It was a charge into death from the first moment, and before the men of the second line leaped from their trenches they shook hands, knowing that they could not survive. They were met by a fusillade that became a continuous roaring tempest of machine gun and rifle fire, and out of the 300 men in the first line only one returned. The Second Regiment of the First Brigade was sent out from Quinn’s Post, charging into so impossible a fire that the first line had to be left to its fate, and the second, third, and fourth lines held in the trenches. The First Regiment of the First Brigade charged up the slopes of Dead Man’s Ridge and found a similar fate. It was all over within ten minutes—in the case of the charge from Quinn’s Post within a few seconds. “The Turkish machine guns drew a line across that place which none could pass,” wrote Captain C. E. W. Bean, official observer with the Australian Division, “and the one man who went out and returned unwounded put his escape down to the fact that he noticed the point on our sandbags on which the machine gun bullets were hitting, and jumped clear over the stream of lead. The guns were sweeping low, and a man who was hit once by them was often hit again half a dozen times as he fell through the stream which caught him. The whole of the first line was either killed or wounded within a few seconds of their leap from our trenches.” But though the charges shattered four regiments of as good fighting men as the Empire possessed, they created an imperishable impression.

Approximately 23,709,000 males in the United States, between the ages of 18 and 45, inclusive, registered under the terms of the Selective Draft Law.

Returns on casualties in the American Expeditionary Force up to November 18, 1917, include deaths from disease as well as battle casualties, slightly as well as severely wounded. Deaths from battle alone would be about 36,000. Compared with the reported British battle deaths of 659,000 for the period of the war, our losses were astonishingly light.

He Found the Little Fellows to His Taste But Didn’t Care for Heavies

The general impression of the war tank is that of a huge juggernaut going, solemn and irresistible, over any sort of obstacle; but there seem to have been tank crews who did not regard the lumbering monsters worshipfully. They pinned their faith and devotion to the lighter and nimbler type of machine that could jaunt along at eight miles an hour and revolve on its own axis. The Scientific American had a special correspondent in France who reports somewhat jerkily the talk of an American tank-man who had a working acquaintance with the small, and to him decidedly preferable, type of fighter. The tank-man is quoted:

“Yes, you read a lot in newspapers about tanks. But no American tanks saw any action in France. There were three battalions of American tank troops that saw action; one with heavy tanks, with the British, and two, with light tanks, operating in the Argonne and the St. Mihiel actions. Some troops, too, if I do say it who shouldn’t! No, you’ll have to get some one else to talk about the heavy tanks; don’t know anything about them and don’t want to. Light tanks for me, every time. Yes, I’ll tell you about them if you are interested.

“We used Renault tanks—light ones. Whiffet tanks some people call them. Weigh about seven tons and have two men for a crew. Fast? Too fast; faster than there’s any use of them to be, really. That was one of our troubles, running away from our infantry. No sense in having tanks that can get out of touch with the men they are supposed to precede and blaze a trail for! Those little Renaults can go eight miles an hour over good ground, and infantry is lucky if it goes two!

“Two men, one of them is the engineer and the other the pilot. Some of the tanks have machine guns and some one-pounders; only one gun to a tank you know—those little fellows aren’t battleships. We started in with 216 tanks. They cost about $10,000 each. Motor not unlike a good automobile motor; four-cylinder, about 40 horsepower. Indeed the tank has a lot of automobile mechanism about it. Those Renaults have four speeds forward and reverse.

GRENADES JUST EGGS

“You spin around in your own length. It’s astonishing how fast those little tanks can turn when they have to. Fast enough to cut a man in two if he’s in the way. Yes, it happened more than once. Some Boches had an idea they could do something to a Renault with a hand grenade and tried it at close quarters. Might just as well have thrown eggs at us, unless some splinters got in the slits. And if they were close enough and we whirled her round they were out of luck sure—broken legs, you know, or mashed ribs.

“No, the Boche anti-tank gun never hurt us to amount to anything. Ever see one? It weighs about 50 pounds and shoots a whale of a bullet, but unless it strikes sharp at right angles it doesn’t go through. Pretty hard steel, you know, that tank armor. What did stop us, when we were stopped, was the 77. Even that took a direct hit. A 77 could go off right beside us and we’d hardly know it. But if it made a direct hit—well, you don’t expect to run a war without any casualties, of course. I recall one case where a 77 made a hit and set off all the ammunition in the tank. The tank was scrap steel and the men—well, we found a hand, and a shoe. Just literally blown to nothing.

“Of course there are places a tank can’t go. You read a lot about how a tank loves mud. Don’t you believe it. A tank can slither around in mud just like an automobile. Of course it can go, but it can’t climb at the same angle on mud as on dry ground and somehow we always did fight in the mud. Mud didn’t stop us of course, but it made it more difficult. On dry ground we can climb 45 degrees, and 51 degrees in reverse.

“You hear a lot about the way a tank can crawl over trenches. But that’s the big heavy tank. The little fellow can’t run over a trench the way it can down and up a shell crater. The Renault is tail heavy, you see. It gets its nose across a trench all right, but if the trench is a little too wide the heavy tail drops back into it. Then you have to get out and dig or get another tank to come and pull you out. That’s why two tanks together are worth four separately. They can jam themselves up and still get along by doing the brother act with chains. Once that I know of a tank got stuck and the second tank couldn’t pull it out. So the officer outside signals another tank and it comes up—all this under fire, mind—and he hooks that on, too, and the two of them pull the helpless one up and over. He got the D. S. C. for it, that officer.

“It’s not nice when you’re stalled, you know. As long as you can move around, the 77 has a hard time getting you. But if you get stuck somewhere it doesn’t take a Boche gunner so very long to get your range. That’s why we were so anxious to have self-starters put on the American tanks, when we thought we were going to have American tanks. If there had been any self-starters on our Renaults we’d probably be shy about twenty casualties. Engine stalls, Boche gets busy, chap inside struggles with a crank, takes time, 77 lands, signal back for a reserve tank to come on into action. No, they didn’t put the self-starters on. Don’t ask me why; I don’t know.

TOO MUCH INGENUITY

“Sure, the American tanks were good tanks. We never used them in action that I know of. Those I saw got to France, or got where they might have been used, after the Armistice. But they were sure American all over—too much American, if you know what I mean. It’s a national failing, I guess, this business of being ingenious. There was so much ingenuity about those tanks there wasn’t always room for the crew. For instance, machine gun belts. When you use them, they are rolled up and in a carrier. Some wise tank builder[Pg 60] decided all the ammunition in a machine gun tank ought to be in carriers, rolled up ready for use. When he got through, there wasn’t any room inside for the crew! No sense to it, of course; the same amount of ammunition stores flat, and leaves plenty of room, and it only takes a few seconds to roll up a belt and put it in a carrier.

“Then there was the compass. Some one must have read that British tanks carried compasses. So they did, until the tank crew could throw it away. So our American tanks came over with the handsomest compasses inside you ever saw; regular ship affairs, gimbals and all! Now, of course, that’s all foolishness. In the first place there wasn’t room for the compass and the crew. In the second place, when you start the engine, the compass does a fox trot, and keeps on whirling; it’s no good as a compass. And if it was, there wouldn’t be any sense in it; there’s a map stuck up right under your nose and that’s all you need, not to mention a few officers with flags telling you where to go, if they are not sitting on top going with you.

“Then there was the speedometer. Why any one should imagine a tank crew needed a speedometer I don’t know. But there it was, ready to tell us just how fast we were going. Maybe they thought, down in Washington, we were going to establish a tank speed record or something.

“And the hook—I mustn’t forget the hook. It’s so typically American—a device born of our national tendency to economise time. To put a hook in at the top of the tank meant at least two hours’ work. In 100 tanks that was 200 hours or 24 working days, slowing up production. The idea of the hook was that it would be so convenient when a crane had to lift the tank. Now the average tank gets lifted by a crane just four or six times; on a car at the factory, off the car, on the ship, off the ship, and maybe on and off a car again. So to save the six or twelve minutes it would take a crew to slip a chain around the tanks, they put a hook at the top, because it was efficient!

“Oh, well, I oughtn’t to grouch. We never used the tanks. And no one that I know minds much. Those Renault tanks were little dandies. You have no idea how easily they run. You can crawl over a telegraph pole [Pg 62]and hardly feel it, so well worked out has been the spring suspension, the relation of rollers, chariots and treads. And they didn’t go in for any fancy touches, the Renaults. No armor for the guns nor fancy locks on the door to keep some one from crawling up and throwing a grenade inside, nor deflection armor at odd angles which never did anything but stop bullets and make splinters that otherwise would never have endangered any one’s eyes.

SNIFFS AT HUN TANKS

“German tanks? Punk. Too slow, mechanism too exposed, too many slits. Oh, very well made, but poor design. Nor do I think very much of German tank men.

“We had about 44 per cent. casualties, and that covers 22 actions. Ten per cent. of the casualties were deaths. But I don’t recall many men dying without doing something first.

“I recall that there was one tank got stuck in a trench and nothing handy to rescue it. Captured, of course. Well, we captured it back two days later. Every round of ammunition was fired. Every pistol cartridge had been fired. And both men had been wounded long before they were killed; there was plain evidence of it in blood where no blood would be if they had just been snuffed out right at first. They must have put up a beautiful scrap. Americans don’t like to surrender, somehow.”

“To Be Ready Ever to Fight for the Cause They Think is Right”

Italy at war without a Garibaldi somewhere in the fighting columns is unthinkable. Even before the days of the famous Liberator, Giuseppe himself, there were Garibaldi who had arms and hearts ready to strike for freedom; but since the days when the great patriot and lover of liberty made romance as well as history out of his revolutionary spirit, arms and the defense of freedom are tenets of religion with the Garibaldi. With the exception of the Russian-Japanese War, it is said there has been no conflict of powers or revolutionary struggle without its Garibaldi bearing gun or sword. It goes sans dire, then, that the outbreak of war which arrayed western democracy against the encroachments of German autocracy was like a clarion call to the blood of the Garibaldi. They did not wait for Italy to speak—France was calling and that sufficed.

The son of the Great Garibaldi wrote letters to five of his seven sons scattered about the world. Two of them were in New York (Giuseppe, named for his grandfather, and Ricciotti, on his way to South America), one (Merotti) was in China, and one (Bruno) was in Cuba, and one (Sante) was in Upper Egypt. The two youngest, Costante and Ezio, were pursuing their studies in Italy. There was a sister, Italia, in Rio de Janeiro, who devoted herself to Red Cross organization. In the letters the sons were told to hold themselves in readiness for the receipt of a telegram appointing a rendezvous for which they were to start at once.

The cablegram came; the rendezvous was Paris. Giuseppe and Ricciotti sailed from New York by the next available steamer. They found Costante and Ezio awaiting them. Bruno and Sante arrived a few days later. But Merotti could not come from China until several months later, when Italy had entered the war. Other Italians were there also to tender their services to France and they organized an Italian Legion that was incorporated with that famous multiple battalion, the Foreign Legion. The Italians were soldiers of fortune all, and the brothers had hoped to be sent to the Balkans, Giuseppe frankly confessing that guerrilla warfare was his preference. But Ezio, who was sent to drive a camion at Salonika, was the only Garibaldi who got to the Balkans.

The Foreign Legion, as everyone knows, [Pg 64]was made up of all sorts of adventurers, many of whom knew the meaning of grated windows and ankle chains, but “it isn’t where you come from in the battle-line but what you do that counts.” The world pretty well understands what the Foreign Legion did and how it was honored by grateful France. Elsewhere is told how they were given the place of honor in the attack on the Prussian Guard which they drove back, but with a loss that wrecked them as a legion.

In a talk with Lewis R. Freeman, published in The World’s Work, Giuseppe Garibaldi is quoted as saying:

“I don’t recall anything that was actually said between us on the subject, but it seemed to be generally understood among us brothers that the shedding of some Garibaldi blood—or, better still, the sacrificing of a Garibaldi life—would be calculated to throw a great, perhaps a decisive, weight into the wavering balance in Italy, where a growing sympathy for the cause of the Allies only needed a touch to quicken it to action. Indeed, I am under the impression that my father said something to that effect to the two younger boys before he sent them on to France. At any rate, all three of the youngsters behaved exactly as though their only object in life was to get in the way of German bullets. Well—Bruno got his in the last week in December, ten or twelve days ahead of Costante, who fell on the 5th of January. Ezio—the youngest of the three fire-eaters—though through no fault of his own, had to wait and take his bullet from the Austrians on our own front.

“The attack in which Bruno fell was one of the finest things I have ever seen. General Gouraud sent for me in person to explain why a certain system of trenches, which we were ordered to attack, must be taken and held, no matter what the price. We mustered for mass at midnight—it was Christmas, or the day after, I believe—and the memory of that icicle-framed altar in the ruined, roofless church, with the flickering candles throwing just light enough to silhouette the tall form of Gouraud, who stood in front of me, will never fade from my mind.

“We went over the parapet before daybreak, and it was in the first light of the cold winter dawn that I saw Bruno—plainly hit—straighten up from his running crouch and topple into the first of the German trenches, across which the leading wave of our attack was sweeping. He was up before I could reach him, however (I don’t think he ever looked to see where he was hit), and I saw him clamber up the other side, and, running without a hitch or stagger, lead his men in pursuit of the fleeing enemy. I never saw him alive again.

“They found his body, with six bullet wounds upon it, lying where the gust from a machine gun had caught him as he tried to climb out and lead his men on beyond the last of the trenches we had been ordered to take and hold. He had charged into the trench, thrown out the enemy, and made—for whatever it was worth—the first sacrifice of his own generation of Garibaldi. We sent his body to my father and mother in Rome, where, as you will remember, his funeral was made the occasion of the most remarkable patriotic demonstration Italy has known in recent years. From that moment the participation of our country in the war became only a matter of time. Costante’s death a few days later only gave added impulse to the wave of popular feeling which was soon to align Italy where[Pg 65] she belonged in the forefront of the fight for the freedom of Europe.”

After Italy came into the war, Giuseppe Garibaldi fought with his own countrymen, having the name of Colonel with those soldiers whose Herculean feats in the Alps made one of the most striking chapters in the war’s history of unprecedented achievements.

A Story of the Trenches by One Who Knew Them at Their Worst

He has a very illusory view of life who knows only its sunny phases; and his is worse than a deceptive impression of war—especially the monstrous war of 1914-18—who has vision only of its valorous deeds and heroisms, its thrilling tales of daring and achievement, of splendid adventure and fearless sacrifices.

Here is a revelation of the side of war seldom more than glanced at by those who tell of the moving exploits. It wears none of the trappings of romance; it is without allure; but it is terribly true. The New York Times History of the War made certain of that before publishing what it rightly described as one of the most thrilling human documents produced during that awful four years. The grim record of the young soldier’s experience is necessarily curtailed here, enough being given, however, to picture the grisly reality of war as millions of youths encountered it. It is not the stirring tale of a hero.

Roméo Houle, French parentage, was born in New Bedford, Mass., in 1893. He was the son of a local barber, Zacharie Houle. In 1912 he removed to Montreal, where he was employed as a barber, having followed his father’s calling. He had a grammar school education. He enlisted in the Sixty-first Regiment, First Canadian Division, Aug. 1, 1914, eager to serve in the war. He went with the Division to France, and was soon in the front trenches. During his service he made notes of his experiences. With the assistance of the editor of a French paper in New Haven, these notes were put into narrative form after young Houle, through the efforts of his father, was discharged from the army in 1916.

The narrative begins: “The true story of the trenches has never been told. I know, because for many months I lived in trenches. I have slept daily in dread of bullet, shrapnel, mine and deadly gas; and nightly in fear of mine and gas—and the man-eating rats. I am one of the few soldiers living who entered the front trenches at the opening of the war and lived to fight the Germans in the front trenches in February, 1916. Of my original company (the Fourth of the Fourteenth Battalion, Third Brigade, First Canadian Division) which so gayly marched away to that hell at Laventie and Ypres—500 brave boys—I am one of the sixteen who survived. And returning unexpectedly, snatched by the American Government (as an American citizen who had enlisted under age) out of the very jaws of death, with the mud of the trenches still upon my clothing, I discovered how much American people have been talking of the trenches and how little, after all, they know about them.”

AGONIES OF BODY AND MIND

And during that trench existence, there was, he thinks, no conceivable agony of body or mind which he did not see and experience. There was the gas—“a crawling yellow cloud that pours in upon you, that gets you by the throat, and shakes you as a huge mastiff might shake a kitten, and leaves you burning in every nerve and vein of your body with pain unthinkable, your eyes starting from their sockets, your face turned yellow green.” There were the rats—“I see them still, slinking from new meals on corpses, from Belgium to the Swiss Alps. Rats, rats, rats, tens of thousands of them, crunching between battle lines while the rapid fire guns mow the trench edge, crunching their hellish feasts. Full fed, slipping and sliding down into the wet trenches they swarm at night—and more than one poor wretch has had his face eaten off by them attacking him in his sleep.”

There was the stink from decaying bodies, the filth of days and weeks of unmarked accumulation. “Ah! you would say ‘Roméo, Houle, you are lying’ were I to tell you some unbelievable things that I have really lived through. We go mad over there. My God! I am sick of adventure, for the adventures I have had will plague my sleep until I die.”

His first acquaintance with the trench under fire was at Richebourg. “There Charles Lapointe, the first of our company to die, looked over the edge of the trench. That is death. Machine guns all the day sweep the trench edges. If you raise your hand your fingers will be cut off as by a knife. Well, Lapointe looked over the trench; and nobody knows what he saw. His brother was there to lay him down. He buried him (as we ever must the dead) in a hollow pit in our trench. And the brother had for a time the agony of having to fight and feel the earth over Charley’s breast give under his feet.”

He fought in the first line again at Laventie, and there got his first taste of gas. It came while he was trying for a little rest after a turn at guard duty. Some one having stolen the two empty sandbags he had been using for bedding, he spread his overcoat on the ground and pulled a blanket over him. “The sun meantime was shining hotly on the heaps of dead bodies which lay not far outside the trench, and I was glad to cover my head with the blanket to shut out some of the awful stink. And that is how the smell of decaying bodies saved my life. Arthur Robillard, a car conductor back in Montreal, was on guard duty. I was roused by his falling over me. As I sat up something got me by the throat and I began to strangle for my life. The air was rent with awful cries. Many of my comrades lay dying and dead about me. I hurled myself in semi-madness into a huge crater near by in which there was a little water, and I fell in it face down.

BLOWN FROM THE TRENCH

“The water relieved me a little and I wet my handkerchief in it and covered my face.[Pg 67] I crawled out and half blindly sought my chum, who was unconscious, and dragged him to the crater where the water was. I laid him there face downward, and he, too, revived a little, and then we lay waiting for death.”

Ten minutes later there was a shouting that announced the approach of the Germans on a charge. Houle, followed by Robillard, ran back into the trench, got his gun and began firing. When the rifle became so hot that it burned his hands he threw it down and began hurling bombs. They were ordered to retreat to the next trench and the Germans began pouring into the vacated one. Houle and his fellows got hold of two machine guns, good for from 560 to 700 shots a minute.

“I shall never forget those Germans. When our guns suddenly spoke their front line melted; their second crumpled before this destruction; but on, on, on they came, unflinching, marching with even steps into certain death. We were like lions at bay. It was our lives or the Germans’. Then, as fourteen of us fought together, a bomb dropped amid us, and killed eleven. I came to consciousness, lying in the bottom of a trench, with Roy leaning over me.

“‘Are you living yet, Roméo!’ he exclaimed in amazement. I rose dizzily. He and I and one other stood alone among our eleven dead friends.

“Then Roy told me that I had been blown clear of the trench, twenty feet from where I stood, and that he had braved death to secure, as he supposed, my dead body. A careful examination showed that my only injury was a terrible bruise on the calf of my leg, where the round surface of a flying shard had struck me, but without breaking the skin. Miracles are but small matters when you fight in the presence of death.

“‘I’m not afraid now,’ I told Roy. And from then on I and all my soldier friends believed my life was charmed and that the Germans could not kill me.”

The defenders were driven back to the fourth trench which they were almost immediately ordered to leave, which they did with all speed as it had been mined by the engineers and was ready to give the Germans a warm reception as they came surging in. Houle describes the explosion. “The whole earth seemed to leap skyward, and through and through the black mountain of earth and stones shot heads and arms and legs, torn fragments of what were once heroic men. Next to the gas which they gave us, I think our blowing them up was surely the worst thing men could do to men.”

He describes mining operations, which are a big part of trench warfare, as one of the most dismaying features of trench life. Apparently the mines were more feared than anything else. “It was more terrible than gas poisoning to think that at any moment you would be thrown a thousand ways at once.... The soldier in the trench never knows when he may be blown into small pieces,—and that is why we are always prepared to risk uncertain dangers between the lines at night, instead of lying down in the wet trench hopelessly waiting for death.

FELT SAFEST WHEN ON GUARD

“I never felt so secure, indeed, as when I was on guard between the trenches. Through all the night I could hear the bullets go over me. Men go crazy there. And the insane are sent to England. Sometimes men go mad and become a menace to their own comrades and officers. They sometimes have to be killed. And there have been times when I crouched in some first line trench, where no communication trench joined us to the second or third line, where no doctor could reach us. And I have seen men so terribly wounded, enduring such agonies, and screaming so heart-breakingly for somebody to kill them, that our boys have done what they asked, to save them the unnecessary horror of living dismembered. And I have seen men of good health grow so weary of the trenches that they have simply stood up at noonday. Some machine guns swiftly ended them. And others, as I have written, simply stick their hands above the trench top and bullets trim off their fingers.”

Fingerless hands are unprofitable in the trenches, and not very useful elsewhere in the activities of war. Getting rid of one’s fingers is a comparatively cheap exchange for release from the dangers and maddening anguish of long periods in the trenches. Houle did not think these men were cowards. “But only men who have lived in the trenches can understand.” Though he makes no claim to[Pg 68] heroism for himself, Houle’s record shows that he was a resolute soldier doing valiant things that he sets down in his story quite as matters of routine experience—such as going out under fire to bring in the wounded.

He names Ypres the “graveyard of the old Sixty-first.” They were carried to within six miles of the place in London buses, twenty-five men to a bus. The remaining distance they tramped. At Ypres they first met “the gallant French troops,” and his company of French-Canadians being at the left of the English line acted as interpreters. Here the trenches were but forty yards from the Germans and in bad condition; they were raked terribly by German machine guns on a height. There were dead bodies of Germans and French lying between that had been there three months, neither side having the chance to bury its dead. These were to be seen through the periscopes—but one did not need to see to know they were there. The Battle of Ypres was one of the greatest of the war, one of the most desperate, one of the most deadly in human toll, but out of it all comes the memory of the gas attacks to which the men were then so helplessly exposed.

“There comes a sudden stinging in your nose. Your eyes water. You breathe fire. You suffocate. You burn alive. There are razors and needles in your throat. It is as if you drank boiling hot tea. Your lungs flame. You want to tear your body. You become half wild. Your head aches beyond description. You vomit, you drop exhausted, you die. It is a frightful thing to see your friends like that. Every other man seemed to fall. As I fought I marveled that I was spared. Again and again came to me the belief that my life was charmed. An ecstatic confidence bore me up. I was brave because I was so sure of life, while all my companions seemed groveling in death.”

They left the trench for a charge, under a withering fire, but they pressed forward, and came to the enemy’s trench and leaped in. He saw four Germans trying to escape on the further side. “I did not fire, intending to make them prisoners. But the only thing I took was a great blow on the side of my head, and away went my prisoners.” That night he was one of twenty of his comrades who volunteered to attempt the recovery of [Pg 69]four field guns the English had lost. They joined men from the Tenth and Sixteenth Battalions. They were to storm the wood where the guns were. There were forty yards of open ground to traverse. The Germans worked havoc among them, but the remnant made the wood. In the darkness it was almost impossible to distinguish foe from friend.

“I ran in and out among the trees and asked every one I met who he was. I came upon one big fellow. My mouth opened to ask him who he was, when his fist shot out and took me between the eyes. I went down for the count, but I knew who he was—he was a German. I got up as quickly as I could, you may be sure, and swung my rifle to hit him in the head, but the stock struck a tree and splintered. I thought I had broken all my fingers.

“I found three wounded men, French, I thought they were, in that gloom. So I carried them into our trench. As I brought in the last one, the officer said, ‘You are doing good work, Houle.’ I asked him why he thought so, and he answered: ‘You have brought in three wounded men and when we put the light on them we found they were Germans.’ Well, I am glad I saved them. I would have done so anyhow, had I known their nationality. For we were all trained to give a wounded man help, whether he were friend or foe.

NOT SAFE TO HELP THE HUN

“Yet it is dangerous work, helping a wounded German. I never helped another, after the experience I had. It was one of the two occasions when I knew with certainty that I killed a man. He was a wounded German soldier. We found him suffering and weak. But we knew we could save his life and were dressing his wound. My back was turned. He took a revolver out of his tunic pocket and fired pointblank at me.

“I do not know how I escaped death. Perhaps it was because his hand shook from weakness; perhaps my guardian saint turned aside that death bullet. Anyhow, he had his revolver in his hand. We had to act quickly. My officer spoke a quick word, and I made sure that he would never fire another shot.

“Well, we got our machine guns. But the[Pg 70] Germans had blown them up, and all our sacrifice of men was in vain.”

The Battle of Ypres was a twenty-one day affair, and the toll exacted was appalling. Of the 500 boys of Houle’s company who left Canada only 20 survived. Then came other engagements until in May, 1915, he was again in Richebourg, and the next day an assault was made on the German first line trenches. The first two lines of trenches were taken without difficulty, but there was a counter attack at the third and out of Houle’s company (now reinforced to 365 men) 75 were killed, 100 wounded and 20 taken prisoners.

“We were obliged to leave our wounded in the trench with the dead. I lay until night in the German second line trench among the dead and wounded,” for of course there were no communications and no means of getting medical help for the men “writhing in agony all around us.” At night Highlanders from the 13th and 14th Battalions came to the relief. Three days later there was an attack at a point near Lacouture, where the Germans were entrenched in a hilly vantage. The French Canadians had been reinforced again, this time to 420. The Scots Grays and the Cold Stream Guards engaged in the assault. The artillery cleared the way for the charge. “On the third tussle we got into the German trenches. It was a close fight. We used even our fists. My bayonet was broken, and I used my gun as a club. There we remained until we got reinforcements. Out of 420 men my company was reduced to eighty. No, I could not be killed.”

Then the French Canadians fought at Cuinchy and at La Basse—repetitions of the same story. He had fought in the front lines from almost the very opening of the war, “until all the bed I knew was wet earth, and all the rest I knew was snatches of sleep obtained during lulls in the roaring tumult. And long since I had had my fill of the fighting.”

Then Jan. 10, 1916, he was summoned to headquarters to receive his discharge. He frankly rejoiced in the fact that he was free, free from the trenches, their fevers, their wounded and dead, their noxious odors, their deadly gases, their man-eating rats; free to go home to relatives and friends neither maimed nor wounded. Not that he had gone[Pg 71] unscathed. There was a dent in his skull made by a spent bullet, and a very bad bruise on the leg made by a piece of shell, but these were trifles.

NO WORDS TO DESCRIBE IT

“I take no credit for any special courage in the field. If I was brave it was because I had to be so. We were all brave who kept our senses. We became accustomed to a large degree to the incessant intimacy with dangers and death. We could look at frightful things without wincing.”

He knows no word with which to describe war as he saw it. Hell is far too weak a word. “It is more horrible than the slaughter house, because the forms of death planned are more cruel, more mad, more devilish. We fight underground and under sea. We fight with fire, with steel, with lead, with poison, with burning oil, with gases. We are lower than the brutes, lower than the most degraded forms of life.... I am only Roméo Houle, a barber. But I have lived—God! I have lived. All the slaughter of heroes by the Meuse and on the Belgian border and in Northern France has passed before my eyes. And I, Roméo Houle, am forced to write this: ‘We cannot make ourselves better nor the world more worth while by killing each other like beasts gone mad.... I hope never to fight again.’”

And here is a final reflection of the soldier who confesses “I do not know why we fought.”

“No Archduke’s little life was worth the titanic butchery of the world war. The beginning was petty and small. And I, looking back at horror, horror, horror, cannot forget the extraordinary friendships we made with the men in the enemy’s trenches. We were both only human beings, after all, Fritz and I. We had no wish to kill each other. We had much rather sit at the same table, with our wives and children around us, and talk of gardens, of fair pictures, and of great books. But for our officers and the nations which they represented peace would have been declared right there in the trenches—and that by the soldiers themselves.”

And Faith, Never a Dumas Hero was a Marker to This Sergeant of the Irish Guards

He got the habit and trick of it early they say. He played outside the home cottage in Macroom, about forty miles from the city of Cork, charging imaginary foes, stick in hand, with so much vigor that the plump hens scuttled to cover. His mother at the door of the cottage demanded,

Twenty years later the same mother stood outside the same cottage door in Macroom listening to the almost unbelievable story of a messenger who had dashed from Cork city by motor-car. Her son—her Mike—had won the great war medal. She heard how the world was ringing with the immortal exploit of Sergeant Michael O’Leary, V.C. Poems were being written about him. He had received an ovation in London such as kings might envy. And all this was no more than the brave Irish Guardsman deserved, for with his unaided strong right arm he captured an enemy position, and of ten Germans who stood in his path he killed eight and took the remaining two prisoners....

O’Leary was sent to the front in November, 1914. Mr. Leask has told the story.

All around the La Bassée district fierce fighting had raged since October. The 1st Battalion of the Irish Guards, in common with other regiments, now experienced the severities of trench warfare. At the end of January they were stationed near the La Bassée brickfield, and the Germans were subjecting them to a withering fire.

The last night of January the enemy’s fire was particularly hot. It was decided that the trenches were too expensive to hold. But before evacuating them the men were ordered to storm the enemy’s position.

In order to prepare the way for the assault, the artillery commenced one of the fiercest bombardments of the war up till then. The boom of the big pieces and the detonation of their shells were audible twenty miles away. The guns fired with such intensity in order to demolish what had become a regular bastion in the German lines, also to break down the barbed wire entanglements in front of the German trenches, and thoroughly to demoralize the enemy before the men stormed the positions.

No. 2 Company of the Irish Guards was ordered to keep up a hot rifle fire. This was to make the Germans keep under cover, no matter how much they wished to escape from the artillery. The diversion also caused the enemy to expect an attack from this direction, with the result that he concentrated his fire on the trench occupied by No. 2 Company.

Then No. 1, O’Leary’s Company, which was on the left of No. 2 Company’s trench, was ordered to charge. The Irish dashed over the parapet with a yell, their bayonets fixed, and rushed at the enemy in fine style. The distance they had to cover to reach the German positions was from 100 to 150 yards. The men were very eager to be at the enemy after their long spell in the trenches, and went for their foe at racing speed.

O’Leary soon outstripped his comrades. His Irish blood was up. “You would laugh if you saw us chasing the Huns and mowing them down,” he wrote to his parents.

CHARGE OF THE “MAD IRISHMAN”

He rushed on like one possessed, never looking behind to see if his comrades were following. A railway bank rose in front of him. He cleared it, and went on, heedless of risks, toward a strong barricade held by the Germans.

O’Leary paused at a little mound and looked around. In front of him was a deadly machine gun, trained on the trench occupied by the second company of Irish Guards. As already explained, their work was to deceive the enemy and the maneuver had proved successful. Their rifle fire had prevented the Germans from showing their faces, and they had not seen that the British were racing toward them.

When O’Leary reached the mound the Germans became aware of their danger and immediately prepared to turn the machine gun upon the advancing First company. It was a critical moment. O’Leary did not hesitate; he took deliberate aim with his rifle at the gun’s crew, five in number, and one by one they dropped as his unerring finger pressed the trigger. His bold move in a supremely dangerous situation had been successful. The machine gun was his. The lives of his comrades were saved. For an ordinary man this brave deed would have sufficed. But what O’Leary had just performed whetted his appetite for more.

Another barricade farther on had caught his eye. With daredevil audacity, he bounded toward it. The Germans then were prepared for him, but he “got his blows in first,” and killed three more Germans. The two remaining had no stomach for the “mad Irishman.” They promptly raised their hands, and O’Leary secured them as his prisoners.

He confessed afterward that his second exploit was a hazardous one. He had no bayonet at the time and had to trust solely to his marksmanship. His rifle was loaded with ten rounds, and eight of the bullets found a human billet. When the last two Germans surrendered he had no ammunition left, and had they not been demoralized by his sudden and audacious attack single-handed, the issue would have been different.

Sergeant O’Leary had killed eight Germans, captured a machine gun, taken two Germans prisoner, and carried two strong positions, from which the rest of the attacking party would have been heavily fired upon. Some one has said that this exploit was thoroughly Irish in method and execution, and that O’Leary deserves to rank as one of the greatest heroes of modern warfare.

Describing what happened afterward, Company-Quartermaster-Sergeant J. G. Lowry, of the Irish Guards, says:

“O’Leary came back from his killing as cool as if he had been for a walk in the park, accompanied by two prisoners he had taken. He[Pg 74] probably saved the lives of the whole company. Had that machine gun got slewed round, No. 1 Company might have been nearly wiped out. We all quickly appreciated the value of O’Leary’s sprinting and crack shooting, and when we were relieved that night, dog-tired as we were, O’Leary had his arm nearly shaken off by his comrades.”

When on furlough O’Leary was fêted and cheered as no V.C. hero has been. He received a splendid welcome in Cork and in his native village. The greatest day in his life, however, was June 26, 1915, when Londoners turned out in tens of thousands to acclaim him in the streets. To honor him the London Irish organized a demonstration in Hyde Park, at which over 60,000 persons were present. O’Leary drove from the Strand to the Park in an open carriage, cheered all along the route by an admiring throng. O’Leary was a proud man but, as he afterward protested, he “didn’t know what all this fuss was about. Faith, a bit of a shindy is no great matter at all, at all!”

The Story of the First American Soldiers to Go It Alone in Banging the Huns

Because they were recruited in the New England States, the boys of the 26th Division were known as “Yankees” or the “Yankee Division” and they set up pretty good claim to the distinction by acts of unit heroism not excelled for dash, daring and effective service by any troops opposed to the Huns. The “Yankee Division” was the first of the A.E.F. to take part in a great offensive in France. It was organized under the command of Maj. Gen. C. R. Edwards, Aug. 13, 1917; arrived in France in September, and in January, 1918, was undergoing special training on the Chemin des Dames front. It was assigned to the Toul sector and was in position by the end of March. Ten days later the enemy struck its first serious blow at the line, “a blow which turned out to be far more serious to the Germans than to the New Englanders.” It was the beginning of the five days fight known as the battle of Apremont, though it really was the battle of Bois Brulé, the worst of the fight being in the “burned wood” on the hill top where the 104th Regiment was stationed. In an article in the Boston Globe devoted to the 26th, Willard F. De Lue says:

“From the very first day there had been artillery-action; in fact, the Boche set up a row while the Yankees were coming into the line, before they got their packs off. Now, at five o’clock in the morning of April 10, the Germans sent over a body of seven hundred or eight hundred picked shock-troops against Colonel Shelton’s boys.

“But the Yankee artillery got the jump on them, and opened up with a barrage that couldn’t have been better. It smashed the Germans’ attack so badly that it broke down, and for the rest of that day, and for two more, the Boches were content to throw over a heavy artillery fire.

“On the 13th, however, they were at it again. This time they planned a little better. The center of the assault was directed against the French units on the left of the 104th, and it wasn’t long before they sent over a hurry call for a counter-attack by the Yanks. The 104th responded handsomely. They swept through Bois Brulé right on to the German flank, and relieved the pressure on the French line. But by that time their own flank was threatened. So the Yanks suddenly changed direction, and attacked by their own flank—a difficult maneuver, but beautifully executed.

“The fighting kept up stubbornly. By one o’clock in the afternoon the Germans had broken through and grabbed some of the advanced points held by the 104th, and were filtering in through communication trenches. It was apparent this was no mere raid. So the reserves were ordered up. But before they arrived the enemy had been hurled back again, and by six that night the heaviest of the fighting was over. On the 14th there was further action; but the Boche had been licked, and he knew it. His losses were tremendous; ours comparatively light.

“Many an act of heroism took place that day. The flags of the 104th Infantry were later decorated by the French for the gallantry displayed by its men. And the individual awards of American and French decorations are eloquent.

“That was the first battle fought by Americans—any Americans—in France in which they were not supported by French infantry.”

IN EVERY AFTER BATTLE

Having been inducted into the firing line, the 26th had no surcease, but took part in every subsequent battle up to the signing of the armistice, missing the promised rest, time after time, owing to the exigencies of the campaigns. And according to the complaint of a captured German lieutenant, they did not always play the game right. On one occasion the moment an enemy barrage was lifted, a body of Yankees darted ahead and actually nabbed some of the advancing Huns, the lieutenant included. He sputteringly said in reproach of these tactics, “They should not have been where they were. They were coming right through our own barrage, and might have been wiped out.”

That the Americans were so apt to be “where they shouldn’t have been” was greatly disconcerting to the Huns more than once. They did things in such an unconventional way, acting so much on individual initiative that they frequently spoiled the precise calculations of the German machine. The French had greater appreciation of the Yankee method. The commanding officer of the 32nd French said this of the 26th:

“I salute its colors and thank it for the splendid services it has rendered here to the common cause. Under the distinguished command of their chief, General Edwards, the high-spirited soldiers of the Yankee Division have taught the enemy some bitter lessons at Bois Brulé, at Seicheprey, at Xivray Marvoisin; they have taught him to realize the[Pg 76] staunch vigor of the sons of the great republic fighting for the world’s freedom.”

“On the 9th the fighting on this new field began. The Boche, in the early morning, swept down into Vaux and established machine-gun posts.

“‘You’ve got to drive those (censored) out of there or we’ll be the laughing-stock of the division,’ was the word sent out by Colonel Logan. And so the driving began.

“That fight for Vaux will be long remembered—a picturesque fight, with groups of men rushing here and there, cleaning up snipers and machine-gunners, rushing hostile positions; overhead the roar of the American barrage, below the hum of countless machine guns. The clean-up was thorough.

“Three days later Foch’s famous counter-offensive began—on July 18, at 4:25 in the morning.

“The night before, at ten o’clock, a terrific thunder-storm had broken. Lightning flashed and rain fell in sheets. But in the morning there came a clearing, and when the fated hour approached there was a rosy flush on the morning sky. Commanders wore an anxious look. A surprise had been planned, and a clear day was not to their liking. But just before the time set a heavy mist began to descend. All was well.

“A gun spoke; then the roar from a hundred, a thousand iron-throated messengers of death. The creeping barrage had opened. The infantry was to attack simultaneously.

“The Yanks moved forward on the left, pivoting upon their own right, held by the 101st, in front of Vaux. The 102d came next; but it was the boys of the 103d and 104th, on the left, that did the early fighting.

“‘We are in Torcy,’ was the first message sent back. Then came a delay. A hitch had taken place; but by nine o’clock Bouresches, Belleau, and Givry were in the hands of the Yankees.

“The first objectives taken, preparations were at once made for a further advance. But the French, to the north, had been held up. On the 19th there was no forward movement until three in the afternoon. Hill 193, above Givry, where the French were held up, was passed on the flank, causing the Germans [Pg 77]to fall back. Etrepilly and Etrepilly Woods were reached, taken, and passed. So, too, Genetrie Farm and the woods close by La Halmadière.

“In the night of the 19th there was another halt. Then forward again at daybreak, with the 101st and 102d Infantry getting into action late this day, and sweeping forward, through Vaux and the woods close to Bouresches, they crossed the Soissons-Château-Thierry road, and by the 22d found themselves in front of Epieds and Trugny.

WINNING MORE FRENCH PRAISE

“It was here that the severest fighting of the drive took place. In Epieds the Germans planted machine guns every seven yards. In Trugny and in the woods that lie on the hillsides to the east of both towns they had done likewise.

“The 101st tackled the Trugny proposition. Colonel Logan’s men were in and out of the town twice. But the German artillery had the range just right, and whenever the Yankees went in flooded the place with mustard-gas. On July 23 Colonel Logan borrowed a little ground on his right from the French, encircled Trugny on the south, and started up behind it, through Trugny Wood. It was a terrible fight, but that night the 101st broke through the German defenses and forced a retreat. Meantime, the three other infantry regiments were making constant frontal attacks. The 102d got into Trugny and captured the gun now on Boston Common.

“On the 23d the 103d and 104th Infantry Regiments were relieved; and on the 25th the 101st and 102d were relieved. But the artillery brigade kept on, supporting three other American divisions, until the Vesle River was reached, August 5. It was in this drive particularly that Sherburne’s outfit earned the name of the best field artillery in France. A regular Army officer, watching the guns in action, said: ‘I have been in the Army thirty years and never have seen field artillery until this day.’

“By August 7 the whole division, including the artillery, was back in villages along the Marne, between Château-Thierry and Paris.

“The people of the countryside hailed the[Pg 78] men of the 26th as ‘saviors of Paris.’ Those who went into the French capital were greeted with enthusiasm. Men and women embraced them and kissed them.

“General Degoutte, famed commander of the French 6th Army, with which the Americans fought, wrote to General Edwards:

“‘The operations carried out by the 26th American Division from July 18 to July 24 demonstrated the fine soldierly qualities of this unit, and the worth of its fine leader, General Edwards. The 26th Division fought brilliantly ... advancing more than fifteen kilometers in depth in spite of the desperate resistance of the enemy.

“‘I take pleasure in communicating to General Edwards and his valiant division this expression of my esteem, together with my heartiest congratulations for the manner in which they have served the common cause.’”

THE LAST SHOT

And so on until, drawn from temporary reserve at Verdun, the 26th was ordered into the Argonne battle. The Globe chronicler continues:

“On October 15 the 104th was fighting in conjunction with the French and a squadron of fifteen French tanks. What the fighting was like may be judged from the fact that only one of those fifteen tanks came back.

“On the 16th other units went in, and by October 18 command passed to General Edwards. The new position in line was on the east side of the Meuse River, facing generally east. Ahead lay the scrubby woods of Haumont, Chenes, Ormont, Belleau, and the skirt of the Bois de Wavrille, and of Samogneux, the latter to the extreme left, nearer to Verdun.

“The attack on these positions began on the 23d and continued until the 27th. The woods, so far as trees went, consisted of a few dead, blasted stumps, standing out like skeletons, in the midst of thick, deadly underbrush. The whole ground had been fought over recently. Bodies of dead French and Germans lay there. And in one place was a valley full of skeletons of the Crown Prince’s men who had made the desperate attack on the forts of Verdun.

“These woods were taken and lost again,[Pg 79] taken and lost, taken and lost. Four times did the 101st battle through Belleau, only to be blasted back by artillery. The enemy had sworn to stick it out, for an attack here threatened the lines of communication. And stick they did.

“Of those last days a volume might well be written: of the desperate charges, the hell of shell-fire, the deluges of gas, the hum of millions of machine-gun death-messengers—death-messengers that brought their messages home. And through it all, partly over ground they had won before, they plunged in the dull desperation of despair. In the previous days they had been robbed of the officers they knew and loved. Edwards had been relieved October 25. Others had preceded him, and others followed—Cole, Logan, Hume.

“Desperately these boys fought and paid the price. On the 9th the line was drawn back a little, the accompanying units couldn’t keep pace. And still the battle raged—a bloody, maddening, disheartening battle—raged despite reports that an armistice had been agreed upon. Even at ten in the morning of November 11, one hour before the fighting was to stop, the 26th was ordered forward again ‘to straighten out the line.’ In that hour hundreds were lost.

“The Yankee division fought up to the last shot. That shot fired, the division remained a wreck. Gen. Frank E. Bamford, the new commander, reported that the division was in no condition to go to the Rhine. That day, the 11th, 1,200 replacements were received, and more were on their way. When the last hour’s fight began one regiment, normally 3,000 strong, had only 240 rifles.”

Glimpses of the Sunnier Side of the Men Who Played with Death

After relating many pitiful, tear-compelling incidents of wounded and dying soldiers in trench and in the temporary hospitals back of the front, an English Chaplain turned from the saddening episodes to some of the humorous phases of his experience among the men—humorous by contrast, that is, for some of the touches are more than prods to laughter; this for example:

“Once, in a hospital train, where a crowd of helpless men were being loaded in at a siding, I saw one man, groaning in agony from rheumatism, carried in. ‘Where are you wounded, old chap?’ asked the orderly. ‘Hoots!’ he replied, ‘I’m na wounded at a’; fling me onywhere, an’ luk after the rest.’” The Chaplain continues:

“There are countless streaks of humor and gleams of laughter even amid the sorrow-clouds of war. The mysterious diseases from which the soldier thinks he suffers sometimes puzzle you. He will proudly, and with a majestic solemnity, tell you that his illness has developed into ‘gasteria’—perhaps a more accurately descriptive name than science recognizes. More than one is sorry for his wife, who is distracted and harrowed by the ‘insinuendoes’ of her neighbors, a word almost worthy of a place in the dictionary. And many will tell you of chums who have broken down, and who were not really fit to serve, having been always of a ‘historical’ tendency. One almost feels a plea for heredity there.

“How grateful we were when we found occasions like these! For, though we were not downhearted, we were often war-weary. And frequently the good cheer of those whom we were there to comfort and strengthen really strengthened and comforted us.

MICKY FREE REVIVED

“I remember an Irishman, quite of the type of Micky Free in Lever’s novel, a rollicking, jolly child of the Emerald Isle, pretty badly battered, but with a sparkle in his eye at which you could have lit a candle. He was from Dublin. I thought I should speak cheerfully to him, so I said, ‘Well, now, aren’t you lucky to be here, instead of home yonder, getting [Pg 81]your head broken in a riot?’ ‘Troth, I am, sir,’ said he. ‘Lucky to be here, anyway. And lucky is anny man if he’ll only get a grave to lie in, let alone a comfortable bed like this. Glory be! it’s myself that’s been the lucky one all the time.’ Near him lay another. ‘Don’t spake to him, your honor,’ said the first man with a laugh. ‘Sure, he’s a Sinn Feiner.’ But both of them were of opinion that the loyalty of the rebels might be awakened by contact with German shells. ‘Bring them out here, sir,’ said they, ‘and they won’t be Irishmen if they don’t get their dander riz with a whiz-bang flung at them. That would settle their German philandering. Sure, isn’t it too bad what we’ve been enduring to enable the spalpeens to stay at home, upsetting the State, flinging Home Rule back maybe a generation, with their foolishness, and we as good Irishmen as themselves can be?’

“The infinite variety of classes that make up our present army is astonishing. I told once of a Gordon Highlander landing in Havre with a copy of the Hebrew Psalms in the pocket of his khaki apron to read in the trenches. I saw, among our own Gordons, an Aberdeen divinity student, as a private reading in the mud the Greek Testament and the Sixth Book of Homer’s Iliad. Anything, from that to the Daily Mail, represents the reading of our men. This variety is also very noticeable among our officers. We had the lumberman from the vast forests of the West beside the accountant from San Francisco; the tea-planter from Bengal; the lawyer from the quiet Fife town beside the Forth; the artist; the architect; and the journalist. And it was this mixture that made possible episodes of irresistible comicality.

GLAD TO MEET HAIG

“For instance, to prevent waste of petrol in ‘joy-riding,’ a French barrier at one place near us had guards set upon it under a British officer. One day a young northern subaltern, entirely fresh to military work, was in charge; and the tale goes that he stopped Sir Douglas Haig’s car, asking him to show his permit and declare his business. When the general did tell who he was, the boy was so taken aback that he is said to have stammered, ‘So pleased to meet you!’

“Again, a young officer told me that he was leading a well-known general around some trenches in the dark. They came to a traverse. ‘We’ll go round here,’ said the general, and the young fellow led the way. But a watchful Gordon leaped up suddenly with fixed bayonet, and, ‘Who goes there?’ The youth replied, ‘General Blank.’ ‘Ay, lad,’ whimsically replied the Scot, ‘ye’d better try again. That cock ’ll no fecht wi’ the Cock o’ the North.’

“Another, a verdantly green soldier of the King, almost freshly off the ploughed haughs of home, met an officer of high rank. He was carrying his rifle, but he huddled it under his arm, and awkwardly saluted with the open hand as though he had it not. The officer said, very kindly, ‘Here, my man, is the way to salute your superior with your rifle’; and he went through the proper regulation field-officer’s salute. But Jock, after coolly watching him, as coolly replied, ‘Ay, ay; maybe that’s your way o’t; but I hae my ain way, and I’m no jist sure yet whilk’s the richt gait o’t.’

“It would be worth while seeing this man after a few months’ training has brought him into the ‘richt gait o’t.’ In fact, the way in which the men have fallen into the habit of discipline is as wonderful as the way they leaped into the line of service for their country’s sake when they were not forced to go. I recall one, who was only a type of many. Up in the mouth of a West Highland glen is a little cottage on a croft. And the man there was the last of his race. When others passed out to the world-wide conflict, his mother, who was very old, opposed his going. But she died. And then he drew his door to, locked it, and went to share the battle for liberty which to-day is shaking the earth. There are far more men of peace than men of quarrel fighting for the soul-compelling things that are of value beyond this dying world, and these are made of the true victory stuff.

THEY ARE NOT TALKERS

“None are less given to talk of what they have done than the very men whose deeds thrill others. They just saw the thing that was needed; they seized the flying moment, and did the deed that makes men’s hearts[Pg 82] stand still. They came out of it with something akin to the elation of the sportsman who has scored a goal. They saved their side in the game. That was what they aimed at, and they were satisfied.

“In my last battalion were two men who, working together, did breathless things without themselves being breathless. They enjoyed them. After one ‘stunt’ our people in the trench observed a man hanging on the enemy’s wire. His hand was slowly moving to and fro. They watched carefully, and saw clearly that he was signaling to them. A little group of officers gathered and considered the matter. But it was entirely impossible, they thought, to dream of attempting a rescue before darkness. So they resolved to get together a rescue party in the night and save. Meanwhile, however, these two worthies slipped away, crawled over No Man’s Land, and brought the poor fellow in. Rebuked for their temerity, their reply was, ‘We couldna thole the sicht o’ a chum oot yonder like that.’ Another time, after a bitter struggle in a patch of woodland between our line and the enemy’s, they came and reported that a man in khaki was to be seen moving from tree-stump to tree-stump, evidently in distress. ‘I think he’s daft,’ said one. And in the gloaming over they went, found him, and brought him in to safety. He had been wounded in the head and side, and left behind. The first day he had kept himself alive by drinking from the water-bottles of the dead; but he had lost his reason and his bearings, and was in despair when our brave fellows got him. And these men were killed later on by a slight accident down behind the lines.

“It was difficult to get away from the touch of one’s environment and to overcome that unwelcome realization of the grim surroundings. One morning we had a weird reminder. When we opened the door of our hut, there, on the threshold, lay an unexploded ‘dud’ shell which had fallen in the night. Had it done what had been intended, we should have been very suddenly off somewhere among the stars. It made one think a little of solemn and strange things, and feel more than a little thankful to behold again the light of the sun.

“People speak a good deal about the lust for blood and the fever-passion of battle. But our boys are not bloodthirsty.

NOT THE HUN TYPE

“A friend of mine, after a ‘scrap,’ saw a proof of this which almost cost him his life, as he had to resist the tendency to laugh, for he had been shot through the lungs. A big Scotsman, in a muddy kilt, and with fixed bayonet, had in his charge a German prisoner, who was very unwilling to get a move on. And Sandy shouted out to a companion on ahead, ‘Hey, Jock, he winna steer. What’ll I dae wi’ him?’ But Jock, busy driving his own man forward, just answered over his shoulder, ‘Bring him wi’ ye.’ Both of these men had the sweat of conflict not dry upon them. But they never for a moment thought of driving the bayonet into that reluctant foe, as the German would have done most readily. Of course, one does occasionally find the old grim warrior still, quite contented under hard circumstances, finding indeed the conditions a kind of real relief after the rust of peaceful days.

“This same friend, going one night along the trenches, almost thigh-deep in mud, came upon a grizzled Irishman, O’Hara, cowering in the rain. ‘Isn’t this a damnable war, O’Hara?’ said he. ‘Thrue for you, sir,’ was the unexpected reply. ‘But, sure, isn’t it better than having no war at all?’

“A campaign like this brings one into touch with strange bedfellows. A man I know told me, ‘In one place, during the early terrible days, we crept into a cellar, and I lay down to try to sleep. But I soon found this to be impossible, for I became aware of somebody that kept running to and fro in the dark, driving all the rest away. I went out, and spoke to the doctor, whom I met. “Oh,” he replied, “that’s only our lunatic.” It was, indeed, a poor fellow who had gone mad in the retreat; and they could meanwhile do nothing but carry him along with them.’ Perhaps the weirdest of all the strange mixtures whom I met out at the front was a young fellow at a mechanical transport camp. His father was a Russian Jew, his mother was English, his grandfather Dutch, and he himself was born in London and brought up in Glasgow. In a world of such widely international disturbance you almost expected him to go off into effervescence, like a seidlitz powder.

DID NOT MERIT MERCY

“Amid the sorrows and the weariness of the times out there it was remarkable how closely laughter followed at the heels of tears. We had great fun over a colonel—not in our division—who was very unpopular. He did not know the depths of his unpopularity, but, deeming himself the best-beloved among his contemporaries, he was perfectly happy. One day, while he was sitting in front of his dugout reading an old newspaper, a sniper’s bullet passed quite close, and went ‘pip’ into the parados. He paid no attention, of course, for that was only a bit of the day’s work. But when another came, he thought it was an attention which carried civility a little too far. So he called a Scotsman to him, and said, ‘Go out, Jock, and nail that beggar.’ Jock crawled out, glad of the diversion, stalked the enemy, ‘winged’ him, and was running up to ‘feenish’ him, when the German held up his hands and cried, ‘Mercy, Englishman!’ But Jock replied, ‘Mercy? Ye dinna deserve nae mercy. Ye’ve missed oor colonel twice!’ I often wonder if Jock told the colonel how he had put it! Or is he still as happy as ever?

“It is told of Jock that, on another occasion, when a German held up his hands, after a good deal of dirty work with them, and said, ‘Mercy, Englishman. I’ll go to England with you!’ Jock replied, grimly and coolly, ‘Ay, maybe. But, ye see, that’s no exactly whaur I was gaun to send ye.’

“I was always much impressed by the Wesleyans, whom I often met in painful circumstances. I had never had anything to do with them till I came in contact with them wounded and suffering, but always most brave, patient, and truly religious. They bore their distresses without a murmur, and they died without fear. For they knew what they believed in. They had the gift of religion and the secret of a faith stronger than death. They were true mystics. I remember one day standing beside one of them who had been very dangerously stricken. His eyes were closed, and he was whispering continuously. I stooped down and listened. He was saying, over and over again, ‘Oh, God, remember me, and help me to get well, for the sake of those I love at home.’

SPEAKING TO GOD

“I was turning to slip away quietly, when he opened his eyes and said, ‘Whoever you are, don’t go, sir, I was only speaking to God.’ His religion was so intimate a possession that he did not need to apologize for knocking at the door of love with his prayer.

“Nothing could be more touching, and often at the same time funnier, than meeting men past military age who, sometimes for the sake of their boys serving, had slipped into the ranks, mentally folding down a corner of their birth-certificate over the date, and salving their consciences, as did one, who said to me, ‘I told them I was thirty-four—but I did not say on what birthday!’ I remember one old Scot, who could scarcely move, telling me, ‘I doot I’ll hae to get oot o’ this, an’ awa’ hame. Thae rheumatics is no good in the trenches; and they’re girnin’ at me again.’ Of course, he had ‘a laddie lyin’ up yonder,’ and a nephew, and ‘a guid-sister’s brither,’ and so on, like the rest. And, of course, if it were not for these pains he would be as good as ever he was! Some time later I met him in the rain, and asked how he felt now. ‘Oh,’ said he, ‘I’m just fine the day. I seen my youngest laddie gaun up, and I’d a word or twa wi’ him. I’ll be writin’ his mither the nicht aboot it. He was lookin’ grand. It was fine to get a roar frae him in the by-gaun.’

“I called on one old woman at home, and she told me that her husband had only the previous day, which was his birthday, gone off to France. ‘Eh,’ said she with unction, ‘he’s a good man, my man. I often think I was a lucky woman to have sic a man. D’ye ken—he never told a lie!’ ‘And yesterday was his birthday?’ I inquired. ‘And how old was he?’ ‘He was fifty-eight,’ was her answer. But when I asked how this modern rival of George Washington had got into the army with such an age, she innocently replied, ‘Ye see, he said he was thirty-twa.’

“How these elderly men endured for any length of time all the discomforts at the front was beyond understanding. They were, of course, frequently caught, when youth was more able to skip nimbly out of the way of death. The little, shell-swept graveyards at the front got many of them very soon.

RUNNERS AND M.P.’S

“I spoke elsewhere, some time ago, of some of the forgotten and overlooked departments of our army. There are plenty such, of course. But one cannot help recalling amongst them the battalion runners, who carry messages over No Man’s Land, or anywhere, from post to post, when air and earth are filled with hissing death, and who also act as guides up to the trenches. They are absolutely fearless. This type varies from the gaunt, silent figure, that stalks before you like an Indian through the dark, to the garrulous youth who talks all the time over his shoulder as he goes. One of the latter was leading up our men, and the colonel said to him, ‘I hear that these dugouts are wretched water-logged holes.’ ‘Deed, they are that,’ replied the guide. And then, gently, as if on a tender afterthought, ‘D’ye ken, sir, I’m often vexed for you; for I’m perfectly sure that you’re accustomed to something better than yon at home!’

“Another is the military policeman, who controls and guides the traffic at the cross-roads, and where there is danger of shells falling, in such places as the square at Ypres. There, amongst evidences of steady peril, stands this quiet man with the red band on his arm; and he steps forward to warn you that it is not safe to be there! I cannot forget one road, when we were moving up to the front. The stream of life flowing on towards the fighting area was like the Strand in London at its busiest. The policeman with uplifted hand was as powerful there as at home. In a moment, at the signal, limbers, guns, motor-lorries, ambulances, mounted men, and marching infantry stood motionless till permitted to go on again.

“The directions we got one day from an Irish policeman were unforgettable. He said, ‘It’s quite easy, your honor. You see, when you go into Albert, you don’t go into it at all. But you turn to the right, keeping well to the left all the way.’ We thanked him, and trusted to Providence, as we are apt to do where there is nothing else that can be done; and, following our directions in a general way, we reached our place in safety!

“Again, you will find, right up behind the front, the roadman busy, coolly filling up holes that shells have made, and behaving just as though he were working on a stretch of the Trossachs, or patching up the rut-worn tracks that the rain has damaged along by Loch Hourn.”

Of the airmen flying their graceful, birdlike craft, he says: “There can be no braver hearts than those. Many a time we looked up at them, sailing overhead, and wondered; and the roughest Tommy sends something like a prayer with them as they go.”

Who Made Up the Indian Army; And Some V. C. Heroes

In December of the first year of the war, a letter came to the Indian post-office in London with this address, written in the topknotted Marathi character, and hence perfectly incomprehensible to every one but the Jat orderly who read it:

It was an extraordinary epistle to look at, very thick, and its envelope was an old official one that had been carefully ungummed and refolded wrong side out. And it had come from a tiny village on the banks of the Jhelum River, far away in India. But what was more extraordinary still, its owner received it that very day. For Khundadad Khan had become a very great man indeed, and his name was fully as well known in London then, as ever it had been in his native village. Lying in the Kensington hospital, he [Pg 86]stroked his long black curly beard, the exact color of his hair, and murmured, as he fingered the bulky contents of the letter (a parchment verse from the Koran tied up in silk with a dried serpent’s fang), “Oh, yes, it is a very good tawíz—charm—as such things go, and will no doubt keep off many demons. But the King-Emperor has given me a better one, is it not so, my friend?”

“Undoubtedly, oh son of a most high excellence,” replied the little brown orderly respectfully, in Hindustanie. And it was so. For the king had given him the highest military honor of Great Britain, the V. C., the first ever bestowed upon a member of the Indian Army. What he had done to win it sounds like many another brave deed recounted of the men in the Great War. There is a similarity even in brave deeds. He had remained in a trench, firing a Maxim, after his British captain and all the men with him were killed or wounded, holding back the Germans until he, too, fell, severely wounded, and they passed on over his body. But the Germans had been held back, and that was the important point.

THE BROWN MEN

It was in August that the brown men first took ship at Calcutta and Bombay, and, leaving the sound of temple bell and muezzin, and commending themselves, no doubt, to Ava Ardu Sur Jasan, the angel presiding over the sea and great voyages, sailed away under the British Jack to fight for the Empire in a land they had never seen. They reached the Western front in September, and after a scant two weeks’ rest, were thrown in beside the almost exhausted British in the flat mud-country between Givenchy and Neuve Chapelle. The force consisted of about 50,000 British and 65,000 native Indians, led by white officers, and with native officers to act as go-betweens. It was the first time, since the Moors had conquered Spain, long before Columbus sailed for America, that brown men and white had engaged in a death-grapple on European soil. But these brown men were from a continent, not a single nation.

There were little Gurkhas from around Nepal, stout and muscular, with high topknotted and slant eyes like Chinamen, grinning like terriers from behind British steel. Their great friends, the Scotch, say they can see objects and detect sounds which are imperceptible to other people. And though they trot along contentedly enough with their rifles in trenches that are sometimes too high for them, their favorite weapon is their own sickle-shaped knife, the khukri. This they can either hurl or use at close range, in which latter case, we are told, it makes a sound like the cutting of fresh lettuce. Their friendship with the huge Scotchmen seems to come from a certain like-mindedness on the battlefield. It was a regiment of Gurkhas (the 4th) that on the terrible night of the nineteenth of December supported the Highland Light Infantry in gaining the foremost trench along the Bethune-La Bassée Road. But the little brown men held the trench, while the gallant Lieutenant Anderson, not content with this, rushed on with his Highlanders, shouting, “We are going to take Chapelle St. Roch!” He and his men passed on into the darkness—and were never seen again.

There were long, athletic Sikhs from the land of the Five Rivers. The Sikhs’ knives are straight, for they are tall, brave men who let their hair grow, and who usually pray before fighting. Their knives are two-edged, and they carry on their other side a comb, as is likewise enjoined by their religion. Under Ranjut Singh, the Lion of the Punjab, they once carved for themselves an empire from the Sutlej to the Kabul River, and their greatest ambition even now is for one of them to be known as “Singh” (“Lion”) among his countrymen. This high honor one of them attained, together with the Indian Order of Merit, in the spring drive around Ypres. It happened that a young English lieutenant, J. Smyth, was ordered to supply ammunition to a company farther forward. In the course of the fighting, he found himself in an unconnected trench. Therefore, selecting fifteen Sikhs, he started forward with bombs in boxes, which they carried among them. Only three Sikhs were left unwounded, when finally, still under heavy direct fire, they conceived the idea of breaking up the boxes and carrying the bombs the rest of the way in their arms. One more Sikh fell dead before they reached their objective and delivered the bombs to their hard-pressed companions.

The great bravery of the English officers of the Indian Army, and the enormous casualties among them—Captain Paris, Lieutenant Hayes-Saddler, Major Graham White, good English names innumerable—is part of the story of the Indian Army. It is said that their white skins among the dark faces of their men rendered them an easy mark to the German gunners. And their loss was graver for their troops than that of most officers, for each Englishman in command is obliged to know several of the innumerable dialects of India, and as there remained fewer and fewer men in command who could speak both English and the native tongues, the Indian troops became at times almost isolated.

And there were men from tribes less well known: the Gurhwals, a comparatively new regiment, who proved their mettle at “the Indian Neuve Chapelle.” This was an engagement in November, not to be confused with the later battle of Neuve Chapelle, where the Indian troops actually gained the town, but were obliged to fall back, because of the lack of adequate support. Then there were the Pathans, who shoot like the Leatherstockings, and look, it is said, not unlike him, with their blue eyes and brown hair and their muscular frames. They are the fairest of the native Indians. Then there were the Rajputs, who have been the great gentlemen of the hills for many hundreds of years. Some of them were not subjects of the King of England at all, but citizens of the Feudatory States of India, who came down from their mud huts and mountain fastnesses to make the grand tour, as it were, and fight with the cunning implements of the white man.

WINNERS OF V. C.’s

From whatever tribe they came, however, they proved themselves worthy to fight in any army of Europe, as the V. C.’s awarded in the course of the war to the members of the Indian army will show. From G. A. Leask’s book, Heroes of the Great War, we summarize a few of their exploits, but many must go unnoticed here:

The second Indian V. C. hero of the first year of the war, says Mr. Leask, was also one of the bravest. Naik Darwan Sing Negi,[Pg 88] 1st Battalion 39th Gurhwal Rifles, gained his reward for great gallantry on the night of November 23-24, 1914, near Festubert.

The 1st Battalion 39th Gurhwals are recruited from that portion of the Himalayas lying within territory immediately west of Nepal, known as Gurhwal; and Naik, like most of the sturdy recruits drawn from this neighborhood, spent his boyhood herding his father’s sheep and goats on the bleak uplands and glacier valleys, often alone for weeks on end.

One of the fiercest battles of the war took place around Festubert in the La Bassée district. On November 23rd the Germans made a determined attack upon some trenches near Festubert, held by the Indian corps. A counter-attack was organized during the night of the 23rd-24th, as our men were very hard pressed. In this great onslaught the 39th Gurhwal Rifles, all hardy warriors like Darwan Sing Negi from the northern hills, took a leading part. They leaped over the parapet with fixed bayonets, their faces set and grim. With irresistible dash they advanced to the captured trenches and drove the enemy off with terrible loss.

Darwan Sing Negi received two severe wounds in the head and in the arm, but refused to give in. He led the way round each successive traverse, and we can imagine the terror he inspired in the hearts of the Germans when they saw this tall, fierce Indian hero, with white turban gleaming in the darkness, his eyes afire, advancing upon them with the bayonet. Although fired at by bombs and rifles at the closest range, nothing could daunt this fearless fighter. By his splendid courage and powerful arm he practically cleared the trench himself and so saved a serious situation. The fighting went on all the next day, but the heroic deed of Darwan Sing Negi on the previous night had averted the worst of the danger. He was decorated by the King just before his Majesty left France on December 5, 1914.

THE JEMADAR

The next month, April, saw the winning of another V. C. by an Indian officer. He was Jemadar Mir Dast, of the 55th (Coke’s) Rifles, though he won his distinction when he was attached to the 57th (Wilde’s) Rifles, [Pg 90]both belonging to Indian Frontier Force.

The jemadar—corresponding to our lieutenant—had already distinguished himself before coming to Europe to fight for his King-Emperor. He possesses the coveted Indian Order of Merit for gallant services on the Indian frontier while acting as guardian of the northern boundary.

During both battles of Ypres the Indians fought magnificently. After the enemy’s poison-gas attack had made a temporary dent in the British line in the Ypres area, Sir John French ordered the Lahore Division of the Indian Corps, to which Mir Dast’s regiment was attached, to be moved up and placed at the disposal of the Second Army.

A few days later, this corps, supported by the British cavalry, was pushed up into the front firing-line. The time had come for the British to assume the offensive. Fighting with the French on one of their wings, the Indians were successful in pushing the enemy back some little distance toward the north. Again the Germans let loose their poison gas, and rendered further advance impossible. Such was the position on April 26th.

The Indians fought with determination to carry the German positions. A formidable series of trenches had to be assaulted in order to dislodge the enemy and so relieve the pressure on the rest of the line. Jemadar Mir Dast got his men ready and was waiting to advance. When the order was given to dash from the trenches, Mir Dast found himself detailed off to remain with his platoon in reserve. The others, advancing by short rushes, reached the crest of the first slope without a check, although a number fell by shell fire. On reaching the crest, however, the line came under a terrific machine gun and rifle fire. Whole swathes of men fell as if a scythe had been drawn across their legs. In spite of this, the line pressed on.

Then came the dramatic sequel. The Germans suddenly released their gas. Although the French Colonials were the chief sufferers, the Indian troops were affected by it. The poor fellows were totally unprovided with any form of protection against this devilish device, and were falling fast, being at the same time under a hail of machine gun fire. No troops could have withstood the terrible conditions, and the line was forced to give way.

Jemadar Mir Dast, from his trench, had seen the oncoming poison cloud, and noticed the retirement of a part of the line. He had one of two alternatives presented to him. Either he must retire in conformity with the rest of the troops, or endeavor to get his men to stand firm and resist the attack. Mir Dast decided to remain.

STOOD THE BRUNT

Behind the dense volumes of gas and with ceaseless pointblank fire, the Germans approached nearer and nearer. Undaunted in the trying ordeal, Mir Dast remained firm, and collected all the men available, among whom were many who were recovering from the effects of gas. So many British officers had been killed that there was no one left to lead but himself. He therefore assumed command of the forces he had collected, and kept the men together until ordered to retire, all the while holding up the oncoming Germans with rifle fire.

After dusk, Mir Dast left the trench with his small force. During this retirement, he picked up many men who were in the successive lines of trenches by which he passed, and brought them back to safety.

Throughout the attack, the resolute conduct of Mir Dast was beyond praise. As the little band wended its way to the rear he encouraged each man individually by his cheery words and courageous example. He saw an officer lying wounded, and at great risk went and brought him to cover. A few yards farther on he made out the writhing figure of a gassed Indian officer. In spite of a hot rifle fire the intrepid jemadar made for him, and, with assistance, got the suffering officer out of the zone of fire. Then a second British officer was observed. The jemadar, knowing every minute was precious if he himself was to escape the fire and gas, stopped once again to perform his heroic work of rescue.

In this way during the retirement the gallant Indian soldier brought in no less than eight wounded British and Indian officers. He was exposed in doing so to a very heavy fire, and was himself slightly wounded. Had he not shown such conspicuous bravery these eight men would have died on the field. Mir[Pg 92] Dast not only received bullet wounds, but was rendered very weak through the effects of the German poison gas.

The gallantry of Mir Dast, as well as the behavior of the whole division at the second battle of Ypres, added yet another proud page to the record of the Indian army.

The jemadar, when well enough to be moved, was sent to England, and there received from the hands of the King-Emperor the V. C. he had so deservedly won.

He was much affected by the King’s praise and said afterwards, “What did I do?—nothing, only my duty; and to think that the great King-Emperor should shake me by the hand and praise me. I am his child.”

An Ambulance Man’s First Twenty-four Hours at the Front Well Diversified

In a letter to his father, Dr. John B. Sullivan of Brooklyn, N. Y., an aid with the American Ambulance Field Service in France, Eugene Sullivan, who got quickly into the thick of things, tells the incidents of his first day where the Germans were busy. The letter appeared in the Brooklyn Eagle as follows:

“Well, after being assigned to section ... we went immediately to the front by going to ..., base of sector, and arriving there were picked up by section chief and then brought to section headquarters. Next morning, at eight, was sent out as aid to learn roads, stations, postes de secours, etc. First station at.... Arriving there I expressed my disappointment, because everything looked so quiet, except for the village, which, by the way, at one time must have been lovely, but Germans had destroyed everything—every single house and building—only a few houses had walls standing. At the improvised relay station, or poste de secours, I left the ambulance and strolled to the top of a hill.

“Here I could see and was in plain sight of a German observation balloon, and the German must have taken a dislike to my position, physique or otherwise, because before long some nice big high explosive shells started to come my way—so much so I had to postpone my sight-seeing tour and retire to the poste de secours and join the others who were in an abri, which is an enlarged rat-hole in the ground. While there an ambulance from a station nearer the first line of trenches came in with some blessés (wounded) and left word that he was going to ... to the first hospital. It was then up to us to go forward to Pont ... to take the place of this ambulance, who on his return would take our place at ... Well, all went well and we hid the ambulance at Pont ... in some bushes to wait for some poor fellow to get his ‘ticket’ for the hospital. Very little happened that day, except for the shells flying over our heads and a few airplane scraps, but no wounded. Toward evening an extra ambulance arrived, and we in the first ambulance got word to go still further to the front, to where they have never had an ambulance before, but on account of shell-fire had to wait until darkness.

“This was like preparing me for the inevitable, but finally we got a French soldier to guide us, and the driver, Harry Dunn, the soldier, and yours truly, aid, started. All went well until about half over the rocky and muddy road to Dublin I noticed the soldiers running like mad for the trenches. For a few seconds I didn’t realize what it meant, until a shell burst right near us and pieces went hissing right over the top of the ambulance. Right then yours truly grabbed his steel helmet from the guide, who was holding it, and just planted it on his head, and, believe me, thought of home, mother, etc., said a few prayers, and finally landed under the cover of the French dressing station.

“Got well located and fixed a stretcher in lieu of a bed, and just about settled down to rest and sleep while waiting for candidates for ride in ambulance when the French batteries started up. They were a couple of hundred yards in rear of us and were firing over our heads, and I got up and stood at the door to see the fire of belching batteries, etc. Joe, each time one of those blame things went off my steel (crown) helmet just naturally rose off my head, but in a few minutes I got used to it and got well used to my surroundings and looked over everything. It seems all the fire of a couple of hours was just a small preliminary to an attack by a small company to jump into the German trenches, grab about a dozen prisoners and then back again—all so they could give the poor Boches the third degree for general information, etc.

WITNESSES AN AIR DUEL

“Finally, after all the firing, got a French soldier who had the good portion of his head left to take to the hospital, and as it was getting near daybreak we were ordered to ‘beat it’ under cover of darkness, or the little that was left of it. Got out all right, except that we darn near rode on top of a French battery, just as it was firing, only 100 feet in front of us, and, believe me, we hit only the high spots for about five miles. Got to hospital at ... O. K. and returned to ..., taking up our order of relief and settled down to enjoy some rest. Nothing doing for a couple of hours until just about 8 a.m., when our tour of duty (twenty-four hours) was finished, when a lot of machine-gun fire attracted our attention to the sky.

“There we saw—in my opinion—the most wonderful and yet most horrible duel between two airplanes, French and German. Saw every move they made, until finally the German—or Boche, we call them—machine broke into flames and immediately the observer of the German machine jumped 7,000 feet to his death, leaving his pilot to finish the struggle;[Pg 94] but although the poor wretch made a grand effort to right his plane after a fall like a rocket for 1,000 feet, the tail of his machine and one wing broke off and just dropped.

“While dropping, the flames must have got to him, for he finally jumped, too, and his machine fell one way and he, all in flames, a little farther away. All the while the Frenchman in his victorious machine was flying—really dropping—and followed him down, making a spiral dive, and landed almost as quick. We jumped into our ambulance and hurried to the spot, and the sight which greeted us was horrible. I had my camera with me, but just couldn’t snap the picture. The victorious aviator then reached the spot and stood smilingly over the body while various ones took the picture.

“The German balloon observers took it all in and when the crowd of us gathered they had their artillery just drop some shells among us, so we ‘beat it,’ and that was the end of my first twenty-four hours on the front. Some baptism.

“A chap who came over with me—Osborn, of Dartmouth College—was only four days in active service with Section 28, and in going to the aid of one of his section ambulances got stalled himself and while repairing his car the Germans located him by a star shell which illuminates everything, and in this way they got a line on him and his ambulance. They paid no heed to red cross on ambulance, but let him have a shell, with the result that one leg was shattered and a piece of a shell went through his body and lung. The poor chap didn’t realize how seriously he was hurt or that he lost his leg later by amputation, but was apparently O. K., for on the morning of the day he died he was chatting merrily with every one, shaved himself and had a smoke. He even wrote a most wonderful and pathetic letter to his parents, and yet that night he died. Some say, or try to say, we don’t get under fire. I at least know what shell-fire is.”

At the date of the signing of the Armistice over 25 per cent. of the entire male population of the United States, between the ages of 18 and 31, were in military service. This represents a growth in the size of the American Army in 19 months of nearly twenty-fold, namely, from 189,674 in March, 1917, to 3,664,000 in November, 1918.

So Comrades Named Dick Hall, One of the First of Ours to Die

Speaking at the Lafayette Day banquet given in New York the evening of Sept. 6, 1916, M. Jusserand, the French Ambassador, referring to the service of Americans in France before the United States entered the war, said:

“Serving in the ambulances, serving in the Legion, serving in the air, serving Liberty, obeying the same impulse as that which brought Lafayette to these shores, many young Americans leaving home and family have offered to France their lives. Those lives many have lost, and never, even in antique times, was there shown such abnegation and generosity, such firmness of character: men like that Victor Chapman, who died to rescue American and French co-aviators nearly overcome by a more numerous enemy, and whose father, so justly admired for his gifts of mind and heart, decided that his son’s remains should be buried where he had fallen: ‘Let him rest with his comrades’; or that Richard Hall, killed by a shell while on the search for our wounded and whose mother hesitated to accept a permit to visit his flower-wreathed tomb at the front, because French mothers are not allowed to do so; or that Harvard graduate, the poet of the Legion, Alan Seeger, who felt that his hour could not be far remote and in expectation of it had written from the blood-soaked battlefield where he had fought for Liberty. The Frenchman who goes up is possessed with a passion beside which any of the other forms of experience that are reckoned to make life worth while seem pale in comparison. It is a privilege to march at his side—so much so that nothing the world could give could make me wish myself anywhere else than where I am.”

And Emory Pottle, in telling for the Century the story of a “Christmas at Pont-à-Mousson” (1915) when he and his fellows of the American Ambulance Service in that sector had a “bonne fête,” superintended by Mme. Marion and pretty little thirteen-year-old Jeanne, says:

“It was a gay meal, recklessly, happily so. No one in the sector to which we were attached was wounded that day. That, maybe, was the real holiday note. Though it may seem incredible, the meal ended with a huge plum pudding.

“It ended, too, with something very grave and as I now think of it, very beautiful. The festival meal and the gifts were forgotten in the face of it. For it was, oh! not strangely, one of those events which lift men, if ever so briefly, out of their daily selves into unseen things. Our chief of Section was called to the telephone. He came back—we all saw it—with saddened face. ‘Fellows,’ he said slowly, ‘Richard Hall of Section III has been killed, blown off his car by a stray shell in the Vosges. He is the first of us all to go.’

“We stood very silently and soberly about the table. Such news drove home abruptly, cruelly by reason of our Christmas gaieties—just what being there involved to us, to those who loved us. Very often we had jested and joked about death. None of us was a coward, I think; but—Hall dead—the first of the lot of us—dead—so far from home—Christmas!

“‘Boys, let’s drink to him, the first of us to lay down his life for France. Here’s to Dick Hall, good old scout!’

“So we drank, and I think no man there that night, where danger and death were always brooding darkly, failed to feel the dignity and honor of his calling.

A MOTHER’S GIFT TO THE CAUSE

“A long time after, the mother of Richard Hall said to a friend of mine—said with clear, sad, gentle eyes—‘I am glad to give my boy to so great a cause!’ And we on the edge of the sinister Bois le Pretre, when the news of the boy’s death came to us that Christmas[Pg 96] day, felt, too, somehow, somewhere within us, that the cause was great, was ours.

“Late that night I stood alone for a time under the starry sky of that strange hell we inhabited. Oddly enough, I felt, so I recall, a calmness and a courage, even a sort of happiness, new and strange. Though its approaches might be loud and frightening, I knew again that ‘the ways of death are silent and serene;’ an honorable death, a death of one’s own choosing for an ideal, for a cause.”

An extract from a letter written to his parents on Decoration Day, 1916, by Louis P. Hall, Jr., next older brother of Richard—he, too, valiant in the Ambulance Service—gives an intimate glimpse of the qualities of heart and mind that endeared Richard Hall to his fellows and to all who knew him:

“To-day at two I attended a beautiful memorial exercise. It was held at the monument to Washington and Lafayette in the Place des États-Unis, here in Paris. And during these exercises I took a little part when my officers and myself placed a great floral tribute at the base of the monument among the many others. On the tri-color ribbons of this tribute from the American Ambulance were these words: ‘To Richard Hall and the other Americans who gave their lives for France.’

“And so it is, as you well know, that I have thought a great deal of Dick to-day. I believe I can recall almost every time I saw him during our last three months together in Alsace with the circumstances of each meeting. I can even remember many of the times and places we passed each other on the road. He invariably smiled as we waved to each other in passing, just as if he were as pleased to see me as I was to see him. And I wonder if that really could be true! How I did admire and love him as I knew him there in a life which brought forth all the best from a boy who had no worst. And coupled with his splendid character, indeed a part of it, was that fine reserve which never courted an open show of devotion from me. But he was my own brother and always must be my brother, what more could I have asked?... Though we were often miles apart for days at a time, each was doing his little share in alleviating that endless physical pain and bitter human suffering which made our own hardships seem as nothing. And there was always our next meeting, sometimes down in the valley, sometimes at a post in the mountains, when we would talk things over; but even then neither told the other all his inmost thoughts, for in such work our very depths were touched and stirred as they never had been touched and stirred before.”

FROM DARTMOUTH TO FRANCE

Richard Nelville Hall, less than 21 years old when killed, was the youngest son of Dr. and Mrs. Louis P. Hall, of Ann Arbor, Michigan. In June, 1915, he was a senior at Dartmouth College and with other members of that class he enlisted with the American Ambulance Corps for a period of three months, and was assigned to Section Three. When his term was up there was such urgent need of men and the new enlistments were so few that Dick volunteered to remain in service until he could be spared more easily. About that time Louis P. Hall, Jr., his next older brother, enlisted and surprised Dick by appearing in the yard of the American Ambulance Corps in Paris. Dick had just driven in from the firing line. The meeting can be appreciated only by those who know what a bond of affectionate devotion united the brothers, and which is expressed in the foregoing quotation from Louis’ letter to his parents dated Decoration Day, 1916.

But even when recruits came the work of the Ambulance Corps was such that the need of men was increased, and Dick continued to drive his ambulance, postponing a little further his expected return home. There was terribly fierce fighting in the Vosges in that period, it will be remembered, and the demands upon the ambulance driver were almost incessant, the peril of it constant, gathering up the wounded from the battle front and hurrying them to a place of safety. For five months he had made those hazardous trips from battle front to safety station, unhesitatingly, devoted, inspired by the consciousness that he was engaged in saving, not in destroying life, his work not for France alone but for humanity.

Lovering Hill, the chief of the section, says of him: “I have never known any one who always showed so much dévouement in his [Pg 98]work. He was the steadiest of all, and the most reliable. He never slacked up in times when work was dull, when day in and day out was the same grinding monotony; and in times of activity after many hours without rest or sleep, he was always cheerful and stuck to the work with a tenacity which was astounding. His frankness and straightforwardness, his cheerfulness and good nature, his kindness—for he was always the first to help his comrades—made him beloved by all of us, and by most of the French with whom he came in touch, who admired the wholehearted way in which he worked. In the technical matter of the upkeep of his car he was my special delight, for both his car and his equipment were always in perfect order.”

The incidents of the days preceding the death of Hall have been indicated briefly in a tribute written soon after the fatality. There had been something of a respite from fighting, but on December 21 “the mountains spoke” and all the cars rolled upwards toward the post of Hartmanns-Weilerkopf—taken and retaken a score of times, a bare, brown, blunt shell-ploughed top where before the forest stood—up, elbowing and tacking their way through battalions of men and beasts. From one mountain slope to another roared all the lungs of war. For five days and five nights, scraps of days—the shortest of the year—nights interminable—the air was shredded with shrieking shells—intermittent lulls for slaughtering after the bombardment—then again the roar of the counter-attack.

THE TRAVELED ROAD

“All this time, as in all the past months, Richard Nelville Hall calmly drove his car up the winding shell-swept artery of the mountain of war—past crazed mules, broken-down artillery carts, swearing drivers, stricken horses, wounded stragglers still able to hobble; past long convoys of Boche prisoners, silently descending in twos guarded by a handful of men; past all the personnel of war, great and small (for there is but one road on which to travel, one road for the enemy’s shell); past abris, bomb-proof, to arrive at the Poste de Secours; where silent men moved mysteriously under the great trees, where the cars were loaded with an ever ready supply of still more quiet figures (though some made sounds), mere bundles in blankets. Hall saw to it that these quiet bundles were carefully and rapidly installed, then rolled down into the valley where little towns bear stolidly their daily burden of shells thrown wantonly from somewhere in Bocheland over the mountain to somewhere in France—the bleeding bodies in the car, a mere corpuscle in the full crimson stream, the ever-rolling tide from the trenches to the hospital, of the blood of life and the blood of death. Once there, his wounded unloaded, Dick Hall filled his gasoline tank and calmly rolled again on his way. Two of his comrades had been wounded the day before, but Dick Hall never faltered. He slept when and where he could, in his car, at the poste, on the floor of our temporary kitchen at Moosch—dry blankets or wet blankets of mud, blankets of blood—contagion was pedantry, microbes a myth.”

It was over this shell-swept, torturous road that Dick Hall was driving his car on its final errand of mercy when, in the first hours of the Christmas morning, death made friends with him. Some three hours later he was found by Matter, one of his comrades, the first to pass along the mountain road. It was between 3 and 4 o’clock of the morning. Matter and Jennings, who came a little later, bore the body back in Matter’s car to Moosch, where his brother, Louis Hall, learned what had happened. Death had been instantaneous. A fragment of shell had penetrated his brain. Though he had other injuries (the car was utterly demolished), we have the testimony of Abbé Klein, the chaplain, that “even in death his face preserved the expression of smiling radiance, that frank and kindly nature that his comrades had learned to love in the months he had been with them.”

“There in the small hours of Christmas morning where mountain fought mountain—on that hard bitter pass under the pines of the Vosgian sweep, there fell a very modest and valiant gentleman,” says the memorial from his comrades of Section Three, adding:

“Dick Hall, we knew you, worked with you, played with you, ate with you, slept with you, we took pleasure in your company, in your modesty, in your gentle manner, in your devotion and in your youth—we still pass that spot, and we salute. Our breath comes quicker, and our eyes grow dimmer, we grip the wheel a little tighter—we pass better and stronger.”

THE LIVING DEAD

The funeral services were held in the little Protestant Chapel five miles down the valley while the guns roared in a fierce battle raging for the possession of Hartmanns-Weilerkopf. At the conclusion of the ceremony Hall’s citation was read and the Croix de Guerre was pinned to a fold of the tri-color that wrapped his coffin. At the head of the grave was placed a wooden cross with the simple but all sufficient inscription, “Richard Hall, an American who died for France, December 25, 1915.” The Alsatian women heaped flowers on the grave, and after kept it decorated and cared for. When the United States formally entered the war there was a further ceremony, when a French General laid a palm on the grave in the presence of Louis Hall and the American Corps.

But Richard Hall was one of those fortunate servants whose service and humanity did not end with death. Very soon after he was killed, as a tribute to his memory a new ambulance car was sent to France to be driven by Louis Hall. It was the gift of a lady. Another followed, the gift of a New York gentleman, and a third ambulance was sent by Dr. and Mrs. Louis P. Hall, who also kept[Pg 100] a memorial bed in the American Ambulance Hospital at Neuilly until the end of the war. In addition to that they established a Loan Fund of $2,000 in the University of Michigan (Ann Arbor was Dick’s birthplace, his father a professor in the University) and $500 was given to Dartmouth. In the same spirit of carrying on Dick’s work his parents’ efforts resulted in the sending of $18,000 to the “Fatherless Children of France” and ten thousand garments to the children of the Frontier.

“Much more glorious is the death of this man than is that of the fighting soldier. His was a devotion, not to country and fireside and altar, but to an abstract conception of duty. There can be a selfishness, of a refined kind, to be sure, in even the greatest bravery shown by the soldier who is fighting for the preservation of his native land. Thoughts of his near and dear ones in that land inspire his actions and nerve his body and will for them. To the alien nurse, physician, hospital attendant there is no such inspiration. For them the inspiration must come from the depth of their humanity, and cannot be tinged with the slightest touch of self. German or Hun, Briton or Serb or Frenchman are all the same in their eyes if they are suffering from wounds or disease. Americans have a right to be proud of a fellow countryman like Richard Hall.”

A Christian Priest Who Was a Hero too Found They Vanished at the Front

Though we did not see much about them in the dispatches, those soldiers of the Most High, the army chaplains who went to the front, were often as heroic and self-sacrificing in attending to their duties as were the doughboys themselves. Among the many was Father John J. Brady of New York, the young Catholic chaplain of the 5th Regiment, U. S. Marines, who was awarded the Distinguished Service Cross for things he did in the Château-Thierry region in the deadly period of June, 1918. Some of the zealous folk who wish to put a ban on tobacco in all of its forms will hardly understand the quality of heroism that prompted Father Brady to risk his life on several occasions to carry cigarettes to men of the fighting line who could not otherwise have had the “soldier’s solace” after the perils and fatigues of long hours of trench service. [Pg 102]Nevertheless, that generous and courageous act was among the valiant things for which his country officially honored him. In the big fight that turned back the Germans, this free-souled chaplain made two complete tours of the front line under severe fire, ministering in unusually trying circumstances to the wounded and dying men of his regiment. Right well the men of that regiment loved him—not because he was their chaplain but because he was the chaplain who understood. A wonderful thing is understanding. We recall that the wise Solomon rated it above all things else.

The Stars and Stripes in an article about Chaplain Brady has the key to the man in the opening paragraph, which quotes him as saying:

“’Tis all one great church, the front line is. In all Christendom, in all the rest of the world you will not find so much unselfishness, so much Christian charity, so much loving kindness, as you find at the front. There, if anywhere, the men are brothers. We feel it. Denominations or sects are pretty much forgotten. Faith, war makes strange bunkies, and ’tis me and my pal, the Presbyterian minister, have been shelled out of the same quarters together.”

“Father Brady ought to know, for he penetrated the farthermost American position and has crawled beyond the front lines to hear confessions of Marines in the outpost. He was decorated for extraordinary heroism at the battle of Château-Thierry where his unfailing ministrations were a big factor in conserving the morale of the men.

“The true spirit of the Marines is Father Brady’s. He laughs at obstacles and perils, and his indomitable will carries him through the most difficult tasks. Often he has accomplished the seemingly impossible and he is honored by Protestant and Jew as he is by those of his own faith. Regardless of creed, the Devil Dogs of the 5th Regiment are proud of their chaplain.”

HIS LEATHERNECKS

“There was to be an attack the next morning in the gray hours before the sun was up, when Father Brady reached the wooded country between Soissons and Château-Thierry where his Leathernecks crouched under the Hun bombardments. He crawled and stumbled along the lines to hear confessions from his warriors. Hard-bitten old-timers who had not seen the interior of a church in years bared their souls and went light-hearted into the hell that followed the opening barrage.

“Reaching the final outpost, the young priest spied a shallow trench from which a sentry peeped. In spite of warnings he slipped out among the shadows and wormed his way forward and rolled into the ditch. He heard the confession as he and the outpost lay side by side looking up at the stars, and as he crept back to cover he knew that he had never granted absolution in stranger places. He has said mass for the faithful with his altar cloth on the shattered stump of a tree during the last lull before the attack.

“Friend and foe alike received the sacrament from the young Catholic priest. His enmity for the Germans ceased when he went among the young wounded Bavarians left on the field and gave them the last consolation of the church. Often he bent over young Germans, scarcely able to speak as they groped for their rosaries, and left them facing death more bravely.

“One of his most dangerous tasks was the burial of the dead, which must be done at night, and frequently under shell fire. It is work that must be done in the open, for digging is almost impossible where the woods fill the soil with interlacing roots. It was on such a mission that personal tragedy touched him. Making his way to the crest of a hill, where he had been told a man lay dead, he found the face of one of his closest friends turned up to the moonlight.

“In spite of the horrors he has witnessed and the sorrows he has shared, those who have met Father Brady recently say he is unchanged. Many men would have shrunk from his work, much of which was done alone with no comrade to speak a steadying word. Yet his spirit is still buoyant and his mind is unoppressed.”

A BIT OF A MISTAKE

“Many of his stories deal with the changes in spirit and practice that have followed the [Pg 103]sharing of hardships. All the Marines were ‘his boys.’

“‘What a pother they’d have made in the old days of peace back home if they had caught me at a mistake I made the other night,’ he said. ‘In the confusion just before the attack I heard the confession of one old sinner of a sergeant. He got half-way through before I discovered that he was not a Catholic.’

“‘No, Padre, I’m a Presbyterian,’ said he, ‘but they say confession is good for the soul. Believe me, mine feels none the worse now.’

“Once Father Brady received $2,000 from America to buy himself an automobile. He spent it on a club for the boys in his regiment. Later they found that the young priest could box and wrestle, and that he was the best referee that could be got for their fights. He built up trust and affection for himself during the weary months at the front.

“He has been day and night with his regiment during the long period when they were in the midst of things. For a month at a time he has snatched what sleep he could wherever he might throw himself down, under hedges, in roadside barns and even in shell holes. But he has always had a word of cheer for the men, and in the most terrible days he has made both living and dying more bearable for the 5th Marines.”

How the Ohio Doughboys Managed to Pick Up a New Nickname in France

The “Buckeye Division,” the 37th Ohio, got a new nickname for itself at Montfaucon in September, 1917. It was called “Spearheads” because of its ability to start a drive and carry on until its objectives were reached and captured. In a history of the Division Jack Koons (of the Cincinnati Inquirer), who was one of the Spearheads, tells in a breezily entertaining manner of the first experience of the boys going “over the top.”

Montfaucon had been held for over three years by the Germans, and was one of the so-called “invulnerables.”

“Just before dusk on the night of September 25 the men began to enter the trenches. Blankets, overcoats, packs, and all unnecessary equipment were piled in large salvage heaps. Behind the lines, crouched beneath leafy screens of camouflage, was the artillery. At 10.25 o’clock the first gun spoke and all along the line great splotches of red seared the sky and the boom, screech, and crack of the gigantic pieces echoed and reëchoed through the hills. Far across the landscape, rising from the plain and standing out upon the horizon, was Montfaucon. The white walls of the city could be seen distinctly in the daytime. A church steeple, long ago deserted by worshipers, stood, a vacant monument to the ravages of the foe. In the advance against Montfaucon it was necessary to advance approximately twelve kilometers, through two dense woods, a marshy land, up a sharp slope, another plain, and then a sharp ascent into the town. It was later learned that a German Division Headquarters was located in the town.”

AT THE ZERO HOUR

“Patrols advanced into No Man’s Land as the artillery cut away barbed-wire entanglements. The great guns rose into a rumble and death rode through the night on shells—bound toward Germany. At 2.25 o’clock in the morning of September 26 the barrage rose and thundered in volume. Like the roll of a mighty drum the sound could be heard for more than a hundred miles. At 5.05 o’clock the barrage rested on the German front lines—rested there for twenty-five minutes, cutting forests to the ground and demoralizing the enemy who fled into the deepest dugouts. At 5.30 o’clock, the zero hour, the boys from Ohio went over the top. Every county and village in the State was represented in that attack.

“On and on they went. Machine-gun nests, carefully camouflaged with the hellishness shown only by the German, were discovered and destroyed. Here and there in the woodland Hun snipers were busy—but not for long. Men fell by the wayside in agony, refused assistance from comrades, and urged the men to go forward. That was the true Ohio spirit. The spirit that drove the Germans back mile after mile, that resulted in the capture of not only Montfaucon, twenty-four hours later, but Cierges and Ivoiry. These towns had been held by the Germans for four long years and were wrested away and liberated by Ohioans in forty-eight hours. In the prisoner cage were huddled approximately 1,100 prisoners, many officers among them.

“Relief came to the tired, fighting crew on September 30. Back they came a laughing, joking, dirty, sleepy division of fighting men—no longer boys. Behind them, buried in the[Pg 105] fields of eastern France, slept those sons of Ohio who had given their lives, their all.”

NOW THE FINAL EPISODES

“At 5.25 o’clock on the morning of October 31 ‘Fritzie’ on watch along the Lys River was rudely awakened from his dreams of German beer and sauerkraut to face a typical go-get-’em barrage. It was a typical American barrage. Five minutes of drumfire. Five minutes of hell, fire, and damnation. Five minutes of terror. Across the Lys River scurried the Ohioans. Paddling in the icy water on logs and planks, the ‘doughboys’ went over, carrying rifles and machine guns. Engineers began to build bridges. For a few minutes the Germans hesitated, but it didn’t take them long to decide. Back they went to previously arranged positions. Here they planned to stop the infantry, but they were mistaken. In twenty minutes the Ohioans had reached their first objective. Three hours later they passed their second objective and dug in for the night. As they dug in the Germans dug out and started for the Escaut River. On the second day members of the 37th Division drove on through Cruyshautem and Huysse to the banks of the Scheldt (Escaut) River. Here, under a veritable rain of shrapnel and machine-gun fire, they established and held the only bridgeheads to be erected over this river during the war.”

THEIR LAST OVER

“In this drive through the fertile fields and populated country which had grown dormant under the four years of iron-hand rule of the Hohenzollern, more than twenty towns were liberated. Hundreds of men, women, and children, laughing, crying, cheering, greeted the men as they advanced and entered towns. The yellow, red, and black flags of Belgium appeared mysteriously from hiding places and swayed in the breeze. Apples and bottles of wine were resurrected and slipped down the throats of the boys in olive drab. Up ahead at Heurne, near Audenarde, the Americans were raising Cain with the Germans, who were falling back along the river.

“On November 4, 1918, the Division was relieved by a French division and hiked thirty [Pg 106]kilometers to Thielt, the largest town they had been in since leaving Montgomery, Ala. Here they brushed away the dirt and dust, waxed and grew fat until November 9. On that date the Division advanced again past Deynze to Synghem. With peace rumors flashing through the air, on the morning of November 10, the 37th Division went over the top again, crossing the Escaut River north of their first sector, and drove the Prussian Guards before them. It was here that news of the armistice arrived on the morning of November 11. Orders had been received to suspend hostilities at eleven o’clock. At ten o’clock the men were prepared to follow another barrage.

“Squatting in ‘funk’ holes, the men carelessly rolled cigarettes and waited for the hour to tick around. The announcement was made. ‘Hostilities had ceased.’ Calmly, confidently they clambered to the ground. Across the fields the Germans were moving away. There was no exchange of shots. Another cigarette. The war was over.”

And a Right Good Way to Win the V.C. and the Hearts of Men

Fred Holmes, corporal in the Yorkshire Light Infantry, was awarded France’s chief military decoration, the Médaille Militaire, for gallantry during the fight on the Aisne. The official account of the exploit is quite brief: Holmes saw a platoon of French struggling against heavy odds, whereupon he dashed over the river for a machine gun, carried it to the platoon, and turned it on the enemy, with such effect that the German pressure was immediately relieved. However, when Corporal Holmes’ name is mentioned men usually think of the thrilling record at Le Cateau which brought him the V.C.

The Yorkshire Light Infantry were in the very thickest of the fighting at Mons. At the little colliery town at Warmb they received a severe shaking from the enemy, but gave as good as they got. It was after the engagement at this place that the brave fellows, footsore and tired, but still cheerful, tramped many weary miles to the famous battlefield of Le Cateau.

It is not necessary to describe the stand made there, but only to mention a few facts, as recorded by G. A. Leask in his Heroes of the Great War, without knowledge of which Holmes’s feat would be unintelligible.

Orders were given to entrench, and the men set to work with zest, glad of the change from the continuous retreating. The task accomplished, the regiment lay down in the trenches, while the booming of the German guns grew ever louder.

At dawn of August 26 there was suddenly a fierce bombardment from the enemy’s artillery. According to Holmes, “We could feel the breath from their guns. It was awful.” The Yorks stuck to their trenches, firing incessantly. They had been told that French troops would reinforce them, but as the day dragged on no French appeared. The British artillery kept up a hot fire from behind Holmes’s trench, which suffered the proverbial discomfort of the unlucky victim between two fires.

Late in the afternoon the Yorks received orders to retire; to have remained longer would have meant annihilation. The troops retired in small sections, Holmes remaining with five men to the last to cover the retreat of the others.

Holmes was actually the last man to leave the trench. No sooner had he climbed over the parapet than he met the full brunt of the enemy’s fire, which by this time had become fiercer than ever. He had seen many of his comrades drop to earth, but his heart was undaunted. Suddenly, when he had proceeded a few yards from the trench, he felt his boot clutched and heard his name called.

TAKES UP HIS FRIEND

Holmes paused. There at his feet, unable to move, was one of his chums, his knees shattered by shrapnel. Holmes had only a brief moment for reflection. To delay meant certain death. The problem was how best to help the poor fellow. To take him back into the trench was the quickest way out of the difficulty, and the easiest. Had he done this, the Germans would soon have discovered the wounded man, and in all probability would have put an end to him. Holmes quickly dismissed this plan and decided upon the nobler and more dangerous course. He determined to make a dash with the wounded man, trusting to Providence to reach his lines in safety.

He took the poor fellow in his stalwart arms, no light task, as his chum weighed twelve stone. Exerting his full strength, Holmes slung the man across his back. His only thought now was how to escape the bullets. All around him were the British dead and dying, heroes who had done their bit in the great battle.

A slight drizzling rain was falling; it made the ground slippery, so that when Holmes resumed his dangerous journey he had the utmost difficulty in avoiding treading on the men who were at his feet. With infinite care he succeeded in reaching more open ground.

After proceeding about one hundred yards he paused to take breath, for the burden on his back was a heavy load. At this stage his companion began to complain that Holmes’s equipment hurt him. Holmes laid the man down and removed the equipment. Knowing that he might have to make a long journey before he could reach assistance, he decided at the same time to drop his pack and rifle.

The next few hundred yards were the most difficult, for a hailstorm of bullets and shells raged around. Holmes could hear them whistling as he staggered painfully along. Had he not been possessed of a splendid constitution he must have given in, but he was determined at all costs not to give in. So he continued on and went doggedly forward, with clenched teeth and grim countenance.

On the way he came upon a wounded officer seated on the ground, his head between his hands. The officer looked up as he heard Holmes approach, and when he saw what the hero was doing suggested to him to leave the man with him and look after himself. This Holmes could not bring himself to do. Yard by yard he plodded steadily along. The poor fellow he was carrying began to lose heart. Holmes, although in terrible mental anguish himself, had to cheer him all the weary and dangerous way.

Slowly but surely he made progress. Half a mile, then a mile was passed. Holmes took another rest. Then on again, until he came to a church flying the Red Cross. The Germans were shelling this, so he picked up his chum once more and proceeded to another village, where at length he was able to deposit his charge in the careful keeping of the British Red Cross.

In all, Holmes carried his chum three miles, and every inch of the way was attended by danger from the enemy’s fire. It was certainly one of the most unselfish of the many courageous deeds which it is the purpose of this book to record.

In order to rejoin his battalion Holmes had now to make another dangerous journey across a fire-swept zone. His road lay past a hill, at the bottom of which was a British 18-pounder quick-firing gun. The horses were quietly grazing; the gunners and drivers lay around dead. Nearby was a trumpeter, a lad of seventeen, who was wounded. This lad shouted that the Germans were coming. Holmes looked round and saw that the enemy were surrounding the gun. Now, the true soldier has ever had a fondness for guns, and will die rather than let one fall into the enemy’s hands. It was in this spirit that Holmes now performed his second act of heroism.

Placing the trumpeter on one of the horses, he hitched the team to the gun, then thwacked them with a bayonet he had picked up, and swung into the saddle. The Germans were all around; some actually grasped at the reins. Holmes shouted to the horses, and they rushed madly forward. One after another he bayoneted the nearest Germans, while bullets whistled by his ears. The horse Holmes rode had its right ear shot off. For eight miles the ride went on until the rear of a British column was reached and all danger passed. The poor trumpeter had fallen off in the furious rush.

Jim Gardener Quit the Trolley to Do His Bit and Did It Thoroughly

“When we went to war,” said James C. Gardener, “I figured it out this way: ‘I’m single and healthy and lots of other fellows are going over, and doggone me if I don’t go along and do my bit.’”

So he went down to the Marines’ recruiting office, in Baltimore, and enlisted. He was sent to Philadelphia and on June 6, 1917, he was one of 250 men put aboard the Hancock which went to New York for orders and on June 13 sailed for France.

Gardener had been a motorman on the Baltimore trolley, and when some months after he went to France the War Department, which did not then publish addresses, reported “J. C. Gardener killed in action” the Trolley Topics wrote an obituary of the motorman esteemed of his fellows; but as there was some uncertainty whether the J. C. Gardener killed was really the Baltimore boy, the obituary was withheld for more definite information. “Jimmie,” however, was mourned by his pals until there began to trickle through from one source and another rumors and reports that confirmed the doubt that the J. C. Gardener killed was really their “Jimmie.”

Then one day, the war over, there walked into a group of trolley-men at the Baltimore car barns a strapping fellow, six feet three, weighing 195, wearing a khaki uniform with three gold service chevrons and three gold wound stripes, a division citation cord for bravery on his left shoulder and the Croix de Guerre with palm on his breast, and the boys were doggone certain that Jimmie Gardener, motorman, was very much alive and able to give an account of himself. The Trolley Topics lost no time in possessing itself of that account, and to that semi-monthly organ of the United Railways and Electric Company we are indebted for some of the details of the fighting experience of this trolley hero whom the great Foch kissed on either cheek.

The Hancock, says Gardener was his twice by torpedoes on the way over, which “messed up both ends without crippling her very much.” He first saw action in a position “down below” St. Mihiel. He is quoted:

“It was about 4 a.m. of March 31st that they opened up with artillery. Right ahead of us was a graveyard. The shells first fell on the far side of the graveyard. Then they fell in the graveyard and tore up graves and generally ruined it. Then the shells began to crawl closer to us.

“There were four of us on guard and we reported the coming of the Germans to the officers, and the men were routed out of the dugouts. One little fellow named Roach—we called him the boy scout—was so excited that he put his trousers on backward and got his shoes on the wrong feet.

“He started with a box of ammunition for a gun and ran into another fellow with another box. The collision knocked him down and he rolled clear down a hill to the very place the gun crew was waiting for the ammunition.

“Some of us had been joking and I remember a fellow named Clark who said he wondered which of us would live to take the story back home. A buddy of mine named Hanky said, ‘You fellows write your notes to your mothers and sweethearts and I’ll take ’em back to them.’ Poor Hanky was killed in that fight.

“The fight lasted two hours. The point where I was had thirteen men to defend it. We had two Stokes guns.

“There were five hundred men in the party that attacked this point, or, to be exact, 498, according to the officers. We cleaned up the whole business. Seven of our thirteen men were killed.”

THAT LITTLE FELLOW ROACH

“We moved up to the woods gradually. We met Algerian troops belonging to the French Army. These Algerians claimed that they had been kept at the front too long. They were never taken to rest-camps or had any relief. Many of them committed suicide. They said they were tired of fighting. We met some that were running wild, shooting in all directions, and had to take shelter to keep from being hit by stray shots.

“We met many French moving back, too. They said that the Germans were very numerous in the woods.

“That little fellow, Roach, crawled out in a field, dug into a haystack and climbed to the top. From there he could see that Germans were hiding behind bushes farther on.

“He came back and said he was going to raid ’em. The officers said he didn’t have any right to do this without orders. ‘Well,’ said Roach, ‘this ain’t a regular battle, you know. This is just a little private party of my own.’ He said he wanted a dozen men to volunteer to go with him, and the dozen volunteered at once. I never saw a time when volunteers were called for among the marines that any one wanted to stay back. Everybody wanted to go.

“Well, Roach got his men as quick as he could count ’em. ‘Come on, fellows,’ he said: ‘I’m going to have them Germans for supper.’

“‘Did Roach or any of his dozen men get the Croix de Guerre for that?’ we asked.

“‘Oh, no,’ answered ‘Jimmie,’ ‘as I said, that wasn’t a regular affair. It was only Roach’s own party and there wasn’t nothing official about it.’ It was funny to see our bunch. Roach was a little fellow about five feet seven, and he chose as the second in command of his party a lanky artilleryman who was six feet eleven. The rest of us were just ordinary size, like me.’ (‘Jimmie’ Gardener is six feet three in his stocking feet and weighs 195 pounds!)

“That artilleryman had just drifted into our bunch somehow. They had put him out of the artillery because he had flat feet, and told him to go home. He said he didn’t want to go home. He wanted to fight, and he was going to stay with us whether he belonged with us or not, and he did.

“In a day or two we were put in trucks and hurried forward. We knew now that the Germans were pressing hard in their attempt to reach Paris. The French were falling back. We were run in those trucks directly between the retreating Frenchmen and the advancing Germans, and we got mixed up with the enemy so quickly that we simply tumbled out of the trucks oftentimes to engage in hand-to-hand fighting with the Huns.

“We went right at ’em, and this thing kept up for four days. We had nothing to eat, nothing to drink, nothing to smoke—and everybody longed for a smoke, even fellows who never smoked before they entered the service—and we had no sleep in all those four days and nights.

“A great deal of the time we were in close fighting. There was where the Germans failed. They were all right when they were twenty-five or thirty yards away and could use their rifles, but when it came to the bayonet they turned and fled.

“Sometimes we fought so close that it was impossible to use the bayonet. We had to knock ’em down with our fists first.

“Everybody said the odds were against us in this fighting. While we had some reserves there were only two regiments of us fighting and we were against three German divisions, including the Prussian Guards. But in four days we advanced one and a half miles.

“We suffered terrible losses. When we reached the town of Lucy, where we halted to be reorganized, there were only 150 men left in my company of 335 men.”

THE MAJOR SAID IT

“There was another company whose commander was killed and a major took charge. In the middle of the fighting he had lost so many men that a French officer advised him to retreat. ‘Retreat hell!’ he cried: ‘I’m going on as long as I and one man are left.’ It came near coming true, for when he reached Lucy he had just three men left with him out of an entire company.

“We saw some horrible things in Lucy, At one house we found an old French woman, She said she was with her three daughters—16, 18, and 20 years old—when the Germans came, and they had remained there without [Pg 113]any protection from the Huns who took charge of the house. We asked where her daughters were and she said they were upstairs and she guessed they were asleep.

“Several of us went to learn the fate of the girls and we found all three stretched out with their throats cut from ear to ear, and their bodies horribly slashed. The Germans had deliberately butchered them when they were forced out of the town.

“When we told the old lady of the fate of her daughters she was stricken with heart trouble and died in a few minutes, but before she died she asked that we bury her with the three girls in the little grove near her home. We did it although we were under fire the whole time, and eight of our men were killed while burying those French women.

“The next day we pushed on and got through the woods. That was the hottest fighting of all. The Germans used more artillery, and when the day was over the number of men in my company had again been reduced to about 150. Some companies had only a dozen or fifteen men left.

“One of the fellows killed that day was a fellow from South Baltimore who used to be a chum of mine before we went to war. His name was Halle. He said to me that morning: ‘Jim, I feel I’m going to get knocked off to-day. Never tell my people that I was killed. Just tell them that I am somewhere in France.’ He was killed and I haven’t told his people and never will, but they found it out through the War Department.

“We next went to the Marne. There we fought in the river. It was tough luck for a fellow to be wounded there, for as he sank down he was drowned. It was often close fighting, bayonet to bayonet in midstream, and must have been a pretty sight for people to look at if there’d been any spectators there, but it wasn’t very pretty for those in the fight.

“After the Marne battle our company’s ranks had to be filled again. Once more we had been reduced to about 150.

“Next we went to Château-Thierry and fought there for nine days, which was followed by a three-day hike to Soissons, which we reached on July 18, 1918. The next day we went over the top at 3 a.m.

“Ten minutes later I went down with a wound that crippled my ankle. I was gassed, too, and suffered shock. When I came to my senses in a hospital I had two other wounds that I didn’t know anything about. They told me that as the ambulance was carrying me to the rear it was struck by a shell which killed some of the other wounded men and presented me with a couple more wounds for good measure.

“Outside of having been in a bunch of hospitals in France and America that’s about all I know about the war,” concluded “Jimmie” Gardener.

“You haven’t told why you got the Croix de Guerre and the palm branch,” we suggested.

“Oh,” said “Jimmie.” “I was awarded the Croix with the six other fellows for cleaning up that bunch of 498 Germans in the quiet sector I told you about. The affair they gave me the palm for was rescuing a lieutenant who was wounded in the Belleau Wood fighting.

“I don’t know who the lieutenant was, but he was a newspaper man who had entered the fighting forces and he was out in advance of the line when he was wounded. Several of us volunteered to go out and bring him in, but we did not know exactly where he was. It was during the night and very dark. Along about four o’clock, as I was crawling along, I fell plumb into a shell-hole, and there he was with his leg shot off.”

“SORT OF SWIMMING-LIKE”

“I put my coat around him and bandaged his leg up as well as I could. Then he got his arms around my neck and I held on to him with one hand and dragged myself, sort of swimming-like, along the ground with the other.

“I had only an hour and a half before daybreak when the Germans would be able to see us, and in that time I managed to make about twenty yards to another shell-hole. We lay in that all day. The lieutenant suffered a great deal. I gave him what water I had in my canteen.

“When night came on we started again and before morning had made the rest of the distance—about sixty yards—to our trenches. The lieutenant got well. They say he is a[Pg 114] great writer of books and things. He belongs in New York State somewhere.”

“Yes, General Foch pinned the badge on our coats and then kissed us on both cheeks. We were all smiling when the kissing was going on.”

One Soldier Tells What It Is Like to Have Eyes Shot Out

You may not think this a story of heroism; but if it does not fall into that class we do not know where to place it. There is no attacking a plane in mid-air and sending it crashing to earth; no leaping into trench and gathering a score or so of prisoners with the tilt of a bayonet; no running to stand on a parapet and hurl hand grenades against a rain of bullets; nothing to set your blood into a gallop to grip you and make you take off your hat to the man about whom Private Jesse A. Whaley, Co. K, 310th Inf., A. E. F., is writing. And this is what Whaley wrote as it appeared in the New York Sunday Times:

“It is dark, the ground is damp and cold. There are men stirring about cleaning their rifles and there is a queer look on their faces. One private is sitting huddled in the trench; he is cold, he is hungry with that gnawing feeling in his stomach which comes from lack of food for many hours. He moves restlessly, thousands of things pass through his mind; home, loved ones. Suddenly a whistle sounds at our right and there is a rushing of men. There is but a second’s wait; it is the signal for the fight. It is now midnight, the men move to and fro, they disappear. When we come upon them again they are all lined up waiting for the barrage to start just outside of the wood. Does it seem possible that these men are the same who just a few minutes ago were sitting in the trench back in the wood? The barrage starts and the scene is lit with the strangest light our eyes ever saw. There is a roar in our cars, and suddenly all is dark with a blackness the eye cannot pierce. A flare breaks in the sky, lighting the strange scene which lies before us. To our right lies a valley in which are many more men. We see flashes of rifles, and now and again a flare shoots up, disclosing a clump of bushes which means almost certain death to those who approach it.”

A DASH STRAIGHT AHEAD

“The line moves steadily forward and a man from the back of the line rushes forward and breaks through with his rifle at the charge. It is the private who sat huddled in the trench. He makes a dash for the bushes, followed by other men. Men drop all along the line, but the clump of bushes is reached, and the men who made it are hidden from our view. Between us and the bushes men are lying where they fell, never to be walking mortals again.

“Suddenly the roar grows louder, and we can hardly hear each other shout, although we are standing side by side. The ground trembles and great holes are dug up by the flying shells. We hear the whine of the deadly fragments and the whiz of machine-gun bullets as they pass us on all sides. It seems death to move, but we go forward so we can see what is happening on the other side of the bushes. As we go we stumble over the bodies of men lying where they fell, some partly blown to pieces. At last we come upon the men again, and the lines are very thin. The private we have been following is still untouched, but something has happened to his rifle and he is down on one knee working fast and furiously until he has fixed it and loaded it. Just as he fixes it we notice another man less than a hundred feet away, and by the light of a flare we see that his uniform is not like that of our private. He is a German, and holds in his hands something that [Pg 116]looks strangely like a small soup can with a stick attached to it. It is a deadly hand grenade. Before the American can dodge he throws it, the American starts forward to make another dash, and then the grenade explodes with a roar which shakes the earth, and the American falls, hit in the head. Slowly he rises to his feet in a dazed way and reaches for his rifle. He gropes for it without seeming to realize that it has been blown far out of his reach. He stands up straight and wipes his face, which is running with blood; he pushes his hair back, then takes a step to the left and falls over the body of a dead comrade, killed perhaps by the same grenade and at the same instant.

That is the story of Jesse A. Whaley, told by himself while an inmate of the Red Cross Institute for the Blind, where the blinded soldiers are aught trades and occupations in which the sense of touch serves for the lost eyes. To grip gun in a charge against the foe is possibly no more heroic than to grip life, resolutely to serve though blind.

Terrible Effect of a Charge of Senegals Upon German Officer’s Sensibilities

Perhaps the most vivid and ecstatic description of a fight for trenches that was written in the course of the war or has been written since was from the pen of Rheinhold Eichacker, a German officer on the Western front. It was published in one of the German papers from which it was translated for the benefit of the New York Times. It deserves a permanent place in the historic record of desperate deeds of courage as an example of thoroughly adequate treatment, in literary form, of what may be styled “compound heroism.” The passionate frenzy of a personal experience could not be made more graphic with mere words as tools.

“After a lengthy artillery preparation, white and colored Frenchmen attacked our positions in heavy force. They succeeded in getting a foothold in some of our most advanced trenches. A furious counter-attack drove them back again in a hand-to-hand encounter. Nothing else of importance.”

“At 7.15 in the morning the French attacked. The black Senegal negroes, France’s cattle for the shambles. After a seven-hour suffocating drumfire that, according to all human reckoning, should not have left a mortal man alive. But we still lived—and waited. Six meters under the sod lay our ‘waiting rooms.’ Burrowed into the ground on a slant. ‘Courage bracers,’ they call them out there.

“At 7.15 the enemy shifted his fire backward upon our reserves. Our pickets sounded the alarm. We sprang to arms, with our gas masks in place. For a few seconds the trenches resembled an antheap. There was feverish hurrying, running, shouting, and shoving. Just for seconds. Then everybody was at his post. Everybody who was alive. Every one a rock in the seething waves. Every one determined to hold his position against hell itself.”

“LET THEM COME”

“A gas attack! Several hundred pairs of wide-open warriors’ eyes fixed their glances upon the ugly, smoking cloud that, lazy and impenetrable, rolled toward us. Hundreds of fighting eyes, fixed, threatening, deadly. Let them come, the blacks! And they came. First singly, at wide intervals. Feeling their way, like the arms of a horrible cuttlefish. Eager, grasping, like the claws of a mighty monster. Thus they rushed closer, flickering and sometimes disappearing in their cloud. Entire bodies and single limbs, now showing in the harsh glare, now sinking in the shadows, came nearer and nearer. Strong, wild fellows, their log-like, fat, black skulls wrapped in[Pg 117] pieces of dirty rags. Showing their grinning teeth like panthers, with their bellies drawn in and their necks stretched forward. Some with bayonets on their rifles. Many only armed with knives. Monsters all, in their confused hatred. Frightful their distorted, dark grimaces. Horrible their unnaturally wide-opened, burning, bloodshot eyes. Eyes that seem like terrible beings themselves. Like unearthly, hell-born beings. Eyes that seemed to run ahead of their owners, lashed, unchained, no longer to be restrained. On they came like dogs gone mad and cats spitting and yowling, with a burning lust for human blood, with a cruel dissemblance of their beastly malice. Behind them came the first wave of the attackers, in close order, a solid, rolling black wall, rising and falling, swaying and heaving, impenetrable, endless.

“‘Close range! Individual firing! Take careful aim!’ My orders rang out sharp and clear and were correctly understood by all the men. They stood as if carved out of stone, their lips tightly pressed, the muscles of their [Pg 118]cheeks swollen, and took aim. Just like rifle range work. The first blacks fell headlong in full course in our wire entanglements, turning somersaults like the clowns in a circus. Some of them half rose, remained hanging, jerked themselves further, crawling, gliding, like snakes—cut wires—sprang over—tumbled—fell.

“Nearer and nearer rolled the wall. Gaps opened and closed again. Lines halted and rolled on again. Whrr rratt—tenggg—ssstt—crack! Our artillery sent them its greeting! Whole groups melted away. Dismembered bodies, sticky earth, shattered rocks, were mixed in wild disorder. The black cloud halted, wavered, closed its ranks—and rolled nearer and nearer, irresistible, crushing, devastating! And the rifles were flashing all the time. A dissonant, voiceless rattle. The men still stood there and took aim. Calmly, surely, not wasting a single shot. The stamping and snorting of thousands of panting beasts ate up the ground between us.”

“HELL SEEMED LET LOOSE”

“Now the wave was only 300 paces from our defenses—from their remnants—now only 200—100—irresistible, seething and roaring—50 paces!—‘Rapid fire!’ I roared, I shrieked, through the swelling cracking of the rifles. A hurricane swallowed my voice! Hell seemed let loose at a single blow, raging, storming, obliterating all understanding! Shoving and stamping, shrieking and shouting, cracking and rattling, hissing and screeching. A heavy veil hung over the wall. In this cloud pieces of earth, smoke spirals, black, red, white, yellow flashes, quivered and flared. Rattling, rapping, pounding, hammering, crackling. And the shots fell unceasingly. Clear and shrill the rifles, heavy and roaring the shells.

“And now came the gruesome, inconceivable horror! A wall of lead and iron suddenly hurled itself upon the attackers and the entanglements just in front of our trenches. A deafening hammering and clattering, cracking and pounding, rattling and crackling, beat everything to earth in ear-splitting, nerve-racking clamor. Our machine guns had flanked the blacks!

“Like an invisible hand they swept over the men and hurled them to earth, mangling and tearing them to pieces! As an autumn storm roars over the fields they swept in full flood over the ranks and snuffed out life! Like hail among the ears of grain, their missiles flew and rattled and broke down the enemy’s will! Singly, in files, in rows and heaps, the blacks fell. Next to each other, behind each other, on top of each other. Hurled in heaps, in mounds, in hillocks. Fresh masses charged and fell back, charged and stumbled, charged and fell. And there were always fresh forces! They seemed to spring from the very earth!

“We had losses; heavy losses. Here a man suddenly put his hand to his forehead and swayed. There another sprang gurgling to one side and fell, as flat and heavy as a block of stone. S-s-s-t—it went above our heads. The French were throwing shrapnel against our trenches, hissing, cracking, and in volleys.

“Hell still rages. The blacks get reinforcements. Finally the whites themselves charge, a jerky, rolling, bluish-green mass! In a powerful drive they get over the first rise in the ground. Now they have disappeared. Now they bob up, as out of a trap door. Here and there the ranks shoot forward in great leaps, the officers ahead of all, with their swords swinging high in the air, just as in the pictures! A splendid sight. Now they reach the bodies of the blacks. They halt for a few seconds, as if in horror, then on they roll over the dead, jumping, wallowing, dozens falling.”

“WE STILL STAND FIRMLY”

“Our nerves are strained to the snapping point, gasping, bleeding, feverish! We dare not waver. ‘Steady, men! Steady!’ We must calmly let them come as far as the wire entanglements, as the blacks did. The blacks? Where are they? Disappeared! Only they left their dead behind. The same thing will happen to the whites. We are waiting for them. The death-spewing machine guns are lying over there. They lie there and wait until their time comes. Steady, steady! They lie there and wait impatiently—but yet they are silent— Now!—No—I am raving! ‘Rapid fire!’—I hiss—My neighbor staggers—I only listen and wait, wait and listen, for only one thing. Something that has to come, must finally come, has to come! Great God, otherwise we are lost! Be calm, be calm! Now they will begin reaping! Now they must begin to rattle, our machine guns, our faithful rescuers—now—at once! What can they be waiting for? Why, they are there in the wires already. Hell and Satan! No man can endure that! They are hesitating too long—the enemy is almost in the trenches! Ah! At last! A rattling—a hoarse crackling—Heaven help us, what is that?

“A devilish howling rises hoarsely from over there, lacerating, bestial, shrieking! The blacks, the devils! How did they reach our flank over there? That’s where our machine guns are. It cannot be. There! Hell! They are carrying hand grenades, are in their rear! Heaven help us! And the whites! They are at our breastworks. Already they are in the trenches, fighting like wild beasts. Horror makes them crazy. Help is coming to us from the left. The second company has fallen upon their flank. The French run like hunted animals. A shell bursts in their midst, catches twenty or thirty of them and throws them in the air like toys. They run still further, through the air, bowling along on their heads, gruesomely—and fall in heaps to the ground. Heads, legs, twitching bodies! The French run until back of the bodies. The rest of them are cut to pieces, or made prisoners. But now our men must come back.

“We struggle for breath. Wounded men writhe around and moan and groan heavily. The trench is bathed in blood. Far more than half of the company has been slain. We are[Pg 120] only a handful. I assemble the valiant men and distribute them among the trenches. They stand resolutely, breathing hard and gasping.

“A furious rattling and buzzing and hissing calls us again to our posts. They are charging anew. Now the whites again, in front, on the side. They are on our flank! Back of them the blacks in frightful clusters. ‘Bring the sandbags!’ The sandbags fly from hand to hand. A wall rises in the midst of the trench. The other half was overrun long ago and is a knot of struggling men. A piece of wood hits me on the shoulder—crack—I cry out! A shot lands in the midst of our ammunition—it was our last. This way with the hand grenades! We have got to smoke them out!

“A roaring hurrah! Heaven help us, aid is at hand! The Fourth, and the Fifth—I know the men—and some of the First, too—all mixed up—dispersed troops rallied again. Now, up and at them! The French defend themselves furiously. They hold the trench. The dead are heaped up before their ramparts—but keep it up! A wild passion takes possession of me. My revolver and my dagger have been lost in the fighting. I seize a bottle. Hell sends it to me at the right moment. Like an animal mad with hate I rush forward. My bottle lands, crashing and splintering, on a wooly skull, with a distorted grimace. A hot shock rushes through my shoulder—a shock—a wrench—I grasp at the air—grasp something convulsively—throw myself in the air—and fall in a heap. A confused mist dances before my eyes.”

On November 11, 1918. the American Army had 80 fully equipped hospitals in the United States with a capacity of 120,000 patients.

There were 104 base hospitals and 31 evacuation hospitals in the American Expeditionary Force, and one evacuation hospital in Siberia.

Army hospitals in the United States cared for 1,407,191 patients during the war; those with the American Expeditionary Force cared for 755,354—a total of 2,162,545.

Up to the end of July about 15 per cent, of the entire civilian medical profession of the United States went into active duty as medical officers of the army.

A Lone Corporal Captures 31 of the Enemy in a Morning Frolic

One of the most spectacular of the valorous deeds in the Champagne engagement was the single-handed performance of Corporal Fred D. Hubbell, a Marine, from Toledo, Ohio. He captured and brought in for delivery nine German officers and twenty-two privates as the result of a morning’s pastime. It was during the attack on Blanc Mont, and in some way Hubbell got separated from his company, and in casting about to recover ground he saw the head of a German soldier pop from a dugout entrance and promptly duck down again. Hubbell felt a keen interest and determined to explore. But let him tell his own story, as he did in an interview reproduced by the Marine’s Magazine.

“It was in the morning that the —th Company went forward and had almost obtained their objective when they ran into a series of dugouts occupied by German artillery officers. A few prisoners were taken from one of the dugouts and one of them said that there were no more there. About half an hour later, the company having been under machine-gun fire from our left, I happened to be crouching alone behind the entrance to a dugout waiting for a counter-attack that was reported to be coming, when I saw a Heinie stick his head out of a dugout.

“I immediately told him to put up his hands, but he jumped back down the doorway and I heard him speak a few words of English and so called to him to come out, which he did. He said that there were at least thirty men in the dugout beside himself, whom he thought would surrender also, and a couple of officers. I told him that there were plenty of Americans around and that they might as well surrender because there was no chance for them to get away, and for them to leave their firearms all in the dugout and come out at once and they would not be harmed. He returned to the dugout and said he would go down and get them to come out. He went down but did not return.

“After a considerable length of time I yelled down and threatened to throw a hand grenade and waited for them to come up but none came. As there were several entrances to the series of dugouts I was afraid that they would catch me from behind, so I moved off to the left under some shelter where I could get a different view of the entrance and I had only been there a short time when another Heinie stuck his head up and I yelled at him, thinking they were all coming out. After waiting several minutes I became leary that I would be caught from behind and started for help.

“While on the way I passed another entrance to the series of dugouts and came upon one of the officers with his pistol in his hand evidently coming out looking for me. I yelled at him to throw up his hands, but he did not, instead, fell backward down the stairs in his haste to get away. Then I ran to the dugout entrance with a grenade in my hand and ordered them to come out or I would throw it down, and they came up at once. The German private who spoke English, whom I first caught showing his head out of the doorway, came up and stood by and passed on the orders to the officers and men to leave their firearms below and hold up their hands. Then they all filed out and gave themselves up. There was one major, one captain and seven lieutenants and twenty-two men in the party.

“The private told me on the way to the rear that when he told the officers there was only one American outside they were furious and refused to surrender, and therefore would not come up, and ordered the private to sneak out of one of the dugouts and shoot me, but the private refused. All the privates were willing to give up, but the officers were not so anxious. They evidently had been caught [Pg 123]in their dugout by the barrage and could not get away without a great deal of risk.”

OTHER DOUGHTY CHAPS

But there were numerous single-handed exploits in that thrilling Champagne campaign, and among them are the following instances of the courage and initiative that characterized the American boys on the front.

Private John J. Kelley, of Chicago, Illinois, during the same attack as that in which Hubbell took part, crossed through the barrage of his own artillery, killed the operator of a machine gun which was firing into his line, wounded another with his pistol and took eight prisoners. Private Samuel S. Simmons, of Lancaster, Pennsylvania, with Private Lambert Bos, of Granite, Idaho, and Private Joe N. Viera, of New Bedford, Massachusetts, volunteered and attacked a machine-gun nest in advance of their front line. They killed the crew, then descended into an enemy dugout and captured forty prisoners.

Another instance is that of Corporal Horace P. Frye, of San Francisco, California. The position of his company on the hill east of St. Etienne was being continually swept by enemy machine-gun fire at apparently close range. Acting entirely upon his own initiative he determined to locate the source of the enemy fire and accordingly crawled forward unnoticed through 150 yards of open field, located the enemy guns and after throwing several hand grenades into their position he charged them and captured two machine guns and eleven men, with which he returned to his own lines through machine-gun fire.

The Singular Confessions of a Hollander Who Gave His Life for France

What is a coward? Is there any such thing as absolute bravery or absolute cowardice? When we characterize a particular person as a coward for failing to do, or refraining from doing, some specific thing are we quite sure that in the circumstances we would have acted differently? These are questions that suggest themselves when one reads what purport to be excerpts from the diary and letters of a confessed—or rather self-stigmatized coward, one Jan R——, a Hollander. He had lived in France some years, and soon after the outbreak of war became a naturalized citizen in order that he might join the French Army as a volunteer—not because he wanted to, but because he was ashamed to stay out.

The Atlantic Monthly published all that was suitable of the available material in a long and intensely interesting article which is a curious record of psychological study and introspection. It is highly probable that the experience was by no means unique. A candid statement by the most daring of our heroes possibly would contain the admission that there were moments when the reflections of the Hollander were similar to his own.

Jan R—— tells of morning awakenings from troubled sleep with “the oppression that something horrible was about to enter into his existence.” He felt a pang in his breast that he “should have to take part in the fighting. There was no escape.” He suffered a fear, a shifting fear that he “could sometimes suppress but never drive out.” The life in the training camp somewhat eased his emotions as he mingled with so many others, and at times he even got “flickerings of a desire to fight,” but it was not the real thing, he assumed; it was “more in the nature of artistic imagination.” In the distance was the rumbling and thudding of heavy gun fire, and as he heard it he felt “a strange respect and admiration, mingled with fear for the men in the first line of trenches.”

“Before long our turn for the trenches will come. Most of the fellows are wishing for the time to come. At least that is what they say. I am dreading it. I am in earnest when I say that my life is of little value, even to [Pg 125]myself. Yet I fear the trenches. Yesterday evening transports of wounded soldiers came past us repeatedly. Hearing the wailing and the groaning, seeing all the bloodiness made me sick.... The fear of the front suddenly overtook me. I violently reproached myself for having been so stupid as to enlist. There I was in the midst of this insane murder! And by my own free will!”

HE GOES TO THE FRONT

Finally his turn came for the front. One of his comrades was a youth named Gaston.

“The dear boy has become very much attached to me. He believes that I am a strong support for him! Must I weep at this, or laugh? Gaston has told me in great confidence that he gets occasional attacks of cowardice. And he asked me whether I did not despise him. He is terribly afraid that the fellows will notice it, but he did not mind confiding in me. Why in me? He says it is because he admires my imperturbable calmness so much. What could I reply? It seemed best not to tell him how things stood with me. Apart from the difficulties such a confession would cause me, I concluded that it would also be better for him to believe in my courage.”

THE BOY REGARDED HIM AS A HERO

“A hero! But there are real heroes and make-believe heroes; and they are not always easily distinguishable. I do not hide from myself that I belong to the make-believes. And yet, it is remarkable that I did not find the second week at the front as terrible as the first. It is not as bad there as it seems. When once you get accustomed to the idea that you may be dead in a day, or in an hour, or in a minute, and when you are clear as to your future, your mood is relieved from constant depression. Involuntarily you become kind and helpful to those about you, you do not get vexed over trifles, you are ready to make all sorts of sacrifices. Of course, if, in the midst of such a condition, a grenade suddenly drops into your trench, if you see three or four of your comrades getting killed, your misery returns, no matter how good an outward appearance you may keep up. At least, for a while. But then again the thought comes that getting wounded means rest and safety, and good care. And death? that is still less terrible. One boasts of reaching one’s destination along the shortest road! Is not death every one’s final destination?...

“I have tried to account for it, and it appears to be like this: at first our thoughts are almost incessantly occupied with the frightful things that are about to happen. Then moments come—only a single one at first—in which our thoughts wander away, involuntarily, and dwell on something else. Suddenly fear returns. But the periods of repose become more frequent and of longer duration. And when they are disturbed by fear the painful shock becomes gradually less violent. Neither does fear itself ache so hard. And then the time approaches when one is conscious of fear only on occasions when there is a violent fire, or when men fall. That is my present condition. There seems to be a further stage in which one is rid of fear for good. So far I shall not get.”

One day he got a wound in the hip and was sent to the hospital. The nurses have gotten the idea that he is a hero. He accounts for it thus:

“A friend of Gaston’s is a distant cousin of one of the nurses. Gaston inquired after me, and apparently used that occasion to do a good deal of boasting. At any rate, some greatly embellished stories of my sangfroid have been going the rounds here. Without having to lie, I could say that all this was invented, or at least highly exaggerated. The consequence was that I was looked upon, not only as a hero, but as a giant of modesty as well. It is very annoying. However, to be honest, I must confess that now and then this undeserved praise gives me a feeling of satisfaction; I have always known that I was weak-minded.”

HE IS PROMOTED

“Back to the trenches and made a Corporal. A small thing, eh? Just the same, it made me happy. I was touched by the friendly spirit of the fellows. Gaston shook my hand at least six times, muttering, ‘Ah, mon vieux, [Pg 127]mon vieux, how I have missed you!’ This does one good. And I had better not get lost in the question as to how much of all this attachment I deserve.”

“In the early morning of the 13th the cannonading was resumed, and again we had hours of exhausting expectation. Toward noon we noticed that an unusual event was coming. The captain shouted something. I could not understand a word. Gaston understood: the wire entanglements in front of the first line of trenches had been shot to pieces. We had to hold ourselves ready. There was incessant telephoning.

“I could not restrain myself any longer and looked over the edge of the trench.

“They were coming indeed; I saw them. In broad, irregular rows they were running toward us. Straight toward me, it seemed. And behind them, there came others, and still others, evermore. The German guns were silent now. And then suddenly ours began to roar with redoubled vigor.

“Holes, narrow clefts, and fissures were torn in the massive gray billows that came rolling toward us.

“But behind the first wave came a second one, and a third one behind that. I saw them approach, losing in vigor, yet remaining strong.

“We were ready. In that moment I felt no fear! Like the others, I was burning to fly out of the trenches. Suddenly a strange silence came, and then the call: ‘Attaquez! Attaquez!’

“We clambered up, jumped over the edge of the trench, and ran forward. In front, to the left, to the right, everywhere there were French soldiers, storming forward.

“I saw the Germans coming nearer, in their dirty gray uniforms, in rows, in heaps, and in smaller groups, some even singly. I saw the glistening and flickering of their bayonets. I heard them yell and shout. My heart thumped so hard that I had difficulty in breathing. Around me our men were shouting loudly. I was shouting too, and felt relieved when I heard my own voice, however indistinctly. Now and then a rifle-shot could be heard. We were running fast. ‘En avant! En avant!’

“Suddenly I became aware of a desire to hold back a little, and thereby to postpone, if only for a single second, the terrible moment of the clash. I happened to be pushed by a comrade behind me and I flew forward again.

“At last we had reached the Germans. Six steps in front of me I saw Gaston bayoneting an officer. Not a second later the poor chap fell himself—hit by a rifle shot, as I learned later.”

“BRAVO, CAPORAL”

“Suddenly a big German stood before me, a deathly pallor on his face, his mouth drawn, his eyes crazed with fear. His terror gave me courage and a feeling of superiority. I jumped on him. He tried to defend himself, but, with all my strength, I plunged my bayonet into his body. ‘Bravo, caporal!’ I heard some one call. Scores of my comrades ran past. I tried to catch up with them, stumbled over a body, and fell, with my head to the ground. But immediately I got up again and ran forward, more slowly however; my legs felt weak and powerless. Forward again! The attack had been repulsed. The German guns began thundering again; we had to return to our trenches.

“I took the death of Gaston (and of many others) more calmly than I had feared. This is not so surprising after all. Death may strike any one of us at any moment. We have accepted that chance. But if that is our attitude toward ourselves, why should we not have it toward our friends?

“But it still seems strange to me that I can not reach a definite judgment on my action in this last fight. Certain it is that the circumstances absolutely required my doing what I did, even leaving entirely out of consideration the fact that to every one his own life is dearer than that of a stranger. I can not hesitate in the choice between a French soldier and a German soldier. But it is equally certain that killing men runs counter to my nature and is absolutely irreconcilable with ideas which I had always accepted without question. Efforts to remove the contradiction between these thoughts must inevitably fail. It is in this way that I seek to explain the fact[Pg 128] that at one moment I am cheerful, and sing with the rest—that I am invariably rejoicing over my good luck in the last fight, not merely having escaped without even the slightest scratch, but having had besides the good fortune of killing two Germans; while the next moment I sit worrying silently, asking myself, ‘How did it come to be possible that you are taking part in this frightful war—as a volunteer?’”

He was to receive an answer on another plane. The story of Jan R—— seems to have concluded with the three words, “Fell at Souchez.”

Oxford Graduate and Green-Grocer’s Assistant Win Their Spurs in the Same Crisis

Sir John French has described the fight for Hill 60 as “the fiercest fight in which British troops have ever been engaged.” The hill is southeast of Ypres. Its possession was essential to the British, for it dominated the surrounding country. The Germans held it, commanding excellent artillery observation toward the west and northwest. For months the British had been working to mine it. After much hard work the sapping was complete and one hundred tons of explosives placed in position.

Saturday, April 17, 1915, was the appointed day for the great event. The explosion was timed for seven o’clock in the evening, and, according to program, up went the hill—Germans and all. It was like an earthquake. Simultaneously the artillery opened on the spot and poured in shells at the rate of five a minute. At a quarter past seven the infantry attack was launched, and the British were in possession of the ruins.

Then came the second phase—the holding of Hill 60, which was the hardest task of all, for the German reinforcements came to the assault by the thousands; but as fast as they came rifle and gun fire mowed them down.

During the next few days the Germans continued to attack ferociously, so much importance did they attach to the position.

A private in the East Surreys, writing in the London Evening News, gave the following vivid word-picture of the battle:

“The fight on Hill 60 was awful. The Germans used every kind of explosive, from small bombs to shells that shook the ground like an earthquake.

“This went on from four o’clock in the afternoon to about four the next morning. Every German gun for miles around was trained on that hill.

“Some of the German shells were filled with a stinking acid, which blinded one. I would rather take my chance in half-a-dozen bayonet charges than face such an awful bombardment again. The enemy charged four times, but we beat them back each time, and kept the hill until we were relieved next morning.”

It was in these nerve-racking engagements that Second Lieutenant Geoffrey Harold Woolley and Corporal Edward Dwyer were awarded their honors for distinguished service.

FROM CURATE TO SOLDIER

Lieutenant Woolley is the youngest son of Rev. G. H. Woolley, Danbury, Essex. He was educated at St. John’s School and Queen’s College, Oxford. While at the University he joined the Officers’ Training Corps. He studied for Holy Orders, and is all but a curate, inasmuch as he was on the eve of being ordained when, at the age of twenty-three, he decided to give his first service to his country.

Lieutenant Woolley has been described as a typical specimen of muscular Christianity. He excels at cricket, tennis, and football, and played the greater game of war with all his heart and soul.

He received his commission in the 9th Battalion London Regiment, popularly known as the Queen Victoria Rifles. With the experience of the Officers’ Training Corps to help him, the young lieutenant soon made himself very efficient, and when, in November, 1914, the Queen Victoria Rifles embarked at Southampton for the front, he had already become very popular with his men, and shown high promise as a leader. Soon after landing in France the regiment was at the front, near Ypres, where it was usefully employed, chiefly in trench work.

“On the very first day that he went into the trenches, Lieutenant Woolley showed his mettle. A hand grenade was flung into his trench; without a moment’s hesitation the young officer picked it up, and before the fuse had burned to the charge, flung it out. His prompt and plucky act saved not only his own life, but the lives of at least six or seven of his men.

“On the night of April 20-21 the Germans made a desperate attack on the trench held by Lieutenant Woolley’s regiment. The Queen Victoria Rifles fought with dogged determination not to be excelled by the most seasoned Regulars. Every German gun for miles around was trained on the hill. Again and again the Germans charged with the ferocity of despair.

“One by one Lieutenant Woolley’s superior officers—a major, captain, and a lieutenant—had been killed.

“The force under Lieutenant Woolley numbered at the start 150, including some Regulars. As the German attack grew fiercer, he noted how his little company was being thinned. The young officer did not despair. He was in sole command of Hill 60, and he realized that a hard and terrible time awaited them before relief came, but he summoned up all his courage and made up his mind to hold on at all costs. He went up and down the line calling to his brave men to ‘stick it’ and he infused all with his dauntless spirit.

“A particularly fierce onslaught by the Germans commenced. Guns raked the trench with shells, enemy troops swarmed up, throwing bombs. Lieutenant Woolley moved among his men, giving orders as coolly as if on parade. The already diminished band of heroes dwindled more and more. Lieutenant Woolley knew that the situation was perilous, but he had no thought of giving in. The knowledge that so much depended upon him stirred his blood, and called forth every ounce of his fighting spirit and powers of leadership.”

A DETERMINED BOMBER

“He organized counter-attacks and led his men in throwing bombs at the vastly superior force of the enemy. Standing on the parapet of the trench, fully exposed to the enemy, Woolley hurled bomb after bomb. His men urged him to seek shelter, but he refused. For some time this amazing contest continued, a handful of British against thousands of Germans. But this little band of heroes by their superb bravery, led by a hero, kept the enemy at bay. When welcome relief eventually came, the company of 150 men had been thinned to 20-14 Territorials and 6 Regulars, a pathetic proof of the dauntless fight put up by those men.”

The second hero of Hill 60 is one of the most popular medal winners of the war. Lance-Corporal Edward Dwyer at the time he obtained the coveted decoration was only eighteen years old, and had been a green-grocer’s assistant before the war.

“This boy hero took the public imagination by storm, and with the possible exception of Sergeant O’Leary, no V.C. was more noticed on his return to England. He received enough hero-worship to last a lifetime. When home on leave Dwyer was bombarded by the attentions of admirers, kissed by women in the streets, and, as he confessed, subjected to greater trials than on the bomb-swept slopes of Hill 60.”

TOO MUCH FUSS FOR HIM

“There was something romantic about the slim boy of eighteen who proved himself so heroic in the field, and his handsome appearance and jolly ways captivated every one. As his father confessed, with no little humor, ‘They’re making such a fuss that Ted wants to get back to the battlefield for a rest.’”

Dwyer had been fighting in France for nine months when the struggle at Hill 60 provided his great opportunity.

“During a particularly fierce attack on the morning of the 20th, Lance-Corporal Dwyer was in a trench on the side of Hill 60, about fifteen yards distant from where the Germans had entrenched themselves. So close were they, in fact, that Dwyer says he could actually hear them ‘talking their lingo.’ His section had suffered severely, and Dwyer risked his life by tending many of them as best he could. Some he brought from the open to the side of the trench, leaving the comparative safety of his position in order to save their lives.

“He looked through a spy-hole in the parapet and saw a number of the enemy creeping silently and stealthily across the intervening space between the trenches.

“Like the methodical soldier he is, Dwyer had kept a number of hand grenades, some fifty, all ready to fire.

“Thus provided, he gallantly sprang on to the parapet of the trench. The Germans were creeping forward, thinking to surprise the British, but they had reckoned without Lance-Corporal Dwyer. He stood fully exposed to their fire, and threw his deadly missiles steadily and with excellent effect. For five minutes this eighteen-year-old hero stood all alone hurling grenade after grenade at the oncoming foe.

“The Germans, led by an officer, showed great stubbornness. Had they known that a lad of eighteen alone was guarding the trench, they would have doubtless redoubled their efforts to capture it. Young Dwyer kept throwing his grenades. He had now sent twenty into the ranks of the enemy; now he had used up thirty. At this juncture the officer who was leading the Germans was hit, and this loss seemed to damp the ardor of the attackers.

“Dwyer, however, began to show the first signs of uneasiness. His stock of grenades was fast running out. He had only half a dozen left, soon these had each found a target. Then in the nick of time reinforcements arrived, and the trench was saved. Dwyer alone had saved the situation.”

A New Zealand Soldier with the Qualities of a Fenimore Cooper Hero

Colonel Freyberg is another winner of England’s highest military honor—the Victoria Cross. “For enduring courage and brilliant leadership his achievement,” writes the London Times, “was unsurpassed by any act for which the Cross was conferred.”

To begin with he carried an initial attack straight through the enemy’s front system of trenches, but after the capture of the first objective his command was much disorganized owing to mist and a heavy fire of all descriptions. The Colonel himself rallied and reformed his own men, as well as men from other units who had become intermixed. His own contempt of danger inspired the troops. He was finally able to lead them to the successful attack of the second objective. Colonel Freyberg had by this time been wounded twice, but he again rallied his men and reformed them, and, although under heavy artillery and machine-gun fire in a very advanced position and unsupported, still he held his ground for the rest of the day and throughout the night. On the following morning, having been reinforced, he organized an attack on a strongly fortified village, and such was his dash and enterprise that the village was captured and 500 prisoners were taken. For the third time the officer was wounded, and later in the afternoon he was again wounded, this time seriously, but he refused to leave the line until he had issued final instructions.

“The personality, valor, and utter contempt of danger on the part of this single officer enabled the lodgment in the most advanced objective of the Corps to be permanently held, [Pg 133]and on this point d’appui the line was eventually formed.” So closed the official version of the gallant colonel’s performance.

Colonel Freyberg was by birth a New Zealander. He was not yet twenty-eight years of age. Born in Wellington, he developed both the physique and resourcefulness that were essential for the success of some of the enterprises which he undertook in the war. He won fame throughout Australasia as an exceptionally fine swimmer; he grew to be six feet in height, and broad and powerful in proportion; he achieved renown as an oarsman, a footballer and a boxer, and his physique won for him the affectionate nickname of “Tiny.” Leaving New Zealand he went to America, and drifting to Mexico found full scope for his adventurous aspirations; he fought in Mexico’s Civil War.

In 1914, the London Times says, Freyberg came home, joined the Royal Naval Division, and was wounded in the hand at Antwerp. With good service to his record he went to Gallipoli with his battalion, being already a lieutenant-commander. In Gallipoli he again distinguished himself. General Paris was in charge of a force which was to make a feint landing at Bulair, the narrow neck of the Peninsula. Freyberg was given charge of the party, but, while prizing the honor, he proposed an alternative scheme which, he believed, would protect the lives of the men. This idea was that he should take colored flares and swim ashore, that he should then light the flares, as if a landing was anticipated, and then swim out again to a waiting destroyer. This he did, stripping, and painting his face and shoulders a dark color, so that he should not be seen swimming. Freyberg landed on the beach, lit the flares, made a reconnaissance, and swam off again, but owing to the darkness and the current he missed the boat which was to pick him up, and it was almost two hours before he was hauled on to the deck of the destroyer, more dead than alive. This remarkable feat of endurance and resourcefulness, more suggestive of an adventure from Mayne Reid or Fenimore Cooper than a sober act of modern war, won for the young officer the D. S. O.

An Act of Heroism and Martyrdom that Hardly May be Matched

A Distinguished Service Cross is a proud possession. It is at once a token of bravery and an evidence that bravery has been displayed in valiant service for the good or the saving of others. It implies a great risk taken, a danger faced, a sacrifice made—a something done that, however creditable to the man, is of special value because of its benefit or advantage to many besides the man. For that reason one Distinguished Service Cross differs from another in proud significance to the winner or to the relative to whom the cross comes as an after death testimony to the winner’s worth. The formal official paragraph that announces the award of the cross to this one or that one tells nothing or little of the service that gained the distinction, because the official estimate makes no discrimination between the sentimental values of the respective services, distinguished service being distinguished service.

But there are varying qualities of bravery, different kinds of incitement to heroism, different elements in the acts of sacrifice; and one might like to know the varying values of the instant motives behind the acts—say, of a man who, in the heat and excitement of an engagement, rushes through a withering fire of shell and bullet to perform a serviceable act of desperate valor, with one chance in a thousand of coming safely off; or, of a man, without the stimulus of brain aflame and with the absolute certainty of death, who unhesitatingly, immediately lays down his life for his friends. Which is the higher courage?

In the great list, the never fully-to-be-completed list of heroic deeds in the four years’ war, is there any deed more sublime in essential [Pg 135]quality than that of Sergt. Willard D. Purdy, Company A, 127th Infantry, A. E. F.? You never heard of it? That’s the amazing thing—that this splendid exhibition of the highest character of devoted courage is hardly known at all! Really, it was so great a heroism that it seemed a commonplace in the telling. Here is the story. It reads very simply in the bald despatch of a newspaper man reporting the facts from Washington.

THE MARTYR HERO

“Washington, D. C., May 30.—[Special.]—The heroism of a Wisconsin sergeant, who deliberately sacrificed his own life to save those of his men in the fight at Hegenbach, Alsace, July 4, 1917, is told with official brevity and skeletonized simplicity in to-day’s war department report announcing the award of distinguished service crosses for bravery in action.

“The martyr hero was Sergt. Willard D. Purdy, a member of Company A, 127th Infantry. During the engagement at Hegenbach, Sergt. Purdy, after returning with his patrol from a reconnaissance of the enemy’s line, was engaged in calling the roll of his men and collecting their hand grenades when the pin of one of the grenades became disengaged.

“Seeing the grenade could not be thrown away without making certain the wounding of American troops—most probably some of his own men—Sergt. Purdy instantly commanded his men to run. Then he himself seized three of the grenades and, bending over, held them against his stomach. The grenades exploded, killing Sergt. Purdy instantly, but his presence of mind and self-sacrificing action had saved the lives of his companions.

“When the pin of a grenade becomes disengaged nothing can be done to prevent the bomb from exploding within six or eight seconds.

“Sergt. Purdy’s home address was Box 632, Marshfield, Wis., and his next of kin was given as Mrs. Esther Purdy, his mother.”

No grand adventure; no risk with cheering comrades in a mad assault; no thrill with the consciousness of perils to be met and with luck avoided; no taking of hazards with the hope of an achieved success. Not like a flight into the air to shoot down, after vivid combat, an enemy plane. Not much of a story for the press. But think about it. Match it.

Though They Had More Than Their Share of Trouble to Get to France

Everybody knows what a record the 15th New York Colored Regiment made in the war, how splendidly it fought, the heroism it displayed and the honors it received, but not everyone knows what adversities it had to contend with before it could get to France. The Colonel of that remarkable regiment (which revived the memory of the Civil War military reports that “the colored troops fought nobly”), Col. William D. Hayward, has given a humorous account of those difficulties. This was in one of the many talks Hayward—who has put off the title of Colonel and returned to the civilian simplicity of “Mister”—has been compelled to make in response to public requests. He said, broadly smiling:

“The first thing I ever did in my life that anybody approved of was getting up that regiment. After I gathered my crowd of Harlem waiters, bellhops, indoor chauffeurs, and elevator boys I thought I’d never get them across. When the minute finally came for sailing I think every elevator on Riverside Drive stopped automatically.

“When our ship left in 1917 we sailed a little way, then broke down, came back, and tied up at Hoboken with our cargo of Thanksgiving turkeys and black troops. We got fixed up and started again. We didn’t get quite as far as before when the ship caught fire. I sneaked back and reported the mishap to General Shanks at the port of embarkation. Our ship was overhauled and a third time we set out full of hope, but the machinery broke down again. When I reported to General Shanks this time, he said: ‘Goodness gracious, Colonel, are you ever going to get those coons and turkeys to France?’

“When at last we reached the French front in the Argonne Forest I reported to the French officer in command that I had arrived with the 15th New York Infantry and would place myself and men at his disposal. ‘It is impossible!’ exclaimed the officer. ‘There’s no such American unit due here.’ Finally he said in surprise, ‘Are you the 369th Infantry Regiment of the United States?’ and I replied, ‘I are.’

GAVE THEM BOLOS

“Then they took all our American ordnance away and gave us bolos, which are knives modeled after those used by the Cubans. I was glad afterward, although I think my boys would have done better with razors. When we were leaving France I was told that the regiment would be presented with three thousand razors by the French. When we received the gift we found they were safety-razors. The regiment was insulted.

“From March, 1918, until the following January we were with the Fourth French Army, under General Gouraud. On July 15 I wrote Governor Whitman that the German Army was licked. They were at maximum strength and we at minimum, but ten American divisions were arriving monthly.

“My boys had a sublime faith that they would win. The idea of defeat never entered their heads. No private or officer had[Pg 137] any doubt about our ability to break through. One day I found a number of the men buying German money that had been taken from the dead. I asked why they wanted it, and they answered, ‘We’ll be needin’ this here money soon.’ In five months they were spending it in the Rhine towns and talking Harlem German with a Yiddish accent. They were the advance guard of the Allied armies. The French gave them the honor of carrying the Stars and Stripes to the Rhine. And I was the first man to scoop water from the river. Can you beat that for Allied generosity?

“The boys all had a keen sense of humor. When we docked at Hoboken they were eager to get ashore. One of them said to me: ‘Colonel, the Generals is goin’ over the gangplank and the rats is goin’ over the hawsers. We hope you’ll tell us when it’s time for the regiment to go ashore!’

“I remember one little negro on the other side who was carrying shells from an ammunition-dump to a train. He was so loaded down with 3-inch shells that he was sunk ankle-deep in the mud. He said to his officer, ‘How you got my name on dat sheet?’

“‘Yas, sir, dass right; only I thought maybe you had “Sampson” by mistake.’”

He jested about them freely, did Colonel Hayward, but the jests were of a kind to betray the intense pride he felt in the soldierly character and spirited daring of the men under him. The Hun learned to regard with wholesome fear a charge of Hayward’s “bellhops and waiters,” as he styled them.

At the beginning of the war there were only 750 officers, 393 nurses, and 3,619 enlisted men belonging to the Medical Department of the American Army. In November, 1918, the corresponding figures were 39,363 officers, 21,344 nurses, and 245,652 enlisted men.

In the 19 months elapsing from the declaration of the war to the signing of the armistice the American Army created an embarkation service which succeeded in shipping overseas 2,075,834 men, and 5,153,000 tons of cargo.

During the whole period of active hostilities the American Army lost at sea only 200,000 deadweight tons of transports. Of this total, 142,000 tons were sunk by torpedoes. No American transport was lost on its eastward voyage.

One of the Men the British Took to Gallipoli to Show Their Grit

Private Frederick Potts did a V. C. bit at Gallipoli. An attack was being made on a very strongly fortified Turkish position, a sector stretching from Hill 70 to Hill 112. Potts was in the advance on Hill 70. It was a terrible day. The heat was intense. The country was uncommonly difficult, largely sand and scrub, the scrub being so parched that it took fire in many places from the shell fire, and in crossing these patches some of the men who fell wounded were burned to death. Potts’ section was ascending Hill 70 in short spurts, making occasional halts. After taking shelter in a little gulley, it was ordered to charge. Potts rushed forward with his comrades; but he had not gone more than twenty yards when he was shot down, a bullet having entered the left thigh. Potts was then about a quarter of a mile from the top of the hill. He was lucky enough to be lying in a little thicket formed of the scrub, and this gave him some sort of shelter and hid him from view. Not long after he fell there crawled towards him a fellow-townsman, who was badly wounded. Potts recognized him.

Then Andrews dragged himself as close as he could get—he had been shot through the groin—and the two lay perfectly still for some minutes fully expecting that the Turks would find and kill them.

Very soon a third trooper who had been wounded made his way to the thicket. With great difficulty, room was found for him. Andrews had hardly moved his position so that the newcomer could be accommodated when a bullet mortally wounded the stranger. He cried piteously for water, but there was not a drop to be had, and the three wounded soldiers endured the agonies of thirst that whole afternoon of intense heat. The night came bitterly cold, increasing the suffering of the three. Moreover, a full moon made the night as clear as day, and every movement in the thicket was followed by a bullet from the Turks. A bullet grazed Potts’ left ear as he lay flat on the ground, face down. The morning brought death to the stranger. He had kept on murmuring wearily, “Water! Water!”

The whole of the next day the two survivors lay hidden in the hot scrub, not daring to move, tortured by thirst, suffering from their wounds, and trying to get relief by sucking bits of stalks which they managed to pick from the shrubs. That night, as the only hope of salvation was to get away, they began to crawl off, Potts leading and Andrews following. They lay perfectly flat, and literally wriggled. From six at night—when darkness fell—till three in the morning they dragged themselves, dust-choked, a distance of about three hundred yards—as Potts calculated afterwards, thirty-three yards an hour. A bit of burnt scrub near at hand afforded slight protection; this was taken, and the troopers tried to sleep, but the extreme cold made rest impossible. When daylight came, some water was obtainable, but only by crawling to men who had been killed and whose bottles could be reached. This dreadful day passed, Potts doing his best to stanch his comrade’s bleeding wounds. The third night on the hill came.

A SHOVEL TO THE RESCUE

The two men tried once more to get away and reach the British lines. Potts attempted to carry Andrews, but he was too weak and the effort failed. Then, says the London Times, when hope itself seemed to be abandoned, an inspiration came, suggested by an ordinary entrenching shovel, one of many which were lying on the hill. Potts wriggled to the shovel, managed to support Andrews[Pg 139] on it, stood up, and dragged desperately—all the more so because as soon as he rose the Turks opened fire. Famished and exhausted, he could not do more than pull his burden over the rough ground for about six yards; then he collapsed. Andrews, too, had suffered severely under the strain. But the next night Potts resumed his forlorn hope. He had his comrade on the shovel, lying flat; he supported him as best he could, and Andrews held grimly on to his rescuer’s wrists. For more than three hours, in the bright moonlight, down the scrub-infested, stony, dusty hillside, Private Potts dragged his helpless burden on the shovel; then came a sentry’s challenge, “Halt!” Inexpressibly joyful was the sound of the British voice to the two worn-out troopers; grimly humorous was the sentry’s question:

Potts explained: “I have a chap here wounded, and I’ve dragged him down the hill on a shovel. Could you not give me a hand?”

Give a hand! Many a willing hand was given that night at the foot of that fatal hill, the scene of much tragedy, yet relieved by the bravery and resource of the twenty-two year old trooper, who might easily have saved himself by abandoning his wounded fellow; but he was not of that breed.

And in Spite of Regulations and Red Tape the Old Sergeant Got to France and Into the Front Lines

Let no one dare deny the heroism of Bill Davidson. His name may not be found among those cited for distinguished service, but that is because distinguished services are not enumerated in the military code. If there is an instance of more determined valor or of more successful triumph over the impossible it does not appear in the chronicles. Nevertheless it is necessary to introduce Bill Davidson, and the greatest distinction that can be conferred upon him in the estimation of Bill Davidson himself is to say he was orderly to Lieutenant Colonel John C. Greenway, First Division, A. E. F. He hailed from out Arizona way. In the days when the United States was engaged with Spain in the discussion of matters more or less serious, Jack Greenway was a Captain of Rough Riders, and Bill was his Sergeant, and by the testimony of that Captain, now Lieutenant-Colonel, Bill was the best first Sergeant in Cuba. There Bill took into his spiritual system an affection of devotion to Greenway that time and circumstances can never diminish.

Therefore, when the United States declared war against Germany, Bill, who was in the employ of the New Cornelia at Ajo, straightway thought of Jack Greenway. He said to himself, “All hell can’t keep Jack Greenway from going to the front, and it’s me for Jack Greenway.” He foresaw a great experience “over there,” the doing of extraordinary things, and he wanted to be with Greenway in the performance.

Greenway, of course, tendered his services to the Government at once and was given a commission as Major of Engineers. Now let the Bisbee Review continue the story as it got it direct from Colonel Greenway in Bisbee town.

One day Bill walked into the Captain’s office in Warren just as he was preparing to close his desk and quit the office.

“Well, Captain, I’ve quit over yonder,” Bill remarked, after the salutations.

“Hell, no. I’m no fool. If I enlisted over here I might not go to France for months, perhaps not at all. I’m going with you, and shall enlist in your regiment after I get to France,” was the way Bill figured it out.

Greenway couldn’t make Bill see the futility[Pg 140] of the idea of getting over to France without enlisting in the service, so there was nothing to do but let Bill come along. They took the train together at Osborn, Bill carrying his bed rolled up in a slicker, and together they made the trip to New York.

Bill met some of his old comrades of the Cuban campaign and confided to them his plans. They told him how impossible it was, and that he could not even get on the dock at Hoboken without a pass. Bill’s urbane confidence may have been a little shaken but not his determination. He went to Washington to see Senator Ashurst, and the Senator tried to get Bill a passport but without success, as there was no way for the War Department to act in the circumstances. Bill came back to New York with more determination than ever.

“I got my sailing orders,” said Greenway, “and with my sister, sister-in-law and Bill went to the Hoboken pier and found that I was to sail on the Agamemnon, which was formerly the German steamship Kaiser Wilhelm II. I went aboard and found that I had a large and comfortable stateroom and came ashore and told Bill.

“Bill declared that he was going to get aboard of that boat, although I pointed out the guards to him and told him how impossible it was. Bill was not disconcerted in the least. After sizing up the situation to his own satisfaction he said:

“‘Just you get somebody to talk to that guard over there to distract his attention while you are going through the gate.’

“I got an officer friend of mine to talk to the guard, and Bill picked up my bags and followed me. To my surprise he got through the gate without being seen by the guard, and we proceeded to the gangplank. There we ran into a snag. The captain called out to stop that civilian, and Bill was held up. It was only momentarily, however. I stepped up and told the captain that he was a friend of mine, carrying my bags aboard for me, and the captain permitted him to pass.

“When Bill got into that stateroom of mine he was the happiest man I ever saw. ‘If you get me off this boat they will have to throw me and hog-tie me and carry me off,’ was the way Bill put it as he sank into a chair and wiped his forehead.

“We sailed that night at high tide, and Bill stayed secreted in my room. I would smuggle food from the dining-room to him, but after two days of this Bill rebelled at having to live on cold food and declared that he intended having regular meals like the others on board. I told him that if he were discovered the chances were that he would find himself in the brig, but he said he would risk it, and out of my stateroom he went.

ON THE WAY TO FRANCE

“Bill had just one chance. There were 150 civilians on board, going over for employment on government work in France. It was possible, but not at all probable, for Bill to mingle with them and get by. I went on to dinner in the first cabin, and after dinner concluded that I would look about for Bill. I expected to find him in the brig, but he was not there. I made my way to the dining-saloon where the civilian passengers had their meals and looked in.

“At the extreme end of a very long table I saw Bill. He was engrossed in a menu and was ordering the most delectable things to be found on it. Everybody on the vessel got to know Bill and he was in his element. He needed no further guidance by me while on board. Arguments were referred to Bill for settlement and he was looked to among the civilian passengers as a general source of information, being consulted as to when we would arrive in the submarine zone, when we would land, and about everything else that came up.

“How to get Bill ashore at Brest was a problem that loomed large before me, but it did not worry Bill to any great extent. Power Conway was on board and I enlisted his services, and between us we managed to smuggle Bill aboard the tug and get him ashore. Now the question was to get Bill to Paris, and in this I was assisted by General Harbord, U. S. M. C.

BILL ACCEPTED FOR SERVICE

“We arrived in Paris, where I was kept for several weeks at headquarters. One night[Pg 141] I returned home in Paris and informed Bill that I had been assigned to the First Division and ordered up to the front. Bill was delighted and ready to put off at once, and, although it seemed impossible to me, it never feazed him.

“It never occurred to Bill that he was a civilian in France, with no military connection whatever, and that it would be impossible for a civilian to accompany me to the front. In this dilemma I placed the situation before Colonel Malin Craig. He is a general now, and it made a strong appeal to him. He wanted to make Bill a captain of military police, but Bill would have none of that. He wanted to get to the front, and to the front we started.

“Together we arrived within seven miles of the front line before Bill was finally held up. He had come 7,000 miles on his own responsibility, without one line of authority from any one, and was now actually at the front and in the face of the enemy, and was still a civilian. And it was there in the Toul sector that Bill enlisted and became officially what he had been at heart and in fact for many weeks—one of the American Expeditionary Force.

“From then on Bill and I were together without danger of being separated by army regulations. He became my orderly and remained so throughout. The only time we were separated was when Bill was in the hospital recovering from shell-wounds. We came back together and Bill went with me to Hot Springs, Ark., where we both took baths. We separated at Fort Worth, Bill going on to Ajo by another route, while I came on to Bisbee.”

And that is the story of Bill Davidson, whose devotion to his chief is unlimited. It causes him to “do the impossible” and to override all of the regulations of the War Department. It is a story in the telling of which Colonel Greenway takes the greatest pride and in which a spirit of affection is dominant.

The original Selective Service Law of May 18, 1917, with its subsequent amendments, mobilized the man-power of the United States, between the ages of 18 and 45 inclusive. Under the original and later acts, approximately 23,709,000 men were registered and slightly over 2,800,000 were inducted into the military service.

One of America’s Young Poets Keeps a Tryst While Fighting for France

The poem from which the above opening and closing lines are taken was read for the first time by the majority of those who knew it after the poet had kept the rendezvous—only a little late of the appointed time, like a traveler who has missed a train.

Alan Seeger loved France, and when he saw her in peril and his own America not likely to be brought into the conflict he went to France as a volunteer. Being an alien he was not eligible to the regular army, but the Foreign Legion welcomed him to fight for France under its flag. Among the men of the Legion was Rif Bear, a brilliant and traveled young Egyptian, and he became the close, the intimate friend of the poet with whom he found himself entirely in sympathy.

Seeger was under fire in a series of engagements without suffering hurt, but he seems to have foreboded the end that came in the Champagne campaign. He was a fatalist as well as a dreamer—and there are those who believe that we bring to ourselves the fruit of our thoughts.

After Seeger’s death Rif Bear wrote the facts and an appreciation in a personal letter to a lady in Boston. The letter was in French, but a translation of it has been published. There is a melancholy interest in the circumstances that a clerical error in the date of a temporary leave of absence cheated Seeger of one of the chief joys that could have come to him as a poet. The letter tells us that he ran one day to his friend in the triumph of happiness to show him a telegram which asked him to compose a poem to be read in public at a French-American demonstration—the memorial day ceremony. He was to have 48 hours leave in which to write the poem [Pg 143]and attend the ceremony. But the promised leave did not come.

“The eve of the ceremony arrived—I can not recall the date—but no leave came. We were in the trenches and chance had placed me near Seeger in petit poste (the small outlook-post, some yards in advance of the first line trench). He confessed that he had lost all hope of going, and I tried to find all sorts of arguments to encourage him, that his leave might come at dawn, and that by taking the train at Ressons at 7 a. m. he could still reach Paris by noon and would have plenty of time, as the ceremony was at two.

“The morning came, and instead of bringing the much-desired permission to leave, it brought a terrible downpour of rain, and the day passed sadly. He found consolation in the thought that it was only a postponement and that July 4 would soon arrive, when the Americans with the Foreign Legion might hope for forty-eight hours’ leave, as last year.”

The explanation came later. It was a clerical error that cheated him; the forty-eight hours’ leave granted for the event was made out for June 30, instead of for May 30. Continuing the letter:

A MARCHING ORDEAL

“On June 21, we left the sector of the Thiescourt Woods for an unknown destination, which proved to be the Somme. We took the train at Estrées St. Denis, and on June 22 about 10 a. m. reached Boves. Under a blazing sun, in heat that seemed to have escaped from the furnace of hell, we started for Bayonviller. We had undergone no such march since the war began.

“Weighed down by their sacks, prostrated by the heat, men fell by hundreds along the road. Hardly twenty of the two hundred forming the company arrived without having left the column. Seeger was one of these few. He told me afterward of the terrible effort that he had to make not to give up. At every halt he drank a drop of tafia (rum and coffee) to ‘give himself heart,’ and when he reached the end of the march he was worn out, but proud—he had not left the ranks.

“We passed the eight days of repose at Bayonviller, almost always together, seeking the greatest possible enjoyment in our life at the moment and making dreams for the future after the war. Alan confided to me that ‘after the war’ caused him fear—that he could not tell what destiny reserved for him, but that if the fates smiled on him it was toward the Orient that he would make. He loved the Orient—Constantinople, Cairo, Damascus, Beirut had a powerful fascination for him; their names would plunge him into profound reverie.

“‘It is in the mysterious frame of the Orient,’ he used to say, ‘in its dazzling light, in its blue, blue nights, among the perfumes of incense and hashish, that I would live, love, and die.’

“And then the talk would turn again on the war and he would say: ‘My only wish now is to make a bayonet charge. After that I shall see. Death may surprise me, but it shall not frighten me. It is my destiny. “Mektoub”’ (it is written). He was a real fatalist and drew courage and resignation from his fatalism.

“During the night of June 30-July 1 we left Bayonviller to move nearer the firing-line. We went to Proyart as reserves.

“At 8 o’clock on the morning of July 1 there was roll-call for the day’s orders and we were told that the general offensive would begin at nine without us, as we were in reserve, and that we would be notified of the day and hour that we were to go into action.

“When this report was finished we were ordered to shell fatigue, unloading 8-inch shells from automobile-trucks which brought them up to our position.

“All was hustle and bustle. The Colonial regiments had carried the first German lines and thousands and thousands of prisoners kept arriving and leaving. Ambulances filed along the roads continuously. As news began to arrive we left our work to seek more details, everything we could learn seemed to augur well.

“About 4 p.m. we left Proyart for Fontaine-les-Capy and in the first line. Alan was beaming with joy and full of impatience for the order to join in the action. Everywhere delirious joy reigned at having driven the enemy back without loss for us. We believed that no further resistance would be met and that our shock attack would finish the Germans. After passing the night at Fontaine-les-Capy [Pg 145]we moved in the morning toward what had been the German first lines. I passed almost all the day with Alan. He was perfectly happy.

“‘My dream is coming true,’ he said to me, ‘and perhaps this evening or to-morrow we shall attack. I am more than satisfied, but it’s too bad about our July 4 leave. I can not hope to see Paris again now before the 6th or 7th, but if this leave is not granted me “Mektoub! Mektoub”!’ he finished with a smile.

“The field of battle was relatively calm, a few shells fell, fired by the enemy in retreat, and our troops were advancing on all sides. The Colonials had taken Assevillers and the next day we were to take their place in first line.”

WHEN THE HOUR CAME

“On July 3, about noon, we moved toward Assevillers to relieve the Colonials at nightfall. Alan and I visited Assevillers, picking up souvenirs, post-cards, letters, soldiers’ notebooks, and chattering all the time, when suddenly a voice called out, ‘The company will fall in to go to the first line.’

“Before leaving one another we made each other the same promise as we had made before the Champagne battle (September 25, 1915), that if one of us fell so severely wounded that there was no hope of escape the other would finish him off with a bullet in the heart, rather than let him await death in lingering torture. He showed me his revolver, saying, ‘I have more luck than you. If I can still use one arm I shall have no need of any one,’ and then we rejoined our different sections.”

The order for attack came at 4 o’clock and the troops went forward, the flash and glitter of bayonets above the tall corn through which the men pressed making a curious spectacle against the going down of wave after wave of men under the terrific gun fire.

“The losses were heavy and the enemy made a desperate resistance. The company of reserves was ordered to advance with the second wave of assault. ‘Forward!’ cried the captain, and the company deployed ‘in files of squadron,’ advancing slowly but surely under the enemy’s intense and murderous fire.

“The first section (Alan’s section) formed the right and vanguard of the company, and mine formed the left wing. After the first bound forward, we lay flat on the ground, and I saw the first section advancing beyond us and making toward the extreme right of the village of Belloy-en-Santerre. I caught sight of Seeger and called to him, making a sign with my hand.

“He answered with a smile. How pale he was! His tall silhouette stood out on the green of the corn-field. He was the tallest man in his section. His head erect and pride in his eye, I saw him running forward, with bayonet fixed. Soon he disappeared and that was the last time I saw my friend.

“‘Forward!’ And we made a second bound, right to the wave of assault, which we left behind a little, and down we threw ourselves again. The fusillade became more and more intense, reaching a paroxysm. The mitrailleuses mow men down and the cannons thunder in desperation. Bodies are crushed and torn to fragments by the shells, and the wounded groan as they await death, for all hope of escaping alive from such a hell has fled.

“The air is saturated with the smell of powder and blood, everywhere the din is deafening; men are torn with impatience at having to remain without moving under such a fire. We struggle even for breath and cries resound from every side. Suddenly a word of command, an order of deliverance, passes from mouth to mouth. ‘Forward! With bayonets!’—the command that Seeger had awaited so long.

“In an irresistible sublime dash we hurl ourselves to the assault, offering our bodies as a target. It was at this moment that Alan Seeger fell heavily wounded in the stomach. His comrades saw him fall and crawl into the shelter of a shell-hole. Since that minute nobody saw him alive.

“I will spare you an account of the rest of the battle. As soon as the enemy was driven back and Belloy-en-Santerre won I searched for news of Seeger. I was told of his wound and was glad of it, for I thought he had been carried away and henceforth would be far from the dangers of bullets and shells.

“Thus ended this Fourth of July that[Pg 146] Seeger had hoped to celebrate in Paris. On the next day we were relieved from the first lines and went into reserve lines. A fatigue party was left to identify the dead.

“Seeger was found dead. His body was naked, his shirt and tunic being beside him and his rifle planted in the ground with the butt in the air. He had tied a handkerchief to the butt to attract the attention of the stretcher-bearers. He was lying on his side with his legs bent.

“It was at night by the light of a pocket electric lamp that he was hastily recognized. Stretcher-bearers took the body and buried it next day in the one big grave made for the regiment, where lie 3 hundred bodies. This tomb is situated at the Hill 76 to the south of Belloy-en-Santerre.

“As I think of the circumstances of his death I am convinced that after undressing to bandage himself he must have risen and been struck by a second bullet.”

How a Handful of Russian “Madmen” Held the Fort Until They Were Wiped Out

Here is a weird story of unavailing heroism on the part of a Russian officer and the remaining few of his company who held one of the forts in the siege of the Novogeorgievsk fortress. It is laconically told by the reporter but it needs no flourish:

Several forts pass through the last hours of their life. All the fortifications are swept away; most of the guns are silent; the men are nowhere in sight. German infantry floods the plain. Columns of soldiers advance from the right and from the left. Their front seems impenetrable.

In one of the forts, however, are still a few men. It is one limb of the stricken animal, with claws unsheathed, still throbbing with life. For these men there is a road of escape behind the fort, making their return to the fortress possible, but the “brave ones’ madness” asserts itself. The commanding officer gathers his men together and says:

“Boys, it’s for you to say. If you speak the word, we’ll all go back, though I’m for staying here.... Remember if we stay, the chances are that not one of us will escape. Which shall it be?”

“Of course, we’ll stay. What difference does it make? It’s just the same in the fortress.... We’ll stay and have our fun here.”

They bared their heads, made the sign of the cross, and kissed each other like brothers. The officer informed the fortress, through underground telephone, of the decision of his men.

A few moments later, the struggle between this handful of men and several German columns began. The Germans, encircling the silent fort, never expected to find amid its ruins a handful of “madmen.” The advancing columns were rolling on. Suddenly the ruins burst into life. Machine guns splashed their hail of lead, and a shell or two fell into the midst of the German columns.

The Germans became furious. They rushed to the remains of the fort, and turned back, met by a living wall of lead and fire. The heavy German guns began their booming.... Clouds of dust and broken stone surround the fort, which still speaks its language of fire. The officer reports the operations to the fortress through the telephone:

“We are surrounded. Firing incessantly. They’re falling fast. They’ve turned back. They are hammering our covers with heavy guns. The Germans are beginning their attack. Firing, firing, firing. We’re mowing them down. How are things with you? We are waiting for you....”

A half-hour later, the officer reports again: “They’re hammering hard. The arches seem to hold out. Attacking us again. We’ve[Pg 147] lots of ammunition. We are waiting for you....”

Another hour goes by. “Everything around is strewn with bodies of Germans. They are all mad. Throw themselves on us like starved rats, and we shoot. Every shot tells.”

A little later, the voice speaks excitedly: “The Germans are flooding everything. We’ve no time to fire.... We cut down ten, and twenty take their places.... We mow down the twenty, and forty others are there already.... The Germans are in the fort. We are still firing at those in the field.... They’re trying to break through the roof.... Can’t hear anything.... The Germans are piling rocks against our gun-openings.... We are still firing.... Fire....”

A Lieutenant of the Royal Irish Fusiliers That Stormed Ginchy Paints War’s Horrors in Vivid Language

It is well, once in a while, to take a square look at the grim, the ghastly, the repellent aspects of war, the reality stripped of the glamour, and realize that heroism is not always manifest in valiant deeds, but is often expressed in endurance, in patient suffering, in the play or poise of the inner forces in terrible circumstances.

The experiences at the storming of Ginchy through which Lieut. Arthur C. Young of the Seventh Battalion, Royal Irish Fusiliers, passed and which he embodied in a letter to a relative some days afterward, were not perhaps exceptional,—but his description of them is. It is very doubtful if a more literal, faithful yet graphically vivid picture of war in its actuality has come from the battle front. In simple direct language we get the horror, the awfulness of it—but we also get reflectively the quality of manhood that produces heroes.

Lieut. Young was, at the outbreak of the war, a resident of Kobe, Japan, and he promptly volunteered, returned to England and joined the Fusiliers. He had had his share of fighting, knew right well what it meant to go over the top, before the day at Ginchy which was the subject of his letter.

The storming of Ginchy described by Lieut. Young occurred Sept. 9, 1916. He says:

“It had been taken once or twice before, I believe (some say four times), but even out here it is so difficult to get authentic news about things which are happening quite close to us that you will have to make allowances for my possible inaccuracies. Each time, however, it was recaptured by the Germans, for to them it was a most important stronghold, particularly from their artillery’s point of view. A gunner officer told me why this was. You must remember that artillery fire is not very effective unless there is good observation, for atmospheric conditions affect shooting considerably. Now, the best sort of observation is that obtained from high ground in a forward position—it is better even than airplane or balloon observation, so I am told. Well, Ginchy was the last bit of high ground which the Germans held, and now that they have lost it, they are dependent on their less certain aerial observations, or, failing that, they must shoot by the map, which is no better than guesswork. Hence the vital importance to the Germans of Ginchy.

“On the night previous to the taking of Ginchy, my battalion had to take up a position on the further slope of the valley. We were some distance in rear at the time where the shells did not fall so plentifully. We had had nearly a week of it already, and a more horrible five days I have never passed in my life. We had been over the top from Falfemont Farm on the Tuesday, and had been thanked for our services in a special divisional order, but the price we had to pay for that feat was a big one, as the casualty list printed by this time only too well shows.

“I was sent out to find a habitable trench for my company. We moved in there at dusk. We faced half-right, as it were, looking up the slope toward Ginchy. It was like being near the foot of Parliament Hill, with the village on top. Our right flank was down near the bottom of the valley; our left extended up to the higher ground toward the ruins of Waterlot Farm. The trench was very shallow in places, where it had been knocked in by shell-fire. I had chosen it as the only one suitable in the neighborhood, but it was a horrible place. British dead were lying about everywhere. Our men had to give up digging in some places, because they came down to bodies which were buried there when the parapet blew in. The smell turned us sick. At last in desperation I went out to look for another trench, for I felt sure the Germans must have the range of the trench we were in, and that they would give us hell when dawn broke. To my joy I found that a very deep trench some distance back had just been vacated by another regiment, so we went in there.

“The night was bitterly cold. I have felt hunger and thirst and fatigue out here to a degree I have never experienced them before, but those torments I can endure far better than I thought I could. But the cold—my word! It is dreadful. I suppose life in the Far East does not harden one’s constitution against that torture. Many a night have I slept out in the open, in narrow, wet trenches, with the rain pouring down, and almost groaned with the agony of cold. If two can huddle together, you can get some warmth, but the trenches are frequently too narrow for that. I think I feel the cold more than any one.

“However, dawn broke at last. It was very misty. All night we had been trying to get into touch with the unit on our left, but without success. So the Captain sent me out with an orderly to see whether I could manage it. We two stumbled along, but the mist was so dense we could see nothing. We came to one trench after another, but not a living thing could we see—nothing but dead, British and German, some of them mangled beyond recognition. Bombs and rifles and equipment were lying all over the place, with here and there a great-coat, khaki or gray according to the nationality of their one-time owners, but of living beings we could see no sign whatsoever. There was a horrible stench in places which nearly turned our stomachs.

A DANGEROUS RECONNAISSANCE

“To make matters more wretched, we could not make sure of our direction, and were afraid of running into a German patrol, or even a German trench, for such accidents are by no means uncommon in this region. However, we managed to find our way back and report that up to such and such a point on the map (approximately) there was no one on our left. The Captain was not content with this, so I went out again, this time with another officer. Having a compass on this second occasion, I felt far more self-confidence, and to our mutual satisfaction we discovered that the unit on our left was the right flank of an English division. Captain —— was very bucked when we brought back this information. As the mist continued for some time afterward, we were able to light fires and make breakfast.

“Now, I have forgotten to tell you that we were in reserve. The front line was some five or six hundred yards higher up the slope nearer Ginchy. We knew that a big attack was coming off that day, but did not think we should be called upon to take part. Accordingly, we settled down for the day, and most of the men slept. I felt quite at home, as I sat in the bottom of the deep trench, reading the papers I had received the previous day from England.

“OVER THE TOP”

“It was about 4 o’clock in the afternoon when we first learned that we should have to take part in the attack on Ginchy. Now, you probably expect me to say at this point in my narrative that my heart leaped with joy at the news and that the men gave three rousing cheers, for that’s the sort of thing you read in the papers. Well, I had been over the top once already that week, and knew what it was to see men dropping dead all around me, to see men blown to bits, to see men writhing in pain, to see men running round[Pg 150] and round, gibbering, raving mad. Can you wonder, therefore, that I felt a sort of sickening dread of the horrors which I knew we should all have to go through? How the others felt I don’t exactly know, but I don’t think I am far wrong when I say that their emotions were not far different from mine.

“You read no end of twaddle in the papers at home about the spirit in which men go into action. You might almost think they reveled in the horror and the agony of it all. I saw one account of the battle of Ginchy in which the correspondent spoke of the men of a certain regiment in reserve as ‘almost crying with rage’ because they couldn’t take part in the show. All I can say is that I should like to see such superhuman beings. It is rubbish like this which makes thousands of people in England think that war is great sport. As a famous Yankee General said, ‘War is hell,’ and you have only got to be in the Somme one single day to know it. The man who says he loves being in a charge is a liar, and an adjective liar at that.

“But to get on with the story. We were ordered to move up into the front line to reinforce the Royal Irish Rifles. None of us knew for a certainty whether we were going over the top or not, but everything seemed to point that way. Guides were sent down by the Rifles to lead us up. We wended our way up slowly, keeping as much as possible to the trenches, which were so shallow that the deepest part of them did not conceal more than our waists, but they were something to duck into if we heard a shell coming. The bombardment was now intense. Our shells bursting in the village of Ginchy made it belch forth smoke like a volcano. The German shells were bursting on the slope in front of us. The noise was deafening. I turned to my servant O’Brien, who has always been a cheery, optimistic soul, and said, ‘Well, O’Brien, how do you think we’ll fare?’ and his answer was for once not encouraging. ‘We’ll never come out alive, Sir!’ was his reply. Happily, we both came out alive, but I never thought we should at the time.

A CHARGE BY THE IRISH

“It was at this moment, just as we were debouching on to the scragged front line of trench, that we beheld a scene which stirred and thrilled us to the bottommost depths of our souls. The great charge of the Irish division had begun, and we had come up in the nick of time. Mere words must fail to convey anything like a true picture of the scene, but it is burned into the memory of all those who were there and saw it. Let me employ the simile of Parliament Hill. You are more than half way up it now. The flat top, where the village lies a heap of ruins, surrounded by a fence of shattered trees, is about 400 yards away. Between the outer fringe of Ginchy and the front line of our own trenches is No Man’s Land—a wilderness of pits, so close together that you could ride astraddle the partitions between any two of them. As you look half-right, obliquely along No Man’s Land, you behold a great host of yellow-coated men rise out of the earth and surge forward and upward in a torrent—not in extended order, as you might expect, but in one mass—I almost said a compact mass. The only way I can describe the scene is to ask you to picture five or six columns of men marching up hill in fours, with about a hundred yards between each column. Now, conceive those columns being gradually disorganized, some men going off to the right and others to the left to avoid shell holes. There seems to be no end to them. Just when you think the flood is subsiding, another wave comes surging up the beach toward Ginchy.

“We joined in on the left. There was no time for us any more than the others to get into extended order. We formed another stream converging on the others at the summit. By this time we were all wildly excited. Our shouts and yells alone must have struck terror into the Germans, who were firing their machine guns down the slope. But there was no wavering in the Irish host. We couldn’t run. We advanced at a steady walking pace, stumbling here and there, but going ever onward and upward. That numbing dread had now left me completely. Like the others, I was intoxicated with the glory of it all. I can remember shouting and bawling to the men of my platoon, who were only too eager to go on. The German barrage had now been opened in earnest, and shells were falling here, there, and everywhere in No Man’s Land. They were mostly dropping on [Pg 152]our right, but they were coming nearer and nearer, as if a screen were being drawn across our front. I knew that it was a case of ‘now or never’ and stumbled on feverishly. We managed to get through the barrage in the nick of time, for it closed behind us, and after that we had no shells to fear in front of us.

THE MENTAL SIDE OF FIGHTING

“I mention, merely as an interesting fact in psychology, how in a crisis of this sort one’s mental faculties are sharpened. Instinct told us when the shells were coming gradually closer to crouch down in the holes until they had passed. Acquired knowledge, on the other hand—the knowledge instilled into one by lectures and books (of which I have only read one, namely, Haking’s ‘Company Training’)—told us that it was safer in the long run to push ahead before the enemy got the range, and it was acquired knowledge that won. And here’s another observation I should like to make by the way: I remember reading somewhere, I think it was in a book by Winston Churchill, that of the battle of Omdurman the writer could recollect nothing in the way of noise; he had an acute visual recollection of all that went on about him, but his aural recollection was nil; he could only recall the scene as if it were a cinematograph picture. Curiously, this was my own experience at Ginchy. The din must have been deafening (I learned afterward that it could be heard miles away), yet I have only a confused remembrance of it. Shells, which at any other time would have scared me out of my wits, I never so much as heard—not even when they were bursting quite close to me. One landed in the midst of a bunch of men about seventy yards away on my right; I have a most vivid recollection of seeing a tremendous burst of clay and earth go shooting up into the air—yes, and even parts of human bodies—and that when the smoke cleared away there was nothing left. I shall never forget that horrifying spectacle as long as I live, but I shall remember it as a sight only, for I can associate no sound with it.

“IT WAS HELL LET LOOSE”

“How long we were in crossing No Man’s Land I don’t know. It could not have been more than five minutes, yet it seemed much longer. We were now well up to the Boche. We had to clamber over all manner of obstacles—fallen trees, beams, great mounds of brick and rubble—in fact, over the ruins of Ginchy. It seems like a nightmare to me now. I remember seeing comrades falling round me. My sense of hearing returned, for I became conscious of a new sound, namely, the pop, pop, pop of machine guns and the continuous crackling of rifle fire. I remember men lying in shell holes holding out their arms and beseeching water. I remember men crawling about and coughing up blood, as they searched round for some place in which they could shelter until help could reach them. By this time all units were mixed up. But they were all Irishmen. They were cheering and cheering and cheering like mad. It was hell let loose. There was a machine gun playing on us near by, and we all made for it.

“At this moment we caught our first sight of the Germans. They were in a trench of sorts, which ran in and out among the ruins. Some of them had their hands up. Others were kneeling and holding their arms out to us. Still others were running up and down the trench distractedly as if they didn’t know which way to go, but as we got close they went down on their knees, too. To the everlasting good name of the Irish soldiery, not one of these Germans, some of whom had been engaged in slaughtering our men up to the very last moment, was killed. I did not see a single instance of a prisoner being shot or bayoneted. When you remember that our men were now worked up to a frenzy of excitement, this crowning act of mercy to their foes is surely to their eternal credit. They could feel pity even in their rage.

ONLY TWO OFFICERS LEFT

“By this time we had penetrated the German front line, and were on the flat ground where the village once stood, surrounded by a wood of fairly high trees. There was no holding the men back. They rushed through Ginchy, driving the Germans before them. The German dead were lying everywhere, some of them having been frightfully mangled by our shell-fire. As I was clambering out of the front trench, I felt a sudden stab in my right thigh. I thought I had got a ‘blighty’ [a wound serious enough to send him back to Britain], but found it was only a graze from a bullet, and so went on.

“I managed to find my men without difficulty. They had rushed through the ruins of the village and were almost a hundred yards beyond the wood, where the ground dips down slightly into a shallow valley and mounts up gradually to a ridge about half a mile away. We were facing south here, having Delville Wood away to our left and Leuze Wood on our right. —— and I were the only two officers left in the company, so it was up to us to take charge. There were not more than half a dozen officers in this part of the line, and so we had a great deal of work to do. We could see the Germans hopping over the distant ridge like rabbits, and we had some difficulty in preventing our men from chasing them, for we had orders not to go too far.

“We got them—Irish Fusiliers, Inniskillings, and Dublins—to dig in by linking up the shell craters, and though the men were tired (some wanted to smoke and others to make tea), they worked with a will, and before long we had got a pretty decent trench outlined.

SCENES AMONG PRISONERS

“While we were at work a number of Germans who had stopped behind, and were hiding in shell holes, commenced a bombing attack on our right. But they did not keep it up long, for they hoisted a white flag (a handkerchief tied to a rifle), as a sign of surrender. I should think we must have made about twenty prisoners. They were very frightened. Some of them bunked into a sunken road or cutting which ran straight out from the wood in a southerly direction, and huddled together, with hands upraised. They began to empty their pockets and hand out souvenirs—watches, compasses, cigars, pen-knives—to their captors, and even wanted to shake hands with us! There was no other officer about at the moment, so I had to find an escort to take the prisoners down. Among the prisoners was a tall, distinguished-looking man, and I asked him in my broken German whether he was an officer. ‘Ja! mein Herr!’ was the answer I got. ‘Sprechen sie English?’ ‘Jah!’ ‘Good,’ I said, thankful that I didn’t have to rack my brains for any more German words; ‘please tell your men that no harm will come to them if they follow you quietly.’ He turned round and addressed his men, who seemed to be very grateful that we were not going to kill them! I must say the officer behaved with real soldierly dignity, and, not to be outdone in politeness, I treated him with the same respect that he showed me. I gave him an escort for himself and told off three or four men for the remainder. I could not but rather admire his bearing, for he did not show anything like the terror that his men did.

“I heard afterward that when Captain ——’s company rushed a trench more to our right, round the corner of the wood, a German officer surrendered in great style. He stood to attention, gave a clinking salute, and said in perfect English, ‘Sir, myself, this other officer and ten men are your prisoners.’ Captain —— said, ‘Right you are, old chap!’ and they shook hands, the prisoners being led away immediately. So you see there are certain amenities which are observed even on the bloodiest of battlefields. I believe our prisoners were all Bavarians, who are better mannered from all accounts than the Prussians. They could thank their stars they had Irish chivalry to deal with.

“There were a great many German dead and wounded in the sunken road. One of them was an officer. He was lying at the entrance to a dugout. He was waving his arms about. I went over and spoke to him. He could talk a little English. All he could say was, ‘Comrade, I die, I die.’ I asked him where he was hit and he said in the stomach. It was impossible to move him, for our stretcher bearers had not yet come up, so I got my servant to look for an overcoat to throw over him, as he was suffering terribly from the cold. Whether or not he survived the night I do not know.

“Our line was now extended across the sunken road and beyond the corner of the wood to our right. Darkness was coming on. Airplanes were hovering overhead, and shortly afterward our shells began to form a barrage in front. The Germans had evidently rallied, for we could see a long line of them coming up on our right, evidently from the direction of Leuze Wood. Our machine guns opened fire. The counter-attack was hung up, but the[Pg 154] Germans must have dug themselves in for the night, for in the morning they gave us a good deal of trouble.

After the counter-attack had subsided, I was ordered to take my men and join up with the rest of the battalion on our right. There we spent the night in a trench. We must have been facing south. It was a miserable night we passed, for we were all very cold and thirsty. We had to keep digging. When morning broke it was very misty. We expected to be relieved at two in the morning, but the relief did not come till noon. Never shall I forget those hours of suspense. We were all hungry. The only food we could get was German black bread, which we picked up all over the place; also German tinned sausages and bully-beef. We had to lift up some of the dead to get at these things. Some of them had water bottles full of cold coffee, which we drank.

“We all craved a smoke. Fortunately, the German haversacks were pretty well stocked with cigarettes and cigars. I got a handful of cigars off a dead German, and smoked them all morning. Also a tin of cigarettes. His chocolates also came in handy. Poor devil, he must have been a cheery soul when living, for he had a photograph of himself in his pocket, in a group with his wife and two children, and the picture made him look a jolly old sport. And here he was dead, with both legs missing! The trench (between ours and the wood) was stacked with dead. It was full of débris—bombs, shovels, and what not—and torn books, magazines, and newspapers. I came across a copy of Schiller’s ‘Wallenstein.’

FORGETTING ENMITY

“Hearing moans as I went along the trench, I looked into a shelter or hole dug in the side and found a young German. He could not move, as his legs were broken. He begged me to get him some water, so I hunted round and found a flask of cold coffee, which I held to his lips. He kept saying ‘Danke, Kamerad, danke, danke.’ However much you may hate the Germans when you are fighting them, you can only feel pity for them when you see them lying helpless and wounded on the ground. I saw this man afterward on his way to the dressing station. About ten yards further on was another German, minus a leg. He, too, craved water, but I could get him none, though I looked everywhere. Our men were very good to the German wounded. In fact, kindness and compassion for the wounded, our own and the enemy’s, is about the only[Pg 155] decent thing I have seen in war. It is not at all uncommon to see a British and German soldier side by side in the same shell hole nursing each other as best they can and placidly smoking cigarettes. A poor wounded German who hobbled into our trench in the morning, his face badly mutilated by a bullet—he whimpered and moaned as piteously as a child—was bound up by one of our officers, who took off his coat and set to work in earnest. Another German, whose legs were hit, was carried in by our men and put into a shell hole for safety, where he lay awaiting the stretcher bearers when we left. It is with a sense of pride that I can write this of our soldiers.

“There was a counter-attack on our left in the morning, and for a few minutes the machine guns were very active, but the Germans were beaten off. At last we were relieved, and made our way back, behind Guillemont, to be taken out of the line. We spent one night in a camp and next day came on here. I am writing this in a picturesque French village. You can see green fields and trees and stacks of corn and cattle when you look through the window. Here, at all events, ‘grim-visaged war hath smoothed his wrinkled front’. I am not alone in hoping that we shall not have to go back to that hellish place.

“Well, now, that’s the story of the great Irish charge at Ginchy, so far as I can tell it. I suppose by this time the great event has been forgotten by the English public. But it will never be forgotten by those who took part in it, for it is an event we shall remember with pride to the end of our days.

“Need I tell you how proud we officers and men are of the Royal Irish Fusiliers who played as big a part as any in the storming of that stronghold, and who went into action shouting their old battle cry of ‘Faugh-a-Ballagh’—‘Clear the way!’”

The estimated total war bill of the United States is 30 billions, which is equal to approximately $330 apiece for every man, woman and child in this country. The sum includes the 10 billions loaned to the Allies, and is estimated on the appropriations made by the first and second sessions of the 65th Congress, including the appropriations that were authorized, but were not expected to be expended before the fiscal year 1919.

How the Scotch Snipers Fortified Themselves Against a German Attack at Dawn

What may be described as a domestic scene in a dugout was presented with a flavor of humor by a correspondent in the mid-year of 1917. It was at a strategic point just behind the British first line trench. Though the men were ignorant of the reasons for a recent move, the fact was that officers were preparing to meet a German attack. The occupants of the dugout were snipers of Scotch nativity and not over fond of “blatherin’.” Unlike the usual failings and infirmities of the dugout, flooded or swampy, this was dry and comfortable. There were shelves on which their rifles were stacked, along with telescope sights and other instruments important to snipers, who are invariably the crack shots of the riflemen. There were pegs—bayonets thrust in between the sandbags—for the equipment of the men. Conveniences and advantages not a few; and room for comfortable grouping.

We are introduced to the scene as preparations for a substantial meal are under way. Though the battalion had been hurried up from a village behind the lines where it had enjoyed a month’s rest, the rations had arrived, and moreover the careful purveyors of the sniper squad had brought along two plump hares shot the day before, and these were being devotionally fitted to the service of the inner man on the principal brazier. Another brazier was assigned to the less honorable office of heating water for tea. A few tallow dips feebly lighted the place and gave curious, half-substantial aspects to the men under the wavering canopy of smoke from pipes and cigarettes.

A huge Scot is hanging solicitously over the cooking hares, wholly absorbed in the delightful occupation. He gives no heed to the men surrounding him in critical inspection of his performance, eagerly expectant of the result. These critical watchers are exceedingly careful, however, to make no comment to reflect upon the culinary skill of the man sedulously stirring the savory contents of the “dixie” over the brazier. The group reminded the correspondent of the gnomes Rip Van Winkle found in the Catskill mountains; solemn they were, grave with a sense of their responsibility. The Scots are not over given to gaiety, however sensitive to humor of their own conceiving.

Gravest of all the assembly are those seated nearest the brazier, where the hare soup is stewing, and it is not difficult to infer that they are the veterans, the supersnipers, of the section. Their age, the manner in which the younger snipers defer to them and give them place, the cool confidence of their every look and movement, all mark them out as leaders among men.

“Each a man of distinct personality, yet collectively the deadliest unit on the whole battle-line; each of a name known outside the division and of a skill which has brought the section success in the trenches and credit on the test rifle-ranges behind the lines. Yet no trace of arrogance shows itself in their demeanor, and the careless observer might possibly have only caught a hint of the great reserve strength embodied in each of them. And all sit gravely and watch big Adam, who wields the spoon, stir the soup.”

Suddenly there is a diversion from the other end of the dugout. Here two or three younger men have been sitting, and their conversation, gradually rising in key, has been slowly breaking in as a disturbing factor to the solemnity of their elders round the brazier. The noise now reaches a climax and an indignant voice exclaims:

“But I tell ye, Wullie, I heard the officer sayin’ so,” says Jimmy aggrievedly.

“Well, even tho ye did,” rejoins Willie, “what richt hae ye to be turnin’ ower what the officer says in public?”

“He didna tell ye onything at a’. It was jist thae big lugs o’ yours happened by at the time. And noo, like the big mooth ye are, ye goun clyping it a’ ower the place.”

Jimmy rose threateningly, and Willie was not a whit behind him. Both were prepared for an immediate settlement. Another second[Pg 158] and they would have come to blows, but the sergeant intervened.

“Come ower here, baith o’ ye,” he said sternly, and the two slunk up to him.

“It was Duffus here, sairgeant, was sayin’ that the officer was sayin’ that the Germans wud attack——”

“Be quate, Black,” broke in the sergeant. “Ye’re but a poor, ignorant boy, Wullie,” he continued, speaking with great deliberation, “only good to hold the horse by the head. Go and clean that rifle or I’ll tak it from ye a’thegither.”

Completely subdued by so dire a threat, Willie went off to this task with alacrity. Not only did he love his rifle, but he feared his sergeant’s eloquence. “And as for you, Duffus,” said the latter, turning to the other culprit, “if you do not keep your mooth shut aboot what your betters say, ye’ll be oot o’ the section the morn’s mornin’. Jist mind in future that onything the officer wants the section to know, I’ll tell ye.”

Jimmy subsided discreetly, abashed but not extinguished, and still bursting to blab. The sergeant adjusted himself to some bags of charcoal and dozed off. When the muffled sounds of impending snores assured Jimmy that the sergeant was asleep, he leaned eagerly forward and in a momentous whisper heard by the others discharged his high-tensioned information:

Big Adam leaned forward and roused the sergeant. The younger man looked up inquiringly, expecting some authoritative statement on the subject. But as the sergeant lifted his head attentively, Big Adam, taking appreciative sips from the spoon, said only:

Sergeant McClintock Was Brave Enough to Confess War Has Its Scare

While the war was at its worst one of our boys, a Lieutenant, who had done trench service from “support” to going “over the top,” was, after serious wounds, invalided home as a training officer. He wore a medal on his breast that attested his bravery, but in a little talk at a club dinner he said, “If you hear any fellow say he was not scared when going ‘over the top’ or when scuttling around under shell and gun fire, you may safely set him down as a darned liar or as a mental defective. We do get scared a plenty—but we keep on fighting. It is true a man may forget his scare in the excitement of action, and generally does; but he has moments when the red goes out of his face.”

Some of the coolest, bravest men taking part in desperate engagements have made similar statements. The thing in war is not a question of “to be scared or not to be scared,” but of unfailing obedience to orders in spite of colorless cheeks and tremblings of the flesh. That is an impression one gets from such accounts of war as that of Sergeant Alexander McClintock, a Kentucky boy, who felt the lure so keenly that in October, 1915, he hurried over to Canada and as soon thereafter as formalities permitted he joined the Canadian Grenadier Guards. In due course the Guards were sent across and were dropped into the front trenches in Belgium. From that time onward until he was invalided home wearing a Distinguished Conduct Medal for conspicuous bravery young McClintock had adventures not a few, enough and varied to make fascinating the book he wrote, Best o’ Luck, which the George Doran Company published early in 1918. The Sergeant tells his story capitally, whether recounting experiences with those formidable and ghoulish beasts, the trench rats, or encounters with the not altogether admirable trench Hun. For a long time the life in the trenches was dull monotony, about the only relief in the way of amusement being found in shooting rats as they scurried along the parapet. He says:

A COMFORTING STAFF OFFICER

“At last came the night when we were to go ‘over the top,’ across No Man’s Land, and have a frolic with Fritz in his own bailiwick. I am endeavoring to be as accurate and truthful as possible in these stories of my soldiering, and I am therefore compelled to say that there wasn’t a man in the sixty who didn’t show the strain in his pallor and nervousness. Under orders, we discarded our trench-helmets and substituted knitted skull-caps or mess tin covers. Then we blackened our hands and faces with ashes from a camp-fire. After this they loaded us into motor-trucks and took us up to ‘Shrapnel Corner,’ from which point we went in on foot. Just before we left, a staff officer came along and gave us a little talk.

“‘This is the first time you men have been tested,’ he said. ‘You’re Canadians. I needn’t say anything more to you. They’re going to be popping them off at a great rate while you’re on your way across. Remember that you’d better not stand up straight, because our shells will be going over just six and a [Pg 161]half feet from the ground—where it’s level. If you stand up straight you’re likely to be hit in the head, but don’t let that worry you, because if you do get hit in the head you won’t know it. So why in hell worry about it?’ That was his farewell. He jumped on his horse and rode off.

“The point we were to attack had been selected long before by our scouts. It was not, as you might suppose, the weakest point in the German line. It was, on the contrary, the strongest. It was considered that the moral effect of cleaning up a weak point would be comparatively small, whereas to break in at the strongest point would be something really worth while. And, if we were to take chances, it really wouldn’t pay to hesitate about degrees. The section we were to raid had a frontage of 150 yards and a depth of 200 yards. It had been explained to us that we were to be supported by a ‘box barrage,’ or curtain fire from our artillery, to last exactly twenty-six minutes. That is, for twenty-six minutes from the time when we started ‘over the top,’ our artillery, several miles back, would drop a ‘curtain’ of shells all around the edges of that 150-yard by 200-yard section. We were to have fifteen minutes in which to do our work. Any man not out at the end of the fifteen minutes would necessarily be caught in our own fire, as our artillery would then change from a ‘box’ to pour a straight curtain fire, covering all of the spot of our operations.

THE AGONY OF WAITING

“Our officers set their watches very carefully with those of the artillery officers before we went forward to the front trenches. We reached the front at 11 p. m., and not until our arrival there were we informed of the ‘zero hour’—the time when the attack was to be made. The hour of 12:10 had been selected. The waiting from eleven o’clock until that time was simply an agony. Some of our men sat stupid and inert. Others kept talking constantly about the most inconsequential matters. One man undertook to tell a funny story. No one listened to it, and the laugh at the end was emaciated and ghastly. The inaction was driving us all into a state of funk. I could actually feel my nerve oozing out at my fingertips, and if we had had to wait fifteen minutes longer I shouldn’t have been able to climb out of the trench.”

“We sneaked out, single file, making our way from shell-hole to shell-hole, nearly all the time on all-fours, crawling quickly over the flat places between the holes. The Germans had not sighted us, but they were squirting machine-gun bullets all over the place like a man watering a lawn with a garden-hose, and they were bound to get some of us. Behind me I heard cries of pain and groans, but this made little impression on my benumbed intelligence. From the mere fact that whatever had happened had happened to one of the other sections of ten and not to my own, it seemed, some way or other, no affair to concern me. Then a man in front of me doubled up suddenly and rolled into a shell-hole. That simply made me remember very clearly that I was not to stop on account of it. It was some one else’s business to pick that man up. Next, according to the queer psychology of battle, I began to lose my sensation of fear and nervousness. After I saw a second man go down, I gave my attention principally to a consideration of the irregularities of the German parapet ahead of us, picking out the spot where we were to enter the trench. It seems silly to say it, but I seemed to get some sort of satisfaction out of the realization that we had lost the percentage which we might be expected to lose going over. Now, it seemed, the rest of us were safe until we should reach the next phase of our undertaking.

ALMOST CALM

“I heard directions given and I gave some myself. My voice was firm, and I felt almost calm. Our artillery had so torn up the German barbed wire that it gave us no trouble at all. We walked through it with only a few scratches. When we reached the low, sandbag parapet of the enemy trench we tossed in a few bombs and followed them right over as soon as they had exploded. There wasn’t a German in sight. They were all in their dugouts. But we knew pretty well where every dugout was located, and we rushed for [Pg 163]the entrances with our bombs. Everything seemed to be going just as we had expected it to go. Two Germans ran plump into me as I rounded a ditch angle, with a bomb in my hand. They had their hands up and each of them yelled:

“I passed them back to be sent to the rear, and the man who received them from me chuckled and told them to step lively. The German trenches were practically just as we had expected to find them, according to our sample. They were so nearly similar to the duplicate section in which we had practiced that we had no trouble finding our way in them. I was just thinking that really the only tough part of the job remaining would be getting back across No Man’s Land, when it seemed that the whole earth behind me rose in the air. For a moment I was stunned and half blinded by dirt blown into my face. When I was able to see, I discovered that all that lay back of me was a mass of upturned earth and rock, with here and there a man shaking himself or scrambling out of it, or lying still.

“The philosophy of the British Tommies and the Canadians and the Australians on the Somme was a remarkable reflection of their fine courage through all that hell. They go about their work, paying no attention to the flying death about them.

“‘If Fritz has a shell with your name and number on it,’ said a British Tommy to me one day, ‘you’re going to get it, whether you’re in the front line or seven miles back. If he hasn’t, you’re all right.’

“Fine fighters, all. And the Scotch kilties, lovingly called by the Germans ‘the women from hell,’ have the respect of all armies. We saw little of the poilus, except a few on leave. All the men were self-sacrificing to one another in that big melting-pot from which so few ever emerge whole. The only things it is legitimate to steal in the code of the trenches are rum and ‘fags’ (cigarettes). Every other possession is as safe as if it were under a Yale lock.”

FIRE CURTAINS

The method in which “curtains of fire” are laid down is very clearly described.

“While I was at the front I had opportunity to observe three distinct types of barrage-fire, the ‘box,’ the ‘jumping,’ and the ‘creeping.’ The ‘box,’ I have already described to you, as it is used in a raid. The ‘jumping’ plays on a certain line for a certain interval and then jumps to another line. The officers in command of the advance know the intervals of time and space and keep their lines close up to the barrage, moving with it on the very second. The ‘creeping’ barrage opens on a certain line and then creeps ahead at a certain fixed rate of speed, covering every inch of the ground to be taken. The men of the advance simply walk with it, keeping within about thirty yards of the line on which the shells were falling. Eight-inch shrapnel and high-explosive shells were used exclusively by the British when I was with them in maintaining barrage-fire. The French used their ‘seventy-fives,’ which are approximately of three-inch caliber. Of late, I believe, the British and French have both added gas-shells for this use when conditions make it possible. The Germans, in establishing a barrage, used their ‘whiz-bangs,’ slightly larger shells than ours, but they never seemed to have quite the same skill and certitude in barrage bombardment that our artillerymen had.

“To attempt to picture the scene of two barrage-fires, crossing, is quite beyond me. You see two walls of flame in front of you, one where your own barrage is playing, and one where the enemy guns are firing, and you see two more walls of flame behind you, one where the enemy barrage is playing, and one where your own guns are firing. And amid it all you are deafened by Titanic explosions which have merged into one roar of thunderous sound, while acrid fumes choke and blind you. To use a fitting if not original phrase, it’s just ‘Hell with the lid off.’”

The wound that ended McClintock’s career with the Canadian forces was received at the battle of the Somme. Major Lewis, in command of that section, sent for him:

“‘McClintock,’ said he, ‘I don’t wish to send you to any special hazard, and so far as that goes we’re all going to get more or less of a dusting. But I want to put that machine gun which has been giving us so much trouble out of action.’

“I knew very well the machine gun he meant. It was in a concrete emplacement, walled and roofed, and the devils in charge of it seemed to be descendants of William Tell and the prophet Isaiah, They always knew what was coming and had their guns accurately trained on it before it came.

“‘If you are willing,’ said Major Lewis, ‘I wish you to select twenty-five men from the company and go after that gun the minute the order comes to advance. Use your own judgment about the men and the plan for taking the gun position. Will you go?’

“‘Yes, sir,’ I answered. ‘I’ll go and pick out the men right away. I think we can make those fellows shut up shop over there.’

“‘This is going to be a bit hot, McClintock,’ he said, taking my hand. ‘I wish you the best of luck, old fellow—you and the rest of them.’ In the trenches they always wish you the best of luck when they hand you a particularly tough job.

THE SAME TO YOU

“I thanked him and wished him the same. I never saw him again. He was killed in action within two hours after our conversation. Both he and my pal, Macfarlane, were shot down dead that morning.

“When they called for volunteers to go with me in discharge of Major Lewis’s order the entire company responded. I picked out twenty-five men, twelve bayonet men and thirteen bombers. They agreed to my plan, which was to get within twenty-five yards of the gun emplacement before attacking, to place no dependence on rifle fire, but to bomb them out and take the position with the bayonet. We followed that plan and took the emplacement quicker than we had expected to do, but there were only two of us left when we got there—Private Godsall, No. 177,063, and myself. All the rest of the twenty-five were dead or down. The emplacement had been held by eleven Germans. Two only were left standing when we got in.

“When we saw that the gun had been silenced and the crew disabled, Godsall and I worked round to the right about ten yards from the shell-hole where we had sheltered ourselves while throwing bombs into the emplacement and scaled the German parapet. Then we rushed the gun position. The officer who had been in charge was standing with his back to us, firing with his revolver down the trench at our men who were coming over at another point. I reached him before Godsall and bayoneted him. The other German who had survived our bombing threw up his hands and mouthed the Teutonic slogan of surrender, ‘Mercy, Kamerad,’ My bayonet had broken off in the encounter with the German officer, and I remembered that I had been told always to pull the trigger after making a bayonet thrust, as that would usually jar the weapon loose. In this case I had forgotten instructions. I picked up a German rifle with bayonet fixed, and Godsall and I worked on down the trench.

“The German who had surrendered stood with his hands held high above his head, waiting for us to tell him what to do. He never took his eyes off us, even to look at his officer, lying at his feet. As we moved down the trench he followed us, still holding his hands up and repeating, ‘Mercy, Kamerad!’ At the next trench angle we took five more prisoners, and as Godsall had been slightly wounded in the arm, I turned the captives over to him and ordered him to take them to the rear. Just then the men of our second wave came over the parapet like a lot of hurdlers. In five minutes we had taken the rest of the Germans in the trench section prisoners, had reversed the fire steps, and had turned their own machine guns against those of their retreating companies that we could catch sight of.”

Badly wounded in the knee a little later, the sergeant took refuge in a shell-hole. Four German prisoners on their way to the rear were requisitioned as stretcher-bearers and carried him in on an improvised litter.

KNICKERBOCKER WAITER

“It was a trip which was not without incident. Every now and then we would hear the shriek of an approaching ‘coal-box,’ and then my prisoner stretcher-bearers and I would tumble in one indiscriminate heap into the nearest shell-hole. If we did that once, we did it a half-dozen times. After each dive,[Pg 165] the four would patiently reorganize and arrange the improvised stretcher again, and we would proceed. Following every tumble, however, I would have to tighten my tourniquets, and despite all I could do the hemorrhage from my wound continued so profuse that I was beginning to feel very dizzy and weak. On the way in I sighted our regimental dressing station and signed to my four bearers to carry me toward it. The station was in an old German dugout. Major Gilday was at the door. He laughed when he saw me with my own special ambulance detail.

“‘Now,’ said he, ‘my advice to you is to keep on traveling. You’ve got a fine special detail there to look after you. Make ’em carry you to Poizers. It’s only five miles, and you’ll make it all right. I’ve got this place loaded up full, no stretcher-bearers, no assistants, no adequate supply of bandages and medicines, and a lot of very bad cases. If you want to get out of here in a week, just keep right on going now.’

“As we continued toward the rear we were the targets for a number of humorous remarks from men coming up to go into the fight.

“‘Give my regards to Blighty, you lucky beggar,’ was the most frequent saying.

“‘Bli’ me,’ said one cockney Tommy, ‘there goes one o’ th’ Canadians with an escort from the Kaiser.’

“‘Good work,’ he said. ‘I’d like to have a nice clean one like that myself.’

“I noticed one of the prisoners grinning at some remark and asked him if he understood English. He hadn’t spoken to me, though he had shown the greatest readiness to help me.

“‘Certainly I understand English,’ he replied. ‘I used to be a waiter at the Knickerbocker Hotel in New York.’ That sounded like a voice from home, and I wanted to hug him. I didn’t. However, I can say for him he must have been a good waiter. He gave me good service.”

A Rampageous, Self-Willed Old Thing Fondly Remembered by Her Non-Commander

Captain David Fallon is a young Irishman, but an old soldier. Before 1914 he had fought against the hillmen in India, and had won the Indian Field Medal. At the opening of the war he was physical instructor and bayonet drill master at the Royal Military College. So expert a teacher was he that the authorities decided to keep him at his post training new officers. Dave Fallon couldn’t “see it” that way. He remonstrated strenuously. There were other men—older men—professional soldiers, he insisted, just as capable of training men as he was. Anyway he couldn’t stay out of the “big fight.” He pointed to his long service record, his Frontier Medal. He would be more valuable at the front. The authorities finally gave in.

Fallon had no wild dreams of glory and distinction. “It is your amateur soldier,” he says, “who is most filled with such aspirations. Not that he hasn’t a right to entertain them, and try to act on them, for they have led many new-made soldiers into great and brave accomplishments. I don’t mean that such dreams are bad for a man. They are distinctly good. I only mean that with regulars soldiering is a cold, hard business and one isn’t given to enhancing it with romantic imaginings.”

Little did Fallon think when he was urging himself on the military authorities for active duty that when the war was over there would be few soldiers with adventures more thrilling and perilous than fell to his lot.

He went through the entire terrible campaign[Pg 166] at Gallipoli. He was in numerous fierce trench battles. He served as an aerial observer, and fought enemy planes. On the road to Thiepval he had a shoulder smashed by shrapnel, but he remained in command of his men behind barricades made of the dead bodies around them in “No Man’s Land.” For twenty-two hours they kept the Germans off. Then reinforcements came. On scout duty he frequently penetrated German trenches and gun positions in the night. At last he was detected in the enemy trenches. A bomb duel ensued. He was frightfully injured but managed to escape.

These incidents and many others Captain Fallon relates in his book The Big Fight (W. J. Watt & Company). One of his most interesting chapters is devoted to his experience in command of a tank. It was an amazing adventure.

The Captain has fond memories of that good, old tank. “The dear girl was named ‘Razzle Dazzle,’” he says.

“She was very young, having been in service only three months, but rather portly. She weighed something over thirty tons. And in no way could you call the dear little woman pretty. She was a pallid gray and mud splashed when I got her and there was no grace in the bulging curves of her steel shape; or of her conical top; or her ponderous wheels.

“She showed every aspect of being a bad, scrappy, old dearie. The minute I saw her in her lovely ugliness I knew she would like trouble and lots of it. She carried a six hundred horsepower motor. And out of her gray steel hoods protruded eight guns.

SHE GOES INTO ACTION

“The order had come to me about one in the morning, and it was nearly three when we started lumbering out toward the enemy trenches. We had about six hundred yards to cover. I knew little or nothing of her motor power or speed. My concern was with the efficiency of the guns. She pumped and swayed across ‘No Man’s Land’ at about four miles an hour. She groaned and tossed a great deal. And in fact, made such poor progress that my regiment, the Oxfords and Bucks, beat the old dearie to the enemy lines. Our men were among the barbed wire of the first line, fighting it, cutting it, knocking it down before the old ‘Razzle Dazzle’ got into action.

“But she ‘carried on’ just the same. And when she smote the barbed-wire obstacles, she murdered them. She crushed those barriers to what looked like messes of steel spaghetti.

“Instead of sinking into trenches as I feared she would, she crushed them and continued to move forward. Of course, we were letting go everything we had, and from my observation hole, I could see the Germans didn’t like it. They had put up something of a stand against the infantry. But against the tank they were [Pg 168]quick to make their farewells. It was a still black night, but under the star-shells we could see them scurrying out of our way.

“This was very sensible of them because we were certainly making a clean sweep of everything in sight and had the earth ahead throwing up chocolate showers of spray as if the ground we rode was an angry sea of mud.

“Every man in the tank was shouting and yelling with the excitement of the thing and we were tossed up against each other like loosened peas in a pod.

“Suddenly out of a very clever camouflage of tree branches and shrubbery a German machine gun emplacement was revealed. The bullets stormed and rattled upon the tank. But they did themselves a bad turn by revealing their whereabouts, for we made straight for the camouflage and went over that battery of machine guns, crunching its concrete foundation as if it were chalk.

“Then we turned about and from our new position put the Germans under an enfilade fire that we kept up until every evidence was at hand that the Oxfords and Bucks and supporting battalions were holding the trenches.

“But this was only preliminary work cut out for the tank to do. I had special instructions and a main objective. This was a sugar refinery. It was a one-storied building of brick and wood with a tiled roof. It had been established as a sugar refinery by the Germans before the war and when this occasion arose blossomed as a fortress with a gun aimed out of every window.

“To allow it to remain standing in hostile hands would mean that the trenches we had won could be constantly battered. Its removal was most desirable. To send infantry against it would have involved huge losses in life. The tank was deemed the right weapon.

“And largely because ‘Razzle Dazzle’ took matters into her own hands. The truth is she ran away.

“We rocked and ploughed out of the trenches and went swaying toward the refinery. I ordered the round-top sealed. And we beat the refinery to the attack with our guns. But they had seen us coming and every window facing our way developed a working gun. There were about sixteen such windows. They all blazed at us.

“My notion had been to circle the ‘sugar mill’ with ‘Razzle Dazzle’ and shoot it up from all sides. We were getting frightfully rapped by the enemy fire, but there was apparently nothing heavy enough to split the skin of the wild, old girl. Our own fire was effective. We knocked out all the windows and the red-tiled roof was sagging. As I say, my notion was to circle the ‘mill’ and I gave orders accordingly. But the ‘Razzle Dazzle’s’ chauffeur looked at me in distress.

“And the ‘Razzle Dazzle’ carried out her own idea of attack. She banged head-on into the ‘mill.’ She went right through a wide doorway, making splinters of the door; she knocked against concrete pillars, supports and walls, smashing everything in her way and bowled out of the other side just as the roof crashed in and apparently crushed and smothered all the artillery men beneath it.

“On the way through, the big, powerful old girl bucked and rocked and reared until we men and the black cat inside her were thrown again and again into a jumble, the cat scratching us like a devil in her frenzy of fear.

“Closed up in the tank as we were, we could hear the roar and crash of the falling ‘mill,’ and from my observation port-hole I could observe that it was most complete. The place had been reduced to a mere heap. Not a shot came out of it at us.

SHE DEFIES CONTROL

“But still the ‘Razzle Dazzle’ was having her own way. Her motorist was signaling me that he had no control of her. This was cheerful intelligence because right ahead was a huge shell crater. She might slide into it and climb up the other side and out. I hoped so. But she didn’t. She hit the bottom of the pit, tried to push her way up and out, fell back, panted, pushed up again, fell back and then just stuck at the bottom of the[Pg 169] well, throbbing and moaning and maybe penitent for her recklessness.

“Penitence wasn’t to do her any good. It wasn’t five minutes later when the Germans had the range of her and began smashing us with big shells. I ordered my men to abandon her and led them in a rush out of the crater and into small shell holes until the storm of fire was past.

“When it was, ‘Razzle Dazzle’ was a wreck. She was cracked, distorted and shapeless. But the runaway engine was still plainly to be heard throbbing. Finally a last big shell sailed into the doughty tank and there was a loud bang and a flare. Her oil reservoir shot up in an enormous blaze.

“‘Razzle Dazzle’ was no more. But she had accounted for the ‘refinery.’ And our infantry had done the rest. The German position was ours.

“I was all enthusiasm for fighting ‘tanks.’ But my superiors squelched it. For when I asked for command of a sister of ‘Razzle Dazzle’ next day, a cold-eyed aide said to me:

“‘One tank, worth ten thousand pounds, is as much as any bally young officer may expect to be given to destroy during his lifetime. Good afternoon.’”

Though Exempt by Age the Love Art Deepened Bade Him Fight for France

Elsewhere in this volume is told how an American poet, Alan Seeger, gave his life for France. Here is the story of a French painter who, freely offering his life, gave what was even more precious to him than life. You may know the name Lemordant, and you may know the work signed by that name; if not, what pleasanter introduction to both than some words by Mary Fanton Roberts in the Touchstone? She says:

“Perhaps all unconsciously, this heroic French artist-soldier has found the truth about democracy, and he tells it to us with lightning strokes and splendid color. In all of his pictures he is a painter of the simple people: of the workmen, the peasants, the sailors, the fishermen, and women. And he paints them working joyously with strength and exhilaration and interest. He paints them running in the meadows and dancing on the shore and laughing into each other’s faces. He paints them as great workmen, great lovers. They seem, these men and women, in their bright-colored clothes and their vivid faces, as much a part of the essential beauty of life as white clouds racing over the blue sky on a windy day, as the amethyst water through which the women splash bringing in the nets; they are as genuine as the yellow shore where the brilliant fishing-boats lie, as the poppies in the field, and the tulips in the home-gardens.”

WOULD NOT REMAIN BEHIND

He was 37 years old when the war began, an age that entitled him to remain behind in the Home Defense Corps, but he chose to go to the front. Mr. Charles LeGoffic relates, in the Touchstone, the war experiences of painter Lemordant, the experiences of a veritable hero, hero exceptional. His first engagement of consequence was at Charleroi, where he was wounded and where he won a lieutenant’s commission.

One night during the battle of the Marne, on the outskirts of the forest of Guebarre, his attention was attracted by some suspicious movements on the right. He crawled out, revolver in hand, followed by four men of his section, to investigate.

“He was not mistaken; at that spot, between two companies, our line showed a slight opening, a ‘break’ which the Germans were trying to enter. Lemordant sent one of his men to alarm the nearest company, and was making a half-circle toward his own company when[Pg 170] a huge Boche ruffian appeared in the darkness and fired at him pointblank. The bullet shaved his cheek; other bullets whistled about. The little troop had been winded, and there was only one way to get out of it, that was to reply by a general fire that would give the impression of an attack in force. The enemy would perhaps be impressed by it, and in any event this volley would put companies out on the alert. In fact, on both sides the firing became general, even the artillery took part in it; a seventy-seven burst near Lemordant, wounded him in his right side and threw him into the air with his full equipment. The wound was not serious, but Lemordant fell in such a way as to dislocate his hip-bones and to tear his muscles. Fainting, he was carried away to a field-hospital, where he remained until the ninth. The enemy was now in full retreat. On the eighth we had crossed Le Petit Morin, on the ninth we lay at Montmirail and at Champaubert, on the battlefields of the Napoleonic epic, and the birth of victory came to the armies of the Republic in the same cradle where the Imperial star had shed its last rays.

“Lemordant refused to be sent to a base hospital. He was not yet strong. He could scarcely walk, the two wooden splints which they had placed over his pelvis came out of position at each sudden movement; but the splendid conscience of a leader of men had awakened in this idealist, this dreamer who but yesterday was so highly prejudiced against the military profession. He knew that in war-time an officer only holds his men by his own example and moral authority.”

AN OFFICER’S OBLIGATION

“‘An officer,’ he said to me, ‘literally must give all his existence, all his life-blood to his country; he must not spare a drop; less than any other is he allowed to invoke the relief of the “slightly wounded,” which permits him to go to some luxurious hospital in the Côte d’Azur and there appeal to the tender hearts of the Sisters of Charity. Wounded, sick, limping, he must be able to say to his soldiers who are complaining, “But do I not march, too?” Then they will follow him.’

“On the morning of October 4, 1914, the 41st attacked near Monchy-le-Preux.... All went well at first. From time to time, whenever the ground was uneven, they rushed[Pg 171] forward; a few unlucky ones are dropped out on the way. With the rest, Lemordant, although himself wounded in the hand, reached the enemy trench and carried it.

“A second bullet at this moment grazes his right temple; a third, a little while after, wounds him on the top of his skull. It is now broad day, but it is northern weather, gray, cheerless, dark, uncertain. In the four great stages of his military life this painter soldier knew different climates; he has run the tone-scale from the burning blue of Charleroi to the bottomless night of Craonnelle, with the clear starlit heaven of the Marne between.

“Is it of that he thinks, if it be that, in such a moment, he can think of anything except the safety of his men?

“Confused movement on the plain—on his right frantic silhouettes which stand bolt upright, whirl about, collapse; another section of his company engaged on the same side is caught on the flank by machine guns set up in a sort of blockhouse behind a mound, in front of a pile of ruined huts. Without hesitating, with the firmness of decision which never abandons him in the most critical circumstances, Lemordant gets his men together, rallies the fugitives, and throws himself on the blockhouse—the battery of machine guns is put out of action. But Lemordant, climbing the slope, receives a bullet pointblank which goes through his right knee.

“It is his fourth wound of the day, and his men wish to carry him off; he refuses, feeling that his presence is more necessary than ever. In spite of the pain he merely had his leg set in splints, then, fortifying the positions on the side toward the enemy, he sends a runner to Major Bernard to keep him in touch with his advance and to call for supports. The man is killed on the way. Another meets the same fate, and in the interim the German counter-attack breaks loose.

“It is launched by a whole company, and it is terrifying to see this gray wave rolling over the plain, rising, sinking, rising again, and growing at each rush which brings it nearer the mound. Lemordant, by rigid demand, compels his men not to fire, to control their nerves. The charge gets within twenty meters of the mound, where it gathers itself up to come over in a single mass with the cry ‘Vorwärts!’

“The charge vacillates, stops. Our men leap out of the trench to charge in turn. Lemordant, though wounded in the hand, in the forehead, on the head, and in the knee, charges with them, supported by a young soldier of his section. Chance brings him face to face with the Oberst-leutnant, who commands the counter-attack and whom he seizes by the throat; just then a fifth bullet strikes him over the right eye, breaking the frontal bone. It seems to him that his head has burst and that his eyes have spurted out into space. He falls heavily. It is all over!”

WHY THE NIGHT SO LONG

“How was he finally saved? He does not know yet. Wounded within the enemy’s lines, left for dead, he lay there four full days without care and for forty-eight hours he was unconscious. When he came to himself it was difficult to collect his thoughts. He did not know where he was. Around him was total darkness, and it did not pass away. He heard the groans, the death-rattle of the dying, the voices of the wounded who called to him. He dragged himself in their direction and asked them questions. Why did the night last so long? They answered that it was broad daylight—and he understood.

“‘... I had thought of everything,’ he said to me. ‘Of death, of the most horrible wounds, but not of that!

“Yet his martyrdom was not finished, and the worst of all perhaps remains. How shall I tell of that fearful suffering in wretched lazarettos, in the dung-heaps where the Germans laid our wounded in the villages behind the front! Most of them stayed there forever. He, with greater vitality, was carried to Cambrai, and from there stage by stage was transported to a hospital in Bavaria.

“Melancholy journey! If he saw nothing, at least in the railway-stations he heard the yells of the mobs which crowded on the passage of the French wounded to gloat over their sufferings. Eventually his condition improved a little; his eyes, one pushed out of its socket, the other driven back in his head by the[Pg 172] breaking of his frontal bone, had been put back in place; he began to see, he could even draw a few lines and make out large characters. But the idea of escape mastered him; two unsuccessful efforts had sent him to the guardhouse; on the third he was ordered to a reprisal camp; his departure was fixed for the next day. Calm and serene as ever, he wished before going to finish the series of addresses on the history of painting which he had undertaken for his fellow prisoners. In the course of the conference Lemordant wished to run over his notes; he could no longer make them out! A halo danced in front of him, obscuring everything! He had such a sense of anguish that he had to stop. But by a concentration of the will he mastered himself and improvised the rest of his address in a voice in which there was only the slightest trembling. At the end of the address the battalion chief leaped to the platform and took Lemordant in his arms.”

FOR THE LAST LOOK

“‘... What has happened to you?’ Then when he learned: ‘Ah, my poor friend, surely in your condition they can not send you to a reprisal camp; courage, you shall go to France!’

“The commander of the guardhouse himself, feeling a sense of pity when he learned what had happened, offered to telephone to the camp commander and ask for a cancellation of the order. Lemordant refused; he wished to owe nothing to the destroyers of his country. He started for the reprisal camp. But there his blindness classified him almost immediately among the severely wounded who were listed for exchange. Switzerland received him for a time. At last arrived the moment when he could cross the French frontier.

“He had waited for that moment with a sort of religious ecstasy. Blind, wounded in the back and side, with a broken knee, and a high fever, he hoped for a miracle, but expected one only from himself, from the power of his own will. He had asked the Red Cross nurses who had charge of him to tell him the moment when the train crossed the frontier. He would see it—see at least something belonging to it, no matter what—a hedge, a length of rail, a pebble, a tuft of grass. They did what he asked, took him to the door of the compartment, and there he exerted all his strength, all his will-power. It was not to be!

The English Nurse Whose Tragic Heroism and Secret Execution Made Germany’s Defeat More Certain

The penitence of generations cannot suffice to erase from the world’s judgment of German character the black stigma of the infamies perpetrated in Belgium. The implacable, brutal wantonness with which they were committed makes those crimes unforgettable. Ever conspicuous among them will be the conscienceless execution of Edith Cavell, the ministering angel, the merciful nurse murdered by military order,—with the subsequent deliberate approval of Imperial Germany. A military technicality was invoked in the attempted justification of the execution of this brave and devoted woman, who was secretly tried, by a German court-martial, on the charge of having aided English, French and German soldiers to escape from Belgium, and hurriedly done to death. The savagery of the event, which occurred in Brussels, Oct. 12, 1915, sent a wave of horror and resentment throughout the civilized world equaled only by the universal indignation aroused by the sinking of the Lusitania.

Miss Cavell was the daughter of an English clergyman, the Rev. Frederick Cavell, for forty years vicar of Swardeston, Norfolk. In[Pg 173] 1896 she entered the London Hospital to qualify as a trained nurse and later became staff nurse. In 1900 she went to Brussels on the invitation of Dr. Depage, a distinguished physician who had established in a suburb of Brussels a training school for Belgian nurses. Miss Cavell entered into the work so enthusiastically and furthered the plans of Dr. Depage with such success that the institution, whose influence was felt throughout Belgium, became the center of a large nursing organization of scientifically trained nurses. She had won the confidence of Dr. Depage so entirely that when, on the outbreak of the war, he was called to military service, she was left to continue the work in Brussels. All who came in contact with her agree that she was a woman of fine character and a capable leader, worthy of a high place in the list of great nurses of whom Florence Nightingale was the first.

When the Germans occupied Brussels in 1914 Miss Cavell was permitted to remain in the service to which she was so single-heartedly devoted, and it is a memorable fact, the more honorable to her for the ingratitude that rewarded her benevolent disinterestedness, that she and her assistants nursed with equal care and fidelity the wounded German soldiers and the Belgian victims of war. Her mission was one of beneficence to the maimed, the sick and the unfortunate, a humanitarian work that discriminated against none whose needs demanded her sympathy and aid.

HER DUTY TO HER COUNTRY

In the retreat of the French and British armies in late summer of 1914 a number of English and French soldiers cut off from their companies hid themselves in the woods, in trenches and in deserted houses, hoping to escape capture. Many were caught, and some of them were summarily shot. Others were sheltered and protected by farmers who provided them with civilian clothes and gave them employment until they could find means of escape into Holland. Similarly Belgian soldiers were given the chance to evade the Germans; but those who were captured were, in many instances if not usually, shot. It was because of this severity in the treatment of captured men that Miss Cavell the more readily yielded to her natural inclinations to aid the unfortunate who sought her help. That was her statement to the military court before which she was arraigned. She was asked why she had helped English soldiers to escape; she replied firmly that it was because she believed that if she had not done so the Germans would have shot them and that she thought she only did her duty to her country in trying to save men’s lives. Her prominence and her fame as nurse and comforter to the wounded attracted the soldiers to her as a sympathetic woman disposed to help, and it is not denied that she did help many. The Germans charged that she had assisted one hundred and thirty to get out of Belgium.

MISS CAVELL A PRISONER

Suspicion having been directed against her,—how is not clearly known—she was subjected to espionage and in consequence she was arrested August 15, 1915, and thrown into prison at St. Giles. This did not cause her any apprehension as she anticipated no more than a short imprisonment. She did not imagine, in fact, no one dreamed that the German authorities would with premeditation shoot a woman for pitying and showing mercy to the helpless.

Mr. Brand Whitlock, the American Minister to Belgium, who at that time represented (and until the United States entered the war continued to represent) British interests in Belgium, felt an intense sympathy with Miss Cavell and at once took up the matter of securing for her a fair and proper trial. He wrote a letter to Baron von der Lancken, the German Civil Governor of Belgium, stating that he had been urged by telegraph to take charge of the defense and requested that Mr. de Leval, councilor for the American Embassy, be allowed to see and confer with Miss Cavell. This letter was not answered. Mr. Whitlock again wrote more urgently. None too promptly the German Civil Governor finally made reply, refusing to permit anyone to see Miss Cavell as the Department of the Governor General “as a matter of principle does not allow an accused person to have any interviews whatever,” stating also that Miss Cavell had confessed her guilt and that her defense would be conducted by Mr. Braun.

THE GERMAN WAY

For some reason not ascertained, Braun could not undertake the defense, and it was turned over to Mr. Kirschen, a Rumanian, practising law in Brussels. Mr. de Leval thereupon wrote to Mr. Kirschen, as he stated in his narrative later:

“I put myself in communication with Mr. Kirschen, who told me that Miss Cavell was prosecuted for having helped soldiers to cross the frontier. I asked him whether he had seen Miss Cavell and whether she had made any statement to him, and to my surprise found that the lawyers defending prisoners before the German Military Court were not allowed to see their clients before the trial, and were not shown any document of the prosecution. This, Mr. Kirschen said, was in accordance with the German military rules. He added that the hearing of the trial of such cases was carried out very carefully, and that in his opinion, although it was not possible to see the client before the trial, in fact the trial itself developed so carefully and so slowly, that it was generally possible to have a fair knowledge of all the facts and to present a good defense for the prisoner. This would especially be the case for Miss Cavell, because the trial would be rather long, as she was prosecuted with thirty-four other prisoners.

“I informed Mr. Kirschen of my intention to be present at the trial so as to watch the case. He immediately dissuaded me from taking such attitude, which he said would cause a great prejudice to the prisoner, because the German judges would resent it and feel it almost as an affront if I was appearing to exercise a kind of supervision on the trial. He thought that if the Germans would admit my presence, which was very doubtful, it would in any case cause prejudice to Miss Cavell.

“Mr. Kirschen assured me over and over again that the Military Court of Brussels was always perfectly fair, and that there was not the slightest danger of any miscarriage of justice. He promised that he would keep me posted on all the developments which the case would take and would report to me the exact charges that were brought against Miss Cavell and the facts concerning her that would be disclosed at the trial, so as to allow me to judge by myself about the merits of the case. He insisted that, of course, he would do all that was humanly possible to defend Miss Cavell to the best of his ability.”

The trial began Thursday, Oct. 7. Some opinion of the value of Mr. Kirschen’s assurance made “over and over again that the military court of Brussels was always perfectly fair,” etc., may be formed from the facts that Miss Cavell was not allowed to have a defender of her friends’ choosing, that she had no record of the evidence, oral or documentary, to study in preparation for her defense, that she was kept in solitary confinement for over nine weeks without opportunity to consult even with her legal advisers, during which time she was subjected to repeated cross examinations, and statements said to have been made by her confessing guilt were transmitted by the German authorities to the lawyer who subsequently was to defend her.

The trial was conducted in German, a language she did not understand and which had to be interpreted to her. As a commentator said, “It obviously was impossible to place any adequate scheme of defense with a lawyer whom she saw for the first time when the trial began, a lawyer who had had no opportunity of studying the documents of the prosecution. That Mr. Kirschen did the best he could under the conditions is possible, though his subsequent conduct did not give assurance of the devotion and profound interest to be expected of a conscientious lawyer charged with an obligation that appealed at once to his humanity and his chivalry.”

SENTENCED TO DEATH

The fullest account of the trial was that given in M. de Leval’s report to Mr. Whitlock. It was as follows:

“Miss Cavell was prosecuted for having helped English and French soldiers, as well as Belgian young men, to cross the frontier and to go over to England. She had admitted by signing a statement before the day of the trial, and by public acknowledgment in Court, in the presence of all the other prisoners and the lawyers, that she was guilty of the charges brought against her, and she had acknowledged not only that she had helped these soldiers to cross the frontier, but also that some of them had thanked her in writing when arriving in England. This last admission made her case so much the more serious, because if it only had been proved against her that she had helped the soldiers to traverse the Dutch frontier, and no proof[Pg 175] was produced that these soldiers had reached a country at war with Germany, she could only have been sentenced for an attempt to commit the ‘crime’ and not for the ‘crime’ being duly accomplished. As the case stood the sentence fixed by the German military law was a sentence of death.

“Paragraph 58 of the German Military Code says:

“‘Will be sentenced to death for treason any person who, with the intention of helping the hostile Power, or of causing harm to the German or allied troops, is guilty of one of the crimes of paragraph 90 of the German Penal Code.’

“The case referred to in above said paragraph 90 consists in—

“... conducting soldiers to the enemy....’

“The penalties above set forth apply, according to paragraph 160 of the German Code, in case of war, to foreigners as well as to Germans.

“In her oral statement before the Court Miss Cavell disclosed almost all the facts of the whole prosecution. She was questioned in German, an interpreter translating all the questions in French, with which language Miss Cavell was well acquainted. She spoke without trembling and showed a clear mind. Often she added some greater precision to her previous depositions.

“When she was asked why she helped these soldiers to go to England, she replied that she thought that if she had not done so they would have been shot by the Germans, and that therefore she thought she only did her duty to her country in saving their lives.

“The Military Public Prosecutor said that argument might be good for English soldiers, but did not apply to Belgian young men whom she induced to cross the frontier, and who would have been perfectly free to remain in the country without danger to their lives.

“Mr. Kirschen made a very good plea for Miss Cavell, using all arguments that could be brought in her favor before the Court.

“The Military Public Prosecutor, however, asked the Court to pass a death sentence on Miss Cavell and eight other prisoners among the thirty-five. The Court did not seem to agree, and the judgment was postponed.”

WHITLOCK ATTEMPTS TO SAVE HER

The duplicity of the German authorities was later demonstrated. The political departments of the Governor-General of Belgium had given the American Legation positive assurance that it would be fully informed of developments in the case. As late as 6.30 o’clock on Monday evening, three days after the trial, the Legation was positively informed by Conrad, of the political department, in answer to direct inquiries, that sentence had not been pronounced. Conrad renewed his previous assurances that he would not fail to inform the American officials as soon as there was any news. At this time sentence of death already had been pronounced.

At 8 o’clock that evening M. de Leval learned through private but reliable sources that Miss Cavell had been sentenced to death at 5 o’clock that afternoon, and that she would be shot at 2 o’clock the next morning. Thus the fact of her sentence was kept as secret as possible, the officials denying it, and her accusers were evidently so fearful that even at the eleventh hour a plea for mercy might prevail that they had her shot, in the night, within nine hours of her conviction.

When, at 8 o’clock, M. de Leval was informed[Pg 176] of the sentence and impending execution, there remained but six hours in which to attempt to save Miss Cavell’s life. He hurried to Mr. Whitlock, who was ill, unable to leave the house, but who wrote an impassioned note to Baron von der Lancken, the Civil Governor:

My dear Baron:—I am too ill to present my request to you in person, but I appeal to the generosity of your heart to support it and save this unfortunate woman from death. Have pity on her.

Yours sincerely,
Brand Whitlock.

THE LAST PLEA FAILS

With this letter and a plea for clemency addressed to the Governor-General, M. de Leval and Mr. Hugh Gibson, First Secretary of the Legation, went to the Marquis de Villalobar, the Spanish Minister, to beg his coöperation. He most heartily joined them and the three went to the house of the Civil Governor. Mr. Gibson reported the interview and its negative results to the American Minister:

“Baron von der Lancken and all the members of his staff were absent for the evening. We sent a messenger to ask that he return at once to see us in regard to a matter of utmost urgency. A little after 10 o’clock he arrived, followed shortly after by Count Harrach and Herr von Falkenhausen, members of his staff. The circumstances of the case were explained to him and your note presented, and he read it aloud in our presence. He expressed disbelief in the report that sentence had actually been passed, and manifested some surprise that we should give credence to any report not emanating from official sources. He was quite insistent on knowing the exact source of our information, but this I did not feel at liberty to communicate to him. Baron von der Lancken stated that it was quite improbable that sentence had been pronounced, that even if so, it would not be executed within so short a time, and that in any event it would be quite impossible to take any action before morning. It was, of course, pointed out to him that if the facts were as we believed them to be, action would be useless unless taken at once. We urged him to ascertain the facts immediately, and this, after some hesitancy, he agreed to do.

“He telephoned to the presiding judge of the court-martial and returned in a short time to say that the facts were as we had represented them, and that it was intended to carry out the sentence before morning. We then presented, as earnestly as possible, your plea for delay. So far as I am able to judge, we neglected to present no phase of the matter which might have had any effect, emphasizing the horror of executing a woman, no matter what her offense, pointing out that the death sentence had heretofore been imposed only for actual cases of espionage and that Miss Cavell was not even accused by the German authorities of anything so serious. I further called attention to the failure to comply with Mr. Conrad’s promise to inform the Legation of the sentence. I urged that inasmuch as the offences charged against Miss Cavell were long since accomplished, and that as she had been for some weeks in prison, a delay in carrying out the sentence could entail no danger to the German cause. I even went so far as to point out the fearful effect of a summary execution of this sort upon public opinion, both here and abroad, and, although I had no authority for doing so, called attention to the possibility that it might bring about reprisals.

THERE COULD BE NO APPEAL

“The Spanish Minister forcibly supported all our representations and made an earnest plea for clemency.

“Baron von der Lancken stated that the Military Governor was the supreme authority (‘Gerichtsherr’) in matters of this sort; that appeal from his decision could be carried only to the Emperor, the Governor-General having no authority to intervene in such cases. He added that under the provisions of German martial law the Military Governor had discretionary power to accept or to refuse acceptance of an appeal for clemency. After some discussion he agreed to call the Military Governor on the telephone and learn whether he had already ratified the sentence, and whether there was any chance for clemency. He returned in about half an hour, and stated that he had been to confer personally with the Military Governor, who said that he had acted in the case of Miss Cavell only after mature deliberation; that the circumstances in her case were of such a character that he considered the infliction of the death penalty imperative; and that in view of the circumstances of this case he must decline to accept your plea for clemency or any representation in regard to the matter.

“Even after Baron von der Lancken’s very positive and definite statement that there was no hope, and that under the circumstances ‘even the Emperor himself could not intervene,’ we continued to appeal to every sentiment to secure delay, and the Spanish Minister even led Baron von der Lancken aside in order to say very forcibly a number of things which he would have felt hesitancy in saying in the presence of the younger officers and of M. de Leval, a Belgian subject.

“His Excellency talked very earnestly with Baron von der Lancken for about a quarter of an hour. During this time M. de Leval and I presented to the younger officers every argument we could think of. I reminded them of our untiring efforts on behalf of German subjects at the outbreak of war and during the siege of Antwerp. I pointed out that, while our services had been rendered gladly and without any thought of future favors, they should certainly entitle you to some consideration for the only request of this sort you had made since the beginning of the war. Unfortunately, our efforts were unavailing. We persevered until it was only too clear that there was no hope of securing any consideration for the case.”

EDITH CAVELL’S LAST HOURS

M. de Leval had made application on Sunday evening that he and the British chaplain, the Rev. H. Sterling Gahan, might be permitted to see Miss Cavell in jail. This was at first refused, but on Monday evening, after the sentence of death had been passed, Mr. Gahan was allowed to visit her. Mr. Gahan subsequently wrote a simple and moving statement of what took place:

“To my astonishment and relief I found my friend perfectly calm and resigned. But this could not lessen the tenderness and intensity of feeling on either part during that last interview of almost an hour.

“Her first words to me were upon a matter concerning herself personally, but the solemn asseveration which accompanied them was made expressly in the light of God and eternity. She then added that she wished all her friends to know that she willingly gave her life for her country, and said: ‘I have no fear[Pg 178] nor shrinking; I have seen death so often that it is not strange or fearful to me.’ She further said: ‘I thank God for this ten weeks’ quiet before the end.’ ‘Life has always been hurried and full of difficulty.’ ‘This time of rest has been a great mercy.’ ‘They have all been very kind to me here. But this I would say, standing as I do in view of God and eternity, I realize that patriotism is not enough. I must have no hatred or bitterness towards anyone.’

“We partook of the Holy Communion together, and she received the Gospel message of consolation with all her heart. At the close of the little service I began to repeat the words ‘Abide with me,’ and she joined softly in the end.

“We sat quietly talking until it was time for me to go. She gave me parting messages for relations and friends. She spoke of her soul’s needs at the moment and she received the assurance of God’s Word as only the Christian can do.

“Then I said ‘Good-bye,’ and she smiled and said, ‘We shall meet again.’

“The German military chaplain was with her at the end and afterwards gave her Christian burial.

“He told me: ‘She was brave and bright to the last. She professed her Christian faith and that she was glad to die for her country.’ ‘She died like a heroine.’”

VON BISSING’S DEFENSE

It is not surprising that the secrecy, the precipitate haste and the early morning hour of the execution gave rise to many sensational reports, among others that Miss Cavell fainted on the way, and was shot to death by the commanding officer as she lay unconscious. But it seems to be certain that the execution was carried out in the usual military way and without any aggravating incident. It was, however, quite in keeping with the brutal and conscienceless procedure throughout that the place of burial was kept secret, so that none of the friends of the martyred nurse could pay even the tribute of a tear at her grave. One needs but to look at the photographed face of von Bissing, the German Governor-General of Belgium responsible for the vindictive killing of Miss Cavell, to see the outward signs of a despicable soul. The only charitable thought with which one can review his acts is that his mind was already diseased and corrupted by the illness that not long after sent him to the final accounting for his Belgian infamies which—with the exception of Germany—roused the whole world to execration.

It is worthy of note in this connection that in a talk with Mr. Karl Kitchen, a writer for the New York World, Von Bissing expressed great astonishment that an American newspaper man thought it worth while paying a visit to Brussels over “such an affair.” He was unable to understand “why the world is interested in the case. When thousands of innocent people have died in the war, why should anyone become hysterical over the death of one guilty woman?” And he admitted in the talk that the authorities had hurried on the execution not because Miss Cavell had helped fugitives to escape, but because they wanted to make her an example to awe the Belgians. He said:

“A few years in prison is not sufficient punishment for an offense of this kind. For punishment in a case of this nature is meted out to deter others from committing the same offense. If the Cavell woman had been sent to prison she would have been released in two or three years—at the end of the war. Amnesty is usually granted to all prisoners convicted of offenses of this nature, espionage, and so forth, when peace is made.

“The Cavell woman was not charged with espionage. The charge of aiding the enemy’s soldiers to escape which was made against her was sufficiently serious. Her death was deplorable—but I do not see why it should occasion such hysteria in America.”

That was von Bissing’s self-justification. Baron von der Lancken’s plea was more naïve. As the execution was purely a military affair, he, the Civil Governor, did not interfere. “It would have been a breach of etiquette if he had done so!” It counted nothing with these official exponents of Kultur that Miss Cavell had been the compassionate and skillful nurse of numbers of wounded German soldiers in the Brussels hospitals. That offered them no reason for treating her with leniency.

It was the worse for Germany that etiquette and native savagery put clemency aside in this case. As the London Times declared, “The late Miss Cavell’s death came like a trumpet call to the British nation. It showed [Pg 180]once again the real character of the enemy this country is fighting. To the soldiers in Flanders it gave a fresh battle-cry and to civilians at home it served to re-emphasize the need of greater effort and great sacrifice. Before leaping for the trenches for a charge the soldiers shouted: ‘For Miss Cavell.’”

The King and Queen of England wrote to the aged mother of Miss Cavell expressing their sympathy with her and their horror of the deed that took her daughter from her. There was a great memorial service in St. Paul’s, the church itself and the churchyard around it being crowded by every class. The nation was thrilled. The French also made the cause their own. From Allies and neutrals the world over came messages of sympathy and indignation. Nowhere, perhaps, was the emotion deeper than in the United States. The American people were aroused in many ways. Their national dignity was offended, because their representatives had been slighted when attempting to save the Englishwoman. But this resentment counted for little as compared with the genuine wrath at an act of barbarous inhumanity to a woman.

Her name has been honored in every possible way—in sculpture, in painting, in verse, in prose, in the sermons of the clergy, in the oratory of statesmen, and after the armistice England received home her body with such ceremonies as are reserved for those who have served the country greatly. An imposing ceremony in the ancient Westminster Abbey was attended by royalty and nobility, and the throng within and without the Abbey represented every class of English life. The funeral procession, in which marched hundreds of nurses, was witnessed by vast throngs along the route, and was in itself a memorable spectacle. The body of the martyr-heroine was taken to her native town for burial, where a monument portrait of herself, in the town square, will perpetuate to the eye a memory that will never perish from the English heart.

The Story of Marcelle Semmer, Who Held Up the Advance of a German Army Corps

French heroines were not few; indeed to be a woman of France was to be a heroine in those slow grinding years of the war that tired the soul, as it trampled the life of that country. But none of them was of greater courage or of more resolutely self-sacrificing purpose than a young woman of Picardy, a mere girl, Marcelle Semmer. She was the daughter of a phosphate factory owner, an Alsatian, who had quitted Alsace in 1871 rather than remain as a subject of Germany.

The story of her deeds was first given to the public by a lecturer at the Sorbonne, Paris, and was repeated by the Paris correspondent of the Times, but her fame had already run throughout the armies of France, and the Republic had honored her.

After the defeat of the Allies at Charleroi, the French tried to make a stand along the Somme, but being unable to resist the overwhelming mass of the invaders, they fell back across a canal in the vicinity of Marcelle Semmer’s home. The enemy were in close pursuit. As the last group of the French crossed the bridge, Marcelle rushed forward and raising the drawbridge, threw into the canal the control key, without which the draw could not be lowered. This remarkable evidence of presence of mind and coolness was hardly to have been expected from a girl in such terrifying circumstances. The act was a daring one, as the advancing Germans did not hesitate to fire at her as well as at the retreating soldiers; but realizing that it would hold up the advance of the Germans she unhesitatingly confronted the danger. It was the saving grace for the French, for it was not until the next morning that the Germans were able to get together boats enough to form a pontoon across the canal. The retreat had the advantage of those precious hours of the hold-up.

Though the risks were great, Marcelle remained in the village during the German occupation in order to be of possible assistance to the French. And she did render assistance. There was near the village Eclusier a subterranean passage used in the working of a phosphate mine, and in this passage Marcelle managed to conceal at different times sixteen French soldiers who had got separated from their command in the retreat from Charleroi and Mons. There she fed them, furnished them with civilian clothes and aided their escape into the French lines. It was not until she was helping the seventeenth to escape that she was caught and dragged, with a French soldier, before the local commandant. Asked if she meant deliberately to aid the soldier to escape, she replied firmly:

“Yes. He is not the first. I helped sixteen others to get away. Do what you please with me. I am not afraid to die.”

With little ceremony she was ordered to be shot. She was taken out for the purpose. The firing squad was drawn up and only waited the order to fire when suddenly there was a roar of French artillery bombarding the town and the position of the Germans around Eclusier. It was an unexpected French advance, and without thought of the girl the firing squad joined the confusion of men hurrying to the shelter of their defenses. Marcelle made her escape to the friendly subterranean passage. The French occupied Eclusier.

TWICE SAVED FROM THE GERMANS

The Somme lay between the opposing armies, and in the vicinity of Eclusier it forms a marshy lake. At flood the water covered the lines so that soldiers often lost their way, and here Marcelle found another means of serving France.

“Being thoroughly acquainted with the [Pg 182]neighborhood, she used to pilot parties of soldiers. This brought her again close to death. While leading a squad of men who wanted to dig an advanced trench in the village of Frise she fell into the hands of a party of Germans.

“They locked her up in the little village church of Frise. On the morrow, she felt sure, they would shoot her.

“But once more luck and the French artillery were her salvation. The French across the Somme began a lively bombardment of Frise. One shell blew a large hole in the church wall. Through this hole, unperceived by her captors, Marcelle crawled. Creeping past the Germans scattered through Frise, she soon tumbled, safe and sound, into the nearest French trench.

“By this time her fame had spread and rewards began to shower upon her. She got the Cross of the Legion of Honor, and some time later the War-Cross. In spite of all she had gone through, she persisted in staying in the Somme country and continued to work for the cause of France. For fifteen months she remained, despite shot and shell, in her little Somme village, taking care of wounded soldiers. Also among her charges was a woman of 90, too feeble to travel to a safer place. Marcelle looked out for her night and day with unflagging devotion.

“Everywhere soldiers knew and admired her. One English General ordered his soldiers to salute when she passed and refrain from addressing her unless she spoke first.”

Under the strain of her volunteer work she finally came near to a breakdown and was persuaded to go to Paris. There she entered a nurses’ school to qualify for the care of the wounded, work being necessary to her to shut away her personal sorrows, as everything she possessed or held dear the war had taken from her.

All this and more was told at the Sorbonne Conference, and then, says the Times correspondent, the narrator made a dramatic gesture and exclaimed:

“‘This little heroine of Picardy, this admirable girl, this incarnation of the qualities of the woman of France, this girl of simple origin, flawless dignity, of serious mind, and gentle ways, this girl of indomitable will-power, is here, ladies and gentlemen, here among you, in this room! And I feel that I am the spokesman for every one of you when I now extend to her the expression of our respect, our gratitude, our admiration!’

“The auditors, every man, woman and child of them, leaped to their feet, mad with enthusiasm. They craned their necks to catch a glimpse of the heroine. Unable to escape them, the young girl stood up, blushing. Through the great hall of the Sorbonne, where the most famous people of the world had been honored by France, swept a storm of cheers. A reward more splendid than the Cross of the Legion of Honor, than the War-Cross, than the salutes of soldiers at the front, had come to Marcelle Semmer.”

Russian Women Who Gave Splendid Proof That Soldierly Valor Knows No Sex

When first reports of the Battalion of Death—the regiment of Russian women—were read in the western world they were regarded as the fiction of correspondents hard pressed for material. Fighting Amazons belonged to the legendary past. But the authentic confirmations of the story and the official recognition of the battalion’s services presently roused a curious interest in these women doing heroes’ work, and there was demand for information concerning the redoubtable “Madam Butchkareff” and the circumstances leading to the organization of the regiment of which she was given command.

The story when told more than gratified the expectant interest. The London Daily Telegraph[Pg 184] was the first to give the particulars as they are here presented.

“Vera Butchkareff, or simply Yashka, as she has been christened by the men of the regiment to which she belonged, got much of her war-like spirit from her father, who fought through the whole of the Turkish war and was left a cripple for life. Her mother was a hard-working woman, with five children, of whom Yashka was the eldest, and she had to go out washing and cooking to earn enough to clothe and feed this flock.

“At the age of five Yashka was sent out as nurse to a baby of three. And from that time she has never stopped working. She looks none the worse for it. Finely yet strongly built, with broad shoulders and healthy complexion, she can lift 200 pounds with the greatest of ease. She has never known what fear is.

“Not long ago she remarked that during the last two years she had lived through so much that there remained but one danger yet to experience, that of flying. Just as she was saying that an aviator came up and offered to take her for a flight, and before the day was out she had exhausted her list of perils.

MARRIED AN UNKNOWN

“When she was sixteen years old her parents seized the first opportunity of getting her married. She never knew the man, but luckily as time wore on they grew very fond of each other, and were very happy. At first they both served in a shop, and thanks to their perseverance and frugality they were soon able to open a small shop of their own. But just as they began to prosper the war broke out, and he was one of the first to be called up.

“She was very keen on accompanying him as a soldier, but he begged her to stay behind and work for her parents, whom they had been keeping.

“She was always ready for any daring venture, and it was with great reluctance that she stayed at home in compliance with her husband’s wish. Time passed, and after long waiting she got the news that he had been killed in action in May, 1915. At once she went to her parents and said: ‘I have decided to go to the front, and you will either hear of my death or I shall return to you in honor and glory. I trust in God.’ And no persuasions were of any use.

“For two years she lived in the trenches and fought like a man. She was wounded three times—in her arm, leg, and back. In the Lake Naroch battles there was a time when all the officers were killed and the men lost courage and lay down, too frightened to attack. Then she rose up and dashed forward calling on them to follow her. Every one obeyed her command, and the trench was captured. She has received two St. George’s medals and two St. George’s crosses for various feats of bravery. At the end of the two years she was legally admitted into the 28th Polozk Regiment.

RAISES HER BATTALION

“She was presented to Mr. Kerensky for her bravery, and after hearing all her experiences, the Minister of War asked what wish she would like to have granted. She straightway said: ‘I want to form a woman’s volunteer[Pg 185] battalion, which is to lead men into battle if they will not go of themselves.’ The idea was approved by Kerensky, and, with the sanction of the commander-in-chief, the battalion was formed.”

There were 300 girls, most of them being recruits from the higher educational academies and secondary schools, with a few peasants, factory girls and servants. There were a few married women, but none with children were accepted. They ranged from 18 to 28 years in age and were of good physique, most of them pretty and of refined appearance. They wore their hair short, or their heads entirely shaved. They wore as uniform a soldier’s khaki blouse, short breeches, stockings, heavy soled shoes and forage cap. It was a mixed battalion in the matter of class; with the peasant and the factory girl marched the daughters of noble families, society women, writers, etc., for it was in the universities and schools that the Russian revolution found its most earnest advocates.

These were the women who in action near Vilna that terrible July day exhibited great courage and coolness, and did such heroic service in the midst of a wavering and weakening, cowardly, panic-stricken body of troops that they have hardly a parallel in all history. Marie Golokbyova, a member of the battalion but eighteen years old, who enlisted from the high school, has told of the first engagement of the fighting girls.

THEIR FIRST ENGAGEMENT

“We went into action a fortnight after our arrival at the front under heavy German cannon fire. Given the order to advance, we rushed out of our trench. Feeling no sense of danger, we dashed toward the enemy in the wood. The machine guns began knocking over my companions. We were ordered to lie down. I noticed those at the front with me were all women. The men were further back.

“I began shooting, the gun kicking my shoulder so hard that it is still blue and stiff. I was glad when we were ordered to charge the machine guns in the woods. We paid dearly, but we held on, and by night our scouts discovered the machine gunners and we shelled them out.

“After the first attack I was attached to a machine gun, carrying ammunition to an advanced position under the fire of hidden German machine guns. We were advancing and constantly in danger of capture by the Germans. On one trip over newly captured ground I saw what I considered a wounded German officer lying on the ground. I went to help him with my gun in my right hand and the machine gun ammunition in my left.

“Seeing me, he jumped to his knees and pulled out his revolver, but before he could shoot I dropped the ammunition and killed him.

“How did I feel on taking a human life? I had no sensation except to rid my country of an enemy. There was no sentimentality. We were trying to kill them and they were trying to kill us—that is all. Any Russian girl or any American girl in the same position would have the same feeling.”

Mme. Butchkareff—Commander Butchkareff—the peasant born leader of the heroic girls, was not only endowed with the highest quality of courage but she seemed to have an instinct for military command. She was, as her soldiers testified, “here, there, everywhere,” directing the action, adding the fire of her own spirit to the enthusiasm of the members of the battalion, urging them to “fight like real Russian soldiers,” and they met the demand. Said one of them:

“None of us was afraid once we got started. We were in the midst of a great fusillade of shots. Then terrific big shells began bursting around us. We were again frightened a little when we first saw the dead about, but before very long we were jumping over the dead and quickly forgot all about them. We just forgot ourselves entirely. We were simply Russia fighting for her life.

“As we ran forward we suddenly came upon a bunch of Germans immediately ahead of us. It was only a second until we were all around them.

“They saw they were caught and threw down their rifles, holding up their hands. They were terribly frightened.

An English Woman’s Contribution Was Her Fortune and the Daily Risk of Her Life

Among the decorations worn by Mrs. Hilda Wynne are the French Croix de Guerre, the Belgian order of Leopold, and the Russian Order of St. George—certificates of preëminent service in circumstances of danger that demand the high courage of utter self-devotion. Mrs. Wynne is a young English woman who gave her fortune to organize an ambulance unit and risked her life driving an ambulance on the firing line. Her organization was known as the Bevan-Wynne Unit, and it cared for some 40,000 wounded soldiers in the course of the war. Mrs. Wynne visited this country in the Autumn of 1917 for the purpose of arousing interest in the public in the needs of soldiers in France. Happily her mission was a successful one.

While she was in Denver the Post of that city induced Mrs. Wynne to tell some of her experiences, which are here reproduced.

“Looking upon the human courage I have witnessed, from this distance and in the little breathing space I have taken from service I can recall thousands of heroic acts, but the bravest happened on the Russian front.

“I saw two aviators go up to certain death. They were a Russian and a Frenchman. Both were little men. They went up to meet twenty German aeroplanes. It was suicidal. But they had been ordered to go—and theirs was the spirit of the gallant six hundred. I stood near them as they made ready to go. They said nothing. That is one of the lessons you learn in war—not to waste time nor words.

“They got their machines ready as a rider tests his saddle-straps and stirrups before starting for his morning gallop through the park. A little pothering and fixing of the machinery and they had gone. They went straight up and began blazing away at the German planes. I watched and the cords of my heart tightened, for the German planes, looking like great gray birds with wings widespread, came closer and closer. They surrounded them. They formed a solid double circle about them. Then they began to fire. And I turned and covered my eyes with my hands. A few seconds later what had been aeroplanes were splintered wood and what had been men a broken mass covered by smoking rags.

“While this was the bravest act I saw in two and a half years on the firing line, I readily recall the most pathetic. It was the second line of men in the Russian trenches. They were unarmed soldiers. There were no guns for them. They took their places there expecting that the man in front might drop, and the second-line man could pick up his gun and take his place.

“I have seen many of the Allies die. They all die bravely. At Dixmude when the fusiliers arrived 8,000 and went out 4,000 there was magnificent courage in death. The Frenchman dies calling upon his God. The Englishman says nothing or feebly jests; just turns his face to the wall and is still. The Russian is mystic and secretive. The Russian lives behind a veil of reserve. You never fully know him. In the last moments you know by his rapt look that his soul is in communion with his God.

AN IMPLACABLE BREED

“One of the deepest, unalterable truths of the war is the German power of hatred. It is past measuring. An example occurred at Dixmude. When we had been there three days we were driven out. I took my car filled with the wounded across a bridge just in time. A second after we had crossed there was a roar, then a crash. A shot had torn the bridge to pieces. Three weeks later to our hospital was brought a wounded German.

“That man’s eyes used to follow me in a strange way. Build no beautiful theories of his national animosity disappearing, or being swallowed up in his gratitude. There was no such thought in his mind. The eyes said: ‘I wish I had killed you. But since I didn’t I wish I might have another chance.’

“This, after I had driven away a group of zouaves who had taken everything from him, including his iron cross, and who were debating whether to toss him into the canal then or that night.

“Shells have a disturbing way about them, more disturbing to your plans than your equanimity. Shells prevented my having a nice comfortable illness. In southern Russia one can get little to eat. Coarse black bread is the chief food. It causes various disorders. I, afflicted with one of them, arranged a table in the corner of my tent, placed remedies on the table, undressed, and turned in, intending to have a cozy illness of a few days. But as I lay came an angry buzzing. A shell hissed through, carrying away a corner of my tent. That ended my illness. I had no more time to think of it.

“The greatest peril I encountered was not from shells. One becomes used to them. One of the greatest dangers I faced was on a dark night drive along a precipice in the Caucasus. It was while the plan to bring troops through Persia to Russia was expected to be successful. I went ahead with some ambulances. It was necessary to take two Russian officers across the mountain. I offered my services. The road was an oddly twisting one. On one side was a high wall, on the other a precipice whose depth no one calculated. But as I allowed myself to look into it at twilight I could see no bottom to it. We started on the all-night drive at dusk. The precipice remained with us, a foot away, most of the distance. Had my car skidded twelve inches the story would have been different.

“Then, too, I wandered once within the Turkish lines, mistaking them for our own. But amid a courteous silence I was allowed to discover my mistake and escape without harm.

TOO BUSY TO REFUSE HER

“I think I owe my opportunity to do my bit, in the way I have, to the fact that I arrived in Flanders a few hours before the fight[Pg 188] and the officers were too busy to send me back. I had seven automobiles, and knew how to use them. I took them to Dixmude and offered the automobiles and my services to the cause. I established headquarters at Furnes, which is seven miles from Nieuport, eight from Dixmude, and twenty from Ypres. I drove along the Yser Canal to the parts of the field that were under the heaviest fire, for there, I knew, my cars and I would be most needed. For a year I worked for the relief of the wounded of the French armies. Then I went to Russia, where I found the need of help and the sacrifice of life because of lack of that help almost inconceivable. The French armies have 6,000 ambulances. The Germans have 6,200. Russia, with a firing line of 6,000 miles, has only 600 motor-ambulances.

“I established dressing-stations in the mountains. Some of these were 10,000 feet above the sea-level. There, on the canvas stretched between two horses, the wounded were brought, or so they started. For many of them died in the long journey, every step of which was torture to a wounded man.

“The most exciting experience I ever had was on the Galician border. We could approach the battle-line only along the Tarnopol road, which ran for fifteen miles directly under German guns. I was speeding along it with an ambulance full of wounded soldiers when a shell struck the roadside and exploded, tearing a great hole in the earth fifty feet away. The concussion stopped us. Then we went on. I travel on my luck. Some time, I suppose, I shall travel too far.”

The Type of Woman from Which Fate Fashions Jeannes D’Arc

Had there been a Myra Ivanovna in every sector of the Russian front in the wavering days, it is not extravagant to think the troops of the Czar might have resisted the propaganda as well as the guns of the Germans and pushed on—perhaps to Berlin. Myra was but twenty years of age, a Russian Sister of Mercy. She accompanied her brother, a military doctor, to the front. She was small, and weak and nervous, but she had a resolute will, an indomitable soul, and these gave energy and endurance to her body. She was one of the most active and tireless in ministering to the sick and wounded. The soldiers marveled to see so frail a creature perform such tasks as mark the duties of an ambulance nurse. Naturally, she inspired the devotion of those she served.

It was in 1915. There had been heavy and dogged fighting and there were many wounded. The ambulances and the nurses were kept busy. Then the Germans succeeded in outflanking the regiment to which Myra was attached, and poured a deadly fire into the trenches. M. Kupchinsky, correspondent at the front for a Petrograd paper, told her story. The London Morning Post translated it. Here it is:

“The ambulance near the 10th Regiment was not brought to the rear, despite the instructions of the commander. It was discovered that Sister Ivanovna was employed there in bandaging the wounded.

“‘Let the ambulance station go back,’ she said; ‘I shall stay here, where my hands are wanted.’

“The doctors and the wounded officers appealed in vain—she would not retreat until her brother ordered her to do so. No sooner, however, was the ambulance posted in a new situation than she moved back to her former position with a few volunteers. At this time the enemy’s reinforcements with machine guns opened a deadly fire from some heights commanding the position, and Ivanovna was slightly wounded by a bullet in the left arm. She bandaged the wound herself, and, without saying a word, continued her work.

“The position of the regiment was a perilous one. Every moment the strength of the enemy was increasing, and the Russian ranks were decimated by their long exposure to heavy fire. It was necessary to strike a rapid blow, sharp and decisive; but officer after officer was brought in wounded, and at last word came that the commander himself had been killed. Men began to drop back from the front trenches. Indecision in the ranks threatened a panic.

SWORD IN HAND, SHE LED THE ATTACK

“Seeing that the men were wavering, and actuated by indignant horror at the unequal fight, Sister Myra Ivanovna drew a sword from the sheath of a dead officer and ran from the station. She was followed by some of the wounded soldiers, who, with tears in their eyes, implored her to return, and even tried to detain her by holding her arms, but she freed herself.

“Then, her eyes burning with excitement, she went forward. She was not alone, for the soldiers were anxious to defend this frail woman who was leading them back to the trenches, her sword raised in the air.

“The soldiers of the 10th Regiment were wavering in the trenches when, at the critical moment, Sister Myra, surrounded by a group of wounded soldiers, with uplifted sword, rushed toward the trench. At once there was a resounding ‘Hurrah!’ and the rifles of the exhausted soldiers commenced once more their deadly clicking.

“For a moment Sister Myra bent toward the occupants of the trench, and they heard the word ‘Golubebiki!’ (Dear ones). Then, rising to her feet, she ran forward, her sword flashing in the air. All the men followed her. But all the time the enemy machine-guns were steadily spitting forth their leaden pellets of death, and, though losing men with every step, the remnants of the company made a wild dash for the enemy’s trench, which they occupied after furious work with the bayonet. The enemy fled precipitately, but in the recesses of the trench, on the bloody ground trodden by the feet of the eager combatants, lay Sister Myra Ivanovna.

“Rough soldiers bent over her, and now that the excitement of the fray was over they wept as they tried vainly to arrest the flow of blood from a wound in her throat. She was carried out of the fire, but before she had proceeded far another bullet struck her, and she fell dead among the group of soldiers.”

“A true heroine,” writes Mr. Kupchinsky, “a type of the Russian woman who is guiding us to victory.”

This Young Englishwoman Risked Death in a Hideous Form to Save the Lives of Others

The serene courage of self-devotion to the service of humanity does not have the acclaim of the world very often. We have not learned how to measure the values of quiet heroism—the heroism that works in the solitude. We thrill to feats of daring, we are rather complacent to the bravery of scientific experiment, though the risk of life be great.

There is the story of a young Englishwoman, Miss Mary Davies, who, far behind the front with its stimulating excitement and without the inspiration of approving and emulous comrades, calmly, deliberately challenged death in one of its most horrible forms. She had seen the victims of one of the most terrible of war scourges—gaseous gangrene—suffering a loathsome death, and knew how hopelessly the surgeons in the laboratories of the American Ambulance where she served, worked to combat the plague. She realized that if inoculation with the bacilli of the disease could be successfully employed, thousands of wounded men would be saved, and she resolved to make the experiment.

She had seen many examples of the horrible results of this infection and had observed the invariably fatal course of the disease in animals inoculated with the bacilli. She watched and assisted in the experiments in which guinea-pigs were inoculated with gangrene bacilli. She had become convinced of the efficacy of injections with quinine hydrochlorid and had concluded that the experiments on small animals had given all the results of which they were capable and that the time had come for an experiment on a normal human body, and not one from the battlefield, fatigued and wounded and possibly infected by other bacilli.

Well aware that her plan would be prevented if it became known, she determined without a word to any one, to risk her life in an attempt to demonstrate the efficacy of the treatment, which she was convinced would cure the victims of this dread disease.

Her preparations deliberately and completely made, she waited until she was about to leave for a holiday, so that her absence would not disturb the work in the laboratory. She chose the deadliest strain of bacilli in the laboratory, obtained from the latest fatal case, of which two drops of culture sufficed to kill a guinea-pig. Then she inoculated herself in a manner most certain to produce the disease in animals, injecting fifty times the amount used to kill a guinea-pig, making one injection deep into the muscles of her thigh, the other just beneath the skin. Two hours later she quietly came to the laboratory and asked to be treated in the same manner as the animals under experiment.

The surgeons and attendants were greatly alarmed for her. Their experience had taught them the rapidity and horribleness of the effects of gangrene, the most dreaded and the most baffling of the diseases produced by the war. They began treatment of her at once, apprehensive and doubtful of results.

Injections with a quinine solution were made at the points where she had inoculated the deadly bacilli. She was sent to the nearest hospital for observation and further treatment. Quinine injections were given a second time. Symptoms of a slight degree of infection developed within twenty-four hours, but they subsided without operation becoming necessary, and it is more than gratifying to know that recovery was rapid and complete.

Miss Davies has been named a “heroine of science” and her brave and self-sacrificial deed will be properly recognized in medical science; but surely she has won a place in the world’s esteem and memory as a heroine of humanity.

Raoul Lufbery, the Connecticut Boy Who Roamed the World to Die a Hero in France

The Great War brought into bold relief no more romantic figure or daring spirit than that of Major Raoul Lufbery, from Wallingford, Conn. The bare facts of his life have the flavor of incidents taken from the adventure story of a highly imaginative fiction writer. There is no need of invention or added color to make his history a thrilling tale. No presentation of it, however bald and commonplace the narrative, can cheat it of its romance and heroism. That he was one of the chief of the American “Aces” is in itself an epitome of adventure that might easily be elaborated into a volume.

Lufbery was an adventurer in the dashing sense of the word. His blood was filled with the essence of unrest, the energy of motion that would not let him stay fixed to place. When he was seventeen years old Wallingford held him too much cabined and confined. He ran away from home as an explorer of the unknown world. Drawn, perhaps, by the spell of ancestral affinities, he made his way to France and wandered from place to place in the land of legend and romance, working at any job that would provide his keep and supply him with funds for his next excursion.

From France he sailed to Algiers, where he[Pg 192] remained till he had satisfied his interest, when he set off for other scenes—Egypt, the Balkans, Germany, South America and then back to Wallingford for a peep at the home folks. He chuckled appreciatively on learning that his father was off doing a bit of globe-vagabonding on his own account.

He stopped at home for a year, when the wander-bubbles of his blood got into ferment again, and trotting down to New Orleans he was tempted by military possibilities and enlisted in the Regular Army. He was sent to the Philippines, where he displayed such proficiency as rifleman that he won all the regimental prizes for the best marksmanship. That skill in getting bullets into the right spot was one of his great assets when he came to battling in the air over the fields of France.

But even the Army waxed tame for Lufbery, and when his term of enlistment expired he was ready and eager to nose out what the still strange parts of the world had to offer him. He sailed for Japan, sampled the beauties and novelties of that country and then dipped into China. From China he went into India. A characteristic anecdote is told of him as ticket-seller in one of the railway stations of India. It has been said that he sustained himself with any kind of odd job as he roamed the world, and ticket-selling was one of the tedious sort of occupations least to his liking. A pompous type of native one day stood at the wicket.

THE PRICE OF A JOB

With never a wink, Lufbery left his place, approached the offended person, took him by the back of the neck and with neatness and dispatch ejected him from the station. Under English civil law one is promptly summoned for assault, and as the person Lufbery had treated so summarily in accord with his own ideas of fitness chanced to be the richest and most influential merchant of Bombay, the summons cost the ticket-seller his place. Cochin-China was his resort, Saigon his haven, and there, if you please, he viewed with envious admiration the aerial antics of Marc Pourpe, the famous trick flyer.

There came a day when Pourpe lost his mechanic, and his exhibitions came to a stop while he made vain quest among the natives for a substitute. None cared for the office, preferring infinitely the understood foundation of Mother Earth to antics in the air. Quite right—Lufbery applied for the job. Was he a mechanic? No. Did he know anything about an aeroplane motor? Not a thing.

“Why the deuce, then, do you come bothering me?” demanded the irritated Pourpe.

“I don’t know the job now,” Lufbery said, “but I can learn. You only have to show me once. Take me on. You won’t regret it. I’m not afraid of work.”

“His reasoning was full of logic. His method was original. I agreed, and I will say that never have I seen a person more devoted, more intelligent and more useful. He is already better informed about a motor than most of the so-called mechanics of Paris. Moreover, this boy has hung his hat in every country in the world. He is not a man, he is an encyclopedia. He can tell you what the weather is in a given season in Japan, in Egypt, in America, or in France. He observes everything and once he has noticed it, it is engraved on his memory.

“He told me that in all his travels he had never been more than a week without working. He was hospital interne at Cairo, a stevedore in Calcutta, station master in India, a soldier in America. I am glad he is now a mechanic.

“If he likes it, I will take him back with me at the end of my tour and will keep him with me. It is rare to find a good mechanic. His name is Raoul Lafberg, and he spent his childhood in the vicinity of Bourges. If I return with him, you will see what a sympathetic character chance has thrown in my way. So once more in my life everything goes well.”

This shift of name on the sudden from Lufbery to Lafberg was due to a hope that the Frenchified turn would the more favorably determine Pourpe to engage his services, especially as Lufbery spoke French fluently, having learned it in his three years’ stay in France.

JOINS THE FOREIGN LEGION

So it was that Lufbery, as Pourpe’s mechanic, found himself in France when the war storm burst. Pourpe, who had a new type of plane, promptly enlisted as a flyer for his beloved France. As an American Lufbery could not be accepted except as a member of the Foreign Legion, which he hastened to join in the expectation that he could be transferred thence to service with his friend, which was done. But they were not long together at the front. Pourpe was killed the first or second of December, 1914.

Thereupon Lufbery applied for admission to the regular French air service, which was granted and in a short time he was on the front with the Escadrille of bombardment, V. 102.

But it was not until he joined the newly organized Escadrille Lafayette that his career of distinction began. His first victim was brought down, over Etain, July 30, 1916, the second five days later. He was cited by the French Government thus:

“A model of address, of coolness, of courage. He has distinguished himself by numerous long distance bombardments and by the daily combats he has had with enemy aeroplanes. On July 30 he unhesitatingly attacked at close range four enemy machines. He shot one of them down near our own lines. He successfully brought down a second on the 4th of August, 1916.”

His record grew apace. He got his third August 8, his fourth August 12, his fifth October 12, and became an “Ace.” In December he brought down two in one day after a fight that nearly cost him his life as his jacket was torn with bullets. That victory gained him the award of the Legion of Honor. Incidentally, he was the first American to receive from England the British Military Cross which was conferred on him June 12, 1917, when his record had mounted to ten enemy planes.

That tenth plane exploit, by the way, was memorable. Lufbery was alone at an altitude of 18,000 feet when, at a distance, he saw a formation of seven Boche machines. Two of them were two-seater observation machines, the others were the protective escort. He flew into the sun to wait for a chance to attack. Soon one of the seven cut loose from the others, and immediately Lufbery dived for it and began firing, taking the enemy by surprise. After thirty shots or so his gun jammed, but no more shots were necessary. The enemy machine wobbled, shifted and began its downward plunge, and as Lufbery volplaned away he saw the wrecked machine crash into the German trenches.

In an article written for the French publication La Guerre Aérienne, Lufbery describes an encounter he had one day when he was sent scouting over the Vosges, the panoramic beauty of which had so enthralled him he flew in sheer delight of the vision, nevertheless “all the time on guard.”

“It is a little one-seater biplane of the Fokker or Halberstadt type. A glance around assures me that he is alone. I am surprised at this, for it is certainly the first time that a machine of this sort has deliberately placed itself in a position so disadvantageous for fighting. Perhaps it is a trap. One never knows! If it only may prove to be a beginner, lacking experience, who listens to nothing but his courage in his purpose to become one of the great Aces of his country.”

ATTACKS A MASTER OF HIS ART

“However that may be, the wind keeps blowing from the west and carries me farther and farther into the lines. It will not do to allow the Boche to have this advantage too long: I decide to begin the attack without losing another second.

“An about face, followed by a sudden double spin, carries me a little behind my adversary. Profiting by this advantage I dive upon him, but with a remarkable skill he gets out of range of my machine gun. He has anticipated my maneuver and parried the blow before it was struck. I am now aware that I have to do with a master of his art. This first encounter has proved it to me.

“Making my machine tango from right to left, I saw him again below me but much nearer than before by at least forty yards.

“Suddenly he noses up as if to begin a looping, and in this awkward position fires a volley at me which I dodge by a half turn to the right. A second time I attack but with no more success. The wind carries us to the north of Mulhouse, and I begin to ask myself if I am not playing my adversary’s game for him in delaying longer.

“At this moment I chanced to glance in the direction of Belfort, which was about twelve miles within our lines. I perceived in the air little white flakes. Evidence of the presence of a Boche.

“A lucky chance! I had now an excuse for abandoning without loss of honor the match, which I confess I am not at all sorry to leave. Only before leaving my adversary I feel that I must show him that I appreciate that he is a valiant foe and respect him as such. Drawing my left arm out of the fuselage I wave him a sign of adieu. He understands and desires to show courtesy on his part, for he returns my farewell.

“All my attention is turned toward him whom I already consider as my new prey, a big white two-seater of very substantial appearance.

“I draw nearer and nearer to him. Good luck! For the first time since I have been a chaser I am going to have the good fortune to battle within our lines. Also this increases my confidence until it makes me disregard measures of caution, even the science of tactics.

“Another motive impels me to take more than ordinary risks. I am determined that he shall not escape me, and I make up my mind to shoot at him until I have won the victory.

“What joy if I can only lodge a ball in his motor, or in his gasoline tank, which would oblige him to make a landing on French soil! Then I should be able to speak with the conquered and ask them their impressions of the aerial duel in which they had just taken part. But there is an old French proverb which says ‘You must not sell the skin of the bear before you have killed him.’ I had occasion that day to prove the wisdom of this as you shall soon see.”

“POOR COUCOU”

“Enough of dreaming! The moment for action has arrived. Quickly I place myself in the rear and on the tail of my enemy from whom I am separated by a distance of about fifty yards. Then I open fire with my machine gun, and continue firing up to the moment when my plane, his superior in speed, arrives so near the big two-seater that a collision seems inevitable.

“Quickly I pull up, leap over the obstacle, and fall in a glide on the right wing. Increasing my speed I re-establish my equilibrium and prepare to tempt fortune a second time.

“Curse the luck! It is of no use. The motor, the soul of my aeroplane, has received a mortal wound and is about to draw its last breath.

“Turning my head I discover that the ailerons are also seriously injured. My enemy fortunately does not seem to wish to profit by the situation. He continues his flight in the direction of his own lines. Perhaps I[Pg 195] have wounded him very seriously. I hope so. Anyway, his flight leaves me master of the field. But that is a very small consolation. And also of short duration; for I am coming down faster and faster. At last I safely take the ground on the nearest flying field within gliding distance.

“Pilots, observers, mechanics surround me and besiege me with questions. They have seen the fight and want the details. For the moment I do not explain much but that I have encountered a Boche who does not understand joking! Besides, I was in a hurry to examine the wounds of my little aeroplane. It is very ill, poor thing! Three bullets in the motor, the gasoline tank ruined, a strut out of commission, many holes in the hood, finally the left aileron was cut and broken off by the bullets. It had made its last flight! Poor Coucou!”

“To recount all the aerial successes of this American champion is but to repeat the usual details of his sober inspection of his aeroplane and his arms before dawn; his calm scrutiny of the skies for the black crosses of the enemy planes; his adroit maneuvering for the best position from which to surprise the foe; his determined and patient attack; his exactness in machine gun marksmanship; his jubilant return to his comrades with another certain victory on his score.

“During months of his service in France Lufbery suffered from acute seizures of rheumatism which frequently necessitated his return to the hospital. Quiet and unassuming in his conversation, Lufbery won universal respect from the mechanics and affectionate loyalty from his comrades. Every one who met him felt as Marc Pourpe wrote, ‘He is not a man, he is an encyclopedia.’

“When America entered the war and began her preparations for her own Air Service in France, certain of the experienced fighting pilots who had been fighting for France were given charge of the new American escadrilles. Lufbery and William Thaw, both original members of N. 124, the Escadrille Lafayette, were commissioned Majors. To them fell the task of organizing the eager youths who were to assist in clearing from the skies of France the invading Huns.

“Possessed of all the honors that his army could bestow upon a noble Soldier, and wracked with physical pains that were daily increased by inclement weather, an ordinary man would have been satisfied to seek his ease and fill his required duties with the instructions to his pilots. But Major Lufbery instructed by example, not by speech. Not unmindful of his value to his comrades as their mentor and commander and impelled by an ardor that knew no rest, Lufbery continued his active patrolling, exposed himself to every risk.”

THE LAST FLIGHT

“On Sunday, May 19th, the American Ace went aloft over Toul with his fighting squadron. Enemy fighting machines were flying over the American line. The latest designed Fokker aeroplane, a single-seater triplane, appeared deep enough within our territory to be cut off before he could escape. Lufbery darted swiftly to the attack.

“Exact details of any air combat are known only to the combatants. Fighting machines of to-day move with a speed of 140 miles per hour. Approaching each other they lessen the distance between them at the rate of over 400 feet each second. Let some one calculate the fraction of an instant given to the pilot in which he plans his maneuver, alters his position, takes his aim, and presses the trigger!

“Lufbery’s machine fell in flames. He was seen to jump from the blazing mass when 2,000 feet from the ground. A parachute attachment might have saved his life as his body was found to be uninjured from the enemy’s fire. A non-inflammable fuel tank might have permitted him to continue his attack until the Fokker triplane dropped as his nineteenth victory.

“Deprived of these improvements, Lufbery died. With his lamented loss the title of the American Ace of Aces passed to Sergeant Frank L. Baylies, of New Bedford, Massachusetts, who after eight months at the front, had amassed a total of twelve enemy machines. Upon the gallant death of Baylies, Lieutenant Putnam of Brookline, Massachusetts, with ten official victories, headed the American list of Aces.”

Though officially credited with only eighteen[Pg 196] planes brought down in single combat, Lufbery was, in fact, the victor over twice that number of enemy planes. The rule for official recognition requires that a fall must be attested by eye-witnesses in addition to the flyer. Many of Lufbery’s “downs” were inside the enemy lines beyond the observation of any of his comrades, and others fell in such a way that it could not be said positively that they were destroyed.

An Air Squadron Made Famous by American Youth Before America Entered the War

In the first years of the war, when the war was yet a European War, when America as a nation was not ready to act, a group of American boys—roused by the righteousness of the war against Germany, and longing to help France—finally enlisted in the French aviation service. They had come to repay the debt America owed to the people who had sent Lafayette in her time of need. Therefore their section was given the name of Lafayette Escadrille. Americans glory in the homage paid to the daring deeds of Kiffin Rockwell, Victor Chapman, Norman Prince and Jim McConnell, of Thaw, Lufbery, Hall, Masson and Cowdin. Jim McConnell wrote a little book called Flying for France (Doubleday, Page & Company), in which he describes with a vividness born of the gallant affection he felt for his friends and comrades the deeds of that glorious group, and the deaths of three of them. Then he too fell.

McConnell first joined the American ambulance service in the Vosges, and was mentioned several times for conspicuous bravery in saving wounded under fire. It was in the ambulance service that he won the Croix de Guerre.

Gradually, however, this heroism drew on a deeper feeling. The spirit of adventure gave way to the spirit of liberty. France’s struggle took on a new aspect. McConnell gave up the ambulance service and enlisted in the French flying corps.

Immediately he began to feel something more than the mere bond of common danger drawing him to the members of the Escadrille. They were like brothers who had managed to grow up friends as well as kinsmen. They were a picked lot. There was William Thaw, of Pittsburgh, the pioneer of them all; Norman Prince, of Boston; Elliot Cowdin, of New York; Bert Hall, of Texas, and his chum James Bach—the first to fall into German hands. Bach had smashed into a tree in going to the assistance of a companion who had broken down in landing a spy in the German lines. Both he and his French companion had been captured. The last of the original six was Didier Masson. Soon Lufbery came, and Kiffin Rockwell of Asheville, N. C., and Victor Chapman of New York. Rockwell and Chapman had both been wounded in other branches of the service.

It was Rockwell who brought down the Escadrille’s first plane in his initial aerial combat. “He was flying alone, when, over Thann, he came upon a German on reconnaissance. He dived and the German turned toward his own lines, opening fire from a long distance. Rockwell kept straight after him. Then, closing to within thirty yards, he pressed on the release of his machine gun, and saw the enemy gunner fall backward and the pilot crumple up sideways in his seat. The plane flopped downward and crashed to earth just behind the German trenches. Swooping close to the ground Rockwell saw its débris burning away brightly. He had turned the trick with but four shots and only one German bullet had struck his Nieuport.”

The section was soon transferred to more dangerous territory. They were needed at Verdun. Fighting there came thick and fast. McConnell describes the activity of almost every one there. And every one was active.[Pg 197] “Hall brought down a German observation craft. Thaw dropped a Fokker in the morning, and on the afternoon of the same day there was a big combat far behind the German trenches. Thaw was wounded in the arm, and an explosive bullet detonating on Rockwell’s wind-shield tore several gashes in his face. Despite the blood which was blinding him Rockwell managed to reach an aviation field and land. Thaw, whose wound bled profusely, landed in a dazed condition just within our lines. He was too weak to walk, and French soldiers carried him to a field dressing station, whence he was sent to Paris for further treatment. Rockwell’s wounds were less serious and he insisted on flying again almost immediately.”

HOW CHAPMAN FOUGHT

“A week or so later Chapman was wounded. Considering the number of fights he had been in and the courage with which he attacked it was a miracle he had not been hit before. He always fought against odds and far within the enemy’s country. He flew more than any of us, never missing an opportunity to go up, and never coming down until his gasoline was giving out. His machine was a sieve of patched-up bullet holes. His nerve was almost superhuman and his devotion to the cause for which he fought sublime. The day he was wounded he attacked four machines. Swooping down from behind, one of them, a Fokker, riddled Chapman’s plane. One bullet [Pg 198]cut deep into his scalp, but Chapman, a master pilot, escaped from the trap, and fired several shots to show he was still safe. A stability control had been severed by a bullet. Chapman held the broken rod in one hand, managed his machine with the other, and succeeded in landing on a nearby aviation field. His wound was dressed, his machine repaired, and he immediately took the air in pursuit of some more enemies. He would take no rest, and with bandaged head continued to fly and fight.”

Balsley, a newcomer, managed to get wounded in the meantime. He had started out with a party of four that had met a German squadron. Balsley attacked the nearest German, “only to receive an explosive bullet in his thigh. Extra cartridge rollers, dislodged from their case, hit his arms. He was tumbling straight toward the trenches, but by an effort he regained control, righted the plane, and landed without disaster.

“Soldiers carried him to shelter, and later he was taken to a field hospital, where he lingered for days between life and death. Ten fragments of the explosive bullet were removed from his stomach. He bore up bravely and became the favorite of the wounded officers in whose ward he lay. When we flew over to see him they would say: ‘Il est un brave petit gars, l’aviateur américain.’ [He’s a brave little fellow, the American aviator.] On a shelf by his bed, done up in a handkerchief, he kept the pieces of bullet taken out of him, and under them some sheets of paper on which he was trying to write to his mother, back in El Paso.

“Balsley was awarded the Médaille Militaire and the Croix de Guerre, but the honors scared him. He had seen them decorate officers in the ward before they died.

THE FIRST OF THEM TO DIE

“Then came Chapman’s last fight. Before leaving, he had put two bags of oranges in his machine to take to Balsley, who liked to suck them to relieve his terrible thirst, after the day’s flying was over. There was an aerial struggle against odds, far within the German lines, and Chapman, to divert their fire from his comrades, engaged several enemy airmen at once. He sent one tumbling to earth, and had forced the others off when two more swooped down upon him.” The wings of his plane suddenly buckled and the machine dropped like a stone.

Chapman had only started the list of deaths. He was to be followed by perhaps the most beloved of all the section. Kiffin Rockwell had started off with Lufbery one morning. Just before he reached the lines he “spied a German machine under him flying at 11,000 feet.” Rockwell had fought more combats, than the rest of the Escadrille put together, says McConnell. “He had shot down many German machines that had fallen in their lines, but this was the first time he had had an opportunity of bringing down a Boche in our territory.”

Rockwell approached so close to the enemy plane that it seemed there would be a collision. The German aeroplane carried two machine guns. When Rockwell started his dive the enemy opened a rapid fire. “Rockwell plunged through the stream of lead and only when very close to his enemy did he begin shooting. For a moment it looked as if the German was falling, but then the French machine turned rapidly nose down, the wings of one side broke off and fluttered in the wake of the airplane, which hurtled earthward in a rapid drop. It crashed into the ground in a small field—a field of flowers—a few hundred yards back of the trenches. It was not more than two and a half miles from the spot where Rockwell, in the month of May, brought down his first enemy machine. The Germans immediately opened up on the wreck with artillery fire. In spite of the bursting shrapnel, gunners from a nearby battery rushed out and recovered poor Rockwell’s broken body.”

“Lufbery engaged a German craft but before he could get to close range two Fokkers swooped down from behind and filled his aeroplane full of holes. Exhausting his ammunition, he landed at Fontaine, an aviation field near the lines. There he learned of Rockwell’s death and was told that two other French machines had been brought down within the hour. He ordered his gasoline tank filled, procured a full band of cartridges and soared up into the air to avenge his comrade. He sped up and down the lines, and made a wide détour to Habsheim, where the Germans [Pg 199]have an aviation field, but all to no avail. Not a Boche was in the air.”

No greater blow could have befallen the Escadrille than Rockwell’s death. “The bravest and best of us all is no more,” said the French Captain. “Kiffin was the soul of the Escadrille,” writes Jim McConnell. “He was loved and looked up to by not only every man in our flying corps, but by every one who knew him. Kiffin was imbued with the spirit of the cause for which he fought and gave his heart and soul to the performance of his duty. He said: ‘I pay my part for Lafayette and Rochambeau,’ and he gave the fullest measure. The old flame of chivalry burned brightly in this boy’s fine and sensitive being. With his death France lost one of her most valuable pilots. When he was over the lines the Germans did not pass—and he was over them most of the time.”

“Rockwell had been given the Médaille Militaire and the Croix de Guerre, on the ribbon of which he wore four palms, representing the four magnificent citations he had received in the order of the army.”

Kiffin was given a funeral worthy of a general. “His brother, Paul, who had fought in the Legion with him, and who had been rendered unfit for service by a wound, was granted permission to attend the obsequies. Pilots from all nearby camps flew over to render homage to Rockwell’s remains. Every Frenchman in the aviation at Luxeuil marched behind the bier. The British pilots, followed by a detachment of five hundred of their men, were in line, and a battalion of French troops brought up the rear. As the slow moving procession of blue and khaki-clad men passed from the church to the graveyard, airplanes circled at a feeble height above and showered down myriads of flowers.”

The fates seemed to be envious of the American section in France. Rockwell had fallen September 23. On the 15th of October Norman Prince died. “It was hard to realize that poor old Norman had gone, but I do not think he minded going,” writes McConnell. “He wanted to do his part before being killed, and he had more than done it.”

JIM’S TURN CAME

Thus did Jim McConnell—honest, tender, courageous Jim, Irish Jim—glory in the glory [Pg 201]of his friends and mourn their loss. His good humor and native wit remained to the last, but the deaths of those so dear to him were deepening his character. There are touches of tense seriousness in the book—a tragic note at times. It was hard to see those brave fellows go one by one, and so steadily. And you never could tell which of your remaining friends was to go next. Then of a sudden came Jim’s turn. There are a few letters which describe Jim’s death as tenderly as Jim wrote about Chapman and Rockwell and Prince. The affection, loyalty, and undying gallantry of the group is quite evident. In one of these letters, dated March 21, 1917, to Paul Rockwell, Edmond Genet tells of the last flight:

“On Monday morning, Mac, Parsons, and myself went out at nine o’clock on the third patrol of the Escadrille. We had orders to protect observation machines along the new lines around the region of Ham. Mac was leader, I came second and Parsons followed me. Before we had gone very far Parsons was forced to go back on account of motor trouble.

“Mac and I kept on, and up to ten o’clock were circling around the region of Ham, watching out for the heavier machines doing reconnoitering work below us. We went higher than a thousand meters. About ten, for some reason or other of his own, Mac suddenly headed into the German lines toward Saint Quentin—perhaps for observation purposes—and I naturally followed close to his rear and above him. At any rate we had gotten north of Ham and quite inside the hostile lines, when I saw two Boche machines crossing toward us from the region of Saint Quentin at an altitude higher than ours—we were then about 1,600 meters up. I supposed Mac saw them too. One Boche was far ahead of the other, and was in position to dive at any moment on Mac. I saw the direction Mac was taking, and pulled back climbing up, in order to gain an advantageous height over the nearest Boche. It was cloudy and misty and I had to keep my eyes on him all the time, so naturally I lost track of Mac.”

The letter goes on to tell how the writer got back—to find Mac had not returned.

“The one hope that we have is that some news of Mac will be brought by civilians who might have witnessed his flight over the lines north of Ham. We likewise hope that Mac was merely forced to land inside the enemy lines on account of a badly damaged machine, or a bad wound, and is well, but a prisoner. I wish, Paul, that I had been able to help Mac during his combat. The mists were thick, and consequently seeing any distance was difficult. I would have gone out that afternoon to look for him, but my machine was so damaged it took until yesterday afternoon to be repaired. Lieutenant de Laage and Lufbery did go out with their Spads, around the region north of Ham, toward Saint Quentin, but saw nothing of a Nieuport grounded or anything else to give news of what had occurred.”

“The evening before last definite news was brought to us that a badly smashed Nieuport had been found by French troops. Beside it was the body of a sergeant-pilot which had been there at least three days and had been stripped of all identification papers, flying[Pg 202] clothes and even the boots. They got the number of the machine, which proved without further question that it was poor Mac.

“Mac has been buried right there beside the road, and we will see that the grave is decently marked with a cross. The Captain brought back a square piece of canvas cut from one of the wings, and we are going to get a good picture we have of Mac enlarged and placed on this with a frame. I suppose that Thaw or Johnson will attend to his belongings which he had asked to be sent to you. In the letter which he had left in case of his death he concludes with the following words: ‘Good luck to the rest of you. Vive la France!’

“All honor to him, Paul. The world, as well as France, will look up to him just as it is looking up to your fine brother and the rest who have given their lives so freely and gladly for this big cause.

“The Captain has already put in a proposal for a citation for Mac, and also one for me. Mac surely deserved it, and lots more, too.”

The Place in Fame to Which the French Assign Their Miracle “Ace”

In that charming French style of which he is a known master, Henry Bordeaux tells the story of a frail little boy, delicate as a girl and having the general appearance of one, with his long curls, his too pretty face, his pale complexion, his gentle manners. Because he was so frail of body and so uncertain of health he was closely looked after by the women of the household, which means, among other things, that he was quite thoroughly spoiled. The child looked like a little princess, as though adapted more to a future of effeminate surroundings, not like a boy in whose infant breast waited a great spirit.

One day, when the child was about six years old, it suddenly occurred to the father that they were taking a wrong course with the boy. After reflection he took the boy on his knee and said to him:

“After all, it is better to be too soon than too late. Get your hat. I’ll take you.”

“I wish to do as the men do,” the boy answered. And the beautiful curls were shorn.

There were tears when the mother folded her transformed darling to her breast, but the child stiffening proudly declared: “Je suis un homme!”

Bordeaux says here: “Il sera un homme, mais il restera longtemps un gamin aussi. Longtemps? Presque jusqu’à la fin—à ses heurs, jusqu’à la fin.”

It was Georges Guynemer, who not so very long after flamed out a boy hero of France, doing deeds that struck the world with wonderment, and while the world marveled vanished mysteriously, leaving no trace behind.

Small and feminine, educated chiefly by governesses and his sisters, later a day student at the Lyceum, afterwards for a time at Stanislas, he was not the stuff for a soldier, yet soldier he wished to be when France set out to repel the German horde. He was twenty years old then. He hastened to his father.

But it was to no avail. He was not able[Pg 203] to carry the equipment and endure the fatigue of a private, and the effects of a childhood’s illness made it impossible for him to serve in the cavalry. He was rejected—laughed at by some, be it said.

He made a second attempt to enlist with no better result. Says M. Bordeaux: “He returned with his father to Biaritz, pale, silent, mournful, in such a state of rage and bitterness that his face was distorted.” He wrote to his old preceptor at Stanislas: “If I have to lie at the bottom of an auto-camion I wish to go to the front; and I will go. I mean to serve, it doesn’t matter where nor how, it doesn’t matter in what branch, but go to the front, serve I will.”

That sort of spirit is not to be denied. Fate and circumstances make way for it.

He met the pilot of an airplane one day and in conversation with him asked: “How can one get into the air service?”

A SMALL BEGINNING

His parents, or rather his father, consenting, he was on his way to Pau next morning. He rushed to Captain Bernard-Thierry with his plea. The Captain objected. Georges pleaded, passionately, tearfully, begging even as a child for a desired object. The troubled captain made the only practicable concession—he would receive the youth as a mechanician student. The heavens opened. “That’s the thing! That’s the thing! I know automobiles.” And so it began, with hard work to the like of which he had never been accustomed, his endurance of which was problematical. But January 26, 1915, he was named as pilot student; March 10, 1915, he made his veritable first flight. In a letter to his father about this time he said: “I believe I am not making a reputation for prudence, but I hope this will come. I shall know soon.”

That reputation never came, on the contrary it was said of him: “Returning almost daily from his chases with his aeroplane and often his clothing riddled with bullets, hurling himself with absolute abandon against three, ten, fifteen or twenty enemy machines in formation, among which he usually succeeded in bringing down one or more; exulting in the number of wounds which his faithful planes brought home as if to bear witness to his charmed life, and encircling them with red paint to make them more conspicuous; on two occasions shooting down an enemy plane with a single bullet; on May 25, 1917, bringing down four enemy aeroplanes in one day—these extraordinary exploits coupled with the very extraordinary energy of this slim boy soon placed him upon a pedestal which raised him high above his comrades; and by reason of his many miraculous escapes from certain death, eventually surrounded him with a halo of fame unknown to the French populace since the day of Jeanne d’Arc.

“Conqueror in fifty-three aerial combats wherein the result was officially established by the verification of three or more eye-witnesses, Guynemer brought down as many more German aeroplanes quite as effectively if less officially. His comrades in the escadrille knew this and respected their chief accordingly.

“Possessed of every decoration that a grateful nation could officially bestow upon him, conscious of a position in the public esteem that, tinctured as it was with the legendary, illumined him with more glory and worship than was accorded even to a Joffre or a Foch, Georges Guynemer fulfilled the expectations of his fellow countrymen, when on September 11, 1917, he disappeared from the eyes of the world while in the full exercise of his duty. The heavens swallowed him up, and to this day no reliable clue to his disappearance has been discovered. Small wonder then that the people of France in contemplation of this last exploit of their adored hero place his memory with one acclaim alongside the niche so long occupied by the heroic Jeanne d’Arc!”

MIRACULOUS ESCAPES

His fellows and the soldiers in general were devoted to him; and that their devotion was something profounder than lip-service one incident of his career, one of his narrow escapes, will attest. It was in September, 1916. He was far within the enemy lines combating seven machines when a shot penetrated the radiator of his engine and the motor stopped. He was then quite fifteen miles distant from his own lines and about twelve thousand feet in the air. There was nothing for it but to point his machine for home, with the least practicable slant, and trust to the glide sustaining him until he could reach home lines. The turn made, he gave all his attention to his pursuers, who, not suspecting his plight and having a lively respect for the generalship of the redoubtable “Ace,” seemed to think discretion the better part of valor, did not continue the chase but dived for their own quarters. The machine on its glide fell lower and lower as he approached the trenches and finally the German gunners recognized [Pg 205]the craft as that of the dreaded young champion and the guns were leveled at him, and he was gliding through a veritable shower of bursting shrapnel. His machine was riddled and it was a grave question if it could reach the French lines. It crossed the German trenches a scant fifty feet above the heads of the enemy who stood up in the trenches in their eagerness to send a shot into the tattered plane that would bring it down.

The French soldiers, who had watched the coming of the Cigogne through the rain of bullets and realized the helplessness of their idol, were recklessly and excitedly hanging over their trenches raging that they were powerless to help. Almost simultaneously with Guynemer’s consciousness of his inability to reach his lines the poilus perceived the fact and with yells they leaped to the rescue, scrambling from their trenches in a wild charge against the Huns.

The aeroplane fell into a shell hole some forty yards short of the French lines and was smashed to pieces, but the charmed pilot was thrown free of the wreck and was absolutely without injury when his rescuing comrades picked him up and surrounding him carried him hurriedly to their protecting trenches. He is credited with saying, when they marveled at his escape, “I was born on Christmas Eve. They cannot hurt me.”

M. Bordeaux, who is a loving biographer, devotes over three hundred pages to the events and deeds of the amazing hero, and there is not with it all an event recorded that is not worthy the record. Among them is an instance of the irony of fate that occasionally turns intended service into serious hurt. It was in September, 1916, in the Somme battle. Guynemer had shot down two Boche machines and was after a third at an altitude of 10,000 feet when a foolishly fired French shell meant for the enemy machine caught him in full flight, breaking a wing and taking off part of his radiator. Of course the machine began falling to the earth. By energetic efforts with the controls and the swing of his body Guynemer succeeded in checking the fall and establishing a glide, but he could not lessen the velocity with which he was approaching the ground. The catastrophe was witnessed by the troops and when the Spad crashed head first they ran to take up the remains of the doomed pilot. But when they reached the spot there stood Guynemer unharmed regarding mournfully the wreck of his machine. An idea of the force of the impact may be had from the fact that the nose of the machine was driven so deep that it could not be budged.

The jubilant soldiers lifted Guynemer to their shoulders and bore him to the General’s quarters. The General embraced him and ordered the troops to form for review. Then the adored aviator was led by the General down the lines. One can imagine the enthusiasm, the emotions of the French.

WON WITHOUT ARMS

Guynemer kept a diary of all his doings day by day, and his biographer makes free use of it. His method of entry was laconic. He never stressed a point. Take as an example of the style and as a character sketch of the man his entry of January 26, 1917, when he did that incredible thing, brought down and captured a two-seater enemy machine when he himself was without offensive arms. He went up in a borrowed machine of which he was sufficiently contemptuous. The day before he had not gone up. His only diary entry for that day was “Je regarde voler les autres et ronge.”

“Bucquet lends me his taxi. Gun sights nothing, simply an emptiness. What a layout! Line of aim worse than pitiful.

“12 o’clock saw a Boche at 12,000 feet. Up went the lift. Arrived in the sun. In tacking about was caught in nasty tail spin. Descending, I see the Boche 400 yards behind, firing at me. Recovering I fire ten shots. Gun jams completely. But the Boche seemed to feel some emotion and dived away full south with his motor wide open. Let’s follow him!

“But I do not get too close to him, for fear he will see that I can’t shoot. Altimeter drops to 5,000 feet above Estrées-Saint-Denis. I maneuver my Boche as nicely as I can, and suddenly he redresses and sets off towards Rheims.

“I essay a bluff. I mount to 2,000 feet over him and drop on to him like a stone. Made an impression on him but was beginning[Pg 206] to believe it did not take when he suddenly began to descend. I put myself 10 yards behind him; but every time I showed my nose around the edge of his tail the gunner took aim at me.

“We take the road towards Compiègne—3,000 feet—2,000 feet again I show my nose, and this time the gunner stands up, takes his hands from his machine gun and motions to me that he surrenders. All Right!

“I see underneath his machine the four bombs in their resting place. 1,500 feet. The Boche slows down his windmill. 600 feet. 300 feet. I swerve over him while he lands. I make a round or two at 300 feet and see that I am over an airdrome. But not having any gun or cartridges I cannot prevent them from setting fire to their taxi, a 200 H. P. Albatross, magnificent.

“When I see they are surrounded I come down and show the two Boches my disabled machine gun. Some headpiece!

“They had fired 200 shots at me. My ten bullets that I fired before I jammed had struck their altimeter and the revolution counter, hence their emotion! The pilot told me that my aeroplane I shot down day before yesterday at Goyancourt had gunner killed and pilot wounded in the knee. Hope this unique confirmation will be accepted by authorities. It will make my 30th.”

THE FLIGHT INTO THE UNKNOWN

But after he had brought down his fiftieth, for some unaccountable reason a change came over Guynemer. He became nervous and irritable. He lost his old vivacity, nerve, dash, and with them his instincts of the air seemed to desert him. Friends urged him to rest, to give over fighting and direct his genius to teaching others to fly. But he answered: “They would say I would fight no more because France has no more decorations to give me”; and he had a jealous pride to work harder than ever, do even more valiant deeds. And he did work harder. He did take greater risks. He engaged in combats but was unable to win. Luck had turned and his chums, his comrades, knew him to be a sick man in no condition to fly. They ’phoned to their commanding officer in Paris begging him to come and take Guynemer away for a recuperative rest. Captain Brocard responded promptly. He arrived at the Dunkerque aerodrome at nine o’clock the next morning. But Guynemer had ordered his machine and taken flight half an hour before, accompanied, in another machine, by Lieut. Bozon-Verduras.

It was Sept. 11, 1918. It was Guynemer’s last flight. All that is known of it Bozon-Verduras tells. Somewhat northeast of Ypres, at an altitude of 12,000 feet, a two-seater enemy machine was discovered. Directing Lieut. Bozon-Verduras to take a position above to guard against rescue, Guynemer rushed to the attack. While on guard the Lieutenant detected a distant enemy formation and drove forward to intercept its course. But without seeing him the formation changed its course and the Lieutenant returned to position. He did not, however, see Guynemer’s machine, nor did several hours of extended search lead to any trace above or below of the vanished aviator. His fuel exhausted, the Lieutenant returned to the aerodrome hoping Guynemer might be there. But he was not. All day they waited for his return. He never returned. “Undoubtedly,” said some one of the men, “he has been taken prisoner.”

“Guynemer a prisoner! He had said one day, laughingly, ‘The Boche will never have me alive’—but his laugh was terrible. No one believed Guynemer to be a prisoner. What then?”

Nothing more is known. The Germans made contradictory and unreliable reports about his death. The simple minded among the French believe their hero an immortal, taken up into his native heaven. The lofty minded French name him “Héros légendaire, tombé en plein ciel de gloire, après trois ans de lutte ardente,” and this they have inscribed on a marble plaque in the crypt of the Panthéon, that temple which the French hold sacred as the “Sepulcher of Great Men.”

A Distinguished Service on the Battle Front for Which No Honors Provision Has Been Made

There is a kind of heroism that never gets tagged. Many would not think it heroism. But when you come to analyze heroism into its elemental parts you find that it is a spiritual energy with myriad forms of expression, though these forms always have the character of self-dedication to an altruistic service. By that definition Capt. E. W. Zinn takes place in the ranks of war heroes; but if you have not seen what The Stars and Stripes—the official newspaper of the A. E. F., published in France—has said about him you probably never have heard of Capt. Zinn and his self-appointed mission. It is well to know about him; so here is the story as it appeared in the official organ:

“It was Captain Zinn, a veteran of the French Foreign Legion and the Lafayette Escadrille, who, when eager young American aviators, fresh from their training-camps, reported for duty where the fighting was, assigned them to squadrons and each to a particular airplane. Thus it was that he came to know them all. He sent them to their stations. He knew what ships they would pilot in combat in the air, on bombing expeditions, on reconnaissances over the lines.

“And now he seeks for those he sent out and who never returned. He asked that he might do it. If you talk to Captain Zinn about it, you know why he made the request. You know how he feels about that which he is doing. There is no mawkish sentiment about Captain Zinn.

“But deep down within him Captain Zinn feels that he and no other should go out on the mission that now engages him. He has an interest that is intimate and personal.

“Already, Captain Zinn’s quest has led him over the greater part of northern France and into Belgium and Germany. Through the torn fields and woods in the Verdun, Château-Thierry, St. Mihiel, and Meuse sectors he has gone. He has tramped through the Argonne to Sedan and sought in the mountains that encircle Metz and hide the valley of the Moselle. Wherever there was fighting in which the American Air Service participated, there has gone, or will go, Zinn.

“Out of 150 missing American aviators, Captain Zinn already has definitely located and identified the spots where seventy fell and were buried. It has required many days of painstaking search and inquiry to attain this result.

“Captain Zinn has found that in a great many cases American fliers were buried either by the Germans or by civilians with no mark of identification left on them.

THE UNIDENTIFIED

“Many times he has come upon a grave with a rude cross on which was scrawled: ‘Unidentified American Aviator’ or ‘Two Unidentified American Aviators.’ He has had to obtain positive identification by careful examination of air-service records, questioning of peasants and civilians who saw American machines brought down and deductions based on the information he gathered. In some instances it has been necessary to open graves to make sure.

“To start out with, Captain Zinn has the records of squadrons, which show, for instance, on what date a missing pilot went out, what his mission was, over what country he naturally would go, and what kind of machine he had. Perhaps an attack by an overwhelming force or an accident or other circumstances forced the pilot off the course marked out for him. When he failed to return, only speculation as to where he fell could be indulged in. Unless the Germans notified his squadron of his death and the location of his grave, he became one of the men for whom Captain Zinn now seeks.

“There was the case of young Kenyon Roper, of the 91st Aero Squadron. By a process of elimination of facts gathered, it was fairly definitely established that Roper had come down in the night between the lines. Captain Zinn questions scores of peasant folk. But the search appeared to be hopeless. And then Captain Zinn heard that a small boy had a handkerchief that the dead flier had possessed. He found the boy and the handkerchief. And written in indelible ink on the little piece of linen was the name ‘Kenyon Roper.’ It was easy then to learn from the boy where the grave was and to be sure that Kenyon Roper lay sleeping there.”

A LAST AUTOGRAPH

“Then there was the case of Lester Harter, of the 11th Squadron. He went out and his machine caught fire. Harter jumped, just as Major Lufbery did and as other aviators have done, and fell many thousand feet to his death. When awe-stricken peasants ran from the fields to his crushed body they found in his hand a scrap of paper, and on it was written in hurried, jerky letters, ‘Lester Harter.’

“Fearing lost identity among the dead, Lester Harter must have written his name on that piece of paper before he jumped from his machine.

“Then there were Kinne and McElroy, of the 99th Aero Squadron. Only a piece of the tail of their machine was found. Their plane came down in flames between Cunel and Nantillois. Both jumped. One day their squadron commander joined in the search for their bodies. He hunted for hours in a thick wood. And he gave up. He was standing on the edge of a covered shell-hole, discouraged. Some impulse caused him to stir the earth in the shell-hole with his foot. And there he found the body of young McElroy. Near by they later found Kinne.

“From the information he gathers, Captain Zinn writes personal letters to the relatives of the dead aviators, telling in simple words how and where they went to their deaths. His letters usually give the first true account of the manner in which the fighters of the air met their ends. Sometimes those letters destroy cherished hopes that the aviators reported as ‘missing’ by the War Department might some time, somehow, turn up. But it is better so, says Captain Zinn.”

The Guns of Both Armies Suspend Fire as Captains Ball and Immelman Fight in Air

It was often said in the early months of the war that the air combats revived the spirit of ancient chivalry. It was true for a time, but German treachery and ruthlessness soon changed the character of the upper warfare. When the raider and the dastard entered, gallantry necessarily gave way to grim and merciless antagonism.

There were many, though, on both sides who felt that no glory came to aviation from methods of frightfulness and reprisals for such frightfulness and to the last there were instances of clean, brave fights. One of the last duels on the knightly lines of conduct was that in which Captain Immelman, “The Falcon” of the German army, met Captain Ball, one of the most brilliant airmen of the British Royal Flying Corps. Immelman had a record of some fifty-one British airplanes downed. Captain Ball wanted to wipe out this record, and the daring German at the same time; so one day he flew over the German lines and dropped the following note:

“Captain Immelman:

I challenge you to a man-to-man fight to take place this afternoon at two o’clock. I will meet you over the German lines. Have your anti-aircraft guns withhold their fire, while we decide which is the better man. The British guns will be silent.

“Ball.”

Ball was by that time quite renowned. The Germans were aware of his official record. He had taken part in twenty-six combats, had destroyed eleven hostile machines, driven two out of control, and forced several others to land.

In these combats Captain Ball had gone up alone. On one occasion he had fought six hostile machines, twice he had fought five machines, and once four. When leading two other British aeroplanes he had attacked an enemy formation of eight. On each of these occasions he had brought down at least one enemy.

The Germans knew all that, but evidently Ball had picked an opponent worthy of him not only in skill but in courage and chivalry, for that day the answer to the note was dropped from a German machine:

“Captain Ball:

Your challenge is accepted. The guns will not interfere. I will meet you promptly at two.

“Immelman.”

CHEERS FROM OPPOSING TRENCHES

Far and wide along the trenches the word was spread. Firing stopped as though a flag of truce had been hoisted. Germans and English left covers and sought positions of vantage from which to watch the battle royal. At the appointed time both flyers rose promptly and made their way over “No Man’s Land.”

“There were wild cheers for Ball. The Germans yelled just as vigorously for Immelman.

“The cheers from the trenches continued; the Germans’ increased in volume; ours changed into cries of alarm.”

Immelman was known to have a method of attack peculiar to himself. Instead of approaching his adversary from the side, he maneuvered to get squarely behind him. His study was to hold the nose of his machine almost on the tail of the aircraft he was pursuing. This gave him, Abbot points out, what used to be called in the Navy a raking position, for his shots would rake the whole body of the enemy airplane from tail to nose with a fair chance of hitting either the fuel tank, the engine, or the pilot. Failing to secure the position he coveted, this daring German would surrender it with apparent unconcern to the enemy, who usually fell into a trap. For just as the foeman’s machine came up to the tail of Immelman’s craft the latter would suddenly turn his nose straight to earth, drop like a stone, execute a backward loop and come up behind his surprised adversary, who thus found the tables suddenly turned....”

“Ball,” continues the eye-witness, “thousands of feet above us and only a speck in the sky, was doing the craziest things imaginable. He was below Immelman and was apparently making no effort to get above him and thus gaining the advantage of position. Rather he was swinging around, this way and that, attempting, it seemed, to postpone the inevitable.

“We saw the German’s machine dip over preparatory to starting the nose-dive.

“‘He’s gone now,’ sobbed a young soldier at my side, for he knew Immelman’s gun would start its raking fire once it was being driven straight down.

“Then in a fraction of a second the tables were turned. Before Immelman’s plane could get into firing position, Ball drove his machine into a loop, getting above his adversary and cutting loose with his gun and smashing Immelman by a hail of bullets as he swept by.

A WREATH FOR HIS VICTIM

“Immelman’s airplane burst into flames and dropped. Ball from above followed for a few hundred feet and then straightened out and raced for home. He settled down, rose again, hurried back, and released a huge wreath of flowers, almost directly over the spot where Immelman’s charred body was being lifted from a tangled mass of metal.

Shortly before his death Ball wrote to a friend: “You will be pleased to hear that I have ten more Huns, and that my total is now 40—two in front of my French rival. Oh, I’m having a topping time! To-day or to-morrow I’m being presented to Sir Douglas Haig. Am very pleased. I just want to get a few more if I can.”

Ball’s wish was gratified. He got more than a few more and then—died as he had so often lived—fighting against great odds, for when last seen, on the evening of May 7, 1917, he was high above the enemy’s lines engaging three German machines at once.

What slender hope had been left for him was shattered by the War Office intimation that Ball had been killed. The brave young officer lost his life at a village 5½ miles east of La Bassée.

The Brief but Greatly Achieving Career of Lieut. Frank Luke, Jr.—His Mysterious End

Innumerable are the instances, never to be reckoned, of the sudden meteoric flame of splendid daring—the sudden flash of the courageous soul in achievement, and the equally sudden extinction—that a thousand attested circumstances assure us characterized the terrible passing of the Great War. Happily for the world, always the better for new evidence that “divinity still lives in the hearts of men,” very many of those deeds of devoted heroism have been written into history for the inspiration of high-minded youth.

There was no experience more aptly described as meteoric than that of Frank Luke, Jr., who joined the 27th Aero Squadron near Château-Thierry late in July, 1918, did brilliant service in that connection, and before the end of September had utterly disappeared from the knowledge of men—one of the missing never definitely accounted for.

Frank was a Phoenix, Arizona, boy, barely twenty when he entered the service. After a period of training in Texas he was sent to France and had further training at Issoudun and was then sent to join the squadron near Château-Thierry. He was an enthusiast for flying, never getting enough of it. It was like second nature to him, and he adhered to no rules but his own, apparently indifferent to safety regulations when in the air, and so impatient of restrictions that he almost invariably got lost from his flight when it went out in formation. This gave rise among his fellows to the belief that he was afraid to follow, his getting lost being the deliberate result of “funk.” In course of time, however, they came to understand that Frank Luke held no acquaintance with fear. He simply [Pg 213]had a method—method and initiative—and put his abilities to their most effective use. It was so good a method, so wisely reasoned and so admirably executed that in the space of seventeen days he shot down eighteen enemy balloons and planes.

Lieut. Col. Harold E. Hartney, Chief of Gunnery in the Air Service, at that time Commander of the Squadron to which Luke belonged, gave an account of the young aviator’s first exploit. August 6, 1918, the First Pursuit Group, which included the 27th Squadron, was operating on the Château-Thierry sector. The work was seriously interfered with by heavy barrages of pursuit planes maintained by the enemy to prevent Allied reconnaissance over the territory being evacuated. Col. Hartney says:

HIS FIRST EXPLOIT

“Lieut. Luke believed that if he could get across the opposing lines unobserved and far enough, he would be able to take the enemy formations unaware and swoop down upon the unsuspecting rear man, shoot him down and get away in safety. Accordingly one day he went off on his own at great altitude and crossed over into enemy territory. Far below him he spied an enemy formation of six machines dropping down to land on their own aerodrome. Perfectly aware of the odds against him, he swooped from 15,000 feet to 3,000 feet in one long dive, speeding at approximately 200 miles an hour, closed in on the rear man, and from a distance of no more than twenty yards sent him crashing down.

“The enemy formation had been taken completely by surprise. Before they could realize what had happened or engage Luke in combat the latter dropped to an elevation of less than 400 feet, and, zigzagging, made his way home, dodging anti-aircraft fire and machine-gun nests until he crossed the lines. By then he was completely out of gasoline and was compelled to make a forced landing near the front line. He had seen the enemy machine crash to earth, but was unable to give the location, and therefore he could not get from eye-witnesses on the ground the confirmation required to make the victory official.”

That feat indicated the man. It was very soon apparent that on the occasions when he was “lost” he was off on adventures of his own, planning actions and studying the means to execute them,—qualifying himself for what he conceived to be his most valuable and effective service. He was a veritable hunter.

The morning set for the opening of the St. Mihiel offensive, Sept. 12, 1918, the clouds hung low and the weather was such that ordinarily it would have been regarded as altogether unfit for flying. But Luke was not to be deterred by it. He was off at dawn in quest of enemy planes or balloons and after many vain explorations he finally discovered a German balloon at the extreme right of the American sector, but operated against a portion of the line allotted to other flyers. He returned to his aerodrome, and on reporting the balloon learned that it had been doing great damage by an enfilading fire, but that it had been attacked repeatedly without success both by American and French aviators. Luke offered to destroy the balloon and set off with Lieut. Fritz Wehner, his flying partner. The statement of eye-witnesses from the ground was that Luke dived suddenly out of the clouds taking the balloon wholly by surprise, but the balloon-gun which he was handling for the first time jammed when he attempted to discharge it. He rose into the clouds, got the gun free, immediately dived again and fired the heavy incendiary bullet that sent the balloon down in flames.

DOWNED THREE BALLOONS IN ONE DAY

Two days later he sent another balloon flaming down in somewhat more exciting circumstances. While he was speeding with an escort of other pilots, to attack three enemy balloons operating at an unusually low altitude, his escort became engaged with a formation of Fokkers. This would have made it seem to many pilots unwise to proceed with the attack; but Luke took advantage of the fight above to dive down and begin the assault on one of the balloons which, after several attempts, he succeeded in shooting down, though machine bullets and anti-aircraft shells and flaming onions were showered about him. As the balloon fell burning, Luke flew down to close range and turned loose his machine gun on the Huns on the ground with the desired result of many casualties.[Pg 214] When he got back home he found that his machine was so full of bullet holes that a very few more taps would have weakened it enough to bring it down in collapse. But within five minutes he was in another machine and begging leave to go on a further quest.

At 5 o’clock that afternoon he sent down the second balloon in flames. Later he discovered attempts being made to send up another balloon north of Verdun; he hastened back to his squadron and asked to be ordered out at dusk to surprise and destroy the big bag.

He left with instructions not to descend on the balloon until 7.50 (that being for the benefit of his protective escort who would follow him down a few moments later). Precisely at 7.50 the watchers on the aerodrome saw the balloon flare in the darkness and fall to the ground.

And so the story runs; each new adventure a companion thriller to the others, every machine in which he flew being more or less riddled with bullets, and the miracle is that the daring youth passed so many hazards unscathed. Col. Hartney is authority for the statement that balloon strafing is in reality “the most dangerous exploit any man in any branch of the service can undertake.”

Frank Luke in seventeen days accounted for eighteen enemy balloons and planes. He was the first American flyer to win the Congressional Medal of Honor.

HIS END A MYSTERY

But there is an end to successful adventures as to other things, and the brilliant career of this Arizona lad came to abrupt conclusion, leaving the shadow of mystery as to just how the hero passed on. Here is the story of the last exploit as Col. Hartley tells it:

“His next official victory was on Sept. 28, when he shot down a German Hanoveraner airplane which was being escorted by a single-seater Fokker.

“That evening he did not return to his own aerodrome, but remained all night with the French squadron and went out the next day for the express purpose of destroying three balloons. The wonderful story of his exciting fight against hopeless odds and of his glorious death need not be dwelt upon. For his work on Sept. 29 he was awarded the Medal of Honor.

“Briefly, what happened was that he flew over an American aerodrome and dropped a weighted message. The message asked that a lookout be kept for three drachens over on the German side. He was next seen to go over in that direction at a very high altitude, and when very nearly over the drachens was attacked by ten enemy machines. He engaged all of them single-handed and crashed two of the ten. Then he dropped—out of control, as it seemed, but most likely only pretending to be so. When he reached the level of the balloons he shot them down one after another in flames—all three of them. The anti-aircraft guns were very busy about the second balloon. After that he disappeared.”

Beyond this all that is known is more or less speculative. Jan. 3, 1919, the Graves Registration officer of Neufchateau reported to the Chief of the A. E. F. Air Service on the subject of the grave of an unknown American aviator, killed Sept. 29, 1918, in the village of Murvaux (Meuse), and asked for possible information to identify the body. “Reported as having light hair, young, of medium height and rugged physique. Reported by the inhabitants that previous to being killed this man brought down three German balloons, two German planes and dropped hand bombs, killed eleven German soldiers and wounded a number of others. He was wounded himself in the shoulder and evidently had to make a forced landing, and upon landing opened fire with his automatic and fought until he was killed. It is also reported that the Germans took his shoes, leggings and money, leaving his grave unmarked.”

Supporting the report is an affidavit (Jan. 15, 1919) signed by twelve inhabitants of the village that gives the foregoing facts in detail and adds this:

“Certify equally to have seen the German Commandant of the village refuse to have straw placed on the cart carrying the dead aviator to the village cemetery. This same officer drove away some women bringing a sheet to serve as a shroud for the hero, and said, kicking the body, ‘Get that out of my way as quick as possible.’”

The Formidable Odds Against Which a Young English Pilot Daringly Battled, Only to Fall 14,000 Feet Into the Sea

German air-raids on London which were entirely without military justification, being a part of the scheme of frightfulness, resulted in the death of relatively few persons; but they roused British resentment to a pitch that had a tremendous influence upon the fighting spirit of the soldiers at the front and the aviators summoned to the defense of London.

In one of the later raids, Lieutenant I. E. R. Young, of the Royal Flying Corps, lost his life in highly dramatic circumstances that proved his heroic quality. The event is best recorded, perhaps, in a letter written by Young’s commanding officer to the father of the daring aviator. The letter was as follows:

“Your son, as you know, had only been in my squadron for a short time, but quite long enough for me to realize what a very efficient and gallant officer he was. He had absolutely the heart of a lion and was a very good pilot. Your son had been up on every raid of late, and had always managed to get in contact with the enemy machines. The last raid, which unfortunately resulted in his death, shows what a very gallant officer we have lost.

“Almost single-handed he flew straight into the middle of the twenty-two machines, and both himself and his observer at once opened fire. All the enemy machines opened fire also, so he was horribly outnumbered. The volume of fire to which he was subjected was too awful for words. To give you a rough idea: There were twenty-two machines, each machine had four guns, and each gun was firing about 400 rounds per minute. Your son never hesitated in the slightest. He flew straight on until, as I should imagine, he must have been riddled with bullets. The machine then put its nose right up in the air and fell over, and went spinning down into the sea from 14,000 feet.

“I, unfortunately, had to witness the whole ghastly affair. The machine sank so quickly that it was, I regret, impossible to save your son’s body, he was so badly entangled in the wires, etc. H. M. S. —— rushed to the spot as soon as possible, but only arrived in time to pick up your son’s observer, who, I regret to state, is also dead. He was wounded six times, and had a double fracture in the skull.”

It Was a Problem of Mud That Turned Trooper Bishop Into an “Ace” of the Royal Flying Corps

It was not unnatural that intrepidity in the air should have commanded more of public attention and enthusiasm during the war than did the courage, daring and amazing fortitude of the men in the trenches. The sensation of novelty makes stronger appeal to the curious interest of humanity than do deeds and events no less masterful though more familiar to experience. So it was that the invaders of the air, who fought their duels or delivered their assaults above the clouds, came in for the lion’s share of the popular plaudits,—the miracles of the flyers having the advantage of the romantic and picturesque over[Pg 216] the miracles of the men who kept their feet on the earth. That is why there are more stories of the one than of the other. But are they not wonder stories? The career of any of the “Aces,” American, French, British, Italian, German, compels an affirmative answer.

Among the many is that of Col. William A. Bishop, a Canadian member of the British Royal Flying Corps, his story rather the more interesting by reason of his living to tell it himself after the battles of the air had ceased. He had a record of forty-nine German planes and balloons actually destroyed. In addition to this, he was the victor in eighty to a hundred other fights high in air, the enemy engaged being driven from the field, either because of wounds or of that discretion said to be the better part of valor. In recognition of these achievements he received the Victoria Cross, the Distinguished Service Order, twice bestowed, and the Military Cross—all in a single fighting season and before he was twenty-three years of age. Perhaps the most remarkable thing about it all was that the hero of these officially honored achievements was little known, until the war ended, to the public at large. But that was due to the fact that the British policy was not to emphasize the performances of one branch of the service more than those of another. It is claimed that there were about forty “aces” of the British Royal Flying Corps of whom the world has never heard. Only when there was repeated mention of a name in The Official Gazette was the public made aware that a flyer had won exceptional title to honors.

Bishop went to England as a cavalry officer in a unit of the Second Canadian Division, and expected that his services would be in the saddle, not in the cockpit. That was in July, 1915, in a period of torrential rains and consequent mud—cheer-despoilers of a cavalry camp. It was while wallowing in knee-deep mud that he viewed with envy a pilot gliding overhead in a trim little aeroplane, and the sudden desire possessed him to follow that airy mind-free branch of the service. He talked with a friend in the Royal Flying Corps who approved his purpose, and assured him the transfer could be made quite easily. He got the transfer and was soon training as an observer, his first lessons being flights in a ponderous training “bus” (as the airmen name their planes) that was not equal to a speed of more than fifty miles an hour. In a few months he got the observer’s badge or insignia, an O with a spread wing attached to one side, and within a little while was making observations and taking photographs in France over the enemy lines.

This useful work, so highly important to the men fighting on the ground, was drudgery to him because he was burning to become a fighter. Some six months later his longing was gratified; he returned to England and set about acquiring the knowledge and skill to fly “on his own.” He had the usual experience of the beginner,—elation over his first “solo”; uncertainties, anxieties as to how to get back to earth safely; a somewhat humiliating landing, etc.; but he suffered no misadventure. The first week in March, 1917, he landed in Boulogne with ten or twelve other flying men for his second experience on the fighting front.

KEEPING UP WITH THE FORMATION

The first time he was to go over the lines his orders were to bring up the rear of a flight of six machines, and he found keeping up with the formation such a busying task that he could be conscious of little else. “Every time the formation turned or did anything unexpected,” he says, “it took me two or three minutes to get back in my proper place. But I got back every time as fast as I could. I felt safe when I was with the formation and scared when I was out of it, for I had been warned many times that it is a fatal mistake to get detached and become a straggler. And I had heard of German ‘head hunters’ too. They are German machines that fly very high and avoid combat with anything like an equal number, but are quick to pounce down upon a straggler, or an Allied machine that has been damaged and is bravely struggling to get home. Fine sportsmanship that!

“The way I clung to my companions that day reminded me of the little child hanging to its mother’s skirts while crossing a street. I remember I also felt as a child does when it is going up a dark pair of stairs and is sure something is going to reach out somewhere and grab it. I was so intent on the clinging part that I paid very little attention to anything else.”

Some distance off was another formation on patrol that became engaged with a Hun formation and he saw the young flyer of one of the machines, “one of our own,” going down in flames, but his reflections on that incident were suddenly interrupted by a “bang” of terrifying violence close to his ears. The tail of his machine shot up in the air and he fell three or more hundred feet before he could recover control. It was a shot from an “Archie” (an anti-aircraft gun), and Colonel Bishop says of it: “That shot, strange to relate, was the closest I have ever had from anti-aircraft fire.”

THE GERMAN “FLYING PIG”

In his highly entertaining book, Winged Warfare, Colonel Bishop introduces an amusing incident as the finish of this night’s patrol. He says:

“We continued to patrol our beat, and I was keeping my place so well I began to look about a bit. After one of these gazing spells, I was startled to discover that the three leading machines of our formation were missing. Apparently they had disappeared into nothingness. I looked around hastily, and then discovered them underneath me, diving rapidly. I didn’t know just what they were diving at, but I dived, too. Long before I got down to them, however, they had been in a short engagement half a mile below me, and had succeeded in frightening off an enemy artillery machine which had been doing wireless observation work. It was a large white German two-seater, and I learned after we landed that it was a well-known machine and was commonly called ‘the flying pig.’ Our patrol leader had to put up with a lot of teasing that night because he had attacked the ‘pig.’ It seems that it worked every day on this part of the front, was very old, had a very bad pilot and a very poor observer to protect him.

“It was a sort of point of honor in the squadron that the decrepit old ‘pig’ should not actually be shot down. It was considered fair sport, however, to frighten it. Whenever our machines approached, the ‘pig’ would begin a series of clumsy turns and ludicrous maneuvers, and would open a frightened fire from ridiculously long ranges. The observer was a very bad shot and never succeeded in hitting any of our machines, so attacking this particular German was always regarded more as a joke than a serious part of warfare. The idea was only to frighten the ‘pig,’ but our patrol leader had made such a determined dash at him the first day we went over that he never appeared again. For months the patrol leader was chided for playing such a nasty trick upon a harmless old Hun.”

As Colonel Bishop’s story is that of one thrilling and perilous adventure following fast upon another, it is impossible to give his career in detail or recount even the chief of his many engagements. The fight in which he won the Military Cross is a good illustration of the clear judgment and fearlessness which characterized his exploits in general.

The Allies had been preparing for the great offensive that began with the battle of Arras, and for a week in advance of the date set for the initiative (April 9th, 1917) the airmen[Pg 219] had been carrying out orders to keep the sky free from prying eyes of men in planes and to attack and destroy enemy observation balloons. The balloons flew from the same places every day because there were batteries of anti-aircraft guns stationed below that area. Bishop was assigned to the destruction of a particularly annoying balloon that went up daily in contempt of scouting planes. The balloon, because of cloudy weather, did not go up the first day after the assignment. The character of the fighting may be determined from the fact that in two days, April 6 and 7, the Allies lost twenty-eight machines as against fifteen German machines accounted for. But, says Bishop, “We considered this a small price to pay for the amount of work accomplished and the number of machines engaged (every class of machine was thrown into the clearing process) coupled with the fact that all our work was done within the German lines.”

HOW HE WON THE MILITARY CROSS

“My own experiences on the seventh of April brought me my first decoration—the Military Cross. The thrills were all condensed into a period of two minutes for me. In that time I was fortunate enough to shoot down an enemy machine and destroy the ‘sausage’ I had started for two days before. This should have been excitement enough, but I added to it by coming within fifteen feet of being taken a German prisoner and becoming an unwilling guest of the Huns for the ‘duration.’

“I was ordered after my particular balloon and had climbed to about 5,000 feet before heading for the lines. On my way there I had to pass over one of our own observation balloons. I don’t know what it was that attracted my attention, but looking down I saw what appeared to be two men descending in parachutes. A moment later the balloon below me burst into flames. I saw the enemy machine which had set it on fire engaged with some of ours, but as I had definite orders to proceed straight to the lines and destroy the hostile balloon which had been allotted to me, I was unable to join in the fighting.

“Just about this time an amusing incident was in progress at our aerodrome. A Colonel of the Corps was telephoning my squadron commander, informing him that one of our balloons had just been destroyed.

“Well, if it is any consolation, young Bishop, of my squadron, has just gone over to get one of theirs,’ replied my commander.

“‘Good God,’ said the Colonel, ‘I hope he has not made a mistake in the balloon and set ours on fire.’

“At this moment I was serenely sailing over the enemy trenches keeping a sharp lookout for some sign of my own balloon. After flying five miles over the lines I discovered it and circled around as a preliminary to diving down upon it. But just then I heard the rattle of machine guns directly behind me and saw bullet holes appear as if by magic in the wings of my machine. I pulled back as if to loop, sending the nose of my machine straight up into the air. As I did so the enemy scout shot by underneath me. I stood on my tail for a moment or two, then let the machine drop back, put her nose down and dived after the Hun, opening fire straight behind him at very close range. He continued to dive away with increasing speed and later was reported to have crashed just under where the combat[Pg 220] had taken place. This victory I put down entirely to luck. The man flew directly in line with my gun and it would have been impossible to have missed him.

“I proceeded now to dive for the balloon, but having had so much warning, it had been pulled down to the ground. I would have been justified in going home when I saw this, for our orders were not to go under 1,000 feet after the sausages. But I was just a bit peevish with this particular balloon, and to a certain extent my blood was up. So I decided to attack the ungainly monster in its ‘bed.’ I dived straight for it and when about 500 feet from the ground, opened fire. Nothing happened. So I continued to dive and fire rapid bursts until I was only fifty feet above the bag. Still there were no signs of it catching fire. I then turned my machine gun on the balloon crew who were working frantically on the ground. They scattered and ran all about the field. Meantime a ‘flaming onion’ battery was attempting to pelt me with those unsavory missiles, so I whirled upon them with a burst of twenty rounds or more. One of the onions had flared within a hundred yards of me.”

“SUDDENLY MY ENGINE HAD FAILED”

“This was all very exciting, but suddenly, with a feeling of faintness, I realized that my engine had failed. I thought that again, as during my first fight, the engine had oiled up from the steep diving I had done. It seemed but a moment before that I was coming down at a speed that must have been nearly 200 miles an hour. But I had lost it all in turning my machine upon the people on the ground.

“There was no doubt in my mind this time as to just where I was, and there appeared no alternative but to land and give myself up. Underneath me was a large open field with a single tree in it. I glided down, intending to strike the tree with one wing just at the moment of landing, thus damaging the machine so it would be of little use to the Huns, without injuring myself.

A MIRACULOUS RECOVERY

“I was within fifteen feet of the ground, absolutely sick at heart with the uselessness of it all, my thoughts having turned to home and the worry they would all feel when I was reported in the list of the missing, when without warning one of my nine cylinders gave a kick. Then a second one miraculously came to life, and in another moment the old engine—the best old engine in all the world—had picked up with a roar on all the nine cylinders. Once again the whole world changed for me. In less time than it takes to tell it I was tearing away for home at a hundred miles an hour. My greatest safety from attack now lay in keeping close to the ground, and this I did. The ‘Archies’ cannot fire when you are so close to earth, and few pilots would have risked a dive at me at the altitude which I maintained. The machine guns on the ground rattled rather spitefully several times, but worried me not at all. I had had my narrow squeak for this day and nothing could stop me now.

“I even had time to glance back over my shoulder, and there, to my great joy, I saw a cloud of smoke and flames rising from my erstwhile bête noir—the sausage. We afterward learned it was completely destroyed.

“It was a strange thing to be skimming along just above the ground in enemy territory. From time to time I would come on groups of Huns who would attempt to fire on me with rifles and pistols, but I would dart at them and they would immediately scatter and run for cover. I flew so low that when I would come to a clump of trees I would have to pull my nose straight up toward the sky and ‘zoom’ over them. Most of the Germans were so startled to see me right in their midst, as it were, they either forgot to fire or fired so badly as to insure my absolute safety. Crossing the three lines of German trenches was not so comfortable, but by zigzagging and quick dodging I negotiated them safely and climbed away to our aerodrome. There I found that no bullets had passed very close to me, although my wingtips were fairly perforated.

“That evening I was delighted to get congratulations not only from my Colonel, but my Brigadier as well, supplemented later by a wire from the General commanding the Flying Corps. This I proudly sent home the same evening in a letter.”

“LIKE SHOOTING CLAY PIGEONS”

There seems to be a general feeling among airmen that theirs is not a business or profession, but a game. Colonel Bishop declares that it did not seem to him to be killing a man to bring down a machine; “it was more as if I were destroying a mechanical target, with no human being in it. Once or twice the idea that a live man had been piloting the machine would occur to me, and it would worry me a bit. My sleep would be spoiled perhaps for a night. I did not relish the idea of killing even Germans, yet, when in a combat in the air, it seemed more like any other kind of sport, and to shoot down a machine was very much the same as if one were shooting down clay pigeons. One has the great satisfaction of feeling that he had hit the target and brought it down; that one was victorious again.” The fascination that such a game has for the airman is easily understood.

Bishop brought down his fortieth enemy plane six miles within the enemy lines, and escaped in spite of a hail of shells from anti-aircraft guns for five miles of the return trip, his machine being fairly well riddled; and, one day just at that time, his cup of happiness filled and overflowed with the award of the Victoria Cross.

A German Aviator’s Perils and Escapes On An Observation Tour

In the early days of the war, the value of the flying machine as a weapon was not by any means appreciated. It was used for observation and bomb-dropping purposes almost exclusively. The Germans were the first to realize its possibilities as a gunning as well as bombing or spying craft. They began carrying rifles and pistols with which to pot enemy aviators, and the chivalry of the air, so excellent a feature of the initial period, disappeared, for, necessarily the Allied aviators were not slow to follow the lead. It was, however, in the early stage, September, 1914, that the duel occurred of which the following is an account. The narrative was written by the German aviator, the chief figure in the adventure.

The story, the truth of which is unquestioned, was published originally in the Berlin Tageblatt from which the New York Evening Post made the translation. It is of special interest as a report of one of the first, if not the first of the armed encounters between belligerent planes.

OBSERVING THE RETREAT OF THE BRITISH

God be thanked! After a veritable Odyssey I am at last joined again this noon to my division. To be sure, my wanderings were not much to be wondered at, for, during my absence, my troop had advanced about sixty-five kilometers in a southwesterly direction. All the more joyfully, however, was I greeted on all sides, for I had already been given up after an absence of more than four days; and, indeed, I myself wondered, as I made my report to my commander, that Jack Death had so allowed me to slip through his fingers.

On the morning of the 6th of September, I had ascended from D—— with the commission to report the positions of the enemy at S—— and F—— and to make charts of the opposing forces which I observed. First Lieut. K—— went with me as a guest on the flight, and my brave biplane soon bore us at an altitude of about 800 meters above the hostile positions, which were repeatedly sketched and photographed from aloft. As we had expected, we were soon the objective of a lively bombardment, and several times I felt a trembling of the machine, already well known to me, a sign that a shot had struck one of the wings. After a three hours’ flight we were able to give our report at the office of the General Staff of the —— army at M——, and earned for it the warmest praise and half of a broiled chicken and an excellent Havana.

As I was making my “Kiste” ready for flight again in the afternoon, with the help of several drivers of the General Staff auto—that is to say, refilling the benzine tank and carefully patching with linen the places where shots had pierced—I counted four of them, one in the body and three in the wings—a Bavarian officer of the General Staff informed me that he would be glad to observe the retreat of the English along the great military road toward M——. I prepared the machine at once, and ascended at about four o’clock in the afternoon with Major G——, the aforementioned General Staff officer.

Following the road, it was at once obvious that the retreat of the English was a disorderly one, absolutely without plan, that it had apparently occurred to the troops to reach the fortified positions at Paris as soon as possible, and there to make their stand.

At Paris! My flying companion shouted something into my face. Although the noise of the motor drowned it out, I believed that I nevertheless understood what he meant. I glanced at the benzine indicator. I had sufficient fuel. Then I held a direct course to the south, and after a period of about half an hour we saw ahead of us in the gray distance, far, far below, the gray, immeasurable sea of stone that was the chief city of France. At a speed of a hundred kilometers an hour we rushed toward it. It became clearer and plainer. The chain of forts, St. Denis, Montmartre, stood out; from the haze there raised itself the filigree framework of the Eiffel tower. And now—now we hover over the mellow panorama of Paris.

THE “CONQUEROR” AT PARIS

There lay the white church of Sacré Cœur, there the Gare du Nord, from which the French thought to leave for across the Rhine; there Notre Dame, there the old “Boul Mich,” the Boulevard St. Michel, in the Latin Quarter, where I Bohemianized so long as an art student, and over which I now flew as a conqueror. Unprotected beneath me lay the heart of the enemy, the proud glittering Babel of the Seine. The thought of everything hateful, always attached to the great city, was swallowed up; an emotion of possession, of power, alone remained. And doubly joyful we felt ourselves. Doubly conquerors! In a great circle I swept over the sea of houses. In the streets raised itself a murmuring of the people, whom the bold “German bird” astonished, who cannot understand how the Germans are turning the French discovery to their own service more cleverly and advantageously than the French themselves.

THE RETURN FROM PARIS

For nearly an hour we had been flying in swoops and had been shot at vainly from here and there below us, when there approached in extremely rapid flight from the direction of Juvisy a French monoplane. Since it was much faster than my biplane, I must turn and seek to escape, while the major made ready my rifle and reached for his revolver. The monoplane came steadily closer and closer; I sought to reach an altitude of 2,000 meters, in order to reach the protecting clouds, but my pursuer, on whom we constantly kept an eye, climbed more rapidly than we. And came always closer and closer. And suddenly I saw at a distance of only about 500 meters still a second biplane, attempting to block my way.

Now it was time to act. In an instant my companion had grasped the situation. I darted at the flyer before us; then a turn—the major raised the rifle to his cheek. Once, twice, thrice, he fired. Then the hostile machine, now beside us, and hardly a hundred meters away, quivered and then fell like a stone. Our other pursuer had in the meantime reached a position almost over us, and was shooting at us with revolvers. One bullet struck in the body close beside the fuel controller. Then, however, impenetrable mist enfolded us protectingly; and the clouds separated us from the enemy, the sound of whose motor grew ever more distant.

When we came out again from the sea of clouds, it was toward seven o’clock. In order to get our position, we descended, but suddenly there began to burst before us and behind us and beside us roaring shrapnel shells. I found myself still always over hostile positions and exposed to French artillery. “The devil to pay again!” Ever madder grew the fire! I noticed that the machine received blow after blow, but held cold-bloodedly to my course;[Pg 223] at the time, it did not come into my mind at all that these little pointed pieces of steel meant death and destruction. Something in mankind remains untouched by knowledge and logic!

There—suddenly before me, a yellow-white burst of flame! The machine bounds upward; at the same time the major shrinks together, blood runs from his shoulder, the wiring of one of the wings is shattered. To be sure, the motor still booms and thunders as before, but the propeller fails. An exploding grenade had knocked it to pieces, torn one of the wings to shreds, and smashed the major’s shoulder. Steeply my machine sinks to the ground. By calling up all my power, I succeed in getting the machine into a gliding flight, and I throw the biplane down into the tops of the forest trees. I crash through the branches and tree crowns. I strike heavily, and know no more what goes on around me.

When I wake again from my unconsciousness, I find Major G. lying beside me on the ground, in the midst of a group of Landwehr men. German outposts had recognized me as a friend, and had forced their way into the woods, although only in small numbers, to protect me. Major G. had suffered a severe injury to his shoulder, which made it necessary to transfer him to the nearest field hospital. I, however, had only sustained a bruise on my leg, and after the application of an emergency bandage remained with the outpost, later to find my way, by all possible—and some impossible—means of transportation, back to my troop.

The Brilliant Exploit That Marked the First “Down” of a “Zepp” by Airplane

The air raids on the coast towns of England were regarded as the most brutally wanton of the cowardly “frightfulness” tactics of the Germans employed against England. The killing of non-combatants, chiefly women and children, and the destruction of private property were the only material results of those raids, but the moral indignation of the world was aroused. After a period of suspension of this sort of warfare the Germans once more, in June, 1915, began raiding the East and Northeast Coast, the most serious of any that had happened being the raid of June 6.

The raiders sailed over a town on the East Coast during the night and bombed it at their leisure. One large drapery house was struck and was completely wrecked, the entire building—a somewhat old one—collapsing. Adjoining these premises, with only a narrow roadway between, there was one of the most beautiful Norman churches in England. The church was wholly uninjured save a few of the panes in the glass windows. A rumor was spread over the country, and was generally believed, that a large number of girls and women “lived in” on the draper’s premises, and were killed when the house was struck. This rumor was false. The drapery firm had ceased to house its attendants on the premises for a couple of years before the raid. Some working-class streets were very badly damaged, a number of houses destroyed, and many people injured. It was one of the peculiarities of this raid that, unlike results from most of the others, all the people injured were struck while indoors. The total casualties here were twenty-four killed, about sixty seriously injured, and a larger number slightly injured.

The outrage was quickly avenged by a young British naval airman, Flight Sub-Lieutenant R. A. J. Warneford, in one of the most brilliant aerial exploits of the war—the first Zeppelin brought down by an aeroplane.

Mr. Warneford, who was only 22 years of age, was the son of an Anglo-Indian railway engineer, and before the war was in the mercantile marine. He went home to “do something” for his country, enlisted in the 2nd Sportsman’s Battalion, was transferred to the[Pg 224] Royal Naval Air Service, passed the tests for a pilot’s certificate within a few days, and was given a commission. He was noted at the flying school as one of the most brilliant pupils the instructors had ever known. A month after obtaining his commission he went to France, where his reckless daring soon made him conspicuous in a service where venturesomeness is the general rule. On the morning of June 7, 1915, at 3 a.m., he encountered a Zeppelin returning from the coast of Flanders to Ghent, and chased it, mounting above it and sailing over it at a height of 6,000 feet. Zeppelin and aeroplane exchanged shots, and when the Zeppelin was between one and two hundred feet immediately below him he dropped six bombs on it. One bomb hit the Zeppelin fairly, causing a terrific explosion, and setting the airship on fire from end to end.

Warneford’s aeroplane was caught by the force of the explosion and turned upside down, but he succeeded in righting it before it touched the ground. He was forced to alight within the German lines. Nevertheless he restarted his engine, though not without great difficulty, and in due course returned to his station without damage. Only the framework of the Zeppelin was left, the crew being all burned or mangled, and the body of the machine being completely destroyed. The flaming framework dropped on the Convent School of St. Amandsberg, killing one nun and burning two Sisters who had rushed into the street with children in their arms. The machine on which Warneford made this attack was a Morane “Parasol,” a little monoplane with a pair of wings raised well above the pilot’s head. This construction gives the aviator full view on either side below, thus enabling him to take good aim for bomb dropping. The Morane of that type was also noted as a quick-climbing machine, a very decided advantage in attacking Zeppelins.

The story of Warneford’s triumph sent a thrill through England. The King promptly sent a personal telegram of congratulation to[Pg 225] him, and conferred upon him the Victoria Cross. The telegram ran as follows:

“I most heartily congratulate you upon your splendid achievement of yesterday, in which you single-handed destroyed an enemy Zeppelin.

“I have much pleasure in conferring upon you the Victoria Cross for this gallant act.

“George R.I.”

Next day the French War Minister, on the recommendation of General Joffre, awarded Warneford the Cross of the Legion of Honor. It was known that he was returning on a visit to England. A splendid public welcome was prepared for him. He went first, however, to Paris, and there in company with Henry Needham, an American journalist, he set out on a new Henry Farman biplane, which he proposed to take by air to Dunkirk. Warneford and his passenger had risen to 700 feet when the machine wobbled violently for a few seconds, and then overturned, throwing them both out. They were both killed instantly. The return to England was different from that which had been anticipated. In the late evening of June 21, a fortnight after the deed which won him fame, the train carrying Warneford’s body came into Victoria Station. Thousands of people had assembled there to pay their final tributes to the hero, and the little procession of the coffin covered by the Union Jack, mounted on a gun-carriage, and guarded by seamen of the Royal Naval Division, moved out amid the bared heads of the silent crowd. Warneford was buried in Brompton Cemetery.

The strictly American aviation operations started in the middle of March, 1918, with the patrolling of the front from Villeneuve-les-Vertus by an American pursuit squadron using planes of the French-built Nieuport-28 type. These operations were in the nature of a tryout of the American trained aviators, and their complete success was followed by an immediate increase of the aerial forces at the front, with enlargement of their duties and field of action. By the middle of May, 1918, squadrons of all types—pursuit, observation, and bombing—as well as balloon companies were in operation over a wide front. These squadrons were equipped with the best available types of British and French-built service planes.

Three Attacking Hun Machines Downed by “Ricky” in About Seventy Ticks

No one has succeeded better than Boyd Cable, in the Red Cross Magazine, in conveying an impression of what “Quick Work” means in the war combats between aeroplanes when the fighting machines are in expert hands. But after all it is doubtful if one can realize in reading how quick the action was, inasmuch as the fight took less time than you will require to read one of these columns aloud. As Mr. Cable says:

“It is difficult, if not indeed impossible, to convey in words what is perhaps the most breath-catching wonder of air fighting work, the furious speed, the whirling rush, the sheer rapidity of movement of the fighting machines, and the incredible quickness of a pilot’s brain, hand, and eye to handle and maneuver a machine, and aim and shoot a gun under these speed conditions. I can only ask you to try to remember that a modern fast scout is capable of flying at well over a hundred miles an hour on the level, and at double that (one may not be too exact) in certain circumstances, and that in such a fight as I am going to try to describe here the machines were moving at anything between these speeds. If you can bear this in mind, or even realize it—I am speaking to the non-flying reader—you will begin to understand what airmen-o’-war work is, to believe what a pilot once said of air fighting: ‘You don’t get time to think. If you stop to think, you’re dead.’

“When the flight of half a dozen scout machines was getting ready to start on the usual ‘offensive patrol’ over Hunland, one of the pilots, ‘Ricky-Ticky’ by popular name, had some slight trouble with his engine. It was nothing much, a mere reluctance to start up easily, and since he did get her going before the flight was ready to take off, he naturally went up with it. He had a little more trouble in the upward climb to gain a height sufficient for the patrol when it crossed the line to stand the usual respectable chance of successfully dodging the usual ‘Archie’ shells.

“Ricky, however, managed to nurse her up well enough to keep his place in the formation, and was still in place when they started across the lines. Before they were far over Hunland he knew that his engine was missing again occasionally, and was not pulling as she ought to, and from a glance at his indicators and a figuring of speed, height, and engine revolutions was fairly certain that he was going almost full out to keep up with the other machines, which were flying easily and well within their speed.”

FOLLOWING THE CHANCE

“This was where he would perhaps have been wise to have thrown up and returned to his ’drome. He hung on in the hope that the engine would pick up again—as engines have an unaccountable way of doing—and even when he found himself dropping back out of place in the formation he still stuck to it and followed on. He knew the risk of this; knew that the straggler, the lame duck, the unsupported machine is just exactly what the Hun flyer is always on the lookout for; knew, too, that his Flight-Commander before they had started had warned him (seeing the trouble he was having to start up) that if he had any bother in the air or could not keep place in the formation to pull out and return. Altogether, then, the trouble that swooped down on him was his own fault, and you can blame him for it if you like. But if you do you’ll have to blame a good many other pilots who carry on, and in spite of the risk, do their best to put through the job they are on. He finally decided—he looked at the clock fixed in front of him to set a time and found it showed just over one minute to twelve—in one minute, at noon exactly, if [Pg 229]his engine had not steadied down to work, he would turn back for home.

“At that precise moment—and this was the first warning he had that there were Huns about—he heard a ferocious rattle of machine gun fire, and got a glimpse of streaking flame and smoke from the tracer bullets whipping past him. The Huns, three of them and all fast fighting scouts, had seen him coming, had probably watched him drop back out of place in the flight, had kept carefully between him and the sun so that his glances round and back had failed to spot them in the glare, and had then dived headlong on him, firing as they came.

“They were coming down on him from astern and on his right side, or, as the Navals would put it, on his starboard quarter, and they were perhaps a hundred to a hundred and fifty yards off when Ricky first looked round and saw them. His first and most natural impulse was to get clear of the bullets that were spitting round and over him, and in two swift motions he had opened his engine full out, thrust his nose a little down, and was off full pelt. Promptly the three astern swung a little, opened out as they wheeled, dropped their noses, and came after Ricky, still a little above him, and so fairly astern that only the center one could keep a sustained accurate fire on him. (A scout’s gun being fixed and shooting between the blades of the propeller—gun and engine being synchronized so as to allow the bullet to pass out as the blade is clear of the muzzle—means that the machine itself must be aimed at the target for the bullets to hit, and two outer machines of the three could only so aim their machines by pointing their noses to converge on the center one—a risky maneuver with machines traveling at somewhere about a hundred miles an hour.)

“But the fire of that center one was too horribly close for endurance, and Ricky knew that although his being end-on made him the smaller target, it also made his machine the more vulnerable to a raking shot which, piercing him fore and aft, could not well fail to hit petrol tank, or engine, or some other vital spot. He could do nothing in the way of shooting back, because, being a single-seater scout himself, his two guns were trained one to shoot straight forward through the propeller, the other, mounted on the top plane on a curved mount allowing the gun to be grasped by the handle above him and pulled back and down, to shoot from direct ahead to straight up? Neither could shoot backward.

“Ricky, the first shock of his surprise over, had gauged the situation, and, it must be admitted, it was

“DANGEROUS IF NOT DESPERATE

“He had dropped back and back from the flight, until now they were something like a mile ahead of him. A mile, it is true, does not take a modern machine long to cover, but then, on the other hand, neither does an air battle take long to fight, especially with odds of three to one. With those bullets sheeting past him and already beginning to rip and crack through his wings, any second might see the end of Ricky. It was no use thinking longer of running away, and even a straight-down nose-dive offered no chance of escape, both because the Huns could nose-dive after him and continue to keep him under fire, and because he was well over Hunland, and the nearer he went to the ground the better target he would make for the anti-aircraft gunners below. He must act, and act quickly.

“A thousand feet down and a quarter of a mile away was a little patch of cloud. Ricky swerved, dipped, and drove ‘all out’ for it. He was into it—400 yards remember—in about the time it takes you to draw three level quiet breaths, and had flashed through it—five or six hundred feet across it might have been—in a couple of quick heart-beats. The Huns followed close, and in that half-dozen seconds Ricky had something between fifty and a hundred bullets whizzing and ripping past and through his wings. As he leaped clear of the streaming wisps of the cloud’s edge he threw one look behind him and pulled the joy-stick hard in to his stomach. Instantly his machine reared and swooped up in the loop he had decided on, up and over and round. At the first upward zoom Ricky had pulled down the handle of his top gun and brought it into instant action. The result was that as he shot up and over in a perfect loop the center machine, which had been astern of him, flashed under and straight through the stream of his bullets.

“Ricky whirled down in the curve of his loop with his gun still shooting, but now that he had finished his loop and flattened out, shooting up into the empty air while his enemy hurtled straight on and slightly downward ahead of him. Instantly Ricky threw his top gun out of action, and having now reversed positions, and having his enemy ahead, steadied his machine to bring his bow gun sights to bear on her. But before he could fire he saw the hostile’s left upper plane twist upward, saw the machine spin side on, the top plane rip and flare fiercely back and upward, the lower plane buckle and break, and the machine turning over and over plunge down and out of his sight. One of his bullets evidently had cut some bracing wires or stays, and the wing had given to the strain upon it. So much Ricky just had time to think, but immediately found himself in a fresh danger.

CLEVER WORK

“The two remaining hostiles had flashed past him at the same time as the center one, while he threw his loop over it, but realizing apparently on the instant what his maneuver was, they both swung out and round while he passed in his loop over the center machine. It was smart work on the part of the two flanking hostiles. They must have instantly divined Ricky’s dodge to get astern of them all, and their immediate circle out and round counteracted it, and as he came out of his loop brought them circling in again on him. In an instant Ricky was suddenly roused to the fresh danger by two following short bursts of fire which flashed and flamed athwart him, and caught a glimpse of the other two closing in and again astern of him and ‘sitting on his tail.’

“Both were firing as they came, and again Ricky felt the sharp rip and crack of explosive bullets striking somewhere on his machine, and an instant later knew that the two were following him and hailing lead upon him. He cursed savagely. He had downed one enemy, but here apparently he was little if any better off with two intact enemies in the worst possible position for him, ‘on his tail,’ and both shooting their hardest. A quick glance ahead showed him the white glint of light on the wheeling wings of his flight, attracted by the rattle of machine guns, circling and racing to join the fight.

“But fast as they came, the fight was likely to be over before they could arrive, and with the crack and snap of bullets about him and his own two guns powerless to bear on the enemy, it looked uncomfortably like odds on the fight ending against him. Another loop they would expect and follow over—and the bullets were crippling him every instant. Savagely he threw his controls over, and his machine slashed out and down to the right in a slicing two-hundred-foot side-slip.

“The right-hand machine whirled past him so close that he saw every detail of the pilot’s dress—the fur-fringed helmet, dark goggles, black sweater. He caught his machine out of her downward slide, drove her ahead, steadied her, and brought his sights to bear on the enemy a scant twenty yards ahead, and poured a long burst of fire into her. He saw the bullets break and play on and about the pilot and fuselage. Then came a leaping flame, and a spurt of black smoke whirling out from her; Ricky had a momentary glimpse of the pilot’s agonized expression as he glanced wildly around, and next instant saw a trailing black plume of smoke and the gleam of a white underbody as the enemy nose-dived down in a last desperate attempt to make a landing before his machine dissolved in flames about him.

“With a sudden burst of exultation Ricky realized his changed position. A minute before he was in the last and utmost desperate straits, three fast and well-armed adversaries against his single hand. Now, with two down, it was man to man—no, if he wished, it was all over, because the third hostile had swung left, had her nose down, and was ‘hare-ing’ for home and down toward the covering fire of the German anti-aircraft batteries. Already she was two to three hundred yards away, and the first German Archie soared up and burst with a rending ‘Ar-rrgh’ well astern of him. But Ricky’s blood was up and singing songs of triumph in his ears. Two out of three downed; better make a clean job of it and bag the lot.”

MAKING A CLEAN JOB

“His nose dipped and his tail flicked up, and he went roaring down, full out, after his last Hun. A rapid crackle of one machine gun after another struck his ear before ever he had the last hostile fully centered in his sights. Ricky knew that at last the flight had arrived and were joining in the fight. But he paid no heed to them; his enemy was in the ring of his sights now, so with his machine hurling down at the limit of speed of a falling body plus all the pull of a hundred and odd horsepower, the whole fabric quivering and vibrating under him, the wind roaring past and in his ears, Ricky snuggled closer in his seat, waited till his target was fully and exactly centered in his sights, and poured in a long, clattering burst of fire.

“The hostile’s slanting nose-dive swerved into a spin, an uncontrolled side-to-side plunge, back again into a spinning dive that ended in a straight-downward rush and a crash end on into the ground.

“Whether it was Ricky or some other machine of the flight that got this last hostile will never be known. Ricky himself officially reported having crashed two, but declined to claim the third as his. On the other hand, the rest of the flight, after and always, with enthusiastic unanimity, insisted that she was Ricky’s very own, that he had outplayed, outfought, and killed three Huns in single combat with them—one down and t’other come on. If Ricky himself could not fairly and honestly claim all rights to the last Hun, the flight did. ‘Three!’ they said vociferously in mess that night, and would brook no modest doubts from him.

“As the last Hun went reeling down, Ricky, in the official language of the combat reports, ‘rejoined formation and continued the patrol.’ He pulled the stick toward him and rose buoyantly, knowing that he was holed over and over again, that bullets, and explosive bullets at that, had ripped and rent and torn the fabrics of his machine, possibly had cut away some strut or stay or part of the frame. But his engine appeared to be all right again, had never misbehaved a moment during the fight, was running now full power and blast; his planes swept smooth and steady along the wind levels, his controls answered exactly to his tender questioning touch. He had fought against odds of three to one and—he had won out. He was safe, barring accident, to land back in his own ’drome; and there were two if not three Huns down on his brazen own within the last—how long?

“At the moment of his upward zoom on the conclusion of the fight he glanced at his clock which had not been hit by the enemy fire, could hardly believe what it told him, was only convinced when he recalled that promise to himself to turn back at the end of that minute, and had his belief confirmed by the flight’s count of the time between their first hearing shots and their covering the distance to join him. His clock marked exactly noon. The whole fight, from the firing of the first shot to the falling away of the last Hun, had taken bare seconds over the one minute. That pilot was right; in air fighting ‘you don’t get time to think.’”

That’s All That Observation Pilot Miller Cared About When the End Came

Among the men killed at Château-Thierry was John Q. Miller, of Fairview, N. C., first lieutenant of the air service, shot down July 24, 1918. He was one of the airmen of whom the public had probably not heard, for his courage and daring were not as spectacular as the bravery of Luke, Rickenbacker or Lufbery. At the time of his death he was the greatest observation pilot on the front, according to the story of Major Elmer R. Haslett in an issue of United States Air Service, the official publication of the Army and Navy Air Service Association.

The unsung, silent heroes of the air are the observation pilots, who at the risk of life go forward into impossible places to get pictures [Pg 234]of enemy positions and come back with their machines riddled with shrapnel from “archie” fire. At the outset Miller, says Major Haslett, attracted attention for the serious way in which he took his work. He took assignment after assignment when he might have stayed back in the barracks, and never failed to complete his mission. Momentarily driven off by hostile aircraft or by too heavy “archie,” he would return to the job and come back with his pictures or observations, and his plane so full of holes that it had to be salvaged.

IN SPITE OF WOUNDS

Six Germans finally brought Miller and his observer down on his last trip over the lines, but not until the photographs had been made. Badly wounded, Miller pulled his plane out of a spin and landed his observer with the pictures. Major Haslett says:

“He gave the plane the gun, and they took off on Johnny’s last ride. The plane accompanying was piloted by Lieut. Baker and an observer by the name of Lieut. Jack Lumsden, both of whom were the very finest of our personnel. On this mission Thompson, I believe, was taking photographs—oblique views—which must be taken very low, in fact, dangerously low, in order that the advancing troops may see from the photographs exactly what is in front of them. It was a very poor day, and the clouds were low.

“As they were just finishing this perilous work, a drove of eleven Huns swooped out of the clouds and made for them. Five attacked Lumsden and Baker, and six attacked Thompson and Miller. Our boys were about two or three kilometers within the enemy’s lines, and, with such a superiority of numbers, of course, were immediately outclassed.

“The Hun planes surrounded Thompson and Miller, pouring in lead from all sides. Thompson, who had shot down a Boche before and had been in a number of scraps, was giving them the fight of his life. Miller was heading toward No Man’s Land. It is hard in such a fight to know exactly one’s location, and it is better to pick out one’s general direction when at such a low altitude, and be sure the plane is on the friendly side of the line before hitting the ground.

“While still about a kilometer within German territory, a bullet struck Miller in the chest and another in the arm. Thompson told me that Miller put his hand over the fuselage as if semi-conscious, then the plane started to go from right to left, climb and dive as if partly under control.

“As Thompson described it, it seemed as if Miller were doing his best to keep up his strength to go on with the flight. They crossed the lines, and as they did so Miller motioned to him in one of his conscious moments as if to point to home. He then put the plane into a dive.

“One of the German planes had dropped out of the combat, but the others were determined upon putting the plane down in flames or out of control. In these last few seconds they closed in with every gun concentrated on Miller. This fighting was so close that Thompson was aiming point blank. Miller was shot again; he made some sort of a motion as if falling forward.

MILLER’S RALLYING FEAT

“In a moment Thompson scored a direct burst into one of the planes; it made a sudden climb, then went into a tail spin from which it never recovered. Thompson swung his tourrelle round to get the one coming up on his tail. While himself falling, by sheer good fortune Thompson, fighting to the end, turned loose all he had, and the plane underneath his tail ceased firing, dived and fell within a hundred yards of the other he had just got.

“The three remaining Huns followed Miller down. One of them got Thompson in the arm and leg with an explosive bullet. The plane was out of control. By some miracle, Thompson says, as they were about to strike earth, Miller came out of his forward position, pulled the stick back, and the plane landed without a crash.

“Thompson had enough strength to jump out of the cockpit and run around to Miller, who, with a strength that was superhuman, was climbing out of the cockpit, bleeding profusely, his face ghostly white.

“He reached his arms up, man-like, and let them rest limply on Thompson’s shoulders. With closed eyes, and with a voice barely[Pg 235] audible, he mumbled: ‘Thompson, God bless you! They got me, but I got you home, boy—and we brought the pictures back. Get a motorcycle, Tommy, and take them to headquarters. You write a report—I can’t, Tommy; you see I can’t, Tommy. And be sure to put in it that the pictures are good—that the mission was successful.’

“These were his last words, and he fell over unconscious. His wounds were of a hopeless nature, and he died without regaining consciousness a few minutes later in a sort of improvised dressing station in the front lines.

“The official records credit Johnny Miller with the destruction of two enemy planes, and the French Government has bestowed upon him posthumously the Croix de Guerre with Palm, but those of us who had the pleasure of serving with him and who have lived to tell the tale credit Johnny Miller with having been just a plain, ordinary, brave fellow, who gave his life with all willingness to insure the successful completion of the mission to which his country assigned him.”

When Captain Butt, the British Ace, Found Bakshish a Cure of Captivity

When the war broke out, Alan Bott was one of the younger set of newspaper men in London. Soon after England cast in her lot with France, Bott was training with the airmen. Right speedily he became a fighting flyer and anon an Ace, with seven German planes to his credit. He won the Victoria Cross, and the rank of Captain. Readers may remember having heard him lecture when he made a tour of this country early in 1919, and gave very impressive pictures of adventures in the air. Not many aviators had the varied experiences that fell to the fortune of Captain Bott, for though he was for a time with his fellows of the Royal British Air Force operating in France, he was transferred to the East later and many of his thrilling adventures were in the Holy Land. He gave an account of one of these soon after his arrival in this country. He said:

“It all began when I fell out of the clouds from a height of six thousand feet and bumped my nose after a fight with a Boche plane. It wasn’t exactly a fight with one plane, either. I was chasing a Boche who had a machine nearly as fast as mine, and by the time I caught up with him we were forty miles behind the enemy lines and above some rough, rocky, partly wooded hills.

“I was just beginning to pepper the Boche when two enemy scout planes I had not seen literally dropped from the clouds right above and shot me up, especially the petrol tank. I whirled and crashed down, and the next thing I knew it was moonlight and my leg was paining like the deuce, held down by part of my engine. It was a very lonely, desert spot, and I figured that hill would be my last resting-place. I figured they would name it after me.

“Whether fortunately or not a bunch of Arabs came along, sort of bandits, I suppose, and found me. As far as I could make out, after they lifted the engine off me they were tossing up whether they should kill me or turn me over to the Turks and get some bakshish, which is a popular pastime in that part of the country. They used to say that with £1,000 you could bribe the Grand Vizier himself.

“While they were drawing lots to see whether I would live or die, a party of Turkish soldiers came along and chased the Arabs off, but detained me. In fact, they were decent enough to take me to an Austrian hospital at Afion-Kara-Hisson, about seventy miles from our base at Jaffa. It was three weeks before I could get around much, and then I foolishly tried to escape. My leg was so bad that the attempt was a foozle, as the guards caught me up before I had gone very far.

IN JAIL AT NAZARETH

“Finally, I was taken to Nazareth and put in a criminal jail with murderers and brigands, all filthy brutes. At first I was put in an underground dungeon, with one other man, an Arab, whose great penchant was chasing cooties. There were other English prisoners there, and we were all treated pretty badly. Our food consisted of a bowl of soup and a loaf of bread each day. It was some bread!

“Several of us planned to escape and tried several stunts, none of which appealed to the Turks, until I selfishly hit on the scheme of becoming temporarily insane. I was very crazy, for a few days, and then the highly ornate boss of the jail shook his head seriously and said he would have to send me to Constantinople.

“We finally began to rumble across the desert in a very slow train, and I decided to drop off at the first convenient way-station and cut across lots for Jaffa. We were quite near Constantinople before an opportunity came, and then, at the psychological moment, there was a very opportune train wreck, and I walked away and hid in among some rocks.

“When night came I met a Turkish officer dressed in a German uniform, and then worked the popular game of bakshish, which is really the national game of Turkey.

“I gave the officer a couple of Turkish pounds and he peeled the uniform. He put on mine and I have no doubt he was duly captured by the guards. I went to Constantinople and was saluted very regularly by Turkish and German soldiers. It took a lot of dodging to keep clear of the Germans in Constantinople, but I managed to get along, having a lot of fun sometimes in the cafés, listening to the gossip and plotting.

A STOWAWAY ON A “HELL SHIP”

“It appeared at that time that Turkey had been ready for quite a while to sign a separate peace, but the Allies couldn’t get the idea. My greatest desire was to get out of Constantinople, and I finally stowed away on a little rusty cargo-steamer bound for Odessa. We were rolling around the Black Sea one day when the crew were seized with Bolshevism and went on strike.

“It was great on that ship with the engines dead. We rolled and rolled for days on end. I had bought a Russian sailor’s uniform by that time and so could go about without fear of capture. The main thing was to get a crust of bread and cup of water. It was a hell ship and no mistake, with the sun beating down all day and the officers and crew in continual fights.

“Finally they patched up a truce and we made Odessa, the trip taking almost three weeks. It was bad in Odessa and when we heard that Bulgaria had made a separate peace I decided to make a try for the Bulgarian coast. I stowed away aboard another cargo steamship and finally reached Bulgaria and my British countrymen.”

In An Ordinary Plane Aviator Bone Chased a German Sea-Plane Over Sea

On Sunday, March 19, 1916, four German sea-planes sailed over East Kent, England, in a bombing raid upon defenseless towns—Deal, Margate, Ramsgate—and arrived over Dover about 2 o’clock in the afternoon and dropped more than a dozen bombs, doing a considerable amount of damage. One bomb went through the roof of a Home where there were a large number of children; fortunately, the children, at the first sound of the raiders, had been taken to the shelter of the basement. Several children going to Sunday school were killed or injured. A woman walking along the street was blown into a doorway of a shop and badly hurt. The invaders were given very little time to do their work. British aeroplanes rose in pursuit. A sharp fight followed, both attackers and defenders using their machine guns freely in the air. One British airman particularly distinguished himself. Flight Commander R. J. Bone, R. N., pursued one of the German sea-planes out to sea for nearly 30 miles, in a small single-seater land machine. There, after an engagement lasting about a quarter of an hour, he forced it to descend, the German machine having been hit many times, and the observer disabled or killed. For this, Flight Commander Bone received the D. S. O.

The commander left the aerodrome while the enemy machine was still in sight, and making no attempt to climb steeply, kept the enemy in view. After a pursuit of nearly 30 miles he rose to 9,000 feet, 2,000 feet above the enemy. Rapidly overhauling the other machine, he attempted to make a vertical dive for it, both sides firing vigorously. Then he maneuvered ahead of the other and steered straight at him, diving below him and turning with a vertical right-hand bank immediately under him.

BROUGHT HIM DOWN

The German pilot swerved his machine to the left before they met, and the Englishman as he passed could see the German observer hanging over the right side of the fuselage, apparently dead or severely wounded. The gun was cocked at an angle of 45 degrees. Continuing his courageous maneuvers, Flight-Commander Bone brought his machine within 15 or 20 feet of the enemy, and poured in five or six bursts of six rounds until the enemy dived deeply, with smoke pouring from his machine. The propeller stopped, but the pilot kept control and succeeded in landing safely on the water. Here the English airman had to leave him, as he could not come down on a land machine, and his engine showed signs of giving out.

One machine apparently escaped from the fight at Dover and rapidly made its way to Deal, where it dropped seven bombs, doing considerable damage to property, but not killing or injuring any persons. A second pair of sea-planes appeared over Ramsgate at 2.10 p.m. and dropped bombs on the town. Four children on their way to Sunday school were killed, and a man driving a motor-car near by was also killed. A hospital for Canadian troops was damaged, but no one in the building was hurt, and the nurses went out in the streets to assist in the work of tending the injured. One of the sea-planes traveled on from Ramsgate to Margate, where it dropped a bomb, damaging a house. The German aircraft were now all pursued by British machines and driven out to sea.

Four Sons of a Famous Fighter Gather Their Own Laurels of War

The Roosevelts are not the only family to have given four sons to the cause of their country, and those other sons have fought as bravely as Archibald and Theodore and Kermit, and died as daringly as Quentin. It isn’t, then, because the sacrifices of the Roosevelts are unique that they have become so dear to the hearts of Americans. The Roosevelts would be the first to decry any attempt to single out their deeds as any nobler than the deeds of their millions of comrades in arms. It seems only fair, however, to the traditions of our democracy that having recounted so many exploits by heroes who before the war were not known outside their little towns, we should include a few of the many, many names which proved that connection with more noted families did not make them any slower to welcome the dangers which war brought alike to rich and poor.

ARCHIE GOES TO FRANCE

Back in June, 1917, Theodore Roosevelt, Jr., went across with Archie. Theodore was a Major then; Archie a Captain. Both were [Pg 239]assigned to General Pershing’s staff. In August it was reported that the two, anxious for real action, had been transferred to the 26th Infantry. So anxious was Archie to get into line duty that he accepted a reduction to Second Lieutenancy in order to get into the trenches.

All this had happened quickly. It was only in April that Archie had been engaged to Grace Lockwood. Some five days after that he had passed his examination for the Officers’ Reserve Corps. By April 15 he had married. June 20 he left Plattsburg with confidential orders. June 25 his father announced that Archie and Theodore had left for France.

Archie did not stay long as a Second Lieutenant. By Christmas, following distinguished service in leading patrols in No Man’s Land, General Pershing recommended that Archie be promoted. In February Archie was made a Captain. One month later Captain Archie was wounded in the arm and leg by shrapnel. He received the French War Cross while lying on the operating table. “He lay wounded for fourteen hours unattended,” writes an American surgeon in a letter home. In May Archie was reported able to walk again.

His wounds did not make Archie callous to the suffering of others. In July (1918) we read that “Archie’s request for aid for Sergeant F. A. Ross whose hand was amputated will be heeded by Colonel Roosevelt.”

A shrapnel wound of its nature usually results in more serious complications than an ordinary bullet wound. On July 13 the Captain had to undergo another operation for partial paralysis of the left arm. His spirit never wavered. When wounded he had directed that the wounded men in his command be attended first. Archie was hurt worse than he knew. It would take eight months, at least, for him to recover. In September he was brought back to the United States for special treatment.

THEODORE, THE IDOL OF HIS MEN

In the meantime Theodore was making himself feared, loved and famous. He was a Major, we said. He had been a Major once before, but under what different conditions—a Major in the Connecticut National Guards. He got into action from the very start. You could find him at the head of the most dangerous charges. In June (1918) he was cited for bravery after he had been gassed in the fight at Cantigny.

Theodore, too, retained his tenderness despite war’s horrors. In July we read of his paying homage to Lieut. G. Gustofson, Jr. In September he writes to the widow of Lieut. Newbold telling her that he would be proud to have his two little sons grow up to live and die like the Lieutenant. Theodore’s men made an idol of him. That, however, did not save him a second wound—this time (July 24) it was in the left knee. He received it while leading a battalion in a charge at Ploisy. It was the same fearlessness which a month before had called forth the official citation.

“On the day of our attack on Cantigny, although gassed in the lungs and gassed in the eyes to blindness, Major Roosevelt refused to be removed and retained the command of his battalion under a heavy bombardment throughout the engagement.”

After his second operation Major Roosevelt was promoted once more, and it was as Lieutenant-Colonel that in November he occupied the headquarters of von Hindenburg’s son at Luxemburg.

KERMIT IN MESOPOTAMIA AND FRANCE

The Major’s younger brother Kermit had, like the rest, come in from the very start, but fortune kept at least this one member of the family a little safer. He had left Plattsburg to accept a position in the British Army as early as July, 1917. In September he was made Temporary Honorary Captain. After being rewarded with the Distinguished Service Order for bravery with the British in Mesopotamia, Kermit, through the aid of Lord Derby, obtained a transfer to the American Army. In April he was appointed Captain. By June he had received the British Military Cross.

QUENTIN

Kermit, Archibald, Theodore—all have done their duty, but, of course, death has made the youngest of the Roosevelts dearest to American hearts. Perhaps, indeed, the death of no other man at the front has so touched the people as that of young Lieutenant Quentin. He stands almost like the symbol of young America giving itself up for freedom. “In the sorrow of his parents,” writes the Outlook, “his fellow-countrymen have felt the sorrow of all who have lost sons in this struggle. In the pride his parents have simply expressed his fellow-countrymen have been able to understand in part the pride of all[Pg 242] those who have learned that for his purpose of making mankind free God has had need of their dearest. In honoring Quentin Roosevelt Americans honor all those young men who have rendered to their country their full measure of devotion.”

Part of the special glory of the Roosevelts comes from the fact that they were watched so closely. Quentin, especially, was known to the nation from his very childhood. The nation knew him, and it watched him. Quentin died fighting against odds—a symbol of young American manhood.

When we think of what Colonel Roosevelt and his sons stood for in this war there is something soul-stirring in the fact that the father and his youngest boy have both so suddenly passed away, and in the light of all this there is a pathetic significance in the answer which Colonel Roosevelt gave to the man who at a public meeting asked the Colonel why he himself had not gone across:

“I asked not only to go over there, but I came with one hundred thousand more men in my hands to help. And I will tell you, you man over there, that I have sent my four sons. I have sent over my four boys, for each of whose lives I care a thousand times more than I care for my own.”

Of these four sons Kermit received his cross for bravery. Archibald and Theodore rose steadily from rank to rank—wounds and honor marking their path. And Quentin gave his life. There is something more than fortitude in the words of the proud, strong, old man bearing up against the saddest of tidings:

“Quentin’s mother and I are very glad he got to the front and had the chance to render some service to his country, and to show the stuff there was in him before his fate befell him.”

Quentin Roosevelt was not yet twenty-one. He was born in Washington, November 19,[Pg 243] 1897, while his father was Assistant Secretary of the Navy. After 1901 Quentin, starting out as the “White House baby,” kept Washington interested and amused for seven years.

Sturdy, impetuous, frank, and democratic, he was friends with everybody. He rode locomotives between Washington and Philadelphia with his chums, the engineers and firemen of the Baltimore & Ohio and the Pennsylvania.

Meantime, he was captain also of a crew of warrior Indians recruited from members of his classes in a public school.

One day, during an illness of his brother Archie, Quentin decided that a sight of a pet pony might prove better than the White House doctor’s prescriptions.

Without waiting for permission he went out to the stables, introduced the Shetland into one of the private elevators, and had the little horse on the way into his sick brother’s room before he was stopped.

As recorded by the New York Times: “Quentin’s life while in Washington—he was running around here in kilts and afterward in short trousers when his father was President—was just the adventurous childhood of the boy who later slammed his motor cycle into a tree at Oyster Bay when he was trying to establish a new speed record and smiled when a home-assembled automobile took a corner under his guidance on one wheel. He was not afraid for himself and worried only about the expense of rebuilding the motor cycle.”

Quentin was sent to Harvard. He took a prominent part in athletics. He inherited his father’s pluck and determination. Like his father, too, Quentin suffered from a defect of vision. That is why when the first officers training-camp was organized and Archie was admitted and won a commission, Quentin, on account of his eyes, was rejected.

He thereupon applied for enlistment in the Canadian Flying Corps. That was in April, 1917. When the United States decided to send troops to Europe he was transferred to the United States Signal Corps as a private.

He underwent a brief period of training at Mineola. He reached France a few weeks after Archie, who, we remember, was then a Captain. Theodore, Jr., was already commanding one of the first American battalions to go under fire. Kermit also had by that time sailed for the war zone.

HE MAKES A DOWN

Quentin became known to his fellow flyers as “Q.” Before the fatal day he had been[Pg 244] fighting in the air five weeks. A few days before that last fight Quentin had a very narrow escape. He was cut off by a cloud from his fellows and coming out of the clouds saw three aviators whom he took for Americans. When he got quite close he found they were Boches, and coolly opened fire on them. All three attacked him. Quentin “did” for one of them and got home safe. An account of this is included in Captain McLanahan’s description of Quentin’s last days.

“Our airdrome was north of Verdun, about twenty miles back of the American front line. Quentin had joined us June 1. He had been instructor at the aviation school at Issoudun, and I had formed his acquaintance there. I left Issoudun for patrol work at the front about two months before Quentin was allowed to join us. They liked his work at the aviation school so well that he had a hard time to obtain leave to get into the more perilous work at the front, for which he was always longing.

“Our regular occupation in the patrol service consisted of two flights a day, each lasting from an hour and a half to two hours. As this involved the necessity of going over the enemy lines, it was, of course, extremely trying upon the nerves. I doubt whether anybody, except perhaps the most foolhardy, ever performed this sort of work without feeling greatly exhausted after a few hours of so tense a strain. Nevertheless, we were often required, when circumstances demanded it, to go aloft four or even more times in the course of a day. This was of rare occurrence and only when the enemy showed extreme activity and every resource at our command had to be called into service in opposition.

“Usually a patrol consisted of three squads of from six to eight planes, one squad going to a height of 20,000 feet, the second 12,000, and the third 4,000 feet. They would fly in V formation, the leader about a hundred feet below the level of the next two, these 100 feet lower than those next after them, and so on to the last ones of the squad, who were always the highest.”

July 14 was an exceptionally fine day for the sort of work the squadron was doing. “We went up at eleven o’clock in the forenoon,” says Captain McLanahan, and describes the flight and the fatal fight that followed:

“There were eight of us, all, at that time, Lieutenants—Curtis, of Rochester, N. Y.; Sewall, of Bath, Me.; Mitchell, of Manchester, Mass.; Buford, of Nashville, Tenn.; Roosevelt, Hamilton, Montague, and I. As[Pg 245] was customary, we chatted together before we went up, and of course, planned what we were going to do. It was arranged that Lieutenant Hamilton was to lead, and in case of any hitch to his motor Lieutenant Curtis was to take his place in the van.

© Western Newspaper Union.

Captain Archie Roosevelt

on Fifth Avenue in New York. He was wounded in action.

© Underwood and Underwood.

Facsimile of Quentin Roosevelt’s record card in the Ecole de Aerien de Casuaz.

The captain’s remarks at the bottom of the card: “Very good pilot; regular landings; very good shot; excellent military spirit, and very daring.”

“There was a rather stiff wind blowing in the direction of the German lines, and when we reached an altitude of about 10,000 feet we began to be carried with great rapidity toward them. We had not yet sighted any enemy airplanes after we had been aloft an hour. Hamilton’s motor went wrong about that time and he had to glide back home. In a few minutes he was followed by Montague, whose motor also had gone back on him.

MEETING THE ENEMY

“Half an hour after this, when we were five miles inside the German lines, we saw six of their Fokker planes coming toward us. They had been concealed until then by clouds between them and us, they flying on the under[Pg 246] side of the clouds. Our planes were of the Nieuport type, of the lightest pursuing kind, and in almost every respect like the type the Germans approaching us were using. The chief difference was that they carried stationary motors while ours were rotary ones, which gave us a trifle the advantage in turning. But this was more than neutralized by the very much greater inflammable material in our machines.

“When we got to within 500 feet of each other both sides began firing. The weapons on each side were virtually identical, each Nieuport and each Fokker carrying two machine guns. As each plane had but one occupant, upon whom, of course, devolved the work not only of steering his craft but firing the guns, there was an arrangement by which these two duties could be executed with, so to speak, one movement. The steering gear and the firing and aiming devices were adjusted to a stick in front of the aviator, in such a manner that his hand could clutch all three levers at once and work each by a slight pressure.

“Each of the machine guns carried about 250 rounds of ammunition, and unless it got jammed it was capable of firing the entire lot in half a minute. In order to determine whether the aim is accurate some of the bullets are so constructed that they emit smoke and can thus be seen. These are called tracers. Without them it would be well-nigh impossible to gage one’s range so far up in the air, remote from anything by which comparisons could be made to rectify the judgment in aiming.

“From the moment that I singled out the enemy whom I was to engage in duel I naturally lost sight of everything else and kept my eyes pretty well glued upon him alone. Now and then, of course, I would, when I got a chance, look backward, too. For one can never tell but that another enemy plane, having disposed of its opponent, may pay his respects to another one.

“But if anybody imagines that an aviator engaged in battle with an active opponent gets a chance to help along an associate, or even to pay attention to what is happening to any of the others, he is mistaken. One has to be on the alert for every move the enemy makes, and even do a lot of correct guessing as to what would be the most logical next move for him to make. For it is upon that next move that the entire fortunes of the war for those particular two aviators may hinge.

“After I had fired every round of ammunition, which seemed to be about the same time as my adversary discovered himself to be in the same plight, we drew away from each other and flew toward our respective bases. During our duel my airplane had become separated from the others of our unit and I could see no trace of them. I assumed, however, that they were either still fighting or had also finished and were on their way back home. Somehow I did not think of the third alternative, namely, that anything serious had happened to any of them.

“Indeed, one’s thoughts are so completely directed toward the business in hand, especially during a fight, that there is not a moment’s time that can be devoted to other matters, even those of the dearest, tenderest, or most sacred nature. To divert the mind even for an instant from the grim business of battle itself would be scarcely short of suicidal. And the home-bound journey after the battle is enlivened by so continuous a gauntlet of bursting enemy anti-aircraft shells that they suffice to keep the mind engaged in ways and means of dodging them until the home base is finally reached. During an air-battle, of course, the anti-aircraft guns are silent, for their shells would be equally dangerous for friend and foe.”

ALL BUT QUENTIN RETURNED

Lieutenants Buford and McLanahan arrived after all of the others, except Lieutenant Roosevelt, had returned to the field. They were not worried about him at the time, but when hours went by and he failed to return, they knew that something had gone wrong. Still, they did not think he had been killed. As Captain McLanahan explains:

“We were encouraged to hope for the best by the fact that Quentin had remained out a considerable time longer than the rest of us three days before. On that occasion he had become separated from the squad, I don’t just know in what way, and when we saw him again he jumped out of his airplane in great[Pg 247] excitement and so radiant with elation and with so broad a smile that his teeth showed exactly in the same famous way as his father’s used to do. He never reminded us so much of his father as on that occasion.

“He told us that after losing track of us he sighted a group of airplanes which he believed to be ours and headed his airplane toward them. He was too cautious, however, to take anything for granted, and so in steering toward the group he kept himself in the rear of them, and when he got closer he discovered that they had the cross of the Germans painted on them.

“His first impulse was to get away as fast as possible; but then the hero in him spoke up and he decided to avail himself of the chance to reduce the number of our enemies by at least one. And so, flying quite close to the last one of the airplanes, he fired quickly and with such good aim that the plane immediately went down, spinning around, with its nose pointed to the ground.

“‘I guess I got that one all right,’ he said; but he did not wait to see what the final outcome might be, for aviators are full of tricks and, by feigning disaster to their own machine, often succeeded in drawing an overconfident enemy to destruction. Quentin knew this; and moreover, he had another big contract on his hands, namely, to get away from the associates of the man whom he had attacked. They all turned upon him, firing from a dozen machine guns; but in firing his own gun he had wheeled about at the same instant, and in that way had a big handicap over the pursuers. He kept far enough in advance of them to get back within the American lines before they were able to lessen the distance sufficiently to make their shells effective. The rate of speed, by the way, was 140 miles an hour.

“Despite his excitement and the really exceptional achievement, Quentin modestly refrained from declaring positively that he had bagged his man. It was only afterward, when we learned through an artillery observation-balloon that the airplane brought down by Quentin had been seen to strike the earth with a crash, that he himself felt satisfied that he was entitled to be regarded the victor. This was the occasion which brought him the Croix de Guerre.”

When the day passed and Quentin failed to return, his associates still remained hopeful that he had landed in the enemy lines, and had been taken prisoner. But there was further news, bad news, as Captain McLanahan relates:

“Even this forlorn hope was dispelled the following day, when news was received that an observation-balloon’s crew had seen a Nieuport machine fall at Chamery, east of Fère-en-Tardenois,[Pg 248] the place where Quentin had gone into the battle.

GERMANS REPORT DEATH

“A few days after that German aviators flying over the American lines dropped notes announcing that Lieut. Quentin Roosevelt had been killed by two bullet wounds in the head and had been buried with military honors by the Germans.

“After the armistice was signed, we saw the aviator who had killed Quentin. He was a non-commissioned officer and one of the most expert flyers in the enemy’s air service. After the armistice he was acting as an inspector in the surrender of German airplanes to the Allies.

“This man said that when he learned that the officer whom he had brought down belonged to so prominent a family in America he felt sorry.

“‘He was identified by a metal identification-plate fastened by a little chain to his wrist,’ said the German, ‘and I was then told of the young man’s prominence and his own personal popularity. Of course, even if I had known during the battle who he was, I would not have hesitated to try my best to down him; because, if I hadn’t, he surely would have downed me.

“‘He made a gallant fight, although I recognized almost from the beginning of our duel that he was not as experienced as some others I had encountered and won out against.

“‘As it was, he dipped and circled and looped and tried in a variety of ways to get above and behind me. It was not at all an easy task for me to get the upper hand and down him.’”

Simple praise this is, but sincere we feel. The German felt sorry for our boy-hero. “He made a gallant fight,” he said. And he was not the only German who was forced to give due admiration to the dauntless American. [Pg 249]The enemy buried him with military honors, and marked his grave. The German Cross, however, has been removed from the grave of Quentin. The grave is now simply fenced with stones. The French strew flowers over it. It bears a soldier’s inscription:

“Here rests on the field of honor First Lieutenant Quentin Roosevelt, killed in action July, 1918.”

A memorial just as eloquent in its simplicity is the letter from General Pershing to the father of Quentin:

“Lieutenant Quentin Roosevelt during his whole career in the air service both as a cadet and as a flying officer was a model of the best type of young American manhood.”

Quentin is a hero—a soldier—an officer—yet most of all he remains to our memory as our ex-President’s youngest boy. Eleanor Reed expresses this lasting appeal in her poem to Quentin, in the New York Times:

A Restless Seeker After Excitement, the War Filled the Bill for Lieutenant Roberts

Few young men enlisted for the war more frankly in the spirit of adventure than did Lieutenant E. M. Roberts, an American boy, born in Duluth, and seemingly born with the unrest of the winds of the Northwest in his blood. When he was but ten years old he ran away from home in obedience to the restless longing to fare for himself, go whither he listed, and taste the ruggedness of nature in experience. He tried lumbering in the Northwest. He crossed the border into Canada and successively turned his hand to many things—mining, automobile repair, railroad construction, cow-punching, sheep-raising, etc.—getting a liberal education in the “University of Hard Knocks,” as he expressed it, but never finding just the excitement he vaguely yearned for.

He was in Calgary in October, 1914, and by chance learned from a newspaper in which he had wrapped a purchase, that there was war doing in Europe. It struck him that the thing sought, the desired excitement, was now ready to hand. He met an old friend and talked the news with him. The friend told him that there had been a call that morning for men for service in Europe. “Let’s join!” Both were of the same mind; both were ready for adventure. Next morning he enlisted as a member of the 10th Canadian Infantry Battalion. But the officer in charge of the barracks knew Roberts, and recalling that he was familiar with mechanics, transferred him to a mechanical transport section, not at all to his liking, mechanics being but a tame affair.

In time he went with the battalion to France as driver of a lorry. He got a dose of gas at Ypres and was sent back to England for hospital treatment. On recovery he was returned to France as Section Sergeant, his duty being to scout the roads ahead on a motor cycle. He found that he was getting very little out of the war but hard work, plodding knee deep in mud much of the time while up there the flyers were having a jolly, enviable time. Ambition to get into the Royal Flying Corps seized him and never let go of him, but it was long before the opportunity to join came to him. Much experience of many kinds came his way, despatch riding among the rest, before the happy day when he was attached to an air squadron as gunner on probation, the getting of which position was in itself an adventure, as is duly set forth in A Flying Fighter, the intensely interesting story of his career told by Roberts himself.

Though on the way he was yet far from his goal. He had first to go into the trenches to learn what infantrymen had to go through.[Pg 250] He got a thorough lesson, which included prowls in No Man’s Land, charging enemy trenches and plunging in to prod with the bayonet and fling hand grenades and much like matter rather adapted, one would imagine, to disqualify an aspirant for service in the air, for rising above ground. But he arrived in due time at the dignity of an accepted aviator, and made his first flight. Then came the excitement of shooting down his first Hun, but we pass that and many other arresting incidents and exploits of his apprenticeship to come to his account of an exceptional sort of encounter with hostile planes that has in it all the elements of dramatic surprise.

He was assigned to pilot duty with a scout and fighting squadron doing service in France, and his first turn of service consisted of patrol duty for three days running. It was an uneventful start, nothing occurring in the three days. On the fourth day he went up again on patrol to 20,000 feet. He was looking for Huns up there but found none. As it was very cold he decided to go down a way, and shut off power. He says:

“At the level of 18,000 feet, I found myself sweeping along a very large peak of cloud. Intending to spoil its pretty formation I dived into it, and coming out on the other side, found myself along side of a Hun plane of the Albatross type. [Roberts was in a Spad.] I had no intimation at all that a Hun was present, and I guess he was in the same position.

“THE HUN WAVED AT ME AND I WAVED AT HIM”

“I suppose he was as much surprised as I was when he saw me emerging from the cloud. Neither of us could shoot at the other for the reason that the guns of the machines we were flying were fixed to the machine so that the machine itself has to be pointed.

“We were so close together that this could not be done without our ramming one another, which both of us had to avoid if we did not wish to crash to the earth together.

“We found ourselves in a very peculiar situation. I was so close to him that I could see with the naked eye every detail of his machine. His face also I could see quite clearly, even to the wrinkles around his mouth.

“There was something odd in our position. I had to smile at the thought that we were so close together and yet dared not harm one another. The Hun also smiled. Then I reached down to feel the handle on my pressure reservoir to make sure that it was in its proper place, for I knew that one of us would soon have to make a break.

“I had never before met a Hun at such close quarters in the air and though we flew parallel to one another for only a few minutes, the time seemed like a week. I remembered some of the tactics told me by some of the older and best fighters in the corps, and was wondering how I could employ them. Finally a thought occurred to me. Two machines flying at the same height are not necessarily on exactly the same level, as they keep going up and down for about 20 feet.

“I was flying between the Hun and his own lines and I had fuel for another hour and a quarter anyway. I wanted to make sure of this bird, but decided to play a waiting game. We continued our flight side by side.

“After a while, however, much sooner than I expected, the Hun began to get restless and started to maneuver for position; like myself he was utilizing the veriest fraction of every little opportunity in his endeavor to out-maneuver the antagonist. Finally, the Hun thought he had gotten the lead.

“I noticed that he was trying to side-slip, go down a little, evidently for the purpose of shooting me from underneath, but not far enough for me to get a dive on him. I was not quite sure as yet that such was really his intention, but the man was quick. Before I knew what had happened he had managed to put five shots into my machine, but all of them missed me.

THE HUN SPINS EARTHWARD

“I maneuvered into an offensive position as quickly as I could, and before the Hun could fire again I had my machine gun pelting him. My judgment must have been fairly good.

“The Hun began to spin earthward. I followed to finish him, keeping in mind, meanwhile, that it is an old game in flying to let [Pg 251]the other man think you are hit. This bit of strategy will often give an opportunity to get into a position that will give you the drop on your antagonist. The ruse is also sometimes used to get out of a fight when in trouble with gun jam, or when bothered by a defective motor.

“I discovered soon that this precaution was not necessary, for the Hun kept spinning down to the ground. He landed with a crash.

“A few minutes later I landed two fields away from the wreck and ran over to see the kill I had made.

“I had hit the Hun about fifty times and had nearly cut off both his legs at the hips.

“There was nothing left in the line of souvenirs, as the Tommies had gotten to the wreck before I did. I carried off a piece of his props and had a stick made of it. That night we had a celebration over the first Hun I had brought down behind our own line since I became a pilot.

“Next day I went out to get another Hun to add to my collection. I was in the act of crossing the Hun lines when, bang! to the right of me came a thud, and my engine stopped. Revenge, I thought. I volplaned to the ground, made a good landing in a field just behind our lines, and, ’phoning up the squad, I then had another engine brought out to replace mine.

AVIATOR PRICE DOWNS THREE PLANES

“On my way to the squadron I witnessed one of the greatest air fights I have ever seen. It took place above the cemetery of P——.

“Three Huns were aloft behind their own lines, and back of them was one of our patrolling scouts.

“The Hun does not believe in coming over our lines if he can possibly help it, and generally he will maneuver so that any engagement[Pg 252] will have to be waged over German territory.

“One of our men named Price, who was coming in from patrol, was pilot of the scout, which was flying at the same height as the Hun aircraft, about 12,000 feet. Price was well behind the Hun lines when they saw him, and all three of them made for him at once. I happened to be at an artillery observation post, which I had to pass on my way home, and so was able to get a good view of the combat.

“The foremost of the Huns made straight for Price, and for a minute it looked as though he intended ramming him. The combatants separated again and began to fire upon one another, as the tut-tut-tut of the machine guns told me. Of a sudden one Hun volplaned, while another made straight for Price. I wondered what Price would do, but saw the next moment that he had ‘zoomed’ over the second Hun machine, which just then swooped down upon him. While Price was ‘zooming’ I noticed that the first Hun was falling to the ground, having either been disabled or killed by Price’s machine gun.

“Yet within a few moments the second Hun also crashed to earth, and the third was now making for home as fast as his motor would carry him; but Price chased and quickly caught up with him. It was an exciting race. Price was working his machine gun for all the thing was worth, and before long the third Hun went down.

“Just five minutes had been required for the fight. When I met Price later I congratulated him. I remember wishing him all the good luck a fellow could have. But that did not help, for within a month he, too, came down in a heap.”

Roberts won his lieutenant’s commission and achieved the distinction of Ace before he returned home. He was four times wounded in mid-air.

In April, 1918, the American forces just going into active sectors had three squadrons, two for observation and one for pursuit. Their strength totaled 35 planes. In May, 1918, the squadrons were increased to nine. The most rapid growth occurred after July, 1918, when American De Haviland planes were becoming available in quantity for observation and day bombing service, and by November, 1918, the number of squadrons increased to 45, with a total of 740 planes in action.

Von Richthofen’s Brilliant Career in the Air an Offset to His Failure as a Uhlan

The cheery egotism of a man fully assured within himself that he merits his own good opinion is the dominant note of Captain Baron Manfred Freiherr von Richthofen’s account of his experiences as a flyer. It is not an offensive egotism; you do not resent it; though you may smile, wondering that a spirit so entirely valiant could so lock arms with that quality of juvenile vanity commonly described as “cockiness.” Von Richthofen was a remarkable fellow, the most debonair as well as the most redoubtable of the German aviators and really entitled to exemption from the opprobrious terms of “Hun” and “Boche.” Though a resolute foe he did not forget that he was a gentleman, an aristocrat, and he played the game on that level. He was easily the foremost of aviators—as far as official recognition can determine priority—at the time of his death, April 21, 1918. He then had a record of 80 downs—70 aeroplanes and 10 observation balloons. His nearest rival at that time was Major Raymond Collishaw, the British Ace, with a record of 77.

Von Richthofen was shot down on the Amiens front, over the Somme, April 21st, and his machine, a new and elaborate triplane of the Fokker type, recently presented to him—its speed was 140 miles an hour and it could climb 15,000 feet in 17 minutes—fell in the British lines. The esteem in which he was held by those who had so often sought to shoot him down was attested in his burial with full military honors and the tributes of genuine admiration heaped on his grave. In the fifteen months of his active flying he became the favorite of the Kaiser and the idol of the Germany Army. Some one has said, perhaps not too extravagantly, that the fall of Amiens, then besieged, would not have compensated Germany for the loss she sustained in the death of the greatest and most beloved of her heroes of the air.

Von Richthofen belonged to the country gentry, of noble family. He entered the Cadet Corps when he was eleven years old. In 1911 he entered the Army. At the outbreak of the war he was a lieutenant of Uhlans. He went to the Western front with his regiment. His first experience with whistling bullets was when he and his company of Uhlans, out to ascertain the strength of the enemy in the forest near Virton, were caught in a trap. They fled in wild disorder, not without casualties. He was in the trenches before Verdun and found it “boresome.” When off duty he sought amusement shooting game in the forest of La Chaussée. So passed several months. Then one day he rebelled against inactivity. It was not the thing for which he went to war. He made his plea to the higher powers. With much grumbling his prayer was granted. He joined the Flying Service in May, 1915. He made his first flight the next day as an observer. Of that experience he wrote in his book:

HIS FIRST FLIGHT

“The draft from the propeller was a beastly nuisance. I found it quite impossible to make myself understood by the pilot. Everything was carried away by the wind. If I took up a piece of paper it disappeared. My safety helmet slid off. My muffler dropped off. My jacket was not sufficiently buttoned. In short, I felt very uncomfortable. Before I knew what was happening, the pilot went ahead at full speed and the machine started rolling. We went faster and faster. I clutched the sides of the car. Suddenly, the shaking was over, the machine was in the air and the earth dropped away from under me.

“I had been told the name of the place to which we were to fly. I was to direct my pilot. At first we flew right ahead, then my pilot turned to the right, then to the left, but I had lost all sense of direction above our own aerodrome. I had not the slightest notion where I was!”

He continued—with steadily increasing knowledge of aircraft—to serve as an observer until October 10, 1915, when, having passed his examination and been accepted as a pilot, he had the ecstasy of his first solo-flight. In his book (The Red Battle Flyer, translated by T. Ellis Barker, published by Robert M. McBride & Company), he describes that flight:

“I started the machine. The aeroplane went at the prescribed speed and I could not help noticing that I was actually flying. After all I did not feel timorous but rather elated. I did not care for anything. I should not have been frightened no matter what happened. With contempt of death I made a large curve to the left, stopped the machine near a tree, exactly where I had been ordered to, and looked forward to see what would happen. Now came the most difficult thing, the landing. I remembered exactly what movements I had to make. I acted mechanically and the machine moved quite differently from what I had expected. I lost my balance, made some wrong movements, stood on my head and I succeeded in converting my aeroplane into a battered school ’bus. I was very sad, looked at the damage which I had done to the machine, which after all was not very great, and had to suffer from other people’s jokes.

“Two days later I went with passion at the flying and suddenly I could handle the apparatus.”

THE BOELCKE CIRCUS

It was not, however, until September 17, 1915, when he was a member of the newly organized Boelcke flying squadron that came to be known as the Circus, that he scored his “first English victim.” It was “a gloriously fine day, and therefore only to be expected that the English would be very active,” so under the leadership of Boelcke the squadron took the air. As they approached the front, Boelcke discovered an Allied squadron going in the direction of Cambrai. There were seven of the Allies to five of the Germans. They came within range. Here is a sample of that “cockiness” with which von Richthofen described his various and manifold encounters:

“The Englishman nearest to me was traveling in a large boat painted with dark colors. I did not reflect very long but took my aim and shot. He also fired and so did I, and both of us missed our aim. A struggle began and the great point for me was to get to the rear of the fellow because I could only shoot forward with my gun. He was differently placed, for his machine gun was movable. It could fire in all directions.

“Apparently he was no beginner, for he knew exactly that his last hour had arrived at the moment when I get at the back of him. At that time I had not yet the conviction ‘He must fall!’ which I have now on such occasions, but, on the contrary, I was curious to see whether he would fall. There is a great difference between the two feelings. When one has shot down one’s first, second or third opponent, then one begins to find out how the trick is done.

“My Englishman twisted and turned, going criss-cross. I did not think for a moment that the hostile squadron contained other Englishmen who conceivably might come to the aid of their comrade. I was animated by a single thought: ‘The man in front of me must come down, whatever happens.’ At last a favorable moment arrived. My opponent had apparently lost sight of me. Instead of twisting and turning he flew straight along. In a fraction of a second I was at his back with my excellent machine. I gave a short series of shots with my machine gun. I had gone so close that I was afraid I might dash into the Englishman. Suddenly, I nearly yelled with joy, for the propeller of the enemy machine had stopped turning. I had shot his engine to pieces; the enemy was compelled to land, for it was impossible for him to reach his own lines. The English machine was curiously swinging to and fro. Probably something had happened to the pilot. The observer was no longer visible. His machine gun was apparently deserted. Obviously I had hit the observer and he had fallen from his seat.

HIS FIRST VICTIMS

“The Englishman landed close to the flying ground of one of our squadrons. I was so excited [Pg 254]that I landed also and my eagerness was so great that I nearly smashed up my machine. The English flying machine and my own stood close together. I rushed to the English machine and saw that a lot of soldiers were running towards my enemy. When I arrived I discovered that my assumption had been correct. I had shot the engine to pieces and both the pilot and observer were severely wounded. The observer died at once and the pilot while being transported to the nearest dressing station. I honored the fallen enemy by placing a stone on his beautiful grave.

“When I came home Boelcke and my other comrades were already at breakfast. They were surprised that I had not turned up. I reported proudly that I had shot down an Englishman. All were full of joy, for I was not the only victor. As usual, Boelcke had shot down an opponent for breakfast and every one of the other men also had downed an enemy for the first time.

“I would mention that since that time no English squadron ventured as far as Cambrai as long as Boelcke’s squadron was there.”

“Still,” said von Richthofen, in his airily patronizing way, “the Englishman is a smart fellow. That we must allow. Sometimes the English came down to the very low altitude and visited Boelcke in his quarters upon which they threw bombs. They absolutely challenged us to battle and never refused fighting.”

BOELCKE’S FINISH

But October 28, 1916 (when the squadron had 40 downs to its credit), Boelcke, von Richthofen and four others flying in formation saw at a distance “two impertinent Englishmen in the air who actually seemed to be enjoying[Pg 255] the terrible weather.” The struggle began. “Boelcke tackled one, I the other. I had to let go because one of the German machines got in my way.” All that seems to have interested him further in the fight was the fact that Boelcke’s machine suffered a sort of collision with one of the other German machines, a part of his planes was broken off, his machine was no longer steerable and it fell. Boelcke was killed.

Some little time after he had brought down his sixteenth victim von Richthofen was given the Ordre pour le Mérite and appointed commander of the Eleventh Chasing Squadron. It was then that the idea seized him to paint his machine a flaming red, which became afterward the personal identification of the Captain, who became famous through the adventures and success he had with his machine—Le Petit Rouge, as “everyone got to know my red bird.”

French, English, and American airmen who gained wisdom at the front may find an amusing flavor in a sage remark of von Richthofen about the time he became captain of the squadron. “In my opinion, the aggressive spirit is everything and that spirit is very strong in us Germans. Hence we shall always retain the domination of the air.” Events did not altogether sustain the boast.

But it is not necessary to object strongly to the complacency of a man who fought with undiminished valor throughout his flying career, accounted for 80 enemy machines, and died at last, shot down over the enemy’s lines. If he was self-confident to the degree of vanity, his audacity was truly admirable. He lacked just ten days of attaining his twenty-sixth birthday when he fell. The English grudged him no honors.

THE WORLD’S GREATEST LAUNCHING

American shipbuilders established a world’s record on July 4, 1918, by launching 92 ships of 450,000 deadweight tonnage—one third more than the tonnage produced during the fiscal year, 1915-16. The previous year’s record of total tonnage was 398,000 tons in 1901. American Labor’s answer to Germany’s unrestricted warfare was the launching on one day of 54,000 tons more shipping than had been constructed in any previous year.

The Remarkable Story of an American Boy in a Seventy-two Days’ Ordeal of Escape from the Germans

The publishers of his book, Outwitting the Hun, were not extravagant when they advertised Lieut. Pat O’Brien’s story as “one of the strangest and most thrilling since the outbreak of the war.” No one else had quite such an experience, and that he lived to tell of it was due to indomitable Irish pluck rather than to any favor of circumstances. You get the flavor of the capital book he wrote and the tone of the man from the name he transferred to the title page. There is no Lieut. Patricius, or even Lieut. Patrick O’Brien; but straightforward character-delivery in plain “Lieut. Pat. O’Brien.” and you get from it an odd sort of subconscious assurance that the very extraordinary story he tells of his escape from the Germans is every whit true. Yet, between his being shot down from a height of 8,000 feet and the last item of his seventy-two days of anguish and adventure in escaping the Huns there is many a challenge to credulity. There can be but little of his story reproduced here.

AS A FIGHTING SCOUT

Pat started flying, in Chicago, in 1912. “I was then eighteen years old,” he says, “but I had had a hankering for the air ever since I can remember....

“In the early part of 1916, when trouble was brewing in Mexico, I joined the American Flying Corps. I was sent to San Diego, where the Army flying school is located, and spent about eight months there, but as I was anxious to get into active service and there didn’t seem much chance of America ever getting into the war, I resigned and, crossing over to Canada, joined the Royal Flying Corps at Victoria, B. C.

“I was sent to Camp Borden, Toronto, first to receive instruction and later to instruct. While a cadet I made the first loop ever made by a cadet in Canada, and after I had performed the stunt I half expected to be kicked out of the service for it. Apparently, however, they considered the source and let it go at that. Later on I had the satisfaction of introducing the loop as part of the regular course of instruction for cadets in the R. F. C., and I want to say right here that Camp Borden has turned out some of the best fliers that have ever gone to France.

“In May, 1917, I and seventeen other Canadian fliers left for England on the Megantic, where we were to qualify for service in France....

“Within a few weeks after our arrival in England all of us had won our ‘wings’—the insignia worn on the left breast by every pilot on the western front.

“We were all sent to a place in France known as the Pool Pilots’ Mess. Here men gather from all the training squadrons in Canada and England and await assignments to the particular squadron of which they are to become members.”

He was soon “called” to a squadron stationed about eighteen miles back of the Ypres Line. There were eighteen pilots. The routine was two flights a day, each of two hours’ duration. He presently found that his squadron “was some hot squadron,” the fliers being assigned to special-duty work, “such as shooting up trenches at a height of fifty feet from the ground.”

CAPTURED BY THE HUN

Pat holds August 17, 1917, as a day he will “not easily forget.” He has fairly good reason for thinking the day a fixity in his memory, for, as he says:

“I killed two Huns in a double-seated machine in the morning, another in the evening, and then I was captured myself. I may have[Pg 258] spent more eventful days in my life, but I can’t recall any just now.”

Considering the fact that he had been shot down from a height of 8,000 feet the miracle is that he became “a prisoner of war.” His fellows of the squadron who had seen the fight took it as a matter of fact that he had been killed outright. One realizes that a chap who could come through that sort of juggle with death was quite equal to his later adventures.

Convalescent, after some time spent in a hospital, O’Brien was sent to the officers’ prison camp at Courtrai, preparatory to transfer to a prison in the interior of Germany. He remained there nearly three weeks, to which he devotes an interesting chapter. He had many fellow prisoners, and, of course, one frequent topic of conversation was “what were the chances of escape?” There were many ingenious plans but O’Brien did not remain to attempt to carry out any of them. September 9th he and six other officers were marked off for transfer into Germany, and later were marched to the train that was to convey them. They were objects of derision to the crowd gathered at the station. There were twelve coaches, eleven of them containing troops going home on leave, the twelfth, fourth class, filthy, being reserved for the prisoners, eight of them under four guards.

He proposed to the other officers that if the eight of them would at a given signal jump on the four guards and overpower them, they could, when the train slowed down on approaching a village, leap to the ground and take to flight. But the others turned the plan down on the ground that if they did get free they would be recaptured speedily. O’Brien therefore resolved to make a try on his own account by a leap from a window when the train was in motion. After long self-debate, as they were getting nearer and nearer to their destination he successfully put his resolution into effect.

MAKING HIS ESCAPE

Then began one of the most remarkable series of perils, hardships, struggles and curious adventures that fell to the lot of any individual in the course of the war. With the aid of a map, which he had stolen from a guard’s room at Courtrai, he set out with the distant Holland frontier as his objective. It is a narrative that loses by condensation, for there is hardly an adventure or experience that has not novel interest as O’Brien relates it. To avoid detection and capture he had to secrete himself by day, all his travel being by night. His guide was the Pole Star. “But for it I wouldn’t be here to-day.”

About the ninth night he crossed into Luxemburg, but though the principality was officially neutral it offered no safer haven than Belgium would. Discovery would have been followed by the same consequences as capture in Germany proper. In the nine nights he had traveled perhaps seventy-five miles.

He was nine or ten days getting across Luxemburg, a task that could have been accomplished in two days of normal travel, but swollen feet and knees, aching body and a hunger-griping stomach together with the necessity of stealth to avoid discovery, German guards, workmen and others often having to be widely circled are not conducive to speed. About the eighteenth day after his leap from the train he entered Belgium, and some days later brought up at the Meuse between Namur and Huy, where it was at least half a mile wide. There he came nearest of all to giving up the struggle. But he must get across. There was nothing to do but swim.

There were adventures in Belgium, some amusing, some harrowing, all of them perilous to an English officer escaped from captivity. When, after narrow escapes not a few he reached the Holland frontier, one of the greatest of his herculean tasks presented itself. He had to pass the triple barbed-wire barrier with its electrically charged nine-foot-high fence. With hands and sticks he resolutely set to work to dig under the deadly barrier—hard work and most dangerous. He was forced to stop from time to time to escape detection. At last, on November 19, 1917, the hole was finished. He writhed through and into Holland territory.

A few more difficulties to surmount, then on board train for Rotterdam, a run to London, a presentation to the King, some banquet pleasures in London and, crowning all, home again, “in the little town of Momence, Illinois, on the Kankakee River.”

Eddie Rickenbacker, Who Won Popularity as an Auto Racer, Snatched Lasting Glory from the Void.

The spirit of adventure had won for Eddie Rickenbacker a wide popularity long before he began plucking laurels from the skies. His performances as an automobile racer had made him the idol of lovers of that perilous sport and taught him the cool judgment and generalship in dealing with velocities which served him to such good purpose when he exchanged automobiles for aeroplanes. When America entered the war Rickenbacker was in England on automobile business, but hastened back to America with the intention of organizing a flying squadron of motor drivers for service in France. His plan was not possible at the time from the government point of view, and Rickenbacker accepted the position of chauffeur to General Pershing and sailed with that officer. It was not long after, however, that the loftier ambition found its channel and at Villeneuve, March 4, 1918, he became a member of Squadron 94, the so-called “Hat-in-the-Ring” squadron of which Major Lufbery was the commander. Lufbery was then America’s top ace, his service of more than three years in the French Air Service and with the Lafayette Escadrille having netted him seventeen Huns, omitting those not officially recorded. A little over two months later, May 19, 1918, Major Lufbery was killed by a leap from his flaming machine. The title of American Ace of Aces passed from Lufbery to Lieutenant Paul Baer, who, with a record of nine victories, had not gotten over his repugnance to shooting down an enemy aviator. Two days later Baer was shot down and captured. Lieutenant Frank Baylies succeeded to the title. He was killed June 12th with 13 victories to his credit. Then David Putnam, with 12 victories, took the lead. He was shot down in flames. Rickenbacker, who in the period between March and July had accounted for seven enemy machines, next was ace of aces for a brief time, but Frank Luke took the title from him in a single day’s stunning exploit, as told in the special story of that amazing young man. In due course, however, the Rickenbacker record grew becomingly and in addition to attaining the highest score on downs he conspicuously distinguished himself in the service as Squadron Commander. Some of his eulogists do not hesitate to give him preëminence as a commander because of the judgment he exercised in protecting himself and guarding the safety of less competent pilots.

Not a few aviators have written books descriptive of their experiences and there is quite a library of these high adventure stories; but it is probable that the uncommonly voluminous book Rickenbacker has contributed to the long list is one of the most valuable because of the great variety of interesting matter it comprises. Indeed Fighting the Flying Circus has historic importance as well as storied interest and is not by any means a glorification of its author. That fact makes it rather difficult to take from the book the material wanted for a personal sketch without including attractive matter that would speedily exceed our limits of space—for example, the complete narrative of the exploit with “Rumpler Number 16”; or the story of Douglas Campbell, America’s first ace; or the story of Jimmy Meissner, who piloted his machine with the canvas gone; and others.

CHAGRIN A SAVING GRACE

Before Rickenbacker scored a victory he suffered many disappointments, and felt the chagrin of seeing his expected quarry escape. There was serviceable virtue in it all nevertheless, as he admits in his account of downing his first Hun. He says:

“My preparation for combat fighting in the air was a gradual one. As I look back upon it now, it seems that I had the rare good fortune to experience almost every variety of danger that can beset the war pilot before I ever fired a shot at an enemy from an aeroplane.

“This good fortune is rare, it appears to me. Many a better man than myself has leaped into his stride and begun accumulating victories from his very first flight over the lines. It was a brilliant start for him and his successes brought him instant renown. But he had been living on the cream at the start and was unused to the skim-milk of aviation. One day the cream gave out and the first dose of skim-milk terminated his career.

“So despite the weeks and weeks of disappointment that attended my early fighting career, I appreciated even then the enormous benefit that I would reap later from these experiences. I can now most solemnly affirm that had I won my first victory during my first trips over the lines I believe I would[Pg 261] never have survived a dozen combats. Every disappointment that came to me brought with it an enduring lesson that repaid me eventually tenfold. If any one of my antagonists had been through the same school of disappointments that had so annoyed me it is probable that he, instead of me, would now be telling his friends back home about his series of victories over the enemy.”

It was April 29, 1918, that he had his turn of luck. He was in the air with Captain James Norman Hall following a course towards Pont-à-Mousson, as that experienced flyer led the way.

“Whether or not he knew all along that a German craft was in that region I could not tell. But when he began to change his direction and curve up into the sun I followed close behind him knowing that there was a good reason for this maneuver. I looked earnestly about me in every direction.

“Yes! There was a scout coming towards us from north of Pont-à-Mousson. It was at about our altitude. I knew it was a Hun the moment I saw it, for it had the familiar lines of their new Pfalz. Moreover, my confidence in James Norman Hall was such that I knew he couldn’t make a mistake. And he was still climbing into the sun, carefully keeping his position between its glare and the oncoming fighting plane. I clung as closely to Hall as I could. The Hun was steadily approaching us, unconscious of his danger, for we were full in the sun.

“With the first downward dive of Jimmy’s machine I was by his side. We had at least a thousand feet advantage over the enemy and we were two to one numerically. He might outdive our machines, for the Pfalz is a famous diver, while our faster climbing Nieuports had a droll little habit of shedding their fabric when plunged too furiously through the air. The Boche hadn’t a chance to outfly us. His only salvation would be in a dive towards his own lines.

“These thoughts passed through my mind in a flash and I instantly determined upon my tactics. While Hall went in for his attack I would keep my altitude and get a position the other side of the Pfalz, to cut off his retreat.

“No sooner had I altered my line of flight than the German pilot saw me leave the sun’s rays. Hall was already half-way to him when he stuck up his nose and began furiously climbing to the upper ceiling. I let him pass me and found myself on the other side just as Hall began firing. I doubt if the Boche had seen Hall’s Nieuport at all.

“Surprised by discovering this new antagonist, Hall, ahead of him, the Pfalz immediately abandoned all idea of a battle and banking around to the right started for home, just as I had expected him to do. In a trice I was on his tail. Down, down we sped with throttles both full open. Hall was coming on somewhere in my rear. The Boche had no heart for evolutions or maneuvers. He was running like a scared rabbit, as I had run from Campbell. I was gaining upon him every instant and had my sights trained dead upon his seat before I fired my first shot.

WITHOUT A RETURN SHOT

“At 150 yards I pressed my triggers. The tracer bullets cut a streak of living fire into the rear of the Pfalz tail. Raising the nose of my aeroplane slightly the fiery streak lifted itself like a stream of water pouring from a garden hose. Gradually it settled into the pilot’s seat. The swerving of the Pfalz course indicated that its rudder no longer was held by a directing hand. At 2,000 feet above the enemy’s lines I pulled up my headlong dive and watched the enemy machine continuing on its course. Curving slightly to the left the Pfalz circled a little to the south and the next minute crashed onto the ground just at the edge of the woods a mile inside their own lines. I had brought down my first enemy aeroplane and had not been subjected to a single shot!”

So capital a beginning had an appropriate sequence of performances and honors to match, among them, as early as May 15th, the Croix de Guerre. That day, too, Lieutenant Jimmy Meissner, the merriest, most reckless member of the squadron, took to his breast the Croix de Guerre, and much ado the two had to keep their elation within the limits of decorum, which stunt flying for the entertainment of the French officials did not diminish. Rickenbacker says:

“Suddenly Jimmy Meissner stood by my side, grinning his most winsome grin. ‘Rick,’ said he, ‘I feel that “Hate-the-Hun” feeling[Pg 262] creeping over me. What do you say to going up and getting a Boche?’

“‘Right!’ I called back over my shoulder. ‘Come along. We’ll take a real ride.’

“As luck would have it, we had hardly left the ground when we saw a Hun two-seater, probably a Rumpler machine, very high above us. The Rumpler has the highest ceiling of any of the German two-seaters and frequently they sail along above us at an elevation quite impossible for the Nieuport to reach. It is maddening to attain one’s maximum height and see the enemy still sailing imperturbably along, taking his photographs and scorning even to fire an occasional burst at one. We climbed at our fastest to overtake this fellow before he could reach his safety spot. Evidently he got ‘wind up,’ for after a few minutes climbing he sheered off towards Germany and disappeared from our view. We completed our patrol of the lines without finding another enemy in the sky and returned to our field, where we landed with the mutual vow that on the morrow we would begin seriously our palm collecting shows until we might dangle our new Croix de Guerre well down below our knees.

“‘Have a heart, Rick!’ he said softly, ‘think of the cost of the red tape!’”

As combats in the air, however varied in the performance, have a great similarity in narrative, it were bootless to follow the captain through the many experiences that earned his distinction. The earlier incidents were when the squadron was confined to the use of Nieuports because more satisfactory machines were not available. He dwells with some pride of possession on the later equipment of Spads. Soon after getting them he had become Flight Commander, and relates an unusual experience to illustrate the extent to which the Flight Leader of a squadron feels himself morally bound to go.

“Six of my Spads were following me in a morning’s patrol over the enemy’s lines in the vicinity of Rheims. We were well along towards the front when we discovered a number of aeroplanes far above us and somewhat behind our side of the lines. While we made a circle or two, all the while steadily climbing for higher altitude, we observed the darting machines above us exchanging shots at one another. Suddenly the fracas developed into a regular free-for-all.

“Reaching a slightly higher altitude at a distance of a mile or two to the east of the mêlée, I collected my formation and headed about for the attack. Just then I noticed that one side had evidently been victorious. Seven aeroplanes remained together in compact formation. The others had streaked it away, each man for himself.

SEVEN TO SEVEN

“As we drew nearer we saw that the seven conquerors were in fact enemy machines. There was no doubt about it. They were Fokkers. Their opponents, whether American, French or British, had been scattered and had fled. The Fokkers had undoubtedly seen our approach and had very wisely decided to keep their formation together rather than separate to pursue their former antagonists. They were climbing to keep my squad ever a little below them, while they decided upon their next move.

“We were seven and they were seven. It was a lovely morning with clear visibility, and all my pilots, I knew, were keen for a fight. I looked over the skies and discovered no reason why we shouldn’t take them on at any terms they might require. Accordingly I set our course a little steeper and continued straight on towards them.

“The Spad is a better climber than the Fokker. Evidently the Boche pilots opposite us knew this fact. Suddenly the last four in their formation left their line of flight and began to draw away in the direction of Soissons—still climbing. The three Fokkers in front continued towards us for another minute or two. When we were separated by less than a quarter of a mile the three Heinies decided that they had done enough for their country, and putting down their noses, they began a steep dive for their lines.

“To follow them was so obvious a thing to do that I began at once to speculate upon what this maneuver meant to them. The four rear Fokkers were well away by now, but the moment we began to dive after the three ahead of us they would doubtless be prompt to turn and select a choice position behind our[Pg 263] tails. Very well! We would bank upon this expectation of theirs and make our plans accordingly!

“We were at about 17,000 feet altitude. The lines were almost directly under us. Following the three retreating Fokkers at our original level, we soon saw them disappear well back into Germany. Now for the wily four that were probably still climbing for altitude!

“Arriving over Fismes I altered our course and pointed it towards Soissons, and as we flew we gained an additional thousand feet. Exactly upon the scheduled time we perceived approaching us the four Fokkers who were now satisfied that they had us at a disadvantage and might either attack or escape, as they desired. They were, however, at precisely the same altitude at which we were now flying.

“Wigwagging my wings as a signal for the attack, I sheered slightly to the north of them to cut off their retreat. They either did not see my maneuver or else they thought we were friendly aeroplanes, for they came on dead ahead like a flock of silly geese. At two hundred yards I began firing.

“Not until we were within fifty yards of each other did the Huns show any signs of breaking. I had singled out the flight leader and had him nicely within my sights, when he suddenly piqued downwards, the rest of his formation immediately following him. At the same instant one of my guns—the one having a double feed—hopelessly jammed. And after a burst of twenty shots or so from the other gun it likewise failed me! There was no time to pull away for repairs!

“Both my guns were useless. For an instant I considered the advisability of withdrawing while I tried to free the jam. But the opportunity was too good to lose. The pilots behind me would be thrown into some confusion when I signaled them to carry on without me. And moreover the enemy pilots would quickly discover my trouble and would realize that the flight leader was out of the fight. I made up my mind to go through with the fracas without guns and trust to luck to see the finish. The next instant we were ahead of the quartet and were engaged in a furious dog-fight.

“Every man was for himself. The Huns were excellent pilots and seemed to be experienced fighters. Time and again I darted into a good position behind or below a tempting target, with the sole result of compelling the Fritz to alter his course and get out of his position of supposed danger. If he had known I was unarmed he would have had me at his mercy. As it was I would no sooner get into a favorable position behind him than he would double about and the next moment I found myself compelled to look sharp to my own safety.

“In this manner the whole revolving circus went tumbling across the heavens—always dropping lower and steadily traveling deeper into the German lines. Two of my pilots had abandoned the scrap and turned homewards. Engines or guns had failed them. When at last we had fought down to 3,000 feet and were some four miles behind their lines, I observed two flights of enemy machines coming up from the rear to their rescue. We had none of us secured a single victory—but neither had the Huns. Personally I began to feel a great longing for home. I dashed out ahead of the foremost Spad and frantically wigwagging him to attention I turned my little ’bus towards our lines. With a feeling of great relief I saw that all four were following me and that the enemy reënforcements were not in any position to dispute our progress.

“On the way homeward I struggled with my jammed guns—but to no result. Despite every precaution these weapons will fail a pilot when most needed. I had gone through with a nerve-racking scrap, piquing upon deadly opponents with a harmless machine. My whole safety had depended upon their not knowing it.”

AS SQUADRON COMMANDER

The night of September 24th Rickenbacker received the order promoting him to the command of the 94 Squadron, his pride and pleasure being greater than he could find words to express. He had been with the squadron since the first day at the front; but three of the original members were left—Reed Chambers, Thorn Taylor, and himself. He took counsel for himself that night and formulated rules for himself. He would never ask a pilot to go on a mission he would not undertake himself. He would lead by example as well as by precept. He would accompany the new pilots to watch their errors and give them more confidence by showing their dangers. He would work harder than ever he did as a pilot. Full of enthusiasm to carry out his purpose he started out the next morning on a lone, voluntary patrol and within half an hour returned to the aerodrome with two more victories to his credit—“the first double-header I had so far won.” He discovered a pair of L. V. G. two-seater machines, above which was a formation of five Fokkers. From a position well up in the sun Rickenbacker drove down at the nearest Fokker and sent it crashing with the first volley. The Huns were so surprised by the suddenness of the attack and the drop of one of them that their only thought was of escape. Before they recovered their wits and renewed their formation, one of the L. V. G. two-seaters was shot down in flames, and quite content with his morning’s work Rickenbacker put on gas and piqued for home.

October 30th Rickenbacker won his 25th and 26th victories, the last that were added to his score. But on November 9th Major Kirby, who had just joined the 94 Squadron for a little air fighting experience, was one of a party of four who flew off for a try at the retreating Huns, and shot down an enemy plane across the Meuse. This was the last plane shot down in the war. Rather exultingly, pardonably so, Captain Rickenbacker says:

“Our old 94 Squadron had won the first American victory over enemy aeroplanes when Alan Winslow and Douglas Campbell had dropped two biplane machines on the Toul aerodrome. 94 Squadron had been first to fly over the lines and had completed more hours flying at the front than any other American organization. It had won more victories than any other—and now, for the last word, it had the credit of bringing down the last enemy aeroplane of the war!”

“After having visited some sixty-odd British flying squadrons at the front, many of the French escadrilles and all of the American squadrons, I was given the pleasure of entering Germany, after the armistice was signed, as the guest of the Hat-in-the-Ring Squadron, of which Captain Rickenbacker was and is the commanding officer. In no other organization in France did I find so great a loyalty to a leader, such true squadron fraternalism, such subordination of the individual to the organization. In other words, the commander of 94 Squadron had perfected the finest flying corps I have ever seen.”

A Court-Martial in Which Vengeful Malice Mocked Justice and the Rules of Naval War In the Lust of Blood

Brutal blundering was a German characteristic throughout the war. Indeed it has been declared more than once that her abandonment of moral restraints and obligations, imposed by international codes and the laws of humanity, is responsible for Germany’s overthrow. Without entering into that question it is admitted that two of the German blunders—both of which were subjects of diplomatic efforts at prevention—which incensed the world and roused the United States from its dream of neutrality were the murders of Edith Cavell and Capt. Charles Fryatt. We have told the story of Miss Cavell; that of Capt. Fryatt is no less a testimony to German turpitude if less revolting to sentiment in that the first was a nurse, a ministering angel to the sick and wounded (German soldiers included) whose offense was due to her compassion for the helpless and hunted.

Capt. Fryatt, an Englishman, was master of the Great Eastern Railway Company’s steamer Brussels, a merchant vessel. June 23, 1916, the Brussels was captured by German warships. (The circumstances of the capture are presented in the report of First Officer Hartwell, which follows later.) The steamer, its officers and the crew were taken to Zeebrugge and searched. On Capt. Fryatt was found a gold watch that had been presented to him by the Mayor of Harwich at a public demonstration in his honor, the inscription commemorating an incident of March 20, 1915, when Capt. Fryatt attempted to ram the German submarine U-33, to avoid capture or destruction. After a brief imprisonment at Zeebrugge he was transferred to Bruges, where, July 27th, he was tried by court-martial, was condemned to be shot as a franc-tireur and was executed that same afternoon.

June 28th the English Government first learned of the Germans’ intention to try Fryatt by court-martial, and immediately undertook to arrange for his proper defense. Sir Edward Grey telegraphed to the American Ambassador at Berlin requesting his efforts in this behalf and that he would convey to the German authorities the contention of the English Government that “in committing the act impugned Capt. Fryatt acted legitimately and in self-defense for the purpose of evading capture or destruction, and that the act of a merchant ship in steering for an enemy submarine and forcing her to dive is essentially defensive and precisely on the same footing as the use by a defensively armed vessel of her defensive armament in order to resist capture, which both the United States and His Majesty’s Government hold to be the exercise of an undoubted right.”

In spite of possible influence and efforts, Ambassador Gerard’s intervention was unavailing, and on July 27th, the very day of the execution, he telegraphed to London that his efforts to secure a postponement of the trial were futile because the German Government insisted that “the German submarine witnesses could not be further detained.” In other words, the men whose business it was to conduct a sea campaign of lawlessness and “frightfulness” could not be delayed from their destructive work by anything so paltry as a consideration of justice and honor in the trial of a prisoner.

GERMAN EXULTATION

Neither Sir Edward Grey and Ambassador Gerard, nor others interested in securing a fair trial for the accused, imagined that his trial and execution would be the hurried work of an afternoon, and there was consternation when a Reuter despatch of July 28th gave the first news of the shooting and made public the German communiqué as follows:

“The accused was condemned to death because although he was not a member of a combatant force, he made an attempt on the afternoon of March 20, 1915, to ram the German submarine U-33 near the Maas Lighthouse. The accused as well as the first officer and the chief engineer of the steamer received at the time from the British Admiralty a gold watch as a reward of his brave conduct on that occasion, and his action was mentioned with praise in the House of Commons.

“On the occasion in question, disregarding the U-boat’s signal to stop and show his national flag, he turned at a critical moment at high speed on the submarine, which escaped the steamer by a few meters only by immediately diving. He confessed that in so doing he had acted in accordance with instructions from the Admiralty.

“One of the many nefarious franc-tireur proceedings of the British Merchant Marine against our war vessels has thus found a belated but merited expiation.”

This report aroused intense indignation in England, and hardly less resentful feelings in neutral countries, especially in the United States, whose Ambassador in Berlin was the intermediary of the English protest against the basis of the court-martial. At once the British Foreign Office addressed a note to Ambassador Page in London in which was the statement:

“His Majesty’s Government finds it difficult to believe that a master of a merchant ship who, after German submarines adopted the practice of sinking merchant vessels without warning and without regard to the lives of passengers or crew, took the only means at his disposal of saving not only the vessel but the lives of all on board can have been deliberately shot in cold blood for that action”; and the request was made that urgent inquiry be made by the United States Embassy at Berlin.

The inquiry made it only too clear that the report was authoritative. Premier Asquith, in the House of Commons, July 31st, said: “I deeply regret that it appears to be true that Captain Fryatt has been murdered by the Germans.” That he was not speaking extravagantly in using the word “murdered” is evidenced by the fact that naval and military experts, including those of Holland, strongly suspected of more than a casual sympathy with the Germans, concurred in denouncing the execution as a “judicial murder,” and insisting that Fryatt was entitled to be regarded as a prisoner of war. In the subsequent review of the case it was demonstrated conclusively by many citations from German legal and military naval sources in declarations and regulations made in 1914 and earlier that “Capt. Fryatt was well within his rights in attempting to ram a hostile marine.” Had he sent the submarine with her crew to the bottom by shell fire in avoiding capture or destruction, he would have been held as a prisoner of war if subsequently captured, but because he used the only weapon at his command to escape the enemy vessel itself, “he was condemned to execution by a court of German naval officers as a franc-tireur.”

August 15th, in the House of Commons, Premier Asquith declared: “This country will not tolerate a resumption of diplomatic relations with Germany after the war until reparation is made for the murder of Capt. Fryatt.”

THE FIRST OFFICER’S REPORT

The first officer of the Brussels, referred to in the German communiqué quoted, was William Hartwell. He was interned in Holland and from there sent the following report to Mr. C. Busk, one of the officials of the Great Eastern Railway. It gives all the particulars known of the arrest and execution of Capt. Fryatt:

“Sir: This being the first opportunity since the capture of the Brussels in 1916, I will endeavor to give you details of the capture and happenings up to July 27th, this being the date of Capt. Fryatt’s death. I beg to report that on June 22d the steamship Brussels left Rotterdam with cargo and passengers for Tilbury, stopping at the Hook of Holland. She left the Hook Quay at 11 p. m. on that day, the weather being very fine and clear. All saloon and cabin lights were extinguished before passing the North Pier Light. Directly after passing it, a very bright light was shown from the beach, about four miles north of the Hook, followed by a bright star, such as a rocket would throw. After a lapse of ten minutes this was repeated. On both occasions Capt. Fryatt and myself remarked upon it, as we had never seen similar lights on any previous occasions.[Pg 267] After passing the Maas Light Vessel, all Board of Trade Regulation Lights were darkened. Five miles west of the light vessel a very small craft, probably a submarine not submerged, commenced Morseing the letter ‘S’ at intervals. No other lights were visible.

“After running for one hour and thirty minutes, an extra sharp lookout was kept for a steamer that was going in the same direction and without lights, the port and starboard lights of the Brussels being put on for the time being. At 12:46 craft without lights were seen at a point on the starboard bow, traveling at a great speed in the opposite direction. These proved to be German destroyers of the latest type, five in all. Two came alongside on the starboard side, and one on the port side, the other two following close behind. During the time the destroyers were approaching their commanders were shouting orders to stop, asking the name of the ship, and threatening to fire on us. No firing occurred, however. As soon as Capt. Fryatt was assured that the destroyers were German, he gave orders for all passengers to be ready to take to the boats if necessary, and quietly instructed me to destroy all dispatches and official papers. His instructions were carried out, and as the last bag was destroyed German seamen, armed with pistols and bombs, appeared on the starboard alleyway. I passed through the saloon to the deck and met more German seamen, who were driving all the crew they could find over the rail on to the destroyers. I was ordered over the rail, but refused to go, and then met the officer who came on board to take charge. He requested me to show him to the bridge, which I did. He greeted Capt. Fryatt, and congratulated himself over the great prize.

GERMAN INTELLIGENCE

“Satisfied that all was well, the destroyers left and made for Zeebrugge. The course was given for the Schouwenbank light vessel, and the order was given for full speed ahead, but no reply came from the engine room, as the engineers had been driven over the side with the majority of the crew. This greatly excited the German officer, who drew his revolver and threatened to shoot Capt. Fryatt and myself if we failed to assist him, and to blow up the ship if the orders to the engine room were not complied with at once. It was some minutes before the German officer could be convinced that the engineers and most of the crew were on the destroyers. He then ordered his own men to the engine room, and instead of going full speed ahead, the engines were put on full speed astern. This also angered the officer, and matters became very unpleasant on the bridge. I was ordered to go to the engine room to inform the Germans of their mistake. By this time the steam was greatly falling back, owing to the stokers being away, and the order was given that all on board, except Capt. Fryatt and myself, should maintain steam till the ship arrived at Zeebrugge. On reaching the Schouwenbank light vessel the German flag was hoisted, and directly after the Flushing mail boat for Tilbury passed quite close.

© Underwood and Underwood.

Naval Honors for Captain Fryatt

The body received from Belgium is being escorted in lengthy procession through the streets of Dover.

“Capt. Fryatt was assured that soon after her arrival at Tilbury the capture of the Brussels would be reported. The Brussels was met and escorted by several airplanes to Zeebrugge, where the destroyers were already moored. On arrival at Zeebrugge the Brussels was moored alongside the Mole. The engineers and crew all returned. The crew were sent to their quarters and kept under armed guard. The officers and engineers were placed under a guard in the smokeroom, and Captain the same in his room. The Belgian refugees were closely searched, and landed at Zeebrugge. After a stay of about five hours the Brussels left and proceeded to Bruges under her own steam.

© Underwood and Underwood.

Memorial Service to Captain Fryatt at St. Paul’s, London

“For some reason Capt. Fryatt was kept in his cabin, and I was sent to the bridge, not to assist or officiate in any way, but simply to stand under guard and to be questioned at intervals by the Germans if they could get the right answers. During the passage from Zeebrugge to Bruges both sides of the canal were thronged in places, and both the soldiers and the marine Landsturm were greatly excited. On reaching Bruges the crew were taken off and sent to a waiting shed. Only Capt. Fryatt and myself, with many German officers, remained on board. After we had been questioned at lunch Capt. Fryatt and I were photographed, and we then joined the crew in the shed, being afterward taken to a building in the town. All of us, including stewardesses and twenty-five Russians, were packed in, leaving scarcely standing room.

SHIPPED LIKE CATTLE

“After some hours, following a request to the prison commandant, the stewardesses were allowed separate quarters in the top of the building. Otherwise they were treated in the same way as male prisoners until they were separated to go to a different camp. At 3 a. m., on June 25th, orders came for all to be ready for the train to Germany, the stewardesses joining us at the station. At 5 a. m. we all left, closely packed, in cattle trucks, and on arrival at Ghent we were escorted to very dirty and unhealthful quarters underground. At 5 a. m. on the following day we left Ghent for Germany, via Cologne, where the stewardesses and Russians were separated to go to other camps. After being exhibited at Berlin, as at Hanover and other stations, the rest went to Ruhleben, where they arrived at 5 p. m., June 28th. Two days later Capt. Fryatt and I received orders to the effect that we were to be prepared to leave the camp at 8 p. m. for Bruges on ship’s business.

“We arrived at Bruges at 7 a. m., on July 2d, after visiting Ostend by mistake on the part[Pg 269] of the escort. We reported to the port commandant at 9 a. m., and were taken from him to the town prison and put in cells. From then onward we were treated as criminals. We were occasionally visited by German officials and questioned as to the submarine and other subjects, on which Capt. Fryatt made a clear and open statement to the Germans, with nothing condemning to himself. From the time of being placed in the prison at Bruges to July 15th I saw Capt. Fryatt and spoke to him on several occasions, after which I never spoke to him until one hour before he was shot.

“I will endeavor to make you understand the so-called tribunal or trial. On July 24th Capt. Fryatt and myself were questioned and cross-questioned in the prison, and, so far as I could learn, Capt. Fryatt never added to or departed from his opening statement. It was then that we were first informed of the tribunal that was to follow. On July 26th we were told to be ready for the tribunal, which was to take place at Bruges Town Hall on the 27th at 11 a. m. On July 27th at 9 a. m. the door of the cell was opened, and an escort was waiting. To my surprise, four of the crew were in the waiting cell. Each man was escorted to the Town Hall, Capt. Fryatt and I being the last to go, and placed under a strong guard until the trial began.

“At 12 noon Capt. Fryatt was called into his place before the so-called bench, and repeated his previous statement. I followed and answered questions that appeared to be ridiculous, not appearing either to defend or condemn Capt. Fryatt. At the same time an officer in uniform appeared, and, approaching Capt. Fryatt and myself, informed us in broken English that he was for the defense. The Naval Commandant of the port conducted the trial, and also acted as interpreter. At 4 p. m. the Naval Commandant informed us that all was over so far, and that the decision, resting with the naval officers, would be made known to us in our cells.

SIXTEEN BULLETS

“After being again placed in the cells, the chief warder of the prison came to me at 5:30 p. m. and told me I was to go and stop with Capt. Fryatt, as that was his last night. I then met Capt. Fryatt, who was very much distressed, not so much because of the verdict, but of the unfair and cowardly manner in which everything was done. He told me himself that he was to be shot on the next morning, and after having a talk for about an hour—it was then 6:30 p. m.—the prison official took his watch from his pocket and said that in a short time the escort would be there, and Capt. Fryatt would be shot at 7 p. m. The last twenty-five minutes I spent with him were appalling. At 6:55 p. m. I wished him good-bye, and promised I would deliver his last messages, which were many, and returned to my cell.

“Punctually at 7 p. m., a very short distance from the prison walls, a band commenced to play, and poor Fryatt was no more. Late the same evening an official came to my cell and described to me, in the best way he could, how Fryatt died. He was shot by sixteen rifles, the bullets of which penetrated through his heart, carrying with them the clothes he was wearing through the body and out at the back.

“Sir, I was and am still proud of Capt. Fryatt’s manly conduct right up to the last, and I may add that there was not a German present at the trial who could face him.”

The Germans made a long official statement in an impotent attempt to justify this vengeful murder.

How Capt. Paul Koenig of the Deutschland Turned Incredible Fiction Into Practical Reality

There was a very positive thrill throughout the world when the startling report was published that a German submarine had crossed the Atlantic and, on July 10, 1915, entered an American port. It had not been believed possible at that time for a submarine to make so great and perilous a voyage, and the first news of the unique achievement was somewhat sceptically received. But when there was no remaining doubt that the Deutschland, dodging and evading British hostile craft, had actually voyaged from Bremen to Baltimore, Capt. Paul Koenig, commander of the U-boat, was prominently head-lined in the press.

This historic event was interesting not only as something new and wonderful in marine annals, but there was a graver interest in the demonstration of the fact that distance from the base of operations was no sure protection from submarine warfare. No little alarm was manifested in the United States for a time. But this subsided, and the romantic side of the exploit appealed to the dullest imagination.

When Capt. Koenig returned to Germany he wrote his experiences in book form, parts of which have been translated into several languages. No more absorbing story than Koenig’s own could easily be written, and from an American version of it the following excerpts were made.

After leaving port the Deutschland traveled submerged until they were far out in the North Sea on their westerly course. It was about two o’clock in the morning. Capt. Koenig thought it safe to rise to the surface and gave orders for the emptying of the tanks. But as the boat approached the surface it began to toss and plunge in a way that gave warning of a storm above. The nearer the surface the wilder the antics of the boat, which occasionally indulged in regular leaps. The emptying of the tanks went calmly on nevertheless, Capt. Koenig being of the order of men not to be moved from a purpose by so inconsiderable a thing as an ill-mannered sea. They got to the surface without too much disorder. Then says Capt. Koenig:

“I was just about to give orders to put on the oil-engines—when—what was that? That dark stripe over there—wasn’t that a smoke-flag? Donnerwetter! It’s a destroyer!

“With one leap I am back in the turret and have closed the tower-hatch. ‘Alarm—submerge quickly—depth rudder—go to twenty meters.’

“The whole boat trembles and shakes under the increased pressure and makes a couple of real jumps; it literally reels in the wild sea. Will it not go down pretty soon? With a sudden jerk the Deutschland darts below the surface and now, bending her bow lower and lower, rapidly descends into the depths. The light of the just dawning day disappears from the turret windows, the manometer shows in quick succession, two, three, six, ten meters. But the bow drops lower and lower.

“The boat had bent forward in an angle of 36 degrees and stood on its head, as it were. Its bow rested on the sea’s bottom and its stern was violently swinging back and forth. The manometer showed a depth of about fifteen meters. I quickly realized our situation. It was something less than comfortable.

“We were revealing our position by a peculiar buoy, and we expected momentarily to hear the crashing blow of a shell in the stern. But everything remained quiet. The screws could no longer betray us. Also it probably was still too dark up there, and the destroyer perhaps had enough of its own troubles in the wild sea.

“There must have been a combination of several causes. Aside from the fact that only in the most extraordinary and rare cases is it[Pg 271] possible for a big boat to submerge against a high sea, it is conceivable that in the haste which was forced upon us by the destroyer the tanks were not completely emptied of air.

“But, above all, I recall that my first thought was the cargo. ‘Is the cargo safely stored? Can it lose its equilibrium?’ Curious as it may sound in retrospect, that is what I instinctively thought of. A ‘big steamer’ captain doesn’t easily get rid of his second nature, even on a U-boat.

A WASH, A FEAST AND A NIGHT’S REST ON THE OCEAN BOTTOM

“We have submerged and placed ourselves on the bottom. We are in no hurry. Why should we not for once give ourselves a little rest? Our resting-place was rather deep, but therefore safer and calmer.

“This night on the bottom of the sea was truly a recreation for us all. One could for once take a good wash and go to bed in peace, without fearing to be frightened at the next moment with a ‘Hey-a’ in the speaking-tube.

“But before resting we had a regular banquet. Both the phonographs were playing and the glasses were raised, filled with French champagne.

“Our good Stücke, who was our steward, kitchen boy, and maid of all work, at the same time served us in such a dignified manner as if he were still a steward in the dining-room of the Kronprinzessin Cecile, as if he had never been in French captivity for nearly a whole year, in order to develop his ability in our company at the bottom of the sea.

“Again we come to the surface the next morning. The pump is working with a hissing noise as we climb upward. On the twenty-meter depth the boat loses its stability.

“First, we can see it on the manometer, then it is noticed on the depth rudder, which becomes more difficult to handle. And as the boat at times moves in unexpected jumps we realize there must be a considerable sea above.

RISING TO THE SURFACE

“I now carefully rise to the periscope depth and proceed for a time in this position and am looking around. Nothing can be seen except a stormy army of white wave-crests. This weather suits me exactly, as we need not be on our guard so very closely.

“I decided therefore to rise to the surface. But before this is done the boat must be placed across the wind, as the long heavy hull would not otherwise be able to climb out of the water.

“At slow speed, we place the Deutschland right across the seas. The boat rolls fearfully. It feels just as if the soul would shake out of its body, and now it obeys the deep rudder and its nose rises slowly out of the water.

“When we are completely out of the water the ship makes the alarming motions of a pendulum all around the compass. Then comes the unpleasant moment when we have to turn the ship slowly into its course.

“Protected by the thick conning tower windows, which the heavy seas are continually washing over and streaming down, with arms and legs ready to withstand the sharp twistings of our craft, I keep watch on all sides.”

They were getting out of the North Sea into the Atlantic currents, in an increasing storm. The boat plunged and tossed sickeningly and the navigation was hard work. Finally they were free of the turbulent sea and rode into the ocean proper and its less angry motion.

OUT INTO THE BROAD ATLANTIC

“The reception of the Atlantic can not be called cordial. We undoubtedly had got accustomed to much during the past days, but I decide as far as possible to save my men’s nerves so that they will be able to withstand that which was about to come. I therefore selected the southerly course, hoping to get better weather, but I was not entirely successful. The seas continually sweep over the boat from stem to stern, because it is too heavy to be lifted out of them as other steamers are.

“It certainly was not pleasant in the conning-tower, but it was a thousand times better than below deck, where the crew, because of the unbroken rolling of the ship, began to suffer on account of seasickness in the close and stagnant air. Many an old sailor offered himself on the altar of Neptune for the first time.

“On the third day the storm begins to[Pg 272] abate, the sea becomes calmer, and we can open all the hatches in order to get air and dry out. All who were off duty came up to stretch themselves on the deck in the sunshine and pull themselves together again after their confinement and suffering during the rough weather, which certainly was necessary. With pale faces, worn out by sleepless nights, they came out of the hatches, but hardly had they reached the fresh air and had felt the beautiful sea-wind blowing on their cheeks refreshingly before the dear cigars or pipes were produced.”

Following days were fair for a time and the boat rode the surface. It was the daily practice on fair days to put the Deutschland through her diving exercises so important to efficiency in a sudden emergency. A very considerable part of the westward trip was made on the surface, though storms and the prospect of unfriendly encounters often enough sent them below.

A DUMMY SMOKE-STACK

“During the calm days we had prepared a clever disguise which would change us from a submarine to a regular steamer. Out of sail-cloth we had made a smoke-stack which, with steel rings, we could fasten to the periscope and raise it up. To cover the conning-tower we had a dressing of sail-cloth so that it would look like the deck-house on a small freight-steamer. In this way we made ready for any possibility and directed our course through the beautiful sunshine until one evening at half-past seven a steamer appeared ahead of us on the port bow. We knew at once that he would pass close if we continued on our course. We changed it a little, swinging off a few points in order to test our disguise.

“The smoke-stack is hoisted on the periscope and bellies out in the wind. In order to make it more real we build a fire in the lower opening, using cotton soaked in oil for fuel. At the same moment the conning-tower disappears under the cover, which trembles in the breeze. The oily cotton loses its honor and only stinks. There is no smoke coming from it. Every one is standing blowing with cheeks puffed out until our ‘tradelose,’ a foxy Berliner, fetches an air-pump and gets a big flame in our fake stoke-hole. With one hurrah his trick is rewarded; above the smoke-stack’s upper opening we could see a slender stream of smoke only to diminish to nothing in the next minute. We roar with laughter and again make ready to proceed with our dummy smoke-stack minus smoke.

“When our boatswain, Humke, comes with a jar filled with tar, the air-pump again starts to work, and at last big clouds of smoke pour out of the funnel. The effect was great. The steamer, which was at a distance, suddenly changes its course and comes straight for us.

“This we had never expected. I therefore order the mast taken down and make ready for diving. Our canvas covering disappears from the conning-tower and with a deep bow the smoke-stack comes down.

“As soon as the steamer sees this change in our make-up, fear fills his heart. He changes his course and flees, throwing thick, black clouds of smoke which we admire not without a feeling of jealousy.

“Without hindrance we again hoist our funnel. The masts are raised. And while our steamer speeds away in her wild flight we laugh so the tears run down our cheeks.

“Our fine disguise which was intended to let us pass unnoticed had instead attracted the steamer’s attention to us. He undoubtedly took us for a wreck or a ship in distress and came toward us with the kind intentions to save us. When he could suddenly see himself the target for the devilish cunning of a foxy U-boat he fled precipitately.

“What did the people of the steamer think when they recovered from their scare? Maybe they felt proud to have been able to escape from the heartless ‘pirate.’ And we, who would have been so proud if our disguise had worked a little better, were preparing to sink below the surface to avoid him.

“Well, we thought, ‘better luck next time,’ and we improved our invention with the result that two days later, while throwing off solid clouds of smoke, we passed by a steamer which we met without causing the least suspicion.”

And so without mishap or misadventure the Deutschland fared to her destination, tarried some while in the American port where officers and men were discreetly entertained, the United States being a neutral country then. Suddenly, mysteriously she put to sea again. Many were the rumors of disaster to her—for the return trip was long and beset with peril from paroling and watchful destroyers eager to catch sight of her; but in due course and in triumphant contradiction of reports of her destruction the first authentic news was of her safe return to the home harbor.

The Dramatic Sinking of Three British Cruisers by U-boat in the Early Days of the War

Early on the morning of September 22, 1914, three 12,000-ton armored cruisers of the British Navy—the Aboukir, the Cressy, and the Hogue—were torpedoed in the North Sea and sunk by a German submarine, with a loss of 1,433 men. The news startled the whole world. It was as if three Goliaths, imposing, formidable, on parade in panoply, challenging the stoutest, had succumbed impotently to the assault of the diminutive David—for it was a solitary submarine that sank the naval giants in less than an hour. So adroit, rapid and precise had been the maneuvers of the submarine that the officers of the attacked warships were of the belief that there were several of the invisible devil-boats, and that the guns of the Cressy sank one of them. Nor did they become the wiser until Captain Lieutenant Otto Weddigen, commander of U-9, made report of his exploit on his return to Wilhelmshaven, whence he had set forth for the enterprise. Conditions, be it said, were entirely favorable to him, for the sea was calm, and the weather clear. The three cruisers, unsuspicious, were steaming along in close formation, patrolling the silent sea, and they gave him a famous victory—the destruction of the first warships by the U-boat.

There follow three separate accounts of the event as related by three different sources, the first being that of an officer of the Cressy, published in the Manchester Guardian.

EYE-WITNESS ACCOUNT BY AN OFFICER OF THE Cressy

“I was awakened about 6:15 by the increase of our speed, and, thinking it was nothing more than just a slight spurt to take up our day patrol position, I lay quiet. However, about ten minutes later I felt the engines going full speed astern, so, guessing at once that something out of the ordinary was happening, I sat up, and, opening my scuttle, looked out. Conceive the jump I gave when I saw the Aboukir, about half a mile away, heeling over to port so that the starboard copper plates were plainly visible glistening red in the sun. I could also see considerable commotion on board her, and one of her starboard sea boats was lowered half-way, but seemed to have stuck there.

“While I watched she seemed to heel over still more, so I leapt from my bunk, and, running into the next cabin, I found —— jumping out of his bunk, and together we ran up on to the quarterdeck. From there we could see that in the short time we had taken getting up on deck she turned over much more, and was down by the head, and while we watched we could see the sun shining on pink, naked men walking down her sides inch by inch as she heeled over, some standing, others sitting down and sliding into the water, which was soon dotted with heads. All this time we were hard at it lowering boats.

“Both the sea-boats had gone, manned by nucleus crews, and Lieutenant ——’s voice could be heard as he directed the hands working the main derrick, which was hoisting up the launch—a boat capable of holding two or three hundred men. Other men under the direction of another lieutenant were busily throwing overboard every bit of wood that they could find for the swimming men to clutch—an act which materially aided in our escape afterward. I then ran along to the sick-bay and ordered the stewards to get hot blankets and coffee ready, and went below to get into some clothes.

“THE SHIP LIFTED, QUIVERING ALL OVER”

“I had only been in my cabin about a minute when there was a terrific crash, and the ship lifted up, quivering all over. A second or two later another and duller crash, and a great cloud of smoke, followed by a torrent of water, came pouring in through my open scuttle. The noise for a second or two was deafening; everything seemed to be breaking, and somewhere or other I could hear dishes and glass being crashed to pieces on the deck, and, in addition, all the lights in the ship went out. I ran out of my cabin and along to the first ladder, the aft deck being in darkness and full of smoke; conceive my dismay when I found that it had fallen down.”

However, he found another ladder, farther on. On the deck was worse confusion than before. There was nothing left to do but make escape in the shortest possible order. He climbed down into the sea.

“The first piece I clung to had sharp edges which hurt, so I left that and swam to a table floating near. Then another man came up and climbed on to my table, so I left it to him and struck out for a large spar which I caught sight of some little distance off. This afforded a very comfortable hold, and I lay over it, kicking gently with my legs to keep them warm, and I looked about me. Both the Aboukir and the Hogue had gone, and the Cressy was in front of me, about a quarter of a mile away. Then she began to fire her guns, and, hearing the shells going over my head, I looked behind, and there, about 300 yards off, I saw the periscope of a submarine.

“For some time the firing continued, several of the shells bursting most unpleasantly near, and then the men on the Cressy started cheering, and I heard after that they were unanimously of the opinion—true or not, I don’t know—that they had sunk one of the submarines. However, the firing continued for some time, till there was a sudden explosion, and a great column of smoke, black as ink, flew up as high as the Cressy’s funnels, while she heeled over about ten degrees. Nothing much further seemed to happen, however, and, looking about me, I caught sight of —— hanging on to a large fender of twigs, which kept revolving and ducking him under, so, calling to him, I started to push my spar toward him till I got near enough, and then, giving it a vigorous shove, pushed it alongside him and swam after it.

“The two of us clung to that for some[Pg 277] time, till the sound of an explosion made us look round to see the spray and smoke disappearing, and as we watched another torpedo struck, and the Cressy heeled right over and almost entirely disappeared in a very short space of time, the last few feet of ‘island,’ however, taking a very long time to go. Soon after this I realized the wonderful fact that as the Hogue sank she must have righted herself, for the picket boat and steam pinnace had in some miraculous way floated clear quite undamaged, though half full of water, and were now about one hundred yards from us. Turning the spar so that it lay pointing toward the boats, and slipping the fingers of my left hand into a notch that seemed made for the purpose, I turned on my side and started to tow the spar toward the boats.

“These were soon reached, and we found that some four or five people had already boarded them. With their help we scrambled on board, having been in the water about an hour and a quarter. After this there is not much to tell. The Flora hove in sight when we had been in the boat about an hour, followed by the Titan, and in an hour more we naked, shivering mortals were all taken off to the former.”

THE OFFICIAL REPORT

In the official report to the Admiralty made by Commander Bertram W. L. Nicholson we find the expression of the belief that there were several submarines, and that one was sunk. The report is quoted:

“The Aboukir was struck at about 6.25 a.m. on the starboard beam. The Hogue and Cressy closed and took up a position, the Hogue ahead of the Aboukir, and the Cressy about 400 yards on her port beam. As soon as it was seen that the Aboukir was in danger of sinking all the boats were sent away from the Cressy, and a picket boat was hoisted out without steam up. When cutters full of the Aboukir’s men were returning to the Cressy, the Hogue was struck, apparently under the aft 9.2 magazine, as a very heavy explosion took place immediately. Almost directly after the Hogue was hit we observed a periscope on our port bow about 300 yards off.

“Fire was immediately opened and the engines were put full speed ahead with the intention of running her down. Our gunner, Mr. Dougherty, positively asserts that he hit the periscope and that the submarine sank. An officer who was standing alongside the gunner thinks that the shell struck only floating timber, of which there was much about, but it was evidently the impression of the men on deck, who cheered and clapped heartily, that the submarine had been hit. This particular submarine did not fire a torpedo at the Cressy.

“Captain Johnson then maneuvered the ship so as to render assistance to the crews of the Hogue and Aboukir. About five minutes later another periscope was seen on our starboard quarter and fire was opened. The track of the torpedo she fired at a range of 500 to 600 yards was plainly visible and it struck us on the starboard side just before the after-bridge.

“The ship listed about 10 degrees to the starboard and remained steady. The time was 7.15 a.m. All the watertight doors, deadlights and scuttles had been securely closed before the torpedo struck the ship. All the mess stools and table shores, and all available timber below and on deck had been previously got up and thrown over side for the saving of life.

“A second torpedo fired by the same submarine missed and passed about 10 feet astern. About a quarter of an hour after the first torpedo had hit a third torpedo fired from a submarine just before the starboard beam hit us under the No. 5 boiler room. The time was 7.30 a.m. The ship then began to heel rapidly, and finally turned keel up, remaining so for about twenty minutes before she finally sank, at 7.55 a.m.

“A large number of men were saved by casting adrift on Pattern 3 target. The steam pinnace floated off her clutches, but filled and sank.

“The second torpedo which struck the Cressy passed over the sinking hull of the Aboukir, narrowly missing it. It is possible that the same submarine fired all three torpedoes at the Cressy.

“The conduct of the crew was excellent throughout. I have already remarked on the bravery displayed by Captain Phillips, master of the trawler L. T. Coriander, and his crew, who picked up 156 officers and men.”

CAPT. WEDDIGEN’S OWN STORY

And here is the story of the daring enterprise, one of the most extraordinary of naval exploits, told by Captain Lieutenant Otto Weddigen, Commander of U-9. He was 32 years old at the time, and for the five years preceding had been attached to the submarine flotilla. He was married but twenty-four hours to his boyhood sweetheart, a Miss Prete of Hamburg, before he set out on the adventure that offered more than an even chance of making the bride a widow. Besides himself there were twenty-five men in the U-9 and they were a picked crew.

Weddigen’s own story of the cruise, first published in the United States by the New York World, was in part as follows:

“I set out from a North Sea port on one of the arms of the Kiel Canal and set my course in a southwesterly direction. The name of the port I cannot state officially, but it has been guessed at; nor am I permitted to say definitely just when we started, but it was not many days before the morning of Sept. 22, when I fell in with my quarry.

“When I started from home the fact was kept quiet and a heavy sea helped to keep the secret, but when the action began the sun was bright and the water smooth.

“I had sighted several ships during my passage, but they were not what I was seeking. English torpedo boats came within, my reach, but I felt there was bigger game further on, so on I went. I traveled on the surface except when we sighted vessels, and then I submerged, not even showing my periscope, except when it was necessary to take bearings. It was ten minutes after 6 on the morning of Tuesday when I caught sight of one of the big cruisers of the enemy.

“I was then eighteen sea miles northwest of the Hook of Holland. I had then traveled considerably more than 200 miles from my base. My boat was one of an old type, but she had been built on honor, and she was behaving beautifully. I had been going ahead partly submerged, with about five feet of my periscope showing. Almost immediately I caught sight of the first cruiser and two others. I submerged completely and laid my course so as to bring up in the center of the trio, which held a sort of triangular formation. I could see their gray-black sides riding high over the water.

“When I first sighted them they were near enough for torpedo work, but I wanted to make my aim sure, so I went down and in on them. I had taken the position of the three ships before submerging, and I succeeded in getting another flash through my periscope before I began action. I soon reached what I regarded as a good shooting point.”

[The officer was not permitted to give this distance, but it is understood to have been considerably less than a mile, although the German torpedoes had an effective range of four miles.]

THE SHOT WENT STRAIGHT AND TRUE

“Then I loosed one of my torpedoes at the middle ship. I was then about twelve feet under water, and got the shot off in good shape, my men handling the boat as if she had been a skiff. I climbed to the surface to get a sight through my tube of the effect, and discovered that the shot had gone straight and true, striking the ship, which I later learned was the Aboukir, under one of her magazines, which in exploding helped the torpedo’s work of destruction.

“There was a fountain of water, a burst of smoke, a flash of fires and part of the cruiser rose in the air. Then I heard a roar and felt reverberations sent through the water by the detonation. She had been broken apart, and sank in a few minutes. The Aboukir had been stricken in a vital spot and by an unseen force; that made the blow all the greater.

“Her crew were brave, and even with death staring them in the face kept to their posts, ready to handle their useless guns, for I submerged at once. But I had stayed on top long enough to see the other cruisers, which I learned were the Cressy and the Hogue, turn and steam full speed to their dying sister, whose plight they could not understand, unless it had been due to an accident.

“The ships came on a mission of inquiry and rescue, for many of the Aboukir’s crew were now in the water, the order having been given, ‘Each man for himself.’

“But soon the other two English cruisers learned what had brought about the destruction so suddenly.

“As I reached my torpedo depth I sent a second charge at the nearest of the oncoming vessels, which was the Hogue. The English were playing my game, for I had scarcely to move out of my position, which was a great aid, since it helped to keep me from being detected.

“The attack on the Hogue went true. But this time I did not have the advantageous aid of having the torpedo detonate under the magazine, so for twenty minutes the Hogue lay wounded and helpless on the surface before she heaved, half turned over and sank.

“But this time, the third cruiser knew that the enemy was upon her and she sought as best she could to defend herself. She loosed her torpedo defense batteries on boats, starboard and port, and stood her ground as if more anxious to help the many sailors who were in the water than to save herself. In common with the method of defending herself against a submarine attack, she steamed in a zigzag course, and this made it necessary for me to hold my torpedoes until I could lay a true course for them, which also made it necessary for me to get nearer to the Cressy. I had come to the surface for a view, and saw how wildly the fire was being sent from the ship. Small wonder that was when they did not know where to shoot, although one shot went unpleasantly near us.

THE CRESSY TURNS TURTLE

“When I got within suitable range, I sent away my third attack. This time I sent a second torpedo after the first to make the strike doubly certain. My crew were aiming like sharpshooters and both torpedoes went to their bullseye. My luck was with me again, for the enemy was made useless and at once began sinking by her head. Then she careened far over, but all the while her men stayed at the guns looking for their invisible foe. They were brave and true to their country’s sea traditions. Then she eventually suffered a boiler explosion and completely turned turtle. With her keel uppermost, she floated until the air got out from under her and then she sank with a loud sound, as if from a creature in pain.

“The whole affair had taken less than one hour from the time of shooting off the first torpedo until the Cressy went to the bottom. Not one of the three had been able to use any of its big guns. I knew the wireless of the three cruisers had been calling for aid. I was still quite able to defend myself, but I knew that news of the disaster would call many English submarines and torpedo-boat destroyers, so, having done my appointed work, I set my course for home.

“My surmise was right, for before I got very far some British cruisers and destroyers were on the spot, and the destroyers took up the chase. I kept under water most of the way, but managed to get off a wireless to the German fleet that I was heading homeward and being pursued. I hoped to entice the enemy, by allowing them now and then a glimpse of me, into the zone in which they might be exposed to capture or destruction by German warships; but, although their destroyers saw me plainly at dusk on the 22nd, and made a final effort to stop me, they abandoned the attempt, as it was taking them too far from safety, and needlessly exposing them to attack from our fleet and submarines.

“How much they feared our submarines and how wide was the agitation caused by my good little U-9 is shown by the English reports that a whole flotilla of German submarines had attacked the cruisers, and that this flotilla had approached under cover of the flag of Holland.

“I reached the home port on the afternoon of the 23rd and on the 24th went to Wilhelmshaven to find the news of my effort had become public. My wife, dry-eyed when I went away, met me with tears. Then I learned that my little vessel and her brave crew had won the plaudits of the Kaiser, who had conferred upon my co-workers the Iron Cross of the second class and upon me the Iron Cross of the first and second classes.”

A Nurse’s Graphic Personal Narrative of the Wanton Destruction of the Sussex

On a clear day with the sea a perfect mirror reflecting the blue sky, the French Channel Steamer Sussex left Folkstone harbor on its fateful trip for Dieppe, March 24, 1916. Among the passengers was an English nurse attached to a French hospital, who was returning to duty from a month’s leave of absence in England. The Sussex was a small but finely built, stout passenger boat, unarmed. She left harbor at 1.30 in the afternoon, and in a short time encountered in the Channel thousands of floating bags of a jettisoned cargo. A group of passengers, standing by the rail, began to discuss the possibilities of torpedoing. A British officer, who had braved dangers at Undros, laughed, saying that it was not submarine weather, the Germans being afraid to show themselves in a calm sea. Soon the others of the group strolled off leaving the nurse alone watching a Belgian officer exercising his dog on the deck. Presently they went away, and the nurse turned to look out at the sea and watch for a periscope.

What followed the nurse tells, as her personal experience, in an article published in Blackwood’s Magazine:

“It grew cold, and I was beginning to think of going back to my sheltered chair to roll myself up in my rug, when in a moment the whole earth and heaven seemed to explode in one head-splitting roar. In the thousandth part of a second my mind told me ‘Torpedoed—forward—on my right’—and then the sensation of falling, with my limbs spread-eagle, through space.

“When I came to myself again I was groping amid a tangle of broken wires with an agonizing pain in my back and the fiercest headache I had ever known. My hair was down, and plastered to my chin with blood that seemed to be coming from my mouth. [Pg 282]There was more blood on my coat-sleeve. I was conscious that I was bleeding freely internally with every movement. My first definite thought was, ‘If only it is all a ghastly nightmare!’ But I remembered. My next thought was a passionately strong desire not to die by drowning—then. I crawled free of the wires that were coiled all about me and stood up.

DEAFENED AND UNABLE TO SPEAK

“In one unsteady glance I took in a number of things. Near me a horrible piece of something, and a dead woman. (Afterwards I wondered why I was so sure she was dead and never stooped to make sure.) Below me, on the quarterdeck and second-class promenade deck, numbers of people moving to and fro, many with lifebelts on. I never heard a sound from them, but it did not strike me as odd then. Now I know I was deafened. So I had been blown up on to the top deck, to the other end of the ship. I swayed to and fro, and looked for a stairway, but could find none, and began to be aware that I had only a few moments of consciousness left me.

“Something must be done if I was not to drown. I forced my will to concentrate on it, and came to the side, where I found three men looking down on a lowered boat. I also saw a lifebelt on the ground. I picked it up and, not having the strength to put it on, I tried to ask the men to tie it for me. Then I found I could not speak. So I held it up, and one, an American, understood, and hastily tied it. Then I saw one of them catch hold of a loose davit rope and swarm down it to the boat. There was my one chance, I decided. My arms were all right, but would my legs work? I took hold, and made a mighty effort to cross my knees round the rope: I succeeded. Then I slid down till I was just above the water.

INTO ONE LIFEBOAT

“I waited till the roll of the ship brought me near enough to the boat to catch, with my right hand, another rope that I saw hanging plumb above it, while I hung on with my left. It came within reach: I caught it, let go with my left, and lowered myself into the boat. Then I wanted to sink down in her bottom and forget everything, but I dared not, for men were pouring into her. I saw a man’s knee hooked over the side of the boat where I sat. I could not see his body, but it was in the water, between us and the side of the Sussex. As in a dream I held on to his knee with my left hand with all the grip I had left, and with my right held on to the seat on which I sat. I could do nothing to help him in, but on the other hand, so long as I remained conscious, his knee-hold should not be allowed to slip. No one took any notice of either of us. Gradually I began to hear again. The men in the boat were shouting that there was no more room, that the boat was full. One last man tumbled in and then the people in the boat pushed away, and men on the Sussex helped. Others continually threw gratings and planks overboard.

ALMOST SWAMPED

“Our boat was dangerously overcrowded. Already she was half swamped. I wondered when she would upset. A man on either side seized gratings and towed them alongside. One made a herculean effort and pulled the man whose knee I had been holding into our boat, and nearly upset her. No one said a word. He was an elderly man, and his fat face was white and piteous. His hands never ceased trembling. He had had a terrible fright. Some one suggested getting out the oars, and others said it was impossible, as they were underneath us all. However, it was managed, and several men stood up and changed places. Again we nearly upset. I joined with the others in commanding these wild folk to sit still. Three oars were produced. One was given to a young and sickly looking Frenchman opposite to me. He did not know how to use it. Everyone shouted to get away from the steamer. The water had now reached my knees, and I began to notice how cold it was.

“I saw three other women in the boat. They sat together, white and silent, in the stern, nor ever moved. They were French women. Some one noticed that the water was increasing and there was a wild hullabaloo of alarm. A Belgian—the man who had pulled into the boat the man whose knee I held—called for hats with which to bale, setting the [Pg 284]example with his. But we were so tightly packed that no one could get at the water, whereupon the Belgian climbed overboard on to one of the gratings I have already mentioned, and a young Belgian soldier followed his example on the other side. They held on to our gunwale with their fingers. This somewhat relieved the congestion, enabling us to bail.

“Sometimes the people in the boat bailed furiously, sometimes they stopped and stared stupidly about them. Some shouted ‘Ramez! Ramez!’ Others equally excited yelled ‘Mais non! Videz l’eau! Videz l’eau!’ I apologized to my immediate neighbors for that I had no hat to lend, and for that I was too hurt to stoop, but I put my hands on the erring oar the young Frenchman was feebly moving across my knees, and did my best to guide his efforts. As often as not he put it flat on the water, and sometimes he merely desisted altogether, and gazed vacantly in front of him. The Belgian asked for a handkerchief, and groping in the water at the bottom of the boat, found a hole and caulked it as best he could. Thereafter the bailers kept the water from increasing, but did little to reduce it.

THE SUSSEX STILL AFLOAT

“Looking around I saw our steamer riding quite happily on the water with her bows clean gone. Afterwards I learned that the torpedo had cut off her fore-part, to within an inch or two of where I had been standing, and that it had sunk. I saw another full boat being rowed away from the ship, and an overturned one with two people sitting on her keel. I saw a man seated on a grating. All were convinced that help would be forthcoming speedily. And still the Sussex floated. Four times I remarked—by way of a ballon d’essai—that it seemed as if she were not going to sink, and always there was an outcry to row, and get away from her. The Belgian and the Belgian soldier evidently thought as I did. They proposed that we should return before we were swamped ourselves. Once again a hysterical outburst. One man jumped to his feet and shrieked, and asked us if it were to hell that we intended returning? I began to be afraid that he and those who thought as he did would throw us others into the sea, but common-sense told me that to remain all night in that overcrowded half-swamped boat would be to court death.

“We saw at last that the other boat was returning. This was our chance. Example is a wonderful thing in dealing with mob hysteria. Tentatively the two Belgians and I proposed that we should go as close to the steamer as prudence permitted, and ask the Captain if she were going to sink. If his answer were favorable, those who desired should go on board, and any who liked could go off again in the boat. If his answer were unfavorable, we would stand off again. The maniac still shrieked his protests, but the rest of the boat was with us. But no one seemed to know how to turn the boat. As soon as we told one to backwater, the other two did likewise. It seemed hopeless. Finally, we let the other two oars pull, and I myself tried to induce my vis-à-vis to ‘ramez au sens contraire,’ which was the nearest approach I could get to ‘backwater’ in French. He was too dazed to understand, so I simply set my teeth and pulled against him, and in about fifteen minutes the boat gradually came round in a wide circle. How I longed to be whole again so that I could take his oar right away and cox that mad boat! With my injured back and inside I could only just compass what I did. The pain kept me from collapsing, and the exertion from freezing.

“It looked as though we were to be swamped, after all, within ten yards of the Sussex’s gaping bows, for our crew, in their excitement, had forgotten to bail for some minutes. As we floated in under her sides I made a final appeal, which a young Belgian put into more forcible French, for everybody to keep calm and not upset the boat at the last.

BACK TO THE SHIP

“The women now spoke for the first time—and it was to appeal to the excited boat’s load to let me be taken off first, since I was injured. I found I could not stand, so sat in the middle of the seat trying to trim the boat while the men scrambled out. I was left alone at last; and the water that came over the gunwale poured over my legs to my waist, some of it soaking through my thick great-coat and chilling me to the bone. The boat was floating away. Some one shouted to me to get up. [Pg 286]I got on to my hands and knees on the seat and tried to crawl along the side, but the change of position nearly caused me to faint with pain. Then the Belgian managed to get hold of the boat and hold her, and some sailors leaned out of the hatchway in the Sussex’s side and grasped me by the arms and pulled me up and in as though I had been a sack. There were many far worse hurt than I, and they left me propped against a wall. The Belgian again came to the rescue, and half dragged me to the top of the second saloon stairway. I got down by levering myself on my hands on the rails, while he supported me under the arms.

“Once in the saloon, he and the young Belgian soldier took off my loosely fixed lifebelt and laid me on a couch. One forced a glass of whisky down my throat, which burned and gave me back renewed consciousness, while the other ran for brandy. I was terribly cold, and the good Belgian took off my boots and puttees and stockings and chafed my feet till one was warm. The other had no sensation for over twelve hours, and five days later, when it was radiographed, proved to be sprained and fractured.

“WHAT IS IT TO DIE?”

“After that, long hours of waiting. A woman shrieked incessantly up on deck. A man with a wounded head came and sat patiently in a corner. A girl, complaining of a pain in her chest, came down the stairs and lay down on a corner couch. She never moved nor spoke again. By midnight she was dead. None of us guessed, none of us knew. She died bravely and silently, quite alone. Another woman showed signs of approaching hysteria. A young Belgian officer, who had been attending her, suddenly ceased his gallantry, and standing sternly before her, said brusquely, ‘After all, if the very worst comes, you can only die. What is it to die?’ The words acted on her like a douche of cold water. She became herself again and never murmured. We others, perhaps, benefited too. It is nerve-racking work lying helpless in a damaged vessel, wondering whether the rescue ship or another enemy submarine will appear first on the scene. And no ship came. At intervals the Belgian boy soldiers came down to reassure us: ‘The wireless had been repaired. Forty vessels were searching for us. There was a light to starboard. We were drifting towards Boulogne. The “Phares” of the coast were in sight.’ But no ship came. The light to starboard faded. Another appeared, and faded too.

“Then we heard the regular boom of a cannon or a rocket. We all knew that something must have blocked our wireless, but no one said so. The Belgian came down to sleep, fixing his lifebelt first. With him came a good French-woman, who was very kind to me and washed the blood from my face and rinsed out my bleeding mouth. She was very hungry, and all I could do to help her was to hold her jewels while she went on deck to search for her hand baggage, and, later, to give her some soaked food out of my pocket. There was no food left anywhere. She said some brave words, too, about death coming to all, only coming once, and being soon over. How much one person’s courage can help others at such a time! Then she tied on a lifebelt and went to sleep beside me. The ship was rolling now, and the seas slapped noisily against her somewhere, jarring her all through her frame. But the Captain had said she would not sink for eighteen hours, and we all believed his word implicitly. Still, it was an ugly noise, and seemed to betoken her helplessness.

“WOMEN AND CHILDREN FIRST”

“And then at last the news of rescue! A French fishing-boat was coming! ‘Women and children first,’ the young Belgians cried. My Belgian succorer roused himself and fetched my stockings and boots. My right boot would not go on. My puttees he could not manage, and so he tied them round me. He was always cool and practical and matter-of-fact. ‘I have been in the Belgian Congo,’ he explained, ‘and in shipwrecks before. I know what to do, and I am not alarmed. You can trust entirely to me.’ And I did. There was a great bump as the fishing-boat came alongside, and a rush upstairs. Once more I was left alone, for my Belgian friend had gone up to see about getting me helped on board. He came back to say that the crush was so great that he would wait till it [Pg 288]was over and then take me. It seemed a long time, but he came back at last, only to find he could not lift me. Then he went away calling for an ‘homme de bonne volonté’ to help. A young Chinese responded, and together they staggered up the heaving stairway with me. When they reached the ship’s rail it was to hear that the boat had gone! A British torpedo boat was coming, we were told, and so the fisherman had gone off with as many as he could safely carry to Boulogne. With her went my hope of reaching my own hospital in France. I had been sure the destroyer would take her load to England.

“Perhaps half an hour passed, and then the destroyer came. This time one of the French sailors helped him to carry me, and I was placed on my back, across the ship’s rail, and when the roll brought her near enough to the destroyer, British sailors grasped my arms and pulled me over. For one sickening second my legs dangled between the two ships, but the sailors hauled me in just before the impact came. They carried me to the chart-house and laid me on the couch, and before long the Belgian joined me, and, utterly exhausted, lay down on the floor. From that moment I felt entirely safe. We English are brought up to feel complete confidence in the British Navy, much as they teach us to trust in Providence. And the Navy deserves our confidence.

“It took a long time to transfer all the remaining passengers of the Sussex to H. M. S. ——, for the sea was becoming restless, and the two ships hammered and thumped at each other’s sides to such purpose that the rescuing destroyer had to go into dock for repairs when her labors were over and she had landed us all safely.”

An Italian Lieutenant Braves Batteries and Mines and Harbor Wire in Novel Feat

The Germans and Austrians, knowing that it would be folly for them to risk a naval battle, kept their navies cooped up in harbors and rivers to the intense disgust of real jackies, who thought it quite unbearable at times that while the Allied fleets were roaming about the high seas begging for a fight the enemy was shutting itself up. English and French and American sailors were so hungry for action that they occasionally took unwarranted chances for the sake of getting at the enemy, and more than once these daring leaders were at the same time rebuked for their recklessness and rewarded for their bravery and success.

One of the most brilliant and picturesque of naval adventures fell to the credit of a young Italian who achieved a plan that startled the Austrians and Germans as much as it delighted the Allies.

Lieut. Rizzo is really a Sicilian, strong and handsome. He is about thirty years old—young enough to go through with a daring feat, old enough to be careful. Moreover, there were two boats that carried out the plan, and the second boat was in charge of an elderly man, sixty-two years old, a fire-eater though.

The task was quite definite. In the Trieste harbor the Austrians kept several ships which were a source of great annoyance to the Italians. Especially hateful was the Wien and her sister the Monarch. She carried four 10-inch guns and six 6-inch guns and a crew of 441 officers and men. A month before the Wien had shelled the lower Piave line and Italian motor boats had tried their torpedoes on her. She had a narrow escape. Then she was stored at Trieste. She must have felt herself quite safe with her sister ship, the Monarch, drawing by her. They were behind steel nets fringed with mines. And all day and all night sentries watched.

Lieutenant’s Rizzo’s plans were all laid. But he had no false hopes. He knew of the Austrian combination of nets and mines, and knew that at best he had great chances of being blown to pieces. He started out, though, with his two little launches—really not much bigger than a ship’s lifeboat.

DUMBFOUNDED AUSTRIANS

There was a mist on the sea. It was after midnight when they crawled in toward the coast. It was in December, and they could just about make out the white city of Trieste. The two boats stole toward the harbor. One of the chief problems of Rizzo was that of the huge steel cables attached to the nets; but these he managed to cut apart, thus making his way through the nets.

They came nearer the harbor. It is an affair of three piers, making two channels. These channels were closed by booms and nets. Mines were linked to the piers by great steel hawsers.

The boats crept up to one pier. Rizzo climbed up and took in the situation. There was nobody on that pier. On the middle pier, however, was a guardroom. There could be heard the sound of voices in that room, and the barking of dogs, and the monotonous rhythms of the sentry patrolling the middle pier.

“Lieutenant Rizzo,” Percival Gibbon wrote to the New York Times, “crawled back and gave the order, and up came his men, crawling on hands and knees over the concrete, passing the big cutting tools from hand to hand, groping their way to the cables. Some set to work to cut them, while two men scanned the shore lest some sentry should arrive.

“The cutting instruments worked well. It needed only a strong jar to set the mines[Pg 290] exploding, but the cutters bit their way through strand after strand of twisted steel wire. Three cables above water were severed without trouble; the five more below; water were grappled and hauled to the surface and cut in their turn.

“At last the weight of the net and its attachments tore the last steel strands asunder, the whole great cobweb of metal and explosives sank, and the harbor lay open. Rizzo and his men crawled back to their boats. Those boats moved like shadows toward the Wien and the Monarch. Rizzo backed off till he had his enemy at 150 yards. His second boat, commanded by the old petty officer, shifted out upon his beam to get a line which cleared the Wien’s bow and commanded the Monarch’s great steel flank. Rizzo raised his arm in that gloom and saw the answering gesture of the petty officer. It was the moment to let her go. In a second four long steel devils were sliding through the water for the enemy.

“A roar, a blast of flame, a waterspout raining on them, and a second roar as the Monarch, too, got her dose.

“A searchlight flashed out from the Wien and sawed at the darkness. A scream sounded over the water: Wer da? (Who’s there?) There were shoutings and stampings along the deck of the wounded ship, searchlights waking along the shore and on the breakwaters, and anti-aircraft guns arousing everywhere. No one in Trieste knew whence the attack had come, whether from air or sea. The sky was festooned with bursting shell, while the ships in the harbor opened with their guns toward the harbor mouth, shelling the mist of the Adriatic at random. By the light of that furious illumination the Italian sailors saw the great bulk of the Wien listing toward them.

“By this time they were making for the harbor mouth. Shells spouted all around them, but not one hit them, and both boats saw before they left that last subsidence, that wriggle and resignation with which a great ship goes under.”

An Engagement When Pistol and Cutlass Revived Memories of Notable Sea Fights of the Past

A friendly ghost of the old grappling and boarding days at sea came to give the color of romance to one of the encounters between British and German ships in the latter part of April, 1917. And a touch of ancient charm is given to the experience in the fact that the hero of the engagement was a gallant and daring midshipman, for the honors really fall to Midshipman Donald Gyles of the good ship Broke—a British destroyer.

Appropriately too, it was a dark and calm night. The Broke (whose commander was Capt. Evans, the antarctic explorer) and the sister destroyer Swift were steaming leisurely in a westerly course on patrol duty. Suddenly, quite in the vein of romance, the lookout of the Swift made out, not more than six hundred yards distant, a flotilla of six German destroyers. Here was a how-d’ye-do, when you consider that a distance of a thousand yards is a disagreeably close range in these days of far-speaking guns. The Germans were the first to fire, but the Swift lost no time in making reply and also put on steam in an attempt to ram the foremost enemy destroyer. She failed of her purpose and ran beyond the enemy line, but turning about she sent a torpedo into one of the enemy ships and made a second dash at the leader, which again escaped a ramming and took to flight. The Swift gave chase.

The Broke was giving excellent account of herself meanwhile. She had torpedoed one of the enemy and then opened fire with every gun. The other enemy destroyers were frantically working for full speed. The Broke swung around and rammed one of them square abreast the after funnel, so that the two boats were locked. Then began the desperate hand-to-hand conflict reminiscent of ancient days. The Broke raked the enemy’s decks point blank with fire from big guns, maxims, rifle and pistol. Two other German destroyers came to the rescue and poured a furious fire on the Broke, killing twelve of the eighteen men of the gun crew.

A HAND-TO-HAND FIGHT ON DECK

It might have been that at such a disadvantage the Broke would fall speedy victim to superior numbers. But something more than numbers and preponderance of force enter into the audit of the militant; and the “something more” in this instance was the spirit and understanding of Midshipman Gyles. Although wounded in the eye he kept all the foremost guns in action, himself helping the sorely reduced crew to load. While he was occupied in this way Germans began swarming over the Broke’s forecastle from the rammed destroyer, and to escape the blinding flashes of the forecastle guns began pushing aft, roaring and shouting like a frenzied mob. A graphic account of what happened was published right after the event:

“The midshipman, amid the dead and wounded of his own gun-crews, and half blinded himself by blood, met the onset single-handed with an automatic revolver. He was grappled by a German, who tried to wrest the revolver away. Cutlasses and bayonets being among the British equipment in anticipation of such an event, the German was promptly bayoneted by Seaman Ingleson. The remainder of the invaders, except two who feigned death, were driven over the side, the two being taken prisoner.

“Two minutes after ramming, the Broke wrenched herself free from her sinking adversary and turned to ram the last of the three remaining German boats. She failed in this object but, in swinging around, succeeded in hitting the boat’s consort on the stem with a torpedo. Hotly engaged with the two fleeing destroyers, the Broke attempted to follow the [Pg 294]Swift in the direction she was last seen, but a shell struck the Broke’s boiler-room, disabling her main engines.”

Thus freed from pursuit the enemy ships made off swiftly and disappeared in the darkness. In spite of her disability the Broke made such headway as her crippled engines were capable of in quest of the Swift. Soon a burning German destroyer was sighted and immediately its crew saw the Broke they rushed to the rails shouting for mercy and begging to be saved. Disregarding the danger and unsuspicious of treachery the Broke steered slowly toward the burning ship. The German crew redoubled their plea, “Save, Save,” and then suddenly opened fire on the vessel coming to their rescue.

The Broke in her crippled condition was not able to maneuver for safety, but she had her guns and happily they served her. She silenced the German with four shots and then, the desert of baseness, torpedoed the German amidships.

The Swift had a somewhat different experience. She had, owing to impaired speed, abandoned the pursuit of the first destroyer, and began a search for other quarry. After a time she sighted a motionless destroyer from which came calls for help. She approached cautiously with guns ready for instant action and presently made out that it was the destroyer that the Broke had rammed. The Germans were shouting, “We surrender,” but the Swift was wary, suspecting treachery, and waited. In a little while the destroyer keeled and went down stem first, the crew jumping into the water.

The Swift switched on her searchlights and there being no enemy ship visible, lowered her boats and rescued the Germans swimming toward her. Then the Broke and the Swift reported to each other on the details of the engagement and those who remained of the two crews cheered each other well nigh as long a time as the thrilling engagement itself had lasted.

And let not be forgotten, when quiet heroisms are remembered, the conduct of Seaman William Rowles, helmsman of the Broke. Though hit four times by shell fragments he stuck to the wheel during the entire action and only betrayed the fact that he was wounded by fainting as he reported to his captain, “I’m going off now, Sir.”

One of a Crew That Was Saved Tells of the Thrilling Moments Just Before the Final Plunge

Many submarines, rammed or shot, were sent to the bottom with their crews, and for the most part the world has been left to imagine how the doomed men met their fate. There is always a desire, deeper than mere curiosity, to know how men behave in such circumstances; now and then the desire is gratified, and we have learned that brave men go down to death cooped in a submarine with the same resolute calm with which brave men meet death in any guise. That the spirit of man is a wondrous thing the war has given new proof in myriad ways.

A survivor tells the story of the crew of the Monge, a French submarine commanded by Lieutenant Morillot, rammed by an Austrian warship and sunk in the Adriatic, Dec. 29, 1915. It was more than a year after that date before any of the details became known. Then the letter of one of the crew released from an Austrian military prison was published, giving the thrilling particulars. After telling how the warship smashed into the submarine the letter continued:

“The water enters in torrents. The safety hatch is closed, but the Monge descends very swiftly; it reaches a depth of 200 feet, and the plates crack under the pressure of the water. We give ourselves up as forever lost. Our vessel is being crushed; we feel it flattening in upon us. No one says a word, but[Pg 296] everybody works. Orders are executed as in ordinary times; no panic, not a cry.

“We are facing the most certain and perhaps the most hideous death, yet our commander is superb in his coolness, and he has a crew that is worthy of him. The steel braces supporting the hull—bars as thick as my fist—are twisted like so many wires. The accumulators fall down on each other; the electric current is intensified, the fuses burn out, the acid decomposes—it is the second phase; after the crushing comes asphyxiation.

“‘Courage! Courage! We are rising!’ That is the cry of the second torpedo master, for to him belongs the most delicate and certain of all our remedies. In fact, we feel that we are rising, and in a minute or two we have gone from a depth of 200 feet to the surface. We are saved!

“Alas! A third ordeal! The Austrians have seen us and begin shelling us at short range. A single shell pierces our hull. The commandant orders for the third time: ‘To your posts for the dive!’ This time all is indeed ended; the motors no longer act, none of the machinery runs, and the water keeps pouring in. Everybody goes to his post without a murmur, and yet we all know that this time death awaits us—and what a death! The commandant changes his mind. Our vessel is lost; why sacrifice the crew? He lets his arms drop, and two big tears roll down his cheeks, tears of pride and of impotence.

“In a calm voice, however, he tells us to save ourselves. The impossible had been attempted; we could give up with a light heart.

“Before rising to the surface the commandant asks us to cry three times, ‘Vive la France!’ and to sing the ‘Marseillaise.’ Such were the last words and orders of the man who was and remained the commandant of the Monge, for he chose not to leave his beloved boat. As soon as we reached the deck we complied with his request and thrice shouted ‘Vive la France!’ and sang the refrain [Pg 297]of the ‘Marseillaise.’ When the water rose to our waists we had only time to throw ourselves into the sea. The Monge sank on Dec. 29, 1915, at 2:30 in the morning. There were three deaths—the commandant and two mechanician quartermasters.”

Afterward the French Government honored Lieutenant Morillot by giving his name to a ship captured from the enemy; but one wonders why so gallant an officer should have been so unprofitably sacrificed to a naval tradition. Captains go down with their ships because tradition and court-martials have made it more honorable than living to serve their country in new duties and responsibilities.

Two Italian Naval Officers Destroy an Austrian Dreadnought in a Novel Way

Lieut. Col. R. Rossetti of the Italian Naval Construction Corps and his friend, Dr. Paolucci, also of the Navy, on the night of October 31-Nov. 1, 1918, destroyed an Austrian dreadnought in circumstances as thrilling as they were exceptional. They struck an entirely new note in marine warfare.

The Austrian warship Viribus Unitis, having a displacement of 20,010 tons, and an armament of twelve 12-inch guns, and representing a cost of $13,000,000, was moored in the harbor of Pola, about as secure a place as she could possibly have been at rest in. The entrance of the harbor was formidably fortified; it was a most important naval base and was guarded accordingly. Obstacles and obstructions, however, did not dismay Col. Rossetti, who was of a mind to blow up the greatest and newest of Austrian dreadnoughts of the super variety. He was of an inventive faculty, this daring Genoese, and he devised an apparatus, a curious motor, the especial purpose of which was to enable a swimmer to get a mine safely over the obstructions that closed Pola harbor.

With this device supporting the necessary mine, Col. Rossetti and Dr. Paolucci swam into the harbor in the night. They had approached as near as was expedient in the chaser M. A. S. 95 which towed the apparatus. They left the chaser with the parting whisper “Vive il Re!” and steered their course between two lighthouses until they came to the obstruction at the extreme end of the jetty. The obstruction consisted of long beams bound together at the ends by wire rope. Buoys at intervals kept the obstruction in position. The apparatus was put in a line with the beams and dragged slowly forward for about a quarter of an hour. At a certain point the beams were submerged and the men could no longer guide themselves by them, so the motor was put into action to reach the inner edge of the obstruction. In his official report Col. Rossetti gave in detail by hours the incidents and events that followed. The report is quoted:

“On our left (that is, toward the open sea) I have noticed a submarine with one tower. She is on the surface, and passes, darkened and noiseless, between the harbor obstruction and the chaser which had brought us. I can see her like a shadow against the sky, and point her out to Dr. Paolucci.

“About 11.15 p.m.—We can distinctly see a red light shining at intervals and moving up and down along the jetty. Probably it is on a patrol boat stationed between the jetty and the outside obstructions. This will not affect us, however, for here we shall be keeping to the outer side of the obstructions.

PAOLUCCI EXPLORES

“About 11.45 p.m.—We are nearing the jetty and are about 100 meters from it after passing rapidly through the second diagonal. At my request Dr. Paolucci swims off to explore in the direction of the jetty, and returns[Pg 298] in a few minutes to say that we can proceed. During this pause I notice that a rather strong current runs northward along the coast. We move on until we reach the jetty, and then work along parallel with it, placing ourselves between our apparatus and the jetty. We have a good hand hold, as the jetty is made of blocks of cement, piled one on another. The current, too, is in our favor. Everything is going smoothly, but we are losing far too much time, so I venture to start the motor once more. This is not really imprudent—notwithstanding the phosphorescence produced by increased speed—for the breakwater, with large intervals between the cement masses, surely cannot be patrolled at night by a sentry. We are in a dead sector as far as sentries are concerned.

“12.30 a.m.—Still clinging to the jetty, we reach a group of chains that are fastened to the top of the jetty and hang down toward the water. I judge this may be the end of the last diagonal of the first observation, and conclude, therefore, that we must be about 200 meters from the small opening of the jetty. Dr. Paolucci again goes alone to explore the opening. He soon returns with the report that we may advance. We are under way again by about 12.45. When the opening is clearly visible I silence the motor and we proceed hand-over-hand.

AVOIDS A SENTRY BOAT

“About 1 a.m.—We have reached the edge of the opening, always sticking close to the jetty, which now slopes down to the opening and is guarded by a small gun (of about fifty millimeters), which is silhouetted against the sky as we pass under it at a distance of about five meters.

“A strong current coming from the interior of the roadstead meets the current flowing along the coast and drives us—despite all our efforts—out to sea in the direction of the northern extremity of the jetty. The motor is started into full action and we manage to make a wide loop toward the left, returning to the small opening.

“Here, too, we find an obstruction formed by several sections of floating beams, joined with wire ropes. Here and there points project above the water. Having satisfied ourselves that the obstruction has no submerged nets, we decide to climb over it while passing our apparatus underneath, and the plan is carried out without accident. We follow the inner side of this obstruction back to the jetty—easily[Pg 299] recognized by the cannon and sentry-post which we had already seen from the other side. Still creeping along the jetty for a few meters, we find ourselves near the bow of a tug, moored there, and can hear the hissing noise of a jet of steam. A little further off, stern toward the jetty, is a large boat that guards the port. This is indicated on our chart, so we decide to turn toward the inner harbor.

“About 2 a.m.—We reach the third obstruction, which runs parallel to the jetty, without encountering that running from the jetty on the right of the guard boat to the large opening of the port. The obstruction now to be overcome is made up of a row of metal cylinders, with tops projecting about twenty centimeters above the water, supporting, about sixty centimeters below the water level, a metal cable to which a net is attached. Given the distance between buoys, and the depth at which the net begins, it is easy to pass this barrier. About ten meters behind it is a second, and then a third, all parallel and of the same type. These are passed without real difficulty, though we have lost time between the second and third series. A boat was moored not more than thirty meters from us, and we had to move with extreme caution and very slowly.

“It is easy to know where we are. Ahead and to our left, I can recognize Valmaggiore and the rocky mass near the curve toward the interior of the port. We consult the pocket compass, but it is full of water and will not work. Once past the third section of this obstruction, I steer in an oblique line to the right, the direction in which I believe we shall find the last series of obstructions—those projecting from the north coast and running perpendicular to the jetty.

“The first big ships—dark, shadowy forms—are barely visible on our right. Going forward, we can see three other ships, further in, that show lighted cabins and portholes, and that have white deck-lights.

NEARING THE SHIP

“About 3 a.m.—We reach and pass, without trouble, a triple series of obstructions similar to the preceding ones. Sure of our position, I steer so as to pass between the north[Pg 300] coast and the line of big ships, along which we move for about 200 meters, now always fighting against the current.

“It is late, and we fear that the air pressure of 120 atmospheres will not be sufficient to insure our return to the chaser. After consultation, we agree to continue as far as the flagship, which had been pointed out to us as of special importance. After sinking this we will endeavor to land on the north coast, sink our apparatus and dispose of our waterproof suits. Then, in the uniform of Italian naval officers, which we wear underneath the waterproof, we will try to reach a place called Fontaine, near Rovigno, where it has been agreed that a motor boat will wait for us each night from the 2d to the 7th of November.

“As we move toward the ship I detach a small device that had been added at the last moment. It is supposed to insure an easy mooring for the propelling apparatus, but fails to work. To rid ourselves of this incumbrance I unsheathe my knife, lose the sheath, and am obliged to stick the knife into the wooden cover of the apparatus. (I mention this merely because it will explain why, later, I was so long under the Viribus Unitis.)

“At this time an incident occurs that very nearly puts an end to the whole business. We find that, with no apparent cause, our apparatus is gradually, unmistakably, sinking—especially at the stern, where I am. Greatly disturbed, I endeavor to counteract this sinking by crossing my legs beneath the stern, and by accelerating the motor, at the same time working to open the little valve that lets air into the balance tank at the stern. After a hurried examination, I find that the valve for flooding the afterpart is open; how it happened I cannot imagine. The valve is finally closed, and when air is readmitted the apparatus returns to its normal condition. Without doubt these were the most exciting moments of the trip.

“We continue slowly and cautiously until 4.30 when we find ourselves at the bow of the Viribus Unitis, the last of the six ships that are drawn up in line. At about 100 meters from the ship’s bow the motor is stopped, and I move to the head of our apparatus and prepare the first weapon of offense. The time for the explosion must be calculated from 4.30 [Pg 301]a.m., and the mine is so regulated that it will go off four hours from that time. This, however, is changed before finally sinking the mine.

“It takes from 4.30 until 4.45 to detach the mine from our propelling apparatus. Meanwhile the current carries us along parallel to the right side of the ship at a distance of sixty meters. We have drifted too far toward the stern so, by using our arms as in swimming, and by putting the propeller very gently into action, we succeed in turning our apparatus and in getting back toward the bow of the ship near the lower boom, at a distance of about twenty-five meters from the right side. After another slight change of position toward the rear, on account of the current, I detach the mine, and, swimming, push it before me until it touches the hull.

ALL LIGHTED UP

“The ship is lighted up and shows all the movement that is usual during the night. Some one speaks on the bridge (also lighted); some one is walking the deck. The spot toward which I am swimming is between the second and third of the 150-millimeter guns—counting from the stern—which corresponds roughly to the position of the principal motors. It is a convenient position for the sure sinking of the ship.

“On the weapon of offense is a contrivance for fixing the machine to the hull of the ship. It is connected by a small rope that must be loosened or cut. I set to work, but the knot is intricate and my knife is sticking in the wooden cover of the apparatus. Consequently, as the rope is wet and my hands numb with cold, it takes a long time to untie that knot. Finally, after about twenty minutes, the knot yields. I then attach the device to the hull, and also fasten it to a rope that I find secured to the ship at this point. During the operation (it is about 5.15) I hear the morning bugle—it is sounded repeatedly—soon followed by the noise of all hands on board awake and moving. Ashes are thrown out close to me, and more steps sound on the deck. I must hasten and complete the work. I change the clockwork regulating the explosion from 4 to 2; consequently the explosion should take place at 6.30. I detach the bandage of linen and[Pg 302] cork that has floated the mine, and sink it. It is now 5.30.

“I swim away from the ship as quickly as possible; the sky is cloudy, but in the east are signs of dawn. It is a question whether I can succeed in reaching our apparatus or whether I must swim ashore and try to make my way to the point where they will be waiting for us. Happily, on my right I soon see Dr. Paolucci and the apparatus about fifty meters from the ship, and I soon reach them.

“Again taking command, I send the apparatus as rapidly as possible toward the bow of the ship, and parallel to it, hoping to get away from her and to gain the north coast as we had planned. The ship’s crew is now awake, and they must have discovered us by the excessive natural phosphorescence, which was increased by the more rapid movement of our apparatus. Suddenly a searchlight is operated upon the bridge and the light is thrown on us. We remain breathlessly still for a few moments, hoping against hope that we may not be seen. The light remains stationary on us and we move very slowly, for, although no shot has been fired, we understand that we have been discovered and that a boat will now be sent out to us.

“Dr. Paolucci, at the bow, now prepares the second mine, while I open the valves that will sink the apparatus. In this way, while a motor boat is leaving the ship and approaching, we abandon our apparatus which drifts slowly forward—sinking—with the mine that will destroy it. Our mission is ended.

TAKEN ON BOARD

“The motor boat reaches us, paying no attention to our apparatus, and they take us on board. It is 5.45. We are recognized as Italians and they take us to the ladder on the port side of the ship. A crowd of sailors receives us at the top of the ladder. We feel it our duty to shout ‘Viva l’Italia!’ This demonstration, contrary to what might be expected, is received in a spirit rather more cordial than hostile. To our surprise we notice the new Jugoslav insignia on the caps. We are asked, in Venetian dialect, how we come to be here. We answer (as Commander Ciano had suggested) that we lighted on the water in a hydroplane which we had afterward sunk. [Pg 303]In the meantime they are escorting us aft. The friendly reception and the changed nationality of the fleet cause us to hesitate a bit; we consult and come to a decision, asking to speak with the Captain on a very important and urgent matter. The Captain is called, and it is 6 o’clock when he receives me in his cabin. I give him Dr. Paolucci’s knife, which I find myself still holding, and inform him that his ship is in immediate and very serious danger. The Captain inquires the nature of the serious danger and asks if other ships are in the same peril. I answer that I cannot disclose the nature of the danger and that no other ship is involved.

“The Captain picks up his lifebelt and leaves the cabin at once, giving loud orders in German that all should leave the ship. We follow him up on deck, where he repeats the order—obeyed, scatteringly, by all. I ask the Captain to permit Dr. Paolucci and myself to leave the ship. He consents, and we go down the ladder at the right and swim off toward the ship’s stern with the current, but impeded by the great weight of our clothing. Numbers of swimming sailors pass us, as well as boats loaded with members of the crew. Searchlight signals are flashed to the nearest ship, Tegethoff, which sends boats to our assistance.

“About 6.20 a boat picks us up and takes us back to the ladder on the right of the Viribus Unitis, where a large boat is waiting for the remainder of the crew. When we reach the deck we are received with threats, though the men are not especially violent. I lose sight of Dr. Paolucci in the crowd. It seems that they no longer believe in our warning or in the danger. A sailor begins to rip up my waterproof suit with his knife; others go through my pockets.

“There is a short, smothered thunderclap; the ship shivers violently, while a crest of foam is thrown up all along her starboard side. External damage is very slight, but the ship heels over to the right, at first very rapidly, then more slowly, but steadily. Most of the crowd has left us; a few, however, now close in, threatening to shut us up on board. The Captain, who stands a few meters off, shows no interest in our fate. I appeal to him, reminding him that we are prisoners of war; that what we have done, as belligerents, gives us the right to have our persons respected; that the threatened treatment is contrary to rules of war. The Captain acknowledges the justice of my protest, again gives permission for us to leave, and gives orders in German for a boat within hailing distance on the left of the stern to return and take us off the ship. I succeed meanwhile, with the help of Dr. Paolucci, in ridding myself of my waterproof suit, which had hampered me in swimming and which the sailors had ripped open.

“Dr. Paolucci and I let ourselves down into the water on the port side of the stern. We are both pulled into the boat and can watch the end of the Viribus Unitis. She is still settling on the right. When the water almost reaches the deck—although the ship is still high out of the water—she suddenly heels over with remarkable rapidity. In a few seconds nothing is visible save the flat bottom of the keel and the four screws—encircled by smoke, flames, and fragments of shattered wood—while the sea all around is lashed up into frothy waves. One sailor in our boat gives vent to his grief in a most touching manner; all the others appear indifferent. If my calculations are correct not ten minutes elapsed between the explosion and the end.

“I have learned with sincere grief that Captain Ianko Vukovic de Podkapelski of the Viribus Unitis was wounded by a fragment of the sunken ship while swimming to a place of safety. He was picked up and carried to the hospital in Pola but died a few hours afterward. Throughout, he was most chivalrous, and treated us with all the consideration that one could expect from an honorable enemy.

FREED AFTER THE ARMISTICE

“We were landed on the neighboring shore and taken, under escort, on board the Hapsburg. There we were despoiled of our clothing and given Austrian uniforms. Then we were removed to the arsenal, where we arrived at 8. From that moment we became prisoners of war, but for four days only. On the signing of the armistice with Austria, Italian naval forces entered Pola—and we were free.”

The Impossible Done in Saving Fifty Lives from the Flooded and Sunken Submarine K-13

One of the most dramatic episodes of the war, one in which the tragedy of suspense was exemplified with thrilling intensity, had nothing to do with siege or battlefield, though it partook of the nature and perils of both. It was the salving of the K-13. The story was first made public in its completeness, two years after the event, by Bennet Copplestone, who presented the facts, as he obtained them at first hand, in a vivid article contributed to the Cornhill Magazine.

The story, which could not be released until the war ended, is of such absorbing interest that it is here reproduced with little abbreviation. Mr. Copplestone begins:

“I was in Scotland when this happened that I write of, and I took the details in all their intimate simplicity from the mouths of the chief actors—from the salvors who sweated blood that they might be in time to pluck live men out of a steel coffin; from those who lay below and who, drugged by poisoned air, remained throughout indifferent to the issue, whether of life or death. It was a queer paradox of a fight in which the salvors, not those saved, got all the excitement and all the thrills.

“K-13 was a fleet submarine of a new type, more like a submersible destroyer than an ordinary underwater boat. Fairfields of Govan built her, and even now it were unwise to be too explicit in description. But some few details are necessary for an understanding of my story. She was over three hundred feet long and displaced two thousand tons when submerged. Unlike most submarines, which are driven on the surface by internal combustion engines, K-13 was a turbine-engined steamer with two funnels fitted with watertight covers for closing when she dived. The ventilators which fed air to her boiler room were also equipped for rapid closing down. A bulkhead cut off the boiler and engine rooms from the central control room, and another bulkhead forward divided the control room from the foc’sle. Thus, like Cæsar’s Gaul, K-13 was divided into three parts. Of her armament, which does not concern us here, I will observe a discreet silence, though to me it was of absorbing interest. But I must say something of her upper works. The conning tower was large and humped forward, so that a man could stand upright under the hump yet needed to stoop to reach the hatch, which was on the lower unhumped portion. Above the conning tower was a chart-house and bridge, and, of course, a mast stayed in the usual fashion. For a submarine, therefore, the K-13 had a lot of top hamper, and a passage from the conning-tower hatch, when the submarine was under water, towards the upper air was thickly studded with perils from the chart-house roof and the stays of the bridge and the mast. Yet two men did pass out; one was caught and killed; the other’s luck held—he was not killed.

“At noon on Monday, January 29, 1917, K-13 left her builders’ yard to carry out diving trials in the Gareloch. A large party was on board. In charge of her was Commander Herbert—‘Baralong’ Herbert—and with him went Commander Goodheart, who had been appointed skipper of another K of similar type. Many of Fairfields’s staff were there, for K-13 had not yet been taken over by the Admiralty. There were Percy Hillhouse, the yard’s Naval Architect, Bullen, the draughtsman in charge of submarine construction—a man who knew every nut and bolt that went to her—Searle, the Admiralty overseer, and McLean, the yard manager of the K submarines. It was no complement of amateurs which manned the K-13 upon her fatal trip. While steaming down the Clyde she grounded slightly at Whiteinch, but suffered no hurt. No harm was done, and K-13 went on to the Gareloch, and there passed successfully [Pg 306]through her trials. She was accepted for the Royal Navy by the Admiralty officials.

“ONE MORE DIVE”—THEN SUNK

“Then it was that the unexpected happened, as it always does at sea. Herbert decided to take one more dive—perhaps just for luck, perhaps to satisfy himself upon some nicety of trim. He gave the order to close down and dive and the K-13 dived. Though the order had been given to close down, and the reply received that the order had been carried out, the ventilators had been left open. Instantly the water poured into the engine and boiler rooms, drowning those within, and K-13 sank by the stern. The water flowing towards the control room bulkhead compressed the air in the room and indicated immediately what had happened to the alert senses of Commander Herbert. ‘Our ears began to sing’ say those who were within the belly of the ship.

“All this occupied a space of time measured in seconds. In a few more seconds Herbert had all compartments closed tight and the forward tanks blown. The hydroplanes, too, were set to rise, but the resources of seamanship could not overcome the loss of buoyancy. Overweighted by her flooded boiler and engine rooms K-13 sank to the bottom, grounding upright on the mud in twelve fathoms of water. No blowing of ballast tanks could bring her up, for the calculations of her builders showed that with all tanks empty she would still be too heavy by four hundred tons to float. There is very little reserve of buoyancy about even the biggest of submarines.

“While Herbert in K-13 had been struggling to rise, his efforts were detected and understood by skilled seamen above. An E submarine had been attending the trials, and her officers saw at once from the surging mass of air-bubbles that Herbert was blowing his tanks and was in grave difficulties. Submarines dive when trimmed to float awash, and descend or ascend by delicate movements of the horizontal rudders (hydroplanes). In this trim when diving they are lighter than the water displaced, and do not need to blow tanks in order to rise. Much time was saved by the presence of the E-boat, for, when K-13 did not rise, and quite evidently could not rise, she dashed off at once to gather assistance. Had Herbert and Goodheart down below known how quickly help was being summoned above they might not have made that fatal though most gallant effort to pass out through the conning-tower hatch.

HURRYING TO THE RESCUE

“It was at 3.30 in the afternoon that K-13 came to rest upon the bottom of the Gareloch, and the short winter’s day in the North was drawing towards sunset. As soon as the commander of the E-boat had marked the spot where K-13 lay, he pressed at full speed for Greenock, flashing as he went aerial signals to the Senior Naval Officer in Glasgow. A salvage steamer, which was lying at Greenock, went off at once and picked up two hoppers and two tugs as consorts. Telegrams were dispatched to Fairfields and to Glasgow, and the news spread quickly through those circles whose business it is to be well informed. Not a moment was lost by those upon whose shoulders rested the responsibility of the salvage operations. By the early hours of Tuesday, long before daylight, a fleet of seven vessels had collected at the spot below which, seventy feet down, K-13 rested motionless in the mud. There were the Greenock salvage steamer, the two tugs, the two hoppers, and two E-boats. With them, in charge of everything and responsible for everything, was the S. N. O., Captain (now Rear-Admiral) Brian Barttelot, and with him was his naval assistant, Captain Corbett.

“The problem before the salvors bristled with novel difficulties. In peace and war we had lost many submarines, but never had a live man been taken out of one which had sunk. Barttelot was limited by what was mechanically possible. He had not—as I confess now that I had when composing ‘The Last of the Grenvillas’—the guiding light of a precedent. First he had to get into continuous communication with the survivors of K-13’s company, for without their coöperation he was helpless to aid them. Then he had to devise a rapid and effective means to supply them with air and food for a period which might stretch into days. And, lastly, he had to get them out. That was the worst of his problems—how to get them out. For remember K-13 was a great bulky double-skinned[Pg 307] lump of a vessel of two thousand solid tons and of more than three hundred feet in length. She was not the kind of craft which could easily be raised.

“But although Barttelot’s difficulties were great his advantages were greater. He had nothing to fear from bad weather—the Gareloch is narrow and well sheltered. He had within reach the incalculable resources of the biggest shipbuilding center in the world. And there in Glasgow he had, too, just round the corner, the builders of K-13, who knew the work of their own hands as a man knows the picture which he has painted or the book which he has written. There was yet another advantage, and one which was not small. There inside K-13, if they could be got at, were four of Fairfields’s experts who would supply that intimate technical knowledge of the craft which the salvors themselves could not possess. Once communication had been established, Fairfields in Glasgow and Fairfields in K-13 would be linked to the chain of salvage, and would lift success from the barely possible up to the almost probable.

TUBES FOR AIR AND FOOD

“Meanwhile Fairfields in Glasgow were hard at work. A special staff of draughtsmen and mechanics were put on to the construction of two flexible tubes, one designed for the passage of air and food, and the other for bringing up the men one by one, if no other and better means was found to be possible. The first tube, in comparison with the second, was easy of construction. It was seven inches in diameter and fitted with a screw union to connect with the circular ammunition hoist beside one of the deck guns of K-13. The other, built of steel sections, was designed to fit tightly over the torpedo hatch by means of a connecting frame. The first was the more immediately urgent, for until it was completed and fixed in place the survivors in the sunken submarine must remain coffined. Both were put in hand long before communication had been established between the salvors and K-13, and here one sees how completely the lives of all the imprisoned men depended upon Fairfields’s exact knowledge. Both tubes would have been useless unless their dimensions had been precisely correct. There was no need to press Fairfields’s workmen not to waste a moment; by night as well as by day they threw into their pious task every ounce of energy and every refinement of skill which they possessed. To lay hand to the work was an honor for which all eagerly competed. Though both tubes were completed in an astonishingly short time, and the first proved to be invaluable, the efficiency of the second—the man-saver—was not tested. Other means were successfully employed to get the men out. But this does not detract in any way from the merits of its design and of its rapid accomplishment. Battles may be won without calling upon the reserves, but he would be a very poor general who had not the reserves ready, if need be, at his call.

“For the time being the salvage party could do little except to send divers down and to open up communications with the men whom they had come to save. Until the first tube, which I have just described, was ready to their hands, they could take few active measures. The vessels and plant at Barttelot’s disposal were quite incapable of raising the great hull which lay below them, and the famous Ranger, for which he had telegraphed to Liverpool, could not arrive till the following day. The Ranger, owned by the Liverpool Salvage Association, had been requisitioned by the Admiralty early in the war, and had proved as powerfully effective in war as she had been in peace. She is worthy of her name, for under Captain Young—the most accomplished of living salvage officers—she has ranged over the world, picking up wrecks a dozen times her size with an ease which looks almost miraculous.

A JOB THAT CALLED FOR FINESSE

“I have seen her at work. She is a little old composite steamer built of iron and teak—incredibly old, fifty years at least; she knocks about among wreckage as indifferent to hard blows as was Nansen’s Fram; and she brings to her never-ending jobs gear and brains which make their incredible accomplishment seem easy. K-13, emptied of men, would soon have been lightened and raised by the Ranger’s tremendous steam pumps—she will lift a dreadnought if it be not damaged beyond possibility of patching up by her divers—but K-13, with fifty living men inside, called for [Pg 309]finesse rather than power. It was the men, not the ship, that Barttelot and Young were out to save.

“And while in the cold pale light of that Tuesday morning in the North the salvors sent down divers to call in friendly Morse upon their comrades below, and to cheer them with the assurance of rescue, the unexpected happened again, as it always does at sea. Suddenly before the astonished eyes of the salvage party up shot a column of foam and bubbles, and in the center of an artificial whirlpool gyrated stern upwards a human body. And a very live body it proved to be when up-ended and pulled clear of the water. Involuntarily, without the smallest intention of quitting, Commander Herbert had been boosted by the ill-mannered high-pressure air out of his own ship, and flung, a bedraggled, gasping figure, in shirt and trousers, almost into the arms of his would be rescuers. How he came out I will now tell, and in doing so will return to 3.30 p.m. on the Monday when K-13 settled down in the mud of the Gareloch.

INSIDE THE SUNKEN SHIP

“She lay upon an even keel in seventy feet of water. In her flooded after-compartment, shut off from the control room by a strong closed bulkhead, were twenty-eight dead bodies, including that of Engineer Lieutenant Lane. The engine room and boiler room staffs—twenty-three men of the navy and five of Fairfields—had all been instantly drowned when the submarine dived with her ventilators open. The fore bulkhead had also been closed, and in the control room were gathered the fifty-one survivors of the disaster. The air pressure in the compartment, raised by the inflow of water to about two atmospheres, dulled the sense of all and induced an apathy which increased into hopeless fatalism as the slow hours passed. Among the men there was little talking. One heard at first an almost careless comment, ‘Rotten way to die. We would sooner go under fighting Germans.’ That was all; no complaints and no trace of panic. No one expected to be saved, and no one cared very much. With Herbert and Goodheart, his guest, it was, of course, different. Upon them and on Fairfields’s officials rested a nerve-racking responsibility.

“At first there appeared to be little danger that the survivors would lack for air. The high-pressure bottles were far from empty, and the bodies and minds of those within K-13 were suffering from too much air, not from too little. Food they could do without for a long while, for no one wanted to eat, and even after supplies came from above few ate. The men were not hungry, but thirst devoured them, a thirst little appeased by copious draughts of water.

DANGER OF POISONOUS GASES

“The real dangers lay unseen below and around. Behind the after-bulkhead stood a wall of water at a pressure of thirty-one pounds to the square inch, against which the strength of the steel, supported by the air pressure in the control room, was a sufficient barrier. But though the bulkhead might have been in little danger of collapse, it could not prevent water from leaking through. Those leaks were the deadly peril. If the oozing salt water had reached the fully charged electric batteries of the vessel poisonous chlorine gas would have been given off and the control room turned into a mortuary. The batteries never were reached, but the risk, even the probability that they would be, was always present to the subconscious minds of officers and men. Perhaps it was this, as much as the air pressure, which caused that disbelief in rescue which remained with them up to the moment of actual safety.

“But though the salt water did not turn the batteries into ministers of death, it did its best to suffocate the unhappy men who crowded K-13’s control room. It reached and short-circuited the switch, causing some of the cables to fuse. Fumes of stinking smoke from the burning insulation befouled the air, and the fire was put out with the greatest difficulty. The switch could not be touched and the current cut off, so no method of extinction remained except to beat out the fire with lumps of wood wrapped in cloth. In this way it was extinguished but the stink remained.

THROUGH THE CONNING-TOWER HATCH—A DARING IDEA

“It was on Tuesday morning that Goodheart obtained permission from Herbert to go[Pg 310] out through the conning-tower hatch and to carry news of the disaster to the world outside. No one in the sunken vessel knew anything of the work of salvage which had begun within a few minutes of the K-13’s fatal last dive. To the officers and men of K-13 it seemed that they were isolated and already dead to the human family. The risks of the issue from the conning tower were beyond experience, but the attempt at any rate was accepted by the gallant Goodheart as a sacred duty. If he could get out alive, then the survivors of K-13 would no longer be dead to the world and might conceivably be saved. If he were killed, well, he would be killed in the way of business. While it was Herbert’s plain duty to stick to his ship, it was equally Goodheart’s duty to clear out and to be jolly quick about it. So he argued, and Herbert, a man of the same fine quality, accepted his arguments as palpably sound. Nothing remained except to devise means and methods of exit.

“It was decided to go forth by way of the conning-tower hatch and to use high-pressure air from the bottles to speed the passage. I have explained how one part of the conning tower was humped. The general idea was for Goodheart and Herbert to climb up into the conning tower and to take station together under this hump, where they had head room to stand upright. They would then close the lower hatch which gave upon the control room and have nothing between them and the upper outside water except a bolted sheet of steel. The density of the air cooped up with them would be roughly two atmospheres (twenty-eight pounds to the square inch) and the water pressure outside about thirty-one pounds. If, then, the sea-cocks were opened the water would flow in not too furiously and would fill the lower part of the tower, but would be prevented by the imprisoned air from rising very high in the hump. There the men could stand in extreme discomfort, no doubt, and under severe pressure, but, nevertheless, alive and active. Then those inside would turn on high-pressure air in large quantities so as to expel the water and to give Goodheart a handsome lift from behind when he sought to be gone through the upper hatch. Herbert went with Goodheart to help him and to wish him Godspeed in his passing, but with no intention of following in his path. His place was with his men. It was a path both tortuous and full of unknown dangers. Above the conning tower was a chart-house, of which the roof opposed a formidable obstacle to a vertical ascent. There was a large manhole in this roof, but, unluckily for Goodheart’s bold scheme, it was not cut directly above the hatch. This inclination of the passage out caused Goodheart’s death.

“DIED A MOST GALLANT OFFICER”

“The two officers made their way to the conning tower, secured the lower hatch, then through the opened sea-cocks in rushed the water, but standing in security under the hump the heads and shoulders of the men remained uncovered. A moment later, according to plan, the high-pressure air from below was driven in and the bolts of the upper hatch withdrawn. ‘Good-bye, sir,’ said Goodheart; I’ll try now,’ and stooping under the open hatch he was carried forth. Those were his last words, for, missing the aperture above, he was caught under the roof of the chart-house and drowned.

“There died a most gallant young officer, to whose memory, months afterwards, a posthumous award was made of the Albert Medal in gold. The powerful air, forced in by the pressure from the bottles, continued to surge into the conning tower, driving the water before it and tearing the helpless Herbert from his retreat under the hump. He was whirled out in the center of a column of air and water, carried safely through the manhole in the roof of the chart-house and clear of the mast stays, and delivered at the surface like a scrap of wreckage. He went up with both hands before his face, and declares, according to my authorities, that he breathed all through his ascent. He was picked up immediately and insisted upon giving all possible information and guidance to the salvors before accepting any of their kind offices for himself.

MORSE CODE CONVERSATIONS

“We have reached noon on Tuesday and the survivors of K-13 have been entombed for more than twenty hours. No word had yet come to them from outside of the efforts which were actively in progress for their rescue. [Pg 311]But they were not destined to remain much longer in ignorance. Even while Herbert and Goodheart were making that effort at communication, which had been so grievously costly, the leaden soles of a diver were planted on the submarine’s deck. At first attempts were made to flash signals through the periscope, but the surer and simpler method of tapping Morse dots and dashes on the steel plating was quickly substituted. Between the inner and outer skins of K-13 were interposed five feet of water, admitted through flap valves in order to distribute the pressure when she penetrated the depths of the sea. Linked together by stays and trusses, these two skins formed an encircling girder of immense strength. Water is an excellent conductor of sound, and the Morse taps of the divers without could have been readily heard and interpreted by those within had their senses not been dulled by the thick bad atmosphere. Conduction was indeed so good that the replies of K-13, struck on the frames of the ship, were picked up and read without difficulty by the salvors on the surface of the loch. It happened, therefore, that though outside talked to inside and replies were received, it was by no means easy to get inside, to grasp and to carry out precisely what outside wanted done. And it was found to be particularly difficult to secure the exact and essential coöperation of those within K-13 when that flexible tube arrived which had been designed by Fairfields to be screwed into an ammunition hoist upon the deck.

“THE LIMITS OF HUMAN ENDURANCE”

“This was in the early hours of Wednesday morning, and by that time the unhappy men imprisoned within the submarine were approaching the limits of human endurance. Though no chlorine gas actually had been given off by the electric batteries, the air in the control room was so foul as to be almost unbreathable. Fresh air from the bottles, without means to expel the poisonous atmosphere of the ship, would only have increased a density which was already unbearable. Many in drugged sleep forgot their troubles, and even those few upon whose alertness hung the lives of all, had become drowsy and sluggish. Vitality was ebbing; the love of life, and with it the expectation of rescue, had passed from all. The company of K-13 may be divided during this period of imprisonment into sleepers and somnambulists, and it was only because trained minds retained some small part of their habitual control over exhausted bodies that the somnambulists were able to understand and to coöperate sufficiently with the salvors to bring this story to its happy conclusion.

“The long flexible tube, seven inches in diameter, which was to open up a clear passage between K-13 and the upper air, arrived at 4. a.m. on Wednesday morning, but it was not until four hours later that it was in place and in effective operation. To the eager salvers the delays were exasperating; there were many more delays, even more exasperating, to be suffered, before their job was finished. They had to explain to the enfeebled folk within precisely where the tube was to be fixed up and how they were themselves to complete the open passage. The tube was designed to screw, by means of an adaptor, into an ammunition hoist, and, when this was done, it needed but the removal of the retaining plate inside to put the device to immediate use.

FRESH AIR AT LAST!

“When the salvors had done their part it was for the prisoners to do the rest—to remove the inner plate as quickly as they pleased. But when it came to explaining this not very complicated operation by tapping out messages in Morse on the deck it was by no means easy to get K-13’s survivors to take it in. By patient repetition that was done at last, and then the divers busied themselves with fixing up the tube. They had to measure the screw threads, so that the adaptor might be made to fit accurately and to prepare a packing of tow soaked in tallow to exclude the water. A salvage steamer is a traveling workshop and divers are skilled mechanics, so that this part of the job, though it might consume time, presented no difficulties. By eight o’clock on the Wednesday morning the tube had been screwed firmly into place, the inner plate of the hoist had been removed, and the men, who had for forty and a half hours lain buried in a steel coffin, were at length enabled[Pg 312] to draw into their impoverished lungs air which was free from pollution. It was scarcely the fresh air of heaven, for it came out of an E-boat’s bottles, but though tinned it was a draught of infinite refreshment. The pumps of K-13 were at once set working and the two days’ accumulations of foul smells and gases were thankfully expelled. A pipe run down the now open tube brought blasts of high-pressure air which were allowed to expand and to blow away all festering impurities; this pipe also brought replenishment to K-13’s bottles. With the power of her charged batteries and her refilled air-bottles, she was now ready to play her part in the work of salvage.

“The salvors had got through in time to save, but the margin was small. At 6 a.m., two hours before the tube was opened into the sunken submarine, the water leaking through the after-bulkhead had short-circuited the lighting cables, and K-13 was utter darkness. To the men imprisoned it must have seemed the darkness of the tomb. Even the strongest among them could not have borne up very much longer. They were so little capable of excitement that not a man cheered when the air-tube was opened.

LEAKS IN THE BULKHEAD

For the salvors the worst had passed, but for the prisoners the worst had yet to come. Fourteen more hours of suffering had to be endured before the rescue was completed, and they were hours more full of perils than those which had passed. The devils of the sea were not willing to yield their prey to the efforts of man. One of these perils was the old haunting threat of chlorine gas intensified. Of the others I will tell in their place. When the control room was opened up to the outer air by the tube which had been fitted the pressure within fell to the normal. It had been raised when the submarine sank by the intrusion of hundreds of tons of water into the enclosed space of the hull. But the pressure in the flooded compartments and upon the bulkhead, which alone stood between the survivors and death by drowning, remained at thirty-one pounds to the square inch. The leaks in this bulkhead at once increased and the water gushed through in greater volume. It looked as if the means which had saved the men from a slow death from suffocation would hand them over to a quick death from poison gas.

“If the salt water had reached the powerful batteries it must have been decomposed into its constituents and given off gas in deadly volumes. The expedient was adopted of pumping the incoming water into the bilge, but this could not continue indefinitely. Time was now an even more urgent factor in the rescue than it had been during the previous two days. This was fully understood by the salvors, who furiously yet with orderly precision redoubled their efforts. It was decided not to attempt the removal of the men one by one through Fairfields’s big steel tube which had been made to fit over the torpedo hatch. The method was too uncertain and, even if feasible, too slow. Instead of risking all upon this doubtful means of egress, Barttelot determined to throw all the energies of his plant and staff into raising the bows of K-13 above the water and cutting a hole through her double skin. The Ranger was on the way and would soon arrive; what he could not do without her would become comparatively easy with her powerful assistance.

TILTING UP THE BOW

“In the afternoon she came, and Barttelot, though he remained responsible, gladly handed over the entire direction of the critical operations to Captain Young. They could not have passed into better hands. No experience in salvage in any part of the world counts beside that of Young and his Ranger. Sunset was approaching, and night would soon overshadow the Gareloch. But this mattered little. The Ranger, accustomed to work at all hours of the night and day, was equipped with arc lights which could shatter any darkness. It was easy now to communicate with K-13 through the tube and to make clear how she was to help herself. She was over three hundred feet long—three hundred and forty feet, to be precise—and did not need to be tilted very steeply to bring her nose and upper bow plates clear of the surface. But to be got up into a working position she must be lightened forward. This was done by blowing all the forward oil tanks. The heavily loaded [Pg 313]stern held tight in the Gareloch mud, but the bows were free and, as the tanks were blown, they lifted rapidly. They heaved up through ten degrees, and the salvors who were watching for the movement instantly whipped steel hawsers under the fore-part of the submarine and secured the ends to bollards on tugs alongside. K-13 was up, but would she remain up? It seemed most unlikely, and remained most unlikely until the end.

“The hawsers—six-inch—were too light for the job, but none stronger were at hand. No sooner were the bows of K-13 up and secured than her stern began to slip backwards into the mud. Before she brought up against hard ground she had gone back thirty feet. More hawsers were whipped under her and held, but there was no security that they would continue to hold. There was no security for anything. It was a fight for life against the ruthless chances and devilries of the sea.

CUTTING A HOLE IN THE SIDE

“The supreme risk had to be taken of cutting a big hole through the outer and inner skins. If when it was cut the hawsers parted, or K-13 by burying her stern still more deeply escaped from their embrace, all would be over. The men remaining in the vessel, forty-nine of them, would follow into the shades their dead messmates whose bodies lay in the boiler and engine rooms. But whatever the risk the hole had to be cut, and that quickly.

“Inside the submarine, hope, which may have flickered a little when the air-tube was first opened, had given place to the old dull apathy. Food and drink had been passed down the tube, but appetite for them had vanished. They struggled mechanically, as trained British seamen always will so long as life is in them; they struggled mechanically like automata against the incoming water. It was difficult to move about upon the most urgent duties. The wet and slippery floor of the control room lay now on a long upward slant upon which the half-dazed seamen stumbled and fell. There was no lack of courage; no one grumbled or lamented; but frail human bodies have their limits of endurance, and those limits had been reached.

“Yet the men worked on and did their utmost to carry out the directions of those who led them. The place where the hole was about to be cut lay far towards the bows, and to reach it from within the fore bulkhead must be opened. But when it was sought to unclose the bulkhead which divided the control room from the foc’sle, it was found that the door had jammed and would not slide back. For hours this miserable shut door stood between these men and freedom. Somehow at last it was got open, but no one has clearly told me how. It was not until the survivors of K-13 had for a long time been above water that they became voluble—and untrustworthy. At the moment of rescue, or shortly afterwards, they remembered as little as one on awakening in the morning remembers the details of a dream. Yet they remembered that door, how it stood there obdurate for hours and at last yielded. Though how it had stuck or why it yielded they could not say.

“A DEVIL OF A LOT OF WATER”

“Meanwhile the hole in the bows was being cut, and the cutting of this holes supplies me with one pleasing bit of comedy with which to round off this rather grim story. Any acetylene plant makes butter of steel plates, and it was very rapid work to draw the spouting white flame, fed from the Ranger’s plant, round a rough circle marked out on K-13’s bows. The outer skin was quickly cut through. Within lay water filling up the space honeycombed with cross ties between the inner and outer skins. Before the inner hole could be cut, this water must be pumped out. The place selected for the hole could not be reached by the steam salvage pumps, so the men working upon the submarine’s hull were compelled to fit gear for pumping the water out by hand. They knew that it was no more than five feet deep, so they bent their backs to it cheerfully. But they were less cheerful when they found that their efforts produced no appreciable result. ‘There must be a devil of a lot of water between these skins,’ said they, and bent to the task once more. Shift followed shift, and the pumping went on. It was a tiresome, backwearying business, but precious lives were at stake, and they would get that water down and the inner hole cut if they died of disgust in the doing of it. But[Pg 314] the water showed no sign of going down. How long this pumping went on I cannot say with precision. Admittedly it was hours, probably as many hours as it took to pry open that obtrusive bulkhead door, for some of the survivors of K-13 had got through their job and arrived under the pumpers’ feet while they were still pumping.

“It then occurred to the slaves of the hand-pump to seek after enlightenment from those whom they were pumping to save. ‘How long is it going to take,’ asked they, ‘to get rid of this damned water between the skins?’ They were asked by one of Fairfields’s experts how long they had been pumping. The reply was ‘Hours.’ ‘Have you closed the flap valves?’ dryly asked the man of Fairfields. They hadn’t; the water was coming in just as fast as they pumped it out; they had been trying with hand-gear to pump out the ocean!

SAVED AFTER 54½ HOURS

“After this little discovery progress became rapid. The valves, which admitted water between the skins, were closed and it did not take long then to get through. A hole was cut by acetylene flame in the inner skin and the way out was opened at last. It was ten o’clock on Wednesday evening, January 31, fifty-four and a half hours after K-13 had sunk, that her forty-nine survivors emerged into the blazing arc lights which shone from the Ranger’s masts. They could not speak; many of them could scarcely walk. One by one they were helped by kindly hands along a gangway to a tug and thence to the shore. They stumbled ashore, unconscious of the cheers which greeted them, gazing without recognition upon the friends who welcomed them. And so to Shandon, where they were put straight into hot baths and lifted thence into bed. For they were dumb and perished with cold. It is always cold in a deep-diving submarine even in high summer; in the bowels of K-13, lying seventy feet deep in the Northern mid-winter, the cold, though little noticed at the time, had been paralyzing. Forty hours of bad and poisonous air, fifty-four hours of bitter cold, had brought the bright flame of these men’s life down to a poor flicker. But recovery was rapid, and not one of the survivors disappointed by dying those who had saved him.

“Twenty hours after the last man had been plucked out of K-13 the hawsers which held her up parted, and she sank to the bottom of the Gareloch.

“The world did not ring with news of the story which I have told, for the censor forbade. But His Majesty, who was a sailor before he was a King and remains first and always a sailor, sent to Barttelot a telegram of which the purport, rendered in the language of the naval signal book, ran ‘Maneuver Well Executed.’”

From Poems. Copyrighted 1916 by Charles Scribner’s Sons. By permission of the Publishers.

Lieutenant-Commander Holbrook’s Perilous Adventure to Surprise and Blow Up a Warship at the Dardanelles

It hardly need surprise any one that each of a multiplicity of deeds and feats of daring and heroic adventure should, by different writers, correspondents, or official observers, be described as the most notable, the most brilliant, or the most courageous undertaking or achievement of the war. The simple fact is that the unparalleled war called for the souls and spirit and mental qualities of men as never did war before, and so many things were done that amounted to triumphs over the impossible, each one of which taken by itself seemed to overtop all others, that it would require a concourse of Solomons to determine which was the supreme excellence. They were all striking enough to command the superlatives of description. And some of these great accomplishments need but a few lines for their recital. It is not the volume of words that determines the value.

One of these briefly recorded deeds was that of Lieutenant-Commander Norman D. Holbrook, of the British submarine B-11, which “all his brother officers concur in regarding as one of the finest individual feats performed during the war.”

In the Dardanelles the old Turkish battleship Messudiyeh lay in guard of the mine fields, and, acting on his own initiative, Lieutenant-Commander Holbrook set out to sink the old ship by torpedoing her at her anchorage where she idled under the protecting guns of the land forts. It was, from the viewpoint of the conservative minded, a mad enterprise. Even under the most favorable conditions the underwater navigation of the Dardanelles is most perilous, beset with forbidding difficulties, so swift are the currents that never cease racing through the straits, producing swift whirlpools and strong eddies as they strike projections. But when to these natural obstructions and dangers are added five distinct rows of mines it would seem that running the Dardanelles in a submarine would prove a feat quite impossible of accomplishment. That is what many said dissuasively; but Lieutenant Holbrook is apparently one of those who hold the opinion that nothing conceivable is impossible. He set out with Lieutenant Sydney Thornton Winn, his second in command, and his regular crew. Cautiously, slowly the B-11 stole along toward its objective, fairly crawling to avoid the rows of mines and beat the swirling currents. Arrived clear of the mines, but uncertain of the exact location of the Messudiyeh, Lieutenant Holbrook deliberately came to the surface in the bay, took an informing survey, submerged again and a little while later rose in perfect position for a shot and sent a torpedo crashing into the side of the astonished old warship that immediately proceeded about the business of sinking to the bottom of the sea.

A COMPASSLESS RETURN

But the shot that settled the Messudiyeh aroused the forts and started the torpedo boats, and the B-11 became the target of the guns. She promptly sought refuge by a dive and had to lie submerged for several hours to elude her hunters. The object of the hazardous excursion accomplished, there was the problem of getting back, which was now gravely complicated by the fact that the compass of B-11 went wrong in the commotion and was not dependable. The Lieutenant had to find his way out without it. But he did it; passing again the five rows of mines, escaping the swirl of the currents that seemed rushing to slam the submarine against the rocks, returning to station safely and without casualty or mishap.

That was Dec. 14 and Dec. 26 the London Gazette published the announcement that the King had approved the grant of the Victoria[Pg 318] Cross to Lieutenant Holbrook, and that Lieutenant Winn had been made a Companion of the Distinguished Service Order. A writer at that time said:

“That the torpedoed battleship was guarding the mine field adds a touch of comedy to the proceedings that must have been singularly gratifying to Lieutenant Holbrook and his gallant companions who crept along the sea floor with him that eventful day.”

Eye-witness Account of a Duel at Sea between Great Steamers Built for Passenger Traffic

Early in the war the Cunard trans-Atlantic steamer Carmania was converted into an auxiliary cruiser. Painted black from stem to stern (that was before the art of “camouflage” was introduced), and mounted with eight 4.7 guns, she left Liverpool for a reconnoitering cruise in the South Atlantic. Between 600 and 700 miles east of the coast of Brazil there is a small island of rock known as Trinidad (not to be confused with the West Indian Island of that name). The Carmania came in sight of this island one morning toward the end of September and discovered three steamers in the vicinity. As soon as these steamers caught sight of the piratical looking Carmania they moved about uncertainly for a time and then made off. But when it was apparent that the black intruder was alone, the largest of the three steamers turned back. This ship proved to be the Cap Trafalgar, a magnificent steamer, the chief of the Hamburg-South American Line,[Pg 319] built for the special purpose of successful competition with the British Royal Mail in securing the South American passenger traffic and shipping trade. She too was equipped as an auxiliary cruiser, with eight 4.1 guns, up to date, their newness offsetting the extra caliber of the Carmania’s older guns.

The tonnage of the Carmania was 19,524, that of the Cap Trafalgar, 18,710. Splendid targets, both “so colossal,” said a writer, “as to be beyond the possibility of a failure to hit with any gun-layer.” A well-matched pair—ocean-going palaces, taken from their peaceful pursuits, transformed into war machines, neither having any appreciable advantage over the other as a belligerent, and now ranged against each other for a decisive duel. There was a fair field, too, for the two steamers seen with the Cap Trafalgar continued their retreat and disappeared across the horizon, though one returned later.

It was the first sea duel of its kind. Never before had two floating hotels played at gun fire with each other, each intent on sending the other to Davy Jones’s locker if possible. When the action began the vessels were separated by about 8,000 yards, and their nearest approach was about 4,000 yards. As the sinking of its enemy was the aim, the guns of each combatant were directed at the water line of the other. Of the first few shells fired by the Cap Trafalgar, three made holes in the Carmania at and above the water line, one tore through the stewards’ quarters, one smashed the lower deck galley and carried away the fire main leading to the bridge and fore-part of the ship, the latter the most serious damage.

A report of the engagement written two hours after, by one who took part in it was published in the War Album De-Luxe, from which the following is taken:

A DISTURBED LUNCHEON

“One never saw such a scatter as when we sat down to lunch and ‘Action!’ was sounded! Feeling ran high that this time we were in earnest; everyone was at his post in the twinkling of an eye. Ten minutes afterwards the conflict started, at a range of about six miles, both ships closing rapidly. The din that followed was unnatural and terrifying, and men’s hearts leaped to their mouths, for here was death amongst us. But the heat of work changed white faces to red. Blood once seen revives savagery in the human breast, and all our thoughts, after those first few moments, were concentrated in the grim work at hand, which was to sink as speedily as possible the monster that was vomiting red and steaming arrogantly towards us.

“By a clever maneuver our captain turned the ship round just as the enemy was bringing his pom-poms into play as well as the big guns, and brought our starboard battery, fresh and eager, to bear. Then we turned into demons, in a scene that had turned diabolical. Screaming shrapnel, returned by salvos of common shell, splinters everywhere, lumps of iron, patches of paint, a hurricane of things flying, hoarse shouting, and unintelligible sounds from dry throats, men discarding garments, and laughing with delirium—over all a white pall hiding the ghastly work.

“What matter that a shot cannoned down the after companion and laid low three of the whip party? Volunteers were not wanting to close in the breach and keep up a brisk supply of ammunition to the hungry guns. Or that a shot glanced off the shield of No. 1 gun, past the officer in charge, and blew away the neck of a corporal of Marines passing projectiles along the deck, leaving him leaning over the magazine hatchway, head dangling down, and dripping blood on to the madmen working below? Or that a shell burst by the feet of a man carrying another one in his hands?

“Word went round that we were on fire forward—the bridge, in fact, was blazing. A shell had torn through the cabins below, setting them alight, and the flames by this time reached and enveloped the bridge, since water could not be turned on in the first instance, as the main on the lower deck had been shot away. But the ill news was more than compensated for by the frenzied announcement that the enemy was also on fire and listing, moreover, on his side. So our main control was gone. The captain, first lieutenant, and navigating party had to leave the bridge to the flames—not before gaining us victory, however, by the splendid way they handled the ship in heading off the enemy, preventing him from turning round and bringing his idle [Pg 321]guns on the port side to bear, and by keeping him on our starboard quarter so we were able to use five of our guns to his four.

“The enemy listed a little more, and our work was done; his shooting became higher and more erratic, then stopped altogether. We ceased firing, and turned our attention to fighting the flames roaring up on high in the fore part of the ship. Luckily, we were able to stop the engines and keep the ship before the wind. The bridge and all its precious fittings and contents were doomed, as also the cabins below it; the officers who occupied them lost all their effects. A fireproof door in the staircase leading to the lower cabins effectually kept the fire from spreading in this direction, otherwise there might not have been very much left of the Carmania. The action raged hotly for an hour; after that, desultory firing was continued until the end.

“Of the two colliers that accompanied the enemy, one steamed away at the commencement of the action and was never seen again. The other, and smaller of the two, followed suit until he noticed the plight of his escort, and returned to pick up the survivors. Anon, an order went round the decks: ‘All firemen down below.’ The firemen had been doing yeoman service, running hoses and buckets of water to the scene of the fire, just as the stewards had distinguished themselves by taking round water and limejuice to the guns’ crews under shell fire, and also helping with carrying away the wounded. The reason for this order was ominous. The yeoman of signals had sighted smoke on the horizon to the north, and made out a bunch of funnels. It could not but be the Dresden, or whatever German cruiser the armed merchantman we fought was in company with, returning to the assistance of her consort, who had been signaling to her during the action. A great pity, indeed, one of our cruisers was not in touch with us at the time. What a fine haul it would have been!

Vale, CAP TRAFALGAR!

“Just as we got the fire well in hand, and were starting to run to the American coast, we beheld the most awe-inspiring sight of our lives—the last moments of an ocean leviathan. The wounded ship, distant from us about five miles, suddenly lurched over on the starboard beam-ends, looking for all the world as if she were about to turn turtle. Lower and lower she went, until her huge funnels were level with the water, pointing in our direction like two tunnels side by side, and dense clouds of smoke and steam escaped from all parts of her as from a volcano in a high state of activity. As quickly again, the mammoth righted herself; down, down went her bows; up and up her stern, till quite one-third of the hull stood upright to the sky; then, with a majestic plunge, she slid beneath the waves, game to the end, for the last to disappear was the German flag.

“A ring of foam and half a dozen boats crowded with dark forms were all that were left at 2 p.m. of the brave Cap Trafalgar and her ornate saloons and winter gardens, the ship that conveyed Prince Henry of Prussia on his triumphant tour of the South American Republics.”

The casualties of the Carmania are reported to have amounted to nine men killed and twenty-six wounded out of four hundred and twenty-one hands all told, a low percentage owing to the wide distribution of the various parties. The survivors of the Cap Trafalgar landed at Buenos Ayres consisted of eighteen officers and two hundred and ninety-two men, which would give her casualties at about eight officers and one hundred men if she carried the same number of men as the Carmania.

Seventy-nine direct hits were counted on the Carmania, and innumerable small holes from splinters; her boats were riddled, as also masts and ventilators; her rigging and wireless aerial were shot away.

The Men Who Captained the Merchant Ships Are Among the Heroes of the War

By telling the story of Captain Frank M. Custance, of the Royal Navy Reserve, as typical of the stories of a coterie of merchant ship men in the service, Mr. Ralph E. Cropley most interestingly reminds the public that the war was not altogether won by the men in the trenches. The merchant ship commanders played some small part in the winning. Indeed, Mr. Cropley goes somewhat further. He concludes his story of Captain Custance, which appeared in the New York Evening Post, with this paragraph:

“Without their valor this war would have been over long ago and Germany would have won. I say this without reserve, for it is the truth. It has only been by their untiring sacrifices that the soldiers have gotten to the trenches at all and been kept supplied with munitions and food. The merchant ship men have done work which gold cannot pay for and never have thought of themselves—simply of the great cause which to them has meant the end of cruelty.”

Though Captain Custance is an English seaman he is familiarly known to Americans who have sailed between New York and Bermuda in the winter or to the Land of the Midnight Sun in summer, for he was Captain of the tourist boat Arcadian that made those trips in the different seasons. He was up among the Norwegian fords when England entered the war, and it was a question whether he could save his ship by evading the Germans. Not that he personally had any question about it. He proceeded to act with the calm assurance characteristic of his conduct in normal sailings, quietly determined to get safely away. So, excellent seaman that he was, “in the darkness of that famous Monday night of Aug. 4, 1914, without a pilot, he took her through the dangerous ford to sea. ’Twas indeed a feat.”

But there were dangers at sea, too, for it was necessary to avoid any ship or craft that heaved in sight, and constant vigilance, with much dodging, was necessary before he got into Liverpool with his American passengers saved from anything so unpleasant and perilous as drifting in open boats on the high seas. With equal success he landed them in New York some days later, their number having been added to by Americans stranded in England.

TURNED TO MINE-SWEEPING

Then the Arcadian was dismantled and turned into a transport, and Captain Custance took her back to England filled with Canadian troops. But wanting a more war-like job he appealed to the Admiralty and eventually was assigned to the perilous duty of mine-sweeping, to keep the sea about the Orkneys free from the floating or sunk mines, to the sowing and planting of which the Germans were devoting their devilish activities. When it is borne in mind that Captain Custance was then 46 years old, with wife and several children, one may appreciate the patriotic zeal that kept him in this dangerous employ for two years. During that time he stuck at it with never a glimpse at his family until he was called to London to have the King confer on him the D. S. O.

Those broad-beamed boats known as trawlers in which the fishermen ply their calling were the instruments employed in mine-sweeping, and admirable they were for the business, but comfortless enough for other purposes. Said the Captain in a letter: “It’s no joke monkeying about in a tiny craft hunting ‘tin fishes.’ In daylight it’s bad enough, but at night it’s extremely dangerous, as one can’t see the sea, and one is liable to half swamp oneself in turning. And as far as any comfort below goes, there isn’t any. Everything is damp and cold, and the steward loses the greater part of your food in bringing it to [Pg 323]you, and what you finally receive is a cold, unpalatable mess. Yet, by God! it’s something to be out here having a chance to bag a bally German swine.”

Besides the danger from mines there was the excitement of submarine shelling of the fleet every now and then. In one attack of that kind Custance’s trawler struck a mine and sank. After that the Captain was given a steam yacht, no longer at her best, the Mingary, in which he did patrol work, visited and overhauled neutral ships, and kept a weather eye out for submarines and mines.

The performance that gained him the D. S. O. was the day after the Jutland naval fight, when the German fleet had fled, leaving only the submarines to prowl and finish off the wounded if possible. The dreadnought Warspite was one of the wounded and poorly protected by destroyers as she toiled along with deranged steering gear. The Captain saw three submarines maneuvering against the Warspite, and despite the fact that the chances were all against him in an attempt to beat off three submarines with his little yacht and its tiny guns Custance rushed the Mingary pell mell to the rescue, acting with such suddenness that he took one submarine by surprise and was able to ram it, got so close that he could use his guns on the next one and sink it and so thoroughly scared the third one that it submerged instantly without an offer of fight.

Later the Captain was in command of the Maid of Honor in convoying colliers across the English Channel by night. There were no lights, there was no signaling by whistle, there was traffic both ways, troop ships, darkness everywhere. Skilled navigators were necessary—men of the merchant ship sort. Out of all his convoys going or coming, only three ships were torpedoed, only two being lost.

In the final part of the war he crossed and recrossed the Atlantic in convoy. It was then that the Justicia was torpedoed. “She remained afloat for twenty-four hours, and Custance would have saved her if a German had not dived under the ring of patrol boats that surrounded her and fired a finishing torpedo.”

In getting off the dying Justicia Custance nearly lost his life, yet, says Mr. Cropley, “I received a very apologetic letter saying he was sorry he hadn’t been able to save the cigarettes he was bringing over to me.”

The German Secret Service System the Scrap Basket of Official Honor

Though the knowledge of an enemy’s plans, purposes and preparatory measures is of the highest importance in military campaigning, and though the utmost of courage and daring are often necessary to obtain the required information, the office of the spy has, from time immemorial, been contemned of men. There was but one fate for the captured spy under military rule. Even when the bravery and devotion of the adventuring spy have been admitted to admiration there has remained the instinctive aversion to the office. The reason for the almost universal mental attitude is that spying usually, if not invariably, involves treachery, the betrayal of trust and confidence gained by professions of friendship and sympathetic opinion. The word “spies” stirs the spleen of wholesome minded persons. It implies craft, duplicity, perversity. Few men have been willing to confess themselves spies. However greedily the sensational or adventure-loving reader may follow the narrative of the experiences, the desperate chances, the hazards, the daring risks, the narrow escapes of the successful spy, there is nevertheless a regretful wish that the valor, the intelligence, had found a nobler medium of expression.

But because there is such a thing as fearless, generous self-sacrifice in the performance of undertakings or obligations that come under the general classification of spying, it is perhaps unfortunate that no attempt has been made to discriminate what may be termed honorable (in a military sense) espionage from ignoble spying. Surely there is a vast distinction between the soldier who volunteers to penetrate an enemy’s lines to ascertain particular facts and the person who under the protection of social or official privilege wins trust only to betray it. In the second class there probably is no more despicable violation of moral responsibility recorded in the history of nations than the German intrigue against the United States when this country was still at peace with Germany. The indictment is clearly drawn in a few words in the Flag Day address of President Wilson, June 14, 1917. He said speaking of the German Government:

“They filled our unsuspecting communities with vicious spies and conspirators and sought to corrupt the opinion of our people in their own behalf. When they found they could not do that, their agents diligently spread sedition amongst us and sought to draw our own citizens from their allegiance—and some of these agents were men connected with the official embassy of the German Government itself here in our own capital.”

ITS DIPLOMATIC AIDS

Their Ambassador, Count Johann von Bernstorff; their military attaché, Capt. Franz von Papen; their naval attaché, Capt. Karl Boy-Ed; their financial agent, Dr. Heinrich Albert, were the diplomatic and social spies who engineered and supplied with necessary information the vicious under-agents of the spy system of which sedition and violence were the shameful instruments.

With patient diligence, John Price Jones, a newspaper man, attached to the New York Sun, collected—from documentary evidence, from Secret Service officials and by means of his own investigation over a period of eighteen months—a vast amount of valuable and exact information, the vital part of which Small, Maynard and Company subsequently published in book form, under the title The German Secret Service in America. The information in that book, substantiated by governmental and other evidence, is authoritative, and we are indebted to it for much of the matter in this article.

“Count von Bernstorff, once his nation had declared war upon France and England, went to war with the United States. As ambassador, diplomatic courtesy gave him a scope of observation limited only by the dignity of his position. A seat in a special gallery in the Senate and House of Representatives was always ready for his occupancy; he could virtually command the attention of the White House; and senators, congressmen and office-holders from German-American districts respected him. Messengers kept him in constant touch with the line-up of Congress on important issues, and two hours later that line-up was known in the Foreign Office in Berlin. As head and front of the German spy system in America, he held cautiously aloof from all but the most instrumental acquaintances: men and women of prominent political and social influence who he knew were inclined, for good and sufficient reasons, to help him. One woman, whose bills he paid at a Fifth Avenue gown house, was the wife of a prominent broker and another woman of confessedly German affiliations who served him lived within a stone’s throw of the Metropolitan Museum and its nearby phalanx of gilded dwellings (her husband’s office was in a building at 11 Broadway, of which more anon); a third, woman intimate lived in a comfortable apartment near Fifth Avenue—an apartment selected for her, though she was unaware of it, by secret agents of the United States.

BAIT FOR INGÉNUES

“During the early days of the war the promise of social sponsorship which any embassy in Washington could extend proved bait for a number of ingénues of various ages, with ambition and mischief in their minds, and the gracious Ambassador played them smoothly and dexterously. Mostly they were not German women, for the German women of America were not so likely to be useful socially, nor as a type so astute as to qualify them for von Bernstorff’s delicate work. To those women whom he chose to see he was courteous, and superficially frank almost to the point of naïveté. The pressure of negotiation between Washington and Berlin became more and more exacting as the war progressed, yet he found time to command a campaign whose success would have resulted in disaster to the United States. That he was not blamed for the failure of that campaign when he returned to Germany in April, 1917, is evidenced by his prompt appointment to the court of Turkey, a difficult and important post, and in the case of Michaelis, a stepping-stone to the highest post in the Foreign Office.

“Upon the shoulders of Dr. Heinrich Albert, privy counselor and fiscal agent of the German Empire, fell the practical execution[Pg 328] of German propaganda throughout America. He was the American agent of a government which has done more than any other to coöperate with business towards the extension of influence abroad, on the principle that ‘the flag follows the constitution.’ As such he had had his finger on the pulse of American trade, had catalogued exhaustively the economic resources of the country, and held in his debt, as his nation’s treasurer in America, scores of bankers, manufacturers and traders to whom Germany had extended subsidy. As such also he was the paymaster of the Imperial secret diplomatic and consular agents.

“You could find him almost any day until the break with Germany in a small office in the Hamburg-American Building (a beehive of secret agents) at No. 45 Broadway, New York. He was tall and slender, and wore the somber frock coat of the European business man with real grace. His eyes were blue and clear, his face clean-shaven and faintly saber-scarred, and his hair blond. He impressed one as an unusual young man in a highly responsible position. His greeting to visitors, of whom he had few, was punctilious, his bow low, and his manner altogether polite. He encouraged conversation rather than offered it. He had none of the ‘hard snap’ of the energetic, outspoken, brusque American man of business. Dr. Albert was a smooth-running, well-turned cog in the great machine of Prussian militarism.

CORRUPTION FUND OF MILLIONS

“Upon him rested the task of spending between $2,000,000 and $3,000,000 a week for German propaganda. He spent thirty millions at least in secret agency work, also known by the uglier names of bribery, sedition and conspiracy. He admitted that he wasted a half million.

“His methods were quiet and successful, and his participation in the offenses against America’s peace might have passed unproven had he not been engaged in a too-absorbing conversation one day in August, 1915, upon a Sixth Avenue elevated train. He started up to leave the train at Fiftieth Street, and carelessly left his portfolio behind him—to the tender care of a United States Secret Service man. It contained documents revealing his complicity in enterprises the magnitude of which beggars the imagination. The publication of certain of those documents awoke the slumbering populace to a feeling of chagrin and anger almost equal to his own at the loss of his dossier. And yet he stayed on in America, and returned with the ambassadorial party to Germany only after the severance of diplomatic relations in 1917, credited with expert generalship on the economic sector of the American front.

“Germany’s military attaché to the United States was Captain Franz von Papen. His mission was the study of the United States army. In August, 1914, it may be assumed that he had absorbed most of the useful information of the United States army, which at that moment was no superhuman problem. In July of that year he was in Mexico, observing, among other matters, the effect of dynamite explosions on railways. He was quite familiar with Mexico. According to Admiral von Hintze he had organized a military unit in the lukewarm German colony in Mexico City, and he used one or more of the warring factions in the southern republic to test the efficacy of various means of warfare.

“Von Papen operated from New York after[Pg 329] the outbreak of war. “German reservists who had been peaceful farmers, shopkeepers or waiters, all over the United States, were mobilized for service, and paraded through Battery Park in New York shouting ‘Deutschland, Deutschland über alles!’ to the strains of the Austrian hymn, while they waited for Papen’s orders from a building near by, and picked quarrels with a counter procession of Frenchmen screaming the immortal ‘Marseillaise.’ Up in his office sat the attaché, summoning, assigning, despatching his men on missions that were designed to terrorize America as the spiked helmets were terrorizing Belgium at that moment.

“... Although von Papen marshaled his consuls, his reservists, his thugs, his women, and his skilled agents, for a programme of violence the like of which America had never experienced, the military phase of the war was not destined for decision here, and there is again something ironical in the fact that the arrogance of Captain von Papen’s outrages hastened the coming of war to America and the decline of Captain von Papen’s style of warfare in America.

BOY-ED, A TURKISH HALF-BREED

“The Kaiser’s naval attaché at Washington was Karl Boy-Ed, the child of a German mother and a Turkish father, who had elected a naval career and shown a degree of aptitude for his work which qualified him presently for the post of chief lieutenant to von Tirpitz. He was one of the six young officers who were admitted to the chief councils of the German navy, as training for high executive posts.... His duties took him all over the world as naval observer, and he may be credited more than casually with weaving the plan-fabric of marine supremacy with which Germany proposed in due time to envelop the world.

“He impressed diplomatic Washington in 1911 as a polished cosmopolite. Polished he was, measured by the standards of diplomatic Washington, for rare was the young American of Boy-Ed’s age who had his cultivation, his wide experience, and his brilliant charm. He was sought after by admiring mothers long before he was sought after by the Secret Service; he moved among the clubs of Washington and New York making intimates of men whose friendship and confidence would serve the Fatherland, cloaking his real designs by frivolity and frequent attendances at social functions. His peace-time duties had been to study the American navy; to familiarize himself with its ship power and personnel, with its plans for expansion, its theories of strategy, its means of supply, and finally, with the coast defenses of the country. He had learned his lesson, and furnished Berlin with clear reports. On those reports, together with those of his colleagues in other countries, hinged Germany’s readiness to enter war, for it would have been folly to attempt a war of domination with America an unknown, uncatalogued naval power. (It will be well to recall that the submarine is an American invention, and that Germany’s greatest submarine development took place in the years 1911-14.)

“And then, suddenly, he dropped the cloak. The Turk in him stood at attention while the German in him gave him sharp orders—commands to be carried out with Oriental adroitness and Prussian finish. Then those who had said lightly that ‘Boy-Ed knows more about our navy than Annapolis itself’ began to realize that they had spoken an alarming truth. His war duties were manifold. Like von Papen, he had his corps of reservists, his secret agents, his silent forces everywhere ready for active coöperation in carrying out the naval enterprises Germany should see fit to undertake in Western waters.

“America learned gradually of the machinations of the four executives, Bernstorff, Albert, Papen and Boy-Ed. America had not long to wait for evidences of their activity, but it was a long time before the processes of investigation revealed their source. It was inevitable that they could not work undiscovered for long, and they seem to have realized that they must do the utmost damage at top speed. Their own trails were covered for a time by the obscure identities of their subordinates. The law jumps to no conclusions. Their own persons were protected by diplomatic courtesy. It required more than two years of tedious search for orthodox legal evidence to arraign these men publicly in their guilt, and when that evidence had finally been obtained, and Germany’s protest of innocence had been deflated, it was not these men who [Pg 331]suffered, but their country, and the price she paid was war with America.

GERMANY’S SECRET ARMY

“A hundred or more of their subordinates have been convicted of various criminal offenses and sent to prison. Still more were promptly interned in prison camps at the outbreak of war in 1917. The secret army included all types, from bankers to longshoremen. Many of them were conspicuous figures in American public life, and of these no small part were allowed to remain at large under certain restrictions—and under surveillance. Germany’s army in the United States was powerful in numbers; the fact that so many agents were working destruction probably hastened their discovery; the loyalty of many so-called German-Americans was always questionable. The public mind, confused as it had never been before by the news of war, was groping about for sound fundamentals, and was being tantalized with false principles by the politicians. Meanwhile Count von Bernstorff was watching Congress and the President, Dr. Albert was busy in great schemes, Captain von Papen was commanding an active army of spies, and Captain Boy-Ed was engaged in a bitter fight with the British navy.”

But long after the departure of the principals for their native land the enterprises they had inaugurated persisted.

Among the pre-war activities the German government made a contract with Dr. Karl Buenz, American head of the Hamburg-American Line, for the provisioning, during war, of German ships at sea, the contract being jealously guarded in the German Embassy at Washington. Merchant ships were to be used for the purpose. July 31, 1914, a cablegram from Berlin called on Dr. Buenz to begin filling his contract. The first ship to be loaded (with coal) was the Berwind, and the question arose as to who among the conspirators should apply for the clearance papers. Finally G. B. Kulenkampff, a banker and exporter, was directed to do so. He swore to a false manifest of the cargo and got the papers. The Berwind carried food as well as coal for the provisioning of German warships to be found at secretly designated points, and her destination was not Buenos Ayres as the clearance papers declared, so the United States was unwittingly a party to German naval operations, on the third day of the war, by German mendacity. The Berwind sailed for a little island known as Trinidad (not the British West Indian island) about 70° east of Brazil, and there her cargo was transferred to five German ships, one of which was the Kap-Trafalgar, presently sunk by the British auxiliary cruiser, the Carmania, which steamed into view while the Trafalgar, the Berwind and one other of the vessels were still at Trinidad.

It is interesting to know that most of the ships chartered for this lawless purpose did not carry out the intention. The Unita was one of them and we are told:

“Her skipper was Eno Olsen, a Canadian citizen born in Norway. Urhitzler, the German spy placed aboard, made the mistake of assuming that Olsen was friendly to Germany. He gave him his ‘orders,’ and the skipper balked. ’“Nothing doing,” I told the supercargo,’ Captain Olsen testified later, with a Norwegian twist to his pronunciation. ‘She’s booked to Cadiz, and to Cadiz she goes!’ So the supercargo offered me $500 to change my course. “Nothing doing—nothing doing for a million dollars,” I told him. The third day out he offered me $10,000. Nothing doing. So,’ announced Captain Olsen with finality, ‘I sailed the Unita to Cadiz and after we got there I sold the cargo and looked up the British consul.’”

Under the Buenz contract twelve ships were either purchased or chartered at a total cost of $1,419,394, and it is said that of their shiploads of supplies less than $30,000 worth were ever transferred to German war vessels. Buenz, after much delay in the proceedings, was sentenced to eighteen months’ imprisonment in the Federal penitentiary at Atlanta.

THE WIRELESS TREACHERIES

The Sayville Wireless Station on Long Island was for a long time a successfully controlled medium for the direction of spy and propaganda work in this country as well as for communication with wireless stations in Germany, in Central and South America, with wireless ships interned, etc., etc. To this[Pg 332] and the other German-owned commercial plants in the United States Capt. Boy-Ed added amateur stations of more or less extended radius as auxiliaries. But owing to complaints of frequent interference with regular messages, the “United States presently ordered the closing of all private wireless stations, and those amateurs who had been listening out of sheer curiosity to the air conversation cheerfully took down their antennæ. Not so, however, a prominent woman in whose residence on Fifth Avenue lay concealed a powerful receiving apparatus. Nor did the interned ships obey the order: apparatus apparently removed was often rigged in the shelter of a funnel, and operated by current supplied from an apparently innocent source. And the secret service discovered stations also in the residences of wealthy Hoboken Germans, and in a German-American ‘mansion’ in Hartford, Connecticut.”

Later suspicions were aroused by the activities of the German wireless, but the German operators were not at once removed. The United States began taking down the seemingly meaningless jargon that came every morning from the Nauen Station near Berlin. It was two years later, however, that a key to the jumble was discovered and the code revealed. Two codes in fact were found.

“The chief significance of the discovery of the two codes is their conclusive proof that while von Bernstorff was protesting to the American government that he could not get messages through to Berlin, nor replies from the Foreign Office, he was actually in daily, if not hourly, communication with his superiors. Messages were sent out by his confidential operators under the very eyes of the American naval censors. After the break of diplomatic relations with Berlin, in February, 1917, the authorities set to work decoding the messages, and the State Department from time to time issued for publication certain of the more brutal proofs of Germany’s violation of American neutrality. The Ambassador and his Washington establishment[Pg 333] had served for two years and a half as the ‘central exchange’ of German affairs in the western world. After his departure communication from German spies here was handicapped only by the time required to forward information to Mexico; from that point to Berlin air conversation continued uninterrupted.”

It may be noted in passing that Captain Karl Grasshof of the cruiser Geier, that took refuge from the British by tying up in Honolulu harbor, gave high proof of the German nice sense of honor in respect of hospitality. He instituted a series of afternoon concerts by the ship’s band, that the music might drown out the noise of the wireless apparatus as he sent messages to raiders at sea or threw off false reports in English, the purpose of which was to make trouble between the United States and Japan. He said at one time that von Papen inspired this peculiar treachery, but afterwards denied it.

TO INVADE CANADA

On the military side, one of von Papen’s brilliant projects was to organize the German reservists in the United States into an army for the invasion of Canada. The plan was to transport men and guns by night from ports of the Great Lakes by means of powerful motor boats and attack defenseless lake cities, the object being to arouse such fear in the Canadians that they would keep their troops for home defense instead of sending them to the aid of England. This, however, was a project from which the craftier Bernstorff recoiled as smacking too much of open violence. Then von Papen proposed a scheme to blow up the Welland Canal as a terrorizing job. The plot was ascribed to “two Irishmen, prominent members of Irish associations, both of whom had fought in the Irish rebellion.”

The spy, Horst von der Goltz, was the active agent in the preliminary steps, such as recruiting men for the job, securing explosives, etc., Papen, in the name of Steffens, supplying the money and giving the necessary instructions. But after being carried forward almost to the point of action the Welland enterprise was, for some unknown reason, suddenly abandoned and the dynamite (three hundred pounds in suitcases), which had been taken to Niagara Falls, was left with an aviator, and Goltz, with his immediate associate, Constance Covani, a private detective, returned to New York. Von Papen was much provoked by the failure of his second plan to terrorize Canada. Goltz was sent on some commission to Germany in October, sailing on a forged passport, got safely to Berlin and, on his return trip in November, was arrested in England, spy fashion. After a protracted imprisonment, Goltz agreed to turn State’s evidence against his fellow conspirators. A number of arrests resulted, and the plots against Canada were fully revealed.

As more and more precise rules for the issue of passports were made by the government the difficulties of the conspirators in making direct communication with Berlin increased correspondingly. It devolved upon von Papen to provide for the supply of passports to meet the needs of couriers and others who could not get passports in their own names.

“The military attaché selected Lieutenant Hans von Wedell, who had already made a trip as courier to Berlin for his friend, Count von Bernstorff. Von Wedell was married to a German baroness. He had been a newspaper reporter in New York, and later a lawyer. He opened an office in Bridge Street, New York, and began to send out emissaries to sailors on interned German liners, and to their friends in Hoboken, directing them to apply for passports. He sent others to the haunts of tramps on the lower East Side, to the Mills Hotel, and other gathering places of the down-and-outs, offering ten, fifteen or twenty dollars to men who would apply for and deliver passports. And he bought them! He spent much time at the Deutscher Verein, and at the Elks’ Club in 43rd Street where he often met his agents to give instructions and receive passports. His bills were paid by Captain von Papen.”

MANUFACTURING PASSPORTS

The passports secured in this way by von Wedell and by his successor, Carl Ruroede, Sr., in the employ of Oelrichs & Co., were supplied to reservist officers whom the General Staff had ordered back to Berlin, and [Pg 335]also to spies whom von Papen wished to send to England, France, Italy or Russia. Among the latter was Anton Kuepferle, who was captured in England, confessed and killed himself in Brixton jail.

When it became obvious that passports must be serving the ends of persons other than those to whom they were issued the government demanded that each passport should have the photograph of the bearer. But this did not disconcert the conspirators, as The German Secret Service in America tells us. It says: “The Germans found it a simple matter to give a general description of a man’s eyes, color of hair, and age to fit the person who was actually to use the document; then forwarded the picture of the applicant to be affixed. The applicant receiving the passport would sell it at once. Even though the official seal was stamped on the photograph the Germans were not dismayed.

“Adams [Albert G. Adams, a United States Secret Service agent, who had insinuated himself into Ruroede’s confidence] rushed into Ruroede’s office one day waving a sheaf of five passports issued to him by the government. Adams was ostensibly proud of his work, Ruroede openly delighted.

“‘I knew I could get these passports easily,’ he boasted to Adams. ‘Why, if Lieutenant von Wedell had kept on here he never could have done this. He always was getting into a muddle.’

“‘But how can you use these passports with these pictures on them?’ asked the agent.

“‘Oh, that’s easy,’ answered Ruroede. ‘Come in the back room. I’ll show you.’ And Ruroede, before the observant eyes of the Department of Justice, patted one of the passports with a damp cloth, then with adhesive paste fastened a photograph of another man over the original bearing the imprint of the United States seal.

“‘We wet the photograph,’ said Ruroede, ‘and then we affix the picture of the man who is to use it. The new photograph also is dampened, but when it is fastened to the passport there still remains a sort of vacuum in spots between the new picture and the old because of ridges made by the seal. So we turn the passport upside down, place it on a soft ground—say a silk handkerchief—and then we take a paper-cutter with a dull point, and just trace the letters on the seal. The result is that the new photograph dries exactly as if it had been stamped by Uncle Sam. You can’t tell the difference.’

NABBED AT SEA

“Through Adams’ efforts Ruroede and four Germans, one of them an officer in the German reserves, were arrested on January 2, on the Scandinavian-American liner Bergensfjord outward bound to Bergen, Norway. They had passports issued through Adams at Ruroede’s request under the American names of Howard Paul Wright, Herbert S. Wilson, Peter Hanson and Stanley F. Martin.

“Von Wedell himself was a passenger on the Bergensfjord, but when he was lined up with the other passengers, the Federal agents, who did not have a description of him, missed him and left the vessel. He was later (January 11) taken off the ship by the British, however, and transferred to another vessel for removal to a prison camp. She struck a German mine and sank, and von Wedell is supposed to have drowned.”

An explicit letter from von Wedell to von Bernstorff dispelled any possibility of doubt that the German Ambassador was fully cognizant of the false passport frauds.

“Ruroede was sentenced to three years in Atlanta prison. The four reservists, pleading guilty, protested they had taken the passports out of patriotism and were fined $200 each.

“The arrest of Ruroede exposed the New York bureau, and made it necessary for the Germans to shift their base of operations, but did not put an end to the fraudulent passport conspiracy. Capt. Boy-Ed assumed the burden, and hired men to secure passports for him.”

But the increased vigilance and thoroughness of the British reduced this service to a negligible quantity before the entrance of the United States into the war squelched it entirely.

An incident in connection with the arrest of Ruroede is related by French Strother in his story “Fighting German Spies” published in The World’s Work. Ruroede “was being urged by the Assistant United States District Attorney to ‘come across’ with the facts about his activities in the passport frauds, and [Pg 337]he had stood up pretty well against the persuasions and hints of the attorney and the doubts and fears of his own mind. About eleven o’clock at night, as he was for the many’th time protesting his ignorance and his innocence, another agent of the Bureau of Investigation walked across the far end of the dimly lit room—in one door and out another—accompanied by a fair-haired lad of nineteen.

“‘My God!’ exclaimed Ruroede, ‘have they got my son, too? The boy knows nothing at all about this.’

“This little ghost-walking scene, borrowed from Hamlet, broke down Ruroede’s reserve, and he came out with pretty much all the story, ending with the melancholy exclamation ‘I thought I was going to get an Iron Cross; but what they ought to do is to pin a little tin stove on me.’”

A SENSATIONAL CAPTURE

In addition to von Papen, Dr. Albert and Boy-Ed, one of Bernstorff’s effective agents was Wolf von Igel, who was the leader of the dynamite men of the conspiracy. He set up at 60 Wall Street ostensibly in the “advertising” business. Attention was attracted to him by the fact that his visitors during the two years he was undisturbed were Germans who had nothing whatever to do with advertising. Moreover, conspicuous in his office was a large safe bearing the insignia of the German Imperial Government. Suspicions were aroused and by degrees these suspicions were strengthened by circumstances and incidents that indicated von Igel as a German agent. Therefore, as the New York Times reported, one morning in April, 1916, while von Igel was engaged preparing a mass of papers taken from the safe for transfer to Washington, the office was entered by four United States Secret Service agents from the Department of Justice, who made their way past the guardians always on duty, put von Igel under arrest, and undertook to seize the papers. The German was powerful and brave. With the aid of one associate he stubbornly fought the officers, striving to rescue the papers, to close the safe, to get to the telephone and communicate with his superiors. Revolvers were drawn by the Secret Service men. They produced no effect upon the intrepid von Igel.

“This is German territory,” he shouted. “Shoot me and you will bring on war.”

There was no shooting. But after a protracted struggle the defenders were overpowered and the papers seized. The German Embassy at once entered its protest. These were official papers. They were sacrosanct. The diplomatic prerogative of a friendly nation had been overridden and the person of its representative insulted. To this the State Department replied that the invaded premises at 60 Wall Street were described in the contract as a private business office for the carrying on of advertising, and that von Igel had not been formally accredited as a German representative.

When the papers were examined by the Department of Justice the reason for von Igel’s determined fight became apparent. Here, in the form of letters, telegrams, notations, checks, receipts, ledgers, cashbooks, cipher codes, lists of spies, and other memoranda and records were found indications—in some instances of the vaguest nature, in others of the most damning conclusiveness—that the German Imperial Government, through its representatives in a then friendly nation, was concerned with—

Maintenance of a spy system under the guise of a commercial investigation bureau.

Subsidizing of a bureau for the purpose of stirring up labor troubles in munition plants.

One of the most significant papers in the von Igel collection was a letter directly convicting von Papen of paying money to a plotter (Paul Koenig, manager of an alleged Bureau of Investigation established by the Hamburg-American Steamship Company for secret service purposes) designing to blow[Pg 338] up merchant ships sailing from the port of New York. Koenig had reported the make of the bombs which it was proposed to use. They were made to look like lumps of coal, to be concealed in the coal laden on steamers of the Allies. By this or other means thirty ships carrying munitions to the Allies were sunk.

MORE BERNSTORFF CRAFT

Closely related to and to some extent under the guidance of von Igel was the German and Austro-Hungarian Labor Information and Relief Bureau, with central headquarters at 136 Liberty Street, New York City, and branches in Cleveland, Detroit, Bridgeport, Pittsburgh, Philadelphia, and Chicago. The head of the enterprise was Hans Liebau, from whom it took its familiarly accepted name of the “Liebau Employment Agency.” During the trying days which followed the arrest of the Welland Canal conspirators it was unwaveringly asserted that the Liebau concern was a bona fide employment agency and nothing else, with no object other than to secure positions for German, Austrian, or Hungarian workmen seeking employment. That was for publication only. In von Igel’s papers the truth appears, brought out by the refusal of the Austro-Hungarian Embassy to continue its subsidies to the bureau.

That the Austro-Hungarian Embassy had taken official cognizance of the bureau previously, however, is disclosed in the letter written by the Ambassador to the Austro-Hungarian Minister for Foreign Affairs, which was found in the possession of James F. J. Archibald by the British authorities August 30, 1915. In this letter the Ambassador stated:

“It is my impression that we can disorganize and hold up for months, if not entirely prevent, the manufacture of munitions in Bethlehem and the Middle West, which, in the opinion of the German Military Attaché, is of importance and amply outweighs the comparatively small expenditure of money involved.”

Representations on behalf of the bureau’s efficiency were made, under date of March 24, 1916, in a letter to the German Ambassador, von Bernstorff:

“Engineers and persons in the better class of positions, and who had means of their own, were persuaded by the propaganda of the bureau to leave war material factories.”

The report comments with unconcealed amusement upon the fact that munitions concerns innocently wrote the bureau for workmen (which, of course, were not furnished) and continues in reviewing later conditions in the munitions industry:

“The commercial employment bureaus of the country have no supply of unemployed technicians.... Many disturbances and suspensions which war material factories have had to suffer, and which it was not always possible to remove quickly, but which on the contrary often led to long strikes, may be attributed to the energetic propaganda of the employment bureau.”

The captured documents contained letters and communications that established intimate relations between the German Diplomatic Service and the Irish revolutionary movement. Among others was the letter concerning a Justice of the New York Supreme Court, Daniel F. Cohalan, beginning, “Judge Cohalan requests the transmission of the following remarks.” The remarks are then quoted as follows:

“The revolution in Ireland can only be successful if supported from Germany, otherwise England will be able to suppress it, even though it be only after hard struggles. Therefore help is necessary. This should consist, primarily, of aerial attacks in England and a diversion of the fleet simultaneously with Irish revolution. Then, if possible, a landing of troops, arms, and ammunition in Ireland, and possibly some officers from Zeppelins. This would enable the Irish ports to be closed against England and the establishment of stations for submarines on the Irish coast and the cutting off of the supply of food for England. The services of the revolution may therefore decide the war.”

“He asks that a telegram to this effect be sent to Berlin,” the letter continues. It is but fair to say that Judge Cohalan has denied making the request.

Other documents revealed the German Secret Service dealings with Sir Roger Casement, subsequently executed by the British for treason, but though the Department of Justice had this incriminating evidence, it did not reach the Attorney General until the afternoon [Pg 340]following the arrest of Casement. The cause of Casement’s arrest was not, therefore, information furnished by the Department, as was loosely charged at the time.

LANSING’S REVELATION

The most sensational of the revelations of German plotting in the United States was made by Secretary Lansing on September 21, 1916, when he published without comment a telegram written by Ambassador Bernstorff himself and asking his government for $50,000 to be used in influencing Congress. This was not one of the papers taken from von Igel, but was of much later date, and Mr. Lansing stated that the cablegram had not been sent to Germany through the State Department, leaving it to be implied that it went by way of some neutral legation.

There was a veritable storm of excitement in Congress over the imputation of bribery, some Congressmen in the heat of the moment intimating that they knew what members had benefited from the fund. But later it was made evident that Bernstorff had no idea of bribery but of starting a volume of letters and telegrams from various parts of the country to influence Congressmen against a declaration of war. Some time afterwards Secretary Lansing made public the fact that when Bernstorff asked for the $50,000 to influence the American Congress he was already aware that Germany was about to resume her ruthless submarine warfare which she had assured the United States would be abandoned.

THE BOLO PASHA FOLLY

The most amazing instance thus far discovered of the German government’s lavish waste of the German people’s money for useless intrigues in other countries is that revealed after the arrest of Paul Bolo, alias Bolo Pasha, in Paris, Sept. 29, 1917. The following account is taken from the New York Times Current History:

“Bolo had long been under suspicion and had been temporarily under arrest several weeks before, but only upon receipt of important evidence from the United States was he imprisoned without bail. He is a Frenchman, born at Marseilles, and, according to an article in the Paris Matin, is a brother of an eloquent French prelate of that name. He has had an adventurous career in various countries, including Egypt, and at the beginning of the war he was penniless; but when in Switzerland in March, 1915, he met Abbas Hilmi, former Khédive of Egypt, and apparently concluded an arrangement by which he was to receive $2,500,000 to be used in influencing the French press in favor of a German peace. The plan was approved by Gottlieb von Jagow, German Foreign Minister, who was to pay the money partly through the ex-Khédive and partly through Swiss and American banks.

“In accordance with this arrangement $1,000,000 was paid by roundabout methods through Swiss banks, to avert suspicion. Abbas Hilmi and an associate are said to have collected $50,000 as a commission. After that time Bolo Pasha and Abbas Hilmi seemed to have fallen out, for their relations ceased. At the time of his arrest Bolo was said to have received $8,000,000 from Germany, of which $2,500,000 had been traced to the Deutsche Bank. Large portions of this sum were said to have been paid through an American channel. The actual facts, now proved by the documents, go far toward confirming those original estimates.

“Bolo arrived in New York on February 22, 1916, and left on March 17 following. He had rooms at the Plaza Hotel, and was careful not to be seen in public with German agents. He saw Bernstorff secretly in Washington.

“When the French government got an inkling of his traitorous activities it appealed to Governor Whitman of New York for evidence, and ten days’ work by Merton E. Lewis, the Attorney General of the State, assisted by an expert accountant, resulted in sensational disclosures which were made public on the evening of October 3. The evidence, which included photographic reproductions of many telltale checks, letters, and telegrams, revealed the fact that Count Bernstorff, then German Ambassador at Washington, had eagerly fallen in with Bolo’s proposition to betray France by corrupting the press in favor of a premature peace and had advanced him the enormous sum of $1,683,500 to finance the plot. The State Department and Ambassador Jusserand examined the evidence and attested its genuineness.

“Many banks had been used to confuse and hide the transaction, but the persons and agencies who figured knowingly in it are Bolo Pasha, Ambassador von Bernstorff, and two bankers—Hugo Schmidt, former New York agent of the Deutsche Bank of Berlin, who acted as Bernstorff’s financial agent, and Adolph Pavenstedt, former head of the New York banking house of G. Amsinck & Co.

“Of the mass of documents exhibited by Attorney General Lewis, the most important was a letter written by Bolo Pasha to the New York City branch of the Royal Bank of Canada on March 14, 1916, three days before he sailed to return to France. That letter reads:

“‘New York, March 14, 1916.

“‘The Royal Bank of Canada, New York, N. Y.

“‘Gentlemen: You will receive from Messrs. G. Amsinck & Co. deposits for the credit of my account with you, which deposits will reach the aggregate amount of about $1,700,000, which I wish you to utilize in the following manner:

“‘First—Immediately on receipt of the first amount on account of this sum pay to Messrs. J. P. Morgan & Co., New York City, the sum of $170,068.03, to be placed to the credit of the account with them of Senator Charles Humbert, Paris.

“‘Second—Establish on your books a credit of $5,000, good until the 31st of May, in favor of Jules Bois, Biltmore Hotel, this amount to be utilized by him at the debit of my account according to his needs, and the unused balance to be returned to me.

“‘Third—Transfer to the credit of my wife, Mme. Bolo, with agency T of Comptoir National d’Escompte de Paris a sum of about $524,000, to be debited to my account as such transfers are made by you at best rate and by small amounts.

“‘Fourth—You will hold, subject to my instructions, when all payments are complete, a balance of not less than $1,000,000.

“‘Yours truly,
“‘Bolo Pasha.’

“That is how the $1,683,500, which was the exact amount Bernstorff ordered Schmidt to place at the service of Bolo, came into the latter’s actual possession.

BERNSTORFF THE MASTER MIND

“Direct evidence that Count Bernstorff was the master mind behind the plot on this side of the Atlantic came to light in five dispatches that were made public by Secretary Lansing on October 5. These messages were exchanged in the Spring of 1916:

“‘The Department of State communicates to the press the following telegrams bearing upon the case of Bolo Pasha, exchanged between Count von Bernstorff and Herr von Jagow, German Minister of Foreign Affairs.

“‘Number 679, Feb. 26. I have received direct information from an entirely trustworthy source concerning a political action in one of the enemy countries which would bring peace. One of the leading political personalities of the country in question is seeking a loan of one million seven hundred thousand dollars in New York, for which security will be given. I was forbidden to give his name in writing. The affair seems to me to be of the greatest possible importance. Can the money be provided at once in New York? That the intermediary will keep the matter secret is entirely certain. Request answer by telegram. A verbal report will follow as soon as a trustworthy person can be found to bring it to Germany.

“‘Bernstorff.’

“‘Number 150, Feb. 29. Answer to telegram Number 679. Agree to the loan, but only if peace action seems to you a really serious project, as the provision of money in New York is for us at present extraordinarily difficult. If the enemy country is Russia have nothing to do with the business, as the sum of money is too small to have any serious effect in that country. So, too, in the case of Italy, where it would not be worth while to spend so much.

“‘Jagow.’

“‘Number 685, March 5. Please instruct Deutsche Bank to hold nine million marks at disposal of Hugo Schmidt. The affair is very promising. Further particulars follow.

“‘Bernstorff.’

“‘Number 692, March 20. With reference to telegram Number 685, please advise our Minister in Berne that some one will call on him who will give him the passport Sanct Regis and who wishes to establish relations with the Foreign Office. Intermediary further requests that influence may be brought to bear upon our press to pass over the change in the inner political situation in France so far as possible in silence, in order that things may not be spoiled by German approval.

“‘Bernstorff.’

“‘Number 206, May 31. The person announced in Telegram 692 of March 20 has not yet reported himself at the legation at Berne. Is there any more news on your side of Bolo?

“‘Jagow.’

“In France the most sensational feature of the case was Bolo’s payment of $170,000 to Senator Charles Humbert, owner of Le Journal. The money was in part payment for 1,100 bonds of that newspaper. Senator Humbert immediately came out with a statement to prove that he was entirely unaware of the treasonable purpose of the purchases. He gave facts showing that Bolo Pasha had used his contract with Le Journal to extract money from Germany. On Oct. 12, the French Military Court appointed a sequestrator for the money advanced to Senator Humbert. It amounted in all to $1,200,000 and was handed over to the care of the Deposit and Consignment office, a section of the Ministry of Finance.

“Whatever the total number of millions extracted from the German government by Bolo Pasha, the utter futility of the expenditure, so far as Germany is concerned, must remain one of the most striking features of the case.”

A CONTINUING EVIL

The exposures of German intrigue and the departure from this country of the official representatives of Germany who had so grossly abused their diplomatic privileges did not by any means put an end to pro-German activities and expenditures. They were uninterrupted though necessarily transferred to channels of less commanding importance. What was true late in 1917, was practically true of the major part of 1918, before the armistice. Societies as well as individuals continued to distribute German money and carry on pro-German or anti-English propaganda. The New York Times said in October, 1917:

“The thing needs no proof. She is paying every man who will accept pay for the same purpose for which, before the war began, she was paying every man who would accept pay to handicap and weaken the arm of the American government.

“How are we to recognize the trail of her money? Before the war she was organizing strikes, blowing up factories, and purchasing the creation of a false public opinion against trading with the Allies. The outbreak of war somewhat altered her aims; there have been no purchased strikes lately and no dynamiting of factories. Her aim, which is always the same—the weakening of the government’s arm—can now be best attained by creating a false public opinion in favor of laying down our arms and consenting to peace before the objects of the war are attained. All her own moves from Berlin are now directed to that end, and when we find a movement in the United States which duplicates the moves from Berlin it is safe to assume that Germany is backing it in the same way in which she backed other movements, to quote von Bernstorff, ‘on former occasions.’

“It makes no difference that some of the men who are engaged in this movement may be merely foolish or deluded and not in receipt of money from Wilhelmstrasse. There are others who are, and these dupes are merely their tools. One and all they are doing the work for which Germany pays those who get the pay and those who do not. The ignorant zealot goes where the paid traitor sends him. That the ignorant zealot does not know the paid traitor is paid does not alter in the slightest the deadly effect of his action, the deadly effect calculated on and purposed by the German paymaster.”

The New York Tribune, commenting on the facility of espionage and propaganda by Germans, said:

“Conditions are incredible. These enemy aliens, acting as spies and carriers of information, are everywhere.

“They are in possession of hundreds of sources of information of military value.

“‘If you discharge the Germans,’ says Herman A. Metz, a manufacturer of drugs and chemicals, ‘you will close every chemical plant in the country.’”

ORGANIZED PROPAGANDA

“Many of the peace movements which were set going during the first three years of the war were sincere, many were not. A mass meeting held at Madison Square Garden in 1915 at which Bryan was the chief speaker, was inspired by Germany. In the insincere class falls also the ‘Friends of Peace,’ organized in 1915. Its letterhead bore the invitation: ‘Attend the National Peace Convention, Chicago, Sept. 5 and 6,’ and incidentally betrayed the origin of the society. The letterhead stated that the society represented the American Truth Society (an offshoot of the National German-American Alliance), The American Women of German Descent, the American Fair Play Society, the German-American Alliance of Greater New York, the German Catholic Federation of New York, the United Irish-American Societies and the United Austrian and Hungarian-American Societies. Among the ‘honorable vice-chairmen’ were listed Edmund von Mach, John Devoy, Justices Goff and Cohalan (a trinity of Britonophobes), Colquitt of Texas, ex-Congressman Buchanan (of Labor’s National Peace Council fame), Jeremiah O’Leary (a Sinn Feiner, mentioned in official cables from Zimmermann to Bernstorff as a good intermediary for sabotage), Judge John T. Hylan, Richard Bartholdt (a congressman active in the German political lobby), and divers officers of the Alliance.

“The American Truth Society, Inc., the parent of the Friends of Peace, was founded in 1912 by Jeremiah O’Leary, a Tammany lawyer later indicted for violation of the Espionage Act, who disappeared when his case came up for trial in May, 1918; Alphonse Koelble, who conducted the German-American Alliance’s New York political clearing house; Gustav Dopslaff, a German-American banker, and others interested in the German cause. In 1915 the Society, whose executives were well and favorably known to the German embassy, began issuing and circulating noisy pamphlets, with such captions as ‘Fair Play for Germany,’ and ‘A German-American War.’ O’Leary and his friends also conducted a mail questionnaire of Congress in an effort to catalogue the convictions of each member on the blockade and embargo questions. Their most insidious campaign was an effort to frighten the smaller banks of the country from participating in Allied loans, by threats of a German ‘blacklist’ after the war, to organize a ‘gold protest’ to embarrass American banking operations, and in general to harass the Administration in its international relations.

“So with their newspapers, rumor-mongers, lecturers, peace societies, alliances, bunds, [Pg 347]vereins, lobbyists, war relief workers, motion picture operators and syndicates, the Germans wrought hard to avert war. For two years they nearly succeeded. America was under the narcotic influence of generally comfortable neutrality, and a comfortable nation likes to wag its head and say ‘there are two sides to every question.’ But whatever these German agents might have accomplished in the public mind—and certainly they were sowing their seed in fertile ground—was nullified by acts of violence, ruthlessness at sea, and impudence in diplomacy. The left hand found out what the right hand was about.”

PAUL KOENIG, THE ATLAS LINE’S MAN

One of the delectable agents of the Bernstorff-von Papen intrigues was a “bull-headed Westphalian” named Paul Koenig, who had been one of the Hamburg-American Line’s detectives in service with the subsidiary company, the Atlas Line. His duties brought him into close relations with sailors, tug-captains, wharf-rats, longshoremen and keepers of dives of the lowest sort. That experience, coupled with the fact that he was, as his apelike countenance suggests, crafty and brutal, made him an ideal man for von Papen’s more dastardly purposes, especially as Koenig had under him the company’s police force of ten or twelve men, obedient to his will. Here was a nice little organization ready to hand.

On von Papen’s request the Atlas Line put Koenig entirely at his disposal, and no time was lost in making use of his service. Under von Papen, Koenig became the chief of a majority of the German Secret Service groups in the eastern part of the country. Gradually his work extended to the execution of commissions for the higher-ups, Bernstorff, Dr. Albert, the curious Austrian Ambassador, Dr. Dumba, as well as the orders of von Papen. He was a sort of factotum to them on various occasions, guard, messenger, investigator, etc. But to preserve the air of unsuspicious employment the Line continued to pay his wages, his work for the conspirators being covered by special bills and von Papen’s special checks. Koenig kept a book in which were listed the names of hundreds of persons—German-Americans and Americans, clerks, army reservists, scientists, city and federal employees, etc.—indicating his wide range of sources of information and the effectiveness of his system of poisonous propaganda.

His staff had numbers and special initials as well as aliases for identification in correspondence and telephone or other communications. He provided against the tapping of his telephone wires by talking in code. His code seems to have been devised with some sense of humor in the possibility of sending listeners-in on wild-goose chases, which was often the result. Then to prevent being shadowed he had one or two of his own men trail him, ready to notify him by signal if he seemed to be the object of too persistent attention. It is said he had the trick, when being followed, of suddenly turning a corner and waiting until the detective came up, when, taking a good look to identify the follower, he would go on with a boisterous laugh. By this trick he came to know quite a number of the agents of the Department of Justice. Such a cunning and cautious fellow of course gave the police a deal of trouble to keep tabs on him. Mr. John Price Jones says in his book:

A SUPERSUBTLE KNAVE

“So elusive did he become that it was necessary to evolve a new system of shadowing him in order to keep him in sight without betraying that he was under surveillance. One detective, accordingly, would be stationed several blocks away and would start out ahead of Koenig. The ‘front shadow’ was signaled by his confederates in the rear whenever Koenig turned a corner, so that the man in front might dart down a cross-street and maneuver to keep ahead of him. If Koenig boarded a street car the man ahead would hail the car several blocks beyond, thus avoiding suspicion. In more than one instance detectives in the rear, guessing that he was about to take a car, would board it several blocks before it got abreast of Koenig.

“It was impossible to overhear direct conversation between Koenig and any man to whom he was giving instructions. Some of his workers he never permitted to meet him at all, but when he kept a rendezvous it was in the open, in the parks in broad daylight, or in a moving-picture theater, or in the Pennsylvania Station, or the Grand Central Terminal.[Pg 348] There he could make sure that nobody was eavesdropping. If he met an agent in the open for the first time he gave him some such command as this:

“‘Be at Third Avenue and Fifty-ninth Street at 2:30 to-morrow afternoon beside a public telephone booth there. When the telephone rings answer it.’

“The man would obey. On the minute the telephone would ring and the man would lift the receiver. A strange voice told him to do certain things—either a definite assignment, or instructions to be at a similar place on the following day to receive a message. Or he might be told to meet another man, who would give him money and further orders. The voice at the other end of the wire spoke from a public telephone booth and was thus reasonably sure that the wire he was talking over was not tapped.”

But cunning, like vaulting ambition, sometimes “doth o’erleap itself,” and Koenig’s fall into the clutches of the law was due to that excess of caution that forbade him to trust any of his men or assistants. His rule was to employ no one man more than once in any service that gave him a “hold” on Koenig sufficient to warrant blackmail or threaten exposure. The detectives found this out, by observation. Then they noticed that one George Fuchs, a young relative with whom Koenig had been quite chummy at first, came to be seen less and less in his company. The detectives thereupon set about making the acquaintance of Fuchs and getting into his good grace. It did not take them long to learn that he was resentful of his unappreciative relative, and they gave sympathetic ear to his complaints. The desired result was the betrayal of Koenig to the authorities.

A Dozen Were Shot, Hundreds Were Imprisoned, But “Cherished Spies” Were Allowed To Go Free Because Their Work Was So Bad.

There has never been a war since the one in which the daughter of Jupiter and Leda, the inconstant Helen, figured so conspicuously, that has not had its fact or fiction of “beautiful” women. Whether it be Homer or Timothy Tubbmutton who wields the recording pen, there is always the woman beautiful to flavor the narrative. And usually the “beautiful” is a clever spy who casts a seductive spell over diplomats, statesmen, generals or, if need be, corporals of the guard. Inevitably a war of a magnitude to take in every clime and nation offered alluring field for the play of the reportorial or literary imagination, and we have had—in novel, movie and magazine as well as in the columns of the press—stories unlimited about beautiful women spies.

It goes without saying that, with the rarest possible exception, beauty is not a feature of the type of person whose mentality delights in “treasons, stratagems and spoils.” But we seldom have an authoritative pronouncement on the subject, and for that reason it is particularly interesting to reproduce in part an interview Miss Gertrude Lynch had with an English secret service official in 1917 while the war was still very much on. Miss Lynch was one of the “Vigilantes,” an association of American writers whose object was to “help win the war” by the dissemination of educative information. The interview with the English official was to get some light on the German espionage system as applied to England. Though not named, the official is described as the spy expert of England. A great many spies, of one and another sort, were nabbed in England. The article says:

ONLY A DOZEN SHOT

“There have only been twelve spies shot since the beginning of the war, but hundreds are either in penal servitude for life or serving shorter sentences. The actual number was not known to the official who talked with [Pg 350]me on this topic—with the distinct understanding that I should not mention his name or title. He is the acknowledged authority on the spy evil. Not far from where we sat, in a formidable cabinet which looked as if it held other interesting documents, the papers taken from von Papen were carefully locked.

“‘No woman spies have been shot in England and only one among the feminine lot—a bad lot—who are serving sentence could possibly lay claim to being a “beautiful lady” spy. This woman had all the hall-marks of the fiction and cinema character, charming in manner, well gowned, having plenty of money, traveling about luxuriously, and was finally nabbed with the incriminating papers on her. But the popular conception of the feminine secret agent rarely exists outside of sensational stories because only women without moral sense can take up this profession, and when a woman is devoid of moral sense she is sure to be devoid of the other qualities that might make her work efficacious.

“‘There are, of course, numberless men and women who would be spies if they had not been interned, and, among the 30,000 Germans who are at this moment so confined, there are doubtless several who treasure the belief that they would have been of inestimable use to their country; but as they will never get a chance to prove themselves wrong that poor solace is permitted them.

“‘We have,’ continued my informant, ‘a great number of “cherished spies” with us. These are the spies who go about plying their profession and believing themselves the personification of that cleverness the Germans demand for this work. That is why we have dubbed them “Our Cherished Ones.” They are carefully watched. We let them go on doing bad work because it is much better to keep a bad spy doing bad work than it is to take him and perhaps have a spy who might do good work sent in his place.

“‘America has the job of the century. I wouldn’t know where to tell her to begin. Spies that were there and have left had plenty of time to lay their plans before the unrestricted submarine warfare began.

“‘With 8,000,000 Germans in America, what you have to find out is whether or not a German has been denationalized, a process that can only be gone through in Germany. It is not enough to know that he has been naturalized and that he claims to be a good citizen to your country. The fact that he has become a naturalized citizen does not free him from the call to fight for his own land. If he is denationalized as well as naturalized you are then safe, but not before. In England we had only a very small number who were found to be denationalized, a fairly negligible unit.

“‘I should say that the rush by foreigners immediately after the declaration of war in America was not because before they had been indifferent or hostile, but because they feared to be called upon to fight for their own countries. You will probably find that many of the Germans had been denationalized and were finishing up the process.’”

AMERICA’S HIGH-CLASS SPIES

America had a monopoly of the so-called high-class spies, according to this authority. The average German spy was described as a man who has one or more convictions hanging over his head—an unsentenced criminal—and these men were paid only about $250 a month. The statement continues:

“‘The last spy we caught was only a day or so ago. We had been after him for some time and he was traveling with a perfectly good American passport.

“‘The high-class spies with you are responsible for the sabotage, for the strikes on the docks and in the factories. They are pacifists, anticonscriptionists. It is a situation terribly serious for you. They are going to delay what they can not prevent. Don’t flatter yourselves that the important spies have been driven out. If I had been a spy in America and the warning had been given to me so long in advance, I would have laid my lines very well. Look out for those lines; you may trip.

“‘What should be done with a spy in America? He should be shot as soon as his espionage has been proved. No weakness should be permitted because he has many affiliations there.

“‘I was in Germany eight years ago. Everywhere I was asked, “Are you ready to fight [Pg 351]America?” That was the pretty little German game. Even then they were dying to rub into us the fact that America was our enemy. In the beginning, when the commercial party—Herr Ballin and his clique—were in power, they pretended a great affection for you. It was contrary to their desire that the submarine warfare became so terrible—not because they hated its brutalities, don’t make any mistake about that, but because they thought it a diplomatic blunder. Then and now they have a press which harps on the unfriendly feeling that exists between you and us. That often reiterated phrase that “America is fighting Great Britain’s battles for her” was made in Germany.

“‘I’m not such a fool as to think that America loved us in the past, but that she ever hated us as the Germans have said and that we have hated her as they still say in subtle, indefinable ways in some of your papers, is unbelievable by either of the parties concerned. Nations have faults as do individuals. We’ve made mistakes. We may have talked a little too much about the Shannon and Chesapeake and you too much about Bunker Hill and that tea-party in Boston Harbor. Let’s have an end to it—it all helps Germany too much. Take away the text-books from your children which teach them to hate us. If you try it, the German school-teachers will try to keep them, see if they don’t.

“‘America ought to love us now if she has not in the past, if national love is founded on respect, as it should be. We can point to ourselves with pride. We have given up in this war the thing we most believed in—personal freedom. We have made untold sacrifices and we are ready to give up everything—everything. Anything in your press that makes you see these facts in a distorted way is false, spy-work of the subtle, underground, submarine mentality sort that the Germans excel in.

“‘Look out for it. It isn’t the work of the “lovely lady spy” or that of the man with a conviction suspended while he does their dirty work that you are in danger from. It is just where I have pointed out.

“‘You asked me a while ago what England would do in case Germany won. I will tell you and you can draw from it the lesson of spy—and other German effort.

“‘If Germany should win, there won’t be any one here when it happens to know anything about it.’”

A Traitor of Belgium Posing as an Allied Soldier Served the Germans

The basest of the spies in the German Service of whom there is any account probably was Gaston Quien, the betrayer of Edith Cavell. He was a degraded moral type, and had been convicted of various minor offenses before the war, being a “bad citizen.” He was at St. Quentin when the Germans arrived there, and according to testimony he at once placed himself on familiar terms with them. He was nicknamed “Doublemetre” (Two-yarder) because of his great stature. The Germans saw that they could make use of him, and proceeded to do so.

In 1915 the German commanders in Northern France and Belgium were angered at the fact that hundreds of Belgian and Allied soldiers hidden in various villages were eventually smuggled through the lines into Holland or France by an organization known to have its headquarters in Brussels.

Quien opportunely arrived in Brussels and posed as an Allied aviator who had been obliged to alight behind the German lines, and, after burning his plane, had evaded capture. Along with several French soldiers, he was hidden for a time at the château of Prince and Princess Crouy. There Louise Thuliez, the school teacher decorated early in 1919 with the Legion of Honor, secretly passed him on to Brussels, by way of Mons. At Brussels [Pg 353]he was lodged for several days in Miss Cavell’s nursery. Finally an engineer named Capiau and Mme. Bodart accompanied him and a group of Allied soldiers to the Dutch frontier, where, by payment of $15 a head to smugglers, they were conducted into Dutch territory.

Once at The Hague, Quien made no further effort to get into France. Instead, he returned to Brussels and betrayed to the Germans the entire organization for helping Allied soldiers out of Belgium.

Miss Cavell was tried and executed soon afterward. Miss Thuliez also was sentenced to death, but pardoned. Princess Crouy, Mme. Bodart and Capiau were sentenced to twelve years at hard labor. An architect named Bauco, also betrayed by Quien, was shot at the same time Miss Cavell met her fate. Quien continued in the employ of the Germans in various capacities, finally establishing himself in Interlaken, where he worked with their most noted spies. After the armistice he was arrested and tried for treason in a Belgian court. He was found guilty, but was not executed, pending an appeal.

It Did Not Wait for Winds to Swing Its Arms for German Guidance

In a book, recently published, called Espions, Espionnage, one story has to do with a windmill: “Celebrated along the whole Aisne front, there existed at Craonne a mill boldly designated, ‘Mill of the Spy.’... The miller, devoted to the interests of our enemies, had found the means of informing them of the movements of our troops by disposing the arms of the mill in different positions.” The French has a beautifully final sound—“the miller, devoted to the interests of our enemies.” “But to tell the truth, neither the miller himself nor the actual information which he was able to impart, made a great deal of difference in the fighting. What it was, that made, or almost made, the difference, I believe, has never been satisfactorily ascertained. The miller at least was not there, then. Of course he may have had confederates, but if so, the destruction of the mill was so sudden, so complete, that there was left no trace of them.”

The information given by the mill to the Germans was almost entirely negligible, and would have penetrated to them anyway through the medium of the spies with which both lines were always swarming. Of course, at first, before they realized the agency of the mill, the French were not a little troubled and disconcerted by the amount of data the Germans seemed to possess, and the speed with which it was acquired. For instance, for a while the Boches amused themselves with knowingly greeting each regiment as it moved up to take its turn in the front line trench. There was a measure of clairvoyance implied in the big white board with black lettering that would go up on top of the German barbed wire as surely as there was a change of guard on the French side: “Bonjour, 77e!” or the number of French trench casualties: “Morts ——,” “Blessés ——.” And so it went on day after day.

A week of this, in dull, rainy weather, was enough to set nerves on edge, but then they caught the miller, whose execution put, it was thought, the quietus on the mill. And upon the morning of the 27th of November, they moved forward stealthily to the surprise attack.

Then a poilu looked back. It was a miserable, gray, shrouded morning, when the shadow cast by any object is merely a blur around that object—the whole a blot upon a cloudy plain. The mill stood, a black, spectral shape in the fog, on a slight eminence, the most commanding point in the surrounding country. As he looked, suddenly a long, black arm fell, abruptly, while the corresponding one, lighter in color, rose a foot or two. Besides the troops, it was the only moving thing in that breathless landscape. “Sacré-bleu!” a poilu exclaimed. As one and another began to gape behind them at his sudden start of surprise, slowly the whole motion was reversed. Light arm down, black arm up. Nothing more occurred. The mill was as motionless as they, though afterwards some of them declared that they had been able to see Tom Bene himself, hanging, with a ghastly face, athwart the arms, as men are sometimes hung to the spokes of a wheel. Then, as a sound came from the German trenches, as with one impulse, the men rushed—back toward the mill, which they literally, by means of fire and bombs, tore shred from shred. Then they turned to meet the Germans, who, warned by this extraordinary wigwagging, by whatever agency or agencies, had instituted a counter-attack. The French were not driven, but they stood the attack in their own trenches. “Afterwards, to those who had been there to see, more vivid than the angels at Mons, more vivid than the vision of the Little Corporal, to those who thought they saw it, was that gray morning, the foiled attack, and this malevolent motion of a secret intelligence in a dream landscape.”

He Planned to End the War by Slaying Its Instigator and Failing—Died

One of the hero-martyrs of Belgium was Alois Van Keirsbilk, a well-to-do citizen of Thielt, beloved of his townspeople, a man of family, and a zealous patriot. He did what he might to serve, and many, they say in Thielt, were the services rendered. But there came a day when the rumor went round that the German Kaiser and his entourage were to visit Thielt, and Van Keirsbilk suddenly conceived a great project for the salvation of Belgium, for the liberation of the world from the nightmare of war. Egbert Hans tells the story of Alois Van Keirsbilk and it was first published in its completeness in the New York Times of Sunday, June 22, 1919. But a little abbreviated, it is here reproduced as Hans told it:

“Thielt was the headquarters of the Fourth German Army and sheltered the Commander-in-Chief with a staff of hundreds of officers. Alois Van Keirsbilk was chief conductor on the railway between Thielt and Bruges. Also he was the chief of a secret organization which had only one object—‘help to our boys and death to the enemy.’ The organization was in communication with the Belgian army through spies who made regular trips into Holland across the ‘cable of death,’ and many a German plan originated at headquarters in Thielt failed, thanks to the activity of Alois and his men.

“It was not long before Alois saw his chance for a big stroke. The Kaiser was coming to Thielt on the first of November. A desperate attack was to be made against the Belgian forces along the Yser and from there on against Ypres and Dunkirk, and Wilhelm II in person was to inspect the preparations.

“Kill the Kaiser and the war will be over, was the firm conviction of Alois and his friends, and they set to work. Alois acquired all the information that his organization could procure as to the movements and schedule of the imperial visitor, and sent all the details to his agents in the Belgian army, with the request that airmen be sent at the opportune moment ‘to kill the Kaiser!’

“Only one of the three messengers who were sent out reached the other side of the electric cable, for at that time the guards were doubled. But one was sufficient, and when the first of November came Alois felt confident that something would happen.

“THE BEST LAID PLANS”

“The big dinner at which the Kaiser and his staff were to gather around the table, and for which all the best silver in town had been requisitioned, was to begin at 2 o’clock. At that moment anxious eyes watched the sky toward the west. Would they come, the airmen with their bombs to do the deed that would finish the war? Would they be in time?

“At 2.15 there was a speck in the blue sky. It grew bigger and bigger, and bigger, and soon the watchers distinguished three flying machines. In haste Alois communicated with his friends. Barely had those who were warned taken shelter when the first explosion was heard. Then for a few minutes the town of Thielt shuddered as bomb after bomb exploded.

“It was a well-managed raid and the daring airmen escaped in safety, but it was all in vain. There had been a sudden change in the Kaiser’s schedule and the war lord had left Thielt at 2 o’clock sharp. During the bombardment his motor cars were speeding along the road to Bruges and his life was safe.

“But the commander of the Fourth German Army raged in his private office at the kommandatur. The secret of the visit had plainly got out. The Kaiser, the idol of 70,000,000 Germans, had barely escaped death. The guilty had to be found and punished.

“A contra-spy system was organized at once and large sums were promised for any bit of information. Slowly but surely Alois was drawn into the net woven by a most minute and complete investigation. On Feb. 2 he was summoned to the kommandatur and taken prisoner. Already three of his coöperators were there.

“It was then that Alois Van Keirsbilk showed the courage which won for him the name of ‘the Silent Hero.’ He knew that one word spoken lightly might betray the whole of his organization, and his last word to his friends who were still free had been, ‘Do not let my absence or death scare you; but keep up the work that we have been doing.’ After his arrest nothing could induce him to speak even a word. All devices, old and new, were tried by the kommandatur—tortures as well as promises, the menaces of a cruel death, and the promise of life in luxury. It was all in vain. Perhaps Alois thought of the many lives he had in his hands. Anyway, he remained silent.

“He was condemned to death on Feb. 25, and then the Germans created and applied as devilish a scheme of mental torture for a human being as could be devised. Alois had two children, and a third was to be born soon.

“‘On the day that new life enters your home your life will end unless you speak,’ said the German inquisitor. Undoubtedly Alois thought of his wife, who would be calling for him that day more than ever. Perhaps he thought of the new baby also. Nevertheless he was still true to his name, ‘the Silent.’

“On the 5th of April a little girl was born in the Van Keirsbilk home. It might seem unbelievable, but evidently the Germans had waited for the event. On the same day they sent official word to ‘Madame Van Keirsbilk’ that if she desired to see her husband still alive, she could see him that day at 3 o’clock in the prison at Ghent. A merciful neighbor nurse saw to it that the message did not reach the mother, then nursing her day-old baby. Instead the eldest girl, 10 years old, was sent to the prison to see her father. Full of joy, in her happy ignorance, she exclaimed:

“‘Oh, father, you must come home with me. We have a little sister, and mother wants to show it to you. Come, father!’

“But father could not come. He pressed his little girl in his arms. He could not tell her she would never see him again, for he wanted to spare the mother, who had to live for the children. Not a word did he say. One kiss, and the big prison gate closed after the child, while her father prepared himself to die.

FACED DEATH A HERO

“His end came next morning at half-past five in the cour of the prison. Four Belgians were to fall that day. When Van Keirsbilk arrived at the place of execution three were already lying dead against the wall. For some unknown reason he went to the muzzles of twelve German rifles alone.

“He refused to be blindfolded. ‘Let not a German hand touch me in this solemn moment when I die for my country. I have no fear of your bullets,’ the Belgians heard that he said, and erect he waited for the moment when his agony would come to an end. A few seconds later his body, with those of his comrades in death, was thrown into the ditch.

“In the afternoon of the same day a German soldier knocked at the door of the ‘Widow Van Keirsbilk’ and delivered a parcel to the devoted neighbor who was caring for the new baby and its mother. The woman opened it, and with horror found that it contained the suit of clothes of the unhappy master of the house. That was the German announcement of his death.

“Loving friends managed to keep the news from the widow for several days, although the continual absence of her husband plainly made her fear. But one morning she was looking through the window into the street, when the church bells began to ring for a funeral service. The people attending looked up at her and nodded with sympathy. None told her, but perhaps the unhappy woman read the pity that was in the eyes of the passers-by. Nobody knows, but suddenly a terrible look of suspicion came into her eyes. She rushed downstairs, where the neighbor nurse was preparing the meal for the children, and, seizing her by the arms, cried out:

“‘Who is dead? For whom are the bells ringing? Is it for Alois? Tell me, or I will run out into the street and find out. I must [Pg 360]know where Alois is. I must know it if he is dead.’ Then and there the sad news had to be broken, and the widow of Alois began a time of lonely misery only broken by the struggle to keep her three children fed and clothed.”

“To-day the Belgian flag flows again from the tower of Thielt and the thrifty people of Flanders are busy rebuilding their homes. Many of the men are missing; some died on the battlefield, others in prison, but all died fighting for the small strip of land they called their own, and those who remain cherish the memory of their heroes. They will tell their stories to their children and grandchildren, thus adding another page to the glorious history of Flanders, and among those stories will be that of Alois Van Keirsbilk, who tried to end the war by ending its instigator, and who failed and died, silent.”

The Popular Dutch Dancer Who Played the Rôle of German Spy to Her Cost

A story redolent of intrigue, adventure and a kind of romance is that of “Mata-Hari”—which is Japanese for “Eye-of-the Morning,” and is the name by which a Dutch dancer was known in the rendezvous of the light world of the European capitals before the war. Her real name is Marguerite Gertrude Zelle McLeod, and in 1917 her public and dashing career of art and adventure came to an abrupt stop by her arrest, trial, condemnation, and imprisonment, under sentence of death, in the prison of St. Lazare, Paris. She was condemned as a German spy, the specific offense being the betrayal to the Germans of the secret of the new, carefully guarded war weapon, the Tank. Reams have been written about this woman since her arrest, but nothing probably that would have anything like the interest for the public that will attach to the “memoirs,” the writing of which, reporters say, was her prison occupation.

Among the stories published at the time was one in the New York World in October, 1917, that presented what was known of her connection with the leak of the tank secret. The success of the tank depended largely on the element of surprise when it was put into the fighting front. Therefore the planning, construction and shipment of tanks to the Somme were conducted with the utmost possible secrecy. Necessarily, however, a certain number of persons in France and England were in a position to know; but, as it took a good many months to get the machines in readiness and habituate a crew to their rolling, pitching, sickening motion, the circle of those who knew more or less about it increased, and in some way not yet explained, Mata-Hari learned something of the secret. It is rumored that a member of the Chamber of Deputies inadvertently gave her her first information. The World said the rumor was strengthened by the fact that Mata-Hari had plenty of coal for her apartment during the fuel famine that winter. That in itself is proof enough to everybody of her intimacy with some high official, as few people, short of Deputies, had influence enough to obtain a hundredweight of coal during the bitter months of January, February, and March.

“In any event, Mata-Hari learned vaguely of tanks early in 1916, when the Krupp guns of the Crown Prince were daily booming nearer and nearer to Verdun in that terrific struggle which was to mark the turning-point of the war. Mata-Hari also learned that the tanks were being constructed in England, and would be shipped to France via certain ports—and she got the names of the ports, too.”

Suddenly, Mata-Hari, then in Paris, decided to return to Holland, her native land, explaining to curious inquirers that she married a Dutch army officer with a Scotch name [Pg 362](McLeod) who had divorced her and that she was going to arrange a settlement.

SHE ACQUIRES A DRAGON

“The dancer proceeded to Rotterdam. Investigation there has since proved that she had no ‘communal rights property’ to settle with any one, and further that Captain MacLeod of the Dutch Army was known among his fellow officers as pronouncedly pro-German.

“Soon Mata-Hari returned to Paris. She was seen at the Café de Paris and at Maxim’s, and at Armenonville in the Bois with an English officer who wore on the lapel of his collar, as insignia denoting his branch of service, a little twisted brass dragon. Months later, when more of these badges were seen on British officers passing through Paris, it became known that the dragon was of the official insignia denoting service with the tanks.

“Mata-Hari sported a new bauble soon after taking up with the Englishman—a jeweled replica of his gold insignia—her dragon had real emeralds for eyes, and a carrot-shaped ruby for a tongue darting from its opened fangs.

“In May, 1916, a little more than a month before the Somme offensive opened and tanks were first used, Mata-Hari appeared before the police magistrate of her district and requested a safe conduct to visit a certain port in France. The reason she gave was that her fiancé, an English officer, was seriously wounded and in hospital there. He had sent for her to come to see him. Perhaps they would be married at his death-bed if he could not recover, she volunteered, dabbing at her eyes with a lace handkerchief. The safe conduct was made out, and Mata-Hari arrived at a certain French port almost simultaneously with the first consignment of tanks shipped over from England.”

She spent the greater part of her time for a week strolling about the town making frequent excursions by night, and then just a month before Foch and Haig began their drive along the Somme she appeared again in Paris.

“The first thing she did was to apply for a visé on her passport permitting her to go to Spain. San Sebastian was the place she mentioned, as she explained she wished to attend the horse-races there. Her papers were stamped and sealed and she left almost immediately for the fashionable winter resort in the south.

“Madrid, Spain, and Nauen, Germany, are in constant wireless communication. There are other radio stations, privately owned, in Spain which can flash messages to Germany, according to Allied intelligence officers who have investigated. And of course there are innumerable German agents, spies, and propaganda disseminators infesting the land of the Dons.

“Secret service reports disclose the fact that Mata-Hari was seen much in company at San Sebastian race-track with a man long looked upon with suspicion by the French government. He was a frequent caller upon her at the hotel where she stopped, and it was reported that he made many of the big bets she placed on horses that did not materialize as winners.

AGAIN THE DEPUTY

“Soon Mata-Hari came back to Paris and the apartment near the Bois de Boulogne. And once more the limousine owned by the individual whom rumor has branded a Deputy began rolling up to her door twice a week and sometimes oftener.

“Then came the simultaneous Franco-British offensive at the Somme. Tanks went into action for the first time, and according to General Haig’s official communiqué his ‘Land ships achieved satisfactory results.’”

But, notwithstanding the “satisfactory results,” several of the tanks were surprisingly put out of action and the investigation of the how and the wherefore revealed the fact that they had been disabled by a peculiar, small-caliber penetrating shell unlike anything known before. They were fired by guns of a special manufacture.

Instantly it became evident that the enemy had become aware of what was in store for him and had constructed an “anti-tank” gun. And when the booty in the captured German positions was examined, the British found they had several good specimens of Krupps’ newest weapon. Several German officers of higher rank taken prisoners confirmed suspicions by[Pg 363] explaining they had received description of the tanks several weeks before, and had been instructed how to combat them.

Suspicion aroused, items of information, curious circumstances in accountable movements, bits of gossip were put together and military law took charge of Mata-Hari.

For some reason the finish of her memoirs is not yet; but the fictionist, attempting to forecast a sensation, has written this:

“So Mata-Hari writes feverishly, and all Paris waits eagerly!—except the one who waits apprehensively—to see if she will name the ami who gave her the first inkling of the tanks.

“Pinned to the corsage of the Empire-cut black silk dress which Mata-Hari wears in her narrow cell in St. Lazare prison is a curious gold brooch. It is shaped like a twisted dragon, and its eyes are emeralds!”

Scion of a Noble Prussian Family Who Failed to Deliver the Goods

Though he may not have been a conspicuous success as a spy, Gustav Constantin Alvo von Alvensleben had a very decided record as a wrecker. Through his directive genius many concerns, industrial and financial, went to utter smash, involving the loss of an unknown but huge number of millions of dollars and causing a suicide or two. In the brief span of years between 1904 and 1911 Alvo rose from the precarious state of a hobo to the lofty plane of millionairedom. That is a performance that requires some doing, and indicates a mental aptitude for the peculiar office of “playing your fellow man” considerably above the ordinary.

And Gustav, or, as he was more commonly named, Alvo, played with no mean counters. Among his clients was Kaiser Wilhelm himself, who, through Alvo, invested two and a half million dollars in British Columbia timber. Other clients were the ex-Chancellor Bethmann-Hollweg, Gen. von Mackensen, the conqueror of Rumania; Emma von Mumm, the champagne queen; Bertha Krupp, the gun woman, and others of equal prominence in Germany. The companies he organized or coupled up with his enterprises—nearly all of which collapsed when the shadow of war blighted Alvo’s golden prospects—included the Alvensleben Canadian Finance and General Investment Company, the Standard Fish and Fertilizer Co., the Vancouver Timber and Trading Co., the Piercite Powder Co., the German-Canadian Trust Co., etc. Also with these went several of the Pacific Coast’s largest financial and industrial concerns, including the Bank of Vancouver, the Issaquah and Superior Coal Mining Company of Seattle, and the Dominion Trust Company, whose failure following the alleged suicide of its managing director, W. R. Arnold, was one of the greatest scandals in the history of the Dominion of Canada.

Two private banks of Seattle closed their doors as a result of their connection with the I. and S. Coal Company, one of the projects of the gambler-financier. The final liquidation of his original real estate and financial company in Vancouver disclosed liabilities of over one and a half millions, with assets of about $3,000, insufficient to satisfy the liquidator’s fees.

NOT A NONDESCRIPT

It is assumed that Alvo would have been able to extricate himself from his difficulties and avert the bankruptcy into which he was forced but for the outbreak of war. The fatality lay in the fact that all his investments were in countries with which the Kaiser was or was about to be at war.

But to begin at the beginning, as we find it in an issue of the Canadian Courier of October, 1917, when Alvo’s career came to a conclusion, temporarily at least, by his internment as a spy.

He was not a mere nondescript adventurer. [Pg 365]He was the youngest son of Count Werner Alvo von Alvensleben, erstwhile German Ambassador to Russia, when Nicholas was Czar. The young man had a taste for the livelier side of life, gaily dissipated his allowance and seemed to regard college life not so much as an educational purpose as a convenience to the sowing of wild oats. This was not at all to the liking of Papa von Alvensleben and in an hour of unsuppressed wrath and resentment he cast the young man off and bade him shift for himself. This was an unexpected climax to his pleasure quest, and rather shocked Alvo. He remembered that the Kaiser was an intimate friend of his father’s, of the family indeed, and it jarred his pride to be an outcast from a circle of such distinction. He felt under obligation to reëstablish himself in the good graces of his father and the august personage whom he had so often familiarly hoched. So he set out to subdue some fraction of the world to his service and credit. He did not immediately find a field of action.

It was in the rôle of a hobo that he drifted into Western America and began casting about for the horn of plenty from which he hoped to shake substantial advantage. Two inches above six feet in stature, two years under forty years of age, he was typically Prussian, stubborn, unreasonable, of violent temper. But he was a good talker and not without imagination. Behold him arrived in Seattle. The Canadian Courier says:

HOBO TO MILLIONAIRE

“He was practically dead broke. An employment office extracted from him the usual $2 fee—all he had—and sent him to a job in a lumber-mill some distance from the city. Alvo tramped many miles to the mill only to be refused employment upon his ticket. He could scarcely speak any English, but he knew how to use his fists. Walking all the way back to Seattle, he proceeded to beat up the employment agent in thorough and picturesque fashion. Afterward he secured temporary rough work at various mills along Puget Sound.

“His first job in British Columbia was the whitewashing of a salmon-cannery at the little village of Ladner, near the mouth of the Fraser River. His wardrobe included overalls and a dozen dress-shirts—the latter relics of his grander days—but he had no socks. From wielding the whitewash-brush to hauling the nets was the next step, and it was not long before the Prussian Junker’s son was engaged in partnership with a rough-neck fisherman making nightly trips out into the Gulf of Georgia, and doing his share in one of the hardest and most dangerous callings in the world, that of a deep-sea salmon-fisher.

“In two months, with the money obtained from his salmon fishing, he was enabled to purchase an ancient mare and a light wagon. Over night he blossomed out as a produce-dealer, buying poultry and dairy products from the farmers in the vicinity of Ladner. These he brought to the city of Vancouver and sold them from house to house in opposition to the Chinamen. Business increased, and the staid old Vancouver Club, a hoary and the most exclusive institution, in which only the most elect held membership, became his best customer.

“But Alvo did not stay long in the business; but went up by leaps and bounds. Real-estate clerk, then curb-broker, then large independent dealer were some of his upward steps, until two years after he had sold his last load of produce to the Vancouver Club he was himself a member.”

There was one little incident of the club life which pleasantly reminds us that Alvo was not an upstart and therefore not a snob. He was entertaining a German baron soon after having become a member, and he noticed that the waiter eyed him very curiously. Presently divining the reason, Alvo suddenly looked up at the waiter and said: “Yes, by jingo, I’m the man who used to deliver chickens at the back door. Now go on serving dinner, and stop staring.”

PLAYS THE GAME WELL

“When the real-estate boom struck Vancouver in 1905,” continues the Courier, “Alvensleben was quick to see the opportunities in land. The old wild gambling spirit of his youthful days was still strong upon him. He was the man for the moment, reckless, willing to take chances, and a born mixer. He cabled relatives in Berlin, who had heard of his early successes, and induced them to invest[Pg 366] large sums of money. His first investment yielded enormous and quick profit, and thus established his prestige in Germany, for he promptly repaid the investors with a 1,000 per cent. on their money. In the next three years he made several visits to Germany, brought men of royal blood to the Pacific coast, and was given several audiences with the Kaiser, whose accredited representative he became. In all probability, at a very conservative estimate, Alvensleben caused $20,000,000 of German capital to be invested in British Columbia and Washington State.

“In 1908, after a very romantic courtship, he married Edith Mary Westcott, a popular Vancouver girl, daughter of one of the leading society matrons. Following the marriage the financier purchased the largest private estate in Vancouver’s most select residential district, Point Grey, where he erected a magnificent home. His name, high foreign connections, and expenditure on entertainment that set a hitherto unknown high mark in the very British city of Vancouver, quickly brought him valuable social connections.

“His business ventures broadened with astounding rapidity, but most of his purchases for himself and clients were made on ‘agreements,’ with the expectations of making big margins in the prevalent boom. A good salesman himself, he was also the easiest mark for wildcat schemes who ever came out of Europe, owing to his gambling mania. Soon his companies became loaded up with timberlands, bought at inflated prices, wild lands, doubtful mining leases, Alberta oil shares, and other unproductive assets. Some of his wealthy clients thrust upon him their useless sons, whom he was forced to maintain in his office at high salaries.

SHY ON DIVIDENDS

“In 1912 the first trouble arose over dividends not being forthcoming from his investments. He was still strong in Berlin and went there and raised fresh capital with which he succeeded in placating some of his investors. Then he was attacked in a Vancouver German paper which charged him with unscrupulous methods in handling foreign capital. Copies of this were mailed to Berlin to members of the Reichstag by the Vancouver editors, and the matter was brought up for discussion by that body. Alvo was game. He sued the local paper and secured judgment in a criminal action against the editors. But the fat was in the fire as far as his German clients were concerned, though he managed to keep his affairs afloat.

“In the early part of 1914 the financier’s creditors, both in Europe and Canada, were pressing him. He was tied up in such a mass of deals, counter-deals, and trades of property with Arnold and the Dominion Trust Company that an army of auditors has never as yet succeeded in untangling them. He owed over $10,000 to one of Vancouver’s chartered banks on some Victoria Island timber deals, which he had anticipated selling to the British Columbia government for a park reserve. The Vancouver manager and a dozen of the staff were dismissed through their connection with this loan.”

He doubtless had advance notice of the outbreak of war, for he suddenly left Canada.

Later interviewed by a New York paper he said he could “best serve his country and his clients by returning to the Pacific Coast,” and from the outbreak of the war until his arrest on the suspicion that he was implicated in a plot to steal the plans of the Puget Sound Navy Yard of Bremerton, he remained in Seattle and other American Pacific Coast cities.

THE WIND-UP

“Rumors were afloat several times that he had visited Vancouver in disguise. After one of these reports appearing in the local papers, Alvensleben wrote to a friend in Vancouver, saying: ‘You can tell the good people of Vancouver I have something better to do than visit their city in the disguise of a Hindu or any other of their numerous allies.’

“Alvensleben’s brother, Bodo, who was in charge of the Victoria branch of the Alvensleben Canadian Finance and General Investment Company, left hurriedly a few days before the outbreak of war to join his unit. The wildest rumors were circulated as to the spying operations of the brothers. It was said that Bodo had been taken off a ship by a British man-of-war, and when searched had in his possession the plans of the Canadian navy-yard at Esquimalt, and for this he was [Pg 368]shot. Alvo denied the report, but whatever happened to this escaping brother, British censorship has never let out. Joachim von Alvensleben, an elder brother, well known from his various visits to Vancouver, was killed early in the war.”

The third and most brilliant of the brothers, the gambler-financier Alvo, was arrested at Portland and taken to Seattle, where he was interned “till the end of the war.” Concerning his subsequent proceedings there is no important information; at all events his meteoric career made a chapter of life which Vancouverites will never tire of discussing.

One of Von Papen’s Dynamiters More Conscientious than His Chief

“Porter, boss?” The remark was an entirely facetious one, but the brakeman did not like to have his humor disregarded. Therefore when he got home he told his wife about the rum party he had met in the cut above the Vanceboro railroad bridge—a six-footer, carrying a suitcase. The brakeman would have been rather more than disgruntled, if Werner Horn had closed with his offer—that is, he would have been, had he known that the suitcase contained dynamite, and that its owner was an Oberleutnant in the German army. The man with the suitcase had passed for a Swede in the hotel at Vanceboro, and his appearance warranted it. But his recent experience as manager of a coffee plantation in Moka, Guatemala, had not effaced the imprint of ten years in the service. He marched out upon the bridge, the brakeman having disappeared, as if he were taking a town. He was going into the enemy’s territory and fire his single shot. He was going to blow up the bridge, over whose rails flowed a tide of death to the Germans—cargoes of guns and shells bound for St. John and Halifax.

He would have preferred to join his regiment and fight, but von Papen had been unable to get him passage when he reported, at the time of the outbreak of the war, and told him that this affair was equally his duty. The Kaiser’s agent had likewise informed him, to soothe him, for Horn had refused to endanger innocent human lives—that there were no more passenger trains after eleven. It was now nearly midnight. Suddenly a whistle shrieked behind him, and in a moment the glaring lights of an express train’s locomotive shone upon him. Horn clutched with one hand at a steel rod of the bridge, and swung out over the river, holding the suitcase safe behind him with the other. The train thundered by, and left him to recover his footing on the ice-coated bridge. Once more, this time from the Canadian side, an express thundered past, and again he went through the same painful process.

He might have blown up the bridge comfortably, from the American side, but this he had refused to do. America was a neutral country. Germany was not at war with America, therefore to blow up the American side of the bridge was an outrage, a crime. He struggled on, the biting wind in his face. Past the middle now—a spy, liable to the penalty of death.

There was a fifty-minute fuse with his dynamite, but when he saw that the passenger-trains continued to run (von Papen’s schedules must have been out-of-date), Horn decided that what he was to do must be done at once, before another train started across. Feeling with his benumbed fingers in his pocket for a knife, he cut off the fuse and with it the long half-hour that was his chance of escape from capture. A very slim chance, if you like, through the Maine woods knee-deep in snow, but still a chance.

THE EXPLOSION

He fixed the dynamite against a girder of the bridge above the Canadian bank of the river, adjusted the explosive cap, and touched his cigar to the end of the three-minute fuse. Then he stumbled back across the gale-swept icy bridge, and back into the hotel at Vanceboro, just as the dynamite exploded with a report that broke half the windows in the town, and twisted rods and girders on the bridge. Everybody in Vanceboro was aroused, but Horn, after a futile attempt to rub his hands and feet with snow, turned in and went to sleep. He had seen all he wanted to of dynamite. In a town turned out of doors with excitement, sleeping was in itself an act to arouse suspicion.

People remembered the tall Swede who had been hanging around Vanceboro for a couple of days, and the suitcase which he had been seen to hide in a wood-pile near the tracks. After some delay, during which Horn slept peacefully, the sheriff and a couple of Canadian constables were got on the job, and they took him at about noon in Teague’s Hotel. He was wearing German colors on both sleeves, for he had been told that they would be regarded, were he caught, in the light of a uniform. He offered little resistance, but in telling his story, he interpolated an innocent lie that caused the Canadian officials a good deal of anxiety. He had not brought the dynamite in his suitcase, he said, but had carried the empty suitcase to the bridge, where an Irishman from Canada, in response to the pass-word “Tommy,” had given him the dynamite. This detail he afterwards cleared up, when asked to set his name to a paper concluding, “I certify on my honor as a German officer that the foregoing statements are true.” He would not sign a lie and set his name to it as the truth.

“Too scrupulous for a spy,” one of the newspapers called him, in the perplexities awakened by this early manifestation of the afterwards famous bomb-plot, “and too thickheaded for an honest man.” Werner Horn was extradited to Canada, and everybody joined in congratulating the man, whoever he might have been, who slept in the lower berth the night Horn took an upper for Vanceboro. It had developed during the trial that the big German, to disencumber himself, had chucked the suitcase under the lower berth, against the shoes and the hot-water pipes, then had climbed into the upper, to sleep peacefully through the night as was his wont. The evil effects of dynamite were comparatively novel at that time, even to bomb-plotters.

A Ruthless Tool of German Duplicity Fails Only Because He Trusted the Wrong Man with His Secret

One of the most nefarious of the schemes formulated in Germany and financed by the German government for operation in this country in the period of our neutrality, and of which von Papen was aware, was that which one Robert Fay undertook to carry out in 1915. This man had invented an infernal machine, the purpose of which was to blow up ships at sea to prevent the transportation of munitions and food supplies from this country to France and England. The story was well told in the World’s Work after Fay and his accomplices had been jailed.

The device was a box containing forty pounds of trinitrotoluol, to be fastened to the rudder post of a vessel, and so geared to the rudder itself that its oscillations would slowly release the catch of a spring, which would then drive home the firing pin and cause an explosion that would instantly tear off the whole stern of the ship, sinking it in midocean in a few minutes. Experts in mechanics and experts in explosives and experts in shipbuilding all tested the machine, and all agreed that it was perfect for the work which Fay had planned that it should do.

Fay had three of these machines completed, he had others in course of construction, he had bought and tested the explosive to go into them, he had cruised New York harbor in a [Pg 371]motor boat and proved by experience that he could attach them undetected where he wished, and he had the names and sailing dates of the vessels that he meant to sink without a trace. Only one little link that broke—and the quick and thorough work of American justice—robbed him of another Iron Cross besides the one he wore.

A PLOT HATCHED IN GERMANY

Fay and his device came straight from the heart of the German Army, with the approval and the money of his government behind him. He, like Werner Horn, came originally from Cologne; but they were very different men. Where Horn was almost childishly simple, Fay’s mind was subtle and quick to an extraordinary degree. Where Horn had been humane to the point of risking his life to save others, Fay had spent months in a cold-blooded solution of a complex problem in destruction that he knew certainly involved a horrible death for dozens, and more likely hundreds, of helpless human beings. Horn refused to swear to a lie even where the lie was a matter of no great moment. Fay told at his trial a story so ingenious that it would have done credit to a novelist and would have been wholly convincing if other evidence had not disproved the substance of it. The truth of the case runs like this:

Fay was in Germany when the war broke out and was sent to the Vosges Mountains in the early days of the conflict. Soon men were needed in the Champagne sector, and Fay was transferred to that front. Here he saw some of the bitterest fighting of the war, and here he led a detachment of Germans in a surprise attack on a trench full of Frenchmen in superior force. His success in this dangerous business won him an Iron Cross of the second class. During these days the superiority of the Allied artillery over the German caused the Germans great distress, and they became very bitter when they realized, from a study of the shells that exploded around them, how much of this superiority was due to the material that came from the United States for use by the French and British guns. Fay’s ingenious mind formed a scheme to stop this supply, and he put his plan before his superior officers. The result was that, in a few weeks, he left Germany, armed with passports and $3,500 in American money, bound for the United States on the steamer Rotterdam. He reached New York on April 23, 1915.

One of Fay’s qualifications for the task he had set for himself was his familiarity with the English language and with the United States. He had come to America in 1902, spending a few months on a farm in Manitoba and then going on to Chicago, where he had worked for several years for the J. I. Case Machinery Company, makers of agricultural implements. During these years, Fay was taking an extended correspondence school course in electrical and steam engineering, so that altogether he had a good technical background for the events of 1915. In 1906, he went back to Germany.

What he may have lacked in technical equipment, Fay made up by the first connection he made when he reached New York in 1915. The first man he looked up was Walter Scholz, his brother-in-law, who had been in this country for four years and who was a civil engineer and had studied mechanical engineering on the side. When Fay arrived, Scholz had been out of a job in his own profession and was working on a rich man’s estate in Connecticut. Fay, armed with plenty of money and his big idea, got Scholz to go into the scheme with him, and the two were soon living together in a boarding house at 28 Fourth Street, Weehawken, across the river from uptown New York,

A SHAM GARAGE

To conceal the true nature of their operations they hired a small building on Main Street and put a sign over the door announcing themselves in business as “The Riverside Garage.” They added verisimilitude to this scheme by buying a second-hand car in bad condition and dismantling it, scattering the parts around the room so that it would look as if they were engaged in making repairs. Every once in a while they would shift these parts about so as to alter the appearance of the place. However, they did not accept any business—whenever a man took the sign at its face value and came in asking to have work done, Fay or Scholz would take him to a nearby saloon and buy him a few drinks and[Pg 372] pass him along by referring him to some other garage in the neighborhood.

The most of their time they spent about the real business in hand. They took care to have the windows of their room in the boarding house heavily curtained to keep out prying eyes, and here under a student lamp, they spent hours over mechanical drawings which were afterward produced in evidence at the trial of their case. The mechanism that Fay had conceived was carefully perfected on paper, and then they confronted the task of getting the machinery assembled. Some of the parts were standard—that is, they could be bought at any big hardware store. Others, however, were peculiar to this device and had to be made to order from the drawings. They had the tanks made by a sheet metal worker named Ignatz Schiering, at 344 West 42nd Street, New York. Scholz went to him with a drawing, telling him that it was for a gasoline tank for a motor boat. Scholz made several trips to the shop to supervise some of the details of the construction and once to order more tanks of a new size and shape.

At the same time Scholz went to Bernard McMillan, doing business under the name of McMillan & Werner, 81 Center Street, New York, to have him make a special kind of wheels and gears for the internal mechanism of the bomb, from sketches which Scholz supplied. At odd times between June 10th and October 20th McMillan was working on these things and delivered the last of them to Scholz just a few days before he was arrested.

In the meanwhile Fay was taking care of the other necessary elements of his scheme. Besides the mechanism of the bomb, he had to become familiar with the shipping in the port of New York, and he had to get the explosive with which to charge the bomb. For the former purpose he and Scholz bought a motor boat—a 28-footer—and in this they cruised about New York harbor at odd times, studying the docks at which ships were being loaded with supplies for the Allies and calculating the best means and time for placing the bombs on the rudder posts of these ships. Fay finally determined by experience that between two and three o’clock in the morning was the best time. The watchmen on board the ships were at that hour most likely to be asleep or the night dark enough so that he could work in safety. He made some actual experiments in fastening the empty tanks to the rudder posts, and found that it was perfectly feasible to do so. His scheme was to fasten them just above the water line on a ship while it was light, so that when it was loaded they were submerged and all possibility of detection was removed.

THE ROAD TO BETRAYAL

The getting of explosives was, however, the most difficult part of Fay’s undertaking. This was true not only because he was here most likely to arouse suspicion, but also because of his relative lack of knowledge of the thing he was dealing with. He did know enough, however, to begin his search for explosives in the least suspicious field, and it was only as he became ambitious to produce a more powerful effect that he came to grief.

The material he decided to use at first was chlorate of potash. This substance in itself is so harmless that it is an ingredient of tooth powders and is used commonly in other ways. When, however, it is mixed with any substance high in carbons, such as sugar, sulphur, charcoal, or kerosene, it becomes an explosive of considerable power. Fay set about to get some of the chlorate.

Fay’s fellow conspirators were Germans—some of them German-Americans—and each in his own way was doing the work of the Kaiser in this country. Herbert Kienzle was a dealer in clocks with a store on Park Place, in New York. He had learned the business in his father’s clock factory deep in the Black Forest in Germany and had come to this country years ago to go into the same business, getting his start by acting as agent for his father’s factory over here.

One of the first things in Fay’s carefully worked out plan was to locate a place to which he could quietly retire when his work of destruction should be done—a place where he felt he could be safe from suspicion. After a talk with Kienzle he decided that Lusk’s Sanatorium, at Butler, N. J., would serve the purpose. This sanatorium was run by Germans and Kienzle was well known there. Acting on a prearranged plan with Kienzle, Fay went to Butler and was met at the station by a man named Bronkhorst, who was in charge of the grounds at the sanatorium.[Pg 373] They identified each other by prearranged signals and Fay made various arrangements, some of which are of importance later in the story.

Another friend of Kienzle’s was Max Breitung, a young German employed by his uncle, E. N. Breitung, who was in the shipping business in New York. Breitung supplied Fay with the information he needed regarding munitions-laden ships which Fay should elect to destroy.

Fay asked Kienzle how he could get some chlorate of potash, and Kienzle asked his young friend Breitung if he could help him out. Breitung said he could, and went at once to another German who was operating in New York ostensibly as a broker in copper under the name of Carl L. Oppegaard, though his real name was Paul Siebs, and for the purpose of this story he might as well be known by that name. Siebs had also been in this country in earlier days, and during his residence in Chicago, from 1910 to 1913, he had become acquainted with young Breitung. He, too, had gone back to Germany before the war, but soon after it began he had come back to the United States under his false name, ostensibly as an agent of an electrical concern in Gothenburg, Sweden, for the purpose of buying copper. He frankly admitted later that this copper was intended for reëxport to Germany to be used in the manufacture of munitions of war. He did not have much success in his enterprise and he was finally forced to make a living from hand to mouth by small business transactions of almost any kind. He could not afford a separate office, so he rented desk room in the office of the Whitehall Trading Company, a small subsidiary of the Raymond-Hadley Corporation. His desk was in the same room with the manager of the company, Carl L. Wettig.

When Breitung asked Siebs to buy him some chlorate of potash Siebs was delighted at the opportunity to make some money and immediately undertook the commission. He had been instructed to get a small amount, perhaps 200 pounds. He needed money so badly, however, that he was very glad to find that the smallest kegs of the chlorate of potash were 112 pounds each, and he ordered three kegs. He paid for them with money supplied by Breitung and took a delivery slip for it. Ultimately this delivery slip was presented by[Pg 374] Scholz, who appeared one day with a truck and driver and took the chemical away.

POTASH TOO WEAK

Fay and Scholz made some experiments with the chlorate of potash and Fay decided it was not strong enough to serve his purpose. He then determined to try dynamite. Again he wished to avoid suspicion and this time, after consultation with Kienzle, he recalled Bronkhorst down at the Lusk Sanatorium in New Jersey. Bronkhorst, in his work as superintendent of the grounds at the sanatorium, was occasionally engaged in laying water mains in the rocky soil there, and for this purpose kept dynamite on hand. Fay got a quantity of dynamite from him. Later, however, he decided that he wanted a still more powerful explosive.

Again he applied to Kienzle, and this time Kienzle got in touch with Siebs direct. By prearrangement, Kienzle and Siebs met Fay underneath the Manhattan end of the Brooklyn Bridge, and there Siebs was introduced to Fay. They walked around City Hall Park together discussing the subject; and Fay, not knowing the name of what he was after, tried to make Siebs understand what explosive he wanted by describing its properties. Siebs finally realized that what Fay had in mind was trinitrotoluol, one of the three highest explosives known. Siebs finally undertook to get some of it for him, but pointed out to him the obvious difficulties of buying it in as small quantities as he wanted. It was easy enough to buy chlorate of potash because that was in common commercial use for many purposes. It was also easy to buy dynamite because that also is used in all kinds of quantities and for many purposes. But trinitrotoluol is too powerful for any but military use, and it is consequently handled only in large lots and practically invariably is made to the order of some government. However, Siebs had an idea and proceeded to act on it, and without any delay.

He went back to the Whitehall Trading Company, where he had desk room, and saw his fellow occupant, Carl Wettig. Wettig had been engaged in a small way in a brokerage business in war supplies, and had even taken a few small turns in the handling of explosives. He agreed to do what he could to fill the order.

Carl Wettig was the weak link in Fay’s chain of fortune. He did indeed secure the high explosive that Fay wanted, and was in other ways obliging. But he got the explosive from a source that would have given Fay heart failure if he had known of it, and he was obliging for reasons that Fay lived to regret. Siebs made his inquiry of Wettig on the 19th of October. The small quantity of explosives that he asked for aroused Wettig’s suspicions, and as soon as he promised to get it he went to the French Chamber of Commerce near by and told them what he suspected and asked to be put in touch with responsible police authorities under whose direction he wished to act in supplying the trinitrotoluol.

From that moment Fay, Siebs, and Kienzle were “waked up in the morning and put to bed at night” by detectives from the police department of New York City and operatives of the Secret Service of the United States. By arrangement with them Wettig obtained a keg containing twenty-five pounds of trinitrotoluol, and in the absence of Fay and Scholz from their boarding house in Weehawken, he delivered it personally to their room and left it on their dresser. He told Siebs he had delivered it and Siebs promptly set about collecting his commission from Fay.

TAKEN INTO CUSTODY

Siebs had some difficulty in doing this, because Fay and Scholz, being unfamiliar with the use of the explosive, were unable to explode a sample of it and decided that it was no good. They had come home in the evening and found the keg on their dresser and had opened it. Inside they found the explosive in the form of loose white flakes. To keep it more safely, they poured it out into several small cloth bags. They then took a sample of it and tried by every means they could think of to explode it. They even laid some of it on an anvil and broke two or three hammers pounding on it, but could get no result. They then told Siebs that the stuff he had delivered was useless. Siebs repeated their complaint to Wettig, and Wettig volunteered to show them how it should be handled. Accordingly, he joined them the following[Pg 375] day at their room in Weehawken and went with them out into the woods behind Fort Lee, taking along a small sample of the powder in a paper bag. In the woods the men picked up the top of a small tin can, built a fire in the stump of a tree, and melted some of the flake TNT in it. Before it cooled, Wettig embedded in it a mercury cap. When cooled after being melted, TNT forms a solid mass resembling resin in appearance, and is now more powerful because more compact.

However, before the experiment could be concluded, one of the swarm of detectives who had followed them into the woods stepped on a dry twig, and when the men started at its crackling, the detectives concluded they had better make their arrests before the men might get away; and so all were taken into custody. A quick search of their boarding house, the garage, a storage warehouse in which Fay had stored some trunks, and the boathouse where the motor boat was stored resulted in rounding up the entire paraphernalia that had been used in working out the whole plot. All the people connected with every phase of it were soon arrested.

Out of the stories these men told upon examination emerged not only the hideous perfection of the bomb itself, but the direct hand that the German government and its agents in this country had in the scheme of putting it to its fiendish purpose. First of all appeared Fay’s admission that he had left Germany with money and a passport supplied by a man in the German Secret Service. Later, on the witness stand, when Fay had had time enough carefully to think out the most plausible story, he attempted to get away from this admission by claiming to have deserted from the German Army. He said that he had been financed in his exit from the German Empire by a group of business men who had put up a lot of money to back an automobile invention of his, which he had worked on before the war began. These men, so he claimed, were afraid they would lose all their money if he should happen to be killed before the invention was perfected. This tale, ingenious though it was, was too fantastic to be swallowed when taken in connection with all the things found in Fay’s possession when he was arrested. Beyond all doubt his scheme to destroy ships was studied and approved by his military superiors in Germany before he left, and that scheme alone was his errand to this country.

EXPLAINED TOO MUCH

Far less ingenious and equally damning was his attempt to explain away his relations with von Papen. The sinister figure of the military attaché of the German Embassy at Washington leers from the background of all the German plots; and this case was no exception. It was known that Fay had had dealings with von Papen in New York, and on the witness stand he felt called upon to explain them in a way that would clear the diplomatic service of implication in his evil doings. He declared that he had taken his invention to von Papen and that von Papen had resolutely refused to have anything to do with it. This would have been well enough if Fay’s explanation had stopped here.

But Fay’s evil genius prompted him to make his explanation more convincing by an elaboration of the story, so he gave von Papen’s reasons for refusal. These were not because the Fay device was calculated to do murder upon hundreds of helpless men, nor because to have any part in the business was to play the unneutral villain under the cloak of diplomatic privilege. Not at all. At the first interview, seeing only a rough sketch and hearing only Fay’s description of preliminary experiments, von Papen’s sole objection was:

“Well, you might obtain an explosion once, and the next ten apparatuses might fail.”

“He casually asked me what the cost of it would be and I told him in my estimation the cost would not be more than $20 apiece. [$20 apiece for the destruction of thirty lives and a million-dollar ship and cargo!] As a matter of fact in Germany I will be able to get these things made for half that price. ‘If it is not more than that,’ von Papen said, ‘you might go ahead, but I cannot promise you anything whatever.’”

Fay then went back to his experiments and when he felt that he had practically perfected his device he called upon von Papen for the second time. This time von Papen’s reply was:

“Well, this thing has been placed before our [Pg 377]experts and also we have gone into the political condition of the whole suggestion. Now in the first place our experts say this apparatus is not at all seaworthy; but as regards political conditions I am sorry to say we cannot consider it and, therefore, we cannot consider the proposition any further.”

In other words, with no thought of the moral turpitude of the scheme, with no thought of the abuse of diplomatic freedom, but only with thoughts of the practicability of this device, and of the effect upon political conditions of its use, von Papen had put the question before technical men and before von Bernstorff, and their decision had been adverse solely on those considerations—first, that it would not work, and second, that it would arouse hostility in the United States. At no stage, according to Fay’s best face upon the matter, was any thought given to its character as a hideous crime.

PERFECTED DEVILRY

The device itself was studied independently by two sets of military experts of the United States government with these results:

First, that it was mechanically perfect; second, that it was practical under the conditions of adjustment to a ship’s rudder which Fay had devised; and third, that the charge of trinitrotoluol for which the container was designed, was nearly half the quantity which is used on our own floating mines and which is calculated upon explosion twenty feet from a battleship to put it out of action, and upon explosion in direct contact, absolutely to destroy and sink the heaviest superdreadnought. In other words, beyond all question the bomb would have shattered the entire stern of any ship to which it was attached, and would have caused it to sink in a few minutes.

A brief description of the contrivance reveals the mechanical ingenuity and practical efficiency of Fay’s bomb. A rod attached to the rudder, at every swing the rudder gave, turned up, by one notch, the first of the beveled wheels within the bomb. After a certain number of revolutions of that wheel, it in turn gave one revolution to the next; and so on through the series. The last wheel was connected with the threaded cap around the upper end of the square bolt, and made this cap slowly unscrew, until at length the bolt dropped clear of it and yielded to the waiting pressure of the strong steel spring above. This pressure drove it downward and brought the sharp points at its lower end down on the caps of the two rifle cartridges fixed below it—like the blow of a rifle’s hammer. The detonation from the explosion of these cartridges would set off a small charge of impregnated chlorate of potash, which in turn would fire the small charge of the more sluggish but stronger dynamite, and that in turn would explode the still more sluggish but tremendously more powerful trinitrotoluol.

The whole operation, once the spring was free, would take place in a flash; and instantly its deadly work would be accomplished.

WHAT FAY PICTURED

Picture the scene that Fay had in his mind as he toiled his six laborious months upon this dark invention. He saw himself, in imagination, fixing his infernal box upon the rudder post of a ship loading at a dock in New York harbor. As the cargo weighed the ship down, the box would disappear beneath the water. At length the ship starts on its voyage, and, as the rudder swings her into the stream, the first beat in the slow, sure knell of death for ship and crew is clicked out by its very turning. Out upon the sea the shift of wind and blow of wave require a constant correction with the rudder to hold the true course forward. At every swing the helmsman unconsciously taps out another of the lurking beats of death. Somewhere in midocean, perhaps at black midnight, in a driving storm, the patient mechanism hid below has turned the last of its calculated revolutions. The neck piece from the bolt slips loose, the spring drives downward, there is a flash, a deafening explosion, and five minutes later a few mangled bodies and a chaos of floating wreckage are all that is left above the water’s surface.

It Is Probable that His Record is Unique in the Annals of War Since Spartan Days

Few men have the modest estimate of duty in relation to self that has given an unsought celebrity to Arthur Ritchings of Cardiff, Wales. If his conduct may be taken as evidence of his philosophy of life, doing one’s duty in the world confers no particular distinction on the individual—the discharge of a moral obligation establishing no title to swank, swagger or puffed-upness. Possibly it is necessary to be a Welshman to appreciate Ritchings’ mental attitude, for it seems that the people of Cardiff saw nothing abnormal or eccentric in the behavior of their townsman, regarding it quite as a matter of course. Indeed it was a London paper that acquainted the Cardiffians that they had in their midst a hero deserving of especial respect. We get the particulars from the same source.

When Germany fell foul of Belgium, Arthur Ritchings was a member of the Cardiff Constabulary, in plain terms, a policeman. As soon as England declared war in 1914, Ritchings threw aside his truncheon, and other police insignia, and enlisted in the Army as a private. He served in that capacity for three years, doing the job with thoroughness, having an eye single to duty. Though unobtrusive in all his doings, not in the least inclined to celebrate in canticles of self-praise his deeds in trench or field, he nevertheless came to the notice of his superiors finally, and in November, 1917, his bravery won him promotion on the field. He was made second lieutenant. But he went right ahead in his normal way, yet, having once attracted their attention, he could not keep out of the view of his superiors, and so in February, 1918, they called him up and gave him to understand that in their opinion he measured up to a captaincy. But Ritchings just went right on being Ritchings, and so they made him a major. Then they made him a lieutenant colonel, and there is no conjecturing what they would have had to do with him had the war continued a little longer. As it was they made him a Chevalier of the Legion of Honor, pinned on his breast the Croix de Guerre with palms, gave him the Military Cross, and did what they could to persuade him that as he had been a gallant and daring soldier so also had he been an able and decisive officer. In the meantime the Germans had done what they could to further his interests by wounding him on six different occasions.

Now, the war having been fought and won, his duty no longer commanding the wear of khaki, Lieutenant Colonel Ritchings retired from the Army and returned to his native Cardiff. His townsmen welcomed him, congratulating him that he had managed to escape death for a further enjoyment of the unemotional serenity of the sturdy Welsh town. The Chairman of the Municipal Bench publicly declared that he was glad to see Ritchings back, and spoke approvingly of the fact that his war record was a credit to the town.

HIS HOME HONORS

Then Lieutenant Colonel Arthur Ritchings—with four years of active military service to his credit and field rank worn at the front, with a breast-load of decorations and the proved ability to command over 3,000 fighting men—stepped over to police headquarters, took up his truncheon and resumed his familiar duties as a common policeman in a mining town, where the care of drunks and disorderlies alone taxed his military genius.

There the matter might have ended but for the interests of a person who had no particular business to come fussing around in Cardiff affairs. This person happened to be one of those ordinary mortals who hold the notion that certain honors attached to heroism and military achievement are not sufficiently[Pg 379] represented by mere medals and things, and this person thought it in high degree outrageous that a man who had lifted himself by valor from private to lieutenant colonel should be permitted to walk a beat and swing a club as a means of serving the Crown. This indignant person wrote a passionate letter to the London Times, with the result that Cardiff took a second view of the situation, and the Watch Committee (a sort of police commissioner) took the ex-lieutenant colonel off his beat and gave him the lofty job of training the police to the proper dignity of constabulary service.

This, however, did not entirely satisfy outside admirers of Ritchings, honorable as it might seem to Cardiffians, so the Lord Mayor was pressed for information whether there was any intention of appointing the distinguished officer to a higher and more responsible position on the force. That dignitary (and a Lord Mayor truly esteems himself a dignitary in England) went to the extent of admitting that he thought that he might say that all the members of the Watch Committee were in sympathy with the idea, and that he had no doubt that when the opportunity occurred Colonel or Constable Ritchings would be given a place better suited to his merits.

And what said Ritchings concerning himself? Why, merely this, that he “recognized as every right-thinking man would that he had a moral obligation to return to the Cardiff police force for the reason that the ratepayers had been contributing during his absence to the support of his dependents at home.”

Driving His Automobile over a Shell-Swept Road a French Lad Braved Death to Deliver the Dead

It was during the dreadful few days when the Germans came closest to Paris, a French writer tells us. Gilles Thurmand—sixteen years old, whose mother kept the Côte d’Or—had got hold of an old motor-car which had been smashed up in the first days of the rush to the front, had tinkered with it until it ran again, and then had driven it out to see what he could pick up. He went in the direction of Givres, for he heard that there were a good many wounded along the roads, and the French were yielding. He had come as far as a little coppice, where he slowed down at the sight of a couple of French uniforms. The Germans began suddenly to shell the part of the road over which he had just driven. He did not pay much attention to this at the time, for he was so engrossed with the French officers, of whom there were three standing, and a fourth badly wounded. They had been cut off from their regiment, and were left in this little patch of wood either to be killed by one of the enemy’s shells, or to be taken prisoner. “Get in,” Gilles told them, “and we’ll make a run for it. I’m game if you are.” He was extremely proud of having to do with so many officers at once, and besides, he thought, it might be the means of getting him admitted into the Army. Just as they were lifting the wounded man onto the floor of the vehicle, which was about the size of a Ford limousine, Gilles’ sharp eyes spied another blue coat through the trees at a little distance away, and he ran over to the man, who wore the uniform of a captain. He was squatting over something in the denser underbrush, and raised up hastily as Gilles came toward him.

“Yes, come with us,” said Major Hervé, the senior officer of the party, limping toward them to find out the cause of the delay. The strange officer responded rather thickly that he couldn’t—that he had his duty to perform, and would prefer to remain at his post. The major, finding that arguing with him was of no avail, commanded him rather shortly to follow the rest, and when he still demurred, ordered the other three to bring him. They[Pg 380] did so, gently enough, believing him to be a little unbalanced by shell-fire. Then they all climbed into the crazy vehicle, shut the door, and Gilles, mounting to the front seat, set out to drive them through a quarter of a mile of fire and brimstone, which was as near to hell as anything he had ever imagined.

Shells whizzed past, and bullets hailed upon the roof. Once or twice Gilles heard a faint cry in the back of the motor, and he knew some one was hit, but he bent doggedly to his wheel, and didn’t once look round, for fear, as he phrased it, that he would “lack courage to go on again.” Though a bomb ripped off the fender and nearly capsized the car, Gilles himself was not touched, and presently he drove into a silence as deafening as the noise had been. It was the outskirts of a camp, and there were a few simple little everyday noises like the rattling of dishes and the chopping of wood. But it was like the cemetery of Père La Chaise to Gilles. He could not hear a sound. Two or three Frenchmen in khaki came running toward him as he slid off the box and opened the rear door. Three dead bodies tumbled out. The two left inside were those of the last-found officer and the badly wounded man. They, too, were dead. How had they been killed? Not by shell fire, certainly. Examination proved that they had died by pistol shots. Gilles, taken into custody, his teeth chattering with fear, pointed out the officer who had forcibly been made a member of their party. The man was searched. There were found upon him a spare telephone receiver and a map of the district, together with other evidence proving him a German spy. He had probably been directing the German fire at the moment when Gilles had so inopportunely come upon him. His great reluctance to join the party was explained. During their wild ride he had apparently found time to put a bullet through the head of each of his unsuspecting captors. Whether one of them or he himself had caused his own death, could not be discovered.

The Story of Col. U. G. McAlexander and the Heroic 38th Infantry, Defender’s of the Surmelin Valley, the “Gateway to Paris”

When two divisions of German shock troops pile up on a regiment of American fighting men, one does not need to be gifted in imagination to see war in all its ramifications and vicissitudes.

I admit that to those of us who participated the picture as a whole is blurred by proximity while spots are multicolored and accentuated into sheets of concentrated lightning.

The historian of the future will view the battle from afar and do much better, particularly as he will not be hampered by individual facts. Therefore we shall tell you the story and not the history of the 38th’s recent unpleasantness.

The scene is laid in that erstwhile heavenly little valley of the Surmelin which finds its resting place on the banks of the River Marne. The semi-mountainous ridges that flank this little valley are wooded with what the French call trees; they are tangled with shrubs and second growths that make for ideal machine-gun nests, as we shall see.

Down in the bosom of the valley meanders the Surmelin river, so called we presume because the French do not know our word “crick.” It is heavily foliaged creek; its value we first recognized in its production of trout through the agency of the festive “OF” grenade tossed into its tiny pools.

This valley is a series of golden wheat fields and garden patches. Not fields as you know them but as the French crofter laboriously cultivates by hand to the limits of one man’s activities—small, though profuse, spots of shining cereal decorated resplendently with carmine red poppies. * * * * *

The maps show this valley to be the gateway to Paris—that is, from the farthest point of the second German drive to the Marne. Would you call it the 38th’s good fortune to be given this gateway to defend? Anyway, the fates so decreed and we were rushed by the fastest means possible from our training billets, with French beds five feet high, at Arc, Cour le Vecque, and Comprey, to stem the tide and thereby block the way to Paris.

The 38th had made some marches before and has since, but none of us will forget when we pulled into the woods back of St. Eugene that last day of our trek. We had revised the tables of field equipment on the way so that when we got there we didn’t bother to spread our blankets. We simply laid down and hoped in a maudlin, disconnected way one of the shells the Germans welcomed us with would make a direct hit and end it all.

The Colonel was right there ahead of us. Nobody ever knows how he does it but he is always ahead of us and we have gotten used to a confident feeling of knowing it’s all right to go anywhere the Colonel is ahead. He warned us about aeroplane observation and gas shells and said, “Be ready for orders to move up!”

Our position was taken without delay on the south bank of the Marne, which is about fifty yards wide and which at that time separated us from the enemy. The Colonel gave orders directly opposite to the “live and let live” principle. “Don’t let anything alive show itself on the other side except those you go over and get for information!”

With the French opposite them the Germans had an insulting and cocky way of strolling about their business in plain view at a few hundred yards. The French custom of running themselves ragged trying to hit the enemy with a hand grenade did not appeal to us, so we became, in the German[Pg 382] opinion, disgustingly belligerent with our rifles.

Their movements soon after our advent became surreptitious and reptilian. So at night we paddled over in various nondescript flotillas, dug them out of their holes or chased their patrols around a bit—and sometimes got chased back again somewhat the worse for wear. They sprinkled us with H. E.’s and gas and we likewise sprinkled them. It was a great game and we thrived on it.

One dark night a patrol of theirs came over right at the point of a sentry post of ours. As they reached for the bank with a boat-hook a Yank accommodatingly took hold and pulled them in. He said, “Come on over, Fritz. We are waiting for you,” and our men proceeded to pacify one boat load of misdirected Huns.

That sort of thing was our daily, or rather nightly, ration, until prisoners and intelligence officers began to tell a new story. The Boche were preparing for another grand offensive and this time their objective was Paris with no stops.

The French on our right were generous with their warnings and made feverish arrangements for something or other—we thought at the time it was for battle. Aeroplanes and scouts verified this rumor and it looked like business. So the whole thing so far as our sector was concerned—the Gateway to Paris, the Valley of the Surmelin—was put up to the Colonel, U. G. McAlexander, who at once proceeded to make hay while the making was good.

“Rowe, you hold the front line with two companies of your battalion, don’t you?”

“Yes, sir, with two companies in their immediate support,” answered Major Rowe, commander of the 2nd Battalion.

“Very well,” said the Colonel. “Thicken the lines by moving one company up. This will give you three company fronts on our sector and your remaining company will entrench themselves in echelon formation, so,” indicating on map with pencil marks the exact position he wished them in. “They will act in close support on the extreme right and also as a right flank rearguard. The weak point on this line is on our right. I don’t believe the French will hold and I shall arrange my regiment to meet that contingency.”

This was a direct statement as usual; no equivocation in the Colonel’s remarks. But we were all greatly surprised, as everybody else had complete confidence in the gallantry of the French division on our right. It was our first introduction to the depth of the man in his preparation for battle. But for his judgment on their instability this would be a requiem, not a story.

The regiment was arranged on advanced and original principles of “formation in depth.” The 2nd Battalion, Major Rowe, as above; then the 1st Battalion, Major Keeley, and the 3rd, Major Lough. The Colonel looked us over individually and collectively, took a rifle to a point near the river in broad daylight, sniped a while as though to challenge the enemy, and said, “Let ’em come.”

The evening of July 14th (1918) came with a darkness you could feel. French crickets cricked in a language we could not understand. Night birds winged their uncertain way in pursuit of life, liberty, and happiness. Frogs croaked and walked—not hopped—after the manner of no other frogs on earth. The Y.M.C.A.—God bless them!—sent chocolates and cigarettes down to the men in the very front lines. The rolling kitchens steamed up in preparation of the boys’ one hot meal per day to be delivered by carrying parties to the front. Company commanders made the usual night reconnaissance of their positions, chatted with the lieutenants and again learned that a plebiscite of the men would produce a reiteration of the Colonel’s “Let ’em come.”

Our artillery lugged over the usual intermittent harrassing fire, but the murmuring pines and whispering hemlocks went A.W.O.L.[1] so far as looking out for the Germans was concerned. For all the noise they made you could hear your eyelashes meet. Their quiet finally became ominous and there was a general stiffening of our cerebral vertebra.

All the demons of hell and its ally, Germany, were unleashed in a fierce uproar that transcended all bombardments of the past.[Pg 383] It thundered and rained shells, H.E.’s shrapnel and gas. They swept our sector as with a giant scythe, and as far back as their guns would reach.

For hours that seemed weeks we huddled in our tiny splinter proofs or open slit trenches in the horrible confusion of it all, but we lovingly patted our, as yet, cold steel and awaited the second shock we knew would come—the shock of bodies, material bodies that we could see, feel and fight—something tangible, so that we could release our mad lust to kill this great snake that was slowly coiling around us, this furious beast that was volcanically tearing at our vitals.

Yes, we wanted them to come. We wanted anything to come that we could see, feel, and fight. We wanted to fight, I tell you. Not to lie there on the rocking ground with hell crashing and the devils snatching at our guts, our eyes, our lungs.

They are not satisfied to drench us at long distances with all the steel they can crowd into space but the dirty, ghoulish, primeval Hun racks his warped and tortured brain for a method more becoming the slime and filth of his rotten being.

Well, so be it. We fight him back with his weapons, so on with the gas masks, it’s only a bluff. He can’t come himself in his poison—and he’s coming, he’s coming! It became a song in our hearts—“He’s Coming! He’s Coming!”

We began to brighten perceptibly. Instead of the earth rocking it became the gentle tossing of a languorous, moonlit sea. We leaned our heads in genuine affection against the dirt sides of our little slit trench and began to marvel at its motherly shelter. How they could churn up the whole world and never drop one in! Of course they could not drop one in. They had no brain, the swine.

If a chemist could run them through a Pasteur filter, he would get a trace of intellectual process about the mental grade of the Pithecanthropus erectus!

That’s it. He is shooting away his fireworks in the vain hope of something. Wonder what it is. Anyway, he shot it away for eight hours on our support and reserve lines, but at about 4 o’clock on the morning of the 15th he lifted his general bombardment on the front line and started a rolling barrage, one hundred meters in three minutes.

This was more like. Something we could see, feel and fight. And when we say they came we mean two divisions of them.

“When two divisions of German shock troops pile up on a regiment of American fighting men”—Do you remember what we told you!

Well! they piled up, at first with excellent formation and a distribution of machine guns, as bumble bees distribute themselves after the small boy wallops their nest with his handful of switches—all over everywhere.

On the river bank where they came in crowds, boats, and pontoon bridges, it was eye to eye, tooth to tooth, and hand-to-hand. It was a strange silence after the barrage had passed. The tack-tack-tack of machine guns, mounted and firing from boats as they came, and the clash of steel as the bayonets met sounded like a death stillness compared to it.

The lines on the river were fought out completely. The barrage had not reached the railway bank and reënforcements could not be sent to them. They paid the supreme price, but the action delayed the enemy advance so that the organizations in depth could unlimber and meet the advance with the result as stated above—this is a story, not a requiem.

Their barrage got away from them, an unpardonable crime in military science but humanly pardonable when one learns they thought it impossible to be met and fought on the river bank.

Our line of resistance was the Metz-Paris Railway. The embankment is some nine feet high with tiny slit trenches on the forward edge but not sufficiently forward to be on the military crest. When the Boche started their advance across the wheat fields intervening, some five hundred yards, this embankment[Pg 384] became a living thing and American Springfields began to laugh in their faces.

That wasn’t fair. They had been assured with all German sangfroid that there would be no resistance after their barrage. But those were shock troops brought from afar with orders. “To Paris. No Stop-overs.”

Though their brains became loose-leaf ledgers with no index and the Kaiser became a more ghastly figure, they were fighters. I should say, professional soldiers. So they came on. We admit they looked like the whole German army and we had to wonder if the little old Springfield would keep on laughing. We had been warned of a big offensive, but we did not know the Boche thought our front was like a city park, free for all.

The Springfield did keep on laughing and after covering about half the distance they were transferred from a soldiers’ maneuver column into a German military omelet. However, their machine guns had infiltrated through the high wheat and covered our front as flies cover spilled molasses.

The rest hit the ground and continued their advance in a more becoming manner, like a mole. They wriggled themselves, many of them to the very foot of the railway embankment, where they were safe from our fire for the above mentioned reason. They rested, then charged the crest, were hurled back; rested, threw stick grenades and charged some more, but never successfully, until the splendid heroes of that line joined their comrades of the river bank, joined them on that long journey to that land which knows no war.

Then came the supporting troops from their immediate rear in a charge to which history will never do justice. They couldn’t come before, as there is only room for a certain number to fight on the forward edge. To the Germans on the embankment the Kaiser must have taken on a more material aspect; they saw visions of Paris, but visions only, which disappeared like mist in the sunshine.

It was not sunshine that hit them. No. It was an earthquake. San Francisco one April morning of 1906 had nothing on that shock which must have been felt back in the Reichstag. Bayonets, rifle butts, fists and teeth. Our boys in khaki were overwhelmed by numbers in gray.

The Colonel had said, “Let ’em come.” Well, here they are, and God, the joy of it all!

Did you ever turn yourself loose in a mad passion that knew no limit? Were you ever blinded by blood and lust to kill and let yourself go in a crowd where you could feel their bodies crumble and sink to the depths below you, then brace yourself on them, and destroy, destroy, destroy!

I hope not, but we did—and what do numbers amount to against spirit? In San Francisco the earthquake subsided and we were left to contemplate and ponder. There was no subsiding of these seismic demons of Colonel Ulysses Grant McAlexander, once they had their orders. We were to hold that railroad. Did we hold it, Go down there and count the German graves. Six hundred before one company alone. Ask the prisoners, pens of them, why they didn’t fulfil their mission. They don’t know just what happened, but whatever it was, it was awful, colossal.

Sir, they did not even take the first line of resistance of the 38th. An officer, later captured, stated that only twelve of the 6th Grenadiers, the Kaiser’s favorite Prussian shock troops, returned to their side of the Marne.

Yes, back they went, and they stood not upon the manner of their going, although I will say their machine guns covered their retreat to the limit of their ability. Without their usual “nest” arrangement they were comparatively easy picking for us. For instance, during the retreat Corporal Newell with his squad augmented by two men went down into the field and captured five guns, killing or capturing their crews.

During the heat of battle one lone private crawled down the embankment through the wheat to the flank of a machine-gun crew who were too busy on their front to know where his shots were coming from. He picked off seven Germans and dragged the gun back[Pg 385] with him. These incidents are not typical, but they serve to illustrate the many, many remarkable individual feats of heroism of the 38th, under the stress of battle.

No grander man lived than Lieutenant Kenneth P. Murray, killed in a flank attack which started in a line from the railway to the church in Mézy, drove in one hundred and eighty-five prisoners, but from which only three returned, the company commander and two privates. Lieutenant Mercer M. Phillips died on the railway with a blood-dripping bayonet on the rifle in his hands. Lieutenant David C. Calkins, whose troops blocked the enemy’s progress at the river edge until the barrage passed and those in his support could get into action, made the supreme sacrifice.

Many, many other splendid souls, born leaders of brave men, joined the great majority with a smile on their lips and pistols empty.

Lieutenant Colonel Frank H. Adams, that great soldier with a lion’s heart, and yet who led his command by an irresistible personal magnetism, by precept and example and never an unkind word—that big, handsome, he-fighter won the Distinguished Service Cross by standing in the way of a whole regiment, not one that he had any direct connection with, but one nearby that was practically routed by the shock the 38th stood and fought back. He brought comparative order out of chaos and succeeded in getting them in a support position.

We could mention hundreds of great deeds by great men on that day, but this is a story of the 38th, not of the indomitable spirits that go to make it up, or we would never reach the end.

At 10 o’clock, on the 15th, our front was fairly cleared and we were beginning to feel that it was a great day, when something else happened. Can you, who were not with us, imagine how a prohibitionist feels on a yachting party? Completely surrounded by hell and damnation and can’t get off.

The enemy had penetrated to our left like the boll weevil through a Southerner’s cotton patch and fortified himself with minenwerfers, machine guns and barbed wire. They did not penetrate to our right. No, they simply walked over and wondered how much of a hike it was to Paris. We were then aware of the reason for “Feverish preparations on the part of the French on our right.”

Do you remember what we told you? We thought it was to fight, but evidently no such idea ever marred the sweet thoughts of the 131st. Say what you please, make any defense you like. They weren’t there. And that’s the business we have in hand just now. They weren’t there. Whence they came or whither they went we know not. A. W. O. L. most likely, but that is neither here nor there.

On the morning of July 15, 1918, when Colonel McAlexander was hurling battalion after battalion of the 38th into the Surmelin valley, the Gateway to Paris, and out-fighting, out-maneuvering, out-generaling the Kaiser’s favorites, there were no friendly troops on our right where they had been on the evening of the 14th.

However, thank God for a real soldier’s instinct. The Colonel had anticipated and was prepared to meet a right flank attack. Good old Captain Reid was there to meet them when they tried to consolidate their line through our regiment. He met them first with rifle fire, then with the bayonet, and finally with butts. He fought them all over the ridge and down on every side except our side. He never let them set foot on our sector of the Marne and though it cost him nearly his entire command he was there when fresher troops could get to him for relief.

On the left we repulsed a heavy rear attack and a light flank attack with a handful of the most exhausted troops in France—old “G” company reduced to fifty-two men from two hundred and fifty-one—taking up new positions and fighting off ten to one is a picture that will ever live in the memory of the 38th.

Major Rowe made desperate efforts to reinforce, but the Boche, just at that place, had us under direct fire of Austrian 88’s, German 77’s, and one pounders. You know what direct fire means. Effective forces can’t be sent against it, that’s all.

So, for three days we fought on our flanks, for three days the German high command [Pg 387]gave us all they had in their desperation to open the gateway. The Colonel received an order. “Fall back if you think best.”

God, what a world of torture and yet solace in that answer! What a world of pain and joy! We were shot to ribbons, cut to small sections, unfed, and oh, so tired; but the drive would never have stopped once they consolidated their lines through the 38th.

It was Paris for them and a terrible defeat for us if we withdrew and gave them the little Surmelin valley. The Colonel had been studying the attack orders taken from captured German officers and knew as no one else knew what it meant to fall back.

He was there for a soldier’s purpose and did a soldier’s duty. He paid an awful price, made sacrifices of officers and men that tore his heart to pieces. But he held the Gateway to Paris and not only that, drove them back across the Marne and followed them across.

Believe it or not, it was an absolute physical impossibility, but we went right on after them and fought them again at Jaulgonne—still nobody on our right, mind you—where for several days and several nights it steadily rained and where for the same length of time we hammered them with shot and bayonet until they fell back with such impetus that our next big battle was at Fismes on the River Vesle.

One soldier was heard to remark: “I don’t see any more prisoners coming in. I wonder what can be the matter?”

Second soldier: “Didn’t you hear the Colonel say he had all the information he needed?”

There are not many of us left of the old 38th. There has been considerable talk in French circles about “Regiment d’elite,” “unconquerable tenacity,” and the like. Yes, our flag is to be decorated with the Croix de Guerre and it is generally recognized in high French command that “McAlexander’s defense was peculiarly American in conception, plan and execution.” You see we have been under French command and our deeds have not been recounted at home. All the glory goes to the High Command.

27 July, 1918.

General Order I.
(From the Field.)
To the Officers and Men of the
38th U. S. Infantry.

The Colonel commanding the regiment wishes to praise you for the heroic manner in which you took your baptism of fire on July 15, 1918, upon the banks of the Marne. No regiment in the history of our nation has ever shown a finer spirit or performed a greater deed.

Let us cherish within our hearts the memory of our fallen comrades. Salute them! Then forward!

McAlexander.

And look at this for an official report and try to remember if in all history such a feat was ever before accomplished:

Headquarters, 38th U. S. Infantry.
A. P. O. 740, France, 8 August, 1918.

From: Commanding Officer, 38th U. S. Infantry.
To: The Adjutant General, U. S. Army.
(Through Military Channels.)
Subject: Capture of Prisoners from Three German Divisions.

1. In the second battle of the Marne, July 15-23, 1918, the 38th U. S. Infantry was attacked on the south bank of the Marne, July 15-18, by two German divisions, and it captured prisoners from each of their regiments, namely:

		6th Grenadier Guards
10th Division		47th Infantry
		398th Infantry

		5th Grenadier Guards
36th Division		128th Infantry
		175th Infantry

2. On July 22, 1918, this regiment attacked the 10th Division Landwehr on the north bank of Marne and captured prisoners from its three regiments, namely:

		372nd Infantry
10th Division Landwehr		377th Infantry
		378th Infantry

3. It is believed that the capture of prisoners from nine enemy regiments during nine days of battle constitutes a record justifying a report to the War Department.

4. Identification of twenty-one separate and distinct regimental and other units were secured from enemy positions in front of this regiment.

U. G. McAlexander,
Colonel, 38th U. S. Infantry.

FOOTNOTES:

[1] Military abbreviation for “absent without leave.”

The 78 Soldiers Who Won the Congressional Medal of Honor for an Act of Supreme Courage

England’s most coveted reward for heroism in battle is the Victoria Cross. France gives her Médaille Militaire; Germany, her Iron Cross.

There has been little need of war medals in the United States, but with the entrance of this country into the war Congress established its medal of honor—called by its full title, The Congressional Medal of Honor.

This decoration is given only to those who achieve an act of supreme courage, or, as “General Orders” have it, to those who in action “have fought with conspicuous gallantry and intrepidity above and beyond the call of duty.”

Seventy-eight of the 1,200,000 men in the A. E. F. received these awards. Fifty-seven of this number were enlisted men, twenty-one were officers. Nineteen awards were posthumous. For every 15,400 soldiers who were in action one received the Congressional Medal.

The best showing was made by the 30th Division, the National Guard organization of the Carolinas and Tennessee. Second honors go to the 89th Division, which is the selective draft unit of Western Missouri, Kansas, Nebraska, Colorado, South Dakota, and New Mexico. The third largest is the 33rd or National Guard Division of Illinois. Fourth honors go to the famous 2nd Division of Regulars, which includes the Marines, while fifth place is shared by the two New York divisions, the 27th and 77th. The list follows:

1ST DIVISION

Colyer, Wilbur E., Sergeant, Co. A, 1st Engineers, 1st Division, Ozone Park, L. I.—Verdun, France, Oct. 9, 1918. Volunteering with two other soldiers to locate machine-gun nests, Sergeant Colyer advanced on the hostile positions to a point where he was half surrounded by the nests, which were in ambush. He killed the gunner of one gun with a captured German grenade and then turned this gun on the other nests, silencing all of them before he returned to his platoon. He was later killed in action.

Ellis, Michael B., Sergeant, Co. C, 28th Infantry, 1st Division, East St. Louis, Ill.—Exermont, France, Oct. 5, 1918. During the entire day’s engagement he operated far in advance of the first wave of his company, voluntarily undertaking most dangerous missions and single-handed attacking and reducing machine-gun nests. Flanking one emplacement, he killed two of the enemy with rifle fire and captured seventeen others. Later he single-handed advanced under heavy fire and captured twenty-seven prisoners, including two officers and six machine guns, which had been holding up the advance of the company. The captured officers indicated the locations of four other machine guns, and he in turn captured these, together with their crews, at all times showing marked heroism and fearlessness.

2ND DIVISION

Bart, Frank J., Private, Co. C, 9th Infantry, 2nd Division, Newark, N. J.—Médéah Farm, France, Oct. 3, 1918. Private Bart, being on duty as a company runner, when the advance was held up by machine-gun fire voluntarily picked up an automatic rifle, ran out ahead of the line, and silenced a hostile machine-gun nest, killing the German gunners. The advance then continued, and, when it was again hindered shortly afterward by another machine-gun nest, this courageous soldier repeated his bold exploit by putting the second machine gun out of action.

Cukela, Louis, First Lieutenant, 5th Regiment Marines, 2nd Division, Minneapolis, Minn.—Villers-Cotterets, France, July 18, 1918. When his company, advancing through a wood, met with strong resistance from an enemy strong point, Lieutenant Cukela (then Sergeant) crawled out from the flank and made his way toward the German lines in the face of heavy fire, disregarding the warnings of his comrades. He succeeded in getting behind the enemy position and rushed a machine-gun emplacement, killing or driving off the crew with his bayonet. With German hand grenades he then bombed out the remaining portion of the strong point, capturing four men and two damaged machine guns.

Hoffman, Charles F., Gunnery Sergeant, 5th Regiment Marines, Second Division, Brooklyn, N. Y.—Château-Thierry, France, June 6, 1918. Immediately after the company to which he belonged had reached its objective on Hill 142, several hostile counter-attacks were launched against the line before the new position had been consolidated. Sergeant Hoffman was attempting to organize a position on the north slope of the hill when he saw twelve of the enemy, armed with five light machine guns, crawling toward his group. Giving the alarm, he rushed the hostile detachment, bayoneted the two leaders, and forced the others to flee, abandoning their guns. His quick action, initiative, and courage drove the enemy from a position from which they could have swept the hill with machine-gun fire and forced the withdrawal of our troops.

Kocak, Matej, Sergeant, Co. C, 5th Regiment Marines, 2nd Division, Albany, N. Y.—Soissons, France, July 18, 1918. When the advance of his battalion was checked by a hidden machine-gun nest he went forward alone, unprotected by covering fire from his own men, and worked in between the German position in the face of fire from an enemy covering detachment. Locating the machine-gun nest, he rushed it, and with his bayonet drove off the crew. Shortly after this he organized twenty-five French colonial soldiers who had become separated from their [Pg 389]company, and led them in attacking another machine-gun nest, which was also put out of action.

Kelly, John Joseph, Private, 6th Regiment Marines, 2nd Division, Chicago, Ill.—Blanc Mont Ridge, France, Oct. 3, 1918. Private Kelly ran through our own barrage 100 yards in advance of the front line, and attacked an enemy machine-gun nest, killing the gunner with a grenade, shooting another member of the crew with his pistol, and returned through the barrage with eight prisoners.

Van Iersal, Louis, Sergeant, Co. M, 9th Infantry, 2nd Division, Newark, N. Y.—Mouzon, France, Nov. 9, 1918. While a member of the reconnoissance patrol sent out at night to ascertain the condition of a damaged bridge, Sergeant Van Iersal volunteered to lead a party across the bridge in the face of heavy machine-gun and rifle fire from a range of only 75 yards. Crawling alone along the débris of the ruined bridge, he came upon a trap, which gave away and precipitated him into the water. In spite of the swift current, he succeeded in swimming across the stream, and found a lodging place among the timbers on the opposite bank. Disregarding the enemy fire, he made a careful investigation of the hostile position by which the bridge was defended and then returned to the other bank of the river, reporting this valuable information to the battalion commander.

Pruitt, John H., Corporal, 78th Co., 6th Regiment of Marines, 2nd Division, Phoenix, Ariz.—Blanc Mont Ridge, France, Oct. 3, 1918. Corporal Pruitt single-handed attacked two machine guns, capturing them and killing two of the enemy. He then captured forty prisoners in a dugout near by. This gallant soldier was killed soon afterward by shell fire while he was sniping at the enemy.

3RD DIVISION

Barkley, John L., Private, first class, Company K, 4th Infantry, 3rd Division, Blairstown, Mo.—Cunel, France, Oct. 7, 1918. Private Barkley, who was stationed in an observation post half a kilometer from the German line, on his own initiative repaired a captured enemy machine gun and mounted it in a disabled French tank near his post. Shortly afterward, when the enemy launched a counter-attack against our forces, Private Barkley got into the tank, waited under the hostile barrage until the enemy line was abreast of him, and then opened fire, completely breaking up the counter-attack and killing and wounding a large number of the enemy. Five minutes later an enemy 77-millimeter gun opened fire on the tank point blank. One shell struck the driver wheel of the tank, but this soldier, nevertheless, remained in the tank; and after the barrage ceased broke up a second enemy counter-attack, thereby enabling our forces to gain and hold Hill 253.

Hays, George Price, First Lieutenant, 10th Field Artillery, 3rd Division, Okarchee, Okla.—Grèves Farm, France, July 14-15, 1918. At the very outset of the unprecedented artillery bombardment by the enemy of July 14-15, 1918, his line of communication was destroyed beyond repair. Despite the hazard attached to the mission of runner, he immediately set out to establish contact with the neighboring post of command; and, further established liaison with two French batteries, visiting their position so frequently that he was mainly responsible for the accurate fire therefrom. While thus engaged, seven horses were shot under him and he was severely wounded. His activity, under most severe fire was an important factor in checking the advance of the enemy.

5TH DIVISION

Allworth, Edward S., Captain, 60th Infantry, 5th Division, Crawford, Wash.—Cléry-le-Petit, France, Nov. 5, 1918. While his company was crossing the Meuse River and Canal at a bridgehead opposite Cléry-le-Petit, the bridge over the canal was destroyed by shell fire and Captain Allworth’s command became separated, part of it being on the east bank of the canal and the remainder on the west bank. Seeing his advance units making slow headway up the steep slope ahead, this officer mounted the canal bank and called for his men to follow. Plunging in, he swam across the canal under fire from the enemy, followed by his men. Inspiring his men by his example of gallantry, he led them up the slope, joining his hard-pressed platoons in front. By his personal leadership he forced the enemy back for more than a kilometer, overcoming machine-gun nests and capturing a hundred prisoners, whose number exceeded that of the men in his command. The exceptional courage and leadership displayed by Captain Allworth made possible the reëstablishment of a bridgehead over the canal and the successful advance of other troops.

Woodfill, Samuel, First Lieutenant, 60th Infantry, 5th Division, Fort Thomas, Ky.—Cunel, France, Oct. 12, 1918. While he was leading his company against the enemy his line came under heavy machine-gun fire, which threatened to hold up the advance. Followed by two soldiers at 25 yards, this officer went out ahead of his first line toward a machine-gun nest and worked his way around its flank, leaving the two soldiers in front. When he got within 10 yards of the gun it ceased firing, and four of the enemy appeared, three of whom were shot by Lieutenant Woodfill. The fourth, an officer, rushed at Lieutenant Woodfill, who attempted to club the officer with his rifle. After a hand-to-hand struggle, Lieutenant Woodfill killed the officer with his pistol. His company thereupon continued to advance until shortly afterward another machine-gun nest was encountered. Calling his men to follow, Lieutenant Woodfill rushed ahead of his line in the face of heavy fire from the nest; and when several of the enemy appeared above the nest he shot them, capturing three other members of the crew and silencing the gun. A few minutes later this officer for the third time demonstrated conspicuous daring by charging another machine-gun position, killing five men in one machine-gun pit with his rifle. He then drew his revolver and started to jump into the pit, when two other gunners only a few yards away turned their gun on him. Failing to kill them with his revolver, he grabbed a pick lying near by and killed both of them. Inspired by the exceptional courage displayed by this officer, his men pressed on to their objective under severe shell and machine-gun fire.

26TH DIVISION

Dilboy, George, Private, first class, Co. H, 103rd Infantry, 26th Division, Boston, Mass.—Belleau, France, July 18, 1918. After his platoon had gained its objective along a railroad embankment, Private Dilboy, accompanying his platoon leader to reconnoiter the ground beyond, was suddenly fired upon by an enemy machine gun from 100 yards. From a standing position on the railroad track, fully exposed to view, he opened fire at once, but, failing to silence the gun, rushed forward with his bayonet fixed through a wheat field toward the gun emplacement, falling within twenty-five yards of the gun with his right leg nearly severed above the knee and with several bullet holes in his body. With undaunted courage he continued to fire into the emplacement from a prone position, killing two of the enemy and dispersing the rest of the crew.

Perkins, Michael J., Private, first class, Company D, 101st Infantry, 26th Division, Boston, Mass.—Belieu Bois, France, Oct. 27, 1918. He, voluntarily and alone, crawled to a German “pillbox” machine-gun emplacement, from which grenades were being thrown at his platoon. Awaiting his opportunity, when the door was[Pg 392] again opened and another grenade thrown, he threw a bomb inside, bursting the door open; and then, drawing his trench knife, rushed into the emplacement. In a hand-to-hand struggle he killed or wounded several of the occupants and captured about twenty-five prisoners, at the same time silencing seven machine guns.

27TH DIVISION

Eggers, Alan Louis, Sergeant, M. G. Company, 107th Infantry, 27th Division, Summit, N. J.—Le Catelet, France, Sept. 29, 1918. Becoming separated from their platoon by a smoke barrage, Sergeant Eggers, Sergeant John C. Latham, and Corporal Thomas E. O’Shea took cover in a shell hole well within the enemy’s lines. Upon hearing a call for help from an American tank which had become disabled 30 yards from them, the three soldiers left their shelter and started toward the tank under heavy fire from German machine guns and trench mortars. In crossing the fire-swept area Corporal O’Shea was mortally wounded; but his companions, undeterred, proceeded to the tank, rescued a wounded officer, and assisted two wounded soldiers to cover in a sap of a nearby trench. Sergeant Eggers and Sergeant Latham then returned to the tank in the face of the violent fire, dismounted a Hotchkiss gun, and took it back to where the wounded men were, keeping off the enemy all day by effective use of the gun, and later bringing it, with the wounded men, back to our lines under cover of darkness.

Gaffney, Frank, Private, first class, 108th Infantry, 27th Division, Lockport, N. Y.—Ronssoy, France, Sept. 29, 1918. Private Gaffney, an automatic rifleman, pushed forward alone with his gun, after all the other members of his squad had been killed, discovered several Germans placing a heavy machine gun in position. He killed the crew, captured the gun, bombed several dugouts, and, after killing four more of the enemy with his pistol, held the position until reinforcement came up, when eighty prisoners were captured.

Latham, John Cridland, Sergeant, M. G. Co., 107th Infantry, 27th Division, Westmoreland, England.—Le Catelet, France, Sept. 29, 1918. Becoming separated from their platoon by a smoke barrage, Sergeant Latham, Sergeant Alan L. Eggers, and Corporal Thomas E. O’Shea took cover in a shell hole well within the enemy’s lines. Upon hearing a call for help from an American tank, which had become disabled thirty yards from them, the three soldiers left their shelter and started toward the tank under heavy fire from German machine guns and trench mortars. In crossing the fire-swept area Corporal O’Shea was mortally wounded, but his companions, undeterred, proceeded to the tank, rescued a wounded officer, and assisted two wounded soldiers to cover in the sap of a nearby trench. Sergeant Latham and Sergeant Eggers then returned to the tank, in the face of the violent fire, dismounted a Hotchkiss gun, and took it back to where the wounded men were, keeping off the enemy all day by effective use of the gun and later bringing it, with the wounded men, back to our lines under cover of darkness.

Luke, Frank, Jr., Lieutenant, 27th Aero Squadron, Phoenix, Ariz.—Murvaux, France, Sept. 29, 1918. After having previously destroyed a number of enemy aircraft within seventeen days, he voluntarily started on a patrol after German observation balloons. Though pursued by eight German planes, which were protecting the enemy balloon line, he unhesitatingly attacked and shot down in flames three German balloons, being himself under heavy fire from ground batteries and the hostile planes. Severely wounded, he descended to within fifty meters of the ground; and flying at this low altitude near the town of Murvaux, opened fire upon enemy troops, killing six and wounding as many more. Forced to make a landing and surrounded on all sides by the enemy, who called upon him to surrender, he drew his automatic pistol and defended himself gallantly until he fell dead from a wound in the chest.

O’Shea, Thomas E., Corporal, M. G. Co., 107th Infantry, 27th Division, Summit, N. J.—Le Catelet, France, Sept. 29, 1918. Becoming separated from their platoon by a smoke barrage. Corporal O’Shea, with two other soldiers, took cover in a shell hole well within the enemy’s lines. Upon hearing a call for help from an American tank, which had become disabled thirty yards from them, the three soldiers left their shelter and started toward the tank under heavy fire from German machine guns and trench mortars. In crossing the fire-swept area Corporal O’Shea was mortally wounded and died of his wounds shortly afterward.

Waalker, Reider, Sergeant, Co. A, 105th Infantry, 27th Division, Noretrand, Norway.—Ronssoy, France, Sept. 27, 1918. In the face of heavy artillery and machine-gun fire, he crawled forward in a burning British tank in which some of the crew were imprisoned, and succeeded in rescuing two men. Although the tank was then burning fiercely and contained ammunition which was likely to explode at any time, this soldier immediately returned to the tank, and, entering it, made a search for the other occupants, remaining until he satisfied himself that there were no more living men in the tank.

Turner, William S., First Lieutenant, 105th Infantry, 27th Division, Dorchester, Mass.—Ronssoy, France, Sept. 27th, 1918. He led a small group of men to the attack, under terrific artillery and machine-gun fire, after they had become separated from the rest of the company in the darkness. Single-handed he rushed an enemy machine gun which had suddenly opened fire on his group and killed the crew with his pistol. He then pressed forward to another machine-gun post, 25 yards away, and had killed one gunner himself by the time the remainder of his detachment arrived and put the gun out of action. With the utmost bravery he continued to lead his men over three lines of hostile trenches, cleaning up each one as they advanced, regardless of the fact that he had been wounded three times, and killed several of the enemy in hand-to-hand encounters. After his pistol ammunition was exhausted, this gallant officer seized the rifle of a dead soldier, bayoneted several members of a machine-gun crew, and shot the others. Upon reaching the fourth-line trench, which was his objective, Lieutenant Turner captured it with the nine men remaining in his group, and resisted a hostile counter-attack until he was finally surrounded and killed.

28TH DIVISION

Mestrovitch, James I, Sergeant, Co. C, 111th Infantry, 28th Division, Fresno, Cal.—Fismette, France, Aug. 10, 1918. Seeing his company commander lying wounded thirty yards in front of the line after his company had withdrawn to a sheltered position behind a stone wall, Sergeant Mestrovitch voluntarily left cover and crawled through heavy machine-gun and shell-fire to where the officer lay. He took the officer upon his back and crawled back to a place of safety, where he administered first-aid treatment, his exceptional heroism saving the officer’s life.

29TH DIVISION

Costin, Henry G., Private, Co. H, 115th Infantry, 29th Division, Cape Charles, Va.—Bois de Consenvoye, France, Oct. 8, 1918. When the advance of his platoon had been held up by machine-gun fire and a request was made for an automatic-rifle team to charge the nest, Private Costin was the first to volunteer. Advancing with his team under terrific fire of enemy artillery, machine guns, and trench mortars, he continued after all his comrades had become casualties, and he himself had been seriously wounded. [Pg 395]He operated his rifle until he collapsed. His act resulted in the capture of about 100 prisoners and several machine guns. He succumbed from the effects of his wounds shortly after the accomplishment of his heroic deed.

Gregory, Earl D., Sergeant, H. Q. Co., 116th Infantry, 29th Division, Chase City, Va.—Boise de Consenvoye, north of Verdun, France, Oct. 8, 1918. With the remark, “I will get them,” Sergeant Gregory seized a rifle and a trench-mortar shell which he used as a hand grenade, left his detachment of the trench-mortar platoon, and, advancing ahead of the infantry, captured a machine gun and three of the enemy. Advancing still further from the machine-gun nest, he captured a 7.5-centimeter mountain howitzer, and, entering a dugout in the immediate vicinity, single-handed captured nineteen of the enemy.

Regan, Patrick, Second Lieutenant, 115th Infantry, 29th Division, Los Angeles, Cal.—Bois de Consenvoye, France, Oct. 8, 1918. While leading his platoon against a strong enemy machine-gun nest which had held up the advance of two companies, Lieut. Regan divided his men into three groups, sending one group to either flank, and he himself attacking with an automatic-rifle team from the front. Two of the team were killed outright, while Lieut. Regan and the third man were seriously wounded, the latter unable to advance. Although severely wounded, Lieut. Regan dashed with empty pistol into the machine-gun nest, capturing thirty Austrian gunners and four machine guns. This gallant deed permitted the companies to advance, avoiding a terrific enemy fire. Despite his wounds, he continued to lead his platoon forward until ordered to the rear by his commanding officer.

30TH DIVISION

Adkinson, Joseph B., Sergeant, Co. C, 119th Infantry, 30th Division, Atoka, Tenn.—Bellicourt, France, Sept. 29, 1918. When murderous machine-gun fire at a range of fifty yards had made it impossible for his platoon to advance, and had caused the platoon to take cover, Sergeant Adkinson alone, with the greatest intrepidity, rushed across the fifty yards of open ground directly into the face of the hostile machine gun, kicked the gun from the parapet into the enemy trench, and at the point of the bayonet captured the three men manning the gun. The gallantry and quick decision of this soldier enabled the platoon to resume its advance.

Blackwell, Robert L., Private, 119th Infantry, 30th Division, Hurdles Mills, N. C.—Saint Souplet, France, Oct. 11, 1918. When his platoon was almost surrounded by the enemy and his platoon commander asked for volunteers to carry a message calling for reinforcements, Private Blackwell volunteered for this mission, well knowing the extreme danger connected with it. In attempting to get through the heavy shell and machine-gun fire this gallant soldier was killed.

Dozier, James C., First Lieutenant, Co. G, 118th Infantry, 30th Division, Rock Hill, S. C.—Montbrehain, France, Oct. 8, 1918. In command of two platoons, Lieutenant Dozier was painfully wounded in the shoulder early in the attack, but he continued to lead his men, displaying the highest bravery and skill. When his command was held up by heavy machine-gun fire he disposed his men in the best cover available, and with a soldier continued forward to attack a machine-gun nest. Creeping up to the position in the face of intense fire, he killed the entire crew with hand grenades and his pistol; and a little later captured a number of Germans who had taken refuge in a dugout nearby.

Foster, Gary Evans, Sergeant, Co. F, 118th Infantry, 30th Division, Inman, S. C.—Montbrehain, France, Oct. 8, 1918. When his company was held up by violent machine-gun fire from a sunken road Sergeant Foster, with an officer, went forward to attack the hostile machine-gun nests. The officer was wounded, but Sergeant Foster continued on alone in the face of heavy fire and by effective use of hand grenades and his pistol killed several of the enemy and captured eighteen.

Hall, Thomas Lee, Sergeant, Co. G, 118th Infantry, 30th Division, Fort Hill, S. C.—Montbrehain, France, Oct. 8, 1918. Having overcome two machine-gun nests under his skillful leadership, Sergeant Hall’s platoon was stopped 800 yards from its final objective by machine-gun fire of particular intensity. Ordering his men to take cover in a sunken road, he advanced alone on the enemy machine-gun post and killed five members of the crew with his bayonet and thereby made possible the further advance of the line. While attacking another machine-gun nest later in the day this gallant soldier was mortally wounded.

Heriot, James D., Corporal, Co. I, 118th Infantry, 30th Division, Providence, S. C.—Vaux-Andigny, France, Oct. 12, 1918. Corporal Heriot, with four other soldiers, organized a combat group and attacked an enemy machine-gun nest which had been inflicting heavy casualties on his company. In the advance two of his men were killed, and because of the heavy fire from all sides the remaining two sought shelter. Unmindful of the hazard attached to his mission, Corporal Heriot, with fixed bayonet, alone charged the machine gun, making his way through the fire for a distance of thirty yards and forcing the enemy to surrender. During his exploit he received several wounds in the arm, and later in the same day, while charging another nest, he was killed.

Hilton, Richmond H., Sergeant, Co. H, 118th Infantry, 30th Division, Westville, S. C.—Brancourt, France, Oct. 11, 1918. While Sergeant Hilton’s company was advancing through the village of Brancourt it was held up by intense[Pg 396] enfilading fire from a machine gun. Discovering that this fire came from a machine-gun nest among shell holes at the edge of the town, Sergeant Hilton, accompanied by a few other soldiers but well in advance of them, pressed on toward this position, firing with his rifle until his ammunition was exhausted, and then with his pistol killing six of the enemy and capturing ten. In the course of this daring exploit he received a wound from a bursting shell, which resulted in the loss of his arm.

Karnes, James E., Sergeant, Co. D, 117th Infantry, 30th Division, Knoxville, Tenn.—Estrées, France, Oct. 8, 1918. During an advance his company was held up by a machine gun which was enfilading the line. Accompanied by another soldier, he advanced against this position and succeeded in reducing the nest by killing three and capturing seven of the enemy and their guns.

Lemert, Milo, First Sergeant, Co. H, 119th Infantry, 30th Division, Grossville, Tenn.—Bellicourt, France, Sept. 29, 1918. Seeing that the left flank of his company was held up, he located the enemy machine-gun emplacement which had been causing heavy casualties. In the face of heavy fire he rushed it single-handed, killing the entire crew with grenades. Continuing along the enemy trench in advance of the company, he reached another emplacement which he also charged, silencing the gun with grenades. A third machine-gun emplacement opened upon him from the left, and, with similar skill and bravery, he destroyed this also. Later, in company with another sergeant, he attacked a fourth machine-gun nest, being killed as he reached the parapet of the emplacement. His courageous action in destroying in turn four enemy machine-gun nests prevented many casualties among his company and very materially aided in achieving the objective.

Talley, Edward R., Sergeant, Co. L, 117th Infantry, 30th Division, Russellville, Tenn.—Ponchaux, France, Oct. 7, 1918. Undeterred by seeing several comrades killed in attempting to put a hostile machine-gun nest out of action, Sergeant Talley attacked the position single-handed. Armed only with a rifle, he rushed the nest in the face of intense enemy fire, killed or wounded at least six of the crew, and silenced the gun. When the enemy attempted to bring forward another gun and ammunition, he drove them back by effective fire from his rifle.

Villepigue, John C., Corporal, Co. M, 118th Infantry, 30th Division, Camden, S. C.—Vaux-Andigny, France, Oct. 15, 1918. Having been sent out with two other soldiers to scout through the village of Vaux-Andigny, he met with strong resistance from enemy machine-gun fire, which killed one of his men and wounded the other. Continuing forward without aid, 500 yards in advance of his platoon and in the face of enemy machine-gun and artillery fire, he encountered four of the enemy in a dugout, whom he attacked and killed with a hand grenade. Crawling forward to a point 150 yards in advance of his first encounter, he rushed a machine-gun nest, killing four and capturing six of the enemy and taking two light machine guns. After being joined by his platoon he was severely wounded in the arm.

Ward, Calvin, Private, Co. D, 117th Infantry, 30th Division, Morristown, Tenn.—Estrées, France, Oct. 8, 1918. During an advance Private Ward’s company was held up by a machine gun, which was enfilading the line. Accompanied by a non-commissioned officer, he advanced against this post and succeeded in reducing the nest by killing three and capturing seven of the enemy and their guns.

31ST DIVISION

Slack, Clayton K., Private, Co. E, 124th Infantry, 31st Division, Lampson, Wis.—Consenvoye, France, Oct. 8, 1918. Observing German soldiers under cover fifty yards away on the left flank, Private Slack, upon his own initiative, rushed them with his rifle, and, single-handed, captured ten prisoners and two heavy-type machine guns, thus saving his company and neighboring organizations from heavy casualties.

33RD DIVISION

Allex, Jake, Corporal, Co. H, 131st Infantry, 33rd Division, Chicago.—At Chipilly Ridge, France, Aug. 9, 1918. At a critical point in the action, when all the officers with his platoon had become casualties, Corporal Allex took command of the platoon and led it forward until the advance was stopped by fire from a machine-gun nest. He then advanced alone for about thirty yards in the face of intense fire and attacked the nest. With his bayonet he killed five of the enemy, and when it was broken used the butt end of his rifle, capturing fifteen prisoners.

Anderson, Johannes S., Sergeant, Co. B, 132d Infantry, 33rd Division, Chicago, Ill.—Consenvoye, France, Oct. 8, 1918. While his company was being held up by intense artillery and machine-gun fire, Sergeant Anderson, without aid, voluntarily left the company and worked his way to the rear of the nest that was offering the most stubborn resistance. His advance was made through an open area and under constant hostile fire; but the mission was successfully accomplished, and he not only silenced the gun and captured it, but also brought back with him twenty-three prisoners.

Gumpertz, Sydney G., First Sergeant, Co. E, 132nd Infantry, 33rd Division, New York City.—Bois de Forges, France, Sept. 26, 1918. When the advancing line was held up by machine-gun fire, Sergeant Gumpertz left the platoon of which he was in command, and started with two other[Pg 397] soldiers through a heavy barrage toward the machine-gun nest. His two companions soon became casualties from bursting shell, but Sergeant Gumpertz continued on alone in the face of direct fire from the machine gun, jumped into the nest and silenced the gun, capturing nine of the crew.

Hill, Ralyn, Corporal, Co. H, 129th Infantry, 33rd Division, Oregon, Ill.—Dannevoux, France, Oct. 7, 1918. Seeing a French aeroplane fall out of control on the enemy side of the Meuse River with its pilot injured, Corporal Hill voluntarily dashed across the footbridge to the side of the wounded man, and, taking him on his back, started back to his lines. During the entire exploit he was subjected to murderous fire of enemy machine guns and artillery, but he successfully accomplished his mission and brought his man to a place of safety, a distance of several hundred yards.

Loman, Berger, Private, Co. H, 132nd Infantry, 33rd Division, Chicago.—Consenvoye, France, Oct. 9, 1918. When his company had reached a point within 100 yards of its objective, to which it was advancing under terrific machine-gun fire, Private Loman, voluntarily and unaided, made his way forward, after all others had taken shelter from the direct fire of an enemy machine gun. He crawled to a flank position of the gun, and, after killing or capturing the entire crew, turned the machine gun on the retreating enemy.

Mallon, George H., Captain, 132nd Infantry, 33rd Division, Kansas City, Mo.—Bois de Forges, France, Sept. 26, 1918. Becoming separated from the balance of his company because of a fog, Captain Mallon, with nine soldiers, pushed forward and attacked nine active hostile machine guns, capturing all of them without the loss of a man. Continuing on through the woods, he led his men in attacking a battery of four 155-millimeter howitzers, which were in action, rushing the position and capturing the battery and its crew. In this encounter Captain Mallon personally attacked one of the enemy with his fists. Later, when the party came upon two more machine guns, this officer sent men to the flanks while he rushed forward directly in the face of the fire and silenced the guns, being the first one of the party to reach the nest. The exceptional gallantry and determination displayed by Captain Mallon resulted in the capture of 100 prisoners, eleven machine guns, four 155-millimeter howitzers, and one anti-aircraft gun.

Pope, Thomas A., Corporal, Co. E, 131st Infantry, 33rd Division, Chicago.—Hamel, France, July 4, 1918. His company was advancing behind the tanks when it was halted by hostile machine-gun fire. Going forward alone, he rushed a machine-gun nest, killed several of the crew with his bayonet, and, standing astride of his gun, held off the others until reinforcements arrived and captured them.

Sandlin, Willie, Private, Co. A, 132nd Infantry, 33rd Division, Hayden, Ky.—Bois de Forges, France, Sept. 26, 1918. He showed conspicuous gallantry in action by advancing alone directly on a machine-gun nest which was holding up the line with its fire. He killed the crew with a grenade and enabled the line to advance. Later in the day he attacked alone and put out of action two other machine-gun nests, setting a splendid example of bravery and coolness to his comrades.

35TH DIVISION

Skinker, Alexander R., Captain, 138th Infantry, 35th Division, St. Louis, Mo.—Cheppy, France, Sept. 26, 1918. Unwilling to sacrifice his men when his company was held up by terrific machine-gun fire from iron “pill boxes” in the Hindenburg line, Captain Skinker personally led an automatic rifleman and a carrier in an attack on the machine guns. The carrier was killed instantly, but Captain Skinker seized the ammunition and continued through an opening in the barbed wire, feeding the automatic rifle until he, too, was killed.

Wold, Nels, Private, Co. I, 138th Infantry, 35th Division, McIntosh, Minn.—Cheppy, France, Sept. 26, 1918. He rendered most gallant service in aiding the advance of his company, which had been held up by machine-gun nests, advancing with one other soldier and silencing the guns, bringing with him upon his return eleven prisoners. Later the same day he jumped from a trench and rescued a comrade who was about to be shot by a German officer, killing the officer during the exploit. His actions were entirely voluntary, and it was while attempting to rush a fifth machine-gun nest that he was killed. The advance of his company was mainly due to his great courage and devotion to duty.

36TH DIVISION

Sampler, Samuel H., Sergeant, Co. M, 142nd Infantry, 36th Division, Mangum, Okla.—St. Etienne, France, Oct. 8, 1918. His company having suffered severe casualties during an advance under machine-gun fire, was finally stopped. Sergeant Sampler, then a Corporal, detected the position of the enemy machine guns on an elevation. Armed with German hand grenades, which he had picked up, he left the line and rushed forward in the face of heavy fire until he was near the hostile nest, where he grenaded the position. His third grenade landed among the enemy, killing two, silencing the machine guns and causing the surrender of twenty-eight Germans, whom he sent to the rear as prisoners. As a result of his act the company was immediately enabled to resume the advance.

Turner, Harold L., Corporal, Co. F, 142nd Infantry, 36th Division, Seminole, Okla.—St. Etienne, France, Oct. 8, 1918. After his platoon[Pg 398] had started the attack, Corporal Turner assisted in organizing a platoon consisting of the battalion scouts, runners, and a detachment of the Signal Corps. As second in command of this platoon, he fearlessly led them forward through heavy enemy fire, continually encouraging the men. Later he encountered deadly machine-gun fire which reduced the strength of his command to but four men, and these were obliged to take shelter. The enemy machine-gun emplacement, twenty-five yards distant, kept up a continual fire from four machine guns. After the fire had [Pg 399]shifted momentarily, Corporal Turner rushed forward with fixed bayonet and charged the position alone, capturing the strong point, with a complement of fifty Germans and four machine guns. His remarkable display of courage and fearlessness was instrumental in destroying the strong point, the fire from which had blocked the advance of his company.

42ND DIVISION

Manning, Sidney E., Corporal, Co. C, 167th Infantry, 42nd Division, Flomaton, Ala.—Breuvannes, France, July 28, 1918. When his platoon commander and platoon sergeant had both become casualties soon after the beginning of an assault on strongly fortified heights overlooking the Ourcq River, Corporal Manning took command of his platoon, which was near the center of the attacking line. Though himself severely wounded, he led forward the thirty-five men remaining in the platoon, and finally succeeded in gaining a foothold on enemy position, during which time he had received more wounds, and all but seven of his men had fallen. Directing the consolidation of the position, he held off a large body of the enemy only fifty yards away by fire from his automatic rifle. He declined to take cover until the line had been entirely consolidated with the line of the platoon on the flank, when he dragged himself to shelter, suffering from nine wounds in all parts of the body.

Neibaur, Thomas C., Private, Co. M, 167th Infantry, 42nd Division, Sumner City, Idaho.—Landers, St. Georges, France, Oct. 16, 1918. On the afternoon of Oct. 16, 1918, when the Côte de Chatillon had just been gained after bitter fighting and the summit of that strong bulwark in the Kriemhilde Stellung was being organized, Private Neibaur was sent out on patrol with his automatic-rifle squad to enfilade enemy machine-gun nests. As he gained the ridge he set up his automatic rifle and was directly thereafter wounded in both legs by fire from a hostile machine gun on his flank. The advance wave of the enemy troops counter-attacking had about gained the ridge; and, although practically cut off and surrounded, the remainder of his detachment being killed or wounded, this gallant soldier kept his automatic rifle in operation to such effect that by his own efforts and by fire from the skirmish line of his company, at least 100 yards in his rear, the attack was checked. The enemy wave being halted and lying prone, four of the enemy attacked Private Neibaur at close quarters. These he killed. He then moved along among the enemy lying on the ground about him. In the midst of the fire from his own lines, and by coolness and gallantry, he captured eleven prisoners at the point of his pistol, and, although painfully wounded, brought them back to our lines. The counter-attack in full force was arrested, to a large extent, by the single efforts of this soldier, whose heroic exploits took place against the sky line in full view of his entire battalion.

77TH DIVISION

Kaufman, Benjamin, First Sergeant, Co. K, 308th Infantry, 77th Division, Brooklyn, N. Y.—Forest d’Argonne, France, Oct. 4, 1918. He took out a patrol for the purpose of attacking an enemy machine gun which had checked the advance of his company. Before reaching the gun he became separated from his patrol, and a machine-gun bullet shattered his right arm. Without hesitation he advanced on the gun alone, throwing grenades with his left hand and charging with an empty pistol, taking one prisoner and scattering the crew, bringing the gun and prisoner back to the first-aid station.

McMurtry, George G., Captain, 308th Infantry, 77th Division, New York City.—Forest d’Argonne, France, Oct. 2-8, 1918. Captain McMurtry commanded a battalion which was cut off and surrounded by the enemy; and, although wounded in the knee by shrapnel on Oct. 4th and suffering great pain, he continued throughout the entire period to encourage his officers and men with a resistless optimism that contributed largely toward preventing panic and disorder among the troops who, without food, were cut off from communication with our lines. On Oct. 4th, during a heavy barrage, he personally directed and supervised the moving of the wounded to shelter before himself seeking shelter. On Oct. 6th, he was again wounded in the shoulder by a German grenade, but continued personally to organize and direct the defense against the German attack on the position until the attack was defeated. He continued to direct and command his troops, refusing relief, and after assistance arrived personally led his men out of the position before permitting himself to be taken to the hospital on Oct. 8th. During this period the successful defense of the position was due largely to his efforts.

Miles, L. Wardlaw, Captain, 308th Infantry, 77th Division, Princeton, N. J.—Révillon, France, Sept. 14, 1918. Captain Miles volunteered to lead his company in a hazardous attack on a commanding trench position near the Aisne Canal, which other troops had previously attempted to take without success. His company immediately met with intense machine-gun fire, against which it had no artillery assistance, but Captain Miles preceded the first wave and assisted in cutting a passage through the enemy’s wire entanglements. In so doing he was wounded five times by machine-gun bullets, both legs and one arm being fractured, whereupon he ordered himself placed on a stretcher and had himself carried forward to the enemy trench in order that he might encourage and direct his company, which by this time had suffered numerous casualties. Under the inspiration of this officer’s indomitable spirit his men held the[Pg 400] hostile position and consolidated the front line after an action lasting two hours, at the conclusion of which Captain Miles was carried to the aid station against his will.

Peck, Archie A., Private, Co. A, 307th Infantry, 77th Division, Hornell, N. Y.—Forest d’Argonne, France, Oct. 6, 1918. While engaged with two other soldiers on patrol duty he and his comrades were subjected to the direct fire of an enemy machine gun, at which time both his companions were wounded. Returning to his company, he obtained another soldier to accompany him to assist in bringing in the wounded men. His assistant was killed in the exploit, but he continued on, twice returning, and safely bringing in both men, being under terrific machine-gun fire during the entire journey.

Smith, Frederick E., Lieutenant Colonel, 308th Infantry, 77th Division, Portland, Ore.—Binarville, France, Sept. 28, 1918. When communication from the forward regimental post of command to the battalion leading the advance had been interrupted temporarily by the infiltration of small parties of the enemy armed with machine guns, Lieut. Col. Smith personally led a party of two other officers and ten soldiers, and went forward to re-establish runner posts and carry ammunition to the front line. The guide became confused and the party strayed to the left flank beyond the outposts of supporting troops, suddenly coming under fire from a group of enemy machine guns only fifty yards away. Shouting to the other members of his party to take cover, this officer, in disregard of his own danger, drew his pistol and opened fire on the German gun crew. About this time he fell, severely wounded in the side; but, regaining his footing, he continued to fire on the enemy until most of the men in his party were out of danger. Refusing first-aid treatment, he then made his way in plain view of the enemy to a hand grenade dump and returned under continued heavy machine-gun fire for the purpose of making another attack on the enemy emplacements. As he was attempting to ascertain the exact location of the nearest nest, he again fell, mortally wounded.

Whittlesey, Charles W., Lieutenant Colonel, 308th Infantry, 77th Division, Pittsfield, Mass.—Binarville, in the Forest d’ Argonne, France, Oct. 2-7, 1918. Although cut off for five days from the remainder of his division, Major Whittlesey maintained his position which he had reached under orders received for an advance; and held his command, consisting originally of 463 officers and men of the 308th Infantry and of Company K of the 307th Infantry together, in the face of superior numbers of the enemy during the five days. Major Whittlesey and his command were thus cut off, and no rations or other supplies reached him, in spite of determined efforts which were made by his division. On the fourth day Major Whittlesey received from the enemy a written proposition to surrender, which he treated with contempt, although he was at that time out of rations and had suffered a loss of about 50 percent. in killed and wounded of his command and was surrounded by the enemy.

78TH DIVISION

Sawelson, William, Sergeant, Co. —, 312th Infantry, 78th Division, Harrison, N. J.—Grandpré, France, Oct. 26, 1918. Hearing a wounded man in a shell hole some distance away calling for water, Sergeant Sawelson, upon his own initiative, left shelter and crawled through heavy machine-gun fire to where the man lay, giving him what water he had in his canteen. He then went back to his own shell hole, obtained more water and was returning to the wounded man when he was killed by a machine-gun bullet.

82ND DIVISION

Pike, Emory J., Lieutenant Colonel, Division Machine Gun Officer, 82nd Division, Des Moines, Iowa.—Vandières, France, Sept. 15, 1918. Having gone forward to reconnoiter new machine-gun positions, Colonel Pike offered his assistance in reorganizing advance infantry units, which had become disorganized during a heavy artillery shelling. He succeeded in locating only about twenty men, but with these he advanced; and when later joined by several infantry platoons rendered inestimable service in establishing outposts, encouraging all by his cheeriness, in spite of the extreme danger of the situation. When a shell had wounded one of the men in the outpost, Colonel Pike immediately went to his aid and was severely wounded himself when another shell burst in the same place. While waiting to be brought to the rear, Colonel Pike continued in command, still retaining his jovial manner of encouragement, directing the reorganization until the position could be held. The entire operation was carried on under terrific bombardment; and the example of courage and devotion to duty, as set by Colonel Pike, established the highest standard of morale and confidence to all under his charge. The wounds he received were the cause of his death.

York, Alvin C., Sergeant, Co. G, 328th Infantry, 82nd Division, Pall Mall, Tenn.—Châtel-Chéhéry, France, Oct. 8, 1918. After his platoon had suffered heavy casualties and three other non-commissioned officers had become casualties, Corporal York assumed command. Fearlessly leading seven men, he charged, with great daring, a machine-gun nest which was pouring deadly and incessant fire upon his platoon. In this heroic feat the machine-gun nest was taken, together with four officers and 128 men and several guns.

89TH DIVISION

Barger, Charles D., Private, first class, Co. L, 354th Infantry, 89th Division, Stotts City, Mo.—Bois[Pg 401] de Bantheville, France, Oct. 31, 1918. Learning that two daylight patrols had been caught out in No Man’s Land and were unable to return, Private Barger and another stretcher bearer, upon their own initiative, made two trips 500 yards beyond our lines, under constant machine-gun fire, and rescued two wounded officers.

Barkeley, David B., Private, Co. A, 356 Infantry, 89th Division, San Antonio, Texas.—Pouilly, France, Nov. 9, 1918. When information was desired as to the enemy’s position on the opposite side of the River Meuse, Private Barkeley, with another soldier, volunteered without hesitation and swam the river to reconnoiter the exact location. He succeeded in reaching the opposite bank, despite the evident determination of the enemy to prevent a crossing. Having obtained his information, he again entered the water for his return, but before his goal was reached he was seized with cramps and drowned.

Chiles, Marcellus H., Captain, 356th Infantry, 89th Division, Denver, Col.—Le Champy-Bas, France, Nov. 3, 1918. When his battalion, of which he had just taken command, was halted by machine-gun fire from the front and left flank he picked up the rifle of a dead soldier and, calling on his men to follow, led the advance across a stream, waist deep, in the face of the machine-gun fire. Upon reaching the opposite bank this gallant officer was seriously wounded in the abdomen by a sniper; but before permitting himself to be evacuated he made complete arrangements for turning over his command to the next senior officer; and under the inspiration of his fearless leadership his battalion reached its objective. Captain Chiles died shortly after reaching the hospital.

Forrest, Arthur J., Sergeant, Co. D, 354th Infantry, 89th Division, Hannibal, Mo.—Rémonville, France, Nov. 1, 1918. When the advance of his company was stopped by bursts of fire from a nest of six enemy machine guns, he worked his way single-handed without being discovered to a point within fifty yards of the machine-gun nest. Charging, single-handed, he drove out the enemy in disorder, thereby protecting the advance platoon from annihilating fire, and permitting the resumption of the advance of his company.

Funk, Jesse N., Private, first class, 354th Infantry, 89th Division, Calnan, Col.—Bois de Bantheville, France, Oct. 31, 1918. Learning that two daylight patrols had been caught out in No Man’s Land and were unable to return, Private Funk and another stretcher bearer, upon their own initiative, made two trips 500 yards beyond our lines, under constant machine-gun fire, and rescued two wounded officers.

Furlong, Richard A., First Lieutenant, 353rd Infantry, 89th Division, Detroit, Mich.—Bantheville, France, Nov. 1, 1918. Immediately after the opening of the attack in the Bois de Bantheville, when his company was held up by severe machine-gun fire from the front, which killed his company commander and several soldiers, Lieutenant Furlong moved out in advance of the line with great courage and coolness, crossing an open space several hundred yards wide. Taking up a position behind the line of machine guns, he closed in on them, one at a time, killing a number of the enemy with his rifle, putting four machine-gun nests out of action, and driving twenty German prisoners into our lines.

Hatler, M. Waldo, Sergeant, Co. B, 356th Infantry, 89th Division, Neosho, Mo.—Pouilly, France, Nov. 8, 1918. When volunteers were called for to secure information as to the enemy’s position on the opposite bank of the Meuse River, Sergeant Hatler was the first to offer his services for this dangerous mission. Swimming across the river, he succeeded in reaching the German lines after another soldier who had started with him had been seized with cramps and drowned in midstream. Alone he carefully and courageously reconnoitered the enemy’s positions, which were held in force, and again successfully swam the river, bringing back information of great value.

Johnston, Harold I., Sergeant, Co. A, 356th Infantry, 89th Division, Denver, Col.—Pouilly, France, Nov. 9, 1918. When information was desired as to the enemy’s position on the opposite side of the River Meuse, Sergeant Johnston, with another soldier, volunteered without hesitation and swam the river to reconnoiter the exact location of the enemy. He succeeded in reaching the opposite bank, despite the evident determination of the enemy to prevent a crossing. Having obtained his information, he again entered the water for his return. This was accomplished after a severe struggle, which so exhausted him that he had to be assisted from the water, after which he rendered his report of the exploit.

Wickersham, J. Hunter, Second Lieutenant, 353rd Infantry, 89th Division, Denver, Col.—Limey, France, Sept. 12, 1918. Advancing with his platoon during the St. Mihiel offensive, he was severely wounded in four places by the bursting of a high-explosive shell. Before receiving any aid for himself he dressed the wounds of his orderly who was wounded at the same time. Then, although weakened by the loss of blood, he ordered and accompanied the further advance of his platoon. His right hand and arm being disabled by wounds, he continued to fire his revolver with his left hand, until, exhausted by loss of blood, he fell and died from his wounds before aid could be administered.

91ST DIVISION

Katz, Philip C., Sergeant, Co. C, 363rd Infantry, 91st Division, San Francisco, Cal.—Eclis-fontaine, France, Sept. 26, 1918. After his company[Pg 402] had withdrawn for a distance of 200 yards on a line with the units on its flanks, Sergeant Katz learned that one of his comrades had been left wounded in an exposed position at the point from which the withdrawal had taken place. Voluntarily crossing an area swept by heavy machine-gun fire, he advanced to where the wounded soldier lay and carried him to a place of safety.

Miller, Oscar F., Major, 361st Infantry, 91st Division, Los Angeles, Cal.—Gesnes, France, Sept. 28, 1918. After two days of intense physical and mental strain, during which Major Miller had led his battalion in the front line of the advance through the forest of Argonne, the enemy was met in a prepared position south of Gesnes. Though almost exhausted, he energetically reorganized his battalion and ordered an attack. Upon reaching open ground, the advancing line began to waver in the face of machine-gun fire from the front and flanks, and direct artillery fire. Personally leading his command group forward between his front line companies, Major Miller inspired his men by his personal courage; and they again pressed on toward the hostile position. As this officer led the renewed attack he was shot in the right leg, but he nevertheless staggered forward at the head of his command. Soon afterward he was again shot in the right arm, but he continued the charge, personally cheering his troops on through the heavy machine-gun fire. Just before the objective was reached he received a wound in the abdomen which forced him to the ground, but he continued to urge his men on, telling them to push on to the next ridge and leave him where he lay. He died from his wounds a few days later.

Seibert, Lloyd M., Sergeant, Co. F., 364th Infantry, 91st Division, Salinas, Cal.—Epinonville, France, Sept. 26, 1918. Suffering from illness, Sergeant Seibert remained with his platoon and led his men with the highest courage and leadership under heavy shell and machine-gun fire. With two other soldiers he charged a machine-gun emplacement in advance of their company, he himself killing one of the enemy with a shotgun and captured two others. In this encounter he was wounded, but he nevertheless continued in action; and when a withdrawal was ordered he returned with the last unit, assisting a wounded comrade. Later in the evening he volunteered and carried in wounded until he fainted from exhaustion.

West, Chester H., First Sergeant, Co. D, 363rd Infantry, 91st Division, Idaho, Falls, Idaho.—Bois de Cheppy, France, Sept. 26, 1918. While making his way through a thick fog with his automatic-rifle section, his advance was halted by direct and unusual machine-gun fire from two guns. Without aid he at once dashed through the fire, and attacking the nest killed two of the gunners, one of whom was an officer. This prompt and decisive hand-to-hand encounter on his part enabled his company to advance further without the loss of a man.

93RD DIVISION

Robb, George S., First Lieutenant, 369th Infantry, 93rd Division, Saline, Kan.—Séchault, France, Sept 29-30, 1918. While leading his platoon in the assault on Séchault, Lieutenant Robb was severely wounded by machine-gun fire; but rather than go to the rear for proper treatment he remained with his platoon until ordered to the dressing station by his commanding officer. Returning within forty-five minutes, he remained on duty throughout the entire night, inspecting his lines and establishing outposts. Early the next morning he was again wounded, once again displaying his remarkable devotion to duty by remaining in command of his platoon. Later the same day a bursting shell added two more wounds, the same shell killing his commanding officer and two officers of his company. He then assumed command of the company and organized its position in the trenches. Displaying wonderful courage and tenacity at the critical times, he was the only officer of his battalion who advanced beyond the town; and by clearing machine-gun and sniping posts, contributed largely to the aid of his battalion in holding their objective. His example of bravery and fortitude and his eagerness to continue with his mission despite severe wounds set before the enlisted men of his command a most wonderful standard of morale and self-sacrifice.

TANK CORPS

Call, Donald M., Second Lieutenant, Tank Corps, Larchmont, N. Y.—Varennes, France, Sept. 26, 1918. During an operation against enemy machine-gun nests west of Varennes, Lieutenant Call, then Corporal, was in a tank with an officer, when half of the turret was knocked off by a direct artillery hit. Choked by gas from the high-explosive shell, he left the tank and took cover in a shell hole thirty yards away. Seeing that the officer did not follow, and thinking that he might be alive, Corporal Call returned to the tank under intense machine-gun and shell fire and carried the officer over a mile under machine-gun and sniper fire to safety.

Roberts, Garold W., Corporal, Tank Corps, San Francisco, Cal.—Montrebeau Woods, France, Oct. 4, 1918. Corporal Roberts, a tank driver, was moving his tank into a clump of bushes to afford protection to another tank which had become disabled. The tank slid into a shell hole ten feet deep and filled with water, and was immediately submerged. Knowing that only one of the two men in the tank could escape, Corporal Roberts said to the gunner, “Well, only one of us can get out, and out you go.” Whereupon he pushed his companion through the back door of the tank and was himself drowned.

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	PAGE
I. FIELD AND TRENCH ORDEALS
“And a Few Marines”	1
Forward Lancers	10
An Unparalleled Hero	13
The Nemesis of Flame	18
He Jests at Scars	20
Epic of the Foreign Legion	27
“Doc” of the Fifth	32
Couldn’t Stop Them	35
One of Our Boys	41
Guthrie of the Kilties	44
Not So Unspeakable	47
The Medical Corps	48
Some Red Cross Weaklings	49
“Eh! Men, ’Twas Grand!”	55
One Survived	57
Tank Man Talks	58
The Garibaldi Code	62
The Bald Facts	65
O’Leary Stepped In	71
When the Yanks Went In	74
Humor and Heroism	79
England’s Indian Warriors	85
A Lively Introduction	92
A Valiant Gentleman	95
Where Denominations End	100
Buckeyes or Spearheads	103
Corporal Holmes’ Way	106
Not Dead But Fighting	109
When the Light Failed	114
The Cloud of Blacks	116
Hubbell Bagged ’Em	121
Was He a Coward?	123
Two Heroes of Hill 60	128
Colonel Freyberg, V. C.	131
One of the D. S. C. Men	133
Colored Troops Reach the Rhine	135
Good Old Potts	138
It Was Up to Bill	139
The Rendezvous	142
Staying to the End	146
Without the Glamour	147
Big Adam’s Hare Soup	156
A Blue Grass Canadian	158
Mistress “Razzle Dazzle”	165
The Painter Soldier	169[Pg v]
II. WOMEN WHO DARED
Edith Cavell Martyr Heroine	172
A Picardy Heroine	181
Girls of the Battalion	183
Her Ambulance Unit	186
A True Heroine	188
A Heroine of Humanity	190
III. ADVENTURE IN THE AIR
One of the Great “Aces”	191
The Lafayette Escadrille	196
A Legendary Hero	202
Worthy Citation	207
A Challenge Duel	209
An American Wonder	211
One to Twenty-two	215
From Saddle to CockPit	215
Dodging “Jack Death”	221
Warneford’s Triumph	223
One Minute Plus	227
“The Pictures Are Good”	232
Subduing the Turk	235
A Daring Pursuit	237
The Roosevelt Boys	238
Just What He Wanted	249
“The Red Battle Flyer”	253
Pat O’Brien Outwits the Hun	257
The Track and Trackless Winner	259
The Gunboat (Poem)	264
IV. SEA AND SUB-SEA STORIES
Captain Fryatt’s Murder	265
Jules Verne Vindicated	271
Weddigen’s Wonder Feat	274
Torpedoed	281
The Valleys of the Blue Shrouds	288
Rizzo Sinks the Wien	290
Edith Cavell (Poem)	291
As of Old	293
Death in a Submarine	295
A Notable Exploit	297
Rescue Extraordinary	304
I Have a Rendezvous with Death (Poem)	315
Tricking the Turk	317[Pg vi]
Canadians (Poem)	318
First of Its Kind	318
Not to Be Forgotten	322
Christmas in the Trenches	324
V. ESPIONAGE AND SPIES
Spying at Its Worst	326
As to Spies in England	348
Edith Cavell’s Betrayer	352
Edith Cavell	354
The Spy Mill	355
Alois the Silent	357
Eye of the Morning	360
Better Wrecker than Spy	363
Delicate Scruples	368
Frustrated Diabolism	369
Here’s to Constable Richings	378
What Gilles Brought In	379
VI. AMERICA AT THE FRONT
The Rock of the Marne	381
America’s Highest War Honor	388

Honors to the Brave		Frontispiece
The Sister of Mercy	Facing page	48
Sergeant George E. Burr	”	102
Captain Douglass Campbell	”	152
Corporal Walter E. Gaultney	”	200
Sergeant Herman Korth	”	254
Master Signal Electrician E. J. Moore	”	304
Corporal John J. O’Brien	”	354

pg 37 Changed:	They let go their ammuntion belts
to:	They let go their ammunition belts
pg 50 Changed:	Colonel Montgomery commandered General O’Ryan’s racing car
to:	Colonel Montgomery commandeered General O’Ryan’s racing car
pg 64 Changed:	generally understod among us brothers
to:	generally understood among us brothers
pg 75 Changed:	The comandming officer of the 32nd
to:	The commanding officer of the 32nd
pg 78 Changed:	into the French capital were greeted with enthsuiasm
to:	into the French capital were greeted with enthusiasm
pg 82 Changed:	Had is done what had been intended
to:	Had it done what had been intended
pg 106 Changed:	a fierce bombardment from the enemy’s adtillery
to:	a fierce bombardment from the enemy’s artillery
pg 127 Changed:	I could not restrtain myself any longer
to:	I could not restrain myself any longer
pg 277 Changed:	picked up 156 offcers and men
to:	picked up 156 officers and men
pg 309 Changed:	Involntarily, without the smallest intention of quitting
to:	Involuntarily, without the smallest intention of quitting
pg 345 Changed:	(an offishoot of the National German-American Alliance)
to:	(an offshoot of the National German-American Alliance)
pg 383 Changed:	awaited the second shock we knew would some
to:	awaited the second shock we knew would come
pg 390 Changed:	further established liason with two French batteries
to:	further established liaison with two French batteries

The Project Gutenberg eBook of Deeds of heroism and bravery

DEEDS OF HEROISM AND BRAVERY

CONTENTS

ILLUSTRATIONS IN COLOR

INTRODUCTION

THE SOLDIER

“AND A FEW MARINES”

Eye-witness Account of the Belleau Wood Action in the Marne Salient Beginning June 6th, 1918

IN THE AMERICAN WAY

FACING THE MYSTERY

A BULLET THROUGH THE LUNG

AS SIBLEY’S MEN ADVANCED

THE RIGHT QUALITIES THERE

IN THE BELLEAU WOOD

THE TAKING OF BOURESCHES

GERMAN TREACHERY

“FORWARD, LANCERS!”

And Captain Grenfell’s Cavalry Troops Lived Over “the Charge of the Light Brigade”

“INTO THE JAWS OF DEATH”

GRENFELL RESCUES THE GUNS

AN UNPARALLELED HERO

The Church Elder and Champion Turkey-Shooter Who Killed 25 Germans and Captured a Machine Gun Battalion

EARLY INTO ACTION

“ALL THE TIME I WAS A-USING MY RIFLE”

“I WHIPPED OUT MY AUTOMATIC”

PROMOTED AND DECORATED

“I FEEL A HEAP STRONGER SPIRITUALLY”

THE NEMESIS OF FLAME

A Vision of Inferno from which Even a Dante Would Have Shrunk——“What Hell Must Be Like”

HE JESTS AT SCARS

A Bomb Thrower and Tank Master Who “Paid His Way in Huns”

LIVING NINE PINS

“PAID HIS WAY IN HUNS”

A GO WITH A TANK

SOMETHING OF A MYTH

EPIC OF THE FOREIGN LEGION

Its Wonderful Story Will Stand as One of the Vital Things of the War

JUST BEFORE GOING INTO ACTION

OVER THE TOP AT DOUBLE-QUICK

STEADILY ON ACROSS A WALL OF FIRE

DARE-DEVIL FIGHTERS FROM THE PARIS SLUMS

“DOC OF THE FIFTH”

The Conversion of the Rev. J. H. Clifford, “Y” Worker, into A Hero Among Marines

SO THEY MADE HIM A MARINE

IN THE THICK OF IT AT BELLEAU WOOD

COULDN’T STOP THEM

Thro’ Turkish Shells and Barbed-Wired Sea They Landed at Gallipoli

THE GREAT ADVENTURE BEGINS

CAUGHT IN BARBED-WIRE NETS

GOT THERE ANY OLD WAY

SOME WOULDN’T “DIG IN”

THE KIND OF MEN THEY WERE

UNORTHODOX BUT STANCH

ONE OF OUR BOYS

A California Youth of Heroic Soul Who Gave His Life to England

WARM HEARTED AND FEARLESS

GUTHRIE OF THE “KILTIES”

The First Canadian to Enlist Came Back with Scars of Twenty-two Wounds

HE RAISES A COMPANY

TAKES A MUD BATH

NOT SO UNSPEAKABLE

A Turk Whose Sense of Humor Made the Tommies His Friends at Gallipoli

THE MEDICAL CORPS

Though the Reports Are all Too Few Every Doctor Was a Hero

SOME RED CROSS WEAKLINGS

Captain Bobo and His Buddies Weren’t Good Enough for the Doctors

“THE JOLLY OLD RED CROSS”

KNEW HOW TO GET ’EM

PRETTY GOOD MEN TOO

RESCUES A VILLAGE

“EH! MON, ’TWAS GRAND!”

A Braw Hieland Laddie’s Impressions of What Happened When “We Were Over the Top Like a Lot of Dogs Let Loose”

ONE SURVIVED

An Episode of the Gallipoli Campaign Typical of the Fighting

TANK-MAN TALKS

He Found the Little Fellows to His Taste But Didn’t Care for Heavies

GRENADES JUST EGGS

TOO MUCH INGENUITY

SNIFFS AT HUN TANKS

THE GARIBALDI CODE