Evening Republican, Volume 19, Number 226, Rensselaer, Jasper County, 23 September 1915 — TELLS WAR TRAGEDY [ARTICLE]

TELLS WAR TRAGEDY

Wounded French Officer Describes Thrilling Escape. Slips Out of German Prison and Makes Way Back to Own Lines— Peasant Baby Shot in His Arms by German Sentinels. (International News Service.) Paris. —A lieutenant in the French Foreign legion has just told the following story here: “It was on the nigfil of .August 23, after the retreat from Luneville. Towards five I received a ball in the forehead —see the scar on the right on the-frontal bone. I fell stunned by the blow. One of my men picked me up, and I could hear him confusedly saying: ‘Our lieutenant is dead.’ My comrades took me behind a wall and left me there.

‘‘Towards seven I came to myself in a fever, and believing I was in the thick of the battle. I shouted ‘Forward,’ but those to whom I gave the order were German ambulance men. They took me on a stretcher to Luneviile and shut me in the barracks of the chasseurs, which had been transformed into a hospital. “The window bars were old and the fever gave me the strength of ten. I dug at the cement with a knife, and tore out a bar. Slipping through, I fell from the first story into an empty passage leading to the Rue Jollivet. 1 was bleeding at the knees, but what matter? I crawled a few yards and saw the uhlans defiling past in the main street. Close by was a house where I had seen a light appear and then go out. After knocking gently and getting no answer, I broke down the door with my shoulder and went in, revolver in hand. A whole family was hiding under the staircase, and in a whisper I said I was French and they had nothing to fear. “A trembling woman’s fingers were held out to guide me. ‘Give me a cloak, a hat and a pair of trousers,' 1 said. In a second or two these were forthcoming. ‘Which is the first road I come to?’ ‘The road to Bayou.’ A man’s toneless voice added: ‘Lieutenant, you are going—let us go with you!’ I lit my pocket-lamp to look at my companions—a lower middle-class family, the man pale, with chattering teeth, the woman also pale, but resolute, and two children, one of seven and the other a baby of nine months. ‘All right,’ I said, ‘we yill go—all five of us!’

“Disguised as a civilian, with bowed shoulders like an old man, I led the way, carrying the baby. We ran and crept along the banks of the Moselle where the bridges were occupied by the troops. We had to go on noiselessly, for I had heard the guttural cries of the sentinels on outpost duty. The baby began to wail. The outpost heard us and ‘Wer da?’ rang out 150 yards away. We did not reply and a shower of bullets swept us, whistling on all sides. ‘Run, and run fast!’ I cried, and I took the baby again. “He was crying just now, but was quiet again. Another shower of bullets. My left arm felt heavy and my little finger especially hurt me horhorribly. At last we fell into a dense scrub. God be thanked! we were saved! But the undergrowth was thick. The man had a knife with him and I had still mine. So we went at it cutting a path through. The woman, motherly even in her terror, offered to take the baby to lighten me. ‘No, no! ’ I said, ‘he does not weigh much and he is asleep.’ “We cut so hard into the wood —I heard afterwards that it was the forest of Parroy—that we came to a clearing and a path. But how heavy the baby was! A grand, fine boy, said the mother, and I did not doubt her in the least. We walked hard, going westward. Suddenly French voices challenged. ‘Halt, who goes there?’ ‘A French officer,’ I answered, and advanced to explain who we were and whence* we came “ ‘But you are wounded, lieutenant!’ says the sergeant. ‘Hush! Say nothing for the sake of the others,* I replied, for by the glare of the lantern I had seen blood also on the baby’s bonnet. *Two men to take these good people to the rear,' I ordered with a

sigh of satisfaction, ‘and as for me. take me to the first aid station.’ “I held out the child to its mother, saying: ‘Be careful, no shaking; he is sleeping, do not wake him.’ I went off at a Jog trot, without turning round for fear of betraying emotion. I had the little finger taken off —see — and two bullets through the shoulder, high up. “But that was nothing to compare with what I was suffering. For I can tell you now, gentlemen, I had known ever since the first shot that I was carrying a dead baby.”