Evening Republican, Volume 20, Number 213, Rensselaer, Jasper County, 5 September 1916 — TELLS OF DEEDS OF DARING ON FRONT AT YSER [ARTICLE]

TELLS OF DEEDS OF DARING ON FRONT AT YSER

American Motorcyclist Relates the Dangers of Carrying Dispatches. RIDER WINS VICTORIA CROSS Six Killed in One Instance Before Seventh Delivers Message—Trench Pools Made Up Before, Divided After Action. London—The Daily Express publishes the following: William J. Robinson was born and lived the first six years of his life at sea. You will have realized that he is an American. He landed in England on September 10, 1914. He had been here before. He was still a young man. A year after he landed he found himself without a job. A few days later he was a trooper in the Fifth Dragoon Guards. He had done no soldiering before. He could not ride a horse. He spent a few days in a riding school at Aidershot, and by way of stopping chaff at his expense in barracks went up to a “big chap” (who, he found out afterward, had been heavyweight champion of tlie army) and began a fight by hitting him in the face. That made them friends. On October 8 he landed at Ostend, and on the afternoon of the third day caine under fire at Routers. He had been in the army just over a month. He spent 14 months at the front as motorcar driver, motorcycle dispatch rider and motor machine gun driver, and has written the story of his adventures and. escapes in a very readable volume. (“My Fourteen Months at the Front,” by William J. Robinson.) “Hellfire Corner.” Soon after he reached the front, Private Robinson became temporary driver to Lieut. Gen. Sir Julian Byng, and he was in Ypres when the first shelling began. From that he was switched off to armored cars, and then to motor machine guns, with which he fought in ditches at “Hellfire Corner,” on the Menin road. It was wfyile he was on this job that he saw a motorcyclist win the Victoria Cross. He describes the incident thus: • ■ ■

“ ‘Volunteer dispatch riders for danger work’ were called for. About eighteen of our chaps offered themselves, and, of course, all were accepted. A dispatch had to be carried about two miles along the road which follows the bank of the Yser canal. The road was constantly being swept by German machine gun and rifle fire. The dispatch was to be hande<L-to a French commander who was waiting for It. “The first man started and was soon out of sight. They waited in vain a certain length of time for a signal that he had arrived and then called ‘No. 2.’ These signals are made by heliograph, but while they are good for this kind of work, the Germans can see the signal as well as we can. ‘No. 2’ started out. but we saw him go down before he had gone a hundred yards.,, ' “Then ‘No. 3’ started. It was pillful to watch those poor chaps. When a man knew It was his turn next, I could see the poor fellow nervously working on his* machine. He’d prime the engine, then he’d open and close the throttle quickly several times—anything, in fact, to keep himself busy. “Six of these fellows went down in Ims than half an hour. ‘No. T was a

young fellow whose name I don’t know. I wish I did, for he was certainly the nerviest man I ever saw. ‘No. 7’ was hardly out of the officer’s mouth before he had his dispatch and was on his way. About five minutes later the signal came that the dispatch had been delivered. ’“My officer told me afterward that the French general to whom he had handed the dispatch had taken the Medaille Militaire off his own breast and pinned it on that of this young dispatch rider. He was also later awarded the Victoria Cross and given a commission. It is things like this that make one proud to belong to such an army.” Sniping a Sniper. After spending Christmas, 1914, in the Ypres trenches, Robinson helped a second lieutenant in the Royal Engineers to snipe a German sniper on the Dickebusch-Hollebeke road. As they rode over a wooden bridge a bullet whistled. Neither spoke, but on the way back, three hours later, the officer said: “That blasted sniper has potted at me once too often. We’ll leave the road here and sneak down opposite the hedge under cover of the trees.” Tethering their horses, they crept near the bridge, waited until a wagon passed and heard the sniper’s shot, from behind. They crawled a hundred yards and waited. Soon they heard the rifle crack again, not far away. Creeping a little further, they waited again, watching the trees. They, came so close to the sniper, without seeing him, that next time he fired they- heard the ejector fly back and the bolt snap. Then they spotted him. He was well up a tree, with his rifle fitted on a tripod, so that whenever he heard anyone on the wooden bridge he had only to pull the trigger. But he .had ended his sniping. The lieutenant and Private Robinson fired together, and “Mr. Sniper came down like a thousand of bricks.” Tlie “British" Tommy” of those days, according to William J., was a “great gambler” as well as a great fighter. One of his forms of gambling was a kind of tontine, known as a “trench pool.” “About ten fellows got together, and each put ten francs in a pool just before they went into action. They left this money with someone behind the lines, for they anywhere from six days to three weeks. The idea of the pool was this: Those who lived to get back would take the money and split it evenly among themselves. If only one lived he would have the whole lot. Daredevil Officer. The Tommies kept canaries, rats, mice, dogs, cats, goats, and even pigs, as pets, and would go hungry before the-pet hungered. The “biggest, daredevil” that Robinson heard of was knotvn as the “Mad Major” —an artillery officer who kept his own aeroplane for range finding purposes. When he wanted to correct a range he just flew over and dropped smoke bombs on the particular spot he. wanted his guns to hit. Then he went back and set the guns to work. One day, being annoyed, with a German 17-inch howitzer, he flew over with a 100-pound bomb, nose dived to within 400 feet, dropped the bomb and blew the howitzer to atoms. He returned with his planes riddled with bullets. Mr. Robinson indicates in a few words what happened to two men, a wonyin and two children when a Taube dropped a bomb in the square at Poperinghe. It is enough here to say that they were killed, and that the bicycle one of the men was riding was found twisted and bent on a lamppost 1 about fifty yards away. He also describes briefly the killing of two officers in a motorcar by a German 15-lnch shell on the road going into Ypres. The driver \ escaped, but was sent nearly mad by the shock. His nerve was gone and he had to be discharged. This was during the secopd battle f Ypres, when the city was being lestroyed by shell fire and the houses were burning.