Evening Republican, Volume 20, Number 153, Rensselaer, Jasper County, 27 June 1916 — DAKOTA MAN HAS MANY ADVENTURES [ARTICLE]

DAKOTA MAN HAS MANY ADVENTURES

Billy Thorin Saps Career by Fighting in Legion After He’s “Dead.” TOOK YEAR TO GET THERE War Is Just One More Thrill to Wanderer —Shanghaied to Chile When He Reaches Bordeaux —Chum Killed in Row. By PAUL ROCKWELL. Paris, France.—A full chronicle of the adventures on land and sea of Billy Thorin, American legionnaire, would fill volumes which for absorbing interest would rank with “Treasure Island” or any of the widely read stories of adventure and romance. Billy was born on a wheat ranch, near Canton, S. D., and was Christ; ened Daniel William Thorin. The peaceful occupation of following the plow or operating a steam thresher did not appeal to him, however, and at the age of fourteen years he ran away from home to see the world. The roving blood of hardy Viking ancestors coursed madly in Billy’s veins,' calling him to the sea. Reaching the Pacific coast, he shipped as cabin boy on a tramp sailing vessel, and from that time on Billy followed the sea with fair regularity for fifteen years. Marine on Chinese Gunboat. Like all sailors, however, Billy had his spells of being tired - of ordinary seafaring. Once he enlisted as a marine on a Chinese gunboat and fought with desperate yellow pirates and opium runners. He was a member of Price and Mosby’s legion of soldiers of fortune which fought for first one Mexican pretender, then for another. That campaign was almost Billy’s

finish. In a guerrilla battle with a band of revolutionists Billy and a comrade decided to investigate a small adobe hut which stood in the low brush near a road. Billy started round one side of the house, his mate round the other. When Billy came to the front of the house the headless body of his comrade lay in the dust before the half open door. Billy “saw red." He put his hand on the door to push it open, and a Mexican lurking behind it cut the hand half off with a machete. Somehow or other, Billy killed the Mexican with his bare hands. Then he heard firing and stepped out of the hut. A bullet passed through his face, from cheek to cheek, and Billy started to run. Just as he reached the road a second bullet caught him through • the thigh and Billy pitched forward in the dust When he recovered consciousness he was in a military hospital at Fort Roswell, N. M. After Billy recovered he went to Australia. He left that country in June, 1914, on an Italian vessel bound for Liverpool. When the ship reached its destination it was learned that the great war had broken out. Goes to Enlist, Shanghaied on Ship. Billy at once announced his intention of going to France and joining the foreign legion.

Jack Hodge, an Australian sailor who had shipped along with Billy, decided to join the legion with him and the Italian captain offered to carry the two men to Bordeaux on his boat. At Bordeaux the two comrades helped load the boat with a cargo for Chile, then went into a case with the captain, who proposed a drink to their success. One drink was followed by another, and when the two would-be legionnaires recovered their senses they were far out on the ocean en route for South America. Some weeks later Jhe ship sailed into the harbor of Ama, Chile. Before going ashore Billy and his mate gave the treacherous captain a thrashing that sent him into a hospital and them into a Chilean prison for two months. After coming - out of Jail the two comrades had to wait around Arica for several months before they could get a ship back to France. There were many Germans in Arica, who did not relish the loudly proclaimed intention of Billy and Hodge of returning to France to Join the legion.

One night Billy and Hodge r been In a saloon together. Hodge stepped out alone, and, hearing a commotion, Billy rushed out after him. He found his mate dying in the street, a knife stuck in his back. -- “Dead” in Battle, Soon Recovers. The next morning Billy sailed, and in June, 1915, he reached Bordeaux, and was enrolled in the legion. He trained at Camp La Val bonne, and went to the front withal detachment of re-enforcements Just before the Champagne offensive In September. A few days after the legion’s charge In the Bois Sabot, on September 28, I received this news in a letter from Paul Pavelka:, . “Early in the .attack Billy Tborin was struck in the head by a piece of shrapnel. He refused to go to the rear, but kept on. A few minutes later he was again hit and toppled over. I knelt and looked at him, and he was stone dead.” But Billy was not dead. He came to and crawled alone to a first-aid post, and later reached a hospital in the far south of France. Billy has Just gone back to the front.

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